JEFFREY GOFFIN

The oldest standing theatre in Calgary, The Sherman Grand Theatre was the focal point of the local theatre scene from its opening in 1912 at the peak of the first boom years in Alberta to 1937 when it was converted to a movie house. It served as a roadhouse offering international stars and touring companies as well as a venue for concerts and productions by local amateurs.

Le bâtiment théâtral le plus ancien de Calgary, le Sherman Grand Theatre fut le centre de l'activité théâtrale de cette ville depuis son ouverture en 1912, au cours de la première grande vague de prospérité de l'Alberta, jusqu'en 1937, année où il fut converti en salle de cinéma. Ce théâtre accueillait longtemps les troupes internationales et les vedettes en tournée, tout en servant de foyer pour les conceris et les productions d'amateurs locaux.

The opening of the new Sherman Grand Theatre in Calgary by Forbes-Robertson in Jerome's The Passing of the Third Floor Back was a brilliant affair. Everything passed off beautifully. Easterners will understand what we mean when we say quite conscientiously that the Sherman Grand has a shade the better of it in comparison with the Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, which, up till this week, might justly be considered the finest in Canada. The appointments of the Calgary Theatre are all in good taste, though the drop curtain is disappointing and ineffective as a work of art. The best drop curtain we have seen in this country is at the Walker Theatre, Winnipeg.

The role of the Passer-By was magnificently played by Forbes-Robertson but there is no use slobbering over him at this late stage of the game. Be that as it may we should very much like to see the Passer-By try his soulful methods on a roomful of cantankerous wildcats like Lemieux, Monk, H.G. Macdonald, Foster, Glen Campbell, Oliver Pugsley, Rod Michael, Sam Hughes, Wilfrid himself, and a few more. If he could make them all shake hands and go off on a pleasant drunk together, Forbes-Robertson would indeed be the wonder of the age and his Passer-By acclaimed by children yet unborn.¹

In this passage, demonstrating his own characteristic style, the editor of the Calgary Eye Opener, Bob Edwards, celebrated the opening of the Sherman Grand Theatre in Calgary on 5 February 1912. While taking advantage of the opportunity to feed the fire of East-West rivalry, he directed a few barbs at the Government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Whether they agreed with his politics or were regional partisans, most Calgarians agreed with Edwards' estimation of this new theatre. The Morning Albertan called it 'Canada's Finest Theatre' ² - and with a stage measuring 42 feet deep, 80 feet wide (with a proscenium opening of 39 feet) and a height of 86 feet, it was the largest theatre in the country. It had a large balcony, six private boxes and a total seating capacity of 1509. Most impressive was the elaborate ornamentation in woodwork and plaster complemented with brass railings, rich tapestries and carpets. The size and splendour of the Sherman Grand quickly made it the focal point of Calgary's theatre scene - a position it maintained for twenty-five years. As a result, the history of this theatre provides a perspective not only on Calgary's early cultural activity but also on the development of the city in other respects.

The theatre was part of the seven-storey Loughheed building, an office complex constructed by McNeil and Trainer of Calgary for Senator James Lougheed. Its distinctive brick exterior was in marked contrast to the sandstone architecture common in Calgary at the time. While in June 1911, when building permits were issued, the estimated cost was recorded as $300,000, ³ by completion time the price tag was closer to a half-million dollars.⁴ However, this cost over-run seemed to pose little problem for Senator Lougheed, a man who already owned two other Calgary theatres and one in Edmonton, as well as commercial blocks in both cities.

The opening of the Sherman Grand Theatre coincided with the peak of the first boom years in Alberta brought on by the flood of settlers to the Canadian West. During the ten years from 1901 to 1911 Calgary doubled in size as new homes and businesses appeared at an unprecedented rate. The population increased from 4,398 to 43,704. The number of firms in Calgary grew from ten, employing 307 people, to 46 with a total of 2,133 employees. Company payrolls in 1911 were ten times that of 1901 and the value of goods produced increased proportionally.⁵

The theatre scene during these years reflects the steady growth of the city. In the 1890's, Calgarians, like all Canadians, provided much of their own entertainment. Churches, schools, halls and even the local barracks of the North-West Mounted Police were the scenes of concerts and lectures. As early as 1893 the Calgary Amateur Dramatic Club presented an evening of music and short plays at the Alexander Hall.⁶ A few years later, in 1896, the Calgary Operatic Society staged The Pirates of Penzance. ⁷ Thus began the long-standing popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in Calgary which included a 1911 production. of the Mikado with a cast of 45 and an elaborately painted set.⁸

The first legitimate theatre opened in 1893. Hull's Opera House, a modestly furnished theatre with a small stage, modem facilities and seating for approximately 700, attracted many touring companies like the James M. Ward Company, New York Theatre Company, the Australian Comedy Company, Summers' Stock Company, Clara Hammer Company, Sherman-Platt Company, and McPhee Dramatic Company. The bills included minstrel shows, vaudeville, a few productions of the classics and a steady stream of stock melodramas. By 1906 two more theatres appeared in Calgary, the Lyric and the Star Electric, both offering vaudeville.

From 1906 to 1912 one name appeared constantly in connection with Calgary theatre. W.B. Sherman, an entrepreneur who managed Hull's Opera House and the Lyric Theatre, jointly managed several theatre companies and Sherman's Roller Rink which featured band music and novelty acts such as 'Chas. G. Kilpatrick - famous one-legged roller skater and cyclist.' ⁹ When Senator Lougheed's new theatre opened, Sherman assumed its management and the theatre assumed his name.

By 1912 Calgary boasted five theatres featuring touring productions and vaudeville: the Sherman Grand, the Empire, the Empress, the Lyric and the Allen. Like the Sherman Grand, each was constructed as part of a commercial block, fusing entertainment with solid, money-making enterprises. Photographs of these theatres reveal that the overall results were often haphazard; for example, the stately sandstone exterior of the Empire Theatre was in sharp contrast to the prosaic storefront of the Empire Cafe next door. The Lyric Theatre, renamed Regent, was barely discernible amidst signs for the adjoining Drug Store and jewellers' shop. In the Wright Block, the Empress Theatre shared space with a sign shop and an ice cream parlour. Elaborate displays at the front of the vaudeville theatres announced the fare which could include dancers, comedians, contortionists, jugglers, animal acts, illustrated songs, moving pictures and music by the resident orchestra. If anything did, these sidewalk displays helped to distinguish theatres from the retailers surrounding them.

In addition to these theatres at least five moviehouses were in operation by 1912 advertising regular showings of motion pictures. These were the Monarch, the Globe, the Starland, the Royal and the Bijou.

This same year also marked the beginning of the Calgary Stampede. Like the proliferation of theatres and cinemas in the previous five years, the creation of the Stampede was further evidence that the sizeable population of Calgary now represented a large potential audience. Consequently, considering this climate, it is not surprising that Senator Lougheed invested half a million dollars in the Sherman Grand and the adjoining commercial block. The time was right for a substantial theatre in Calgary which could cater to a public demanding something more than the rough and vulgar pleasures of vaudeville.

As part of the Orpheum Circuit, the theatre responded to this need offering plays, musical comedies, operas, religious spectacles, symphony concerts and even animal circuses. The list of star attractions who performed at the Grand was impressive and included: the San Carlo Grand Opera Co., the British Guild Players, the Royal Collins Players, Margaret Anglin, Tom Marks, the Dumbells, Bransby Williams, Sophie Tucker, Ethel Barrymore, Sir John Martin-Harvey, the Marx Brothers, George Bums and Gracie Allen, Fred and Adele Astaire, George Jessel, Jack Benny and Aimee Semple McPherson.

For almost two years, the Grand employed resident companies to play in repertory. From August 1922 to May 1923 the Royal-Collins Players from Vancouver presented a different play each week. When their engagement ended five of the actors remained in Calgary to form the core of another company, the Grand Players. This company followed the Royal-Collins model offering Calgarians a wide variety of plays including comedies such as Montagne Glass's Potash and Perlmutter, melodramas such as Alice Rice's Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, David Bellasco's Polly with a Past and even dramas such as Arthur Wing Pinero's Second Mrs. Tanqueray. This experiment with repertory ended as suddenly as it began in March 1924 when the Grand returned to a weekly bill featuring touring performers.¹⁰

A high point for theatre-goers at the Sherman Grand were the appearances in 1913 and 1918 of Sarah Bernhardt as part of a vaudeville show assembled by Martin Beck.¹¹ On 14 January 1913 Bernhardt gave two performances of Act Three of Lucrezia Borgia by Victor Hugo, followed the next day by one performance of Act One from La Dame aux camélias. These performances, in French, were warrnly received despite the language barrier.¹² Her return engagement in 1918, when Bernhardt was in her seventies, features a one-act play, Champs d'honneur and part of Camille. Bernhardt stirred up an emotional response from audiences who reacted with patriotic fervor to the great actress' portrayal of the dying hero of Champs d'honneur. In the context of nearly four years of war in Europe, her play about an actor serving in the trenches was seen by the reviewer of The Morning Albertan as a timely symbol of French resistance:

The spirit of exaltation which has been bom in the French people out of the war shines through the eyes of Madame Sarah Bernhardt as through no other who has come to us. The intensity of feeling, which presses against the dumb lips of soldiers who have suffered all the agonies of battles, finds a sudden, surging release through the transcendent art of this wonderful woman; and it streams from her across the footlights, over the barriers of a foreign language, and of old age, and holds her audience tense and thrilled.¹³

Another important part of the Grand's place in the community was the many amateur productions staged by drama clubs, local dance and music schools, churches and lodges. Throughout the First World War enlisted men and veterans participated in concerts which continued well after 1918 under the Great War Veterans' Association.

The most ambitious of these efforts by local performers was the production in February 1921 by the Calgary Operatic Society of Highwood Trail. This original operetta was based on a story by Guy Weadick, one of the founders of the Calgary Stampede, and featured original music by Jack Bullough, the director of the Grand's orchestra. The reviewer from The Morning Albertan was impressed by the musical score as well as the libretto theme concerning

the visit of wealthy New Yorkers to the T.S. Ranch where they are initiated into western sports and western range life and are entertained by a variegated company of cowboys. ... Cattle rustlers and bootleggers operating in the foothills nearby provide the real plot and the thrilling hunt by a Royal North West Mounted Policeman, assisted by Guy Weadick, is the excitement of the piece. ¹⁴

Surviving photographs serve as a testament to the hard work of the company that mounted this production putting on stage a detailed set complete with a ranch-house, a shack, a corral, a well, a painted back-drop of the prairie and model airplane that flew across the stage and still left room for cowboys to ride their horses!

Although Highwood Trail is a striking contrast to the foreign stars and internationally acclaimed shows presented at the Grand it stands as a rare example of the theatre's integration with the community: an operetta written and produced by Calgarians featuring people and places familiar to its audience. This indigenous production was the inevitable result of the encouragement provided to amateur groups through the availablity of the Grand's facilities.

In the Twenties the Grand was joined by two other major theatres of comparable size. The Capitol was a luxurious, beautifully decorated theatre that alternated vaudeville with motion pictures. The Palace Theatre, primarily a moviehouse, could easily accommodate a full orchestra for concerts or as accompaniment for the latest motion picture during the silent era. In the early Thirties the Palace became famous as the site of radio broadcasts by Bible Bill Aberhart who later became Alberta's first Social Credit Premier. As in earlier theatres such as the Grand, retail space was part of both of these buildings but here it occupied only a small part of each. This new development was a direct result of the reduced need for the owners of these buildings to rent commercial space in order to finance their theatres. Film provided a much greater degree of financial stability than live performances. The high cost of booking touring companies and performers as well as that of maintaining elaborate facilities for live theatre was reduced considerably for each theatre while lower ticket prices and repeated screenings of motion pictures attracted larger audiences.

When the Depression hit, the Grand was no longer able to compete against moviehouses merely by offering live theatre. Gradually movies began to be shown more frequently at the Grand; then, with the demise of several key touring companies, live theatre was phased out completely. In 1937 the theatre was sold to J.B. Barron who promptly converted it into a moviehouse. While periodically in the Forties and Fifties live entertainment such as touring companies was offered at the Grand, the Calgary Symphony Orchestra, or even the National Finals of the Dominion Drama Festival (1950), the days of the Grand as the pre-eminent theatre in Calgary were over. In 1965 renovations removed the stage and the boxes. Four years later the Odeon Corporation bought the theatre from Barron Enterprises and in 1972 extensive reconstruction put a sound-proof wall down the middle of the house to create two cinemas.¹⁵

Today the Grand Theatre in the Lougheed Building is an anachronistic survivor from an earlier era. The squat, red brick building is dwarfed on all sides by glass and steel office towers. Of the many varied theatres built in early Calgary only the Grand and the Palace remain. Fires, neglect and the wreckers' ball have demolished all of the others, making way for highrises, parking lots or, in the case of the Empress Theatre, the new Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts.

In 1937 Johnstone Forbes-Robertson, the star of The Passing of the Third Floor Back, died and the theatre mourned the passing of the last great actor-manager and with him an era in theatre. That year in Calgary the Grand ceased to be a legitimate theatre, turning instead to film to ensure its survival. While few people moumed the latter event it was equally the sign of the end of an era in which a lively theatre dominated culture in the society of Western Canada.¹⁶

Notes

"CANADA'S FINEST THEATRE": THE SHERMAN GRAND

Jeffrey Goffin

1 BOB EDWARDS Calgary Eye Opener 10 Feb 1912, p 2
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2 JAMES W. DAVIDSON 'Canada's Finest Theatre,' The Morning Albertan 6 Feb 1912, p 1
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3 Two entries on the Sherman Grand Theatre are found in the City of Calgary Building Register, Jan 1910 to Dec 1913, preserved in the Archives of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. The first, dated 1 June 1911, records that Senator James Lougheed engaged the McNeil & Trainer firm to build a theatre according to plans by architect L.R. Wardrop for an estimated cost of $ 100 000. Ten days later, on 10 June 1911, another permit was issued for the construction of 'solid brick stores and rooms' at an estimated cost of $200 000 to complete the commercial block of the Lougheed building.
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4 DAVIDSON p 1
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5 EDWARD CAVELL Calgary An Illustrated History Toronto: James Lorimer 1978, pp 174-180
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6 'Calgary Amateur Dramatic Club,' Calgary Weekly Herald 4 Jan 1893, p 5
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7 'Cast of Calgary Operatic Society Production, Pirates of Penzance. Feb 13 & 14,1896' Glenbow Museum Photographic Archives, Calgary
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8 'Cast of Mikado on stage at Lyric Theatre, Calgary, Alta. 1911. February 23' Glenbow Museum Photographic Archives, Calgary
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9 Calgary Herald 25 Jan 1908, p 5
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10 The leading performers in the Royal-Collins Players were Chas. E. Royal, Ray B. Collins, Byron Aldenn, Daisy D'Avra, Alf T. Layne, Helen Audiffred, Evelyn Hambly and J. Barrie Norton. The Grand Players included Byron Aldenn, Alf. T. Layne, J. Barrie Norton, Ray Whittaker, Vaughan Morgan, Thomas Sullivan, Serlis Haymer, Margaret Marriott, Evelyn Hambly, Daisy D'Avra, Eunice Richards and Frances Robertson.
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11 JOHN HARE and RAMON HATHORN 'Sarah Bernhardt's Visits to Canada: Dates and Repertory' Theatre History in Canada/Histoire du théâtre au Canada vol 2 no 2 Fall 1981 pp 93-116
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12 'Sarah Bernhardt Warmly Greeted by Calgarians' Calgary Herald 15 Jan 1913, p 5
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13 'Divine Sarah in Great War Sketch' The Morning Albertan 4 June 1918, p 6
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14 'Made in Calgary Musical Comedy a Great Success' The Morning Albertan 8 Feb 1921, p 6
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15 JAMIE PORTMAN 'Twin Theatres Phasing Out the Grand Old Movie Palaces' Calgary Herald 29 July 1972, p 47
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16 During the summer of 1985 the Grand Theatre was closed again by Cineplex Odeon for further renovations. Not only was the lobby enlarged, new carpeting added and the colour scheme changed, but the two cinemas were rebuilt. The centre wall dividing the theatre into twin houses was removed. The main floor was restored as one room and the old balcony as another. A 6- track Dolby stereo sound system was installed in both cinemas along with new, larger screens to accommodate 70 mm projection. The extensive nature of these renovations is reflected in the new name for the theatre: the Showcase Grand.
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