In the Elegant Eighties and Naughty Nineties, Town Halls flourished like mushrooms on American soil. To them flocked entertainment-hungry audiences who laughed and wept and cheered for political speakers and minstrel shows and pure-young-girls-betrayed and Mark Twain. Harlowe R. Hoyt has re-created in Town Hall Tonight the whole gaudy world of the grass roots theater, from P. T. Barnum’s lectures on temperance to ten-twent’-thirt’ melodrama. Using his grandfather’s Concert Hall in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, as a prototype of the American Town Hall, he restages a joyous collection of scenes from a time gone by. Town Hall Tonight , by Harlowe R. Hoyt. Prentice-Hall, Inc. 292 pp. $7.50. There was a time when the success of Little Lord Fauntleroy produced in countless romantic mothers an urge to clothe their sons in velveteen knickers and ruffled collars—still worse, to ask their outraged offspring to call them “Dearest.” There was a time when audiences thrilled to see Laura Cortland, heroine of Augustin Daly’s Under the Gaslight , locked in a ticket office while goodhearted Snorkey, lashed to the railroad tracks, awaited an oncoming express. But wait! Laura seizes an ax, Snorkey encourages her. “Don’t mind the lock—cut around it!” ( Steam whistle heard offstage, then a rumble on the tracks. ) Laura hacks away. Snorkey cries out, “There’s a true woman for you! Courage!” Laura rushes to his side. ( Glare of headlights illuminates stage. ) Says Snorkey, “Victory! Saved! Hooray! And these are the women who ain’t to have a vote!” ( As Laura takes his head from the track, the train rushes past … CURTAIN.) The book is gaily illustrated with some fine old photographs, including Tom Thumb and his wife, Loie Fuller doing her famous skirt dance, and the only picture of Lillian Russell in tights.
Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
The Town Hall
Featured Articles
Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington.
Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.
Often thought to have been a weak President, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or political fallout.
In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.
Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.
A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.
During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.
Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.
The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.
Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.
Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.
When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.