Sylvester Babe Moore San Jose Center Performing Arts Stagehand

Almost cities of whatsoever size that take at least some semblance of sensitivity for historic preservation still take an Orpheum Theater. My hometown of Omaha, Neb. is one such city, although the Orpheum here came perilously close to beingness razed at ane point. Omaha's track record for celebrated preservation is rather spotty, although it's gotten somewhat amend over time. I wrote the following article shortly after the local Orpheum was renovated for the second or third fourth dimension and had come up under new management.  I will shortly mail a second slice I did around this aforementioned time, for another publication, that takes a different angle at the Orpheum and its opulent place among the city'southward entertainment venues.  For the beginning half of my life I only knew the Orpheum by communicable occasional glimpses of its exterior during downtown shopping excursions with my mom or dad. Mainly though I heard almost it through reminiscences past my mother and aunts, who frequented the theater as girls and young women, when it was still a moving-picture show palace.  They made it sound so k and special that I was ever enthralled by their descriptions. I was actually well into my 20s before I first stepped human foot inside.  Right out of higher my starting time job, albeit it a part-time gig, was as a gofer for a now defunct arts presentation group, whose programs were held at the Orpheum.  I was supposed to be doing PR work simply all I ever seemed to do, much to my frustration, was to fetch java for the haute woman in charge, or selection upwardly affiche orders or send visiting artists, et cetera.  Just there were perks, peculiarly getting to come across a string of world class performances, including Marcel Marceau, Twyla Tharpe, and the Guthrie Theatre.  I've gone on to grab dozens of programs in that location — touring Broadway shows, operas, ballets, movies, you name it. I endeavour to convey some of that broad-eyed excitement in my story, which originally appeared in the New Horizons.

Omaha's Yard Old Lady, The Orpheum Theater

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

More stars than there are in the heavens.

That's how the groovy lion of Hollywood motion-picture show studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, described the galaxy of stars under contact to MGM during cinema's Gilt Historic period. Omaha may be far removed from the bright lights of Tinseltown merely for 75 years now 1 enchanted place — the Orpheum Theater — has been a magnet for some of the brightest stars of the big screen, Broadway, the concert circuit and the recording industry.

This yard one-time lady, fresh from a $10 million facelift applied concluding summer, opened in 1927 to a varied plan featuring comedian Phil Silvers, violinist Babe Egan and her Hollywood Redheads and the silent moving-picture show,The Fighting Eagle, starring matinee idol Rod La Rocque. From the start, the opulent Orpheum has seduced us with its eclectic attractions and extravagant motifs. The French Renaissance Revival way theater is a monument to Old World craftsmanship in such decorative flourishes as gilt leaf glazings, marble finishes, velvet coverings, framed mirrors, crystal chandeliers and ornate Venetian brocatelle and damask-adorned chairs. The grand foyer is dominated past a circular French Travertine marble stairway that winds its way to the mezzanine and balcony levels.

The City of Omaha-owned theater, saved from an uncertain futurity in the early 1970s earlier undergoing a major overhaul, is now nether the purview of the Omaha Performing Arts Social club, a non-profit headed by Omaha World-Herald publisher John Gottschalk. The social club, which will also manage the Omaha Performing Arts Middle to be built beyond from the Gene Leahy Mall, has signed a l-year charter with the city for the Orpheum's use and will share, with the city, in whatever operating losses the next 10 years. Money for this most recent renovation came from private donations culled together by Heritage Services, a fundraising organization headed by Walter Scott, Jr. and other corporate heavyweights. These new developments are the latest efforts to reinvent the Orpheum over the past 107 years.

The present theater is actually forged from the facade and foundation of an earlier building on the very same spot. What began as the Creighton Theater in 1895 became the Creighton Orpheum Theater when it joined the famed Orpheum Theater Circuit in 1898. The original Orpheum operated until 1925. Then, when Orpheum officials decided a grander edifice was needed to support a growing Omaha, $ii meg was spent extensively enlarging, altering and gentrifying the site.

Matching the Orpheum'south lavish decor, is a rich lineage of legendary performers who accept appeared there, including many identifiable by only one name. From Crosby to Sinatra, crooners have made fans swoon and sway there. From Ella to Leontyne, divas have held court in that location. From Channing to Goulet, luminaries from the Neat White Mode have made grand entrances at that place. From Lucy and Dezi to Promise and Benny to Cosby and Carlin, comedians have fabricated audiences titter with laughter. Magicians, from Blackstone to Henning to Copperfield, take bedazzled patrons with their wizardry. Classical musicians, from Stern to Pehrlman, accept moved crowds with their sublime playing. Big band leaders, from Kaye and Kayser to Dorsey and James, have got the place jumping.

The Orpheum has been the home to the symphony, opera and ballet, the place where Broadway touring productions play and the eclectic venue-of-choice for everything from school graduations to Berkshire Hathaway stockholder meetings to movie premieres to appearances by top orchestras, renowned repertory theater companies and elite dance troupes.

The costly theater has been adaptable to changing tastes, beginning as a vaudeville business firm, evolving into a picture palace and lately operation every bit a performing arts hall. During the Depression and war years theaters like the Orpheum were neat escapes for people just wanting a break from the existent world or just to observe relief from extreme weather. In the vaudeville era several shows played daily, from noon to midnight.

When movies lit up the marquee, a typical program included a line of girls, a pit band, a newsreel and a showtime-run feature film. The theater's Wurlitzer organ was a staple for sing-a-longs and silent moving-picture show accompaniment. When the big ring craze striking, live music moved from the pit to the stage. If a hot band packed the house, it became the main allure. If a big picture show drew long lines at the box office, it took center stage. Trying a footling something of everything, the Orpheum even ran airtight circuit Idiot box broadcasts of title fights.

In its heyday its flamboyant managing director, Nib Miskell, was known as "a evidence md" and "principal of clack" whose advice could assist a ill human action get well and turn a sow's ear into silk. Nether Miskell, the Orpheum ran grandiose promotions — similar the time the foyer was dressed every bit a railroad station for the 1939 globe premiere of Cecil B. De Mille's epicWedlock Pacific. In 1953, it became the start Midwest theater to project a Cinemascope film — the religious caricatureThe Robe. From the 1950s through the '60s, the theater operated about solely as a movie house.

Ruth Fob, a veteran usher and backstage volunteer, said the theater has a i-of-a-kind appeal. "It's elegant. Information technology commands dressing upward. It makes you feel like putting on a long gown. What could exist more regal?" Patron Mark Brown said, "I'm amazed by the splendor of the g architecture and the acoustics. I don't recollect information technology can be matched today." Al Brownish, a former on-site Orpheum manager, calls it "the crown jewel of the Midwest. It's majestic."

Onetime Omaha Public Events Director Terry Forsberg, goes even further past describing it every bit "the cathedral of the performing arts as far as Omaha is concerned." Indeed, the sheer grandeur of the place sets it apart.

Impresario Dick Walter, presenter of hundreds of shows there over the years, said, "Visually and mentally, y'all have to be moved when you come across the size of the lobby and the theater. Information technology takes your breath away a piddling. It's like going into whatever of those grand palaces in London or Vienna or Berlin. And in that location's an aureola when you walk in the same space that so many scores of smashing performers of the by performed in. Information technology'southward the implicit tradition and the magic of the theater with its history. I don't desire to audio religious, merely information technology'southward semi-sacred."

The Orpheum evokes many memories. Omaha musician Preston Love recalls getting his groove on at that place to the swinging sounds of jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, all idols for the then-aspiring sideman. "All the large names who toured theaters played the Orpheum," he said. "Suffice to say…the Orpheum was top stuff, human. It was unbelievable." He saw Count Basie there in '43, and three weeks later he auditioned for and won a seat in the band and ended up playing the Orpheum with Basie in '45 and '46, equally family unit and friends cheered this favorite son'due south every lick on the saxophone. He noted that a rolling phase utilized then carried featured acts to the lip of the stage. If it was a band, like Basie'south, those jamming cats really cut loose when they fabricated it out front end. "Boy, you started rolling down in front end and that band would simply be on fire," Honey said.

Duke Ellington

Dick Walter has a long human relationship with the theater, first as a child lapping-up the antics of vintage comedy teams like Olsen and Johnson, than equally a young man spellbound by big name entertainers and afterward as a presenter of performing arts programs, including everything fromCamelot to The National Chinese Opera Theater. "When I was going to Omaha University I enjoyed cutting the Fri afternoon course to go downwards and see the offset show of that week'southward vaudeville bear witness," Walter said. Amid the performers he caught then was the wizard The Not bad Blackstone.

Decades afterwards, in a "remarkable" bit of fate, Walter found himself presenting the famed illusionist's son, Harry Blackstone, Jr., a dandy illusionist in his own correct, in operation at the Orpheum. From the 1970s through the '90s, this local showman brought a diverse assortment of acts to the Orpheum, including scores of Broadway road shows. "Although I made a lot of money and I had great pleasure in presenting big-time musicals with big-time stars, I also enjoyed bringing the off-beat out. I had some successes I certainly didn't deserve and I had some failures I certainly didn't deserve. Fortunately, I guessed correct most of the time." Although officially retired, he still dabbles in evidence business past presenting his long-running travel film series at Joslyn Fine art Museum and bringing occasional shows, such as "A Celebration of Earth Dance" and the Russian State Chorus, to Joslyn this autumn.

As Walter can adjure, prove business organisation is a series of highs and lows. For all the standing ovations and packed houses, he tin't forget the times when things went a cropper. "The biggest glitch ever was when I was presentingHello Dolly with Carol Channing," he said. "We had played a calendar week when about a one-half-hr before the Sat matinee show the entire electrical system went out. The emergency organisation came on, simply it was besides dim to practice a show. It was a sold-out house, all of which had to be refunded. Miss Channing was really upset considering she had never missed a operation. I said, 'What are y'all worried virtually? This performance is missing you — you're not missing it.'"

Ballad Channing

With Channing mollified and the power restored, the second testify went on without a hitch. In his many dealings with stars, Walter has found about to be generous. However, as "they're pestered a lot," he said, "all of the big people build a wall effectually them. They have no private life. Now, when you brought some of them in a few times, the wall bankrupt downward and the next thing you knew you were out eating dinner together subsequently the testify. A lot of them were wonderful with people coming upwardly to them for autographs…and they should be — that's part of their job. On the other hand, if people were a piddling pushy, they didn't like that." Among his favorites, he said, were comic musician Victor Borge, conductor Arthur Fielder, band leader Fred Waring and player Hans Conried. "These people were special."

Regarding Waring, Walter recalls, "The terminal time I had him was his 'Eighth Almanac Farewell Tour.' I used to kid him virtually that. He just kept going on as long equally he could. That last time nosotros had him he gave a wonderful show and, when he came off, he was literally so exhausted he just cruel into my wife's arms backstage, catching his breath. Merely seconds after he was back on stage thanking everyone. That'south testify business. That makes a performer." When it came to Conried, who headlined a straight dramatic play for Walter, the role player so enjoyed a repast at the Maverick Buffet that whenever he hit the route again "he'd bulldoze up, give me a ring and say, 'Let's get to the Bohemian.' He thought this was heaven."

Ruth Fox recalls going as a picayune daughter with her mother to the Orpheum and beingness awe-struck past the great hall. "I was so impressed with the mirrors and the chandeliers." she said. "Oh, that was something to behold." A lifelong theater-lover, Fox began ushering and working backstage at the Orpheum in the 1970s. "I started to usher for the symphony, the opera, Broadway touring productions and whatever else came." It'southward something she continues today. She enjoys being around theater people and the hubbub surrounding them.

"I find it thrilling." Every bit an opera guild member, she joins other ladies running a backstage concession for bandage and crew. "Nosotros fix homemade food. Matzo assurance, deviled eggs. You name it, nosotros have it. Nosotros have a real thing going. Nosotros spend fourth dimension with the performers. Nosotros accept care of their needs…and they're so nice to u.s.. Once in a while you go a stinker, but most are wonderful." She takes great pride in her part every bit an conductor, likewise. "We, who usher, really are ambassadors to the city. There are so many people who come from out of town who have never been to the Orpheum before. It's their introduction, you might say, to Omaha…and we have to brand a proficient impression."

Despite the theater'southward prominence, its future was once uncertain. Past the stop of the '60's it languished among a dying downtown. Ownership inverse hands — from the Orpheum Circuit to several movie house chains. As concern declined, the theater fell into busted and, following an April 29, 1971 screening of Disney'sThe Barefoot Executive that played to a almost empty house, the identify airtight. At commencement, in that location was no guarantee the theater would not follow the fate of another prominent building in Omaha, the old post office, and be razed. Its prospects improved when the Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben bought the theater and donated it to the city, which agreed to steward it.

The city formed the Omaha Performing Arts Society Corp. (no relation to the current management group) for raising revenue bonds to underwrite a renovation. Local barons of commerce contributed more than dollars. Everything was on the fast-track to preservation until the city learned it had inherited a $one,000 a month lease for use of the lobby from the City National Bank Building, which the Orpheum abuts. With the rental issue gumming-up the works, the theater — then lacking any protective celebrated condition — became a white elephant and, some say, a likely candidate for the wrecking ball. It was saved when the Omaha Symphony bought out the charter and deeded the lobby to the urban center.

A multi-million dollar renovation ensued — removing years of grime, repairing impairment caused by a leaky roof and restoring deteriorated plaster and paint — earlier the Orpheum reopened as Omaha's performing arts centre in 1975, with Red Skelton headlining a glitzy gala. Later on, it was designated an Omaha landmark and a National Annals of Historic Places site. Over the next 27 years, the theater thrived just not without complaints about acoustics, amenities and overbookings. The theater likewise operated at a loss for many years.

Two men who know every inch of the theater and accept spent more time there than perhaps anyone else are Al and Jeff Dark-brown, a father and son who accept made managing the Orpheum a family unit enterprise. Al, a tattooed Korean war vet, was on-site manager in that location from 1974 to 1996, during which fourth dimension he saw the theater relish a renaissance.  When Al retired, his son Jeff, who worked at the Orpheum every bit a stagehand similar his dad earlier him, followed in his footsteps to presume responsibility for the day-to-24-hour interval operation and maintenance of this heavily-used old building in need of faithful attending.

The hours on the task can be then long that Jeff, like Al did, sometimes sleeps overnight on a cot in the office. Jeff feels the work done to the theater this by summer, which tackled some longstanding problems, will be appreciated by performers and patrons alike. "The large thing is to go along both of them happy," he said. "I experience with this renovation we're going to amend realize that goal because of the areas we've addressed…improved seating, enlarged and added dressing rooms, added women's restrooms, a new heating-air workout organization. Earlier, we did the best we could with what nosotros had, but now information technology'south going to be much more user-friendly." Keeping show people happy, whether local arts matrons or visiting world-class artists, means making certain everything behind-the-scenes "has to be the way they want it," Al said. "Touring performers come into town and they're tired. It'south a drag. Annihilation you can do to alleviate some of that, they appreciate it."

He said temperamental stars become pussycats if a manager and crew are prepared and take gone the extra mile. Echoing his father, Jeff added. "If you do your homework before the show and you brand sure that everything is clean and you lot have everything they ask for, they're very pleasant to piece of work with." Something Jeff learned from his one-time man is "treating every show the aforementioned — information technology doesn't matter whether it's a school graduation or a dance recital or a big Broadway prove. We do whatever nosotros tin can to make sure they have the best testify they can have."

Jeff said the theater's new direction construction bodes well for the facility. "I feel it'due south better because our budget isn't affected past what happens at Rosenblatt or at the Auditorium. We're our ain split entity now. We're on our own and we know we take to brand it on our own. It volition be a challenge, only I remember information technology will exist good."

The Orpheum, saddled with recent annual operating losses in the half-million dollar range, will more aggressively seek and promote high stature events and marketplace the theater as a destination place. An Orpheum web site is in the works. It also ways Orpheum performance seasons — complete with public subscriptions — may be in the offing. It's all been tried before. But the performing arts society may be in a better position to pull it off than financially-strapped city government.

Terry Forsberg said, "Now that you lot have a private group and the financial backing of the business community, it tin exist done. The question will be how much of a turn a profit they will have to show in order to proceed it operating." Co-ordinate to John Gottschalk, "The Orpheum will have an endowment, only we're certainly in no position to blot half-million dollar losses every year. So, we'll need to operate finer and efficiently. The best fashion to cease the…losses is to take a multifariousness of performances and to accept bigger houses more frequently…and nosotros will be heavily employed to make sure this place is full and agile."

Anybody, it seems, holds the Orpheum in loftier esteem. For Gottschalk, its rich legacy makes it a vital touchstone. "In the first place, information technology's an incredibly old symbol," he said. "At that place'due south been an Orpheum Theater hither since the turn of the century. Its longevity is what makes it such an integral function of the fabric of the customs."

Showman Walter said "it's bang-up to be part of this theater and information technology's wonderful heritage." Omaha Performing Arts Society president Joan Squires calls it a existent treasure for the city." Theatergoer Marjorie Schuck describes it as "a very big asset for Omaha culturally," adding, "It's a highlight coming to the Orpheum…it's been here a long fourth dimension, it's even so hither, information technology'due south yet going, and we expect it to continue."

Perhaps thinking of the event the planned downtown performing arts center may accept on the Orpheum, volunteer Ruth Fox said, "I simply pray they will not tear it down or alter information technology."

Pray not, indeed, for that would be too much to deport. Equally a program for the Orpheum's 1927 opening noted, the theater "is a continuation non only of a identify of amusement, but also a veritable civic institution."

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Source: https://leoadambiga.com/2010/08/02/omahas-grand-old-lady-the-orpheum-theater/

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