Bruce Bell, History Columnist –
I love history and I love theatre, so a story combining both that is filled with intrigue, plot twists and suspicious fires is exhilarating.
At the turn of the 20th century – before radio, talking pictures and television – Toronto’s population of 250,000 had close to a hundred theatres, large and small. Most neighbourhoods had their own local vaudeville theatre or music hall.
Some were small rooms above store or back rooms of taverns. But others were magnificent thousand-seat gold-leafed palaces to the arts, where the drama off stage often equaled the performances on stage.
One of these great theatres, the Academy of Music, on south side of King Street at what is now University Avenue, had the extra added attraction of being the first public building in Toronto to be completely electrified when it opened in 1890.
In 1895 the Academy of Music was renamed the Princess Theatre and remodeled into Toronto’s first first-class ‘legitimate’ theatre, presenting mostly plays and operas on its newly built and larger stage.
In 1900 seven-year-old Mary Pickford, born in Toronto as Gladys Smith and later famous as America’s Sweetheart in films, played two parts at the Princess in the ‘legitimate’ play The Silver King.
Competition arose in 1907 when a block west, the bigger and still standing Royal Alexandra Theatre, also a first-class legitimate theatre, opened its doors.
Even through the Royal Alex was described as the most beautiful theatre on the continent, its owner, 21-year-old millionaire Cawthra Mulock, had trouble booking plays from Broadway because Royal Alex producers and agents were battling an influential New York-based theatrical booking conglomerate known as the Theatrical Syndicate headed by Charles Frohman and Abe Erlanger.
The powerful Syndicate had a near monopoly on touring productions in the United States and Canada at the time, plus a financial interest in Toronto’s Princess Theatre, the Royal Alex’s main competitor.
In order to save the newly built Royal Alexandra from financial ruin, its managing director, Lawrence ‘Lol’ Solman, partnered the Royal Alex with the Syndicate’s main rival. The Shubert brothers would bring legitimate plays from New York rather than accepting the Syndicate’s vaudeville acts, since the Royal Alex’s large and deep stage was not a necessity for vaudeville.
After hearing this news, Syndicate boss Erlanger threatened to wipe the Royal Alexandra off the map and turn the site into a common stable for horses.
Rivalry between the Shuberts and the Syndicate had begun in 1905 when Sam Shubert died at the age of 26 after a passenger train he was on collided with parked freight cars outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
His two remaining brothers, Lee and Jacob, were fueled by Abe Erlanger’s disrespect of their deceased brother by refusing to abide by legal agreements “with a dead man.” The Shuberts were driven to destroy the Syndicate grip on the North American market and ultimately build the largest theatre empire in the 20th century.
For a short time, the Syndicate and the Shubert Brothers buried the hatchet and formed a mega agency, spurring the Royal Alex to partner with another celebrated Broadway impresario, David Belasco.
Almost a decade of competition between the Princess and Royal Alex theatres ended on the night of May 7, 1915, when fire gutted the Princess Theatre, leaving the Royal Alex as the only first-class, legitimate theatre in Toronto.
Was it Karma, fate or coincidence that on the same evening of the fire, the British ocean liner Lusitania sank in the Irish Sea? It was struck by a German torpedo, killing 1,198 people – including Syndicate partner Charles Frohman.
The Royal Alexandra’s owner and founder, Cawthra Mulock, died three years later of the devastating so-called Spanish influenza epidemic while on a business trip to New York.
The Princess Theatre was rebuilt after the 1915 fire but never regained its prominence. The final blow came when this once great theatre lay in the path of the newly expanded University Avenue and was ultimately torn down in 1930.
In another theatrical twist, the Syndicate’s Abe Erlanger, Broadway impresario David Belasco and Royal Alex manager Lawrence Solman all died of natural causes within a few months of one another after the Princess Theatre’s demise.
Some six decades later, in 1993, ‘Honest’ Ed Mirvish and his son David, who already owned the Royal Alexandra, opened the Princess of Wales Theatre on King Street West. The new theatre was named, in part, for the Royal Alex’s former great rival.
The Princess was one of many Toronto theatres demolished to make way for progress and parked cars. At University Avenue and King Street you can still walk across the very spot where this great theatre once stood.
