During the summer of 1910, there were 215,000 inhabitants of Denver….
The Elitch Gardens management arranged for special Elitch automobiles to transport theater patrons from downtown Denver to the Theatre and for their return following the performance. Reservations for seats in the Elitch autos could be made at the Denver Omnibus and Cab Company’s office. The round trip ticket cost was 50 cents. The ad read:
Special Elitch Automobiles will leave the Oxford hotel at 7:30 p.m. and the Albany hotel at 7:35 p.m. each day, reaching the Gardens after a most delightful ride in ample time for the Theatre, returning direct to the hotels within ten minutes after the last curtain.
The highlight of the season at Elitch was the appearance of William Collier as a guest star featured in the last four plays of the season, the plays being William Collier and Grant Stewart’s Caught in the Rain, J. Hartley Manners and William Collier’s The Patriot, H. A. Dusouchet’s The Man From Mexico and Richard Harding Davis’ The Dictator. Other plays included Booth Tarkington and Margaret Turnbull’s Cameo Kirby, George Middleton’s The House of a Thousand Candles and Eugene W. Presbrey’s The Barrier.
Caught in the Rain is a farce, whose principal character is Dick Crawford, a Colorado mining man, but somewhat of a grumpy woman-hater.
Caught in a downpour, (Crawford) finds himself shoulder to shoulder with a beautiful girl who quickly captures his affections, but she disappears before he can learn her name. About the same time he recklessly promises a friend, Mr. Mason, to marry his daughter to help him out of a financial problem. No sooner has he made his promise than he recalls the unknown girl and tries to back out. Even when he discovers that Mr. Mason’s daughter, Muriel, and the mysterious beauty are one and the same, his problems are not solved, for Muriel is upset by his fickleness. Of course, all ends happily.
The final play of the season was The Dictator, a farce by Richard Harding Davis. The story of the play is propelled from a mistaken belief by Brooks Travers, a rich New Yorker, that he has fatally struck a cab driver in a fight over a fare. To avoid possible jail, Travers takes the first boat to Porto Banyos in South America, where revolutions are weekly events. After participating in and surviving several revolutions, Travers learns that the cab driver was not seriously hurt, and decides to take the next ship back, “preferring obnoxious taxi men to Latin instability.” Brooks Travers was played on Broadway by William Collier, who recreated the role at Elitch.
[Borrillo, T. A. (2012). Denver’s historic Elitch Theatre: A nostalgic journey (a history of its times). Colorado. p. 93-94]
Theatre Staff:
- Mrs. Mary Elitch Long, President
- Ira Hards, Stage Director
- Harrison Ford, Stage Manager
Resident Company:
- Willette Kershaw
- Ina Hammer
- Beatrice Prentice
- Zelda Sears
- Florence Bradford
- Mrs. Charles Waldron
- Frederick Burton
- William A. Norton
- Harrison Ford
- John Daly Murphy
- Joseph Kauffman
- Oscar Grey Briggs
- Thomas Findlay
Productions:
- Week of June 5: The Marriage of Kitty, by Cosmo Gordon Lennox.
- Week of June 12: The Next of Kin, by Charles Klein.
- Week of June 19: Classmates, by William C. DeMille and Margaret Turnbull.
- Week of June 26: Cameo Kirby, by Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson .
- Week of July 3: The Commanding Officer, by Theodore Burt Sayre.
- Week of July 10: The Barrier, by Eugene W. Presbrey.
- Week of July 17: The House of a Thousand Candles, by George Middleton.
- Week of July 24: Brewster’s Millions, by Winchell Smith and Byron Ongley.
- Week of July 31: The Lion and the Mouse, by Charles Klein.
- Week of Aug. 7: Caught in the Rain, by William Collier and Grant Stewart, featuring William Collier.
- Week of Aug. 14: The Patriot, by William Collier and J. Hartley Manners, featuring William Collier, Jr., appeared as Kid Sugar.
- Week of Aug. 21: The Man from Mexico, by H. A. Dusouchet, featuring William Collier.
- Week of Aug. 28: The Dictator, by Richard Harding Davis, featuring William Collier and Ira Hands.
