The Shubert Theater opened in downtown Kansas City in 1906. Sometimes, a young Harry Truman was in the audience. Enter “PHL 955” in the JCHS online Digital History Database.

By: Brian Burnes

It’s harvest season in Jackson County which - of course - often prompted Harry Truman to play the piano.

It was before World War I, when Truman helped operate the family farm in Grandview. Following the custom of the time, he hosted members of neighboring farm families to bring in the crops before, in turn, doing the same for them.

But those neighbors helping out at the Truman farm not only received the customary courtesy meal but also the impromptu piano concert - which some thought unusual.

“It could not help being noticeable,” Gaylon Babcock, one of those neighbors, told a Truman Library researcher in 1964.

The future president, however, knew the value of down time.

Since Jackson County’s 1826 organization, its residents routinely have taken time from their often-unceasing responsibilities to set aside time for distraction.

What’s interesting was how much of this down time was documented.

The archives of the Jackson County Historical Society are rich with images and artifacts which bear witness to organized and enthusiastic leisure.

Such activities attracted photographers, said Chris Wilborn, longtime curator of the Wilborn Collection, a vast archive of negatives and photographs acquired by and then donated to the historical society in 2017 by Steve Noll, a former historical society executive director, and his wife Marianne.

“You go back in history and people always wanted to remember their leisure time more than they wanted to remember the grunt work they had to do from nine to five,” Wilborn said.

Today the Wilborn images continue to be processed and added to the historical society’s digital archive, which preserves and allows easy access to photos that document both how Jackson County residents entertained themselves as well as those who entertained them.

One example: the Marx Brothers.

As a young man working in downtown Kansas City banks in the early 20th Century, Truman saw the beloved vaudeville act in local theaters.

“Between the time I was about 16 to 20 I used to go to every vaudeville show that came to Kansas City,” Truman, as president, mentioned during a 1948 press conference.

Those shows may have included the Marx Brothers, who began touring as a vaudeville act shortly before World War I and continued into the 1920s.

Years later, on his way to Wake Island and learning that Harpo Marx was entertaining American troops injured during the Korean War, then-President Truman visited with the performer.

The Jackson County Historical Society dates to 1909. In 1958 Harry Truman helped reorganize the society by soliciting donations to help it acquire what is now the 1859 Jail Museum, then threatened with demolition.

Since then the society has served as Jackson County’s attic - a place to preserve those materials and artifacts the society’s officers and curators deem worthy of safekeeping.

With two exceptions, all the archival photos displayed here are accessible through the Jackson County Historical Society Digital History Database (jchs.catalogaccess.com). Use the codes or proper names posted with each photograph to access the images.

The artifacts detailed here, meanwhile, are on display at the 1859 Jail Museum in Independence (jchs.org/1859jailmuseum).

Coates Opera House

Sarah Chandler Coates, a young Pennsylvania teacher who followed her husband Kersey to western Missouri in 1856, later recalled her reaction following her first glimpse of frontier Kansas City when arriving by steamboat.

“And this is to be my home,” she remembered thinking, at one point describing antebellum community as “a most unsightly spot, with scarcely a redeemable feature about it.”

Her husband, however, would put the same emphasis on culture as his did in commerce. While Coates was among the investors who oversaw the 1869 completion of the Hannibal Bridge across the Missouri River at Kansas City - which opened markets in Chicago and beyond for merchants of the fledgling city - he also, in 1870, supervised construction of the Coates Opera House, about 10 blocks up the bluff from the river.

What is considered the first legitimate theater in Kansas City made a difference in the cultural life of the community, which in 1870 claimed a population of 32,260, only five years after the end of the Civil War.

For the next 31 years, all manner of performers appeared at the 10th Street and Broadway theater, chief among them Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, who appeared in 1882.

The theater burned in 1901.

Standard theater

Before its demise, however, the Coates Opera House helped convince various theater entrepreneurs that revenue could be generated in Kansas City.

In 1900 Edward Butler, a St. Louis businessman, opened the Standard Theater at 12th and Central streets.

The theater, soon renamed the Century, later closed following a 1920 fire.

From 1923 through 1932 the Shubert brothers of New York operated the building as the Shubert Missouri Theater.

Over the ensuing decades the building operated as a burlesque and vaudeville house and even an X-rated movie theater before, suffering from years of neglect, it was threatened with demolition.

In the early 1970s Kansas City leaders stepped in and raised funds to acquire and restore the building. Today known as the Folly, the venue is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and continues to host a variety of performers.

Shubert Theater

What is now the Folly Theater was not the first venue operated by the Shubert brothers of New York; in 1906 they had opened their first Kansas City theater, the Shubert, at Tenth Street and Baltimore Avenue.

This photo of the theater’s exterior, taken in 1907, documents how its operators advertised the building to be “Absolutely Fire Proof,” perhaps a reference to the 1901 demise of the Coates Opera House, just a few blocks to the west.

Harry Truman, as a young bank employee in the early 1900s, attended shows at the Shubert as well as the several other venues that made up downtown Kansas City’s theater district.

Young Truman received formal piano instruction during these years, and he also attended piano concerts across the city. One year, at Kansas City’s Convention Hall, he saw Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Polish pianist and composer who toured America in the early 1900s.

Workers demolished the Shubert Theater in 1936.

Strauss-Peyton Collection

The theaters, of course, attracted actors and entertainers, many of whom had their photo taken by photographers with the Strauss-Peyton studio of Kansas City.

Enter “Marx Brothers” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

That included the Marx Brothers, who had played Kansas City in 1923, 1927 and 1930.

The Strauss-Peyton Collection has been held by the Jackson County Historical Society since 1969, when its officers offered to accept the thousands of glass plate negatives generated over decades to save them from an uncertain fate.

The local studio which then held the negatives no longer had the space to maintain them.

Since then, the collection has been stored at what is now the Truman Courthouse on Independence Square.

Enter “Jean Harlow” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

Beginning in 2016 Bruce Mathews, a researcher and writer of local history, volunteered to scan and edit many of the portraits. While a great number of the images depict Jackson County leaders and families, the collection also contains portraits of many celebrated entertainers such as the Marx Brothers, Fred Astaire and Charlie Chaplin.

During his years of work on the portraits, Mathews counted approximately 275 photos of performers taken between 1900 and 1935. While the names of many of those entertainers may not be familiar today, two others are: Jean Harlow and Jeanne Eagels.

Enter “Jeanne Eagels” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

Both film stars were born in Kansas City.

“Both of them were beautiful and both died very young,” Mathews said.

Eagels died in 1929; Harlow in 1937.

To read more about Bruce Mathews’ work with the Strauss-Peyton Collection portraits, go to jchs.org/strausspeyton.

Jesse James, Jr.

In the historical society’s general collection, meanwhile, is a photo depicting another famous name - Jesse James, Jr., son of the infamous Missouri outlaw (at left in photo below).

Enter “PHM 4161” or “PHS 5144” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

In 1921, the younger James portrayed his father in a silent film entitled “Jesse James Under the Black Flag.”

Before starting his film career, James had been practicing law in Kansas City - but not with much success.

Cole Younger saddle pieces are currently on display at the 1859 Jail Museum. Photo courtesy of Jason Wade.

“He defended five accused murderers in a five-month period and lost all five cases,” said Kansas City Star reporter Dan Kelly, the author of “The Girl With the Agate Eyes: The Untold Story of Mattie Howard, Kansas City’s Queen of the Underworld,” a new biography of a criminal who retained James to defend her in a Kansas City murder trial.

Found guilty, Howard served more than six years in the Missouri State Penitentiary before being released in 1928.

In the face of such futility in the courtroom the younger James, according to Kelly, likely believed it was acceptable to make a film about his father and his fellow outlaws following the 1916 death of James Gang member Cole Younger.

“Nobody left alive could be hurt by it,” Kelly said.

The James and Younger families, meanwhile had their own theatrical legacies.

In 1903 Cole Younger and Frank James, older brother to their original Jesse, lent their names to a Wild West show.

With another partner named Lew Nichols, Younger sanctioned a similar touring production.

Following the 1882 killing of his brother, Frank James had surrendered to Missouri authorities. He soon spent 112 days in what is now the 1859 Jail Museum before his trial in Gallatin, Mo. on charges connected to an 1881 train robbery.

Today visitors to the 1859 Jail Museum in Independence can inspect the cell then occupied by James.

Nearby, meanwhile, are exhibited saddle name plates once belonging to Younger.

“The Girl With the Agate Eyes” is available at the 1859 Jail Museum.

Blevins Davis

Blevins Davis perhaps is best known today for his knowledge of British royalty rituals, which led to his live national radio network coverage of both the coronation of George VI in 1937 and the 1953 coronation of his daughter, Elizabeth II.

But those assignments likely would not have occurred without his earlier work, much of it in Independence and Kansas City, directing plays and pageants.

Following his graduation from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1925, Davis taught English at William Chrisman High School and helped direct several student and community theatrical productions.

Photos of several shows are archived in the society’s Digital History Database, identified as being the work of Davis.

In 1927, to observe the centennial of Independence, he directed a pageant at what is now the Truman Memorial Building. In 1933, to celebrate the dedication of the renovated Truman Courthouse in Independence, he organized a similar production.

In 1935 Davis applied for, and received, a drama fellowship at Yale University. There he encountered press baron William Randolph Hearst, who commissioned Davis to write a series of articles about the upcoming coronation of George VI in 1937.

That led to an assignment from NBC network radio to cover that event live in London.

Stage Play "Overtones" Independence Mo, for Blevins Davis. Enter “PHM 23950” in the JCHS Digital History Database.

In 1949 Davis staged a production of “Hamlet” in Denmark. That production contributed to the later establishment of a State Department cultural exchange program sponsoring

artistic companies abroad.

In the early 1950s Davis helped stage a revival of “Porgy and Bess” featuring an all-Black cast. With State Department blessing, the show toured London and Berlin to great acclaim. When the production premiered in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) it represented the first time an American theatrical company had been permitted to stage a production in the Soviet Union.

Davis died in London in 1971, at age 68. His remains are interred, along with those of his parents, in Independence’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

Joan Crawford

In this photo film longtime Wilborn Collection curator Chris Wilborn believes film star Joan Crawford is standing in the front row, fifth from the right.

Crawford, then known as Billie Cassin, spent much of her youth in Kansas City. In the years following World War I, she financed a fledgling dancing career while working as a downtown Kansas City department store clerk.

This photo depicts members of the “K.C. Vanities,” which appeared at the downtown Kansas City Mainstreet Theater at 14th and Main streets in the 1920s. The performers were advertised as “a colorful ensemble of beautiful and talented singers, dancers and novelty entertainers.”

This photo appears in “Saturday Matinee in Olde KC,” one of several books published by Wilborn.

The books are available at the Sentimental Journey Marketplace, 907 S. Chestnut, in Olathe, Kansas.

“We like to say that we give memories for Christmas,” Wilborn said.

Mary Graham Minor-Laird

Mary Graham Minor-Laird was a dancer and choreographer who worked in Kansas City and across the country in the 1930s and 1940s.

(In the 1930 dance troupe photo shown here, she stands third from left).

She kept files and scrapbooks from her career and in 2001 donated them to the Jackson County Historical Society as part of its Women’s History Collection.

Enter “PHL 12033 I” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

The collection contains newspaper notices, invitations, telegrams, and photographs that document her career.

She graduated from Kansas City’s East High School in 1930. By 1934 - billed as an “Unusual High Kick Dancer” - she was a member of bandleader Paul Cholet’s Cocoanut Grove Revue chorus line, which travelled across Depression-era America when some larger theaters still offered live entertainment between films.

Back in Kansas City Minor served as a member of the “Tower Adorables,” the dancers employed at the downtown Tower Theater at 213 E. 12th St.

Her scrapbooks document a professional life that apparently was both exciting and volatile. Preserved, for example, is a one-week termination notice she received from the Tower’s manager in 1935.

Also included is a telegram from Detroit that she received the following year, delivered to the Tower, where she apparently had been re-hired.

“Have work for five girls,” it read. “Have to know immediately.”

In 1947 Minor married Landon Laird, film critic and columnist for the Kansas City Star.

By then she had left the stage for a desk at Jackson County probate court where she represented the Missouri Abstract Co. She later served as a local examiner for the Chicago Title Insurance Co., from which she retired in 1978.

She was pleased when the Jackson County Historical Society accepted her collection.

“I’ve been wanting to find a home for these things for ever so long,” she told a Kansas City Star reporter that year. “I thought they would all just go to the dumpster.

“Now they won’t.”

A parking lot replaced the Tower Theater in 1960.

Mary Graham Minor-Laird died in 2009 at age 96.

Landon Laird

Also included in the Mary Graham Minor-Laird collection are 30 photographs depicting her husband Landon Laird with film stars of the late 1930s.

Enter “Claudette Colbert” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

They include Laird with Claudette Colbert, Edward G. Robinson, Carole Lombard, W.C. Fields and others.

Photographers employed by several Hollywood film studios took the photos when Laird visited California in 1937 and 1938.

Laird had been named drama and motion picture critic at the Kansas City Star in 1924 and the photos taken in the late 1930s offer a glimpse of Hollywood publicity practices of the time.

In Laird, studio executives knew they had a source of friendly publicity.

One handicap Laird had to overcome as a critic - many agreed decades later - was that he was just too nice a guy to pan a bad movie.

“It’s interesting to note that Laird was criticized by a few because he was not critical in his writings,” the Star conceded in Laird’s 1970 obituary.

But this reputation was a sincere reflection of the man. During his long career as a critic, as well as during his years covering Kansas City’s entertainment district in his daily “About Town” column that appeared in The Kansas City Times, the Star’s morning edition, readers responded to his respectful coverage of performers, both famous and less so, as well as those operating the city’s many charitable causes and nonprofit organizations.

In the months before Laird’s retirement, groups who held dinners in his honor included the Jewish Federation of Kansas City and Golden Gloves of Kansas City.

When Laird’s mother died in 1936, a prominent Hollywood star and Kansas City native wrote him a condolence note on pale blue stationery, the name “Jean” imprinted in the letter’s top left corner.

“There is nothing anyone could say which would in any way lessen your heartache and grief but I wanted you to know that someone here in California was thinking of you,” wrote Jean Harlow, who would die less than a year later.

That note also is part of the Mary Graham Minor-Laird Collection.

Granada Theater

Granada ticket box is currently on display at the 1859 Jail Museum. Photo courtesy of Jason Wade.

Two years ago the historical society received an unusual donation: a ticket box that once was used at the Granada Theater, which stood at 325 W. Maple Ave. in Independence from 1932, according to a National Park Service survey.

The theater operated through at least 1952, according to the survey; the site now serves as a parking lot one block west of Independence Square.

Debbie Raynor of San Diego donated the artifact to the society while taking a recent cross-country trip.

The ticket box had belonged to her father who had no connection to the theater but was an enthusiastic collector of random collectibles found during long driving trips taken by him and his wife over many years.

Raynor had discovered the ticket box while cleaning out family storage space.

“We brought it home thinking we would put it in a yard sale,” Raynor said recently.

“But when we found the old ticket stubs inside the box we figured out where it was from.”

The historical society thanks Debbie for going the extra mile.

paul henning and the beverly hillbillies

Both photos here depict Paul Henning, the radio and television writer who grew up in Independence.

Enter “PHM 1424” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

One photo includes Henning during his years at KMBC radio in Kansas City, posing with singer Cab Calloway and Benny Payne, who served as Calloway’s piano player through the 1930s.

The second photo includes Henning with cast of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” which debuted to a vast television audience in 1962.

The photo is autographed and dedicated to the Childers family of Independence.

Paul Henning’s sister Drusilla was married to Petey Childers, a longtime Independence pharmacist.

Photo of Henning with entertainer Cab Calloway and Benny Payne, courtesy of Chris Wilborn.

Local fans of “Hillbilly” sometimes recognized references to the Childers family. In one episode the fictional character of Granny Clampett could be heard requesting a folk medicine remedy from Petey Childers.

The story of Henning’s career, which began as a singer and writer at KMBC in downtown Kansas City, is detailed in “The First Beverly Hillbilly: The Untold Story of the Creator of Rural TV Comedy.”

In 2017 the Jackson County Historical Society published the book with the Mid-Continent Public Library.

It had been written in the 1990s by Ruth Barth Henning, wife of Paul Henning. At some point she had forwarded a copy of the manuscript to Sue Gentry, longtime editor and columnist with The Examiner of Independence.

Enter “PHS 26873” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

Gentry, who died in 2004 leaving no heirs, had donated two dozen boxes of materials to the historical society archives.

That’s where the manuscript was found years later.

The book details the origins of “Hillbillies,” which had been inspired in part by a production of “Tobacco Road,” which depicted impoverished tenant farmers in Georgia. Ruth and Paul Henning years earlier had seen that show at Kansas City’s Orpheum Theater.

The book details Henning’s career, as well as the kindness for which he was known.

Later in her life Irene Ryan, who portrayed Granny on “Hillbillies,” came to the Henning home in California to thank Henning for casting her.

Her career had begun in 1920s vaudeville; the “Hillbillies” had changed her professional life.

“All my life I was small-time,” Ryan told Henning.

Not long after that Ryan died from a brain tumor, and Paul Henning delivered the eulogy at her memorial service.

Ruth Barth Henning died in 2002; Paul Henning in 2005.

“The First Beverly Hillbilly” is available at the 1859 Jail Museum.

harmonicats

And now, please welcome the Harmonicats.

This unique trio, which dated to the late 1940s and attracted audiences across the country over several decades, was among the attractions available through the Coleman McLaughlin Entertainment Service of Kansas City.

A theatrical booking agency, Coleman McLaughlin specialized in securing acts that might not sell out Arrowhead Stadium but could entertain those attending conventions and corporate events in Jackson County and across the Midwest.

For many years the agency was operated by Earl Coleman, a musician and bandleader whose orchestra began playing to Kansas City audiences in the 1920s, and JoAnn McLaughlin Meierhoff, an aspiring opera singer in her youth who decided that her true talent was in theatrical production.

Together the two booked magicians, acrobats, animal trainers, Elvis impersonators, jugglers and others.

As part of the booking process, the agency distributed publicity photographs of these performers; today these photos are held by the Jackson County Historical Society.

Coleman died in 1983 at age 81; Meierhoff in 2002 at age 95.

friendly persuasion

In 1975 a production company filmed a television movie entitled “Friendly Persuasion” in and around the 1859 Jail Museum.

It told the story of a Quaker couple who risked their lives by helping enslaved persons escape to freedom.

Enter “Friendly Persuasion” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

The film featured Richard Kiley and Shirley Knight, both Tony Award winners.

It also starred the historic jail at 217 N. Main St. in Independence.

Today the building, owned and operated by the Jackson County Historical Society, continues to attract film production companies.

In 2021 Wide Awake Films of Kansas City, operated by former historical society board member Shane Seley, filmed scenes for an episode of “Impossible Escapes: Civil War.”

The episode depicted the border war struggles of Dr. John Doy, a Lawrence, Kansas abolitionist who had been imprisoned in jails in Platte City and St. Joseph in 1859 after being captured while assisting enslaved persons fleeing from pro-slavery forces pursuing them.

Accordingly, the 1859 Jail Museum, today listed in the National Register of Historic Places, offered authentic settings. The crew filmed scenes in several locations, among them two jail cells and the jail courtyard.

“Working with the actors in this space felt special,” Seley said recently.

“I could tell they were utilizing the existing atmosphere of the jail to really immerse themselves in the characters they were portraying.

“For a director, that’s something that is hard to manufacture. That’s why having the opportunity to film in historic places is so unique and important.”

Today episodes of “Impossible Escapes: Civil War,” can be streamed on Curiosity Stream and Amazon Prime.

santa-cali-gon

Country music always has been part of Santa-Cali-Gon, the annual trails festival in Independence, as the photo of performers from 1947 documents.

Enter “PHM 22709” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

While the 1947 performers are not identified, over the ensuing years the festival developed a reputation for showcasing rising stars who often would achieve huge fame not long after appearing in Independence.

Examples include Kenny Chesney, who played Santa-Cali-Gon in 1997 and the Dixie Chicks - today known as The Chicks - who appeared the following year.

Enter “Kenny Chesney” into the JCHS Digital History Database.

From 1989 through 2014, Fran Wagner and Barbara Griffitt, who together operated Stage West, an area entertainment booking agency, volunteered to secure the festival’s musical guests.

“They had a knack for picking artists who were up-and-coming and then becoming big stars,” said Stephanie Roush, who worked for the Independence Chamber of Commerce before serving as tourism director for the city of Independence.

As for The Chicks, their Santa-Cali-Gon appearance was only one of nine concerts they presented in 1998. That soon would change; the group won its first Grammy Award the following year.

Chesney, meanwhile, in 1997 released “She’s Got It All,” which would become his first number one hit on the country charts.

Twenty-five years later, in 2022, Chesney performed before 57,852 fans at Arrowhead Stadium.

“We knew a few people in Nashville and managed to do some pretty good guessing,” Wagner said recently of her work with Griffitt.

Their guesses, however, were educated guesses. While there was never any shortage of aspiring musicians and vocalists in Nashville, Wagner said, she and Griffitt made a point of learning which artists were receiving strong music industry support.

“There’s an old saying that no matter how talented you might be, if you don’t have a lot of money behind you, you are not going to make it,” Wagner said.

“So we always checked that out.”

The historical society’s Digital History Database includes many images from the annual festival; enter “Santa-Cali-Gon” in the search engine.

DOCUMENTING DOWN TIME IN JACKSON COUNTY