A Look at the Lamb's Laurie Collection

By travsd on July 22, 2024

Lambs Shepherd Kevin Fitzpatrick Shows Off Treasures from the Joe Laurie Jr Collection

A few days ago I took advantage of my membership in The Lambs to start diving into their remarkable archives, starting with the papers of the Homer of Vaudeville, Joe Laurie Jr, whom I first wrote about here. Lambs Shepherd Kevin Fitzpatrick had been touting it to me for months, years, maybe, and such assets were among the many lures for me to join. Laurie was not only vaudeville's great chronicler, but he was deeply involved in the Lambs, America's oldest theatrical club. The Lambs turns 150 years old this year, and this year also marks the 70th anniversary of Laurie's death. A good year to shine a spotlight on the treasures in the collection.

The first thing that became readily apparent was that Laurie knew everybody. While he had been a minor to middling vaudevillian, as a Variety columnist and a chronicler of show biz history he was an important guy, and you can tell from all the correspondence that he was not just well-known but well-liked by the most important people in the industry. They share lots of insider intel and shared memories, and to my surprise, lots of risque jokes of the sort that weren't permitted to tell on the stage, screen or radio of their time. When I say the top people, I mean it. I gasped, and my pulse started racing as I went through this material. Much of it was back-up for the column and the books, but plenty was also related to shows Laurie was producing, including benefits for the military during WW2 and similar causes.

The people Laurie was in conversation with (in no particular order) included Eddie Cantor, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, W.C. Handy, Jack Benny, Harry Cohn, Gene Fowler (and later his widow), Smith and Dale (both of them), Ole Oleson of Olsen and Johnson, Fred Waring, George Jessel, Walter Winchell, Goodman Ace, Henry Morgan, Billy K. Wells, Richard Carle, Alan Corelli, Eddie Darling, Max Gordon, William Gaxton, Jack Norworth, Fred "Stoopnagle" Taylor of Stoopnagle and Budd, Sidney Olcott, Pietro Frosini, Chick York of York and King, on and on. In some cases, as with Eva Duncan of the Duncan Sisters, there is a pathetic "remember me?" tone to it.

Overall though, there is instead that breezy, projected confidence that has characterized show folk from the beginning and is still the meat and drink of public people in the age of social media. Along with that comes lots of TERRIFIC, priceless promotional ephemera, such as business cards (often jokey ones), and postcards. A couple of cool finds in that line. One is for Laurie's own book and contains an idea worth stealing:

Get it? It's designed for his FRIENDS to send and plug his book. This is how "influencers" did it back in the days of snail mail. What I love about is that he has very intelligently made it so simple for folks to do. They just have to scribble a signature and pop it in the mail to their own lists.

Also loved that Jack Benny sent a message to Laurie using one of Eddie "Rochester" Anderson's promotional postcards:

Another wonderful (and bygone) element of the collection is telegrams. Often the messages they contain were surprisingly trivial given how expensive they were to send. The impulse to do so had to do with that same projected confidence I just mentioned. Sometimes quite obscure people will send a telegram just to make him aware of some opening or some such event, just to create the impression that they we were doing so well a telegram was nothing. At the other end of the spectrum, we are reminded that telegrams were famously associated with BAD news back in the day. It is in that poignant context that we came across a telegram to Laurie containing the funeral information for George M. Cohan.

There are lots of photographs in the collection as well, ranging from 8" x 10" publicity stills, to pictures that captured significant events, to informal, amateur snapshots. I came across photos of Harry and Eva Puck, young Hugh Herbert, Jimmy Conlin. One very special file is devoted to burlesque dancers and other stage cuties, including Lillian Russell, Fanny Rice, Georgia Sothern, Hildegarde, Yolanda (of Veloz and Yolanda), Belle Archer, et al. Most of these are autographed, and humorously, many of them have an added remark along the lines of "I'll never forget that night we spent together". There is also extensive photo coverage of events like a star-studded book launch for Laurie's Show Biz, which took place at the Palace and featured guests like George Raft and Ethel Waters.

Other vaudeville ephemera in the collection includes theatrical programs, newspaper clippings, contracts, copies of actual sketches and short stories presumably intended for adaptation, business correspondence of a more serious nature dealing with things like obtaining rights to intellectual properties, artist contracts, copies of show biz related periodicals, a bar bill from the White Rats club house, and much more.

And naturally I came across the names of scores of minor acts I'd never heard of, and plan to learn much more about. Hardeen Jr was one. (He's not actually Hardeen's son, but was a sort of successor to the Houdini brothers). Naturally I was intrigued by a photo of "Jeanette and Her Elephant Roxie", who I am quite certain was Jennie Lush O'Brien, mother of George Power of Power's Elephants. There is also some correspondence with a Charles Dockstader -- a relative of Lew Dockstader's? A natural question. An occasional source of frustration is incomplete identification. One interesting letter was signed simply "Doug". Fairbanks? Fairbanks Jr? MacLean? Finding out could be fun...for somebody.

We wrapped up the excursion by breaking out the Holy of Holys from the Lambs' display case: Joe Laurie Jr's actual cocktail set. Kevin gave it a thorough cleaning and whipped up some martinis, using (appropriately) Dorothy Parker Gin. In addition to these pix, keep an eye out for the video we made of the moment at which we toasted the pint-sized great man. Pint-sized? Why, that makes him about as big as out bottle of gin!