Koster and Bial's Music Hall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Koster and Bial's Music Hall was an important vaudeville theatre in New York, famous in cinema history as the site of the first public exhibition of the Vitascope on April 23, 1896. It was located at Broadway and Thirty-Fourth Street, where Macy's flagship store now stands.[1]

Although primarily remembered now as the birthplace of the movies as we know them, both it and its predecessor, Koster and Bial's Concert Hall, were major vaudeville venues and an important part of the New York theatrical scene.

Koster and Bial's Music Hall was the successor to Koster and Bial's Concert Hall. That earlier establishment was located on 23rd Street. At that location, Koster and Bial had taken over Bryant's Opera House, a venue for minstrel shows. They offered food and drink along with vaudeville, circumventing a law against serving alcohol in theatres by replacing the curtain with a folding fan.[2]

Koster and Bial's Music Hall originated when they moved uptown into the former Manhattan Opera House, a huge theatre built by Oscar Hammerstein I in pursuit of his passion for grand opera. Hammerstein had financial problems with the oversized theatre, while the Metropolitan Opera House was suffering from his competition. The Metropolitan offered him a deal, as part of which he agreed not to present opera again for ten years. He decided to convert his theatre to a vaudeville format, and offered Koster and Bial's a partnership under which he would manage the entertainment and they would manage the food. The relaunched enterprise was successful, but Hammerstein quarreled with his partners. Lawsuits ensued, and ultimately Koster and Bial bought out Hammerstein and operated it solely on their own.[3]

[edit] The first Vitascope exhibition

A small advertisement, mixed in with dozens of other theatre ads in the New York Times on April 19, 1896 read:

KOSTER AND BIAL'S MUSIC HALL, 34th st.
TO-MORROW (MONDAY) NIGHT.
THE ONLY CHEVALIER.
2---NEW SONGS---2
Together with all the other
GREAT FOREIGN STARS.
EXTRA--Due notice will be given of the first
public exhibition of Edison's latest marvel,
THE VITASCOPE.[4]

(The Vitascope had actually been invented and developed outside of the Edison organization by Thomas Armat, but by mutual agreement Edison's Kinetograph company acquired, manufactured, and marketed it, and presented it as having been invented by Edison).

The pictures were projected on a twenty-foot screen in an ornate gilded frame.[1] On April 24th, the Times reported:

EDISON'S VITASCOPE CHEERED. "Projecting Kinetoscope" Exhibited for First Time at Koster and Bial's. ... The ingenious inventor's latest toy is a projection of his kinetoscope figures in stereopticon fashion on a white screen in a darkened hall. In the center of the balcony of the big music hall is a curious object, which looks from below like the double turret of a big monitor. In the front of each half of it are two oblong holes. The turret is neatly covered with ... blue velvet brocade... The moving figures are about half life size.
...a buzzing and roaring were heard in the turret, and an unusually bright light fell upon the screen. Then came into view two precious blonde young persons of the variety stage in pink and blue dresses,[5] doing the umbrella dance with commendable celerity. Their motions were clearly defined. When they vanished, a view of an angry surf breaking on a sandy beach near a stone pier amazed the spectators. A burlesque boxing match between a tall, thin comedian and a short, fat one, a comic allegory called "The Monroe Doctrine"; an instant of motion in Hoyt's farce, "A Milk White Flag," repeated over and over again, and a skirt dance by a tall blonde completed the views, which were all wonderfully real and singularly exhilarating.[6]

A later Times article mentioned that "[Mr. Edison] has bought, for about $5,000, two ancient, but still serviceable locomotives and a several dozen flat cars. He has built about a quarter of a mile of railroad track in a secluded spot, not far from his laboratory. In a few weeks he will start a train from each end of the track, and will run them to a crash... all the incidents of a train wreck will be caught by machines stationed at short intervals near the track."[7]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Ramsaye, Terry (1926), A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture Through 1926, Simon and Schuster Essandess paperback reprint, 1964. Location at Broadway and Thirty-Fourth: p. 117; 20-foot screen and gilded frame, p. 232.
  2. ^ Mary C. Henderson and Gerald Schoenfeld (2004). The City and the Theatre: The History of New York Playhouses. Watson-Guptill. ISBN 0823006379. , p. 128, includes photo of theatre
  3. ^ John Steele Gordon (November 1997). [http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1997/7/1997_7_18.shtml "Cigars and Broadway: How a tireless impresario parlayed a cloud of smoke into several fortunes"]. American Heritage. Retrieved on 2008-05-26., Volume 48, Issue 7}}
  4. ^ The New York Times, April 19, 1896, p. 11
  5. ^ An second article published April 26th said that "in only two of the pictures shown Thursday were the colors brought out," and noted that "the [hand-]tinting of the pictures is one of the most delicate tasks that confronts [Edison]....
  6. ^ "EDISON'S VITASCOPE CHEERED. "Projecting Kinetoscope" Exhibited for First Time at Koster and Bial's," The New York Times, April 24, 1896, p. 5
  7. ^ "EDISON'S LATEST INVENTION. With It He WIll Show Us a Railroad Wreck and the Pope Saying Mass." The New York Times, April 26, 1896, p. 10