Chocolat
02-20-2008, 10:14 AM
The History of the Winter Garden Theatre by Bruce Bell
So there I was, fresh off the bus from Sudbury I began working as an usher at the Royal Alexandra Theatre where, as a wide eyed teenager seeking a life in show business, I waited for that big break to come my way. In between watching some of the biggest names in the theatre world strut their stuff across the stage I used to like to roam around that glorious theatre searching for anything that had to do with its past. Maybe I wasn’t fully aware of it then but my other passion in life was history and the Royal Alex was packed full of it. On one of my wandering I opened a rusty old door on the top floor high above the stage in the old scenery storage room and found a box of old programs. As I was flipping through this treasure trove I came across a 1919 ad for a Vaudeville show at a theatre called the Winter Garden on Yonge Street. The ad included a picture of an amazing theatre that looked like it was in the middle of a forest. The Winter Garden, what a whimsical name I wonder what ever happened to it? The address listed said it was just north of Queen on top of Loew’s Yonge Street (now the Elgin) which by the time I arrived on the scene in 1972 was a movie house called The Yonge and the Winter Garden if it still existed was just a myth. I wonder if it’s still there I thought.
I asked some of the old time stage hands at the Alex if they have ever heard of the Winter Garden. The rumour going around was a few years before a theatre was ‘found’, its staircase hidden behind a false wall and that the CBC used it once as a location for its White Oaks of Jalna series. Although it was stripped bare of its seats the magical ambience still survived. I so wanted desperately to see it but when I went to the Yonge Theatre to ask for a tour they said no one was allowed and that it was too dangerous. A few months later I went back to the Yonge Theatre to see Vincent Price and Diana Rigg in Theatre of Blood a crazy movie about an actor who takes revenge on the critics who panned him by killing them off in various theatrical ways. The same usher who told me months before that it was to dangerous to go into the forbidden theatre said I should have been here last week because there was world premier party upstairs in the old Winter Garden for Theater of Blood where they served Bloody Vincents. In the summer of 1973 I also had just missed out on an extra casting call for a Telly Savalas movie of the week The Girl who Cried Murder which later I found out that a scene was shot at the old Winter Garden. One of the many actors who came through the Alex in those days told me back in the ‘60’s he was in a movie called Roses in December that had a scene shot in the abandoned Winter Garden but it was never released. Even though my playground was the Royal Alexandra with all its treasures that went with it I longed to see the Winter Garden. I felt then it was my destiny.
One day not only was I going to see this mythical theatre I was going to play it if and when it ever opened again. Or so I thought being the idealistic teenager hell bent on making a name for myself. The story of the Winter Garden Theatre’s rise and fall and rise again is a perfect acronym for all that is good on how we as Torontonians go about preserving our past. Toronto by the turn of the 20th century now with a population of 200,000 was shifting westward when the City Hall moved from the St. Lawrence Market area to Queen and Bay streets. During this time Vaudeville was reaching its peak as the most prevalent form of entertainment in the city. By it very nature Vaudeville was a grind industry as most of the theatres were pumping out 5 full length shows a day, all day long starting at 11am. Toronto was considered ‘hitting the big time’ on the traveling circuit and we had over 50 theaters large and small to prove it.
But what was needed now was a first class Vaudeville house one to rival anything New York City had. A theatre that not only was beautiful in design but one that could attract an up-market crowd, a theatre that offered only one top billed show a night thus making going to see a Vaudeville show an event. On Monday February 16th 1914 Toronto got that theatre when the Winter Garden opened its doors. Eight months earlier Loew’s Yonge Street Theatre the opulent showpiece downstairs now known as the Elgin opened its doors and ran shows all day long. The two theatres, designed by Thomas Lamb for the New York based Marcus Loew circuit, were based on Loews Corporate headquarters in New York The American Theatre a double-decker theatre complex on 42nd street. Thanks to Marcus Loew’s aggressive booking practices only the biggest names in Vaudeville appeared on his stages. A 16 year old Milton Berle was billed as a droll talker and singer when he played the Winter Garden in 1924 and when he returned in 1930 as a headliner of his own show ‘Get Hot with Milton Berle and is 12 Berle-ing Hot Dancers’ he packed the downstairs theatre. Another act was George Burns together with his comedy partner and wife Gracie who together danced, sang and did their ‘domestic argument comedy’ in September of 1925. But there was one headliner who Marcus Loew had a soft spot for and became his good luck charm as they started out in show business together. She could and did play any of his theaters whenever she wanted, the incomparable Sophie Tucker.
At the time of the Winter Garden’s opening, movies were beginning to share the bill with Vaudeville acts. When the Winter Garden opened in 1914 no one ever thought that Vaudeville was headed for oblivion. And irregardless of that fact we kept on building even bigger vaudeville houses. Two months after the Winter Garden opened the largest theatre in the British Empire the colossal 2,622 seat Hippodrome on Bay Street now the site of the present day City Hall opened for business in April 1914. The Hippodrome, unlike the Elgin and Winter Garden theatres long corridor and narrow frontage, was built to stand out at a distance and its terra cotta and enameled brick façade was topped off with two copper domed towers on each corner. The Hippodrome was the largest theatre in Toronto until 1920 when the Pantages (now called the Canon) just north of the Elgin/Winter Garden opened becoming the largest Vaudeville house in the British Empire. This is when the expression ‘Going to the show’ meant more than just going to see a ‘show’. But it would all come to an end with the arrival of talking pictures. All these great theatres, including the Royal Alex built in 1906 were refashioned into movie houses and the performers the ones that couldn’t find work in radio or talkies hung up their straw hats and canes. On Saturday June 16th 1928 the last Vaudeville show appeared on the Winter Garden stage. The doors were closed and remained shut for the next 60 years. On October 3 1930 the last live show played Loew’s Yonge Street Theatre and for the next 48 years operated as a first run movie house. On March 17 1978 the theatre, while still functioning as a cinema, was re-named the Elgin. Three years later in 1981 the Ontario Heritage Foundation bought the Elgin and Winter Garden theatres with the idea of restoring and using them as a performing arts complex. In June of 1982 the Winter Garden was declared a National Historic Site and a few months later the Elgin received the same designation. In March of 1985 CATS opened at the Elgin for a two year run and the once opulent gold leaf interior that was painted blue and white during its movie house years was now painted black.
In May of 1987 restoration on the entire complex begun including purchasing the seats for the Winter Garden from the Biograph Theatre in Chicago where on July 22 1934 gangster John Dillinger was shot outside of after attending the Clark Gable movie Manhattan Melodrama. Somewhere in the Winter Garden’s auditorium is the last seat Dillinger ever sat in.
After three years of renovations the newly restored Elgin and Winter Garden theatres opened on December 15 1989. The first time I set foot in the Winter Garden was on June 17th 1991 when I attended that year’s Dora Awards for Toronto theatre. From the moment I entered the sumptuous downstairs lobby now named for the architect Thomas Lamb with its grand staircase (bricked up when the Winter Garden was closed) to when I got aboard the gigantic passenger elevator that whisked me up to my destination six stories above Yonge St. I was experiencing what the thousands that came before me once did. Tonight was going to be special. I was finally going to ‘the show’. When I entered the Winter Garden for the first time I was taken aback by its extraordinary fairy tale quality, its roof of leaves, the support pillars that were transformed into tree trunks, the stage surrounded by lattice work and the ceiling mural with its lit moon, everything that the 1919 advertisement had first shown me way back during my Royal Alex days. How magically surreal it all must have been in the days before television, radio and the world wide web to have entered this enchanted world. We are fortunate to still have these stylish and elegant theatres plus the added bonus of the Royal Alexandra and the Cannon standing in our city today. The Hippodrome may be long gone as is Shea’s Victoria, as well as the Regent Theatre, the Majestic, the Grand, the Princess, Shaftsbury Hall and the Royal Lyceum but to have the Winter Garden built as the most beautiful theatre on the continent still standing is a true blessing.
From “Old Toronto Stories”
http://www.brucebelltours.ca/page11.html
There are no coincidences~