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To avoid import duty, Klaw & Erlanger rented rather
than purchasing approximately $100,000 worth of
scenery and costumes from Drury Lane for each of the
pantomime extravaganzas imported from London such
as Beauty and the Beast, Mr. Bluebeard and
Mother Goose. They had to post a duty bond,
refundable when they returned the items to
their owner. Sometimes that was
difficult.
In the case of Sleeping Beauty and the Beast, in addition
to nearly a thousand costumes, forty trucks full of scenery
included a seven-ton twenty-foot-high glass pagoda* with a
thirty-six-foot-wide fountain said to have cost
$20,000 ($600,000 today). Made in Vienna by
Salviati-Jesurum Company, the Palace of Crystal
featured over two-thousand light bulbs (installed by
the British Electric & Telephone Company), three
dozen arc lamps and over thirty thousand pieces of blue, amber and red
glass.
Reassembling the Palace of
Crystal from its 208 crates at each new performance site
took up to three weeks and presented serious
handling problems.
At the National Theater in Washington, for example, to keep
the house out of sight until needed, the
theater blasted the space beneath the stage to
deepen the hole, creating a 16'
x 75' elevator shaft in which the multi-ton
structures could be
stored out of sight. Ten minutes before the
last scene, seven bull-wheel operators raised the
structure to stage level.
The glass palace appeared
during the grand finale when three streams of
tri-colored water soared high into the air while
fairies and clowns danced on the stage in the
Enchanted Crystal Garden. Grigolatis aerial ballet dancers
floated in the air while colored lights played on
the stage, making the glass palace glitter.
The glittering glass
and water spectacle
was not a sufficient crowd draw to offset the
problems of handling and installation and
producers decided to eliminate it when the
pantomime went on the road.
When Klaw & Erlanger cabled Drury Lane's theater
manager, Arthur Collins, about returning the house, he
reportedly cabled back: "If you are through with it,
sink it in your bay."
Regardless of
Collins' thoughts, to retrieve its duty
bond, K&E had to return the house to London.
To reduce shipping bulk, they smashed it into small pieces,
piled them into 480 crates and shipped them to
England. Upon arrival, Collins happily accepted $5
for the lot rather than pay for its
disposal.
Duty bond refunded
On April 18, 1904, Congressman
William Bourke Cockran (1854-1923) of New York
successfully passed a bill in the House of
Representatives to return Klaw & Erlanger's $37,000
duty bond ($1 million inflation-adjusted) on rented Mr.
Bluebeard theater scenery and costumes.
Without the Congressional reprieve, K&E faced
forfeiture if it did not return the items to their
owner, Drury Lane in London. There was nothing
to return, however. Mr. Bluebeard
costumes and scenery burned to ashes during a second
fire in the early hours of March 8, 1904, at Western
Salvage and Wrecking in Chicago, storage supplier
for the insurers.
Discrepancies and addendum
* Some reports said it was forty-feet high. † Who, I wonder, other than
its creators, the mosaic masters of Salviati-Jesurum, would have use for seven tons of
colored glass chips?
Mr Bluebeard at Drury
Lane
The men inside the horse
and the head at Mr Bluebeard
Mr. Bluebeard costumes by Attilio Comelli
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 1226
A note about sourcing. When this
project began, I failed to anticipate the day might come when a
more scholarly approach would be called for. When my
mistake was recognized I faced a decision: go back and spend years creating source lists for every page, or go
forward and try to cover more of the people and circumstances
involved in the disaster. Were I twenty years younger, I'd
have gone back, but in recognition that this project will end when I do, I chose to go forward.
These pages will provide enough information, it is hoped, to
provide subsequent researchers with additional information.
I would like to
hear from you if you have additional info about an Iroquois victim, or find an error,
and you're invited to visit the
comments page to share stories and observations about the Iroquois Theater fire.
