KNOW THEIR SHOWS—Stuart Stewart, left, Rosalie Stewart and Lee
Stewart, theatrical agents, whose experience runs a gamut from vaudeville to
3D. They are shown with posters from “The
Torch Bearer’ of early 20s and Cinerama of today.
BENJAMIN STEWART MUCKENFUSS
The Muckenfuss
Genealogy
Name: Benjamin Stewart Muckenfuss
Born: April 5, 1862 Charleston,
Charleston, South Carolina, USA
Died: November 16, 1926 Poly-Clinic
Hospital Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
Spouse: Katherine Effie Wood
Residence: 26 North Drive,
White Stone, Queens, New York, USA
Parents: Benjamin Anthony Muckenfuss,
Martha Rosaline Stewart
Occupation: Credit Man
Cause of Death: Chronic Bronchitis
Date of Burial 1st
November 18, 1926
1st Interment:
Woodlawn Cemetery Bronx, NY
Funeral: Frank E. Campbell Funeral Church
1970 Broadway New York City, New York, USA
Findagrave.com 120857160
Age at Death: YRS: 64
New York, New York City
Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949 CN 28381
Re-Interment: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Plot Graceland Lot 6859
Space 2 Glendale, Los Angeles, California, USA
Name: Katherine Effie Wood
Born: January
16, 1865 Augusta, Hancock, Illinois, USA
Died: July
31, 1948 Neurological Institute, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
Spouse:
Benjamin Stewart Muckenfuss
Parents: Robert
C. Wood, Sarah Hiler/Hyler
Occupation:
Housewife
Cause of
Death: Intracranial Hemorrhage
Date of
Burial: August 3, 1948
Age at
Death: YRS: 83 MOS: 6 DYS: 15
California
Death Records 1901-12654
Funeral: Little
Church of Flowers, Glendale, Los Angeles, California, USA
Find A Grave
Memorial 85474249
Mortuary: Forrest Lawn Memorial Park Association INC, Glendale, Los
Angeles, California, USA
Interment: Forest Lawn
Memorial Park, Plot Graceland Lot 6859 Space 1 Glendale, Los Angeles,
California, USA
Married: March 5, 1885 Saint Louis, Independent Cities, Missouri, USA
Issues: Lee Pelzer, Rosalie Stewart & Benjamin Stuart Muckenfuss
Katie E. Wood Missouri Marriages, 1750-1920
Name: Benjamin
S. Muckenfuss Spouse's Name: Katie E. Wood Event Date: 04 Mar 1885 Event Place:
Saint Louis, St Louis, Missouri
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V2DW-KNG
The Family of Katherine Effie Wood Stewart-Muckenfuss
Source:
The Stewart Publicist Agency
The Los Angeles Times Los
Angeles California, May 25, 1953 Mon
Page Part One
Source:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/385501882/?terms=Rosalie%2BStewartKNOW THEIR SHOWS—Stuart Stewart, left, Rosalie Stewart and Lee Stewart, theatrical agents, whose experience runs a gamut from vaudeville to 3D. They are shown with posters from “The Torch Bearer’ of early 20s and Cinerama of today.
Agents See Theater with Everything
By Ed Ainsworth
This is going to be the newest billing:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
MARILYN MONROE
“I LOVE LUCY”
It will all be one show, under
one roof, at the same time.
So, say the seers of show
business today concerning the future of entertainment in America.
And these seers should know,
for they have been guessing the public taste successfully for nearly 40 years,
from New York to Seattle and Los Angeles to Miami.
They are three of the most
experienced theatrical agents in Hollywood [formerly of New York]—Rosalie
Stewart, Stuart Stewart and Lee Stewart—Who have run the from vaudeville to
three dimensional movies. Their job has
been to provide the right kind of play for the kind of actor in the right place
at the right time for the right audience.
At this particularly crucial
moment in the entertainment industry—with Cinerama, 3D and CinemaScope a
reality and color television coming up=the Stewarts are pleasurably excited,
unlimitedly optimistic and madly in search of material and actors.
“The Demand is as big as a
balloon and supply is as little as one of my fingernails,” says Rosalie Stewart
regarding the Kind of writing and story material needed for the new mediums. She and her brothers are the intermediaries,
the connecting links, the middleman
28 Part II-Monday May 25, 1953 Los Angeles Times
3D Fundamentals
Source:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/385502333
the “close-up” blacked out all subsidiary characters.
“And in half a lifetime,
Americans thus seen the circle completely traversed, so that we are back where
we started, with the real play and the real actor triumphant just as they were
in the finest days of legitimate theater,” say the Stewarts.
LONG RUNS FORCAST
It looks this way to the
Stewarts; There will be a few big theaters with giant three-dimensional
screens, presenting about four attractions a year, with rans averaging 13
weeks. The little neighborhood theater’s
future is dark. In the big 3D houses, the special television features such as
“I Love Lucy” will be flashed at their regular time, so audiences won’t have to
sit home to see their favorites. This is
what movie houses in the Middle West Used to do during the height of popularity
of the “Amos ‘n Andy” radio show, for instance.
The main bill-of-fare will be a combination of
superlatives—the spectacular visual accompanied by corresponding sound effects,
with Marilyn Monroe in a Bikini being chased through a tropical jingle up the
slope of Mauna Loa with a volcanic eruption in the background and a ballet of
1000 doing the Fire Dance while Toscanini conducts the New York Symphony. To this will be added the greatest fulfillment
yet seen of the traditional play, where concept and wording are paramount, and
3D gives full scope to it all—Shakespeare and his dramatic confreres.
REAL ACTOR COMING BACK
This means, in turn, that the
real actor is coming back.
As has already been noted so
forcibly in 3D, where the spectator is virtually on stage himself, every super,
every extra must be a consummate actor because a sloppy gesture, a careless
expression, or mere in-attention can ruin an entire scene. This has not been true in conventional films
because.
And a discussion of this point
sets the Stewarts off on their favorite topic—the astounding cycle through
which show business has progressed during on generation. They are in the sphere the philosophers of
entertainment, the psychoanalysts of the theater, the Kinsey Report of the Box
office.
They have watched the
legitimate theater in its heyday, seen the rise of “little” vaudeville, watched
“little” vaudeville, watched “ little” vaudeville give way to “big” vaudeville,
both vaudevilles give way to the silent film, the silent film and the
legitimate theater surrender to the talkies, the talkies collide with radio and
television, and now, the advent of three-dimensional and wide-screens films.
They know. They have been through the mill. They started
in vaudeville, as producers. They picked
up a young comic named Bob Hope who was playing the sticks and pushed him up
the ladder from $75 to $2250 a week.
They are producing acts at the Palace in New York when Fred Allen, doing
a skit “Trying to Get Along” was billed in the same-sized type as Fink’s Mules. They assisted in startling Broadway with
“Mary’s Ankle” starring Bert Lytell and Irene Fenwick during World War I when everyone else was
booking war plays.
“The Bench act,” Where two
fellows in straw hats or a girl and a fellow used a bench as a prop and entered
a delightful rapport with audience, brought forth its own special kind of
talent. Burns & Allen, Broderick
Crawford, Wilbur Mack & Nella Walker, Joan Davis, Bob Hope, Jack Benny all
“went over” in this atmosphere.
Mikes Killed Intimacy
But “Big” vaudeville came
in—acts with 15 girls, fluorescent costumes on cuties who had to stand 10
minutes before a special lamp to illuminate the “radi-ana
paint, big bands and MICROPHINES.
paint, big bands and MICROPHINES.
The microphones killed in-
Between the fertile minds of
writers on one hand and the thespian talent of actors on the other; with the
public as the ultimate consumer.
But everybody has been reeling
and confused under the combined impact of television, three-dimensional and the
decline of the conventional film.
Now the Stewarts have
rationalized the whole thing.
They know what they are aiming
at.
The believe the know where
show business is going.
They certainly know where show
business has been.
First: where is the
entertainment world headed?
LONG RUNS FORCAST
It looks this way to the
Stewarts; There will be a few big theaters with giant three-dimensional
screens, presenting about four attractions a year, with rans averaging 13
weeks. The little neighborhood theater’s
future is dark. In the big 3D houses, the special television features such as
“I Love Lucy” will be flashed at their regular time, so audiences won’t have to
sit home to see their favorites. This is
what movie houses in the Middle West Used to do during the height of popularity
of the “Amos ‘n Andy” radio show, for instance.
The main bill-of-fare will be a combination of
superlatives—the spectacular visual accompanied by corresponding sound effects,
with Marilyn Monroe in a Bikini being chased through a tropical jingle up the
slope of Mauna Loa with a volcanic eruption in the background and a ballet of
1000 doing the Fire Dance while Toscanini conducts the New York Symphony. To this will be added the greatest fulfillment
yet seen of the traditional play, where concept and wording are paramount, and
3D gives full scope to it all—Shakespeare and his dramatic confreres.
REAL ACTOR COMING BACK
This means, in turn, that the
real actor is coming back.
As has already been noted so
forcibly in 3D, where the spectator is virtually on stage himself, every super,
every extra must be a consummate actor because a sloppy gesture, a careless
expression, or mere in-attention can ruin an entire scene. This has not been true in conventional films
because
And a discussion of this point
sets the Stewarts off on their favorite topic—the astounding cycle through
which show business has progressed during on generation. They are in the sphere the philosophers of
entertainment, the psychoanalysts of the theater, the Kinsey Report of the Box
office.
They have watched the
legitimate theater in its heyday, seen the rise of “little” vaudeville, watched
“little” vaudeville, watched “ little” vaudeville give way to “big” vaudeville,
both vaudevilles give way to the silent film, the silent film and the
legitimate theater surrender to the talkies, the talkies collide with radio and
television, and now, the advent of three-dimensional and wide-screens films.
They know. They have been through the mill. They started
in vaudeville, as producers. They picked
up a young comic named Bob Hope who was playing the sticks and pushed him up
the ladder from $75 to $2250 a week.
They are producing acts at the Palace in New York when Fred Allen, doing
a skit “Trying to Get Along” was billed in the same-sized type as Fink’s Mules. They assisted in startling Broadway with
“Mary’s Ankle” starring Bert Lytell and Irene Fenwick during World War I when everyone else was
booking war plays.
“The Bench act,” Where two
fellows in straw hats or a girl and a fellow used a bench as a prop and entered
a delightful rapport with audience, brought forth its own special kind of
talent. Burns & Allen, Broderick
Crawford, Wilbur Mack & Nella Walker, Joan Davis, Bob Hope, Jack Benny all
“went over” in this atmosphere.
Mikes Killed Intimacy
But “Big” vaudeville came
in—acts with 15 girls, fluorescent costumes on cuties who had to stand 10
minutes before a special lamp to illuminate the “radi-ana
paint, big bands and MICROPHINES.
paint, big bands and MICROPHINES.
The microphones killed in-
1.
Lee
Pelzer Muckenfuss
Born: March
5, 1889 Saint Louis, Independent Cities, Missouri, USA
Died: June
28, 1968 Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
Spouse: Lena
Margaret Clarke
Parents: Benjamin Stewart Muckenfuss
Katherine Effie Wood
Occupation: Stewart Publicist Agency
Cause of Death:
Death Record Pending
Date of Burial:
July 1, 1968
Age at Death:
YRS: 83 MOS: 6 DYS: 15
Death
Certificate#:
Funeral: Forest
Lawn Memorial Park
Glendale, Los Angeles, Los Angeles,
California, USA
Mortuary: Forest
Lawn Memorial Park
Findagrave.com
30602997
Social Security#:
101-10-0861
Interment: Forest
Lawn Memorial Park Plot Sector pm Glendale, Los Angeles, California, USA
Married: 26 Sep 1913 Fargo, Cass, North Dakota, USA
No Issues:
Miss Stewart Proves Woman Can Succeed as Producer of Plays on Broadway
Demonstrates Men Are
Not Only Ones Who Can take Risks in Business.
Dare to State Plays with Unconventional Ending, and Scored Victory
Dare to State Plays with Unconventional Ending, and Scored Victory
By Harriette Ashbrook
MISS ROSALIE STEWART—holds a unique
place in the theatrical world, for not only is she the youngest woman producer
on Broadway but she is also the most successful.
Now, of course, we realize
that the latter part of that statement may be challenged by those who have
registered in the back of their minds the seven-figure fortune which a certain
Hibernian-Semitic comedy has been piling up for another young woman producer.
But, leaving out question of
box office receipts and looking at it from the point of view of the discriminating
critic and playgoer, Miss Stewart’s place in the center of the feminine
limelight is unassailable. For is she
not responsible for the tremendously fine comedy, “The Show-Off,” and that drab
human drama, “Craig’s Wife,” to say nothing of “Torchbearer” and “Meet the Wife”?
The advent of the woman
producer in the theatrical world in the last five years has caused much comment. Producing plays has always been regarded as
essentially a man’s business. At best,
it was gambling on long shots, investing between $20,000 and $30,000 with a
chance that the play might last anywhere from two weeks to two years. As a sex woman have always been notoriously
poor gambles. They’re afraid to take chances.
So, the succeeds which has attended the ventures of Rosalie
Stewart has been viewed with more than the ordinary amount of surprise. Particularly since she has done something
that few producers ever are able to do—She has won the commendation of the critics
for the fine type of plays which she has presented and at the same time she has
piled up a financial balance which makes even bank presidents treat her with
respect. The plays which she has
sponsored are ample refutation of the old, old cry that the public is a
raucous-voiced, unappreciative rabble, interested only I legs, jazz and low
comedians, and that nothing truly artistic and fine can make money.
In view of all this and much
more which has been going the rounds of the theatrical world during the last
two or three years regarding this remarkable young woman, it was with
considerable interest that we went to her office in Forty-seventh Street
recently to interview her. Sitting in
the anteroom waiting our turn, we herd her voice from the private office
speaking over the telephone.
Something evidently had gone
wrong that didn’t have any business to go wrong, and Miss Stewart was
impressing the fact upon the culprit and the other end of the wire in gentle but
exceedingly—oh, very exceedingly—firm tines.
Our knees grew a little weak and the phrase, “hard-boiled business
woman,” passed through our mind. But
five minutes later, when we were seated pangs for ever having entertained the
thought.
Her dress was smartly tailored,
but her slippers were utterly feminine. Her
desk was the desk of a busy executive, with a bunch of violets on it. She talked of business problems with decisive
sureness., and in a spilt second changed the conversation to a luncheon she had
just attended, relating details that could interest only a woman.
In a word, Miss Rosalie
Stewart is the sort of person that just seems to fit in anywhere. One can with equal ease imagine her
addressing a board of directors or a Y.W.C.A. study group. Attending a ball at the Ritz or
the annual picnic of the United Farm Bureau of Otoe County, Nebraska. When the occasion demands she can be as firm
and aggressive as any man, and when another occasion demands she can be as
charming and delightful as any woman.
Her success as a business
woman and producer she is inclined to regard lightly.
“I can remember the first day
I arrived in New York,” she says. “ My initial
impression was of millions of people hustling and bustling like their life
depended upon it, straining every nerve and muscle to get somewhere. That seemed to be the main idea-to get something
they like and enjoyed doing, but to get to the place where their pictures would
appear in the papers when they sailed for Europe. That’s what they call success.
“If I’m successful it is not
because I have had a little luck, sense enough to take advantage of a few of
the opportunities that came my way and have made some money because at least I’m
doing the thing which all my life I’ve wanted to do-produce good play.”
“If I’m successful it is not
because I have had a little luck, sense enough to take advantage of a few of
the opportunities that came my way and have made some money, but because at least
I’m doing the thing which all my life I’ve wanted to do-produce good play.”
The birth of this ambition
took place in St. Louis when Rosalie Stewart was a small girl and spent most of
her pocket money for the theater. She
went constantly. Sometime toward the end
of the week a twenty-five-cent seat in the gallery was all the personal
exchequer could compass, but nevertheless she went.
When her high school course
was completed, she had an opportunity to go behind the scenes and watch the
wheels go around—to even have a part in spinning them herself. Her Father, B.S. Stewart, moved to Dallas to
manage a string of vaudeville theaters and took his young daughter along with
him as his right-hand man.
She checked box
office receipts, made out payrolls, attended to the advertising and did a thousand
and one odd jobs around the theater. It
was just about this time her father’s eyesight began to fail and he was still more dependent on the
judgement of his daughter, so that when he was called to Chicago a few years
later he took her with him.
In the big Middle Western city,
she soon blossomed out into a full-fledged vaudeville scout for one of the big
vaudeville companies, and she spent most of her time attending theaters,
looking over acts, searching out new talent and finding actors and actresses to
fit into sketches the company wished to launch.
But, since all roads west of
Alleghanies lead to New York in the eyes of the theatrically ambitious, Miss
Stewart finally landed in the big city.
But, unlike most of the other young pilgrims, she had a job waiting for
her. Her work in Chicago had been so
successful that she was asked by the Keith office to come to New York.
For five year she continued her
work with this company. But, like all the
truly ambitious, she felt vaguely dissatisfied at the thought of always working
for someone else. She wanted to do something
on her own. So, while still connected
with the Keith organization, she produced several one-act vaudeville sketches.
It was in this way that she met
a nice-looking young chap, named George
Kelly, who seemed to have a decided gift for writing and acting one-act
plays. Another firm friend was Bert French, a dancer in vaudeville.
Special Note: Herbert C. “Bert”
French Died January 22, 1924 New London
Connecticut.
Five years ago, the
friendship of these three people resulted in the new Firm of Stewart and French
as independent theatrical producers. The
two partners had no money except what they had saved themselves and they
preferred not to borrow any. George Kelly
agreed to try his had at a full-length play and “The Torchbearers” was the
result.
And right here it is
interesting to take note of the fact that the new firm followed none of the
most approved precedents. As producers
on the legitimate stage they were unknown.
It would seem, therefore, that the most advisable course would have been
to have secured the work of some well-know playwright for their initial.
They selected, however, the
work of the obscure George Kelly. They
preferred a play that could stand on its
own merits rather than on the reputation of the playwright. And they were rewarded for their courage by a
Broadway run of twenty-four weeks.
Nothing remarkable, to be sure, but at least a paying investment.
Their next venture, “The Show-off,”
was originally a one-act vaudeville Sketch, which Mr. Kelly, at the request of
Miss Stewart and Mr. French, expanded into the comedy which was almost assumed
the proportions of a classic of the American stage.
Again, the two partners chose
what they considered solid merit rather than a big name, and Louis John Bartels,
a vaudeville actor whose name meant little in the legitimate theater, was put
in the lead. Today his interpretation of
the Character of Aubrey Piper is so well known that no burlesque of Broadway
productions is complete without some impersonation of the self-confident “Kid
from west Philly.”
Four days before “The Show-Off”
Opened Mr. French died Suddenly. In the two
years that have followed Miss Stewart has carried on the business alone,
producing two more plays, “Meet the Wife” and “Craig’s Wife.”
The latter has once and for
all established her as a producer who isn’t afraid to take chances with the
public taste. She has had the courage to
put on a play with an unconventional ending, one devoid of the usual Saccharinated
pap which producers are wont to regard as money making. And again, she was scored
a victory, for the play has been a sell-out almost since it started.
1927 Returning from London Show-Offs Rosalie Stewart and George Kelly
Staging Desire Queer Reading of American Theater History
Kim Marra, & Robert A. Schanke, Editors
Page 132
Fig 5 George Kelly and Rosalie Stewart on December 10, 1924, docking in New York upon return from producing The Show-off
Special Note: " Rosalie Stewart," Kelly Confided in his later years, "Was a woman of great integrity . During all the years represented me and produced my plays, we never had a contract in writing merely her word and Mine." George Edward Kelly
Page 132-133
Page 132-133
But perhaps the most
surprising thing of all about Rosalie Stewart is just this-despite her close
association with the theater from childhood she has never once cherished, even
in the most secret recesses of her heart, an ambition to be an actress. Her personal interest is only in the
producing end and she is quite content to let others be the Lady Macbeths, the
Iris Marches and the Rosie Murphy’s. All
of which goes to show that even the astute Mr. Kelly may occasionally err.
Rosalie Stewart
2.
Rosalie
Stewart Muckenfuss
Public Name: Rosalie Stewart
Born: October
9, 1890 Saint Louis, Independent Cities, Missouri, USA
Died: December
12, 1971 San Juan Capistrano, Orange, California, USA
Parents: Benjamin Stewart Muckenfuss
Katherine Effie Wood
Katherine Effie Wood
Occupation: Stewart Publicist Agency
Cause of Death:
Death Record Pending
Date of Burial:
December 14, 1971
Age at Death:
81 years, 2 months, 3 days
Death
Certificate#:
Funeral: Forest
Lawn Memorial Park
Glendale, Los Angeles, Los Angeles,
California, USA
Mortuary: Forest
Lawn Memorial Park
Findagrave.com
8547424
Social Security#:
550-07-8538
Interment: Forest
Lawn Memorial Park Plot Sectopm Graceland Lot 6859 Find A Grave Memorial
30602997
Never Married:
December 10, 1927 George Edward Kelly and Rosalie Stewart
Refer too Rosalie Stewart's Page
Source:
Refer too Rosalie Stewart's Page
Source:
3.
Benjamin
Stuart Muckenfuss
Legal Name: Stuart Stewart
Born: July
14, 1898 Saint Louis, Independent Cities, Missouri, USA
Died: April
30, 1987 Laguna Hill, Los Angeles, California, USA
Spouse: Noreen
Conner Phillips
Parents: Benjamin Stewart Muckenfuss
Katherine Effie Wood
Occupation: Stewart
Publicist Agency
Date of Burial:
May 2, 1987
Cause of Death:
Death Record Pending
Age at Death:
YRS: 88
Death
Certificate#:
Funeral:
Mortuary: Pacific View Mortuary
Newport
Beach, Orange, California, USA
Findagrave.com 26911552
Social Security#: Number: 550-07-8531; Issue State: California; Issue Date: Before
1951
Interment: Pacific View Mortuary
Plot Alcove of Time, Niche 19-D, Corona del Mar, Orange,
California,
USA
Married: 16 Jun 1935, Los Angeles, California, USA
Issues: Arthur Phillips Stewart
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