Go back to reading about Harry’s early career.
It’s clear that H.B. was developing his remarkable knack for showmanship and theatricality. He could take raw talent and produce winning acts that pleased crowds. A perfect example is what he did for a young singer named Louise Brehany.
First, he put the right musicians together, forming a musical company with Louise as the headliner. He was involved with every aspect of the production, including lighting, costumes, special effects, and especially scenery, to create a winning effect. Finally, he knew how to promote the act not only to the public, but within the industry as well, to get maximum exposure and generate more clients for his firm. In this case he targeted the show’s promotion to a particular audience; as he himself put it, taking care to
…outline a programme that would be popular enough to attract the great mass of people who love music and yet have no great desire to pay their money to listen to a concert too severely classical, and at the same time make a programme that would be satisfactory to those musically educated.
His productions, and with them his ambitions, became more extravagant as he diversified his business interests. Harry also managed the exhibition of “cycloramas”, such as “The Battle of Gettysburg” displayed in Syracuse, New York, produced by his Englewood associate Howard Gross. This one was a massive multi-part painting mounted on the insides of a cylindrical or hexagonal building – a large ice-rink in this case – designed to give the viewer an immersive 360° view of the famous battle at a particular moment in time. People lined up around the block for this over a long period of time. The “IMAX” of its day, this is another wonderful art form lost to history.
Naturally, he was involved with the 1893 World’s Fair held right in the Englewood and Hyde Park neighborhoods. Pain Fireworks, managed by Harry, provided the program for the dedication ceremony, for half a million people – sadly it had to be scaled back from Harry’s original vision. Also his company produced thousands of glass “fairy lamps”, colored glass candleholders of the type used to illuminate the Fair’s fabled Wooded Isle, a short walk from today’s Museum of Science and Industry (the only remaining building from the Fair). The Thearle fairy lamps are now a collector’s item.
Go on to learn about how Harry’s creative pursuits branched out into an entertainment empire.
Sources
- “The Career of a Beautiful Singer – The Louise Brehany Ballad and Opera Concerts”, The Musical Critic, Vol. II, No. 6, Chicago, 1899, available at https://archive.org/stream/acg2367.0002.006.umich.edu on 2 January 2014
- Feinman, Peter, “The New York History Blog”, available at http://newyorkhistoryblog.org/2013/11/20/the-history-of-new-york-in-4000-words/ on 25 September 2014
- Thanks to Gene Meier for original fire insurance documents and connections to H.B. Thearle “Cyclorama”, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclorama on 25 September 2014
- “Gettysburg Cyclorama”, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Cyclorama on 25 September 2014
- “‘Ask Rick’: Ever hear of cycloramas? More than a century ago, these paintings put today’s screens to shame”, available at https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-ask-rick-cycloramas-kogan-sidewalks-0508-story.html on 19 April 2020
- By Paul Philippoteaux – Copied (note: not “downloaded”) from the archives of Gettysburg National Military Park. Physically visited the park and copied it using photography., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23320086 available on 28 March 2020
- Brenneman, Chris, Boardman, Sue, The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas, Savas Beatie, 2015
- Komorowski, Ray, “Harry Bishop Thearle: Fireworks, Fairy Lamps and the 1893 World’s Fair”, The Midwest Bottled News, November 2012. Thanks to Ray Komorowski for his article.
