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Small theaters in Sacramento and San Francisco were called “bijoux”
Though little more than a rough platform stage inside a large canvas tent with an adjacent saloon, they were the sites of lively and various professional theatrical entertainment. many of these were washed away regular floods oar fires that destroyed dozens of flimsy, shoddily constructed buildings.
Some of the early innovations in โbijouxโ (small performance saloons) were comic skits written by and starring local second-rate amateur actors.
One of the first theaters to be built in an any town was always an olympic circus – where equestrian / circus hybrids featured horse riding tricks in an enclosed circle amphitheater.
In the 1860s minstrelsy and variety (early vaudeville) eclipsed drama and opera in popularity in the West. it was a harbinger for the trend of American entertainment as vaudeville spread East. the english actors on the dramatic and operatic circus on the western tours confronted a conflicted national aesthetic. Juvenile sensibilities became triumphant. The (soon to be) internationally famous San Francisco Minstrels, a company created by combining the long-established Edwin P. Christy and Charley Backus minstrel troupes, began to offer, to the delight of their audiences, “Ethiopian” burlesques of well-known plays and operas, sending up San Francisco’s growing intellectual and elitist play – and opera-goers.
The west also had “melodeons” – named after the portable reed organ which supplied much of the musical accompaniment for the variety acts. with names like What Cheer, the Apollo, the Bella Union and the New Idea, melodeons, like eastern “concert saloons” combined a saloon with gambling and entertainment that included acts with off-color jokes and songs, satirical skits, and dance routines or tableaux featuring women in various states of undress. admissions were or or two ‘bits’ (12.5, to 25 cents) some were free and makes money only through liquor sales. Jerry Thomas the bartender specialized in running both simultaneously.
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1867 Twain writes from New York City:
Our old San Francisco Minstrels have made their mark here, most unquestionably. They located them selves boldly in Broadway, right opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, and their very first performance gave them a hold upon the popular favor which has never loosened its grip to this day. Every night of their lives they play to packed houses – every single seat full and dozens of people standing up. I have good reason to know, because I have been there pretty often, have always paid my way but once, and I had to buy a box the last time I went. They go straight ahead from month to month, like the “Black Crook, ” and their receipts for the last twelve months, as furnished to the Revenue officers, were only a fraction under $110,000. What do you think of that? The firm remains the same – Birch, Backus, Wambold and Bernard. They have made an extraordinary success, and wisely they try to keep up with the spirit of the times and deserve a continuance of it.
Tom Maguire’s Japanese Jugglers have taken New York by storm. They threw all the other popular sensations completely in the shade – shed a perfect gloom over them. It has to be a colossal sensation that is able to set every body talking in New York, but the Japs did it. And I got precious tired of it for the first few days. No matter where I went, they were the first subject mentioned; if I stopped a moment in a hotel, I heard people talking about them; if I lunched in a Dutch restaurant, there was one constantly recurring phrase which I understood, and only one, “das Japs;” in French restaurants, it was “les Japs;” in Irish restaurants, it was “thim Japs ;” after church the sermon was discussed five minutes, and then the Japs for half an hour. Maguire plays them in the great Academy of Music, and charges heavy prices; but the first night he turned hundreds away after finding accommodations for three thousand spectators. And the seventh day, at eight in the morning, I saw fifty people strung down the pavement, Post Office fashion, waiting to secure seats, each in his regular turn, when they knew the box-office would not open till nine o’clock. The Japs are a prodigious success.
The Worrell girls have come back and taken the New York Theatre, a sort of half-frog, half-tadpole affair, which used to be a church, and hasn’t got entirely over looking like a church yet. I am told the girls have fine houses, are doing well, and are as popular as they were at the Broadway. At the Broadway – those were great days for them – they turned the heads of half the young men in the country – not in New York alone, but all around. Lovesick youths from far in the interior of Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and everywhere about, came in on the trains and basked in the beauty of their idols every night, and went sleepless to work next day, drivelled along through it, and fetched up in the Broadway again at night, as far gone as ever. There was even an institution called the “WORRELL BRIGADE – a great company of devoted youths and young men who wore a hand some badge, composed of red, white and blue enamel, upon which was wrought the cipher “W.” in fancy work of some kind. They were faithful attendants of the theatre every night, were a regularly organized military sort of institution, with officers bearing such titles as Colonel, Captain, Lieutenant, etc., and were always suffering for a chance to destroy somebody by way of showing and proving their devotion. They were always on hand to assist the Worrells from their carriage before the evening’s performance, and hand them back to it when the play was over. I have first rate authority for all this, otherwise I should be inclined to doubt it. The Worrels must have done well, because I know of a fabulous offer that was made them and they refused it. Also, that they had bought the dwelling 209 1/2 Ninth street – so one good authority said, and another good authority said they had only rented it – but in either case liberal money would have to be forthcoming, because I have been in the house often, last January, and know that to buy it or rent it either would break me easy enough.