Look What Happened to Mabel! - PART I

Sheet music for "Pretty Mollie Shannon"

In the spring of 1902, a firecracker named Mabel Barrison was cast in The Wizard of Oz. The diminutive dynamite was beautiful, a good actress, had a small "talk-like" singing voice, and she was taking no prisoners! 

She was born Eva Maud Farrance, on April 21, 1882, in Toronto, Ontario. She'd gotten a small part in the chorus of Florodora and was ready to climb.

Florenz Ziegfeld's production of The Little Duchess, starring Anna Held, opened on Broadway at the Casino Theatre on October 14, 1901, featuring a score by Reginald De Koven and a libretto by Harry B. Smith. One of the chorus girls was Mabel Barrison, who had been attracting publicity for her duet with Anna Held in the second act, "Pretty Mollie Shannon," an interpolated number with words by George H. Ryan and music by Walter Wolf. While singing this song, Anna Held appeared in the guise of a dirty-faced street gamin, along with Barrison, also dressed as a boy. After its initial run, the show set off on a national tour, eventually finding its way to a three-week run at Chicago's Illinois Theatre starting March 10, 1902. 

By mid-March, Fred Hamlin was busily casting The Wizard of Oz, which was to open at his Grand Opera House in early June, and after seeing The Little Duchess in Chicago, he signed up several of its company to join him for The Wizard of Oz during their summer break, including Harold Morey (who had worked with Julian Mitchell at Weber and Fields) and five of Anna Held's chorus girls: Bessie Wynn, Clara Selten, Mamie Chapin, Grace Kimball, and Mabel Barrison.

Publicity about Barrison's casting began a few days later:

At this time, producer Hamlin and director Mitchell were building a chorus of pretty girls—with some acting ability—that Mitchell could use to populate the land of Oz once he got the show into rehearsals—the libretto was still in great flux. But Hamlin and Mitchell may have been viewing Barrison as a possible understudy for Anna Laughlin's Dorothy. Like Laughlin, Mabel Barrison was tiny, barely five feet tall, very pretty, with a good stage presence—and both young women had played and would continue to play coy and captivating "little girls."

The Little Duchess closed in Chicago on March 29, 1902, and the company moved on to Indianapolis for two nights. Mabel Barrison and Grace Kimball were elated over being cast in The Wizard of Oz—the two girls seemed joined at the hip and ready to celebrate! In Indianapolis the girls met a couple "stage door johnnies." But soon the company was off to its next stop, another two-night stand in Terre Haute, followed by a one-night performance in Louisville, Kentucky, where Mabel and Grace continued their revelry, as reported in the April 12, 1902, issue of The Oshkosh Northwestern:

Three members of Anna Held's Little Duchess company aroused this town from its usual state of languor early one morning this week by calling for about all the liquor on supply in the Louisville house cafe, after which weird noises and strange cries caused the proprietor to grow alarmed and send for the police. 

It was a gala night for the Little Duchess company. One of the men connected with the company and two of the young women, whose duties are to appear shapely and symmetrical in tights, foregathered in one of the rooms of the hotel and made the night a charming affair—that is, a charming affair for them. The other guests disagreed as to the success of the entertainment afforded by the three theatrical folk and sent down a continuous steam of protests.

The Little Duchess men and women sang, danced various naughty dances and otherwise conducted themselves in what was regarded as an unseemly manner. A still alarm sent out by the hotel proprietor brought in the police, and in a few minutes the three noisy performers were hustled to the central station. They were not locked in a cell, but were guarded in the office of Sullivan, chief of detectives. There their manager found them. 

When discovered they were hardly worth redeeming, but the manager seemed to think they might be needed in the next performance and brought them forth and had them sent to the train which was to take the company out of town. . . . 

But the wayward party girls, "carrying an overload of headaches and remorse," apparently missed both the train and the company's next performance in Dayton, Ohio.

What were they to do? Assuming their jobs were probably gone, the girls remembered the two Indianapolis "johnnies," who had money to burn. Arrangements were made for the girls to meet with the Hoosiers in Pittsburgh, where the Little Duchess company was now playing a full week.

The girls decided to go to Pittsburgh, where they hoped either to rejoin the show or to connect with the wealthy, young Hoosiers, or . . . possibly both!

On arrival, the girls found they had been fired from The Little Duchess; their "johnnies" hadn't shown up; and worse, on hearing of the girls' behavior, Fred Hamlin was very displeased.

An undated clipping reported: "Some of The Little Duchess chorus, who misbehaved in [Louisville] last week and were discharged as a consequence, will not be permitted to fill their engagements with The Wizard." 

But that would change. By early mid-May, Paula Edwardes, who was supposed to play the part of Tryxie Tryfle in The Wizard of Oz, had bolted to star in The Show Girl. Hamlin and Mitchell needed a new Tryxie and they rehired Mabel Barrison. Grace Kimball got her job back, too.

Mabel Barrison opened in The Wizard of Oz on June 16, 1902, and played the part of Tryxie Tryfle in Chicago through the summer. She left the show to join the Weber and Fields company at the start of the 1903-04 season in Twirly Whirly. Mabel's trouble-mate in The Little Duchess, Grace Kimball, took over the role of Tryxie Tryfle.

Mabel Barrison at Weber & Fields in Twirly Whirly, February 1903.

Barrison went on to star in Hamlin and Mitchell's next show, Babes in Toyland, and many others, including The Land of Nod, His Honor the Mayor, The Three Graces—and even in a straight comedy, The Blue Mouse, by Clyde Fitch. 

At the start of the 1905-06 season, Mabel Barrison finally took on the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz for a few short weeks, after Anna Laughlin left the show.

But to find out even more of what happened to Mabel, you'll have to wait for Part II.

Mabel Barrison as Tryxie Tryfle in The Wizard of Oz (1902)

NOTE

Some of the events described are from an article published in The Leavenworth [Kansas] Times on April 20, 1902.

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