Vaudeville was alive and kicking in 1923, but escalating interest in moving pictures pressured theater operators to invest in new interiors to project film. The Majestic Theater in Little Rock was one in a chain of hybrid vaudeville/movie operators around the South.
The "New" Majestic stood at 806 Main St., the southeast corner of Main and Eighth streets (see arkansasonline.com/26cals). Opened as a "classy" vaudeville house by the Interstate Amusement Co. in April 1906, the Majestic added movies in 1914; but it kept a steady stream of professional shows on the Big Time vaudeville circuit coming through Little Rock, too.
In late January 1923, Shireen, the girl with the X-ray eyes, played the Majestic. Her publicity stunts -- including driving while blindfolded -- had just drawn throngs into the streets outside Majestic theaters in Texas, but she doesn't appear to have stirred so much interest at Little Rock. My guess is dreary rain kept folks away.
The city received 2.61 inches of water from on high Jan. 29, the day Shireen was supposed to drive a car blindfolded through downtown Little Rock. She postponed her stunt until the next day.
The Jan. 30, 1923, Arkansas Gazette reported that at 11 a.m. that day outside the Majestic, a disinterested committee headed by a local physician would bind Shireen's head with cotton batting, adhesive tape and a heavy black muffler. Then she would climb into a Durant car borrowed from the Davis Motor Co. She would drive Main Street to Third Street, turning west and taking Third to Center Street, West Capitol Avenue and then back to the theater.
But Jan. 30 also was kinda rainy.
The archives of the Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat don't include followup reports of a public sensation. Maybe she did her blindfold drive and maybe she didn't. But she did perform on stage, and was favorably reviewed by the Democrat:
"With her eyes blindfolded she skips about the stage and in the audience describing in minute detail the things she sees. As a final convincing demonstration of her strange power, she smashes tiny targets with a .22 calibre rifle with unerring accuracy."
Also on the bill were a ventriloquist couple — McCormick and Wallace — who used a beach set; a "clean cut and original" acrobatic act, Binns and Grill; musical comedians Raymond Wylie and Marie Hartman; and the highlight of the evening, Maryon Vadia and the Portia Mansfield dancers. (Mansfield founded an influential dance school in Colorado; flip through the book preview here to see photos: arkansasonline.com/26portia.)
These were four "charming and capable" dancers of the bare-legged variety, and they did not wear something the Democrat called "harness" ... judging by the photo the paper published, that might have meant corsets. But also it might have meant rigging, because in other photos of these dancers one can find online, they sometimes piled up their bodies geometrically.
Dancing to a violin and piano accompaniment, they were delicately beautiful and artists of the first magnitude and in no way low class, the Democrat said. They were "poetry in motion."
"The censors were out yesterday afternoon and the city hall and practically every club in Little Rock was represented. No adverse action was taken by the censors and the dance is staged here as in every other city on the Orpheum and Keith time. It is an unusually pretty act and every dance except one is classical. Orders compelling dancers to wear harness would necessitate canceling the engagement."
Vadia had played the Majestic before. She was whatever the Democrat's typo "therieally beautiful" meant, as well as charming. Apparently her stage presence stamped her as an artist of the highest order. Batik scarves in which color ran riot were used with magical effect.
X-RAY EYES
In the weeks before Shireen played Little Rock, she performed her X-ray eye stunts in Houston, San Antonio and Fort Worth. The Houston Post, San Antonio Evening News and Express News, and the Fort Worth Record described her at length. She went shopping blindfolded; newspaper photographers in San Antonio documented her blindfold driving.
She was called a little French Canadian girl, so I looked for her in Canadian newspapers. The Oct. 19, 1921, Quebec Chronicle said that when her unusual power— X-ray vision — became known in her wee village, Drummondville, the backwoods Canadians called her a witch. But, the Chronicle reported, she became a crack shot and expert horsewoman and "could hold her own with the best log-drivers." And so when she came to the big city, "much time has been required to accustom Shireen to urban pursuits" ... like shopping blindfolded.
An ad in the Jan. 18, 1922, Chronicle says Shireen was "Concia Doucet, a little French-Canadian girl."
At San Antonio, the report that she had only just learned to drive the day before — at a local auto dealership — made her demonstration all the more daring.
"Her head was wrapped with ten folds of a black muffler tied tightly.
"She confidently took her place at the wheel. Being a beginner, she gave it too much gas and made a dart, brushing against a Ford. This added excitement and interest and everybody but a very limited number was boosting for her and hoping she would have the nerve to go on with it and make her goal," according to the Evening News. "Then she was off after having successfully turned the corner, with the crowd surging behind intent on seeing the finish at the postoffice."
Houston Street was a mass of humanity. Anxious and expectant people fringed the pavements and a veritable "mob" greeted the eyes at the stopping place. She climbed the steps, turned to the crowd. Someone handed her a piece of paper and she read the name on it, designating people in the crowd, telling how they were attired and just where they stood.
Then she pulled off the muffler and pulled off the adhesive tape, which stuck to her face. The reporter rode with her back to the St. Anthony Hotel, where they had a nice chat on the veranda while her son, Georgie, played around her knee.
Shireen said: "The strongest proof I can give of my sincerity is that I say to the whole world that my power is a gift from God. I would be afraid to make such a statement, for fear that some terrible calamity would happen to me, my child and husband. I am not trying to deceive the public. Until 18 months ago, I was living as any other normal wife and mother, at home rearing my baby."
Her brother-in-law had told a friend about her power and the friend talked her into commercializing it.
She told the San Antonio Express News that when she was 4, "one day my mother kept me away from school on account of a severe attack of headache. She applied a poultice of raw potatoes to my aching head. I lay on a couch for some time and fell asleep. When I awoke the bandage had slipped over my eyes. I found that I could see and told my mother so. She was frightened and called the doctor. He said I was possessed, whatever that could be, after making several tests which proved my statement."
She excelled at playing hide and go seek with all the children of the village, and won many prizes at pin the tail on the donkey.
So, it wasn't just a novelty act, you know? There were real-world applications.
Too bad it was raining at Little Rock so I don't have some marvelous crowd scene to quote for you from the Gazette.
Email:
cstorey@adgnewsroom.com
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