More Amsterdam Bar room History

Saturday in The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder and on-line Sunday here on The Historians

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf by Bob Cudmore"

Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024

Shakespeare at the golf course
By Bob Cudmore

The Phil Kilfoil Company's Woodland Players from New York City performed Shakespeare's comedy "As You Like It" on the grounds of the Antlers Club in Fort Johnson the night of July 13. 1904.

The private golf course, today known as Rolling Hills, had opened in 1901 on a 90 acre site. The original clubhouse was built that year with a spectacular view of the Mohawk Valley from its veranda.

The play was performed atop a hill overlooking the clubhouse with the woods forming what the Amsterdam Recorder reviewer called "an ideal background" to a grassy stage.
Japanese lanterns lighted the audience "with a soft flickering light" and Minch's orchestra, a local favorite, played popular songs before the show, keeping the crowd entertained while they waited.

When the play began, "powerful calcium lights" illuminated the stage and trees with what the newspaper called "a bright but weird glow, which might be well described as exaggerated moonlight."

It was chilly for July. The performance was originally scheduled the night before but had been rained out.

An estimated 350 people sat on camp chairs to watch Shakespeare's pastoral comedy. Many in the patrons arrived on crowded electric trolley cars from nearby Amsterdam. The audience loved the play, according to a rave review the next day in the Amsterdam Recorder.

"Now that the affair is over," wrote the reviewer, "And has proved an unqualified success, it may not be amiss to state that previously there was just a slight undercurrent of doubt as to the ability of any company traveling as does Kilfoll's at present, to properly present a play of such caliber.

"But the first lines were scarcely uttered when all questions along this score were obliterated, and the audience settled itself for what would have been a theatrical treat under any circumstances, but was doubly so amid scenes so absolutely fitting."

There was apprehension at show time among the actors about the financial solvency of their employer, Woodland Players, owned by the Phil Kilfoil Company of New York City.
The reviewer said the entire company was good but gave special praise to Ivah M. Wills who played Rosalind, F.J. McCarthy as Touchstone and James A. Young as Jacques de Boys.
Two weeks after leaving Amsterdam, theatrical producer Kilfoil was charged with passing bogus checks in Oswego, another stop on the tour.

Kilfoil told reporters, "We have been victims of circumstances and there was no intention of defrauding any persons in Oswego. We have met with poor business and benefit performances have so far proved a failure."

The Oswego and Amsterdam papers reported July 30 that charges were dropped when Kilfoil's business partner, Charles Wiegand, provided funds to cover the checks. Wiegand was described as a supervisor of the New York Central Railroad in New York City.

The Recorder said the actors apparently were among those not getting paid, "The company has been receiving money and one by one the members are leaving Oswego as fast as their remittances arrive. There will be no more Woodland Players, it is said, and both Wiegand and Kilfoil have expressed their intention of abandoning the dramatic field as a non-paying venture."

I have secured funds, said Kilfoil, to meet every obligation incurred by the company.
As for the Fort Johnson outdoor venue, the Antlers golf course prospered for many years but its elegant clubhouse burned to the ground in a 1965 fire. A new clubhouse was built.
Historian Hugh Donlon wrote the replacement clubhouse is smaller and lacked the "spacious veranda that had contributed so much to summer social life of affluent Amsterdamians for 60 years."

Friday, January 19, 2024

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.  Also heard is film maker Nick Spark who lobbied for U.S. government recognition of medical doctor Stewart Alexander whose work chronicling the Bari disaster in southern Italy was the impetus to developing chemotherapy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024

15 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:14AM