Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Alabama History & Culture News: March 10 edition





Here's the latest batch of links to just-published Alabama history and culture articles. Most of these articles are from newspapers, with others from magazines and TV and radio station websites. Enjoy!
Remember When: The history of Johnson Park
Johnson came to Alabama where he began his teaching career at the Enterprise High School as coach and teacher. He served as Superintendent of ...


New Adka community to receive historical marker
Coley has served as part of the Alabama Historical Commission since being appointed in 2017 by then-Gov. Robert Bentley. One of the many duties ...


'Big Fish' author Daniel Wallace visits Wallace State March 12
... Read book, “Big Fish: A Novel of Mythical Proportions,” and the 2019 Harper Lee Award recipient, is a nationally-recognized Alabama writer.


Today in History, March 7: Civil rights march in Selma, Alabama violently broken up on 'Bloody ...
... of people in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" march of 1965, saying that America's racial history "still ...


Inside The Museum Preserving Selma, Alabama's Complicated History
The history of Selma, Alabama, is often defined as a long and tumultuous ... The book goes on to describe her capture — a rival tribe tried to make ...

The protest in Marion, Alabama was sparked by the arrest of a minister who was leading efforts to register black people to vote. It ended with the fatal ...

History Professor Looks Back On Four Alabama Suffrage Leaders And Their Fight For The Vote
By Carla Davis. Alabama women today hold political office at local, state and national levels. In 2018, Alabamians elected Gov. Kay Ivey as the state's ...

A Pilgrimage to Montgomery, Alabama
I don't know precisely why this history strikes such a chord with me, but it does, even though I was born and reared in Santa Barbara and have lived here ...

History and Preservation Society making its mark on Lawrence County
Anne Newport Royall, born in 1769, to whom the historic marker is dedicated, relates her experience at Melton's Bluff in her “Letters From Alabama ...


McCarter writes 'Pandamonium' to recount return of baseball in North Alabama
“He brings home our message of 'Minor League Baseball in a Major League way.' We are proud of this work.” McCarter has won “Alabama Sportswriter ...

Wetumpka First Baptist Church to raze historic building damaged by tornado
"Alabama's archive was second only to Virginia's in its size and scope; unfortunately, nearly 40% of the buildings documented since 1935 have been ...

Women's History Month: 18th US Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin has roots in Alabama
Women's History Month: 18th U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin has roots in Alabama. By Donna Cope. March 5, 2020. Women's History ...

Historic Selma Pilgrimage Preparations Underway in Selma
From the West Alabama Newsroom–. The city of Selma will showcase another aspect of it's rich history soon. That's because the 45th annual Historic ...

'Pandamonium' chronicles launch of Rocket City Trash Pandas
“Pandamonium: Engineering Pro Baseball's Return to the Rocket City,” a book chronicling the Trash Pandas' arrival in Madison, will be released in ...

The Legacy of George Wallace
Despite this history, Wallace's name still appears on buildings across Alabama – including in Birmingham, at the University of Alabama's Bell-Wallace ...

Remembering author Charlotte Miller, a victim of the 2019 Beauregard tornado
She was a regionally renowned storyteller who wrote the kind of old stories most Alabama writers don't anymore, according to Randall Williams, ...


Huntsville Civil Rights driving tour
A lot has obviously changed in six decades, but the history last forever. ... had never gone to school together, in the history of Alabama,” said Hereford.


Bill would designate Alabama Black Belt a heritage area
(AP) — Alabama's Black Belt region would become a National Heritage Area ... historian's work preserves moments from Alabama's early history.


Library event draws book lovers, features well-known writers
Library event draws book lovers, features well-known writers ... bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson who wrote “Gods in Alabama” and Thomas Mullen, ...



Kenneth Jones' ALABAMA STORY Combines Homecoming, Debut At ASF
Alabama Shakespeare Festival presents Alabama Story by Kenneth Jones on the ... to ban a gentle children's book, in which a black rabbit marries a white rabbit. ... The Montgomery premiere of Alabama Story is a true homecoming!
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Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Actress Viola Allen

Tallulah Bankhead was a Huntsville native who grew up to become a major figure in British and American theater from the early 1920's until the early 1960's. I've written several blog posts about her, including this recent one on her appearances on the Birmingham stage. In this post I want to talk about another female theatrical star who was also a Huntsville native.

 Viola Emily Allen was born in that city on October 27, 1867. Her parents were actors, Charles Leslie Allen [1830-1917] and wife Sarah. I did not find any of the three in Alabama in the 1870 census, and by the time Viola was three years old the family was back in Boston where her father was born. 

 He made his first professional appearance in Uncle Tom's Cabin in Troy, New York, in 1852. During his long career he shared the stage with such theatrical luminaries as Edwin Booth and Edwin Forrest, in plays like Hamlet and King Lear. In the 1864, 1865, 1866 seasons Allen worked at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. Perhaps in the 1867 season he was on tour with a play and a pregnant wife who just happened to give birth in Huntsville. I'm not sure what else would bring actors from the northeast to a town in a war-ravaged region in the midst of Reconstruction. The finding aid for a collection of Allen's playbooks at the University of Buffalo is here.

 After education in Boston, then boarding schools in Toronto and New York City, Viola Allen had her initial professional role at 15 via her father's connection. He was in a production of Esmeralda at a theater in New York in 1882. The actress playing the title role became ill, and the stage manager asked Allen's father if Viola could fill in. That successful debut attracted attention, and Viola went on to a long career of Shakespearean and other roles until she retired in 1916. Her career included over two dozen plays on Broadway. Her final part there was Lady Macbeth. 

 Allen starred in one silent film, The White Sister, released on June 15, 1915. The six reel film was based on the successful 1909 Broadway play of the same name by F. Marion Crawford and Walter Hackett in which Allen also starred. Crawford wrote the original novel. The film is presumed lost. 

In 1905 she married Peter Duryea, and they remained married until his death in 1944. After retirement Allen supported various theatrical and charitable groups. She died on May 9, 1948, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. 

You can see numerous photographs of Allen at the New York Public Library's Digital Collections. 

 The lives of Viola Allen and Tallulah Bankhead have similarities but also  differences. Both were born in Huntsville. They both started acting careers very young, Allen on the stage at 15 and Bankhead in a silent film at 16. Both had long careers, although Bankhead's extended almost twice as many years. Both women came from prominent families, one in the theater and the other in politics. 

 Although most of Bankhead's career was in theatrical work, she also made many more films than Allen. Finally, Bankhead's ties to Alabama were much stronger than Allen's. She returned to the state many times to visit family and to act in touring theatrical productions. I would be surprised if Allen ever return after moving away with her family at the age of three. 




Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections



Allen in the film version of The White Sister

Source: IMDB

VIOLA ALLEN DURYEA
1867-1948
HER VOICE WAS EVER SOFT,
GENTLE AND LOW

She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County, New York

Source: Find-A-Grave
Photo by Jody Lutter



Allen in Daughter of Heaven

Source: Wikipedia


The following profile of Allen by Henry Tyrrell appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine February 1913.








The Daughter of Heaven, disguised in martial aspect and a heavy harness of armor, descended from the beleaguered ramparts of Nanking at the Century Theater, and stepped out of the gorgeous poetic atmosphere of Pierre Loti and Mme. Judith Gautier's Chinese love-tragedy into a severely modern and unimaginative stage reception-room for a few minutes' human chat. Only her eyes and voice were natural; but these would suffice for instant identification by anyone who had ever seen and heard Viola Allen. "'The Daughter of Heaven' always appealed to me strongly as just my kind of play and my kind of part," she said after the preliminaries of greeting were over. "It is Romeo and Juliet reincarnated in the terms of an art and a civilization so ancient that by comparison Shakespeare's romances seem strangely modern. But to me it is just as human in its emotions as they are. Of course there is more literary formality about this piece, even in the French original - and any such work is bound to lose something in translation. However, since the authors were well content that their play should have its first production on any stage by English-speaking actors, and Pierre Loti himself expressed unreservedly to us, to us and to the public his admiration of the result - why, there's glory enough for us all, don't you think?"

"Surely. And what is the significance, or, rather, the effect - of the popular price admission schedule introduced by the present management in a millionaires' playhouse, which was also handicapped with a reputation for harboring high-brow stuff?"

"The effect," answered the actress triumphantly, "is that now I can point to real, big, responsive audiences - like this you see to-day - and enjoy the supreme satisfaction of saying, "I told you so! I never knew it to fail. Put within the public's reach something you have conviction in, something that has made a hit with you, and it will make a hit with them. I don't care whether it is high-browed, or low-browed, so long as it is human."



Viola Allen ought to know, for she has been in all these and other kinds of theatrical experiences during practically the whole period of a restless and changeful generation. Her New York debut was in "Esmeralda" when she was fifteen. Between then and now is a long stretch, a wonderfully diversified career, especially interesting as we have reason to believe that its full culmination is yet to be achieved, although her place is already secure in that small but supreme group of our native actresses whom you could number on your five fingers, and which includes Maude Adams, Julia Marlowe, Ada Rehan, and Minnie Maddern Fiske.



Here is a striking, a splendid record. Lit with lurid glare or vibrant with coarse-grained passion in the Hall Caine outpourings - "The Deemster," "The Christian," "The Eternal City" - it has risen to serene classic heights in the Perdita of Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale," found the sacred fount of tears in "The White Sister," and donned the trappings of garish society in such artificial comedies as "The Toast of the Town" and "The Comedy Mark." Even the startling and spectacular had her recognition, though not to say any great effect, in Louis N. Parker's "Lady of Coventry," a discreet version of the same horse-back riding Eve who figures in Mascagni's most elusive recent opera, "Ysobel." "Shenandoah," "Twelfth Night," "Aristocracy," "The Rivals," and "The Hunchback," were also on her road to fame.


Like all dramatic artists who put thought and intellectuality as well as emotion into their work, Viola Allen has some individual views regarding things theatrical. Everyday-experience in the real work of her profession has brushed away illusions and made her shrewd and practical. At the same time, observation abroad has widened her artistic horizon, and kept her ideals from fading.

According to her, the self-sacrificing heroine will hold her place on the dramatic stage as long as she survives in real life. Yet the modern view, that the weeping, willing victim of oppression and wrong sets a harmful example, is probably correct. Optimism has grown fashionable; and the greatest acts of heroism and devotion nowadays are performed by cheerful, smiling, and perhaps well-gowned women, in a logical, undeclamatory, matter-of-fact way.



Speaking of audiences, Viola Allen remarked recently (but it was before she had come to the Century Theater): "It is a grand thing to have an interested, politely attentive Broadway audience, and yet - well, it is grander to have an audience - a Harlem audience, let us say - that will take a thrill and then give it back to you. Broadway is a bit blase. Can you blame it?"



Originally published in the Cosmopolitan Magazine, February 1913.
Written by Henry Tyrell.


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Saturday, February 29, 2020

Alabama History & Culture News: February 29 edition




Here's the latest batch of links to just-published Alabama history and culture articles. Most of these articles are from newspapers, with others from magazines and TV and radio station websites. Enjoy!

Alabama's two senators introduced the resolution regarding Clotilda and ... (3) the Africatown Cemetery, where many of the individuals who survived ...

Fire Destroys Century-Old Church
NorthEscambia.com
Fire destroyed a century-old church about seven miles north of Flomaton Thursday night, and the  State Fire Marshal was called to investigate. ... structure on Pineview  Road and Pine Street were visible for miles.
 Voices: Johnny Long built a musical legacy at Troy University
Montgomery Advertiser
Lee High School's first band director, Johnny Long, left talks with a guest at Thursday's lecture at the  Department of Archives and  in ...



Don't miss Pattie and Josephine: Waiting in , a one-act play at Vulcan Park & Museum on ...
Bham Now
Lee has written scripts about Booker T. Washington, Virginia Durr, Alvin Vogtle and several other famous people from . In addition to ...

 


NYC students enjoy free performance of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' at Madison Square Garden
New York Daily News
The  was adapted for the stage by renowned screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and features Ed Harris in the lead role of Atticus Finch, an  ...


Alabama looking for 'bicentennial babies'
al.com
The “bicentennial babies” may receive a copy of “ My Home Sweet Home,” a children's  by  author Charles Ghigna, also known ...


This cozy little bookstore is one of Alabama's hidden gems
al.com
Then they'll start roaming the narrow aisles between shelves crammed with  on everything from the birds of  to the history of France, ...


Tuscaloosa Africana Film Festival brings African culture to community
The Crimson While
“So when you have an event like this that celebrates not only Black  Month, but also women in , and the culture of  and this area ...


How the Southern Museum of Flight Takes Off
Birmingham Times
“You really learn the  of where everything came from, … where the stories came from, the  of America and , … the  of ...


The lost congressman: Sources for Jeremiah Haralson's remarkable life
 
https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2020/02/26/jeremiah-haralson-lost-congressman-alabama/2823015001/
Montgomery Advertiser
I first encountered Jeremiah Haralson as I worked on a story on  ... A recent walk around Selma's Live Oak  did not uncover any ...
ASU announces opening of third Selma to Montgomery March interpretive center
Montgomery Advertiser
Fifty-five years after the  march from Selma to Montgomery, the third and ... “I consider  State University the epicenter of civil rights and I ...

ASU recognizes 60th anniversary of sit-in protest
WTVY, Dothan
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) -- It's the last week of Black  Month, and  State University is recognizing some of histories bravest heroes ...
HistoryAlabamaGroup of Native Americans wants housing developers to stop construction on possible ancient ...
Alabama



University of South  graduates bring artistry to Mobile Carnival
Alabama NewsCenter
Mussell, who studied in what is now the art and art  department, has hired many South -trained artists over the years. Some went on to ...


Montgomery sit-in protesters remember  day 60 years later
Montgomery Advertiser
Three of 29  State College students who led the first sit-in protest in the state six decades ago on Feb. 25 when they refused to leave a ...


First African American female pilot in the  National Guard will be honored again
WBRC
(WBRC/AUSA) - First Lieutenant Kayla Freeman, 26,  National Guard, became the first African-American female helicopter pilot in the  .
..
State reviewing possible artifacts at construction site
Times Daily
The  Commission is reviewing reports of nearby residents and an Army archaeologist who raised concerns about items found near ...



Alabama-born Brooklyn artist displays work in Sunset Park gallery
News 12 Bronx
Alabama-born Brooklyn artist displays work in Sunset Park gallery ... Brown is also working on her  "My Selma," which recounts what life was like ...


Authors tell Turner's story
Selma Times-Journal
... his earlier works, “Cradle of freedom” which tells the story of  Civil ... Both Gaillard and Rosner commended the  illustrator, Jordana ...


Wayne Dean preserving  place in Mardi Gras history
Alabama NewsCenter
Wayne Dean preserving  place in Mardi Gras history ... The 700-plus-page  details the history of Joe Cain in  Port City.



Historic Alabama home makes its mark
Crestview News Bulletin
That's when members of the Crestview  Preservation Board ... Bush was born in Fort Deposit, , moved to Crestview in 1910 and lived ...

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