A Midnight Bell

The play opened March 5, 1889 at the Bijou Theater, Broadway and 80th Street. The comedy play was by Charles Hoyt. Maude Adams played the minister's sister Dot Bradbury, an old maid.

=====From the Acton Davies book=====

"The play was a great success at the Bijou and enjoyed a long run, but in looking through the newspaper reviews of the performance the fact is apparent that the public found out and appreciated Maude Adams as an artist long before the critics did. A number of the reviewers made no mention of her performance; others dismissed her with a complimentary line. Her role in the play, after all, was a subordinate one; but somehow or other that indefinable charm of personality that has done more to make Maude Adams the popular idol that she is to-day than all her technique and grace and cleverness, began to exert its spell over her audiences. In a few days, in all parts of the town, at the clubs, in the bar-rooms,, on the street cars, people began to ask each other, "Have you seen that new little girl in Hoyt's play at the Bijou? She's sweet."

"Midnight Bell was the most tender and one of the cleverest plays which the late Charles Hoyt ever turned out, but it is no injustice., either to its author or the other members of the cast,, to say that to hundreds of playgoers the one memory of that performance is Maude Adams' portrayal of the young New England girl. She had hit the theatrical bull's-eye squarely, and scored One."

=====American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1869-1914 by Gerald Bordman; Oxford University Press, 1994=====

Yankees were clearly staging a theatrical comeback. John Whitcomb was welcoming folks to the old homestead in record numbers, Silas Woolcott was winning his expensive victory, and Miss Prue was ridding herself of her debts. Now Charles Hoyt added a passel of old-line Americans to the list. Hoyt had gained his fame with farces that were in reality primitive musical comedies, but his A Midnight Bell ( 3-5- 89), Bijou) was an unalloyed rural comedy. To frame his action he recorded how Ned Olcott ( Hart Conway) takes the blame for stealing securities from his uncle's bank when he learns that Squire Olcott ( T. J. Herndon) is to be arrested for the crime. Ned is convinced (and so is the audience) that his uncle's cashier, shifty-eyed Stephen Labaree ( W. J. Humphries), is the culprit and that Labaree hopes to win away Ned's girl, Annie Grey ( Beth Bedford). A number of other uncertain romances were threaded through the story. Would John Bradbury ( Richard J. Dillon), the minister, recognize how much he loves the pretty young schoolma'am, Nora Fairchild ( Isabelle Coe)? And would the youthful lawyer, Napier Keene ( W. H. Currie), propose to the minister's winsome little sister, Dot ( Maude Adams)?

The only uncertainty, of course, was on the part of the characters. Savvy playgoers knew from the start how everyone would be paired. Much of the delight of the play came in waiting for, and finally watching, expectations realized--not just lovers happily united and Labaree exposed, but the village's spiteful, gossipy biddies given their comeuppance. These comfortable, reassuring feelings were enhanced by the settings. Act I showed the squire's dining room, with food on the table and a mutt scampering about for scraps. Act II showed the interior and exterior of a one-room schoolhouse, and children sledding and throwing snowballs. The parlor of the village old maid was the background for the next act, while the last took place in the meetinghouse, with pews, organ, and hymnals, and with the bell ropes visible at the bottom of the belfry. Some of the humor was more clownish than comic.

Deacon : You know I never lose my dignity. [ Falls on icy step ] Land o'gosh! [ Rises and falls again ]

Some was obvious, as when the deacon ( Thomas Q. Seabrooke) makes way for one of the gossips with "Age before beauty." And some resorted to homespun aphorisms, such as "True consistency is a jewel, but jewelry is vulgar."

Good, clean fun, A Midnight Bell ran out the season and afterwards toured for many years.

=====American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle by Gerald Bordman; Oxford US, 1992=====

October's next entry was a second farce-comedy. Charles Hoyt's A Brass Monkey bowed at the Bijou on October 15 and compiled a run of 104 showings before it closed on January 4. An old auctioneer named Doolittle Work ( Alf M. Hampton) has always ridiculed his superstitious friends who have insisted the brass monkey he forever carries has caused the breakup of his four marriages. He dies, bequeathing his estate to his nephew, Dodge Work ( Tim Murphy), on the condition the young man retain the brass monkey. When the nephew's own marriage starts to come apart he puts the monkey up for auction. The show was the first of three Hoyt works to be staged during the year. A Tin Soldier ( 5-3-85) was revived at the 14th Street Theatre on December 24 with a cast that included the young Marie Cahill, while A Midnight Bell premiered at the Bijou on March 5, offering in its cast Thomas Q. Seabrooke, who later starred in a number of musical comedies, and introducing a sixteen-year old Maude Adams, who went on to fame in less lyric enterprises. Although a comedy, A Midnight Bell was a more serious attempt by Hoyt at playwriting. The specialties that Hoyt contrived to inject in his other pieces were omitted.

=====A Pictorial History of the American Theatre: 100 Years 1860-1960 by Daniel Blum; Chilton Co. Book Division, 1960=====

There were also a number of long-run comedies The County Fair with Neil Burgess as the Widow Bedot, A Poor Relation which made a star of Sol Smith Russell, Agnes Booth in Aunt Jack, A Gold Mine with Nat C. Goodwin, The Charity Ball ( Henrietta Crosman appeared in the cast), and A Midnight Bell starring E. H. Sothern, with Maude Adams in her first featured role.

Reviews

“Among the features of the school scene a child, a wee thing, little Dot, was introduced, who captured the house by her childish manners and charming action. She was what we seldom see upon the stage, a real child acting the part of a child as a child would act away from the glare of the footlights.” (The World, March 6, 1889)


The North Adams Transcript, Sept. 18, 1900