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None of the magnificent curtains above were in the Iroquois Theater.
It's fairly safe to assume that the painted scenes
on the Iroquois Theater curtains will never be
known. They were destroyed in the fire before
the theater interior had existed long enough to be
photographed and illustrated. Thanks to an
extravagant premier program and a painting found in
the Iroquois Theater manager's estate, we can do
some guessing.
There were two painted curtains at the Iroquois Theater. Both were
painted by a
Klaw & Erlanger favorite,
scenic artist
St. John Lewis,
and produced by the interior decorating & costume
department at Marshall Field department store.
From the program:
"Mr. St. John Lewis has
provided two exquisitely painted curtains, unique in
their significance. The asbestos, or fireproof curtain,
shows a summer scene on the
Mohawk River, made from a sketch by the artist
himself, from which, however, he
has eliminated every semblance of modern civilization, with the view of
illustrating the historic valley as it might have
appeared 150 years ago, when its
banks were peopled with the Iroquois Indians only.
The act drop is a study rich and mellow in autumnal
tints. It is a landscape also, and treated in Mr.
Lewis' best style.
The plush curtain, which is of rich velvet of a
beautiful red to harmonize with the
color of the auditorium, is ornamented with a
portrait of Sagoyawatha, or Red
Jacket, a chief of the Senecas, and later the most
celebrated chief in all the tribes
in that confederacy of Indians known as the Six
Nations, or Iroquois, after which
the theatre is named."
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The generic place-keeper illustration above was used in the
promotional booklet distributed at
the Iroquois Theater open house on November 23,
1903. Both curtains were represented therein with the small
and intentionally indistinct place-holder illustration above that looks more
like a Holbein portrait than a landscape. Possibly the actual
curtain did not yet exist when the program was produced. The illustrator
of the program seems to have read the accompanying text carelessly.
According to the program, the portrait of Red Jacket appeared in a landscape,
not a head shot. Pickin a nit.
Both curtains played a role in the
Iroquois Theater disaster. During the fire, the asbestos fire curtain, the
one with the Six Nations, could not descend all the way to the stage floor
because it kept hanging up on a light fixture. Curtain man
John Dougherty and several other stage workers tried their best, lowering
and raising it several times. At some point during their desperate effort,
they lowered the act curtain instead, the one with Red Jacket's portrait, and it
caught fire in seconds, scattering firebrands into the audience.
At the Coroner's inquest, making sense of
witness testimony was a challenge until they figured out that TWO curtains were
lowered during the fire.
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