Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-07-03

Hats off gentlemen and enter!
The Walnut Street Theater in Phila-
dephia is the oldest standing play
house in America. In February lSOS.
it was erected and for hundred
and two years it has hourished. Once
it stood at the outskirts of the town,
then the center: now the town has
grown many, many miles beyond IT.
But it's prOprOOm old prOproOm:
for it has two nOw-1S the same as
when Pepin and Preschard opened c
the theater with circus and pan Ses
tomime one hundred and two years o'a pr'i
ago,
everything, costumes excepted. used on the stage
during a play. property room looks like the
average junkshop possibly more So A chair is
property: a clock, a cane, candle, a cham, a
corkscrew. And bottle is property too and the
forged will and the mortgage papers, horseshoe.
feather buster, and paper of pins. And the prop.
ertv man of the theater has all these hundreds of
seemingly inconsequential things under his thumb
and gets them when they're needed.
Half Century in the Proproom
OLD Charlie Hofner is property man OF the
~ Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia. For
fifty years he has had charge OF the properties
there the Oldest property man in the United States
in the Oldest theater in the country. No wonder he
loves the old paper mache helmets and the wooden
smitars touched with silver paint that clutter the
old proproom, which long since have Outlved their
make believe! Grizzled and gray he is; but it's
worth while having slvered hair when one has
golden memories. Forrest and Booth and Charlotte
Cushman have talked with him; so Fate cannot
touch him.
The other day he looked his in the old
proproom. Frank Howe jr.. manager of the thea
ter there too to help Hoffner's rich memory
with vagrant date or two. Howe Is a scholar. a
whilom actor a writer of short stories and plays,
musician a whom Art has touched III many
places. Fitting, indeed that he should now, in this
latter day have charge of the playhouse which in
its century of life has numbered among
its managers such people Mrs. ID. =. Bowers,
Edwin Booth, Charlotte Cushman, and John Sleeper
Clarke.
Hoffner brushed a half-inch of dust from
hickory staffs. Thems old props he said. that
were used for most anything, mostly for the witches
in Macbeth The big one here-that one with fork
in it. like the top of the old slngshot used to have
as a boy-that big one was used by Charlotte Cush-
in Meg Merriles. She wanted a stick with
fork the she could rest her elbow there when
she spoke those two big speeches of hers. Ali! and
long memory laden sigh came yelling from him.
she great and good woman, was Charlotte
Cushmanl''
two feet long caught his eye One of the prettiest
little girls ever in my life carried that wand the
first year l came here, 1858. l know that her first
was Lola, and that she died from catching cold
here. Mrs. Bowers managing the theater then,
and Edwin Forrest acted Caius Marius written by
K. Penn Smith Then the children's ballet in
which the kid that carried this wand appeared: then
pantomirne called Jealousy in the Kitchen We
opened the doors at thirty in those days and
up at had to when you had tragedy. ballet,
and pantomime all in one night. Wisht could re-
member that kid last name!' he said he laid the
little star capped silver wand on chair.
Historic Chair
THAT chairs got history" he said rurnnativey
You it's Gothic, and has four blocks of
wood under it, each leg. When Forrest
played Hamlet with the stock company here he sat
on that chair at rehearsal Then he gave me baly
hoo; said the chair was so short and dumpv that
carpenter put blocks under it to raise it from the
floor.