Lost and Gone Stage Tradition

The Girl In The Show (1929) Celebrates "Tom" Troupes

So what's a "Tommer"? I found out after watching this early Metro talker and perusing 19th-early 20th century record. Seems there were dozens of troupes, most itinerant, performing Uncle Tom's Cabin for rural America. We can't know impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel for being a hundred and fifty years late to the party. It was huge, as in, many say, all-time best seller next to the Bible. Hard for a splintered culture to grasp such mass embrace. Anyone who could read, read it. Lincoln credited Uncle Tom's Cabin with starting the Civil War. For all the book's sentiment and homespun prose, it lit abolition's fuse and pushed slavery to forefront of North-South debate. Stowe's story had bumps that cried to be dramatized. To stage-adapt her novel was commonest sense, occurring to multiple impresarios around a same time, none with consent of author Stowe as there was no copyright protection for her work. Troupes could number few as seven players and still put on a Tom show, membership swapping parts where needed, sometimes doing two roles, cork-on or cork-off.

Many actors made lifetime work of Tom shows, never performing in anything else. It wasn't necessary to travel with props, for most of what Tom companies needed was on hand in small towns they played. Audiences expected the chase with bloodhounds, but that breed being sluggish at best of times made Great Danes a better pick to pursue Eliza over the ice. At least one stage entrance on a mule or pony was expected, so animals had to be coaxed not only into local Music Halls or opera houses, but often up multiple flights of stairs. Ambitious troupes arriving would put on a parade to engage locals, this essential to launch a week, or less, stay. Tom shows traveled for a remarkable seventy-eight years, last performance allegedly in summer 1931. Over that time, there would arrive movies to re-tell Uncle Tom's Cabin, from Edison to a lavish Universal production in 1927, latter available on DVD. The play, and those who staged it, were spoofed in variation from The Duncan Sisters to Our Gang. The only full-out telling of Tommer life I've seen, however, is MGM's The Girl In The Show, released in 1929, and a precious souvenir of life among the barnstormers. There's not a DVD so far, and TCM shows it seldom, but this one is a keeper for anyone fascinated by a very long gone theatrical tradition.

Initial title, announced by Metro in their 1929-30 product annual, was Eva The Fifth, a reference to Bessie Love being fifth member of her family to play that character in Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Girl In The Show was part of a first season for Metro all-talkers, all fresh and novel on arrival, but stale within months as improved models came fast off studio floors. Initial tries at talk would soon be as obsolete as Tom shows headed for extinction. "Wired Guys" were on-beam showmen who spent for conversion to sound, but they were still in overall minority as small towns, who would have appreciated The Girl In The Show best, continued silent policy. MGM offered mute versions for these outliers, but some product, fallen into cracks of transition, didn't get as wide play as they would have in all-silent or later all-sound marketplace. My town, for instance, never ran The Girl In The Show either way.

The Girl In The Show ribs Tommers, but never ridicules them. Many of creative personnel, I suspect, had their start doing Tom shows, or at the least forming sentimental attachment to Uncle Tom's Cabin as depicted on hometown stages. No telling how many were lured into show business by a Tom troupe. We can assume the circus caused more youth to leave home, but Tom shows crooked a finger to would-be actors as well, as did vaudeville, medicine shows, etc., with all their siren sights and sounds. Arrival of talk to movies was opportunity to show how progress had swept off old modes of performing. Radio led a wrecking crew of newcomer formats, it making home and hearth a preferred site for entertainment. Clash of discarded old and insistent new is put forth by the ad at top for Chicago's Majestic Theatre, where The Girl In The Show is supported on stage by "World's Famous Radio Stars In Person" from the WLS Showboat, a weekly broadcast mélange of music and patter. WLS was a station established in 1924 by Sears and Roebuck for outreach to Midwestern farmers, who relied on weather and crop info as delivered by wireless. Here, then, is radio tuned to extreme primitive --- convenience and saving of admission an only inducement to listen --- but surprise, we can hear an episode of WLS Showboat today, a rare instance of so early a broadcast being still extant. Peruse of this, plus screening of The Girl In The Show, can take us back to something like what the Majestic's audience experienced in 1929.