anna ascends and “little syria”
One hundred years ago today … Anna Ascends opened at the Playhouse. Written by Henry Chapman Ford, it depicted a Syrian American woman from NYC’s “little Syria” striving to raise her social and economic status in the US.
New York Tribune, 21 September 1920, p. 8. Chronicling America.
A white actor, Alice Brady, portrayed the title character Anna Ayyoub; Brady researched her role by repeatedly visiting Manhattan’s Syrian immigrant neighborhoods.
New York Tribune, 26 September 1920, p. 32. Chronicling America.
As the Tribune feature reports, Brady “made frequent excursions to Washington Street and the East Side…. She became a rather well known figure in the coffee houses and restaurants of the Balkan Belt.” Brady also learned enough of the “Syrian tongue” (that is, Arabic) to sing in the language, a song written by local Syrian music champion Alexander Maloof.
The geographical nomenclature in the article is a bit odd, but “Washington Street” clearly refers to the “Little Syria” neighborhood of Manhattan’s Lower West Side.
Approximate map of the Syrian quarter, 1920, highlighted. Courtesy Arab American Museum, reprinted in The Bowery Boys
According to The WPA Guide to New York City, the “Syrian Quarter [was] established in the late 1880s at the foot of Washington Street from Battery Place to Rector Street” (76). It was the US’s “first Middle Eastern community” (The Bowery Boys).
Note: read more about the vibrant Little Syria in our June 28 post about 1920 NYC’s Arabic-language newspaper Meerat-ul-Gharb.
Anna Ascends was successful enough to be adapted for cinema two years later, with Brady still in the lead role.
Lobby card for Anna Ascends, 1922. Paramount Pictures. Wikipedia.
Only six minutes of the film are known to exist.
References/Further Reading:
“A trip to Little Syria, New York’s first Middle Eastern neighborhood.” Bowery Boys. Nov. 15, 2014.
“History of the Syrian Colony on Washington Street.” Washington Street Historical Society.
The WPA Guide to New York City : the Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s New York. New York :Pantheon Books, 1982.
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, SEPTEMBER 22, 2020.
TAGS: theater, Broadway, drama, stage, actor, actress, neighborhood, Syrian, Arabic, immigration