Christmas benefit at the New York Hippodrome

Today’s guest-post is from Sunny Stalter-Pace (see full bio below)

One hundred years ago today . . . the New York Hippodrome hosted a benefit for the New York American newspaper’s Christmas fund. Stage stars volunteered their time and talent to raise money for the charity, which gave holiday dinners to poor families and Christmas toys to their children.

From its opening in 1905, the New York Hippodrome, located on Sixth Avenue between 43 and 44 Streets, was the site of massive performances that combined elements of the circus, ballet, melodrama, patriotic rally, and musical revue. The Times Square theater had more than 5200 seats for audience members, who faced a stage twelve times the size of one in a typical Broadway house. The downstage apron could hold two regulation-size circus rings; when the apron floor was lowered, that half of the stage could be flooded for water scenes. Hippodrome shows were corny and old-fashioned but visually stunning. Native New Yorkers would take their out-of-town visitors, or maybe their kids at Christmastime.

During the fall and winter of 1920, the production that ran every day of the week except Sunday was called Good Times. A quick description of a few notable scenes should give a sense of the Hippodrome house style. Good Times began with “Shadowland,” where chorus girls in silhouette blew giant bubbles behind a screen. Act Two opened in a toy store setting with cast members costumed as dolls: among the specialties during this scene were an acrobatic act by a North African tumbling ensemble dressed like toy soldiers and a stilt-walking number by the Pender Troupe, lately arrived from England and including a young Cary Grant, still going by his birth name Archie Leach. [Editor’s note: see NY1920’s July 28, 1920 post by Faye Hammill.] Powers’ Elephants, a mainstay of the Hippodrome, gave their performance a modern twist with the elephant known as Jennie dancing a “shimmy.” The show concluded with an aquatic finale, which by 1920 was another established part of the show. Female high divers plunged into the tank. Other cast members walked down steps into the water and disappeared, as seen in this set design sketch for “March of the Water Guards.”

Everyone in the cast returned for the last song, “Truth Reigns Supreme.”

Because of Sunday closing laws, also known as blue laws, vaudeville and variety shows typically did not run full performances on the Christian sabbath. Many exceptions had been carved out: educational performances and films were exempt, as were musical performances. The Hippodrome regularly held orchestral concerts and vocal recitals. Charity benefits could also be held on Sundays. 

The New York American fundraiser advertised forty distinct acts that were to be featured in the evening’s performance. The Four Marx Brothers, already seasoned sketch comedians, are the best known today. Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, riding the success of their hit “Whispering,” performed, as did French actress Alice Delysia, appearing in support of the recently opened orientalist musical comedy Afgar, in which she starred as a harem girl who leads a strike. Accordion-playing comedian Phil Baker and the dancing Fairbanks Twins represented Florenz Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic. Stars from the current Hippodrome show appeared as well:singer Belle Storey, clown Joe Jackson, and the horseback riding Hanneford family. 

[Editor: for more about Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, see our August 23, 1920 post by Roger Smith. Ziegfeld appears repeatedly on this site, for example, in our March 29, 1920 post.]

When the receipts were counted, the benefit earned roughly $12,000.

The Hippodrome was a popular destination during the holidays. The day after the Christmas benefit, the Good Times bill swapped in some new and exciting scenes. Most prominent among them was a reproduction of the Belmont Futurity that racehorse Man o’ War won in September 1919. Ten horses ran on stage, positioned so they all appeared to run straight toward the audience. The New York Times notes that they were “real ones of course, for there is no synthetic entertainment at the Hippodrome.” And that is precisely what fascinates me about this long-gone cathedral of spectacle: it was an analog extravaganza, built one real horse (or daredevil stunt, or dancer) at a time.

References/Further Reading:

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. "Hippodrome souvenir book for Good Times" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed December 14, 2020. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/00d2fbe0-7348-0132-29cd-58d385a7b928

Norman Clarke. The Mighty Hippodrome. South Brunswick, N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1968.

Milton Epstein. “The New York Hippodrome: Spectacle on Sixth Avenue from ‘A Yankee Circus on Mars’ to ‘Better Times’, a Complete Chronology of Performances, 1905-1939.” Ph.D., New York University, Department of Performance Studies, 1993.

“The Holiday Hip.” New York Times. 1920, sec. Drama, Music. 26 Dec 1920: 68

– Sunny Stalter-Pace, December 19, 2020

Sunny Stalter-Pace, Hargis Associate Professor of American Literature at Auburn University, received her PhD from Rutgers University and her BA from Loyola University Chicago. She specializes in the interdisciplinary study of modernist performance, literature, and urban space. Her first book, Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New York City Subway, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2013. Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance (Northwestern University Press, 2020) is her first biography. Twitter: @Slstalter

TAGS: vaudeville, theater, Christmas, holidays, charity, Hippodrome, entertainment