So I’m trying to imagine my Hippodrome book structure as something that will introduce readers to the key images, acts, and spectacles that you might see there. Women marching into the water tank and disappearing, battlefields of the Civil War and the Great War, clowns — and Marceline in particular — as the human element in the oversized spectacle. These are components of Hippodrome shows that keep coming back to the stage over the decades.
Marceline in "The Baltimore Sun" on November 20, 1927, via Newspapers.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Marceline_Orbes
Hippodrome images build up over time: elephants in the walls, elephants in goggles driving automobiles with chorus girl passengers, Power’s elephants performing tricks in just about every show from 1905-1923, Houdini making an elephant disappear …One of the elements that I know is really important but have not yet been able to wrap my brain around is opera. I know there was typically a prima donna who sang some of the musical numbers. In a venue not known for its acoustics, singers with opera training could reliably make themselves heard. Belle Storey and Nannette Flack both served as the soprano stars at different times; they co-starred in the 1920 show Good Times, where they sang an allegorical duet with Belle Storey as Truth and Nanette Flack as Youth. There’s a great blog post about the costuming for that show here
Belle Storey as Truth, pictured in the Dry Goods Economist, via “Costumes for ‘Good Times’ at the Hippodrome.” Deep in the Heart of Textiles, 11 Oct. 2017, https://textileranger.com/2017/10/11/costumes-for-good-times-at-the-hippodrome/.
Apparently Belle Storey did not come from a grand opera background but sang in the long-running, Aladdin-inspired musical Chin Chin. Yesterday I was reminded of another Hippodrome diva whose first performances took place in more popular musicals: Caterina Jarboro. The Wilmington, NC native moved to New York as a teen and performed in two shows penned by African American musical comedy legends F.E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles: Shuffle Along and Runnin’ Wild. (Side note: Caseen Gaines’s book When Broadway Was Black, about the making of Shuffle Along, is absolutely fantastic.)
Jarboro in what I think is her costume from Aida, on a flyer for a fundraiser in Wilmington NC. Contributed to Staton, John. “7 Diva-Worthy Moments from the Life of a Wilmington Opera Legend.” Wilmington Star-News, https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/entertainment/music/2023/03/27/the-diva-worthy-life-of-wilmington-opera-legend-caterina-jarboro/69987163007/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2024.
Just like fellow chorine Josephine Baker, Jarboro moved to France — in her case, to perform in churches, not in Paris cabarets. Jarboro debuted in Milan in 1929 or 1930, playing a role in Verdi’s Aïda. She returned to the U.S. in 1932. In 1933, she performed Aïda at the New York Hippodrome, this time as the lead with the otherwise all-white Chicago Opera Company. This trajectory for Black artists — being hailed in Europe as a necessary precondition to performance in their home country — is one that happened to earlier singers as well. Sissieretta Jones, a soprano singer in the late nineteenth century, has a biography and some really smart academic work published about her. I’m excited to dig into it and to think about how Caterina Jarboro builds on or turns away from the models of celebrity Jones established.
“The Black Patti, Mme. M. Sissieretta Jones the Greatest Singer of Her Race.” Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, https://www.loc.gov/resource/var.1857/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2024.
I always get really excited when I figure out how the research I’ve run across in the past might help me to write about someone or something new that I happen upon. This is definitely one of those serendipitous finds. And then I found out the Jarboro was a friend and correspondent of Arturo Schomburg, the researcher, collector, historian of Black literature and culture. His collection formed the basis for the Schomburg Research Center, which seems to be where the Schomburg/Jarboro correspondence is held. Some of it is online in the NYPL digital collections too. And she has an oral history recording, and she performed with Jules Bledsoe, who played the lead in the Emperor Jones opera that also played at the Hippodrome in 1933! So many exciting connections, ones that will help me write a chapter that fills out the story of the Hippodrome in an era that had previously been a blank spot on my timeline.