Anna had joined the Mr. Bluebeard company at the beginning of its road tour in September 1903, having just finished a sixteen-week season in a stock company in Elmira, NY. Managed by comedian Herbert Salinger, the Manhattan Opera Company (MOC) worked out of NYC. It had come to Elmira, New York (population then around 38,000) for a second summer in early June, 1903 to perform at the open-air Rorick Glen Theater, founded in 1900 by the Elmira Water, Light & Railroad Company as way to increase trolley traffic. The EWLR was a consolidation of Elmira's utilities with the Elmira-Horseheads-Maple Avenue-and-West Side-Street Railways. ( Watch a fun slide show of Rorick Glen images and read more about Rorick's Glen.)

Over a decade later, Anna Brandt cited stock theater work as an excellent way for performers to expand the breadth of their skills and hone their craft. A look at MOC's 1903 season suggests enough variety to challenge a company. The schedule that summer included The Mikado, The Chimes of Normandy, Fra Divolo (poorly performed the first time, according to a local critic, and offending one in the audience who recommended Zerlina's disrobing scene be omitted), The Merry War, The Bohemian Girl, The Grand Duchess, The Pirates of Penzance, Patience, Charity Begins at Home, Trial by Jury, Giroile-Girofla and Rose of Auvergne.

The season was not without difficulties. Three times flooding of the Chemung River took out the footbridge across the river, causing the cancellation of a few performances and requiring relocation to the Auditorium. (The wooden bridge washed out five times during the theater's first five years and was replaced in 1906 with an iron footbridge with concrete pilings — that are still in position though the iron succumbed to floods in 1946 & 1972.) A much-promoted nighttime balloon accession was replaced with a fireworks display when the balloonist decided a nighttime ride was too risky. Three cast members abruptly left to join other companies, including their baritone, Wally Albert Wallerstedt.

Some MOC cast members had previously worked in other Klaw & Erlanger productions, including The Beauty and the Beast and Mr. Bluebeard when it played on Broadway. Seven evening and four afternoon matinees were performed each week in Elmira. Free admission produced audiences of 1,200-2,000, with hundreds more strolling in elaborate gardens and rowing boats on the Chemung River.



It is not known if Anna Brandt* performed in Bluebeard when it was in NYC but I suspect not. She was not mentioned in MOC news stories during the 1903 season, suggesting she did not yet stand out from the crowd.

At the end of August, she and two other performers in MOC left Elmira to join the Bluebeard Company in New York. Mr. Bluebeard opened at the Alvin Theater in Pittsburgh at the end of September, presumably with Anna, Kittie and Gladdis in the chorus. Newspapers did not report the last names of Kittie and Gladdis. The sentence structure in the newspaper story, however, suggests they were Anna's sisters. Ordinarily, with so much information, I would be able to find Anna in genealogy records. Not this time. That may mean that Brand/Brandt was a stage name.

In the years after the fire

Around 1906 Anna joined the Holden Players, who often cast her as an ingénue. In 1912 she joined the North Brothers stock company but a year later returned to the Holden Players. " In 1914 she was with Frank Readick's American Players.

Productions in which Anna performed 1904-1915:

Age and the popularity of cinema may have caught up with Anna. The last mention I found of her in a dramatic role was in Detroit in 1915. A performer of the same name appeared in November 1915 at the Strand Theater in Brooklyn, singing soprano in Bella Donna, but I suspect that was not the same woman. After the first quarter of 1915, Anna seems to have vanished from the stage.

Discrepancies and addendum

* Occasionally spelled in newspapers as Brand but more often as Brandt.

Possible connections:

• Anna, Kittie and Gladdis may have been the daughters of hat maker John S. Brandt and Isabelle A. Holmes Brandt of Boston. In 1910 their married daughters, Gladys L. Brandt Scott and Katherine Brandt Mohan, lived with them in Boston.
• In 1921 an Anna G. Brandt from Stockholm appeared in theater notices. She was described as new on the scene in the U.S., so probably was not the Anna of Mr. Bluebeard. On the other hand, theater promotion sometimes pulled truth beyond recognition, so maybe. She married Charles K. Johansen.
• A playwright in El Paso named Anna Brandt worked in the 1930s, but I found nothing to suggest she was the same woman.
• A Kate Brand appeared in Then I'll Come Back to You in an Indianapolis theater in June 1916. Anna's sister, Kitty?
• An Edwin Brandt in theater work in 1903. Related?

irqperformers

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