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Kristine Feria
Theatre
Theatre
Ottawa Drama League
Ottawa Drama League
The Ottawa Little Theatre, originally known as the Ottawa Drama League (ODL), is one of the foremost Canadian amateur drama organizations. It was originally established by the Canadian Federation of University Women in 1913 and is an example of women's contributions to Ottawa society as a whole despite being largely excluded from political and economic power.
Coming out of the Great Depression, the ODL survived largely thanks to support from members of Ottawa's high society. During the years following the Depression, supporters included Vere Ponsonby, 9th Earl of Bessborough, Colonel Henry Osborne, the Secretary-General of the Canadian Agency of the Imperial War Graves Commission; Duncan Campbell Scott, famed poet and an architect of the residential school system; and Harry Stevenson Southam, owner of the Ottawa Citizen.
The Little Theatre has stood at 400 King Edward since the 1920s and remains a significant part of Ottawa's arts and culture scene.
Ottawa Little Theatre at 400 King Edward Ave, late 1920s vs today. Ottawa Little Theatre. WikiMedia.
"The building, converted from an early Protestant church, was a very handsome one. The auditorium seated 498, which (as it was less than 500) allowed it not to pay taxes as a theatre. It was blue and gold, with a very handsome gold proscenium arch and a lovely front curtain which was blue with vertical purple folds and a gold reverse."
- J.M.C. Meiklejohn, member of the Little Theatre in the 1930s
Street Scene, 1937. Photo by Yousuf Karsh. Ottawa Little Theatre.
First Lady, 1937. Photo by Yousuf Karsh. Ottawa Little Theatre.
Yousuf Karsh
Yousuf Karsh
Yousuf Karsh worked for the Ottawa Drama League in the 1930s as a production photographer. Karsh was born in Armenia in 1908 and fled the Armenian Genocide with his family in 1922. They settled in Syria where he learned photography from his Uncle Nakash. In 1926, Karsh's uncle arranged an apprenticeship for him under John H. Garo, an Armenian photographer living in Boston. Karsh chose to move to Ottawa in 1931, hoping to photograph the rich and powerful that lived in and visited the city. He recalled:
"My first glimpse of the New World on a steely cold, sunny winter day was the Halifax wharf, covered with snow. I could not yet begin to imagine the infinite promise of this new land. For the moment, it was enough to find myself safe, the massacres, torture, and heartbreak of Armenia behind me."
Karsh opened his photography studio on the second floor of the Hardy Arcade at 130 Sparks Street in 1932. He went on to produce some of the most famous portraits of the twentieth century.
Yousuf Karsh, self portrait. Yousuf Karsh Official Website.
Winston Churchill, 1941. Yousuf Karsh Official Website.
Karsh took this photograph of Churchill in 1941, which became one of the most reproduced photographs in history. It was taken in the Speaker's Chamber in Ottawa after his famous "Some Chicken, Some Neck" speech to Parliament. Churchill was angry to discover that his portrait would be taken that day as he was not informed beforehand. Karsh recounted the story:
"Churchill’s cigar was ever present. I held out an ashtray, but he would not dispose of it. I went back to my camera and made sure that everything was all right technically. I waited; he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, ‘Forgive me, sir,’ and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph.”
“No matter where I travelled on my photographic journeys, it was the city of Ottawa to which I returned.”
-Yousuf Karsh in 2000
Dominion Drama Festival
Dominion Drama Festival
The Dominion Drama Festival (DDF) was a national drama festival and competition held annually from 1933 to 1978. The first 5 years were held in Ottawa at the Little Theatre. The DDF was created under the leadership of the Earl of Bessborough with the goal of coordinating the amateur theatres across Canada. The DDF encouraged the development of Canadian theatre and acted as a national forum for Canadian playwrights and actors. It was also a medium for promoting Canadian unity through bilingualism. In 1938, the Festival pushed back against demands for separate drama festivals despite "tense relations" between Anglophone and Francophone participants.
Adjudicators were bilingual and most were from Britain or France. The character of the DDF was markedly European and conservative in character. Balls and dinner parties with formal attire were part of the festival program, and "politically or socially disruptive" plays were not embraced.
Founding organizers of the Dominion Drama Festival, including Sir Robert Borden, Vincent Massey, Earl of Bessborough, and Colonel Henry Osborne. Photo by Yousuf Karsh, 1934. Library and Archives Canada.
Although the Dominion Drama Festival was an amateur competition, it highlighted several Canadian actors and playwrights who would later turn professional...
Lorne Greene
Lorne Greene was born in Ottawa in 1915. Greene co-directed and performed in "The Secret" for the 1937 Dominion Drama Festival. From 1939 to 1942, Greene was the CBC newsreader and his voice became familiar across the nation, which earned him the nickname "The Voice of Canada." He was later nicknamed the "The Voice of Doom" in the early years of the Second World War when he was responsible for reading out the lists of soldiers killed. After serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), he later moved to New York where he starred in Broadway plays throughout the 1950s. In 1959, he was cast as Ben Cartwright in the iconic western television show Bonanza. For his role on Bonanza, Greene was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best TV Star in 1964.
Amelia Hall
Amelia Hall participated in the 1947 DDF. Born in England, she immigrated to Canada through the Overseas Settlement Committee in 1921. She graduated from McMaster University in 1938 with an honours degree in English. She performed at the first Stratford Festival, the internationally-acclaimed Shakespeare festival, in 1953 as Lady Anne in Richard III opposite Alec Guinness. She was the artistic director of the Canadian Repertory Theatre from 1950-59. Several notable actors started their careers at the Canadian Repertory Theatre under Hall, including Christopher Plummer, William Hutt, and William Shatner. She was awarded the Canadian Centennial Medal in 1967 and joined the Order of Canada in 1982.
Amelia Hall, undated. The Hamilton Spectator.
John Colicos in Star Trek, ca. 1960s. Pinterest.
John Colicos
John Colicos was born in Toronto in 1928. Colicos was awarded Best Actor at the 1951 Dominion Drama Festival. He went on to perform in England and the US, most notably as Edmund in Orson Welles' Broadway production of King Lear in 1956 and returned to Canada several times to perform at the Stratford Festival. He was notable for his work in science fiction, and his most notable role was the villain Commander Kor in the original Stark Trek series (1966-69). He played another science fiction villain, Count Baltar, in Battlestar Galactica (1978).
Jewish Theatre Guild
Jewish Theatre Guild
David Slover, artistic director. Canadian Jewish Heritage Network.
Isadore Lewis Cohen, president. Ottawa Jewish Archives.
In this scrapbook, the Jewish Theatre Guild is the only substantial representation of a racial minority. The Jewish population in Ottawa started to grow in the late-nineteenth century. Many of the first Jews in Ottawa immigrated from the Russian Empire, seeking refuge from pogroms and legal and economic discrimination. Most worked as peddlers and they were attracted to Ottawa because a peddler's license was far cheaper there than other cities. They settled in Lowertown, turning it into a centre of Jewish social and cultural life. Successful peddlers often turned into shopkeepers and throughout the early-twentieth century, the majority of merchants in the Byward Market were Jewish.
Like the Ottawa Little Theatre, the Jewish Theatre Guild was supported by wealthy donors. The Jewish Theatre Guild was established in 1936 with David Slover as artistic director and the businessman Isadore Lewis Cohen as president. Cohen was born to Russian Jewish immigrants and he became a successful businessman as the proprietor of Cohen's Pharmacy on Rideau Street.
Review of Awake and Sing, a family drama set in the Bronx during the Depression:
"The production by the still youthful Guild was impressive to a degree. In a sense it marks an event in theatrical circles, for it is some time since an entirely Jewish play, with a Jewish cast, has been seen in Ottawa in a large scale presentation...This does not mean, however, that because the play is Jewish in character it is in any way narrowed in appeal. The problems of the family seen in "Awake and Sing" are true of any family anywhere in similar confined economic circumstances."
March 22, 1937. HSO No. 55. Scrapbook : [1937], City of Ottawa Archives, MG110-SBHS 01/10, p. 139
The Ottawa Evening Citizen, Dec 7, 1937.
The Kibitzer is a comedy written by Jo Swerling and Edward G. Robinson that opened on Broadway in 1929. The title comes from the Yiddish word "kibitzer," meaning a spectator who provides unwanted advice, and the story surrounds a cigar store dealer who offers such advice to his customers. The dealer unknowingly saves the life of a millionaire and is entrusted with 10,000 shares of stock.
Room Service is also a comedy where the main character comes across an unexpected fortune. The play surrounds a struggling producer and his actors living in a hotel. The producer attempts to write a script and crosses paths with an angel carrying $15,000.
Room Service directed by David Slover, Ottawa Little Theatre, 1938. Facebook.
Dance
Dance
Gwendolyn Osborne
Gwendolyn Osborne
HSO No. 55. Scrapbook : [1937], City of Ottawa Archives, MG110-SBHS 01/10, p.142
Gwendolyn Osborne was one of the central figures of the Ottawa dance scene. She was born in Ottawa to an attorney and trained at the Vestoff-Serova Russian School of Dancing in New York City. She brought her dance training back to Ottawa and started working as a dancer and choreographer at the Ottawa Drama League (ODL) in 1917. She choreographed several productions for the ODL from the 1920s to 40s, including As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, and Peer Gynt. Osborne balanced her day job as a secretary to a judge with her passion for the arts. She operated a ballet school at 145 Sparks Street, which produced several successful dancers, including Betty Low, Nesta Williams, and Patricia Wilde.
"Osborne certainly stood out as a maverick in the generally more staid atmosphere of Ottawa, a city without a visible bohemian culture."
-historian Joel Loebenthal in Wilde Times: Patricia Wilde, George Balanchine, and the Rise of New York City Ballet
Nesta Toumine
Nesta Toumine (née Williams) was born in England in 1912 and grew up in Sandy Hill. She was trained by Gwendolyn Osborne and appeared in the ODL's 1932 production of As You Like It. Toumine left Ottawa to continue her dance training in England and began dancing professionally under the name Nesta Maslova with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, one of the most renowned ballet companies of the early-twentieth century. During this period, Western audiences tended to associate ballet with the glamour and prestige of the Russian Empire, and it was common for dancers to adopt Russian stage names to promote themselves as inheritors of the imperial tradition. The Ballet Russes is known for introducing North American audiences to Russian ballet, and many of its members were responsible for the professionalization of ballet in the West. Toumine returned to Ottawa in 1946 after performing around the world with the Ballet Russes. Toumine opened the Classical Ballet Studio at 111 Rideau St. In 1949, she founded the Classical Ballet Company, which performed across Canada and the US.
Nesta Toumine, 1938. Dance Collection Danse.
Ludmilla Lvova
Ludmilla Lvova/Betty Low in Symphonie Fantastique, 1939. State Library of Victoria.
RPReplay_Final1732927656.movShort clip of Low dancing on the beach from the film Playing with the Ballet Russes. This film contains rare footage of the Ballet Russes during the company's Australian tours in the late-1930s, which was discovered in someone's basement in the 1980s.
Nov 20, 1937, HSO No. 55. Scrapbook : [1937], City of Ottawa Archives, MG110-SBHS 01/10, p.149.
"Amongst the names listed on the roster of the Ballet Russe, which has played to crowded houses in Toronto this week, is Ludmilla Lvova. Despite her Slavic name this dancer is a Canadian, none other than Betty Low...Miss Low has made ballet history by staging a comeback after her foot was crushed and broken backstage earlier in the season."
Ludmilla Lvova was the stage name of Betty Low, who was born in Ottawa in 1916. She trained under Osborne in Ottawa and later joined the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, which brought her to stages around the world. In 1937, the Ballet Russes visited Toronto where she was interviewed by the newspaper. She also became an actress and appeared on stage and screen. After her dancing career, she started teaching ballet in the US until the end of her life. Overall, her ballet career spanned 70 years.
Patricia Wilde was an international ballet star in the 1950s. She was one of the original members of the famed New York City Ballet (NYCB) and a muse of the choreographer George Balanchine. He choreographed several roles for her in ballets such as Swan Lake, Western Symphony, and La Valse.
Wilde was born and raised in an estate in the outskirts of Ottawa. She trained under Osborne throughout her childhood. As a teenager, Osborne arranged an audition for her at the School of American Ballet (SAB) in New York. Wilde left Ottawa to train there and after a few years, she made her professional debut with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. Balanchine was the principal choreographer of the Ballet Russes and he invited her to join his newly-established company, the NYCB, in 1950.
Patricia Wilde, 1958. Pittsburgh Ballet Theater.
Film
Film
Errol Taggart
Errol Taggart
HSO No. 55. Scrapbook : [1937], p.145
City of Ottawa Archives MG110-SBHS 01/10.
Ottawa's Errol Taggart was one of the many artists who left Canada for the US in pursuit of the silver screen. At the time, there were far fewer opportunities for Canadian filmmakers. Taggart had already left Ottawa by the time the National Film Society of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), and the National Film Board were established. From the 1920s to 30s, Taggart directed and edited several Hollywood films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
Errol Taggart, Hollywood director. Who's Who at MGM?.
The 1937 "Who’s Who at MGM" claims that Taggart was an adventurer before entering the film industry:
"Even before he ran away from home at fourteen Errol Taggart was an earnest advocate of preparedness. Living in Ottawa, Canada, he studied the railroad branch lines that extended into territory where cowboys and their kind existed in the flesh. Accordingly, he left the train at Kamloops, British Columbia. There, for the next few years, he ran pack trains back into the mountains. He learned to cook from the chuck wagon and what is more, to eat what he cooked and like it. He also acquired the trick of loading more truck on a wagon train than anyone thought it could take."
However, the newspaper article tells a different story:
"Errol, who is 41 years of age, received his scholastic education in Ottawa public schools and the Lisgar Collegiate...After graduating from the collegiate he took a post with the Munitions Board, and 18 years ago was transferred to Vancouver to become an inspector at the dockyards."
The article also notes that he was raised in an artistic family. Errol was the son of William Stuart Taggart, a notable artist who painted Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier in 1906.
Clip from Sinner Take All (1936).
Victoria the Great Premiere
Victoria the Great Premiere
R.M. Martin.. October, 1937. HSO No. 55. Scrapbook : [1937],, p.141
City of Ottawa Archives, MG110-SBHS 01/10
Victoria the Great had its North American premiere at the Regent Theatre in Ottawa in 1937, one hundred years after her succession to the throne. The premiere is an example of the intersections between culture, politics, and diplomacy. The fanfare surrounding the movie also highlights the Canadian romance with the monarchy, a theme that runs throughout the scrapbook. The film follows Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1897 and her romance with Albert. Several high-profile political figures, including Prime Minister Mackenzie King; the Governor General; Lady Tweedsmuir, Brigadier General Charles F. Winter, president of the Red Cross; the British High Commissioner; and Norman Armour, US ambassador to Canada. The stars and director of the film were also present. The film was sponsored by the Women's Canadian Club of Ottawa and proceeds went to the Canadian Red Cross. The article highlights that the film is an "authentic" representation of Queen Victoria and her private life, "its every line being a real saying from record in so far as was humanly possible of the subject and her court."
Victoria the Great, movie poster, 1937. IMDB.
Regent Theater exterior, ca. early 20th century. Cinema Treasures.
Clip of Queen Victoria and Albert's wedding in Victoria the Great .
References
References
Benson, Eugene and L. W. Conolly, eds. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre. Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1989.
Hall, Amelia Wells, and Diane Mew. Life before Stratford : The Memoirs of Amelia Hall. Toronto, Ontario ; Dundurn Press, 1989.
"Hardy Arcade." Directory of Federal Heritage Designations. Accessed December 1, 2024. https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_fhbro_eng.aspx?id=2818.
Cowan, Alison Leigh. ArtsBeat: New York Times Blog, December 7, 2011. "‘Kibitzer,’ a Forgotten Play Reworked by Edward G. Robinson, Gets a Reading." https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/kibitzer-a-forgotten-play-doctored-by-edward-g-robinson-gets-a-reading/.
Canadian Jewish Heritage Network. "Isadore Lewis Cohen fonds." Accessed December 1, 2024. https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn111996.
Community Stories. "The Jewish Community of Lowertown, Ottawa." Accessed December 1, 2024. https://www.communitystories.ca/v1/pm_v2.php?id=exhibit_home&fl=0&lg=English&ex=00000787.
Crawford, Blair. "The Capital Builders: How 'Karsh of Ottawa' captured the world's most famous people in photos." The Ottawa Citizen, May 14, 2017. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-capital-builders-how-karsh-of-ottawa-captured-the-worlds-most-famous-people-in-photos.
Lo, Laurelle and Nicole St-Onge. “The Path From Peddling: Jewish Economic Activity in Ottawa Prior to 1939.” In Ottawa: Making a Capital, 246-257. Edited Jeff Keshen and Nicole St-Onge. University of Ottawa Press, 2001.
Lobenthal, Joel. Wilde Times: Patricia Wilde, George Balanchine, and the Rise of New York City Ballet. University Press of New England, 2016.
Meiklejohn, J.M.C. "Theatre in Ottawa in the 1930s: A Memoir." Theatre Research in Canada Recherches théâtrales Au Canada 10, no. 2 (1989). https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/TRIC/article/view/7312.
National Churchill Museum. "Some Chicken, Some Neck, 1941" Accessed December 1, 2024.https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/some-chicken-some-neck.html.
Ottawa Little Theatre. "Dominion Drama Festival, 1937." Accessed December 1, 2024. https://www.ottawalittletheatre.com/ProductionHistory/PlayProduction.php?productionid=1270.
Ottawa Little Theatre. "History." Accessed December 1, 2024. https://www.ottawalittletheatre.com/history/.
Rowe, Andrea. "Madame Toumine; Dance Goes on as Ballet Teacher Reaches 78." The Ottawa Citizen, Oct 29, 1990. https://login.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/madame-toumine-dance-goes-on-as-ballet-teacher/docview/239487782/se-2.
Smith, Cheryl A. "'Stepping out': Canada's Early Ballet Companies 1939-1963." PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2000. https://hdl.handle.net/1807/119624.
Tam, Pauline. "OBITUARY - NESTA TOUMINE: Trained in Europe, Ottawan Pioneered Ballet Education." The Ottawa Citizen, February 3, 1996. https://login.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/obituary-nesta-toumine-trained-europe-ottawan/docview/240003884/se-2.
Yousuf Karsh Official Website. "A Brief Biography." Accessed December 1, 2024. https://karsh.org/a-brief-biography/.
Yousuf Karsh Official Website. "Betty Low, 1916-2016." Accessed December 1, 2024. https://karsh.org/betty-low-1916-2016/.
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