In the Wild West days, anything having to do with Shakespeare had to mean class. So when John Elitch decided to build a world-class theater on his 32-acre farm in northwest Denver, he used the Bard’s Globe Theater as his model. The original painted linen curtain depicted a cottage owned by Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife.
The theater, and that curtain, are being restored. Groundbreaking takes place Monday on a $14.2 million renovation that will include the creation of the new Center for American Theatre at the Historic Elitch Gardens.
For decades, America’s oldest summer-stock company was the Elitch Theatre, where some of the biggest stars in the world came to perform not just in one play but as members of an ensemble that would put on as many as 10 plays in a 10-week season.
Here are 10 anecdotes in the storied history of the Elitch Theatre, at West 38th Avenue just west of Tennyson Street:
1. The first leading man in 1897 was James O’Neill, father of playwright Eugene O’Neill (“Long Day’s Journey Into Night”) and great-grandfather of actress Geraldine Chaplin. James was an old friend of owner John Elitch and had attended the 1890 grand opening when the park was a zoo. He promised to return to act in John’s new theater, and he made good, even though John Elitch had died in 1891.
2. In 1896, Elitch’s became the first theater in the West to employ a Vitascope, a precursor to a movie projector developed by Thomas Edison’s company to project animated pictures. These displays became a sensation in Denver.
3. Douglas Fairbanks (born Julius Ullman) was a Denver native who at age 12 would scrub the stage in exchange for a ticket. He got his first acting gig there as a teenager and in 1906, at age 23, was hired into the ensemble that included Sarah Bernhardt.
4. Bernhardt was enticed to Denver to play her most famous role, “Camille” in matinees and “LaSorcier” at night. She had been scheduled to perform that year in San Francisco until the great quake destroyed the theater there. Bernhardt enjoyed helping Mary Elitch feed her bears, so Elitch named a mountain lion kitten after her.
5. The leading man in 1922 was a young Edward G. Robinson, who was nearly fired the first day he arrived for looking what then-owner John Mulvihill called “too swarthy,” a commentary on his sloppy wardrobe. Robinson came back to visit Elitch’s many years later after he had attained stardom.
6. Mulvihill believed audiences would never pay “to watch a man make love to his own wife on stage,” so he made this edict: No leading man could be married to his leading lady. But in 1926, Fredric March eloped to Colorado Springs with Florence Eldridge. He told Mulvihill, “I love this girl too much to take the chance of losing her by waiting till the season’s over.” As promised, one of them was fired (hint: it wasn’t March).
7. Mulvihill required any member of his company to have Broadway experience, a policy he passed down to his son-in-law successor, Arnold Gurtler. One year a company member pleaded to Gurtler on behalf of a nobody named Clark Gable. Gurtler wrote in his notes, “A very fine young man – but he ought to get his ears fixed.” Gable was never hired.
8. For most of its history, the Elitch Theatre was sold out for the season, and control of tickets was often listed in divorce settlements. The box office once got a call from a lady who said she had read in the newspaper about a woman who had died, and since her seats were now, shall we say, available, the caller wondered if she couldn’t have those tickets transferred to her name.
9. In 1951, an ingénue was hired from Philadelphia. Ten days after she arrived, her mother came to town, convinced her daughter would end up stranded in dusty squalor before the season was over. The daughter? Grace Kelly, future Princess of Monaco. But her mother was captivated by the beauty of Elitch’s and stayed the entire summer with her daughter in a rented basement at 4020 Raleigh St. Kelly rode her bicycle to the theater each day. One year later, she was starring in “High Noon.”
10. Helen Bonfils, then owner of The Denver Post, a Broadway producer and namesake of Denver’s Bonfils Theatre, was associated with the Elitch Theatre from 1934 to 1954 as an actress and manager. She married her husband, longtime Elitch director George Somnes, in the rose garden of the Gurtler home at 4209 W. 38th Ave. It was great fun for Denver audiences to see the pair perform together in “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” with Bonfils playing Somnes’ nurse. He would call out to Bonfils – “Oh, Miss Bed Pan!” – and an uproarious cheer would erupt from audiences unaccustomed to hearing the dignified owner of The Post referred to in such a way.
Sources: “Denver’s Elitch Gardens: Spinning a Century of Dreams,” by Betty Lynne Hull;
“The Elitch Garden Story: Memories of Jack Gurtler,” by Corinne Hunt
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
ROLL CALL OF STARS, 1891-1991
Steve Allen, 1974
Morey Amsterdam, 1968
George Arliss, 1905-06, ’13
John Astin, 1973-74
Sarah Bernhardt, 1906
Helen Bonfils, 1934-47
Raymond Burr, 1944
Sid Caesar, 1971, ’74
Kitty Carlisle, 1965, ’70
Cecil B. DeMille, 1905
Patty Duke, 1973-74
Douglas Fairbanks, 1905
Douglas Fairbanks Jr., 1971-73
Jose Ferrer, 1973
Arlene Francis, 1964-65, ’69
Barbara Bel Geddes, 1964
George Gobel, 1971
Julie Harris, 1978
Kim Hunter, 1975
Gabe Kaplan, 1982-83
Grace Kelly, 1951
Cloris Leachman, 1982-83
Harold Lloyd, 1914
Myrna Loy, 1969
Fredric March, 1926-28
Jayne Meadows, 1974
Patricia Neal, 1947
Maureen O’Sullivan, 1972, ’82-83
Walter Pidgeon, 1964
Antoinette Perry, 1904-05
Vincent Price, 1979
John Raitt, 1977, ’79
Lynn Redgrave, 1975
Robert Redford, 1955
Edward G. Robinson, 1922
Ginger Rogers, 1975
Cesar Romero, 1964
Mickey Rooney, 1972-74
William Shatner, 1975
Gloria Swanson, 1967
Lana Turner, 1977
Joan Van Ark, 1960
Dick Van Patten, 1968
Nancy Walker, 1987
Shelley Winters, 1973, ’83
Jane Wyatt, 1939
ELITCH THEATRE KEY DATES
1880: John and Mary Elitch arrive from San Francisco seeking their fortune. They buy a 32-acre farm owned by William Chilcott in the Highland area of northwest Denver, complete with a small lake and apple orchard.
1890: John Elitch opens Elitch’s Zoological Gardens with animals offered by P.T. Barnum. The circus magnate wintered some of his animals near Sloan’s Lake and offered his surplus to Mary Elitch. After a wildly profitable initial summer, John Elitch dies of a heart attack.
1891: “The Playhouse in the Gardens” opens as a vaudeville and light-opera house.
1897: The theater goes legit with the creation of a
summer-stock acting company, which would offer 10 plays in 10 weeks. The initial production is “Helene.”
1916: John Mulvihill buys Elitch’s from Mary Elitch with the following conditions: She could live there until her death, the name of the park could never change, and two lower boxes containing 14 seats would always be reserved in her name.
1930: Mulvihill dies, and his son-in-law Arnold Gurtler takes over.
1936: Mary Elitch dies.
1963: The Elitch Theatre stops operating as a summer-stock company and switches to single, star-centered performan ces.
1991: The Elitch Theatre closes. A plan to move the historic structure to Auraria is scuttled, and theater alum Debbie Reynolds openly discusses purchasing it.
1994: The amusement park moves to the Central Platte Valley and later takes on the Six Flags name.
1996: The original Elitch property is sold to Perry Affordable Housing with the condition that the theater never be demolished.
2006: Groundbreaking on a two-year, $14 million renovation of the Elitch Theatre and creation of the Center for American Theatre at Historic Elitch Gardens.
Sources: “Denver’s Elitch Gardens: Spinning a Century of Dreams,” by Betty Lynne Hull; “The Elitch Garden Story: Memories of Jack Gurtler,” by Corinne Hunt
Compiled by John Moore
