Review - Ashcans, Foxy Grandpa and Sober Sue

As foreign as the concept may seem to 21st Century playgoers, there was a time, so I'm told, when audience members freshly entertained by Gotham's newest theatrical endeavors would not rush home to discuss their reactions on the internet. Instead, elegant couples, rowdy intellectuals and distinguished middle-aged gentlemen with their pretty young "nieces" in tow would gather at one of Longacre (later known as Times) Squares' numerous emerging supper clubs and nightspots to mingle, refresh and perhaps even converse about the evening's entertainment.

You can enjoy a glimpse of this era at the New York Historical Society's marvelous exhibition, Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925. Though the eight artists who comprised the Ashcan School, so called because an unimpressed art critic referred to their work as "ashcans and girls hitching up their skirts" (an early example of taking back the word, I'd say), were most famous for depicting the grittier side of New York's everyday urban life, this exhibition focuses on their paintings of leisure time, with a nice chunk of it devoted to scenes of audiences and actors during performances and the after-theatre crowds making merry. I especially enjoyed William Glackens' view of a night at Hammerstein's Roof Garden, Everett Shinn's "Theatre Scene" (pictured, courtesy of New York Historical Society) and a 1902 film snippet of a vaudeville act called "Foxy Grandpa."

And while I'm on the subject of Hammerstein's Roof Garden, that was the theatrical home of a woman billed as "Sober Sue." Garden manager Willie Hammerstein offered $1,000 to anyone who could make her laugh. As word got out about her stone-faced reactions to antics which had the rest of the audience doubled over in chuckles, vaudeville's best comedians would all take up the challenge for a chance to earn the title of the one who made "Sober Sue" laugh. What they didn't know was that the woman, whose real name was Susan Kelly, suffered from facial paralysis and that Hammerstein had set up the whole stunt to get the funniest performers in New York to entertain his audiences for free.

Quick quip from the tongue of Mrs. Parker: "Not just plain terrible. This was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."

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