Lights, Camera, Action: Oliver Smith

By Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Recently, Kelsey Jones, the Chemung County historian, passed along the name of someone buried in Woodlawn Cemetery with impressive Hollywood ties. It’s not Hal Roach, who comes first to mind, but Oliver Lemuel Smith. His story was hidden because he doesn’t have an individual headstone. He is also interred in a family plot that has a different last name. With a little digging, here’s part of his story.

Oliver Lemeul Smith

Oliver Lemeul Smith was born on February 13, 1918, in Waupun, Wisconsin. He was the second of four children, having arrived seven years after an older brother. His father, Larue Free Smith, was a high school principal. His mother, Nina Kincaid, had graduated from Oberlin College and was the only child and heir to a wealthy family who owned a corset-making business with factories around the world. In 1908, the young couple had a lavish marriage ceremony at her parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

After Oliver, two more boys were born, and not ten years later, the couple divorced. Sometime before 1933, Nina married Ivan Max Bernkopf, from Waverly, NY, and moved to Corning. Bernkopf was a co-owner of successful department stores in Waverly and Corning and was active in local civic organizations including the Elks Club.

Despite the Great Depression, Oliver went to Penn State, then moved to New York City. In 1940 he joined other creative people living in Brooklyn Heights in a Victorian brownstone located at 7 Meddagh Street. Since all its residents had been born in February, it became known as the February House. Under the loose leadership of literary critic George Davis, it was to be a utopian commune offering its members a balance between spontaneity and creativity, and structure and domestic routine.

In addition to Oliver Smith, residents included writers A. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, and Jane and Paul Bowles; composer Benjamin Britten; and performer Gypsy Rose Lee. Frequent visitors to the house included Salvador Dali, Anais Nin, and Thomas Mann’s son, Klaus. Smith was apparently responsible for tending the furnace, washing dishes, and generally helping keep various creative tempers calm. Unfortunately, when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, vehement disagreements about U.S. entry into the war fractured relationships beyond repair and the commune was disbanded.

Around this time Smith found his career on the rise. He designed sets for the ballets Saratoga (1941) and Rodeo (1942), and his work caught the eye of choreographer Jerome Robbins and composer Leonard Bernstein. Soon he was designing for Broadway and the movies.

My Fair Lady, Sketch and Photo

Like many artists associated with the February House group, Smith was openly homosexual, and his name is connected to many creative men of the time. Eventually he found his life partner, Richard “Dick” D’Arcy, a Broadway dancer, and they would be together until Smith’s death.

In 1944 Smith was hired to be co-director of the American Ballet Theater, a position he held until 1980. He was reappointed co-director again from 1990 to 1992, before being named director emeritus. Over the span of his design career, Smith received more than twenty-five Tony nominations for his work on plays and musicals, and he won ten. This made him the most recognized designer of his time. Shows he worked on included My Fair Lady (1957), West Side Story (1958), The Sound of Music (1960), Becket (1961), Camelot (1961), Hello, Dolly! (1964), and Baker Street (1965). He also designed for the movies, notably On the Town (1949), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Guys and Dolls (1955). He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Art Direction (Color) for Guys and Dolls, but lost to the designer for the movie Picnic.

Guys and Dolls, sketch and photo

In addition to his professional work, Smith was on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. For over 23 years, he taught and mentored many young students who went on to become influential designers. In 1981 Oliver Smith was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. The Library of Congress archives contain 305 boxes of his design sketches and notes.

In the studio

In 1994 Oliver Lemuel Smith died of emphysema in Brooklyn at the age of 76. His body was cremated and his ashes were placed with his mother’s grave in Woodlawn. Near her grave is a headstone for his youngest brother, who had died in 1982. Smith’s partner, dancer Richard D’Arcy, lived another eight years. He was cremated and interred elsewhere.

It is curious that Oliver Smith ended up in Woodlawn. His ties seem to be through his mother’s second husband’s family, the Bernkopfs. They were related to the Rosenbaum family, who also owned a department store. When Oliver’s stepfather Ivan Max Bernkopf died in 1951, he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, not far from the Rosenbaum family plot. Two weeks after his death, Nina lost her mother as well. She moved to Brooklyn, NY, where she died in 1979. She was buried near her husband in the Bernkopf plot at Woodlawn, though no obituary was published. So, no marker for Oliver Smith exists, but at the very least, some of his story can now be retold.

Some of these photos came from a profile on Oliver Smith published by the Waupun, WI, Historical Society. When I contacted them about using the photos, they shared that they do a Ghost Walk and one year, Smith had been a featured character.

The Kings of Drag

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

On the night of November 21, 2004, a group of talented drag kings and queens strutted their stuff at the annual Mr. & Miss Angles Pageant at Angles Ultimate Dance Club on Railroad Avenue. Contestants competed in the categories of evening wear and performance. While most people are familiar with the concept of drag queens, few are aware of the long history of drag kings, or male impersonators. 

The history of men dressing as women for theatrical purposes dates back centuries. The history of women impersonating men is nearly as old. Male impersonators have played an important role in Chinese opera dating as far back as the Tang Dynasty (618-907 C.E.) where The Butterfly Lovers, an ancient folktale of two star-crossed crossdressing lovers, was hugely popular. The golden age of Chinese male impersonators came during the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1369 C.E.). In 1364, author and theater enthusiast Xia Tingzhi wrote 117 biographies of some of the most prominent performers. They played a wide range of roles from military figures and brigands (complete with martial arts choreography) to tender young lovers. In the West, most male impersonators played teenage boys or women disguising themselves as men. The trend largely dated back to the early-1700s. By the mid-1800s, male impersonation for comedic purposes in vaudeville sketches had also become popular. 

Male impersonator Zelma Rawlston, 1894

 Locally, women performed male roles throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In 1894, Miss Virginia Earl drew praise from the Star-Gazette’s theater critic for her role as the young prince of Siam in the operetta Wang. Several vaudeville performers including Ida LePage and Zelma Rawlston played men in comedic sketches or musical numbers. In 1935, there were two male impersonators working the Elmira bar scene: Buddie Warren and Buddie Brown. Warren was the M.C. and host of the Wonder Bar, 160 Lake Street, where she introduced various acts. Brown, meanwhile, was a singer at the Annex Grill, 62 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Ad for the Wonder Bar, September 6, 1935

 

The use of the phrase “drag king” to refer to male impersonators first became popular in the mid-20^th century. Much like drag queens, modern day drag kings tend to be members of the LGBTQ community. While historically that was not always the case, several prominent male impersonators have, in fact, been very queer. Julie D’Aubigny (1673-1707), was a French opera star and duelist who regularly played male roles and had lovers of both sexes. Annie Hindle (1840s-1897), the most well-known American male impersonator of her day, married her dresser Annie Ryan in 1886 under an assumed name.    

Modern drag kings often perform dance numbers and comedy routines which play up certain male stereotypes. They often take punny stage names like Mo B. Dick and Freddie Prinze Charming. Locally, there are a few places where you can catch a show including Angles Ultimate Dance Club, the Starlight Room, and the Clemens Center.

The Summer Stage at Rorick’s Glen

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

In 1900, the newly consolidated Elmira Water, Light & Railroad Company got the brilliant idea to drum up ridership by opening an amusement park at the end of their Water Street line. Such parks had been a popular tactic of trolley and railroad companies since shortly after World War I. Check out our old blog Tourist Traps and Other Summer Pitfalls for details. Rorick’s was all set to be another fairly generic park until W. Charles Smith, the manager of Elmira’s Lyceum Theatre of Lake Street, suggested the addition of a theater. It proved a fateful suggestion and, from 1901 to the start of World War I, Rorick’s Glen was one of the preeminent places for summer theater in the country.

Glen Theater program, 1913

 

The initial season wasn’t all that promising. The first performance was by William Josh Daly’s Minstrels presented by Mr. & Mrs. Harry Dixie. Most of the shows in that first season were vaudeville variety acts and the audiences were underwhelmed. In 1901, they decided to change things up by bringing in the Manhattan Opera Company. The troupe specialized in operettas and musicals, primarily those by Gilbert & Sullivan. They were a big hit and spent the next 17 years as the theater’s resident summer troupe. In fact, from 1904 to 1916, they were widely regarded as the best summer stock company in the country. In addition to performances by the Manhattan Opera Company, the Glen Theater featured performances by some of the biggest names in vaudeville. They also regularly hosted the Elmira Free Academy’s annual senior play.

The Manhattan Opera Company in the Mikado, 1909

 

The original theater was a large, lovely building with a seating capacity of 1,500. It burned on the night of June 24, 1904, but was not completely destroyed. The roof was gone, but much of the stage and seating area remained intact. By July 4 of that year, it was back open for business, sheltered by a large tent instead of a proper roof.

They built an entirely new theater in time for the 1905 season. It was roughly the same size, but had been redesigned. The lobby was now a giant wrap-around porch accessed via a flight of stairs and decorated with hanging plants Elmira Water, Light & Railroad Company and beautifully carved railings. It had canvas coverings which could be rolled up or pulled down over the large windows depending on the weather. Several improvements were made to the structure over the years, including the addition of box seating. 600 seats on the ground floor were free, with box and other reserved seating costing between 10 and 15 cents depending on the location. Tickets could afford to be so cheap because, unlike the downtown theaters, the goal was to generate ridership and revenue for the trolley, not the theater itself. 

Picture postcard of the second theater

 

After World War I, Elmira Water, Light & Railroad Company ridership fell as more people began acquiring cars. Unable to properly maintain the park and theater, the company let them both slowly fall apart throughout the 1920s. The building was finally destroyed in a fire in March 1932.