Alfred St Leon

Severalactors of the modern era graduated from circus ring to theatre stage and even on to cinema screen. Actors such as W.C. Fields, Archibald Leach (‘Cary Grant’), Burt Lancaster and Bonar Colleano began their professional lives performing in circus or its closely allied genre, vaudeville. In this article, I tell the story of another to make this unusual transition, Ida Jennie St Leon.¹ Born into a circus family that travelled outback Australia for generations, Ida Jennie was, in 1917, voted one of America’s popular stage actresses.

But before I get to Ida Jennie, I shall roll back the passage of time to late 18th-century London when a new genre of entertainment, now known as “circus”, was taking shape. At that time, Captain James Cook was about to embark on his first voyage of “discovery and exploration” and the American colonies still provided a convenient receptacle for the detritus of Britain’s over-crowded prisons.

Astley’s Riding School, London, in 1770. Author’s Collection.

Origins of the modern circus

In 1768, within a roped-off ring on a field called Ha’penny Hatch on the southside of the Thames, a former cavalryman, Sergeant-Major Philip Astley (1742–1814) began giving open-air displays of trick horsemanship.² By 1779, Astley had enclosed these displays within a permanent, roofed venue which he named Astley’s Amphitheatre. The venue became known throughout London as “the circus”, not for the gladiatorial and bloodthirsty circus of ancient Rome but after the large, open-air, circular riding tracks dotted around London used by recreational riders, each of which was called a “circus”, traces of which remain visible today in thoroughfares such as Piccadilly Circus.³ By combining comedy with feats of trick horsemanship, introducing acrobats, ropewalkers and jugglers from the fairgrounds, and developing sequential programs of entertainment, Astley intuitively arrived at a novel form of entertainment that would soon be called a “circus”.

The relationship of circus and the stage has been an uneasy one for, although both are rightly regarded today as worthy branches of the performing arts, “circus” was long regarded as theatre’s “poor cousin”. The Vagrancy Act of 1572 had long confined peripatetic entertainers—such as “ladder dancers, rope dancers, jugglers and mountebanks”—to the bottom of the English social hierarchy, to rank alongside “ruffians, blasphemers, thieves and vagabonds” and “heretics, Jews, pagans and sorcerers”.⁴

Because Astley’s innocuous equestrian-based programs appealed to all classes and was devoid of dialogue, it did not constitute “theatre” within the meaning of the Theatrical Licensing Act. However, by embellishing his programs with the entertainers long confined to the fairgrounds by the Vagrancy Act—tumblers, rope dancers, jugglers and so on—“circus” was tainted with their opprobrium.⁵ Circus people were typically drawn from underprivileged backgrounds who fell outside “all categories” of class, intellect, background or profession.⁶

Astley’s entrepreneurial flare mirrored the age. In 1782, he and his company crossed the Channel. In Paris, he built another amphitheatre—his Amphitheatre Anglais—and travelled the Continent as far east as Belgrade, building more amphitheatres as he went.⁷ One of Astley’s equestrians, John Bill Ricketts, brought his equestrian troupe to the United States in 1793 and delivered the young nation its first complete circus performance. Its new president, George Washington, was one of Ricketts’ most ardent patrons.⁸

From 1808, Astley’s and other amphitheatres actively sought to improve their social standing by mounting “hippodramas”, elaborate equestrian-based melodramatic spectacles based on grand historical, military or religious themes.⁹ Astley’s Amphitheatre reached the peak of its fame in the years 1825–41 under the management of the superlative horseman, Andrew Ducrow (1798–1842) who raised the spectacle of circus riding to an art form. His exquisite equestrian-based pantomimes and spectacles were imitated in circuses throughout the British Isles, on the Continent, in the new United States and in the colonies of Australia. Despite changes in ownership and management and a devastating fire in 1842, Astley’s Amphitheatre remained the international fountainhead of circus until its final closure in 1893.¹⁰

The Tyrolean Shepherd & The Swiss Milkmaid, by Andrew Ducrow & Louisa Woolford, London, 1829. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Although never entirely liberated from its marginalised social status, circus emerged into a major form of mass entertainment and lent inspiration to the development of other forms of popular entertainment such as melodrama, pantomime, variety and vaudeville. By the close of the 19th century, circus rivalled sport, music hall and racing for patronage and economic significance.¹¹ By then, the term “circus” had entered the popular vocabulary, not only in English but in French (“cirque”), German (“cirk”), Italian (“circo”), Russian (“tsirk”) and many other languages.

Advertisement for Radford’s Royal Circus, Launceston, 1847

From Cornwall Chronicle, 29 December 1847 

Circus in Australia

The circus was still a new genreof entertainment when the First Fleet sailed for New South Wales in 1788, although many of the fleet’s human cargo had probably witnessed, or were at least aware of, the delights of Astley’s Amphitheatre. Some of England’s circus performers, falling foul of law, found themselves transported to Australia. Their enforced relocation would eventually contribute to the foundation of an Australian circus industry. However, organised popular entertainments, leisure and recreation were not among the initial priorities of penal settlements. Neither Sydney nor Hobart Town were served with regular theatre performances until the 1830s.

With the growth of a free population, enlightened colonial administrators understood the need for “rational amusements” to content the people “in this new land”.¹² On Boxing Day 1847, nearly 80 years after Astley gave his first displays on Ha’penny Hatch, Robert Avis Radford, a professional jockey and training groom, opened “a sort of Astley’s Amphitheatre on a limited scale” adjacent to his inn, the Horse & Jockey, in York Street, Launceston.¹³ There was nothing particularly “royal” about Radford’s Royal Circus apart from the fact it was licensed.¹⁴ Circus exhibitions were soon given in amphitheatres of modest descriptions in Melbourne (1849) and Sydney (1850).¹⁵ The marginalised social standing of circus and circus people “at home” meant little to emigres drawn largely from Britain’s lower orders and even less to their colonial-born offspring, the “currency” lads and lasses for whom these entertainments were an outright novelty.

Patrick Connelly, Irish champion jockey

Author’s collection

Advertisement for the Royal Australian Equestrian Circus, Sydney 1850

From Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October 1850

John Jones, colonial circus man

A stalwart of Radford’s little company was an acrobat and dancer, the prosaically named John Jones. Born “John Connelly” 24 years earlier, possibly at Bath, Somerset, he was the illegitimate son of a young Irish jockey, Patrick Connelly, and Ellen Catherine Ricketts, whose father was a first cousin of Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, Prime Minister of England. Fostered to a Newmarket trainer, he served as a stable boy in the royal stables and learned the rudiments of fine horsemanship until, aged 12, he was banished to London, in advance of the impending marriage of his natural father—by then one of England’s leading jockeys—to the daughter of a Newmarket trainer, to serve a spurious seven-year apprenticeship to a Westminster chimney sweep. Despite unsociable working hours, a sweep at least had the freedom to practice tumbling skills in London’s parks in the afternoon and perform in London’s streets after dark.¹⁶ Across the Thames, Astley’s Amphitheatre admitted the lowly sweeps to see the exquisite equestrian pantomimes and spectacles of Andrew Ducrow even if dressed in sweep’s attire.¹⁷ When implicated in a theft, the 19-year-old John Connelly was tried at the Old Bailey on 24 October 1842, under the name “John Jones” which he contrived to distance himself from a previous offence on his record. The ruse failed but the name of “John Jones” stuck and, under that name, he was transported to Van Diemen's Land. He received a ticket-of-leave in July 1847.¹⁸

In Radford’s Royal Circus, John Jones refined his skills as an acrobat and dancer, revised his equestrian skills and learned to walk the tightrope. On 21 December 1848, at St George's Church of England, Battery Point, Hobart Town, he married a young Irish woman, Margaret Monaghan (c.1833–1897).¹⁹ Over the following 12 months, Jones organised a circus troupe of his own which he brought to Sydney to perform in the City Theatre in Market Street. The troupe visited the Macquarie towns, before travelling through the Wollombi Valley to Maitland. Returning to Sydney, Jones and his partner Edward “La Rosiere” Hughes erected their Royal Australian Equestrian Circus in the yard of John Malcom’s Adelphi Hotel in York Street which they opened to the public in October 1850. It was Sydney’s first circus establishment of any consequence.²⁰ In May 1851, Jones joined Henry Burton’s Royal Circus just as the first discoveries of gold were made along the Turon River. As people rushed to the diggings, Burton and his troupe followed them.²¹

At Sofala in September 1851, Jones formed a circus troupe of his own.²² When the first discoveries of gold were made in Victoria, Jones and his troupe joined an American circus man, John Sullivan Noble, to open the Olympic Circus at the top of Bourke Street, Melbourne’s first circus of any consequence.²³ Later in 1852, they opened an amphitheatre in Ryrie Street, Geelong.²⁴ From this base, Jones and Noble, sometimes individually, sometimes in partnership, made forays onto the diggings of Victoria. In November 1854, Jones and Noble were at Ballarat when their large circus tent was commandeered one afternoon by rebellious diggers for a protest meeting over the mining license issue. As the diggers began constructing a crude fortress—the Eureka Stockade—on nearby Bakery Hill, they commandeered the circus tent again, this time to conceal arms and ammunition.²⁵ A few days later, the diggers returned to the circus and, at the point of a gun, marched its German bandsmen to Bakery Hill to serenade their comrades as they built their stockade.²⁶ Early on the morning of Monday, 3 December, police and soldiers sent from Melbourne overran the Eureka Stockade and the affair passed into Australia’s history.

Jones’ Circus at Ballarat, 1853, by Eugene von Guerard. Ballarat Art Gallery, Ballarat.

As the frantic gold rush fever calmed in the aftermath of the Eureka incident, Jones began touring his small circus troupe through the small townships emerging throughout south-eastern Australia. Colonial showmen found, as had the wandering minstrels of mediaeval Europe and the circus men of the American frontier, that it was more economic to tour a fixed program rather than remain in one location and regularly change program.²⁷ Co-incidentally, the travelling show also solved a fundamental economic problem facing Australia in the pre-electronic age: how to deliver professional entertainment to a small, widely-distributed population. As well as circus men, showmen of widely varying reputations and capabilities, began touring an extraordinary diversity of cultural offerings through the bush—opera, minstrelsy, panoramic exhibitions, magicians, bellringers, pseudo-scientists, magic lanterns, wild animals and so on.²⁸

Circus companies rose and fell with the economic tide but, overall, constituted a key element in the mosaic of live entertainments that kept Australians amused in the latter half of the 19th century, especially in regional areas. Despite the paucity of infrastructure, it was regarded as the world’s best circus country. In North America and Europe, a circus had to close for the winter but, in Australia, by judiciously exploiting regional variations in climate, a circus could tour all year. Circus proprietors could roam an enormous land mass, largely unfettered by regulation. Nevertheless, there were obstacles and constraints to be overcome: distances were formidable, formed roads and bridges were lacking, lawlessness was rife and economic conditions volatile.

Since protective child welfare legislation was seriously lacking, circus performers were trained from infancy as the circus travelled. In Jones’ Circus in 1856:

… Mr Jones and his three sons in their grand classical entertainment … must be seen to be believed, the ages of the children being eight years, five years and three years; it is really wonderful to see their father throwing them about in the air; the like has never been witnessed in the colonies …²⁹

Jones’ National Circus was well-received in and around the town of Beechworth and its surrounding goldfields during March-April 1859.³⁰ During the visit to Beechworth, Jones’ wife gave birth to another son who would be named Alfred.³¹

As cities and towns emerged, skilled journalists, newly arrived from England, introduced prevailing notions of class and respectability into their new colonial setting, including those long enshrined in the Vagrancy Act. Travelling showmen increasingly attracted the condemnation of a soi-disant colonial gentry:

… travelling Jews with trinkets, organ-grinders, German bands, Ethiopian serenaders, circuses, electro-biologists, and people of that class … were now felt to be great nuisances... Social leadership had been taken over by full-time bankers, ministers and the like.³²

Visiting Wagga Wagga in January 1861, Jones’ circus was patronised so poorly that Jones was obliged to depart early one morning without settling his accounts for printing, feed, board and lodging.

This company has been performing here some weeks and we imagine their sojourn was more prolonged than profitable, as they were patronised very meagrely, owing to the inferiority of the performers and the whole paraphernalia... On one occasion, [Jones] set down for representation a farce called An Old Way of Paying New Debts and acted accordingly, absconding one fine morning leaving his disconsolate creditors the victims of misplaced confidence... ³³

Jones’ fortunes had recovered by the time he took his circus—now promoted as Jones’ British-American Circus—across the Bass Strait to Tasmania in March 1863. By this time, his youngest son, Alfred, born in Beechworth four years earlier, was performing in the ring with his father and older brothers.³⁴ The gymnastic performances of little Alfred and his older brothers were hailed “with expressions of wonder and bursts of applause”.³⁵

Advertisement for Theatre Royal, Melbourne, The Entr’Acte, January 1865

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Matthew St Leon, colonial circus proprietor, Brisbane, 1882

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

The Wonderful St Leon Family

Over the following 12 months, Jones and his sons re-organised themselves into a family-based variety troupe, a more economic and manageable proposition than a travelling circus. As well as their familiar acrobatic, gymnastic, ropewalking and trapeze skills, the troupe embraced singing, dancing and pantomime.³⁶ By early 1865, they were sufficiently rehearsed to return to Melbourne and commence an engagement at the Theatre Royal, leased and managed by the famous Shakespearean actor, Barry Sullivan. By this time, many colonial entertainers were adopting attractive pseudonyms by which to protect and project their professional identities—and distance themselves from their legally-allotted status as “rogues” and “vagabonds”. Sullivan realised that the prospects of Jones and his sons could be improved by replacing their prosaic family name with another more catching. Opening on the evening of 27 January 1865, Sullivan announced:

... The Wonderful St Leon Family … From the Gymnase Imperial, Paris are engaged for a limited number of nights, and will appear in their celebrated Drawing-Room Entertainment …³⁷

Unfortunately, the little troupe failed to impress Melbourne’s prudish critics:

… some of the members are much too youthful to have acquired that grace and skill which alone can render a performance of the class they give befitting a high-class theatre.³⁸

Nevertheless, the professional pseudonym of “St Leon” stuck. John Jones now called himself “Matthew St Leon”. He, his three sons, Gus, Walter and Alfred, and a few engaged artists—began travelling south-eastern Australia as The St Leon Troupe, accumulating experience and polish as they moved from town to town. Master Alfred, the youngest of the troupe, was clearly the peoples’ favourite. He was nine years of age when the Troupe returned to Beechworth in June 1868:

Master Alfred St Leon is one of the most wonderful children we have ever seen on the stage. The child can scarcely be more than seven or eight years of age [sic] … and yet he shows such a knowledge of stage business, and has such funny, dry little ways about him, that it is impossible to look at the boy without laughing. Any child can be taught to repeat a lot of “gags” but there are very few who can deliver them in the smart, “cheeky” … little way that Master Alfred does.³⁹

When the Troupe visited Wagga Wagga in October 1869, Master Alfred had passed his tenth birthday:

… Crowded houses have testified every night to the merits, vocal, acrobatic, and otherwise of the Troupe. Master Alfred St Leon is perhaps the “gem of the evening”. His make-up and manner are both admirable, and his song, “Some lady’s lost her chignon”, irresistible...⁴⁰

By July 1874, the family was travelling South Australia with its own small circus, the foundation of St Leon’s Circus.⁴¹

Alfred St Leon at right, with personnel of Burton’s Circus, 1874

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Alfred St Leon, equestrian, St Leon’s Royal Victoria Circus, Tamworth, 1878

Inverell & District Historical Society

Alfred St Leon

In St Leon’s Circus by 1878, the horsemanship of the 19-year-old Alfred was described as:

excellent—the master manner in which he revolves a somersault through two balloons, while his horse is at full speed, puts him forward as one of the first performers on horseback of the day...⁴²

In March 1881, St Leon’s Mammoth Circus, by then the largest circus in the colonies, played opposition to Woodyear’s Circus at Hay, New South Wales. The encounter gave the dashing young Alfred St Leon sight of his opposite number, Vernon Ida Cousins. Before the year was out, 23-year-old Alfred and 19-year-old Vernon Ida had married.⁴³

Alfred St Leon, wedding photograph, Melbourne, 1881

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Vernon Ida Cousins, wedding photograph, Melbourne, 1881

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Vernon Ida was the daughter of Reuben and Jennie Cousins and was so named for the ss Vernon, the 891-ton ship on which she was born at sea on 29 December 1862, as her parents were returning to Australia after touring India. Reuben—his correct name was John Plevy Bumpuss—was “a very good clown of the heavy class but … exceedingly nimble for his weight … while almost all his jests have the charm of being new.”⁴⁴ Jennie was better known as the famed equestrienne, Mdlle La Rosiere, “one of the few lady riders who could execute the difficult and strenuous bounding jockey act to perfection”.⁴⁵ Jennie imparted her equestrian savoir-faire to her daughter Vernon Ida.⁴⁶

John Plevy Bumpuss, aka Reuben Cousins, clown & circus proprietor, Java, 1865

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Jennie Cousins, aka Madame La Rosiere, c.1869

Author’s collection

Vernon Ida joined her husband in the St Leon circus and appeared in the circus ring under her professional name of “Ida Vernon”.⁴⁷ However, mention of Vernon Ida on the circus program was not continuous, no doubt due to her regular bouts of pregnancy. Vernon Ida and Alfred had seven children, six of whom survived infancy, their varied birthplaces revealing the family’s peripatetic existence:

Advertisement for St Leon’s Grand Palace Circus & Menagerie, Wollongong. From Illawarra Mercury, November 1883.By 1883, the cavalcade of St Leon’s “150 men and horses”, brightly painted wagons, menagerie of wild animals and glittering band carriage extended over half a mile in length.⁴⁸ During its summer Sydney season of 1883–84, over £5000 was taken and Matthew St Leon acclaimed “one of the cleverest equestrians” to have visited the city.⁴⁹ In 1885, the St Leon circus was divided into two companies, one of which, St Leon’s Royal Palace Circus, was taken on a year-long tour of New Zealand by the brothers, Gus and Alfred St Leon.⁵⁰ Although the two companies were re-united in 1887, the St Leon circus had passed its zenith and by July 1889, “bad business principally caused by floods whilst travelling” had forced Matthew St Leon into insolvency.⁵¹ Although the family circus was soon re-organised, the end of an exuberant colonial land boom soon triggered the failure of the banks and a decade-long economic recession. At Stoney Creek, outside Mudgee, in March 1891,

“St Leon’s Circus … pitched their tent near the new bridge and duly notified the farmers all round. On the evening of the opening a large crowd assembled near the tent, and on reading the programme retired to hold a meeting. A deputation was appointed to interview the proprietor and inform him that his charge of 2s. was excessive, that one and all were willing to pay the level shilling, but that if he were resolved to adhere to the two, they meant to ‘strike’ for home again. Wisdom prevailed, and he took the shilling. His seats were full, and the audience enjoyed themselves. Who will say after this that there is no good in unionism?”⁵²

With their growing families to support, each of the three St Leon brothers sought other opportunities.

After periods spent with Perry’s Circus (1893) and Abell & Klaer’s Circus (1894), Alf St Leon and his young family toured Tasmania early in 1895 with a circus organised by the entrepreneur Frank M. Clark, under the name of “Burton’s Circus”. Upon its return to the mainland, the Burton company became the nucleus of Wirth’s Pacific Circus organised by Harry Wirth to tour the Pacific Islands. Wirth chartered the steamer Katoombafor the voyage to New Caledonia from where the company shipped for the Fiji Islands and Hawaii. The money made in Honolulu was lost on the subsequent visit to Japan. Wirth was heavily in debt by the time his Pacific Circus began visiting the seaports of China. On the last day of the company’s visit to Shanghai, a horrible, hot day, Wirth became delirious with sunstroke and died. The company broke up. Some of its artists returned to Australia but Alf St Leon and his family continued their wanderings throughout the Far East. Joining Willison’s Great World Circus, the family again toured China and Japan. The final performance of Willison’s Great World Circus in Japan was purportedly given in the Imperial Gardens at Kyoto.⁵³ Willison then shipped his company to Honolulu.⁵⁴ In May 1898, from Honolulu, Willison wrote to the New York Clipper:

... We have just finished a highly successful tour of the Hawaiian Islands, visiting towns where the name ‘circus’ had never been heard of. Transportation has been the great difficulty experienced, but the plantation managers have assisted where transport companies failed to connect … We have just returned to Honolulu in time to get the [Spanish-American] war news... So, it has been decided to switch off and go back to Australia, the country where this show first saw the light. Nearly all the performers are Australians and have been away from their native land quite a few years, and are looking forward to their return with glad hearts...⁵⁵

But there was a last-minute change of plans for Willison’s did not return to Australia. Its next port-of-call was Vancouver where, soon, the circus was dissolved and, once again, Alf St Leon and his family were left on their own resources.

The St Leon Family, Boonton, New Jersey c.1900 [Alfred, Vernon Ida, Elsie May, George and Ida Jennie]. Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

America

Organising a circus of its own—St Leon’s Australian Circus—the family crossed the border into Washington state to enter the United States and from there took their acrobatic act onto the Orpheum vaudeville circuit.⁵⁶ By this time Alf St Leon, his wife Vernon Ida, and three of their children, Elsie May (14), George (8) and Ida Jennie (4) were performing together as an acrobatic troupe.⁵⁷

The Five Famed St Leons, USA, c.1902 [Ida Jennie standing at rear, right]

Wirth Collection, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Letter of Alfred St Leon to William P. Hall, dated Chicago, 25 January 1905

Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin

Ida Jennie began her circus training as a contortionist. As she grew, she added tumbling, wire walking and trapeze to her accomplishments. At 10, she began training as a bareback rider.⁵⁸

The first decades of the 20th century saw the circus reach its zenith as America’s most popular form of entertainment.⁵⁹ By 1900, America had more railroad track than all of Europe, including Russia, and bigger shows with greater wonders could visit every corner of the nation. While railroads could profitably bring the circus train to town, streetcars could bring the town to the circus. A circus just had to let the people know it was coming and bring the latest acts, music, songs, jokes and sideshow exhibits with it.⁶⁰

It was against this backdrop that Alfred St Leon and his family landed their first circus engagement and began their rise in American show business. Billed as “The Australian Wonders”, the family of “acrobatic artists and riders” and its trained monkey “Jocko”, opened with W.H. Harris’s World Famous Nickel Plate Shows in Chicago in April 1900. ⁶¹

From Chicago, the Nickel Plate Shows, a railroad circus carried on 10 cars, started on its tour of the United States. In advance of each town visited, the advertising men placed elaborate lithographs, emblazoned with circus scenes, in store windows and on billboards. On “circus day”, the circus band headed a colourful parade, seated atop its elegant bandwagon decorated with carvings, gold leaf and mirrors and drawn by a team of camels. Tickets to the circus cost 10 or 20 cents and another 10 cents to see the sideshow and menagerie. Under a four-pole “big top”, the performance was given under gasoline lights in a ring of sawdust enclosed by an “old-time” ring bank of dirt.⁶²

Courier for the William P. Hall Shows, 1905. Mark St Leon collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.After two seasons with the Nickel Plate Shows, 1900 and 1901, the family spent the next two circus seasons, 1902 and 1903, with Forepaugh & Sells Bros, America’s third largest circus. This three-ring circus opened its 1902 season in Madison Square Garden.⁶³ Among the 183 performers were The Five St Leons—Alf, his wife Ida, and their children, Elsie, George and Ida Jennie. Previously promoted as “Australian wonders”, the family was now promoted to an unsuspecting American public as “one of the greatest creations in Arenic Art by La Belle France” and comprised:

unquestionably the handsomest acrobats in the world. They augment their perfection of face and form with the most elaborate costumings ever seen in the arena. Their feats of strength, agility and general proficiency in athletic and acrobatic work places them easily at the head of the most pleasing performers of their class that Europe has sent to this country. They are the beau ideals of polite performers.⁶⁴

Following Forepaugh-Sells, Alfred St Leon and his family were engaged for the season 1904 by another large circus, The Great Floto Shows.⁶⁵ For the season of 1905, they were on the payroll of the Great William P. Hall Shows. A horse dealer of Lancaster, Missouri, Hall had made a fortune supplying the British army with horses and mules during the Boer War and then supplying the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair with several hundred horses for a popular Boer War re-enactment.⁶⁶ Over the winter of 1904–05, Hall organised The Great William P. Hall Shows, and opened in Lancaster on the evening of Monday, 6 May 1905.⁶⁷ A few weeks later, the New YorkClipper reported:

... The acts put on by the St Leon family of acrobats, and which is the feature of the Hall programme, is a great drawing card, and brings forth great applause from the audience. It certainly deserves great credit for wonderful achievement in this line of work...⁶⁸

Although the Hall show reported good business early in the season, receipts tapered off. The year 1905 was a poor one for circuses and travelling shows generally, especially in the central states due to crop failures. The show train was involved in an accident and the tent was twice blown down. From Iowa, the Hall show returned to Missouri to close where it began, in Lancaster, on 30 August 1905 and did not tour again.⁶⁹

The St Leons returned to New York and the approaching winter to await the spring and the start of another annual touring season. Fortunately, an offer came to tour a warmer Cuba over the winter with the “Barnum of Cuba”, Antonio Pubillones. The family sailed for Havana to open at the National Theatre on Friday, 9 November 1905.⁷⁰ The reputation of the “San Leons” (as the Cubans called the family), equestrians and acrobats, preceded them.

Returning to the United States, the family travelled to Peru, Indiana, to join The Great Wallace Show for its annual touring season, inaugurated at the Wallace winter quarters, on 21 April 1906.⁷¹ Owned by Ben E. Wallace, The Great Wallace Show was a notorious “grift” show which hired professional pickpockets to work the crowds and employed ticket sellers who sold tickets from a ticket wagon window above eye level so that patrons would not see their change being miscounted. The more moral, family-oriented circuses forbade gambling, swearing, drinking, sloppy dress and fraternisation with “towners” and were often a more wholesome place in which to raise children than many of America’s cities and towns. However, probably unwittingly, Alf St Leon and his family found themselves employed in this “grift” show for the American circus season of 1906.⁷²

Courier for the Great Wallace Shows, 1906 (left) and Ida Jennie and George St Leon performing cakewalk dance on the tightwire, Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, c.1908. Both Author’s collection.

After the Wallace engagement, Alf St Leon and his family made another visit to Cuba for Pubillones over the winter of 1906–07. The family acts included an acrobatic act, double trapeze, and an act of two horses guided by “two beautiful young ladies”, the sisters Elsie and Ida Jennie, dressed in costumes decorated with electric lights.⁷³

For the season of 1907, Alfred St Leon once again joined Forepaugh-Sells. Elsie did some “pretty work” on horseback. George and Ida Jennie performed a clever wirewalking act with a cakewalk dance at the finish.⁷⁴

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Ida was baptised Ida Jennie St Leon Jones. In some records. “Jennie” was spelt as “Jeannie”. She was also known as “Ida Jane St Leon”. [Sydney, Anglican Parish Registers, 1814–2011].

2. Kwint, Marius, 2002, ‘The Legitimisation of the Circus in Late Georgian England’, Past & Present, No. 174, February-March, p.78.

3. Speaight, George, 1980, A History of Circus, London: The Tantivy Press, p.34.

4. An Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds and the Relief of the Poor and Impotent, 14, Eliz. 1, c. 5, 1572.

5. Hartnoll, Phyllis and Found, Peter [eds.], (1992), The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6. Stoddart, Helen 2000, Rings of Desire: Circus History and Representation, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.49, 50.

7. Bemrose, Paul, 1992, Circus Genius: A Tribute to Philip Astley, 1742–1814, Newcastle-Under-Lyme: Newcastle-Under-Lyme Borough Council, p.46.

8. Hoh, La Vahn G., and Rough, William H., 1990, Step Right Up! The Adventure of Circus in America, White Hall, Virginia: Betterway Publications Inc., p.70; Speaight, 1980, 112–15.

9. Saxon, Arthur H., 1968, Enter Foot and Horse: A History of Hippodrama in England and France, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp.1–29.

10. Speaight, 1980, p.38.

11. Kwint, 2002, p.114.

12. Cornwall Chronicle, 3 January 1846.

13. Cornwall Chronicle, 1, 29 December 1847.

14. Archives Office of Tasmania: CSO 24/4/58; Cornwall Chronicle, 11 March 1848.

15. Finn, Edmund G. ‘Garryowen’, 1888, repr. 1988, The Chronicles of Early Melbourne, 1835 to 1852: Historical, Anecdotal and Personal, Melbourne: Ferguson & Mitchell, pp.489–90.

16. Clamp, P. G., 1984, ‘Climbing boys, childhood, and society in nineteenth century England’, Journal of Psychohistory, Vol. 12, No. 2, Fall, pp.199–200.

17. Morning Post, 15 May 1818.

18. Tasmania Archives: CON33/1/44; National Archives: HO9/14.

19. Van Diemen’s Land, Marriages, 1848, #1789.

20. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October 1850.

21. Australian Town & Country Journal, 3 August 1904.

22. Bathurst Free Press, 27 September 1851.

23. Finn, 1888 repr. 1988, p.489.

24. Geelong Advertiser, 1 December 1852.

25. Serle, Geoffrey, 1977, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851-1861, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, p.167.

26. Anon., ‘One who was there’, The Australasian Bandsman, 26 October 1923.

27. Burke, Peter, 1994, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot, Ashgate

28. Gregory, Helen, 1985, Goanna: The Genuine Bush Remedy, Brisbane: J.C. Marconi Company, p.1.

29. Mudgee Liberal,6 July 1858.

30. Ovens & Murray Advertiser, 22 March 1859.

31. Ovens & Murray Advertiser,29 March 1859.

32. Morrison, 1867, cited by Cannon, Michael, 1973, Life in the Country. Australia in the Victorian Age: Volume 2,South Melbourne: Thomas Nelson Australia Ltd, p.247.

33. Wagga Wagga Express,12 January 1861.

34. Mercury, 2 April 1863; Cornwall Chronicle, 29 April 1863.

35. Cornwall Chronicle,21 March 1863.

36. Gippsland Guardian,2 September 1864.

37. Argus, 27 January 1865.

38. Argus, 30 January 1865.

39. Ovens & Murray Advertiser,11 June 1868.

40. Wagga Wagga Advertiser, 6 October 1869.

41. Northern Argus, 19 June 1874.

42. Richmond River Express, 11 May 1878.

43. Registrar-General, Victoria, Marriages, 1881, #4565.

44. Bendigo Advertiser, 18 March 1865.

45. Pattison, J. Grant, 1939, Battler’s Tales of Early Rockhampton, Melbourne: Fraser and Jenkenson Pty Limited, p. 89.

46. Hobart Mercury, 4 March 1873.

47. Launceston Examiner, 2 February 1884.

48. Colac Herald, 19 January 1883.

49. Sydney Morning Herald, 5, 10 January 1884.

50. New Zealand Herald,9 October 1885.

51. Argus, 20 August 1889.

52. Sydney Mail,4 April 1891.

53. Unsourced clipping, Locke collection, New York Public Library.

54. Hippisley Coxe, Anthony, 1980, A Seat at the Circus, 1980, London: Macmillan, p.39.

55. New York Clipper, 21 May 1898.

56. Unsourced clipping, Harvard Theatre Collection.

57. Sunday Tribune, 27 February 1910.

58. King, Floyd, ‘Ring and Stage are Close Kin’, Billboard, 19 December 1914.

59. Hamlin Garland quoted in Culhane, John, 1989, The American Circus: An Illustrated History, New York: Henry Holt & Company, p.142.

60. Culhane, 1989, p.163.

61. New York Clipper, 31 March 1900.

62. Charlie Duble, ‘The W. H. Harris World-Famous Nickel Plate Show: A Circus Day of Forty-Seven Years Ago’, Hobby Bandwagon, Vol. 3, No. 8, September 1948.

63. Billboard, 12 April 1902.

64. Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin, Courier.

65. Los Angeles Evening Express, 12 March 1904.

66. R. E. Cams, ‘An interesting account of the William P. Hall circus boneyard’, Bandwagon, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1942.

67. Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin, Program File, P8.

68. New York Clipper, 15 July 1905.

69. Pfening III, Fred D., ‘William P. Hall’ in Missouri Historical Review, Journal of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri: Spring 1968.

70. Diario de la Marieo Marana, 9 November 1905.

71. Billboard, 12 May 1906.

72. Hoh, La Vahn G and Rough, William H., 1990, pp.140–41.

73. Diario de la Mari Marana, 9 November 1906.

74. Variety, 26 October 1907.

The Alfred St Leon family, New York, 1908. From left Ida Jennie, unidentified, George, Vera, Vernon Ida, Elsie May and Alfred, seated

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Scene from Polly of the Circus, c.1909

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Polly of the Circus

At the close of the 1907 season, the St Leon family returned to New York and were engaged by Frederic Thompson for his production of Polly of the Circus, a three-act drama adapted from the popular novel by Margaret Mayo. The story of Pollyrequired the execution of live circus scenes on the stage by the family. The open contract with Thompson would keep the family engaged for several years.¹ Polly of the Circus had its initial performance in Washington D.C. on 10 December 1907 and two weeks later opened at the Liberty Theatre, New York.²

Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, c.1910. Author’s collection.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1872, Frederic Thompson had studied architecture before falling into theatrical management. With the fortune he made from his first entrepreneurial success, Brewster’s Millions, Thompson built Luna Park on New York’s Coney Island, the first large summer amusement park of its kind in the world.³

The 20-year-old Mabel Taliaferro, one of America’s leading actresses since childhood, played the role of Polly for its first two seasons, 1907-08 and 1908-09. Taliaferro had toured Australia in 1906 with William Collier’s company, as the leading actress in Collier’s productions of The Dictator and On the Quiet.⁴ On her return, she met Thompson at Coney Island and two weeks later, in November 1906, they married.⁵

Mabel Taliaferro, as Polly in Polly of the Circus, 1908

Author’s collection

Mabel Taliaferro, as Polly in Polly of the Circus, 1908

New York Public Library, New York

Polly of the Circus told the story of Polly, a young rider injured by a fall from her horse when her circus visited a small mid-western town. At the parsonage opposite the circus lot, she is left in the care of a young minister, to recover as the circus continues on its way. Finding herself in the midst of the staid community that is now her home, the young minister becomes her most promising hope for the future. To the annoyance of his parishioners, the minister is drawn to the circus girl, uneducated but intelligent and pure-hearted. To save the minister from their wrath, Polly flees the parsonage and returns to the circus to take her place as a performer again. The play’s climax came towards the end of the three acts with a 45-second explosion of circus activity in a make-believe circus tent on the stage featuring the ‘The Famous St Leon Family of European Acrobats’. Ida Jennie’s older sister, Elsie, performed the circus riding for Mabel Taliaferro. The St Leons leaped on and off their horses loping around the make-believe circus ring. In the midst of this performance, the minister suddenly appears and extracts Polly. The make-believe circus was then cleared away in an incredibly brief time to leave the final scene, a vacant circus lot.⁶ The curtain falls upon the minister and Polly as they stand on the deserted circus lot in a final happy union, watching the circus wagons disappearing into the distance.

Scene from Polly of the Circus, 1908. Author’s collection.

After the inaugural 1907-08 season with Polly of the Circus, the St Leon family returned to New York to perform at Luna Park on Thompson’s Coney Island for the summer of 1908. Luna Park featured an outdoor circus situated beneath other attractions such as Shoot the Chutes and the Scenic Railway.⁷ Before the summer was over, the St Leon family presented Ida Jennie performing a double jockey and hurdle act with her older sister, Elsie. Until then, Ida Jennie had mostly been seen performing as a tightwire walker, parasol in hand. As the two sisters closely resembled each other, each had to wear a different coloured ribbon so that the ringmaster, their father, Alf, could distinguish them as they performed.⁸ A photograph published in Variety showed the two girls posing on a single horse, along with a lengthy caption:

It isn’t often two sisters (who are sisters) are seen in a double riding act on one horse in the ring … Both girls are of the St Leon family, under the direction of Alf St Leon … His accomplished family can give an entire circus performance if called upon. They are riders, wirewalkers, acrobats and lots more besides of value under canvas or upon a stage. Elsie is a principal rider of distinguished reputation. The interest in the double appearance centers [sic] on her sister. Both are blondes and, on the evening seen, the girls were dressed in yellow and purple, making an attractive picture while performing upon a handsome white horse under the myriad of electrics [sic] in the ring set over the lagoon at the park. Ida Jennie gives promise of reaching Elsie’s expertness and confidence upon the horse’s back. At present she is not certain enough for the act to become spectacularly sensational. Elsie giving all attention to Ida Jennie to inspire confidence and prevent mishap. The girls are very pretty and it becomes a ‘sight’ act of large value, holding the crowd always gathered around the railings enclosing the small body of water. Elsie is an easy graceful rider of striking appearance in ring costume and in her single ‘principal’ act is the big feature of Luna this summer, where the Family has been playing since the park opened.⁹

Ida Jennie St Leon, performing on Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, from the Burr McIntosh Monthly, September 1909

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ida Jennie (l) and Elsie May St Leon (r), in double equestrian act on Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, from Variety, 25 August 1908

New York Public Library, New York

The family finished its summer engagement at Luna Park in time to open with the 1908-09 season of Polly of the Circus on Broadway on 5 September.¹⁰ Once again, Mabel Taliaferro was the leading lady but she had spawned an understudy. When she was not performing on the stage, the 14-year-old Ida Jennie hung around the wings to absorb the stage atmosphere and listen intently to Taliaferro as she spoke the words of Polly, until it was her time to perform in the on-stage circus ring. In Polly, Ida Jennie, a genuine circus rider, saw and understood something of herself.

Late in 1908, in a vaudeville house at Albany, New York, Alf St Leon fell seriously ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. Removed to a sanatorium at Rutland, Massachusetts, the Australian circus man died on Sunday, 14 February 1909.¹¹ Alf ‘was highly respected among show people and a gentleman of the old school’ and one of the best known of circus men who ever stood in a ring.¹² Laid to rest in Maple Grove Cemetery on Long Island, the family erected a striking tombstone over his grave.¹³

Gravestone for Alfred St Leon, Maple Grove Cemetery, New York, NY

Author’s collection

So persistent was Ida Jennie in observing Polly of the Circusfrom the wings that, eventually, she could recite every line of the play and she began to attract the interest and patronage of the play’s leading lady. As Mabel Taliaferro recalled:

She never hurried away from the theatre when her act in the stage circus ring was over, but remained back of the scenes in her costume, keeping track of every tick in the final evolution of the play. Her dainty personality and the fact that I felt that the part I was interpreting in the play was the little girl’s own real role in life gradually drew me to her... I was astonished when she told me she had memorised my part in its entirety … Although I could see many flaws in her work, I saw enough to convince me that my judgement of her ability was right … I did not want to overburden her mind at the outset with the heavy works of Shakespeare, but I urged her to read something good every week and to talk the novel or play over with me subsequently... Then I made her stop going to vaudeville shows, to which she had taken a fancy, and got her to go with me, whenever the opportunity presented itself, to see good plays. At such times, I would point out to her the subtleties and graces and tricks of acting... I took the child to church so that she might get the atmosphere necessary in the play. The circus atmosphere, of course, she had in her soul. That was born in her. But I wanted her not only to act the other side of the role but to feel it as well … It took a long time to work up this other side of the girl’s personality and to blend it with her circus side, but although the evolution of the complete Polly came slowly, I could see all the while the development of the sentimental in her and its gradual dominance over her pure circus girl self. So, the budding soul of the woman began to show in the makeup of the child and slowly the tinselled falsity of her earlier youth in the canvas-and-sawdust sphere faded from her. Not that she lost her enthusiasm and pride in herself as a girl of the circus and not that her riding ability did not continue to be a source of real joy to her, but that there came to her the realisation that there were other things in life than those that follow in the ruts of the red wagon caravan...¹⁴

An undated clipping in the Harvard Theatre Collection told the story a little differently. When Mabel Taliaferro suddenly fell ill one evening the stage manager, realising that Ida Jennie was up in her part, asked if she could do it. It would not hurt since they were playing the small town of Waterbury, Connecticut. When Miss Taliaferro recovered, she telephoned her husband to say that the show had a ‘real’ Polly. Ida Jennie was permitted to rehearse frequently and, after seeing her perform, Thompson immediately decided to obtain a new play for his wife and replace her with Ida Jennie as Polly.¹⁵

Ida Jennie St Leon as Polly in Polly of the Circus, c.1909

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ida Jennie St Leon as Polly in Polly of the Circus, c.1909

New York Public Library, New York

Returning to New York at the end of the 1908-09 season of Polly of the Circus, the St Leon family took up its regular summer role in the outdoor circus at Luna Park when Coney Island opened on 15 May 1909.¹⁶ At the same time, Ida Jennie commenced rehearsals on the stage of New York’s Aerial Theatre for her new leading role in Polly of the Circus.¹⁷ She had to hurry back to Luna Park to give her wirewalking performance each afternoon and evening.¹⁸ After eight months of Taliaferro’s coaching, Ida Jennie was ready to step into the role of Polly.¹⁹ For the next four seasons, the former circus acrobat acted the role of Polly on theatre stages throughout the United States and Canada. In the opinion of George Jean Nathan, the transition was almost unparalleled in the theatre.²⁰

Not yet 17, her role as Polly made Ida Jennie the youngest leading woman on the American stage.²¹ With a voice like Florence Rockwell but a charm and a grace of her own, she was a “delightful” Polly, whether as the slangy little circus waif or as the circumspect young lady into which he grew under the minister’s patronage.²² 

As a true child of the circus, Ida Jennie invested her role as Polly with an added touch of pathos.²³ Furthermore, she both talked and acted in the argot of the circus. Taliaferro had led the beautiful white horse, Bingo II, onto the stage, but Ida Jennie made her entrance standing on its back.²⁴ As an example of the circus argot Ida Jennie spoke in the course of the play, the following conversation takes place between Polly and the minister after she learns that the show will move on and she will be left behind to recover from her injury:

“Kinder tough, ain’t it? How long will it be?” says Polly.

“The doctor can tell better about that when he comes”, answers the young minister.

“Doctor? As bad as that, eh? It’s my wheel ain’t it?”

“Yo’ what?” demands Mandy, the coloured nurse in surprise.

“My wheel - my creeper. Oh golly! That hurts. Is it punctured?”

Then, when Polly learns that John is a clergyman, Ida Jennie exclaims:

“Great Barnum & Bailey! You a sky pilot! Well, I never thought I was talking to one of you guys. How long have you worked here?” she asks.

“I’ve only been here about six months”.

“Six months! Haven’t they got mighty tired of your spiel?”

“I hope they haven’t.”

“Gee! Six months in a burg like this. They must be sick of you or you change your act. Do you do the same stuff all the time, or have you a rep?”

“A rep?” queries the puzzled sky pilot.

“Sure, repertory. Different acts - entries some call them. Why, Uncle Toby - he’s our clown - has got twenty entries.”

“I see. Well, I try to say something new every Sunday”.

“None of your acts is like circus acts, are they? Is there any laughs in your acts?”

“Not many laughs I am afraid. But ministers try to tell their people things which help them and make them forget their week-day troubles for a time.”

“Why, that’s just like the circus business - only circuses draw more people than the churches.” ²⁵

By the end of the 1912-13 season, after four consecutive seasons acting in the title role of Polly of the Circus, Ida Jennie was ready to move on to the “legitimate” theatre stage.²⁶ She handed over the title role of Polly to her older sister, Elsie.²⁷ By that time the name of “Ida St Leon” was ranked ninth amongst the twelve most popular and beautiful women in the United States based on the number of photographs declared best sellers. Invariably, actresses and operatic singers dominated these polls. Ranking behind such luminaries as Billie Burke, who was ranked third, and Ethel Barrymore, who was ranked sixth, Ida Jennie’s photograph was included for the first time on the 1912 list.²⁸ Although she retained her affection for the circus, the cry of Polly against the circus had left a deep impression.²⁹

Ida Jennie St Leon as Polly in Polly of the Circus, The Billboard, 17 May 1913

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Mae Marsh as Polly in silent film Polly of the Circus, 1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

In 1917, Polly of the Circus was made into a silent film by Sam Goldwyn, starring Mae Marsh in the title role with Vernon Steel as the minister.³⁰ Although the film was not a box-office success, it launched Goldwyn’s legendary 40-year career as one of Hollywood’s leading producers.³¹

Finishing Fanny

Ida Jennie was soon offered the title role in a new play by Lee Wilson Dodd, Finishing Fanny, aimed at the ‘fads, foibles, aimless lives and lax ideas’ of New York’s.³² A four-act comedy drama set in New York’s shady Bohemian life, Finishing Fanny told the story of Fanny who, direct from her Sabbatarian training, was thrust into this low life for her ‘finishing’. Despite her paucity of formal theatrical training, the four-foot-four Ida Jennie was ‘exquisite’ and ‘impressive’ as Fanny.³³ Early in the autumn of 1912, Ida Jennie took to the road with the Finishing Fanny touring production.³⁴ But Finishing Fanny proved to be a ‘flivver’ and, without losing a week, Ida Jennie next opened in William A. Brady’s Little Miss Brown. During 1913, Little Miss Brown was such a success that Brady engaged Ida Jennie to play the artistic, word-mangling Amy in a dramatisation of Louisa M. Alcott’s famous novel, Little Women.³⁵

Oliver Morosco’s Theatre Company

Ida Jennie’s next role was the part of Gertrude Mayer in Jack Lait’s Help Wanted, a production of Oliver Morosco’s theatrical stock company.³⁶ In Help Wanted, Gerald R. Scott, a millionaire businessman with a wife and family, cannot resist selecting private secretaries to whom he can ‘make love’. When Gertrude, a pretty but inexperienced stenographer, obtains her first job with Scott, he places her in a responsible position beyond her experience and relegates the wiser Miss Wiggins to do the real work of the office. Gertrude rejects Scott’s advances but is drawn to his stepson and accepts his offer of marriage. Throughout the entire performance, Ida Jennie did ‘not play her beauty harder than her brains’ and remained a simple, unassuming girl trying to get along in the business world.³⁷ The following bouquet may need to be taken cum grano salis:

It appears almost inconceivable that a young woman could play the principal part in one of the big season’s successes, and yet never have attended school for a day in her life. What education Ida St Leon had was taught to her by Al Miaco, a clown 72 years old, who is still doing service with Ringling Bros show. Ida St Leon never had a tutor. She learned geography by travelling. But the former circus rider writes a better letter than most Bryn Mawr girls.³⁸

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, c.1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, c.1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Said the Detroit News: ‘It’s a good clean show even if it does deal with the sex question’.³⁹ In December 1914, Ida Jennie was the subject of a full-page article in America’s leading show business magazine, Billboard in which she drew some sharp contrasts between circus and theatre:

... I love the circus and I like the stage... But oh! those muddy lots and those long parades and the cold dressing tents which we used to have down South in the fall. On the stage it is different, for instance the star’s dressing room, so nice and warm, with a private bath nearby... But I like the people of the circus better than I do the people of the stage... I love to hear the band play good old circus music, Happy Heiney, Thunder and Blazes, and somehow, nowhere else does it sound so nice and sweet as under the big, broad expanse of canvas. You see, with the circus, everybody is happy... Professional jealousy, nothing like that at all. You never see anybody flashing a rusty old contract. And with the circus, nobody ever needs an introduction. Why last, year I was a star in a show and it was nearly Christmas before some of the folks in the company appeared sociable.⁴⁰

Despite her nostalgia, Ida Jennie did not return to circus work. After Help Wanted, she appeared in The Unchastened Woman and starred in a revival of Polly of the Circus at the Burbank Theatre, Los Angeles.⁴¹ About this time, she settled at 601 South Rampart Boulevard, Los Angelos. Her name was listed in the 1916 Los Angelos City Directory, her profession given as ‘actress’.⁴²

Ida Jennie appeared in other Morosco productions, including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Under Cover, Nearly Married, Kick In, The Argyle Case, and A Romance of the Underworld. In Rebecca, she played the lead part ‘with real curls of sunny gold that alone would make the part a go’. Many of these were ingenue roles but The Argyle Case called for more serious work.⁴³

in 1915, Ida Jennie was performing with the Morosco company in Taft, a little oil town near Bakersfield. From his seat in the audience, a mining engineer, Leo M. Rosenburg, looked on in admiration. A year or so later, they met at a party in Los Angelos.⁴⁴

According to the Los Angeles Express, the Morosco company’s next production, John Howard Lawson’s Servant-Master-Lover, was a ‘fantastic hodge-podge’. Its splendid director, Robert Milton, and Morosco’s extravagant production were wasted on ‘a lot of piffle’. The leading players both cracked:

... under the strain. It would take a far greater actress than Miss St Leon can ever hope to be to carry the play to success. She did everything she possibly could to make it go, but the part was miles beyond her.⁴⁵

Mr & Mrs Leon Rosenberg, wedding, Los Angeles, January 1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Program for Mamma’s Affair, Fulton Theatre, New York, March 1920

Author’s collection

Ida’s Marriage

Ida Jennie acted the role of the ‘downstairs’ parlour maid in Upstairs and Down which opened in New York in September 1916, at the Cort Theatre, on 48th Street, just east of Broadway.⁴⁶ Before the season had finished, Ida Jennie suddenly turned her role over to another and returned to Los Angelos.⁴⁷ At 8.30 on the evening of 14 January 1917, in a flower-decked ballroom of the Engstrum apartments, Ida J. St Leon and Leo M. Rosenburg, president of the Hippolito Screen and Sash Company, were married. The bride was attended only by her mother, while Herman Rosenburg, a brother of the groom, gave her away. Immediately following the ceremony, the couple departed for Santa Barbara for their honeymoon before returning to their Los Angeles bungalow.⁴⁸ Later in 1917, Ida Jennie gave birth to their only child, Leo Alfred Rosenburg.⁴⁹

That year, Ida Jennie’s photograph and career details were published in America’s Best 100 Actresses.⁵⁰ With marriage, Ida Jennie declared she had left the stage for good but, the following August, she and her husband separated. Ida Jennie boarded a train for New York to begin rehearsals as the bashful bride in Please Get Married.A few months later, Oliver Morosco engaged Ida Jennie for his production of Rachel Barton Butler’s prize-winning comedy, Mamma’s Affair. The three-act comedy opened in the remodelled Little Theatre, New York, on 19 January 1920.⁵¹

Oliver Morosco’s theatre company, Mamma’s Affair, 1920. Ida Jennie St Leon, fourth from right. Author’s collection.

Mamma’s Affair

Mamma’s Affair told the story of a female hypochondriac, Mrs Orrin, who drains her family of energy and sympathy on the specious grounds that her nerves are to blame. She drives her devoted, self-sacrificing daughter—18-year-old Eve Orrin, played by Ida Jennie, to nervous exhaustion and insists that she marry a young man named Henry even though Eve does not love him. A hard-headed physician, Dr Jansen, is called. He announces that ‘Mamma’ is quite healthy but obsessed with self-analysis and ‘taking something’ to relieve her mind. Separating ‘Mamma’ from those around her, he then realises that Eve is at the point of a nervous breakdown. He prescribes fresh air, sunshine and wholesome food for her but, before long, comprehends her problem: Eve has sacrificed her young life tending to her mother’s imaginary illnesses and is now expected to marry Henry, a man she does not love, just to please her mother. Soon, Dr Jansen and Eve fall in love with each other. The doctor’s personal code of honour does not permit him to appear a ‘cradle snatcher’ and admit his love for Eve who is only half his age. To force Dr Jansen to acknowledge his feelings for her, Eve fakes an hysterical attack which quickly brings Dr Jansen to his senses and he embraces the inevitable. Mamma must live with the situation.⁵²

[The] superb performance of Ida St Leon, playing the young girl was like a star rocket that disengaged itself from the surrounding illuminations. In a special sense the evening was Miss St Leon’s. She is a fair haired roseleaf ingenue- with an ingenuousness that is not thickly compounded of kohl and lipstick—who has, besides, the gift of youth and charm and amazing power for tragic suggestions. She meets the various demands of her part with flexibility and power and a priceless intelligence.⁵³

The seating capacity of the Little Theatre was taxed to its limit and the play soon had to be moved to a larger theatre, the Fulton.⁵⁴ On the strength of her appearance in Mamma’s Affair, Ida Jennie was hailed as ‘one of the really promising discoveries of 1920’ and was ‘likely to go further on the American stage’.⁵⁵ The New York Dramatic Herald said:

With all the praise that has been unloaded on her for her deft and charming acting, Miss St Leon remains just as simple and unfeignedly gracious after her rise to notice as she was before Broadway’s lights winked at her. Her manner is utterly unassuming and its naivete is reflected in a winsome, child-like face that’s as friendly as a handshake. Her golden hair—it’s the English type of corn silk hair—is naturally arranged, and she smiles frequently, though not for the purpose of showing her pretty teeth. Perhaps her unaffected poise is due to the fact that her family has been in show business for several generations and pay as much attention to applause as to the air they breathe.⁵⁶

During the season of Mamma’s Affair,Ida appeared as Alice in four benefit performances of Alice in Wonderland, dramatised by Rachel Barton Butler, for the New York Kindergarten Association.⁵⁷ With about 25 other actors, including Ethel Barrymore, she also appeared in a benefit performance at the Century Theatre to raise funds for the new Navy Club in East 41st Street.⁵⁸

At the height of her theatrical fame, Ida Jennie’s growing reputation was blemished by the publicity given her extra-marital affair with a New Jersey banker:

When taken to task for his coldness to her and asked to say if there was another woman in his life, George McIntyre, the vice-president of the Metropolitan Credit Company, gave his wife Eugenia the frank answer, ‘Yes, four or five...’, she alleged. One of her rivals, says Mrs McIntyre, who lives at 72 Denver Avenue, Newark, was Ida Jane [sic] St Leon, playing the part of Eve in Mamma’s Affair. In a suit for divorce which she has commenced, she named the actress as co-respondent... In one of her affidavits, Mrs McIntyre said that... [after] considerable time and endeavour I found that my husband was overfriendly with Ida Jane St Leon, an actress of No 22 West 52^nd Street, Manhattan. I further investigated and found he was in the habit of seeing Miss St Leon home from the theatre and remaining with her in the apartment until 2, 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning... I was grief stricken and endeavoured to win him back but the more I endeavoured the more firm he was in his determination. He would tell me a divorce was of no consequence in these days...⁵⁹

But nothing more was heard about the matter. Ida Jennie went on a 22-week tour with the Mamma’s Affair company across the United States. After the San Francisco season, she returned to the family home in Los Angeles to rest—and perhaps reconcile—before returning to Mamma’s Affair for the remainder of the 1920-21 season.⁶⁰

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, Mamma’s Affair, 1920

Author’s collection

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, Lightnin’, 1923

Author’s collection

The Wheel

Ida Jennie won the leading role in Winchell Smith’s new comedy The Wheel, a drama in four acts, which opened in Atlantic City on 2 May 1921.⁶¹The following week, the Clipperreported the success of The Wheel with ‘... a cast [that was] very close to perfection...’. Ida Jennie played Kate O’Hara, a Fifth Avenue milliner, who marries Theodore Morton Jnr, a young society man to discover he is addicted to gambling. To teach him the costliness of his passion for the roulette wheel and the absurdity of his theory that someday he would have a big winning, Kate conspires with Edward Baker, a professional gambler, to fit up a gambling room and invite Theodore in to play. Gradually denuded of all his possessions, Theodore learns to his relief that the checks he has signed for $35,000 all went to Kate. He resolves never to gamble again. The self-sacrificing Baker, having made Kate happy, gracefully retires. The Wheel was voted one of the best plays of 1921-22.⁶²

Ida Jennie St Leon, c.1924

Author’s collection

St Leon sisters, Ida Jennie Rosenberg and Elsie May Powers, and Elsie’s husband, Freeman L. Powers, California, 1951

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Lightnin’

Ida Jennie’s last known appearance was in another Winchell Smith play, Lightnin’, which toured the mid-west during 1923.⁶³ According to a 1924 reference, Ida Jennie was ‘still playing in legit’ but she appears to have retired from the stage soon after.⁶⁴ Reconciled, she returned to her husband, son and their Los Angelos home and never worked professionally again, either in theatre or circus. Interviewed in Malibu in 1995, her son Leo recalled:

I think she was happy to get out. My mother made a living as an actress but theatrical business is not profitable unless you are really tops. Mother was a every exuberant person, bubbly, outgoing but never said that she wanted to go back into show business. She did not keep many friends from show business. She was just a housewife and did charity work. In the 1940s, she did acting for a charity theatre company called The Thespians which included Debbie Reynolds.⁶⁵

Grave of Ida Jane Rosenberg, Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, California. Author’s collection.

Ida Jennie Rosenburg died after a brief illness on 19 September 1961 at the age of 67.⁶⁶ Her husband, Leo M. Rosenburg, died on 3 July 1966 at the age of 85.⁶⁷ Both were buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.⁶⁸

Polly of the Circus—Screen Test for ‘Polly’, 1917

In 1917, Sam Goldwyn produced a silent film version of Polly of the Circus, based on the stage production in which Ida St Leon had played the lead role over four seasons. That year, the Australian bareback rider, May Wirth, was a household word throughout the United States, one of the leading stars of the huge Ringling Bros Circus. During the visit of the Ringling circus to Los Angeles, Goldwyn invited May to do a screen test to act the role of Polly in his coming film. May did not get (or perhaps declined) the role, but left to posterity this amazing four-minute screen test. The screen test is now part of the collection of the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

Polly of the Circus—Sam Goldwyn’s 1917 production, starring Mae Marsh as ‘Polly’

Endnotes

1. Variety, 26 October 1907, 15 August 1908.

2. New York Times, 24 December 1907.

3. New York Star, 10 October 1908.

4. Age, 26 May, 18 June 1906.

5. New York Clipper, 9 December 1911.

6. Unsourced clipping. Harvard Theatre Collection.

7. Chicago Journal, 11 September 1908.

8. Variety, 1 August 1908

9. Variety, 15 August 1908..

10. Variety, 15 August 1908; New York Clipper, 5 September 1908.

11. New York Clipper, 27 February 1909.

12. Billboard, 19 December 1914; Massachusetts Death Return 1909, Vol. 83, No. 13, p. 305; Variety, 20 February, 11 December 1909.

13. Variety, 16 October 1909. The grave is located in Selection 985, Lot No 358, Prospect Plot of the Maple Grove Cemetery, Kew Gardens, New York.

14. Nathan, George Jean, ‘Through a star to stardom’, Burr McIntosh, September 1909.

15. O. L. Guernsey, Jnr (ed.), The Best Plays of 1978 to 1979, Dodd Mead and Company, p. 503; Who Was Who in Theatre, 1912-1976, Vol. 4, Gale Research Company, Detroit, Michigan; W. Rigdon (ed.), The Biographical Encyclopaedia and Who’s Who of the American Theatre, James H. Heineman Inc., New York, 1966.

16. New York Clipper, 22 May 1909.

17. New York Telegraph, 18 June 1909.

18. New York Clipper, 22 May 1909; Dramatic News, 12 June 1909; New York Telegraph, 18 June 1909.

19. Dramatic Herald, 12 June 1909.

20. Burr McIntosh, September 1909.

21. Toledo News Bee, 15 March 1910.

22. Toledo Flame, 18 March 1910.

23. Unsourced clipping, Harvard Theatre Collection.

24. Toledo Blade, 15 March 1910.

25. Unsourced clipping dated 15 November 1912.

26. Variety, 29 November 1912.

27. Spokane Review, 14 January 1912; Variety, 15, 29 November 1912; Atlanta Georgian, 26 March 1912; New York Telegram, 23 November 1912.

28. San Francisco Call, 24 December 1913.

29. Atlanta Georgian, 14 September 1910.

30. The American Film Index lists the title, ‘Polly of the Circus’, directed by Charles Thomas Horan and Edwin L. Hollywood, screenplay by Margaret Mayo. None of the St Leon family were engaged in the making of the film.

31. F.N. Magill, Magill's Survey of Cinema: Silent Films, Vol. 2, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Salem Press.

32. Atlanta Georgian, 26 March 1912; Variety, 29 November 1912.

33. Dramatic News, 2 December 1912.

34. New York Clipper, 2 August 1913.

35. Billboard, 19 December 1914.

36. New York Clipper, 22 August 1914.

37. Detroit News, 19 October 1914.

38. Billboard, 19 December 1914.

39. Detroit News, 19 October 1914.

40. Billboard, 19 December 1914.

41. Los Angeles Examiner, 11 May 1915.

42. Los Angeles City Directory, 1916.

43. Los Angeles Examiner, 2 August, 20 October, 6 November 1915, 7 January, 7 March, 20 March 1916.

44. Conversation with Leo A. Rosenburg, Malibu, California, 17 July 1995.

45. Los Angeles Express, 17 July 1916.

46. New York Times, 26 September 1916.

47. Morning Telegraph, 11 December 1916.

48. The Los Angelos City Directory lists Leo M. Rosenburg residing at 2354 W 31st Street between 1917 and 1941 inclusive.

49. California Birth Index, 1905-1995.

50. Conversation with Leo A. Rosenburg, Malibu, California, 17 July 1995.

51. New York Mail,10 December 1919.

52. New York Mail, 20 January 1920.

53. New York Tribune, 20 January 1920.

54. New York Telegraph, 2 February 1920.

55. Unsourced clipping, Locke collection, New York Public Library.

56. New York Dramatic Herald, 15 February 1920.

57. New York Sun, 13 April 1920.

58. New York Clipper, 18 February 1920.

59. New York Evening Journal, 5 April 1920.

60. New York Clipper, 22 September 1920.

61. New York Clipper, 27 April 1921.

62. New York Clipper, 4 May 1921.

63. Daily Iowan, 14 March 1923.

64. Variety, 3 January 1924.

65. Conversation with Leo A. Rosenburg, Malibu, California, 17 July 1995.

66. Los Angeles Times, 22 September 1961.

67. Information from Los Angelos Public Library.

68. Ida Jennie Rosenburg is buried in Space 4, Lot 2553, Acacia, Forest Lawn, Glendale. Her husband, Leo M. Rosenburg, is buried beside her.