Broadway and the Prohibition

Florence Ziegfeld

     Let me begin by saying that I can not express enough just how much I love Broadway! This history behind it, both the good and the bad, the performances themselves, and the people behind the performances I find to be extremely interesting. Broadway performances are the reason why I love the preforming arts. That being said, until our last class I didn't know a lot about the history leading up to what we think of as a Broadway performance. For example, prior to our class I had never heard of the Black Face Performers before; I found it very interesting how it started out that white performers used the burnt cork in an attempt to add a new dynamic to their performances. However, as time progressed both white and black performers began to use the burnt cork to darken their face; not only in an attempt to play the part of a black person, but also because it was part of their character and without the cork on they would feel as though the person they were trying to play on stage wasn't complete. Pigmeat was one of the last performers who used the burnt cork because he said it helped him feel the part of his character on stage. Florence Ziegfeld was an extremely important figure in early Broadway. Ziegfeld was responsible for The Follies and contracting Fanny Brice among other important contributions to Broadway productions. Rodgers and Hammerstein  were also successful producers on broadway. They were responsible for the production South Pacific; which challenged the countries views on racial discrimination.

  Now the reason why it took me so long to get this blog post together. I finally was able to talk to my Mom about the speakeasy that her family ran in Baltimore. My Mom's great grand father William Rau was who owned and operated the speakeasy. It was located at 638 Oldham Street in the lower east side of Baltimore. If you are familiar with the location of the Baltimore Inner Harbor at all you will easily be able to grasp where it was located in the photos compared to the rest of the city. My Mom told me from her research that she has done on him that he actually listed him self as a chemical enginear during the time that he ran the speakeasy; at no point in his life was he ever a chemical engineer. William Rau ran a boarding house in the building primarily to cover for the speakeasy that was located in the basement of the house. If you look at the photo of the row houses the one with the red arrow on it is the one that he ran the actual speakeasy out of. However, William Rau owned the entire block of row houses working as a landlord. My Mom recalls actually being in the house that the speakeasy was located in when she was a young child because that was the last house that Rau kept until he died. He died when my mom was 6 years old. After selling the house the money was then used to pay off the mortgage on the house that my mom grew up in. William Rau's grandparents immigrated here from Germany; Rau died at the age of 98.