EDWARD EVERHAPPY EVERGREEN RICE

The Original Grand-daddy of Musical Comedy in America

LEANDER RICHARDSON

IF you ever meet a man on Broadway who is fairly plump, with slighly gray hair and moustache, with a perpetual sparkle in his blue eyes, with a ceaseless smile upon his cheerful countenance, and with some tune or other of an invariably lively nature issuing from his lips, by process of whistling or humming, it will be a reasonable assumption that you are in the presence of Edward Everett Rice, the original and not to be questioned grand-daddy of comic opera and musical comedy in America.

By reason of his perennially sunny heart people call him Edward Evergreen Rice, Edward Everhappy Rice, and various other grades of Rice, but all of the one kinship, a kinship which is forever at war with gloom or heaviness of heart.

YET this same Mr. Rice, with his ebullient spirits undampened, has managed more prima donnas and comedians, and helped to make more of them famous than any other impresario in the annals of musical comedy. If any of these ever were unhappy when under his direction they have not said so, and if he ever was unhappy at their hands he never has said so either, so that the outward account at least is even.

But the account between Mr. Rice and the public is not even, for the public, during the past forty years, has owed to this producing manager a debt that can hardly be repaid.

In all this time Rice has not put forward a serious play or exploited a player who outwardly proclaimed ambitions to invade the highbrow drama. It is true that Nathaniel C. Goodwin for a time darkly threatened us with Shylock, and the late Richard Mansfield actually did win renown in fields other than those of song and jest, but these men did not begin thus to deteriorate until long after their emergence from the jocund influence of Edward Everready Rice.

THE first entertainment that was introduced to the yearning public by this noble producer had a more wonderful career and cradled the talents of a greater number of clever stage performers than can be set to the record of any other comic show in our dramatic annals. It was called "Evangeline," and when produced at Niblo's Garden in July, 1874, it was delightedly hailed as "the first American opera bouffe." For twenty years, at rather frequent intervals, "Evangeline" was revived in New York, where it has been played more than 1,000 times in all.

William H. Crane was the principal comedian of the original production, and is still, we believe, before the public. William Scanlan, who subsequently sang himself into fame with the immortal ballad, "Peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo, I see you hiding there; Peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo, come from behind that chair," played a very small part and little dreamed of what was in store for him in the American Drama, for alas, there was, in those days, no Drama League to tell him. And lone Burke, a gorgeous beauty with a lovely voice, was Evangeline herself, and Connie Thompson, as clever and witching a soubrette as ever kicked up a pair of dainty heels, was the shapely Gabriel.

TO enumerate the well-known actors and actresses who materially increased their standing in public favor through association with this mirthful entertainment would be like compiling a comedians' Who's Who. Still, we may consider as belonging in a kind of abridged edition, Henry E. Dixey, Harry Beckett, H. J. Murdock, Richard Golden, George S. Knight, John A. Mackay, James S. Maffitt, George K. Fortesque, Dan Mason, Annis Montague, Laura Joyce, Eliza Weathersby, Lillian Conway, Sophie Worrell, Lizzie Harold, Fay Templeton, Louise Montague, Irene Verona, Mollie Fuller, Kate Uart, Annie Summerville, Josie Hall, and the already noted Goodwin and Crane.

The coming of "Evangeline" founded a new and wholly delightful variety of stage amusement; frivolous, sprightly, free from -offence and studded all over with beautiful girls. The literature involved in this branch of diversion in the theatre may not have been of supernatural quality, and the music was perhaps rather thinner than some that has flourished since, but for innocent fun, pervaded by the spirit of frolic, there has never been anything to equal the type of shows produced by Mr. E. E. Rice.

The vogue of these plays spread rapidly. It was greeted with eager appreciation by the entire country, and during its own particular cycle it was quite the rage from coast to coast, as may be readily imagined when we recollect that the list of Mr. Rice's plays included: "Adonis," with Henry E. Dixey as its star and a cast including Amelia Summerville, George Howard, Herbert Gresham and a beauty chorus previously unparalleled. "The Corsair," with W. H. Crane and N. C. Goodwin in the leading male parts. "Excelsior, Jr.," with Fay Templeton, Theresa Vaughn, Irene Perry, Marie Cahill, Charles A. Bigelow, Walter Jones and Richard Carle as its principals. "The French Maid/' in which Marguerita Sylva, Georgie Caine and Charles A. Bigelow disported. "1492," with its New York run of 487 nights and its company embracing Richard Harlow, Walter Jones, W. H. Sloan, Edward Favor, John Perugini, Theresa Vaughn and Hattie Williams. "The Girl from Paris," played by Louis Mann, Joseph Herbert, Charles A. Bigelow, Charles Dickson, Frank Smithson, Clara Lipman, Cheridah Simpson, and Josie Hall, with her immortal song, "Sister Mary Jane's top note." "Hiawatha," the cast of which included Alice Harrison, Sadie Martinot, Alice Atherton, Willie Edouin, Louis Harrison, George S. Knight and Henry E. Dixey.

Continued on page 136

Continued from page 55

I COULD name at least a dozen other examples of festive nonsense illustrated by comedians already regarded as the best, or approaching that desirable state, which came to us with the pleasant hallmark of Mr. Rice. In all of them there were girls of rare loveliness, and generally of exceptional talents, at the finding and marshaling of whom the instinct of Rice was absolutely unerring.

The wholly light-hearted quality of tine Rice shows reflected in large measure the nature of the man himself.

The influence of this spirit extended in large measure to the members of the Rice organizations. There were good times and bad, and some of the bad times found the word "treasury" an empty term. On one of these occasions, the company reached Chicago penniless and downcast They were willing enough but could go no further. Money must appear from somewhere, or the organization must disband.

THE opening of "Adonis" in Chicago was very large, and the performance scored a great success. The receipts represented the full capacity of the theatre. At the end of the two weeks the company left for California laughing and singing; everybody rich and happy, with a case of champagne, the gift of Mr. Rice, in each section of the Pullman.

The end of the distinctly Rice period merged into the Gilbert and Sullivan period, or the Stephens and Solomon types of musical comedy. With D'Oyley Carte, Rice produced in America "Iolanthe," and "Patience," by Gilbert and Sullivan, and "Polly" and "Billie Taylor," by Stephens and Solomon. Meanwhile the musical stage was shifting its course. "Erminie," "Fatinitza," "The Black Hussar," "The Little Trooper," "Florodora," "The Telephone Girl" and many more had come and gone. George Edwardes* London Gaiety girls had pranced and danced their spectacular way through our enthusiastic view. Zieg. feld had bestowed upon us the visual boon of the young woman who could not make her eyes behave, and so on, down the scale of music and comedy and up the heights of spectacle to "Chin Chin," "The Ziegfeld Follies," the Winter Garden conglomerations of pageantry and comics, and "The Century Girl."

IT was easy to see what Rice was driving at, with his guileless extravaganzas of jokes, and his girls in slight attire—but without nakedness; or what Gilbert and.Sullivan were aiming at with their timely satires and rattling musical scores; or what the Viennese, French and English musical pieces meant with their semi-serious themes and sometimes ambitious compositions; and even what George Edwardes constructed at the Gaiety, with his Fred Leslie, Nellie Farren, Rosie Boote and his horde of light-footed and nimblelimbed sprites.

But a great and glowing gift will be bestowed upon any analyst who can inform a waiting world what the musical comedy stage of to-day is driving at, or in what particular direction it is headed.