Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
One of the challenges
faced by Billy Hutchinson and his wife Lottie, the owners of The
Birdcage Theater in nineteenth-century Tombstone, Arizona, was how to
make their business appealing to their customers, the region's
miners, cowboys, and ranchers.
In 1881, before wedding
Lottie, Billy had spent considerable money—$600—to
build the theater. Now, he had to offer incentives to customers to
keep them coming back for more. Fortunately, Billy had worked in show
business, and he had the answer:
“entertaining shows, refreshing drinks, games of chance, dancing,
private conversation[,] and adult comfort.”
The eclectic
“entertainment” offered by the theater wasn't exclusively
theatrical. Prostitutes,
who worked behind the drawn curtains of the “elevated boxes”
suspended from the ceiling, also kept the establishment's patrons
entertained at $25
per night. (Private rooms in the basement went for $40
per night.)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
was performed at The Birdcage in June 1882. Not all of the action
went as written in the script:
Chaos occurred when little Eliza was being pursued by Simon Legree and his bloodhound while crossing the icy river. An inebriated cowboy, caught up in the drama, pulled his sixgun and plugged the dog. The audience was outraged and pounced on the clueless cowboy who was finally rescued by a peace officer and hauled off to jail. The next day the cowboy, now sober and repentant, offered his horse to the troupe as recompense for the dog.
In addition, The Birdcage
Theater featured wrestling
matches, one of which, between Peter Schumacher and Professor Dan
Milo, occurred on February 6, 1886, each party receiving $100.
Admission to the floor was 50 cents; for reserved seats, a dollar.
The match was advertised in the town's famous newspaper, The
Tombstone Epitaph, two
days before the event took place.
The
variety
of entertainment that The Birdcage featured virtually guaranteed
there was something for everyone, “including leg shows, bawdy
humorists, and fast-paced variety acts.” The variety acts featured
such performers as The Happy Hottentots and their “Grotesque
Dancing, Leg Mania, and Contortion Feats”; Mademoiselle De
Granville, “The Female Hercules,” who claimed to have “an iron
jaw” and picked “up heavy objects with her teeth”; comedians,
including “the Irish comic duo of John H. Burns and Matthew
Trayers, the comic singer Irene Baker,” and comedienne Nola Forest;
“a serious opera singer” Carrie Delmar; acrobats and trapeze
artists; Ella Richter, aka Mademoiselle Zazel, “the Human
Cannonball”; masquerade balls attended by transvestite entertainers
David Walters and Will Curlew; and “The Flying Nymph,” who “flew”
across the theater “on a rope.”
The
Human Fly was certainly “one of the most unusual”
performances:
. . . women (dressed in the usual theatrical tights and
abbreviated costumes) walked upside-down on the ceiling over the
stage. It was not an illusion—they actually were suspended above
the stage . . . . The trick was that their shoes had special clamps
on them that fitted into holes bored into the ceiling to support them
. . . . In another version “the human fly” women wore suction cups
on their feet as they walked up and down on a platform high above the
stage.
As one might suppose, such acts were dangerous. In both versions, one or more of “the human fly” performers died when equipment failed.
Among the other unusual entertainments the theater boasted was a 24-hour poker game that continued non-stop for eight years, five months, and three days, during which $10 million were bet. To be admitted to the game, a player had to be willing to spend at least $1,000. Those who tried their hands at the game include Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady, and George Hearst. The house took 10 percent of the winnings, so, over the years that the game lasted, The Birdcage received a whopping $1 million!
Eddie Foy, Sr.
Lotta Crabtree
Among other entertainers who performed at The Birdcage were Eddie Foy, Sr., Lotta Crabtree, Lily Langtree, and Lola Montez. However, despite the entertainment the theater offered, the frequent shootings and low company prevented many women from patronizing the establishment, and, despite the weekly Ladies' Nights on which women were admitted free of charge, “respectable ladies in Tombstone never went near the Bird Cage.”
Lillie Langtree
Lola Montez
The
Birdcage Theater is something of a time
capsule. Located at the corner of Allen Street and Sixth Street,
it survived the devastating fire that swept through Tombstone in the
early 1880s because it was built entirely of concrete, and, “when
it closed its doors in 1889, everything inside was left in place”;
in 1934, when the doors were opened again, “Tombstone found itself
with a perfect window into its past.”
