Thursday, August 27, 2015

More postcards



Above is Tod Calloway, a comedian and fixture on the Tivoli circuit. The post card is addressed to Eileen Capel, a fellow performer on the Clay's circuit. It's signed on both sides.





Arthur Foldesy, Hungarian Cellist who toured Australia in 1905. Also signed.


Another postcard of my mate George Lauri, a JCW comedian who met a tragic end.



Connie Milne, a regular for JCW's Royal Comic Opera Company.



Advertising card for the Percy Hutchison tour of 1928.

You can search the HAT collection of photos, postcards and other memorabilia at flickr.






Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Lennon, Hyman and Lennon- Australian Jugglers

I'm posting this because I really just wanted to post the photo. 

Albert Lennon, Ted Lennon and Frank Hyman were an Australian acrobatic juggling trio who were very well known in Australia during the early 20th Century.

Burt was the best known of the three. His real name was Albert Spinks and he was a Sydney man. He and his 'brother' Ted began their career as the Lennon Brothers, working in an amateur group called the Electric Minstrels in Sydney.

Ted and Burt then toured Australia with a troupe which included a very famous former minstrel performer, Irving Sayles. Sayles was an African American man who had arrived in Australia with an American minstrel touring group and never left. He was a mainstay of the Tivoli circuit for many years.

Being associated with Irving gave Ted and Burt some cache with managers and audiences. Irving was very well regarded by both. It was during this time that they met Frank Hyman, a contortionist, and formed a trio, becoming Lennon, Hyman and Lennon. It was as this trio that they gained fame at home and abroad.

Around  1901 the three left Australia and visited England. Whilst there they created a short skit focusing on an Australian outback bush theme. The skit included tumbling and acrobatics and was presented as a novelty act. It was a very popular turn in England.

Their fame overseas led to them being recruited for pantomimes in Australia . And in 1906 they had a feature role in the Sinbad the Sailor pantomime, staged by William Anderson .
This role featured the trio doing comedic juggling, and this aspect of their work was included in all their future vaudeville performances.

Their act seemed to be primarily a club passing act. A review of their vaudeville turn described it as follows.
'The first turn was a display of juggling with Indian clubs which they handled with remarkable proficiency, exchanging flying clubs with one another and sometimes surrendering three clubs in mid air with an air of perfect nonchalance.'

Their juggling was characterised by very fast passing and deft catching that had onlookers seeing the clubs as a blur.
"the varied manipulations were really astounding, the concluding turn in which the nine clubs were kept twirling in the air created the greatest enthusiasm.'

After several pantomime performances, the three men created their own vaudeville touring troupe, which apparently included their wives. The troupe, known as the Lennon, Hyman, Lennon troupe, toured country towns in Australia. During 1908 they visited Rockhampton, the Darling Downs, Lismore and Mackay. In each place they demonstrated their excellent juggling and acrobatic skills.

By 1910, the trio had made enough money to settle down, and they invested in their own theatre, The Empire in Adelaide. They soon became respectable citizens of the city. Originally the Empire showed vaudeville shows, but gradually the theatre changed from a mixture of vaudeville and movies to showing exclusively movies.

They were in partnership for some time, however, during the War years, references to Ted and Frank become scarce and it seems that the partnership dissolved shortly after the end of the war.

Burt, however, continued to be an entrepreneur. He invested with the Fullers in the Majestic Theatre in Adelaide and remained a prominent member of the Adelaide theatrical community for some time.


Burt died in 1954, but I have yet to discover what happened to Frank and Ted. 

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Selma Braatz juggling in Australia 1914.

1914 was a big year for juggling in Australia. Cinquevalli toured and W C Fields returned. The year began with the arrival of a very talented 'lady juggler' called Selma Braatz in January.



Selma arrived in 1913 aged 25 and was accompanied by Clara and Fritz Braatz. Clara has been described variously as Selma's aunt or mother. In Australia she was referred to as the juggler's mother, whilst Fritz was referred to as her father.


The juggler was described as 'a young and trimly built lady from Germany who juggled with any old thing in the way of light articles'. On stage she wore a type of short suit, which was demure, but daring, in that it revealed her legs.

Selma started her tour of Australia in January, in Melbourne. It was pantomime season so her appearance at the Opera House in that city was not much remarked upon . She toured the Tivoli in Sydney, where her appearance was overshadowed by the newest dance craze, the Tango, and went to provincial areas in Victoria such as Ballarat, where the open air nature of the theatre interfered with her juggling. She also visited Perth and Kalgoorlie, a mining town. Her itinerary, particularly the visits to the country areas, suggested that she and her family were quite adventurous. 

Her act consisted of balancing and juggling of unusual household objects. Selma started her act juggling a tennis racquet, she then proceeded to use a bell topper and stick and manipulated both to the  audience's surprise and delight. She  juggled billiard  balls and balanced things on a cue stick. She had difficulty with some of the balancing tricks in the open air Britannia Theatre at Ballarat, but they were performed successfully in the bigger theatres of Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney.

The trick that won her the most applause was balancing a tray, a wine glass, another tray,  and an egg on a billiard cue held upright on her chin. The trays were knocked away and the egg fell into the wine glass without breaking.



As a finale, Selma juggled some carriage lamps. The house lights were dimmed and as the lamps were thrown into the air they became luminous, changing colour from white to red and on to violet.
Selma was assisted on stage by Clara who juggled soap bubbles. Charles Waller described these as 'stiff bubbles, (which) may be blown either from film cement or from a special soap solution, into the composition of which enters a little gum arabic.' According to Waller, Selma was responsible for introducing the juggling of soap bubbles into Australia.

 Selma was apparently  on good terms with Cinquevalli, whose name always arose when jugglers were discussed in this country. Apparently, they exchanged letters, and Cinq called Selma, 'Pauline', a reference to his own name Paul.

Selma toured the whole country, and stayed for several months, before returning overseas where she continued her juggling career.

She died in New York in 1973, reportedly aged 89.


SOURCES;
Arrival information about Clara, Fritz and Selma, from Victorian Shipping records.
Description of Selma from The Adelaide Register, 4/03/1914
Description of Selma's act from The Adelaide Register. 4/03/1914,and The Argus (Melbourne)5/01/1914.
The description of soap bubble juggling comes from Magical Nights in the Theatre by Charles Waller. Edited by Gerald Taylor.
The relationship between Selma and Cinquevalli is discussed in The Referee newspaper.11/2/1914
Pictures of Selma come from 1. The Australasian, 10/01/1914, 2. The World News, Sydney, 14/2/1914
Information about Selma's death comes from juggle.org

New Postcards

My visit to the postcard fair today was very profitable. Well profitable for the stall owners, but very interesting for me.



Upper left is Pansy Montague. Pansy, also known as La Milo, was a human statue performer.She was born in Sydney and started her career with the Tivoli Circuit in the early 20th Century. In this postcard she is posing as the Water Nymph.

Upper right is Little Baby Watson, another Tivoli performer. Little baby Watson was a favorite of Tivoli owner Harry Rickards in the early 20th century.

Lower left is Teresa Carreno, who toured Australia in 1907. She was a Venezuelan pianist, singer and composer.

Lower Right is Margaret Thomas, one of JC Williamson's Royal Comic Opera Company.


Above to the left is a lovely postcard of the 'red headed spark' Daisy Jerome. I have something about her elsewhere on this blog. Next to her is one of my favorites, Carrie Moore. On the bottom is a very interesting advertising postcard for a Bland Holt production. Bland Holt was one of Australia's premier producers of melodrama. This particular postcard is advertising a 1904 production at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. It features a caricature of the man himself staring out a window.



These three postcards feature at the top left, a 1950s Australian magician named Tommy Parer. Next to Tommy is Annette Kellerman, the famous Australian swimmer who made a name for herself in the movies. Below is a picture of Miss Valli Valli an English Edwardian actress.

Finally, two wonderful postcards. The first is of Vivien Leigh during her contract with London Films. This probably dates from the mid 1930s, just before Gone with the Wind.

The second is an intriguing picture postcard of a parade in Sydney to advertise the Criterion Theatre's production of 'A Beggar on Horseback'. A quick internet search dates this to 1908. If anybody can tell where this was taken, I would appreciate it. I'm guessing Hyde Park because it was the closest park to the Criterion.

Alas, No Jugglers!








Tuesday, August 18, 2015

W C Fields juggling in Australia 1903

In the early 20th Century, Cinquevalli popularized juggling in Australia and due to this, Harry Rickards, the owner of the Tivoli circuit, looked for other jugglers to entertain his audiences.

In 1903, Rickards succeeded in persuading the American 'eccentric juggler' W C Fields to tour Australia.

At the time of his arrival, Fields was 23 years old. The local version of Theatre Magazine described him as 'A comparatively good looking , fair coloured youngster. ...a good revolver shot and a capital horseman.'

Fields began his tour in Melbourne in June, traveled to Adelaide for about a week in July and then had a two month stint at the Tivoli in Sydney.

His act was most notable for its comedy.

Fields dressed as a tramp, said little and let his antics and dumb show provide the laughs.



For a ten minute turn in Adelaide, he used a battered old  grey belltopper (hat) and twisted it around his feet, hands and head. He then placed a cigar on the hat, placed both on his toe and whipped them up so that the hat fell onto his head and the cigar into his mouth.

He followed this with feats of three ball juggling. (He used tennis balls)  The Adelaide Advertiser said that 'under his control the balls were made to bound from place to place with lightning speed.'

In Sydney and Melbourne, Fields did the  billiard ball trick. Apparently this involved the use of a trick pool table. Field would bounce balls off parts of his body and they would rebound into the pockets. This trick was very well received by audiences.

The juggler was very popular in Sydney in particular.The Referee newspaper described the encore demands from the audience on his opening night as 'unreasonable.' Most reviews commented on his humour. The same newspaper said 'he does the most difficult feats with a drollness which is irresistibly funny.' 

Fields returned to Australia in 1914 for another tour. Of course he followed up his juggling career with star turns as a comedian in the Ziegfeld follies and in movies. Field gave up juggling, partly because he wanted to drink, and partly because he wanted a more rewarding occupation. Nonetheless, he did gain his initial fame through juggling and was one of the most successful acts on the Tivoli circuit in Australia in 1903.

If you are interested in contemporary juggling in Australia try Sydney Juggling.

notes on sources.

Fields' description from Theatre Magazine is quoted in Tivoli by Frank Van Straten

The picture of Fields comes from Melbourne Punch, 25/06/1903

The description of his act in Adelaide comes from The Adelaide Advertiser, 13/07/1903

The description of the billiard ball trick is based upon a description found at www.juggling.org

Finally, quotations about his performance in Sydney come from The Referee, 29/03/1903




Sunday, August 9, 2015

Cinquevalli

This is my original article about Cinquevalli,the most famous juggler to grace a stage.





Juggler Paul Cinquevalli made four visits to Australia between 1899 and 1914. His act was a rousing success on each occasion. Cinquevalli was a skilled showman who perfected the art of juggling to a degree seldom seen. He travelled the world and one of his favourite places was the Tivoli circuit in Australia.

‘I like Australia’ said the juggler during his 1909 visit.
‘Who could not like a country like this-not only the place and the climate- but look at the audiences and how do they treat me’
Cinq was Polish born but his birth name is disputed. It could have been Emile Otto Lehmann Braun or Paul Braun Lehmann or alternatively Paul Kestner. What is not disputed is the accident that transformed him from trapeze artist to juggler.

Cinquevalli called it ‘the fluke of my life’.
When performing in St Petersburg from the flying trapeze, one of the assistants forgot to wipe the bar of one of the trapeze, and when I swung across space and gripped, my hands slipped. I knew how to fall, that was a part of our training then, but in the downward course I struck one of the wires supporting the poles and this upset my balance and I fell in a heap.'
Cinquevalli broke his arm, his leg and crushed his chest. The accident left him with a permanently weakened and slightly misshapen left wrist. The weakness prevented him from continuing a trapeze career.

Cinq had always been a juggler and sleight of hand artist in private company and his friends urged him to take it up as a profession. He began juggling ordinary items like matches, cigars and umbrellas and worked his way up to specialty items. He soon became one of the foremost jugglers of his generation.

He was a charming conversationalist with a down to earth manner. Theatre Magazine in Sydney called him ‘unassuming and brilliant.’ He was a small man standing a mere five feet six inches, and weighing only eleven stone. As was expected of a former aerialist, he was graceful and fluid in his movements. He was also a vaudeville artist with a wide variety of skills. He was a formidable weight lifter, an expert mandolinist, an accomplished linguist and had a phenomenal memory. For example he could repeat long columns of figures after one hearing.

The juggler was also a skilled raconteur. In 1909 he was telling people a story of how he escaped a murderous lunatic who had wanted to throw him from an enormous building. Theatre Magazine assured it’s readers that the story was a ‘thrilling and blood curdling’ tale. For the same magazine, Cinquevalli wrote a long article called "Some Juggling Tales." The article detailed his adventures in the juggling trade and showed a self deprecating sense of humour and ability to amuse which must have been part of the man’s character.

His juggling ability was one of the most unusual ever seen. He made up most of his own routines. He would juggle with billiard balls whilst he held in his teeth, a table, a chair and Walter Burford, his assistant. One year he had a pony cart driven on stage. He then balanced the cart expertly on his chin. In another trick he balanced a top hat on an umbrella. On top of the hat was placed a half crown and a cigar. He tossed the whole bundle into the air and caught the cigar in his mouth, the half crown in his right eye and the hat on his head.

Cinquevalli had two famous feats, both of which he performed in Australia. The first was the cannon ball trick. He allowed a cannon ball, said to weigh 50 pound, suspended about six or eight feet above the stage, to drop, and he would catch it on his spine. He got the idea by accident when practising one day

When I was balancing a large wooden ball on top of a stick one day just for practice, the ball slipped and fell on the back of my neck without hurting me in the least. It then at once occurred to me that if I could catch a ball by accident on the back of my neck without hurting myself, I ought to be able to do the same thing at any time I wanted to. So I threw the ball up in the air, tried to catch it on the same place, did not quite succeed and was knocked senseless on the floor.'

Cinq said that it had taken him a year to perfect the trick. It was one of his most audacious feats and astounded audiences around the world. The juggler considered it one of his most popular deeds, but not his most dangerous.

However, according to Edward Maas, the Tivoli Theatre’s stage manager, Cinq was well aware that he was risking his life every time he performed it. One night in Sydney a member of the audience approached the juggler and concluded.

‘Well it seems to me that the game is not worth the candle. If you miscalculated the ball by half an inch it would probably kill you’.

‘Dare say’ replied Cinquevalli, ‘but you see, I never miscalculate’

His other famous feat was the billiard ball trick. The juggler considered this one of his most difficult tasks and said that it had taken him eight years to perfect it. To perform it he wore a tunic with several pockets. He balanced two billiard balls on the thick end of a cue, which was in turn poised on top of a third ball, balanced on a wine glass which was standing on his forehead. With a flick of his body, the tower collapsed and the three balls found their way into the pockets of the tunic. The expert juggler performed many versions of this trick during his 1909 tour of Australia.
In Sydney that year, Cinquevalli charmed large Tivoli audiences. He was accompanied on stage by an energetic and comical assistant called Walter Burford. Burford had been with Cinq for ten years and knew every nuance of the act. His antics amused audience and critics and were much commented upon. Walter was often balanced in awkward positions by the skilled juggler. Unfortunately he died during the Melbourne part of the tour later in 1909.

Cinq and Burford received a generous reception in Sydney. Cinquevalli had replaced his traditional all black tights with pink fleshings. The alteration was considered ‘frivolous’ by Theatre Magazine. However it did not affect his performance. On the first night, billiard balls travelled down one of Cinquevalli’s arms, across his chest to the other arm. They were balanced and manipulated in all manner of combinations. In another feat, which caused the audience to gasp in amazement, he used a pyramid triangle and a glass of water. The glass of water was placed on the base of the triangle. The triangle in turn was spun quickly above the head on the tip of a cue, not a drop of water spilt to the stage. The juggler had made a specialty of manipulating ordinary objects. He juggled a piece of paper, a billiard ball and a cannon ball with ease. As a finale he manipulated a hat, an umbrella and a portmanteau.

The Referee newspaper called him mystifying and dazzling. It referred to him as ‘the great Paul Cinquevalli.’ It was his third tour of Australia and every performance was well attended. Cinquevalli’s managers had asked him to refrain from introducing new tricks to the act. The attraction was the familiarity of the performance and the skill with which it was done. The public lined up to witness the famous billiard ball and cannon ball feats. Cinq was therefore forced to perform these wherever he went or risk alienating his audience.

Cinq performed before royalty in every country. He entertained Queen Victoria and appeared many times before Edward the Seventh. He was popularly acclaimed as the world’s greatest juggler. Due to this almost universal popularity, he had no need to continue performing. He apparently attempted to retire at least twice. Once when he was thirty four and again when he was forty five. Yet he became miserable after each attempt. Cinq thrived on the thrill of performing before an audience. He could not live happily without the joy of performing on stage.

Cinquevalli made another trip to Australia in 1914, but his career was to be permanently affected by the First World War. He was a man of Polish and German extraction and as such was ostracised by press and public, who were anxious to show their patriotism. Although Cinq had been entertaining audiences for over 20 years, he was now considered an enemy. The man who could not give up the stage lights had them dimmed by racial prejudice. Cinquevalli died broken hearted in 1918.

He was a man of many talents, an intelligent, humorous, individual who entertained audiences all around the world. He was a brilliant juggler, a funny raconteur and a man who lived for his profession. Jugglers and theatre lovers everywhere honour Cinquevalli’s name.

Some pictures of Cinquevalli during his tours .

Cinquevalli 1899 including juggling some beer barrels.


55 year old Cinquevalli at home and juggling