PATRICK B. O'NEILL
While a reporter and later editor on the Perth Courier, English-born Michael Taylor laboured on this book for several years in his spare time before a change in career removed him from Lanark County and the fonds held by the Perth Museum. Although he was unable to continue working on the story of the Marks Brothers after leaving the area, the editors decided to publish the material he had completed. As a result, academic reviewers will justifiably claim that the focus of attention in the book needed to be maintained more rigorously; that the text and visual elements needed to be more integrally related to each other; that the chronological development needed to continue into the 1920s and not end prematurely; that the work, as a whole, needed to be less descriptive and more analytical, to rely less on family reminiscences written after the event, and to cut through legend and romance for a more truthful representation of the Marks Brothers. All valid criticisms, but criticisms that deserve to be levelled as much at the editors as the writer. The Natural Heritage press received financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Canada's Book Publishing Industry Development Program, and the Association for the Export of Canadian Books, so their decision not to spend additional monies to commission another author to finish the story and then hire an editorial specialist to check its accuracy prior to publication deserves to be criticised. Certainly an informed editor would have insisted that the operations of the Marks Brothers during World War I, when American companies toured less frequently in Canada, be included in the story in detail. Also, that editor would never have permitted the speculation that Canada's Margaret Anglin (Mrs. Howard Hull), who starred with the leading American touring companies (including James O'Neill's) between 1894 and 1899, was a member of Tom Marks company and married Alex Marks in Kalamazoo, Michigan, sometime between January and March 1899.
Despite such fundamental flaws, journalist Michael Taylor has produced an eminently readable volume designed to make the general public aware of "the most remarkable theatrical family in Canadian history." His readers will find a pleasant, charming, gossipy peep at the Marks Brothers, and will be fascinated and enlightened by the extensive assemblage of contemporary comments and period photographs relating to their story. There is, indeed, consid- erable merit in the work since it offers many insightful and provocative glimpses into Canada's foremost theatrical family during the "Golden Age of the Road" between 1880 and 1920 while providing a cursory description of the general state of the theatre in Canada at the turn of the twentieth century and the business practices of a Canadian road company. The Marks Brothers have never been accorded the recognition they deserve by an academic press, perhaps because the period of commercial theatre operations at the turn of the twentieth century is often considered to be one of epidemic mediocrity not worth study because it kept the public addicted to "maudlin melodrama" and "contrived claptrap comedy". True, the main function of the theatre during the Marks Brothers' era was popular entertainment, and the box office was the sole arbiter of who trod the boards successfully; nevertheless, instructors, who are always on constant lookout for new materials to introduce this facet of theatre history into their classes, will find the glimpses provided in this work useful when combined with additional primary materials to illustrate how the foremost Canadian touring companies (such as the Marks Brothers, the E. A. McDowell Company, the Ida Van Cortland Company, or the Harry Lindley Company) managed to succeed in Canada while others failed.
The Canadian Kings of Repertoire could profitably appear on a supplementary reading list to illustrate that successful companies established good relationships with the communities they visited and to demonstrate the business side of successful road companies. Throughout the book, Taylor clearly details how the Marks Brothers dealt with theatre owners and townspeople in a professional, courteous manner. Despite the transportation problems described in the chapter "Life on the Road," the Marks Brothers rarely failed to keep engagements, and realized early in their careers that their audiences expected to be entertained, not "played with" or "guyed." Unlike other companies, such as the Paris Gaiety Girls, whose manager Sam Pickett was sentenced to a month in prison at St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1895, for presenting an immoral show, the Marks Brothers only offered entertainments that were "clean in theme and treatment," and always conducted themselves properly while visiting a town: "Each Sunday, whenever possible, the troupe, dressed in its finery would parade through the community [...] and make its way to church [...] depending on the number of different denominations in the town it was not uncommon for company members to attend three different services" (43).
Their professionalism and affability, however, needed to be combined with business sense for them to be able to proclaim proudly that "No bailiff ever sat on our trunks, and we never missed a payroll" (75). The Marks Brothers understood the finances of the road, and, like other successful managers, never began a season without the family members sporting sufficient diamonds to guarantee the success of the tour. If the tour required a cash infusion, the sale of a diamond stickpin or earrings could be negotiated anywhere along the route. By putting touring profits into diamonds rather than a bank, the Marks Brothers avoided such misfortunes as happened to the Harry Leighton Stock Company, who were stranded in St. John's, Newfoundland, after a bank failure in 1895. The financial viability of the Marks Brothers—as, indeed, of W. S. Harkins, E. A. McDowell, Harry Lindley, and Albert Tavernier—depended upon their frequent jaunts across the American border. Circumventing the copyright laws, the Marks Brothers, who played in crossroads theatres and seldom in prominent American theatres, pirated "wellknown plays under the subterfuge that the plays they steal have been 'rewritten expressly' for them by one James J. Campbell, of Boston." It was for this reason that the New York Dramatic Mirror went on to wish that they "should confine its operations to Canada" (July 20, 1895). Another financial advantage held by Canadian-based companies over their American counterparts rested in the imposition of import duties. When crossing the border, the Marks Brothers could claim their paper, props, sets, and costumes as "tools of trade," and enter them without the payment of duties. Canadian law, however, required American companies to pay import duties each time a company crossed the border: for example, in a route that included Montreal, Kingston, and Toronto with dates between on the American side, a manager would be taxed for the same advertising and scenic properties on three separate occasions. By ignoring copyright law and taking advantage of prevailing duties, the Marks Brothers were more financially viable than similar American companies.
No one will suggest that Taylor's work qualifies as a major academic study of the Marks Brothers. Nevertheless, it is a good piece of journalism, and knowledgeable readers will recognize and value its introduction to the broader trends of North American touring companies, while enjoying, with general readers, a work with no pretension to do any more than tell the story of the Marks Brothers.