{"id":18351,"date":"2017-07-04T07:24:29","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T13:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=18351"},"modified":"2017-07-04T07:24:45","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T13:24:45","slug":"harmons-histories-parisian-belle-charmed-early-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/07\/harmons-histories-parisian-belle-charmed-early-montana\/","title":{"rendered":"Harmon’s Histories: Parisian belle charmed early Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gaby\"<\/a>

Gaby Deslys, circa 1910.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s pretty exciting when big-name stars make appearances in Montana: Elton John, Paul Simon, Garth Brooks and the like. But it\u2019s not as unusual as today\u2019s press might make it appear.<\/p>\n

While we may seem \u201cout of the way\u201d to folks back East, Montana has a long history of drawing the latest fads, entertainment, attractions and big-name talent.<\/p>\n

Back in 1864, the entertainment rage was the poly-o-rama panoptique, a viewing device allowing you to see before and after photos or\u2014my heart be still\u2014a building with a door closed morphing to the same building with the door open! A manipulation of lighting within the box resulted in the magical effect.<\/p>\n

W.J. Kent brought the device to the Theater Hall in Virginia City in the fall of that year to display a \u201cchoice selection of Western and comic pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

In Helena in 1882, Miss Birdie Damon\u2019s songs and character sketches \u201ctook (the) citizens by storm.\u201d The Weekly Herald called the performance \u201cmore than usually meritorious,\u201d noting long, continuous applause. The newspaper and many prominent citizens petitioned Birdie to stay for additional shows, but she had a tight schedule and had to move on.<\/p>\n

That same year, Billings had its first theatrical entertainment when visited by the Boston comic opera company.<\/p>\n

By the late 1890s into the 20th\u00a0century, acts from coast to coast were stopping in Montana. San Francisco baritone Frank Thompson and pianist Maurice Berger spent a night at Missoula\u2019s Florence Hotel in 1894, giving selected guests a private performance, on their way to Spokane.<\/p>\n

Hi Henry\u2019s minstrels entertained at the Billings Opera House in 1899.<\/p>\n

In 1914, Missoula\u2019s Bijou Theater featured \u201cThe Wreck<\/a>,\u201d a new film that was to become a classic. It was billed as \u201ca real head-on collision of two railroad locomotives drawing a train of cars at the rate of forty miles an hour.\u201d Check it out by clicking the link, above. The minute you see it, you\u2019ll recognize it.<\/p>\n

Over at Missoula\u2019s Empress Theater, about the same time, a famous British actor and playwright, Sir Edward Hicks, starred as Scrooge in a performance of Dickens\u2019 \u201cA Christmas Carol.\u201d<\/p>\n

But my favorite stories of early 20th century entertainment in Montana involved a petite Parisian named Marie-Elise-Gabrielle Caire, whose stage name was\u00a0Gaby Deslys<\/a>\u00a0(Day-leez).<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>She was the heart throb of the early 1900s, the Beyonce, the Jennifer Lopez of her day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe little French dancer\u201d was rich, famous and gorgeous. She was \u201ccredited with upsetting the throne of Portugal,\u201d a reference to one of her many beaus, King Manuel II. The Parisian beauty had tossed aside his royal-ness and confided to an East Coast columnist that she planned to marry her dance partner, Harry Pilcer, and \u201cretire to a small estate in France where she declares she will be content the rest of her life to raise chickens.\u201d That never happened.<\/p>\n

The singer-dancer commanded upward of $5,000 a\u00a0week for her performances and traveled in a private Pullman train car, accompanied by security guards, $800,000 worth of jewelry (including a string of pearls from ‘ol King Manuel II, himself) and a pet chicken!<\/p>\n

We\u2019re informed by a Missoulian newspaper reporter that the pet hen was no run-of-the-mill chicken. She was \u201ca prize Victorian hen named Henriette (who \u2026 which) provides fresh eggs for the famous Parisian\u2019s breakfast and always occupied a stateroom in her private Pullman.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of fine hotels, however, barred the prize fowl \u201cwhich usually peeved Gaby.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henriette, the fine Victorian hen, was accompanied by her personal beau, a rooster, \u201cwhich in California, was dubbed Hiram, in honor of the governor of that state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, Gaby\u2019s agent arrived in Missoula a couple of weeks ahead of the artist to scope out the landscape. C. P. Greneker told Montana reporters the Parisian star has mastered our country\u2019s language and the entire show would be done in English.<\/p>\n

He confirmed there would be only one show the night of January 16, 1914, explaining that Miss Deslys, heading east from San Francisco, had a whole continent to cover.\u00a0The young star brought an immense wardrobe, including gowns enough to make a dozen changes during her show. And she brought hats\u2014her signature hats.<\/p>\n

A few \u201cparadise feathers,\u201d the fashion of the day, weren\u2019t enough. Deslys wore what fashion writer Julia Bottomley called \u201can airy cloud of floating, graceful, incomparably fine plumage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottomley cautioned readers, however, that \u201cthe stage requires exaggeration in styles and its standards are to be followed at some distance, as a rule.\u201d Newspaper cartoonists depicted Deslys gussied up with trees or an entire house on her head.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the only local review of Deslys\u2019 Missoula performance came from Arthur L. Stone, a renowned newspaperman and (soon-to-be) founder of the university\u2019s School of Journalism, who admitted he hadn\u2019t even attended the show.<\/p>\n

Borrowing from Portland and Spokane newspaper reviews and comments from local theater-goers, Stone estimated that \u201c90 percent of the big audience of the Missoula theater Friday night was disappointed in the show\u201d because it wasn\u2019t \u201cspicy\u201d enough.<\/p>\n

Stone asserted that Missoulians were hoodwinked into attending by Deslys\u2019 press agent\u2014\u201cone of the most artistic liars in the world\u201d\u2014who played up her sex appeal and the boyfriend-ex-Portuguese-King-affair to lure folks to attend. The public, he wrote, \u201cfell for his stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

The columnist complained that theaters are \u201cfilled when there is rough-house stuff and empty when something worthwhile appears.\u201d He highly recommended Missoulians attend the upcoming performance of \u201cRobin Hood,\u201d which he called \u201ca real opera with real singers\u2014high class, every bit of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only uplift\u201d in Deslys\u2019 show, he wrote, \u201cis of heels, the only art\u2019s in clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the biggest name of the day, the hottest act of the time had come to out-of-the-way Montana.<\/p>\n

Deslys went on to dabble with silent films for a time between 1915 and 1919, but continued to travel the country with her song-and-dance shows. She played three days at the Palace Theater in Great Falls in 1919. By then, she was being billed as \u201cthe sensation of Paris\u201d and \u201cthe dethroner of kings.\u201d Her costumes were upgraded to a \u201cmillion dollar wardrobe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, in 1919, Gaby contracted the Spanish flu, resulting in a throat infection. Despite numerous operations, she died in 1920 in Paris.<\/p>\n

She was just 38.<\/p>\n

Jim Harmon is a longtime Missoula broadcaster who writes a weekly history column for Missoula Current<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s pretty exciting when big-name stars make appearances in Montana: Elton John, Paul Simon, Garth Brooks and the like. But it\u2019s not as unusual as today\u2019s press might make it appear. While we may seem \u201cout of the way\u201d to folks back East, Montana has a long history of drawing the latest fads, entertainment, attractions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":18352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18,16],"tags":[6016,6015,2468],"class_list":["post-18351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-diversions","category-montana","tag-billings-opera-house","tag-gaby-deslys","tag-virginia-city","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18354,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18351\/revisions\/18354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}