New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1908-08-19
TONY PASTORS START
Personal "reminiscences Of the
Noted Vaudeville Manager.
STAR AS TAMBOURINE PLAYER

SAX AS TAMBOURlNE# PLAYER
Began His Career With One Night
Stand In His Fathers Cellar Gospel
Meeting Brought Him Again Into
Shadow of the Footiights.
Tony Pastor, the veteran actor and
noted vaudeville manager, told a few.
years ago, on the thirty fifth anniver-
Sary of his theatrical career. how he
made his debut He said:
l began business at a one night stand
in the basement of our house. That was
in 184 we'll, so far back don't like
to count. Father had laid in good
supply Of coal and wood that year in
the old house in Greenwich street, New
York. He had paid man to pile it up
nice and trim SO it looked pretty and
20 you could get at it handy-like from
| the furnace.
had my idea even in those days
about how to manage things. I was
always managing things, or trying to.
So / carried all the coal could lift and
shove and haul over to the back steps
of the cellar. There I arranged it like
a bicycle track, a sort of sounding
board and place for the feet OF the
audience raised seat, as it were.
Then the boys came and saw me
play the tambourine. AS tambourine
player as kid WAS star, if have
to say it for myself. The boys appre-
ciated this and mace such noise on
the curtain calls that father heard
something doing and came down and
took the house by storm, SO to speak.
1t was an awful anticlimax. It's
| funny how fathers and straps can pro-
| duce the most startling anticlimaxes.
| Yet it isn't funny except when you
look at it in the perspective of thirty
five years Of managership and con-
slant activity in the play business. For
the time being it was very serious and
looked as if my aspirations as an ac-
torina were ended all right.
Strange that gospel meeting should
be the means of bringing me into the
shadow of the footlights again. Dad
was that proud Of my voice. had a
crackerjack of voice as kid, with
which a steam calliope was not in the
same catalogue that he said:
kid, there's to be q meetin' in the
old Hand-in-Hand hall tonight, and
/ you'd better come along with me and
see what's doin.'"
So Went-and sang. And the fire
I 3y,t< 1cSAk No ~,
about then. Ny finances were rather
meager, so Mr.. Nathan, who was one
Of the firm of Welsh, Delevan &
Nathan, took me as an apprentice to
/ learn the circus business.
There We're no railroads over the
mountains in those days. We had ia
cross in ,stagecoaches and didn't strike
a railroad until we reached the old
4 Baltimore and Ohio railroad at Cum.
berland, Md. Cincinnati was two
weeks from New York then, and one
had to hustle to get there that quick
/ Our first trip to Cincinnati was event
4 full, because the elephant came very
i near putting us all out of business. He
1 got loose one day, and they closed the
doors of the tent so be couldn't get out
without some delay. It wasn't that he
couldn't get out so much, I think, as
that those on the outside Of the tent
felt that if they did that he would turn
4 his attention to the things on the inside
of the tent first before destroying Gin
i cinnati.
Boylihe, I climbed the tent an6
watched him from pole hole. There
he was, as calm as you please, a-bowl
ing things right;and left. He didn' tmakt
much noise, except once in awhile
when he made special large hau
with his trunk, he would trumpet loud
enough to wake the dead.
Outside they had all the police Of the
town and the fire department, all train
ed on the tent, and the militia had been
telegraphed for. Inside things began
to grow more warm. Not content with
SO little noise, the elephant turned over
cages and everything else except the
tent poles. He seemed to know I was
up there. looking at him, and his re.
membrane of how I had fed him pea.
nuts softened his heart.
Dear boy he said, "he will live to
see May Irwin in Sister Mary 1t is
enough
That's why I'm here oday-through
that elephants thoughtfulness.
/ I steered clear of Cincinnati after
that Oh, by the way, they caught the
elephant somehow. I didn't wait tc
see how.
am, you know, the father of high
vaudeville. That sounds as II I had
done something perhaps, but it isn't
true. haven't done anything; I've
been simply the instrument When ]
began land was manager at eight
een) only men and boys went to va
riety shows. Our old house on the
i Bowery was like the shows OF London
I knew that If the women would only
come we could purify the stage, fol
where the women are, God bless 'em
their influence is felt. That sounds a
IL rxs, = t.- :. -.