Jackson County
(Mo.)
Historical Society
Portals to the Past by David W. Jackson
Concerning
Kansas City Theater History: The Folly Theater
If you have been transported through our Portals to the
Past these last few months, you know by now that local history surrounds us.
A story into history awaits you at every street corner. Take the corner of
Central in downtown Kansas City, where “The Grand Old Lady of Twelfth Street”
has stood the test of time since renowned local architect, Louis Curtiss,
designed in 1900 the vaudeville house we know today as the Folly Theater.
Constructed as the Standard Theater, audiences cheered
chorus lines of dancing girls, acrobatics, comedy, jugglers, songs, and
comedic acts grouped under the guise of vaudeville. They also marveled at the
sheer magnificence of the structure that boasted among other ostentations,
electric light bulbs…an invention introduced in Kansas City only a year
earlier.
Appropriately, the Standard’s name changed in 1901 to the
Century Theater, where it welcomed “legitimate theater” with the world’s top
entertainers. Near the end of the first quarter of the century, however,
vaudeville and burlesque returned during a roaring time when hemlines rose,
the Titanic sank, and America tried dry-docking during Prohibition.
Even though talkies (or, motion pictures) and girlie
shows increased in popularity, for nearly a decade between 1923 and 1932 the
theater legitimized itself again with national players like the Marx
Brothers, Humphrey Bogart, and Shirley Booth under the ownership of a
prominent New York-based family who renamed the venue Shubert’s Missouri
Theater.
The Great Depression and World War II tremendously
affected American society and cultural landscapes. Of all Kansas City 19th
Century theaters, for instance, only the Missouri ended up surviving the
wrecking ball; its name changing for the third and final time to the Folly
Theater in the 1940s. The forms of entertainment also devolved over the years
from lighthearted burlesque, to striptease, and even to adult films in the
late 1960s (giving a whole new meaning to the phrase, “if these walls could
talk.”)
By the early 1970s, foresighted Kansas Citians began a
quest to “Strip the Folly.” You would never guess from looking at “her”
today, but it took seven years of diligent, dedicated, hard work (starting
with the clean up of 9.5 tons of pigeon droppings in the attic), and millions
raised in funds to restore and “redress” the beauty on 12th Street
to her original grandeur.
Today, we enjoy a diverse offering of entertainment at
the Folly Theater, which celebrated in 2000 her first century of a life well
lived. If Kansas Citians are to continue to boast and brag about this
community cornerstone through to the end of this century, we each need to
make a commitment to supporting the fine work of those who keep The Folly’s
doors open.
Take a virtual historical tour at www.follytheater.com, and keep
abreast of future “Folly Flashback” slide presentations offered occasionally
by The Folly Theater.
David W. Jackson is archivist for the nonprofit Jackson
County (Mo.) Historical Society’s Archives and Research Library at 112 W.
Lexington Ave. Suite 103, Independence, MO, 64050. Explore deeper into local
history topics like those presented in this column through the Jackson County Historical Society JOURNAL,
a scholarly periodical delivered to Society members twice annually. For more
information, or to donate historical materials, visit www.jchs.org, call
(816) 252-7454, or e-mail info@jchs.org.
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