Ripper play in Paris

[Rob Clack]

From 'The Pall Mall Budget' Thursday 3 October 1889



Rob

[Monty]

Great stuff my tea drinking friend,

Tell me, is this the play Chris George referenced at the Conf?

Monty

[Howard Brown]

Rob:

Thanks very much for providing the page....hadn't seen this before !

By the way, did Stead have a hand in the Budget ?
(Just remembered W.W.Astor bought the PMG )

Notice the remark..." many pleasing emotions for old and young..."

[Maria Birbili]

I'm not in Europe right now and don't have access to the lexicon of French theaters, but the Théâtre du Château d'Eau in the late 19th century is associated with the Théâtre de la Gaîté, performing all kinds of things, from opera to plays, but low quality stuff. Don't even know where it's located, I assume in East Paris, 10ème arrondissement.

There was a LONG tradition since after the Revolution on mélodrame theater in Paris, a popular genre mostly performed at the théâtres des Grand Boulevards (du Temple) in the 1820s and mostly depicting villains torturing innocent youth on stage (good times). This genre introduced cool staging effects (including diorama and lighting effects) which were later adopted in the serious theaters, esp. in the spectacular opera stagings of the 1830s. The mélodrame genre later developed into grand guignol, horror plays performed mostly in Pigalle, the red light district on the right bank of Paris, close to the Halles market, which can be compared to London's Spitalfields. For these shows there were buckets of pig blood/fake blood flowing on stage. The wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_guignol) doesn't contain any noticeable errors on a quick read and features cute pics.

[Rob Clack]

Originally Posted by Monty

Great stuff my tea drinking friend,

Tell me, is this the play Chris George referenced at the Conf?

Monty

I'm not sure, I think it could be.

Originally Posted by How Brown

Rob:

Thanks very much for providing the page....hadn't seen this before !

By the way, did Stead have a hand in the Budget ?
(Just remembered W.W.Astor bought the PMG )

Notice the remark..." many pleasing emotions for old and young..."

The Budget and the Gazette were connected. One of the articles in the Budget relating to Pinchin Street was also in the Gazette. Whether Stead had a hand in it I don't know.

Rob

[Howard Brown]

Thank you Rob...and Maria....for the additional info.

[Robert Linford]

Hi How

The Budget seems to have been an arts paper but was, as Rob says, linked to the PMG.

http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/r...massingham.php



http://www.savoyoperas.org.uk/sources/sources.html

[Chris G.]

Originally Posted by Monty

Great stuff my tea drinking friend,

Tell me, is this the play Chris George referenced at the Conf?

Monty

Originally Posted by Rob Clack

I'm not sure, I think it could be.

The Budget and the Gazette were connected. One of the articles in the Budget relating to Pinchin Street was also in the Gazette. Whether Stead had a hand in it I don't know.

Rob

Yes I did mention the French production that premiered at the Chateau de L'Eau Theatre, Paris in August 1889 in my talk on the early Ripper plays but this is the first time I have seen illustrations of the actors in costume, which is a great find. I will add them to my presentation, if I may, Rob.

As I stated in my talk, it is evident that both the Marlande Clarke-Florence Gerald play first staged in Brooklyn at the Holmes Standard Theatre and Museum on January 7, 1889 and this French play of Jack L’Eventreur or “Jack the Disemboweller”, written by Gaston Marot and Louis Pericaud under the pen-names of Xavier Bertrand and Louis Clairan, that opened eight months later, were partly vaudeville entertainments as well as melodrama, with mock fights, singing, and dancing, as the sketches suggest. So they were not at all what we from our modern perspective would expect for a depiction of the murders.

Best regards

Chris

[Maria Birbili]

So sorry to have missed Chris George's presentation. If I recall it correctly, it was moved to first, opening the conference in the morning, and I was still in Lille (giving a talk at another conference) at that time. I managed to reach Whitechapel in the evening, just before Philip Hutchinson's presentation.

I%2

[Chris G.]

Originally Posted by Rob Clack

I'm not sure, I think it could be.

The Budget and the Gazette were connected. One of the articles in the Budget relating to Pinchin Street was also in the Gazette. Whether Stead had a hand in it I don't know.

Rob

You are correct, Matey. I found the following mentions of the Pall Mall Budget in H.G. Wells' Experiment in Autobiography available on line through Project Gutenberg (see the second excerpt below which shows they were connected, at least at first:

Excerpt of a letter to his father dated August 10, 1894:

"About my work. The P.M.G. is still my bread and cheese. I do from six to ten columns a month and get two guineas a column. Then there are short stories which are difficult to plant at present, but I expect this series in P. M. Budget will get my name up. . . .

********
[1894-1895?]:

"The Gazette had thrown off a weekly satellite, the Pall Mall Budget, which was at first merely a bale of the less newsy material in the Gazette. My Man of the Year Million had appeared in it, with some amusing illustrations, and had made a little eddy of success for me. Hind edited this Budget and it was proposed to expand it presently into an independent illustrated weekly with original matter, all its own. He was looking for 'features.' . . . I was to have five guineas for each story. It seemed quite good pay, then, and I set my mind to imagining possible stories of the kind he demanded. . . ."

********

"At the same time the Pall Mall Gazette stopped using my articles. The literary editor, Marriott Watson, always a firm friend of mine, was away on holiday and his temporary successor did not think very much of my stuff. I did not know of this, and I was quite at a loss to account for this sudden withdrawal of support. I thought it might be a permanent withdrawal. For the first time we found our monthly expenditure exceeding our income. A certain dismay pervaded our hitherto cheerful walks. And then an equally unexpected decision by Mr. Astor announced an approaching end to the brief bright career of the Pall Mall Budget and with it my sure and certain market and prompt pay for a single-sitting story."