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Elsie De Wolfe Circa 1901: The Dynamics of Prescriptive Feminine Performance in American Theatre and Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Kim Marra
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Extract

Despite the many admirable qualities of Mr. Clyde Fitch's play, The Way of the World at the Victoria Theatre is not so much a dramatic entertainment as a social function. Any well-ordered comment upon it must take cognizance of the audience as well as of the mummers who perform on the far side of the footlights. They are as much a part of it as the stage setting, and the result of their presence is that the five-act drama and its four intermissions and final curtain form a continuous performance the like of which New York has never seen before.

Type
Special Section: Feminists Theorize the Past
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , May 1994 , pp. 101 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1994

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References

Endnotes

1 Mayer, Grace, Once Upon a City (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 89Google Scholar.

2 Qtd. in Smith, Jane S., Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 56Google Scholar.

3 Auster, Albert, Actresses and Suffragists: Women in American Theater, 1890–1920 (New York: Praeger, 1984), 18.Google Scholar

4 James, Henry, The Scenic Art, ed. Wade, Allan (London, 1949), 100–101Google Scholar.

5 Clarke, Ian, Edwardian Drama: A Critical Study (London: Faber, 1989), 1Google Scholar.

6 Stowell, Sheila and Kaplan, Joel, “Sex, Shopping, and Social Reform: Harley Granville Barker's Politics of Fashion,” Harley Granville Barker: An Edinborough Retrospective, eds. McDonald, Jan and Hill, Leslie (Glasgow: U of Glasgow, 1993), 30–39Google Scholar; and Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994)Google Scholar.

7 Kaplan, Joel H., “Bad Dressmakers and Well-Arranged Worlds: Fashion and Society Comedy,” Modern Drama, 34:3 (September 1991): 328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Barker, Harley Granville, “The Coming of Ibsen,” in The Eighteen Nineties, ed. de la Mare, Walter (Cambridge, 1930), 166, qtd. in Clarke, 6.Google Scholar

9 Doane, Mary Ann, The Desire to Desire: The Woman's Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, Jeanne, “The Film Viewer as Consumer,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 1980): 482–499CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 See, for example, Merk, Frederick, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (New York: Vintage, 1966)Google Scholar.

11 See Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1950), 123–262Google Scholar.

12 Lewis, R. W. B., The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1955), 4–5Google Scholar.

13 Beer, Thomas, The Mauve Decade: American Life at the End of the Nineteenth Century (1926; repr. New York: Vintage, 1960), 27–28Google Scholar.

14 See Welter, Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820–1860,” American Quarterly XVII (1966): 151–174CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See, in particular, Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Avon, 1977), 5–7Google Scholar; and Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Religion and the Rise of the American City (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1971), chs. 3, 4, 5, 7Google Scholar.

16 For example: Ryan, Mary P., “The Power of Female Networks: A Case Study of Female Moral Reform in Antebellum America,” Feminist Studies V (Spring 1979)Google Scholar; and Walters, Ronald G., American Reformers, 1815–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 101–121, 140–141Google Scholar.

17 Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 71–101Google Scholar.

18 Banta, Martha, Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History, 1880–1920 (New York: Columbia UP, 1987), 89Google Scholar.

19 Pitz, Henry C., Introduction to The Gibson Girl and Her America: the Nest Drawings, selected by Gillon, Vincent Jr. (New York: Dover, 1969), vii–xiGoogle Scholar.

20 Banta xxviii.

21 Taylor, George Rogers, ed. and introd., The Turner Thesis: Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1972), 3Google Scholar.

22 H. Smith 250–262.

23 Christy, Howard Chandler, The American Girl as Seen and Portrayed by Howard Chandler Christy (1906; repr. New York: Da Capo, 1976), 69–70Google Scholar.

24 Christy 12.

25 J. Smith 18–19.

26 On this occasion, de Wolfe acted in Daniel Jerrold's comedy The White Milliner at Charles Wyndham's Criterion Theatre in London. For more information, see Elsie de Wolfe Scrapbook in the Players Collection, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library-Lincoln Center [cited hereafter as BRTC, NYPL–LC].

27 J. Smith 19.

28 Marcosson, Isaac F. and Frohman, Daniel, Charles Frohman: Manager and Man (New York: Harper, 1916), 324–325Google Scholar.

29 “A Useful Member of the Frohman Forces,” unidentified newspaper clipping (September 1896), in “de Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, Series 1, Vol. 151, p. 4.

30 See, for example, Hartman, John Geoffrey, The Development of American Social Comedy (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1939), 30Google Scholar.

31 Auster 40.

32 Wolfe, Elsie de, “The Well-Dressed Woman,” New York Dramatic Mirror (December 1903)Google Scholar, n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 2, vol. 123, p. 76.

33 The articles can be found in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrap-books, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 38.

34 “Elsie de Wolfe Returns with a Galaxy of Gowns,” Unidentified newspaper clipping (17 September 1900), in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 13.

35 “Charles Frohman Disagrees with Criticisms Upon the Society Plays and Players of the Day Made by Mrs. Van Renssalaer Cruger,” unidentified newspaper clipping, in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 152, p. 72.

36 Doane 3.

37 Doane 2.

38 Eckert, Charles, “The Carole Lombard in Macy's Window,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 3, no. 1 (Winter 1978): 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Doane 27.

40 Allen 488.

41 Sheila Stowell stresses the importance of historicizing and distinguishing between genres which utilize realistic aesthetics. On the one hand is “realism in the guise of naturalism [which] was championed as a means of challenging the ideological assumptions imbedded in melodrama and the well-made play”; and, on the other hand, is realism in the guise of society drama which further reinforced and idealized those assumptions. Elsie de Wolfe, Clyde Fitch, and Charles Frohman's use of realism falls almost exclusively in this latter category. See Stowell's, A Stage of Their Own: Feminist Playwrights of the Suffrage Era (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1992), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 The play was never published but can be found in original typescript in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. A xerox copy of the typescript is contained in Sprecial Collections and Archives at Amherst College, Amherst MA, which houses the primary archive of materials pertaining to Clyde Fitch, who graduated from Amherst in 1886.

43 J. Smith 78.

44 Clyde Fitch was accorded this moniker in a review of The Way of the World, New York Sun, n. d., n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 29.

45 Clarke 29.

46 Review of The Way of the World, Town Topics (24 October 1901). In “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 26.

47 Clarke 20.

48 Dale, Alan, Review of The Way of the World, New York Journal (4 November 1901)Google Scholar, n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 152, p. 4.

49 Unidentified newspaper clipping (5 November 1901), in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 29.

50 “New York Life as Shown in The Way of the World,” unidentified newspaper clipping (18 October 1901), in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 26.

51 Hart, Lavinia, “The Way of the World Justifies Its Title,” unidentified newspaper clipping (17 November 1901)Google Scholar, in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, YPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 34.

52 Hart.

53 Hart.

54 Qtd. in “Miss de Wolfe as a Star,” unidentified newspaper clipping (5 November 1901), in “de Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 29.

55 Review of The Way of the World, New York Sun, n. d., n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 29.

56 Photo collage is from an unidentified magazine clipping (1900), in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 14.

57 “Elsie de Wolfe's Two Leading Men,” unidentified newspaper clipping, n.d., n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 27.

58 “Some Stunning Gowns,” unidentified newspaper clipping (7 December 1901), in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 46.

59 Emma Kaufman, “Miss de Wolfe's Coquetry in Dress as Illustrated in the Camera and a Chat with Miss Emma Kaufman,” unidentified newspaper clipping, n. d., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 22.

60 Review of The Way of the World, New York Sun, n. d., n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 29.

61 Hart, “The Way of the World Justifies Its Title.”

62 Banta xxvii, 531–533.

63 “Elsie de Wolfe Must Be a Real Automobile Girl,” unidentified newspaper clipping, n. d., n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 25.

64 Review of The Way of the World, unidentified newspaper (6 November 1901), in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 151, p. 32.

65 Hart, “The Way of the World Justifies Its Title.”

66 Doane 32–33.

67 Kaplan, “Bad Dressmakers and Well-Arranged Worlds,” 329.

68 Atkinson, Brooks, Broadway (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 54Google Scholar.

69 Bangs, John Kendrick, review of The Way of the World, Harper's Weekly XLV (23 November 1901): 1180.Google Scholar

70 Review of The Way of World, Boston Transcript (17 December 1901), n. pag., in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 152, p. 14.

71 “Left Baby at Door of Miss de Wolfe,” unidentified newspaper clipping (12 February 1902), in “De Wolfe, Elsie,” Robinson-Locke Collection of Theatre Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL-LC, series 1, vol. 152, p. 34.

72 Qtd. in J. Smith xi.