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Iroquois Theater owner-manager
Will J. Davis knew how to network. Through his work at William Cole's
Adelphi Theater, he met
Jack H. Haverly, owner of several theaters around the country
and a legendary character in theatrical history. Haverly hired Davis to take his Georgia Minstrels troupe on a cross-country tour to California.*
Davis would later report that he had managed three Haverly theaters in San Francisco, but it was a short gig. Within weeks he was back in Chicago working
as an assistant passenger agent for a railway.
Haverly may have found Davis poorly equipped to manage theaters at that point but gave him another chance as an advance man for Haverly's
road companies, and Davis worked for him until 1880. When Haverly creditors in Chicago called upon Davis to help manage the Haverly Theater,
they wisely involved two additional men with vastly more theater management experience than Davis —
Al and Alf Hayman.
It was while working for Jack Haverly that Davis met light opera contralto,
Jessie Bartlett. They married in 1880. By 1882 newspaper references to Will Davis in Chicago theaters, a majority self-submitted public relations notices, make clear his newfound confidence and plan to play a major role in the city's theater industry.
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Jack Haverly (1837–1901) was a colorful figure who charged around the country gambling and juggling several dozen minstrel and comic opera companies. He added
to his empire by buying hotels, printing companies, and silver mines.
His business acquisitions were sometimes ridiculed with predictions of failure, but Haverly often proved them wrong. Relying on a keen eye for talent and an
instinct for weighing the odds, Haverly had a knack for turning pigs' ears into silk purses. Besides Will Davis, Haverly's road managers included several who
went on to become the most successful theater men in the country. Haverly lost and rebuilt his fortune so often that it is not unreasonable to suppose that had
he lived a few more years, he would have recovered from his last bad investment, a Colorado silver mine.
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Discrepancies and addendum
Read an entertaining story about young men learning the trade of advance men, bill posters, lithographers, and the like.
* In disposing of Will Davis's personal papers in 2005, four batches of letters, contracts and programs relating to Davis and Haverly's dealings 1885-1882 were
sold to historians in South Dakota, Kentucky and California. They dealt primarily with engagements of the Minstrels but included a few items from Havery's
Theater in Chicago, managed by Davis in 1883. In January, 1884 Henry Irving and Ellen Terry performed the Merchant of Venice at Haverlys, the start of a relationship with Davis that lasted for several decades.
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