Echoes of Century Resound As Bijou Enters ‘Last Days’

PART I, from the Nashville Banner, July 19, 1957

By Ed Huddleston

SHE WAS a great lady once, the old Bijou Theater at 423 Fourth Ave., North.

It’s been 53 years since her brightest hour, Sept. 14, 1904. That was her opening night. Two thousand Nashvillians became “a seething, writhing mass of humanity” in front of her marquee. They were struggling to enter Nashville’s “largest theater … a jewel of a playhouse … with elegance and beauty everywhere.”

She had 1,642 seats, and “not a single seat remained unoccupied.” After that, there was a “a scramble for standing room.” And the crowd outside keep shoving, trying to get in, “as far out in the street as the [street] car tracks.”

Civic dignitaries and many a proud old name filled her 52 box seats. Even these were new-fangled. They revolved, so that the fortunate occupants could look “in any direction.” They saw plenty. So did the 633 respectable citizens filling her 633 blue leather seats on the ground floor. (“None of the demimonde [mistresses of wealthy men] shall enter the playhouse at any time,” said a house rule.) These seats cost patrons 50 cents each.

Upon entering, they saw pink marble wainscoting, a tiled vestibule, and a softly green interior, trimmed with white and gold. The proscenium arch was gilded.

“But probably the most beautiful feature,” wrote a reporter next day, “were hand-painted figures on her ceiling.” They were life size.

The first balcony accommodated 433, at 35 cents each. Up in the gallery, or “roost,” 524 more seats were jammed, at 15 to 25 cents.

All were intrigued — and reassured — by the red lights glowing above her 12 exits — “500 feet of exit space.” For this huge audience was safety-minded. Jake Wells, out of Norfolk, who sponsored her, had known it would be. [Nine] months before, 602 persons had perished in the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago. Many had been trampled to death. The public couldn’t forget.

The Adelphi

Too, this theater stood upon the foundation of a theater which also had burned, about 1902, around Christmas time. This had been the famed old Adelphi, which had borne various names since Jenny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale,” sang there in 1851, and in which such musical giants as Vieuxtemps, immortal violinist, and Thalberg, the great pianist, once had shared a program.

The old Alephi had been called The Grand at the time it burned to ashes, and its stock company had moved on to 422 Church St., the Grand Opera House. And the Vendome was flourishing at 615 Church St. So the new Bijou had two competitors, both of smaller seating capacity. (Not until the Tennessee Theater opened in 1952, with 2,030 seats, was the Bijou to be outstripped in capacity.)

The Bijou’s first offering was a melodrama, “Sign of the Four,” an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s  hair-raising hit novel. The star was Walter Edwards, a little husky for the cadaverous Sherlock Holmes, but the audience didn’t seem to mind. From the waves of applause, they went for this yarn of Agra treason, stolen by four convicts of British India. The convicts tied Holmes to a huge can of explosive. They lit the fuse. It sputtered wildly on the stage, and 1,600 Nashvillians sat somewhat agog. And then — just in the nick of time, Holmes used his cigar to burn the ropes that held him.

At intermission, scores poured into the Bijou’s cafe. This was to the right of the main building, and it must have been a booming concern. It’s rental was $300 monthly. For 1904, the figure would suggest its business was highly profitable. The cafe had a courtyard in the back. Potted palms were nodding there, a romantic spot in the moonlight. Here lovers murmured, and many a sedate business man took his wife there. It was “genteel.”

The Bijou, for several years, became what some old timers have called a “family theater.” Its specialty remained melodrama and included such offerings as “A Midnight Marriage,” concerning a poor but honest gal who met a millionaire in the Bowery. Then came “Alone in the World,” about a bitter Creole, a cotton speculator, and a lucky lottery ticket. George Sidney showed up as the star of “Busy Iggy,” with a cast of 45. “The Waif’s Paradise” portrayed the dramatic rescue of an infant from a den of lions. (The lions were real Numidians, “10-feet from tip to tail” and swallowed “20 pounds of meat at a single gulp.” Matinee patrons were provided the thrill of seeing the lions fed — offstage.)

But misfortune was ahead. Theatrical doings were moving toward Church St. Moving pictures were coming in. The Bijou’s once elegant neighbor, the Duncan hotel (now the Citizens Saving Bank & Trust Co.) was past her heyday. Jake Wells was running into financial difficulties. About 1913 the Bijou closed. She remained dark about three years. There is a legend that, during those dark years, elephants from circuses were quartered in her courtyard where stately palms once nodded.

Reopens

In May, 1916, the Bijou reopened. She became the Bijou Theater for Negroes. This was in the early silent days of moving pictures. As such she was to find a new renown, as one of the great chain of like Bijou’s, extending from the Carolinas to Texas and Oklahoma which soon would feature vaudeville.

The original partners in this enterprise, the Bijou Amusement Co., were Milton, Michael and Jacob Starr, three Nashville brothers, and their father, Joseph Starr. The late Alfred Starr, a fourth brother, came into the firm in the early 1920s. He was destined to guide the company for many years.

Meanwhile, over at Loew’s Vendome, a Nashville youngster, serving as usher on time off from his job at L. Jonas Co., was getting “the theater fever.”  His name was Evans Sprott, and on May 18, 1918, he opened a concession at the Bijou. By 1922 he was an executive. As Alfred Starr’s partner, Sprott was to serve many years as general manager of all operations of the firm. A new era was ahead for the Bijou, with such big names as Mamie Smith and Tiger Flowers. And Sprott is there today, managing the firm of about 40 theaters, as the end approaches for one of its most storied houses.

“The show much go on,” he said today. “About 150 patrons still show up every night.”

They walk across the yellow earth. The sidewalk is gone. The street is gone. Soon the theater too will be no more. They are faithful to the end.

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PART II, from the July 22, 1957, Nashville Banner

IT HAPPENED quickly, quietly. The Bijou Theater was crowded with Negro patrons. A silent movie was showing. A woman was reading subtitles [intertitles] to her male companion. It disturbed the man beside her. He protested. Words passed. She drew a knife and stabbed him. He stumbled to the foyer, fell, and died before an ambulance could arrive — from just across the street at the McGavock Funeral Home.

That was in the 1920s. Business was roaring. Since May, 1916, the Bijou had been a theater for Negroes, but serious trouble was rare. The murder was an exception.

“She’s pretty consistently noted for her order,” a police officer said today. “Violence that has happened in the area hasn’t been because of the Bijou. It would have happened anyway. Her record is good.”

She was a member of “Toba,” a gigantic turning wheel of the finest Negro entertainment talent of her day. “Toba” served more than 80 Negro theaters in America. Weekly the big corporate wheel would turn a notch, placing new programs, different stars, new acts and songs, before its eager audience. In show business, “Toba” stood for the Theater Owners’ Booking Assn. Heading it was the late Alfred Starr of Nashville and Evans Sprott, now general manager of all operations for the Bijou Amusement Co.

Big-Time Box Office Names

“Toba” offered such big-time box office names that special nights were set aside for white people. They showed up in tuxedoes, for instance, to hear Bessie Smith, “Queen of the Blues,” belt out such lyrics as: “Went down the railroad, Laid my head on the track-a-a-acks! The whistle toot-ed, And I jerrrrrrked it back!” The Bijou boom was on. A single night for whites would bring $2,000 through the wicket, in a week which might have brought only $1,000 from Negroes.

Bessie’s equally famous sister, Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, helped make the Bijou ring. So did Irvan Miller’s Brown Skin Models and blues shouter “Ma” Rainey. Ethel Waters, whose name is even brighter today as author of “His Eye Is On The Sparrow,” poured popular songs and ballads across its footlight to capacity houses. One of her special songs was “Dinah.” It brought down the house. Years later, when her autobiography became a spectacular success, Nashvillians read many a reference to their Bijou.

On the comedy side, Butterbeans and Susie sent tears of laughter down the cheeks of countless Nashville Negroes. They were a tall man-fat woman team, and steady favorites.

The Lafayette Players also graced the “Toba” wheel. They were America’s only Negro dramatic company at the time. Its stars were Andrew Bishop and Evelyn Preer, destined for Hollywood. At first, they were not too well received by their race here. Then the late J. C. Napier, nationally known Negro patriarch of Nashville — lawyer, educator and banker — rose from his seat at the Bijou and recommended the Players to his people. They took quick heed. The troupe remained here eight weeks, offering two plays weekly. The Players remained three years with “Toba.”

Whites also filled 300 ringside seats at many a Bijou boxing match. Tiger Flowers, later to become the first Negro middle-weight champ, is said to have begun his incorruptible whamming here. Certain it is that he fought many times at the Bijou. Tiger, for whom more than one public place in Atlanta has been named, was from Walk Miller’s stable of boxers there. Deeply religious, Tiger upheld high ethics for the ring. “Boss, I’m just going to do the best I can.” That was his gentle brushoff for would-be tipsters who sought an inkling of the outcome before they placed a buck.

“He was the most upright fighter I ever met in my life,” Sprott recalls “—nice, easy-going and polite.”

Sam Langford, “the Boston Tar Baby,” was another who slugged it out on the Bijou’s stage, which is said to be the largest in Nashville, even to this day. (“Ben Hur” was produced upon it in pre-jazz days. And that play took space.)

‘Toba’ Ended

“Toba’s” big wheel turned until about 1942. But vaudeville acts kept coming until about two years ago [in 1955]. Sound movies had reached the Bijou years before. She kept in step with technical advance. When synchronization was improved, the Bijou promptly installed the enabling device. When wide screens came, she acquired one. She has an acoustical richness.

“You can almost hear a pin drop,” Sprott said proudly. (“Her acoustics have rarely been equalled in Nashville,” an old timer told this reporter. “It was always one of her finest points.”)

Her worst disruption of a show was due to mother nature. When the spring tornado of 1933 hit East Nashville, it left its mark just across the Cumberland, on Fourth Ave., North. It snipped the turret from he old Duncan Hotel, just up the street from the Bijou, and lifted the Bijou’s roof. Her audience went — afoot and fast. From the sidewalk they saw the wreckage of the roof, atop the old [street] car barn, then [located] across the street, on the east side of Fourth.

Whatever television may have done to theater patronage by white people, it appears to reach its “saturation point in two years,” where Negro patrons are concerned, Sprott said.  He should know. As head of the Bijou Amusement Co. with its 40-odd theater chain, he has a broad view of the industry.

Also, as president of the Colemere Club, he has brought numerous top-flight entertainers to Nashville, for appearances at the club, and he knows their views.

Business ‘Far From Dead’

“Theater business, so far as we’re concerned, is far from being dead,” he continued. “Our business at the Ritz Theater, on Jefferson St., is better than it’s ever been. After two years of television in New Orleans, our business is coming back. The same thing happened here, in 1956.” …

As he spoke, yellow dust was blowing into the Bijou’s face. Bulldozers had erased that section of Fourth Ave. which had known the footsteps of Jenny Lind (enroute to the old Adelphi) and Mary Pickford (as a youthful star, enroute to the old Grand). The spot is one of Nashville’s richest in legends of greasepaint and gaslight.

The broken earth lay deeply scattered upon her entrance steps. It had been hurled three feet across the concrete beneath her marquee, into the glare of lights that still gallantly burned. Yet patrons were stepping over the little hillock. They were wading through the raw earth. They were buying tickets at the box office. Sprott saw.

“Move that stuff off these steps,” he said quickly to an attendant, “so these people can step up on these steps! What’s the matter with you?”

The old Bijou has a defender, till the very last.

To a reporter he added, “They still get here some way, somehow, and you don’t forget that, just overnight. Business goes on as usual, although we’re being covered up, day by day. The Bijou will be open all this week…”

Someday you’ll go strolling eastward along a beautiful new James Robertson [Parkway].  As you reach its eastern curve, you’ll veer to the right, onto a transformed Fourth Ave., North. And a barker from a sight-seeing vehicle may be shouting, to newcomers to Nashville:  “You are now approaching the city auditorium [Municipal Auditorium]. It stands upon the site of the famed old Adelphi and Bijou — where big names of show business performed for more than a hundred years —”

Look now. Her days are short.

(Newspapers .com)

Editor’s note: In George Zepp’s article about the theater, in the July 2009 issue of The Nashville Retrospect, he wrote: “It’s no wonder the popular theater’s operators fought the city to keep it going in the face of an urban renewal push to totally clear 65 acres of buildings on both sides of the northern end of Capitol Hill for ‘redevelopment.’ Much was true slum housing, but some historical gems went along with it as James Robertson Parkway was added. Nashville voters had approved a $5 million bond issue for a city auditorium in a 1949 referendum. Land acquisition took years. As it progressed, in January 1954 Bijou owners launched a legal opposition. The case ended when the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1957 upheld the Nashville Housing Authority’s right to condemn the theater property. The building sold in August 1957 for a reported $200,000. Its last show was in early November. A few days before Christmas, the Bijou was leveled. The final holdout property was gone.”

Today  Nashville Municipal Auditorium, home to the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, is being submitted by city and state officials for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The Bijou/Aldephi Theater does not currently have a historical marker on the site.

Besides the July 2009 issue, the Bijou Theater is also featured on The Retrospect’s Nashville History Map.