Shakespeare's Ear

by Tim Rayborn

  Whatever the cause, Olive did not seem content to rest in peace. She chose to make her after-life encore at the New Amsterdam Theatre following her death. Employees at the New Amsterdam insisted that she could not be dead, because they had seen her, dressed in her Follies costume, but strangely, carrying a large blue bottle. She was seen at various points up though the 1950s and then seemed to fade from view.

  However, in the early 1990s, Dana Amendola, an employee of Disney, was put in charge of renovating the theater, which the Mouse Corporation had recently acquired and wanted to restore for its own productions. Amendola was woken up by a phone call, sometime after 2:00 a.m., from a panicked security guard at the theater. He claimed that he had been walking across the stage, when his flashlight shone on a young woman wearing a beaded dress and headpiece (exactly the kind worn by the Follies performers), and carrying a blue bottle. Shocked that anyone would be there at that hour, the guard yelled at her that she should not be in the building, but she simply smiled, turned, floated across the stage, and disappeared through the wall. The poor man was so shaken that he quit on the spot.

  Amendola has since studied Olive’s life and has recorded many other instances of her hauntings. She mostly appears after the audiences have gone home, usually to men, and usually in a flirtatious way. A few have reported hearing a young woman’s voice say “Hi, fella!” She seems mostly benign, but a few things have ticked her off, most notably, when still-living former Follies performers have visited the theater for reunions. Amendola said that on one such occasion, sets began shaking, as if in an earthquake. Another time, the light bulbs on an office floor all burned out at the same time, though no fault was discovered in the electrical system. Olive apparently doesn’t want the attention taken away from her.

  Most recently, she was observed walking in midair. Some research revealed that the area in question was once the site of a glass ceiling used for promenades. It seems that Olive is not yet done with the New Amsterdam, and still enjoys putting on shows from time to time.

  The Duke of York Theatre, London

  The Duke of York’s spectral claim to fame is quite unsettling. It involves both a forceful ghost and a jacket that has tried to strangle its wearers. The ghost is believed to be that of Violet Melnotte, who along with her husband, Frank Wyatt, oversaw the building of the venue in 1892, first calling it the Trafalgar Square Theatre, but renaming it in 1895 to honor the young man who would later become King George V. Melnotte, an acclaimed actress and capable manager, was heavily involved in the operation of the theater’s business, perhaps a little too much for some. Even though she would lease out the building to managers and producers, she always seemed to exert control and have at least some final say over productions.

  She died in 1935, and almost immediately, strange things began to happen in the building. Clearly, she was not done yet. Over the years, many have reported hearing loud knocking sounds in various locations, very specific and seemingly made to attract attention. One sound in particular is that of an iron fire door slamming shut, but this door was removed long ago. One theater manager claimed that a skeleton key materialized out of thin air at the place where the door had been located and fell to the floor in front of him.

  Melnotte is not usually seen, but there have been reports of her at one of the bars, dressed in black and shadowy in appearance. Other stories have told of how the door to her favorite private theater box will open and close by itself, as if she is still entering to watch the latest production.

  A carpenter claims that the ghost may have saved his live when he was working on scaffolding. While he was painting a portion of the stage wall, he saw that the wheels on the platform were not locked and had begun to roll away from the wall. He was high up and risked falling to his death if the scaffolding collapsed, but for some reason it stopped, at least for a moment, and he was able to grab a pipe and pull himself to safety before the whole thing came down. Did the former manager intervene and prevent him from joining her in the afterlife?

  Whatever the ghost’s intentions, there is a more disturbing legend associated with the theater, involving a haunted ladies’ bolero jacket. There are several versions of the story, but here are the basics: the garment may have been designed and created in a costume house in the years before World War I, and someone at the Duke of York’s wardrobe department acquired it many years later (perhaps at a market stall) for a 1948 Victorian costume drama called The Queen Came By. Another account says that it was in 1949 and the problems first began at the Embassy Theatre before the show moved to the Duke of York; such is the way with urban legends.

  The female lead in the show, Thora Hird (also highly acclaimed for her numerous film and television roles), had the garment adjusted and fitted for her, but every time she wore it afterward, she would complain that it felt too tight. Other actresses, including Hird’s understudy, Erica Foyle, tried on the jacket and also reported the tightness. In addition, the understudy noted feeling a sense of dread, as if the garment was maliciously trying to strangle her (Foyle apparently also saw the ghost of a young woman wearing the jacket). Often, those who put it on felt a sense that the collar was beginning to close up around their necks. When they removed the jacket, the fear went away almost immediately.

  The producer’s wife thought that this was all nonsense and volunteered to try it on. She felt nothing, mocked the others for their irrational fear, and removed the garment, only to see red marks on her neck, as if ghostly hands had been attempting to strangle her, too. After this, a cast member suggested that they hold a séance in the theater following the final show of the run, to determine what was going on. Apparently, the medium was able to contact the spirit of a young woman (some say an actress), who communicated to them that she had been strangled by an angry and jealous man (her boyfriend?) while near the theater. He may have forced her into a barrel of water and held her there until she drowned. Some accounts say that he then hid her body or threw her and/or the coat in the river; communications from the dead get a little garbled sometimes. His evil had somehow attached itself to the very fabric and now the jacket wanted to strangle anyone who wore it, especially women. However, a man tried the coat on shortly afterward and promptly fainted, so the curse seemed to affect everyone.

  Maybe someone fished the jacket out of the river, cleaned it up, and offered it for sale, and so it ended up at the Duke of York. Regardless of how they acquired it, you would think the simple solution would be to discard the jacket, or burn it or something, but the story says that it was actually sold on to an American known only as Lloyd, who took it to Los Angeles. Apparently, both his wife and daughter experienced similar dread and feelings of being strangled when they tried it on, and were obliged to take it off after only a few minutes. The current whereabouts of the garment are unknown, but readers might want to be careful if they find themselves shopping in any vintage clothing stores in southern California.

  All of this is wonderful campfire-story fodder, or perhaps a creepy tale to be told to young actors by the glimmer of the Duke of York’s ghost light, but is any of it true? Who knows? And honestly, who cares? That’s the fun of a good scare; it doesn’t have to be real, and it’s probably just as well if it isn’t.

  6

  An Encore of Theatrical Oddities

  Here to finish up—and as a form of light entertainment, a virtual vaudeville, if you will—are some short, whimsical, and occasionally awful vignettes from various points in theatrical history. Here is a grab-bag of the grim and a potpourri of the peculiar, in no particular order. They don’t need an introduction, but think of them as finely crafted afters to a good dinner, to be savored with a rich and dark glass of port. Or just a bag of pork rinds to go with a cheap can of beer, whichever you prefer.

  David Garrick and the wigs both scary and silly

  Garrick (1717–1779) was an English actor, manager, and playwright noted for his Shakespearean roles, Hamlet and King Lear among them, and for bringing a naturalist approach t
o his acting. This was something of a novelty at the time, and Garrick did not escape criticism. One disapproving theater enthusiast listed some of his offenses:

  His over-fondness for extravagant attitudes, frequently affected starts, convulsive twitchings, jerkings of the body, sprawling of the fingers, flapping the breast and pockets; a set of mechanical motions in constant use; the caricatures of gesture …

  It seems that in trying to act more naturally, Garrick was thought by some to have gone too far and seemed fake instead.

  One of his more interesting effects was the so-called “fright wig,” which was a headpiece that looked like a normal eighteenth-century wig, but could be adapted to pull the hair outward and simulate one being startled. This would probably look completely ridiculous to a modern audience, but it apparently was useful in conveying emotions of shock and fear at the time.

  And speaking of laughs, there is the wonderful story of Garrick in the role of King Lear, performing the climactic scene wherein the foolish old king holds the body of his beloved daughter Cordelia, just before his own death. One of the great moments in tragedy was inadvertently disrupted by an unexpected sight from the pit. Garrick, while trying to deliver his lines, had to suppress a laugh, and as you well know, the harder you try not to laugh, the more difficult it becomes. He wasn’t the only one, for soon other actors onstage were hiding their giggles, including the “dead” Cordelia. Ultimately, Garrick and his costar were compelled to leave the stage hastily in fits of laughter, bewildering the audience.

  What would send an experienced actor into such a juvenile fit? A contemporary report describes it all in detail:

  A Whitechapel butcher … was accompanied by his mastiff … [who] got on the seat, and, fixing his fore paws on the rail of the orchestra, peered at the performers with as upright a head and as grave an air as the most sagacious critic of the day. Our corpulent slaughter-man was made of melting stuff, and, not being accustomed to the heat of a playhouse, found himself oppressed by a large and well-powdered Sunday periwig, which, for the gratification of cooling and wiping his head, he pulled off, and placed on the head of the mastiff. The dog, being in so conspicuous a situation, caught the eye of Mr. Garrick and the other performers. A mastiff in a church warden’s wig was too much. It would have provoked laughter in Lear himself at the moment of his deepest distress.

  The paper couldn’t resist one final pun, noting that the play took place on “one very sultry evening in the dog days” of summer.

  Joseph Grimaldi’s awful discovery

  Grimaldi, if you recall, is said to haunt London’s Theatre Royal, or at least his floating and disembodied head is. But in life, he had a brush with something equally terrible. During one performance of the pantomime Harlequin and Mother Goose at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London in 1807, a false alarm warning of a fire caused a panicked stampede, as audience members tried to get out of the building quickly, rather than in the “orderly fashion” that everyone is told to adopt.

  Grimaldi was in the production, but was evacuated safely. Ultimately, twenty-three people died in the push to escape, even though there was no real danger. Grimaldi wanted to return to the theater after the incident to assess the situation, but he was unable to, owing to the large crowds still gathered outside. So he came up with another idea, which led him to a terrible discovery. According to a news article:

  He ran round to the opposite bank of the New River, plunged in, swam across, and, finding the parlour window open and a light at the other end of the room, threw up the sash and jumped in, a la Harlequin. What was his horror, on looking round, to discover that there lay stretched in the apartment [presumably a side room of the theater] no fewer than nine dead bodies! Yes; there lay the remains of nine human beings, lifeless, and scarcely yet cold, whom a few hours back he had been himself exciting to shouts of laughter.

  They were victims of a disaster that never happened.

  The show ultimately ran for two years, but Grimaldi considered it to be one of the worst performances he had ever given and became depressed about his involvement in the whole thing; no doubt the feeling had been made worse by his grisly discovery.

  Sol Smith and the theater of bones

  American comedic writer and theater company manager Solomon Franklin Smith (1801–1869) once described a grisly, if interesting, feature about the location of a theater in which he was performing in Natchez, Mississippi. He wrote in his book, Theatrical Management in the South and West for Thirty Years:

  The new theatre in Natchez was situated at the extreme end of the main street, and in a grave-yard. Two hundred yards of the street leading to it had been cut through this “last receptacle of humanity,” and every day, in going to rehearsal, our sights were regaled with the view of leg-bones sticking horizontally out of the earth ten or twelve feet above us, the clay having gradually washed away and left them thus exposed.

  The dressing-rooms for the gentlemen were under the stage, the earth having been excavated to make room for them. Human bones were strewn about in every direction. The first night, the lamplighter being a little “pushed” for time to get all ready, seized upon a skull, and, sticking two tallow candles in the eye-sockets, I found my dressing-room thus lighted.

  Well, that’s one way to do it!

  Henry Miller and the Great Divide with his audience

  Miller (1859–1926) was an English actor whose parents immigrated to Canada when he was young. He later pursued a theatrical career on Broadway with great success. One show, The Great Divide, enjoyed much popularity, but seems pretty bizarre and offensive now, being a Western about a young woman who avoids being kidnapped from her Arizona ranch by promising to marry the most decent-seeming of the three kidnappers. He agrees—and so bribes one of his buddies and shoots the other; and he was the nice one of the group! The next day, they get married, and after a series of seemingly endless melodramatic interludes, they wind up in Boston and she decides that she really loves him.

  For whatever reason, this odd ode to Stockholm Syndrome did quite well onstage, though noticeably less so in Pittsburgh; maybe they were a little more forward-looking? In any case, Miller was offended by their lack of theatrical knowledge and good taste, but was magnanimously willing to give audiences there a second chance. He scheduled another run of the show, presumably to demonstrate to them what they had been missing.

  During a performance, Miller was acting with his costar Margaret Anglin. He noticed that some patrons were getting out of their seats and leaving. Annoyed because he felt that once again this town was shunning him and his work, Miller stopped the scene and walked to the front of the stage, where he literally yelled at them to return to their seats. Calling the city an “over-sized smudge pot,” he warned them that he would not suffer their insults a second time. Some of the audience sheepishly complied and sat down again, but others simply ignored him and continued their exit. This led to more yelling and swearing from the irate Miller. Finally, Margaret took hold of him and said, “Stop being a jackass, Henry, the theater is on fire!”

  Presumably, Miller then made a humbled and hasty exit along with the rest of the cast and the entire lot of his so-called insulters.

  Hedda Gabbler’s overly noisy suicide

  The play Hedda Gabbler by famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was first produced in 1891, and was immediately the source of controversy, featuring a possibly disturbed female lead character who engages in rather horrible and manipulative behavior to obtain what she wants. Ibsen was interested in the study of mental illness, still in its infancy at the time, and his play was unsettling.

  Hedda marries a man, the academic George Tesman, more for the stability the situation offers than for love. Hedda’s former lover, Eilert Løvborg, enters the story, and Hedda fears that he is after the same university positon that George seeks, but Eilert has written a bestselling book and is planning a sequel, which is all he cares about. Hedda is jealous of the fact that a former classmate of hers, Thea Elvsted, is inf
luencing Eilert, and she resolves to disrupt their relationship. Eilert loses the manuscript for his new book while drunk, but George finds it. Hedda then goes to Eilert and tells him that, because he has lost the work (she does not reveal that George has found it), he should kill himself, and she offers him a pistol. She later burns his manuscript. Eilert does die, but George and Thea resolve to reconstruct the work from Eilert’s notes. Soon, a certain Judge Brack comes to Hedda and reveals that Eilert died accidentally in a brothel, rather than killing himself, but that he knows that she gave Eilert the pistol. He threatens to reveal her role in ruining him and she knows that a scandal will engulf her. So she goes to her room and shoots herself in the head, her body being discovered by George, Thea, and Brack.

  Well, that was cheerful.

  One would think that such a dark contemporary tragedy would have no room for humor, and this is true, but we must always remember the possibility of things going wrong during an actual performance. In one showing of the play at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh again!), the actress playing Hedda went behind a screen that was lit, so that the audience could see her shoot herself in silhouette, a good visual trick. She put the fake gun to her head, pulled the trigger and … nothing. Someone had forgotten to load the pistol with blanks, so all that was heard was a click, several actually, as she tried again and again. Some enterprising actor backstage had the clever idea to pick up a stool and drop it to the floor loudly, which would give a sufficient “bang” to pass for the sound of a gunshot. Except that said stool was chained to a table to prevent theft, and upon picking it up and dropping it, the sound was of the stool, the rattling chain, and various plates and glasses all clanking at once and some falling to the floor and breaking; it sounded more like a bull in a china shop than a gunshot.