The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-05-22

lection, attended the theatre The deaf ruutf
te-l INTO such paroxysm of laughter at Jot
Grimaldi'S antics that his nervous disease
was dispelled and his powers restored, to the
establishment of his friends In 1919 Grimaldj
first sang the famous ''Hot COLLINS" A bow
was crushed to death in the crowd that night
In 1921 EgertOn, the actor, undertook the
management. He induced Queen Caroline to
visit the theatre in state, and for two seasons
he iAdustriously made everything unpopular
and wound up with disaster, the abolition of
the water drama being one of his mistakes.
MI. Williams restored the fortunes with
pony races and such plays as ''Mazeppa,n and
| reintroduced the tank dramas in 1924 They
remained feature until 1898, when they
were finally abolished, although water affects
have been used incidentally since
GRISAT.DIS FAREWELL.
One of the notable events in the history of
this play house was Grimaldi's farewell bene-
tit on St Patricks day, 1928 By O'Clock
In the day the courtyard was filed with more
people than the theatre would hold. The
play was by Dibdin, "SixeS, or the Fiend,n
de had played forty-nine seasons on those
boards. His last visit to any theatre was to,
Sadler's Wells, on Jan. 90, 1859. 1t was a
benefit for clown, and the management had
announced that it would be under the patron
age of the veteran. A full house was at first
disappointed at not seeing him, but in a duet
between the clown and Jim Crow the clown
said:
Prithee tell me, Mr.. Crow,
Why you look SO full of gieeg
Jim Crow-Whyf Cos our old friend Joe
I'm delighted there to see
Clown-Now he's here We'll welcome him
With hearty three times three
The house rose with deafening shouts.
Poor Grimaldi crawled to the front of the |
box, faltered out some broken sentences |
about being overcome by the unexpected |
honor, and that it was the last time he should |
ever see his friends, spread out both hands to |
the house, saying, ''God bless you ALL" and |
tel back exhausted IN the arms of friend
THE sHAKEsPEAREAN PERIoD.
Then came the brilliant period of the
Phelps and Greenwood management from
1874 to 1859, when the major part of Shake
speares plays were put on the stage with a
wealth of spectacular beauty never before
nor since in any way approached Phelps
to produce all-he did produce
thirty of them, occupying about 4, 900 nights
''The immense thatre," says Philip Mars
ton, in The Dramatic Mirror, ''is very weird
anu mysterious at night. lrecolect being
at work all night once in property room
right up in the roof, where a stage carpen-
ter had once hung himself from cross benz
He was cut down, but the rope was left l
know that, with the creaking and whistling
of the wind, my imagination, always pretty
vivid, was so wrought up that could almost
see him dangling at the end of the rope which
gave kind of human shrek every time the
wind swayed it to and fro. 1 got so nervous
that began singing odd Hundred Fenton
heard it and cried out to the paint boy:
Go up to Marston; he's scared into singing
hymns"
The Illustrations in this article are takea
from Philip Marston's article in The Dramatic
Mirror. They are" he says, faithful in
their minutest details, and are from sketches
made on the spot in my student days.