Michael B. Leavitt
Encyclopedia
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
minstrel show
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
singer. By the 1860s, Leavitt had made the leap to management and, following the precedent set by others, was touring variety show
Variety show
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...
troupes in rural areas, billing them as authentic city entertainment. By 1870, Leavitt had made a name in the theater industry by importing acts to North America from Europe. Leavitt's companies toured both the United States and Mexico; he had a corner on the best theaters in the latter. He sometimes worked in partnership with his brother, Abraham Leavitt. Acts he managed include magicians Alexander Herrmann
Alexander Herrmann
Alexander Herrmann was a French magician, better known as Herrmann the Great. He was part of the Herrmann family name that is known as the "first-family of magic". Those who witnessed Herrmann the Great perform considered him the greatest magician they ever saw...
and Harry Kellar
Harry Kellar
Harry Kellar was an American magician who presented large stage shows during the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
.
In his memoirs, Leavitt claimed to have made several innovations in American show business. For example, he credited himself with the introduction of lithographic theater posters to the United States in 1872 after he had brought some back from Europe. By the end of the 1870s, lithographic printing had begun to supplant block printing for theater advertising. Leavitt claimed that in the late 1870s, his six to eight touring burlesque companies required $8,000 to $20,000 worth of lithographs posters each season. Another of Leavitt's claims was that in 1880, he was the first to use the term vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
to describe a variety show.
Historians usually cite Leavitt's greatest innovation as the creation of the first touring burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
company and of the burlesque style in general. Leavitt had witnessed a European troupe known as Rentz's Circus sometime in the 1870s. He then decided to form an all-woman blackface minstrel troupe, which he named Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels
Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels
Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels was a blackface minstrel troupe composed completely of women. M. B. Leavitt founded the company in 1870. Unlike mainstream minstrelsy at the time, Leavitt's cast was entirely made up of women, whose primary role was to showcase their scantily clad bodies and tights,...
. The format of its shows, which Leavitt introduced, merged the three-act blackface minstrel show with aspects of Lydia Thompson
Lydia Thompson
Lydia Thompson, born Eliza Hodges Thompson , was an English dancer, actress and theatrical producer....
's all-female troupe's show, vaudeville, and musical travesty. He called the new genre "burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
". The troupe, later renamed the Rentz-Stantley Company and then the Rentz-Stantley Novelty and Burlesque Company, was a success, and it set the standard for burlesque companies through the 1880s and 1890s.
Leavitt had a taste for sensationalism
Sensationalism
Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are over-hyped to increase viewership or readership numbers...
. For example, in 1884, he bought the rights to The Danites, a play by McKee Rankin that was quite critical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Leavitt then decided to stage the play in Salt Lake City, historical center of Mormonism, as a publicity stunt
Publicity stunt
A publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause. Publicity stunts can be professionally organized or set up by amateurs...
.
Leavitt also handled magicians Alexander Herrmann
Alexander Herrmann
Alexander Herrmann was a French magician, better known as Herrmann the Great. He was part of the Herrmann family name that is known as the "first-family of magic". Those who witnessed Herrmann the Great perform considered him the greatest magician they ever saw...
and Harry Kellar
Harry Kellar
Harry Kellar was an American magician who presented large stage shows during the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
. “Whenever I open a new theatre, “ Leavitt once said, “I want to insure of large crowds, I will have Herrmann the Great play the date.” Herrmann was always a drawing card where ever he played, receiving fifty percent of the gross receipt earning $75,000 a year (about $3 million in today’s figures).
Aged 70 in 1914, Leavitt came out of retirement to enter the motion picture business. He secured the rights to present the film Sixty Years a Queen in the Canadian Maritimes
Maritimes
The Maritime provinces, also called the Maritimes or the Canadian Maritimes, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. On the Atlantic coast, the Maritimes are a subregion of Atlantic Canada, which also includes the...
. Despite his advanced age, show business chronicler Robert Grau described Leavitt as "yet as spry and apparently as youthful as he was in his palmy days".