The Greenwich Village
Theatre
by Simi Delgado
Across 7th Avenue South
from Sheridan Square, between Christopher St. and West Fourth St. now stands a low-rise
commercial building built in 1931. It occupies the same lot that saw the illustrious
Greenwich Village Theatre go up in November of 1917. Shown above, it was built by
Maguerite Abbott Barker more as a neighborhood playhouse than professional shows. The
first shows were so good they attracted uptown audiences downtown in droves. One of the
most noteworthy was Sinclair Lewis's sharp edged satire, Hobohemia. Lewis was a young unknown then.
The thing responsible
for putting the theatre on the map was The Greenwich Village
Follies, invented and produced for the stage
by John Murray Anderson. In these pre and post World war One days the Lavish Broadway
playhouses competed with more and more money to stage the biggest and most dazzling shows.
Murray had no money, but all the talent he needed to create the very concept of the
intimate revue to New York City. The Follies of Greenwich Village opened in July of 1919,
and starred a popular Village artist, singer-musician Bobby Edwards whose hit "Why be
an Industrial Slave When You Can be Crazy?" Tony Sarge, who gained a great deal of
fame with his marionettes, choreographed a full puppet ballet. His real fame was earned as
the person who designed the first giant balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Bessie McCoy Davis sang "I'm the Hostess of a Bum Cabaret!" It wasn't long
before a "Sold Out" sign hung in the box office window. After a six week run the
show moved uptown to Broadway, which no other Village production had ever managed to do
before.
A second Follies was spun by
Anderson for the 1920 season, and like the first, it also moved to a Broadway . From then
on the Follies was a Broadway only production and renewed itself annually throughout the
'20's.
Back in Greenwich Village
at Sheridan Square, The Greenwich Village Theatre took on a whole new life in
1924. The Provincetown Theatre over on Macdougal Street had seen great success with it's
young star writer Eugene O'Neill.
They took over rental of the Greenwich Village Theatre and premiered O'Neills
Desire Under the Elms, and
The Great God Brown. They tried to keep both theatres open and
found it too much and gave up on the Theatre as the economics were getting worse and the
crash in '29 brought about their demise. By 1930 the end came to the Greenwich Village
Theatre, too.
The building here is all we have to remind us of
days gone by. But it is a familiar site at Sheridan Square. And now that you have seen the
theatre above, you'll see the Square a little differently from now on. I know I do.
Copyright 1997 Simi Delgado. All rights reserved.
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