Frederick Freeman Proctor (March 17, 1851 – September 4, 1929), aka F. F. Proctor, was a
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
impresario who pioneered the method of continuous vaudeville. He opened the Twenty-third Street Theatre in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
Bio
Frederick Freeman Proctor was born to Alpheus Proctor and Lucy Ann Tufts in
Dexter, Maine
Dexter is a town in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. The population was 3,803 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Bangor metropolitan statistical area. Dexter Regional High School, which serves Dexter as well as other nearby small town ...
, where his father was a physician. According to vaudeville historian Joe Laurie Jr., Proctor broke into show business when a performer known as "Levantine" noticed him working out at the YMCA and recruited him as a partner in his act, which involved juggling barrels with his feet. Proctor later made a successful foray into European variety under the name "Levantine" before moving into theatrical management. From 1880 to 1889 he and his partner H. Jacob opened and operated theaters in Albany, Schenectady, Rochester, Utica, Buffalo, Syracuse, Brooklyn, Troy, New Haven, Bridgeport, Hartford, Lancaster, Lynn, Wilmington and Worcester. In 1889, he opened his most famous theater, Proctor's Twenty-third Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Manhattan. Emulating
B.F. Keith
Benjamin Franklin Keith (January 26, 1846 – March 26, 1914) was an American vaudeville theater owner, highly influential in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville.
Biography
Early years
Keith was born in Hillsborough, New Hamp ...
's innovation in Boston, Proctor began presenting "continuous vaudeville" on 23rd Street. He later teamed up for a time with Keith but the partnership broke up. At his height, Proctor had a chain of fifty theaters. In 1929, he sold his remaining eleven to RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum).
[Laurie Jr., Joe. ''Vaudeville From the Honky-tonks to the Palace'', New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1953.]
Newark, New Jersey
Warren G. Harris writes:
''Proctor's t 116 Market Streetin downtown Newark was one of the rare 'double decker' theatres. Designed by architect John William Merrow, the eight-story complex had a large 2,300-seat theatre at ground level and a smaller theatre of about 900 seats occupying the top four floors beneath the roof. This fairly narrow building contained only the lobby of the larger theatre, which had its auditorium behind it. Very little has been reported about the operation of the upstairs theatre, which was apparently seldom used until the early 1960s, when it was renovated for the presentation of "foreign" films as the Penthouse Cinema. But the main theatre, with its cavernous two balconies, was always one of Newark's leaders, first with vaudeville only and eventually taken over by movies exclusively. When all of F.F. Proctor's theatres were acquired by Radio-Keith-Orpheum
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...
, it became known as RKO Proctor's. The theatre eventually fell victim to the urban decline of Newark and to RKO's merger with Stanley-Warner, which operated the nearby and larger Branford. The new management decided to close Proctor's, and it has been standing more or less derelict ever since.''
Schenectady, New York
Proctor opened
his first theater in
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...
in 1912, near the
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...
. On April 14, 1925, ground was broken for the "new" Proctor's Theatre in
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...
at its present site. Designed by famed theater architect
Thomas W. Lamb
Thomas White Lamb (May 5th, 1870 – February 26th, 1942) was a Scottish-born, American architect. He was one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the 20th century.
Career
Born in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom, Thomas W. La ...
, the theater cost $1.5 million to build and had a seating capacity of 2,700. On December 27, 1926, Proctor's Theatre opened with a showing of ''Stranded in Paris'', a silent film starring
Bebe Daniels
Phyllis Virginia "Bebe" Daniels (January 14, 1901 – March 16, 1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer, and producer.
She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress, became a star in musicals such ...
.
Inside was a $50,000 Wurlitzer organ. Over 7,100 paid admissions were collected. In 1928, sound equipment was installed for the "talkies". On May 22, 1930, Proctor's was the site of the first public demonstration of television. An orchestra led by the image of a conductor that was sent from the General Electric laboratories over a mile away, and projected onto a seven-foot screen. The experiment was by
Ernst Alexanderson
Ernst Frederick Werner Alexanderson (January 25, 1878 – May 14, 1975) was a Swedish-American electrical engineer, who was a pioneer in radio and television development. He invented the Alexanderson alternator, an early radio transmitter used ...
.
RKO
In 1929, the chain was sold to the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corporation (
RKO
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...
).
Death
Frederick F. Proctor died in 1929 at his home in
Larchmont, New York
Larchmont is a village located within the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, approximately northeast of Midtown Manhattan. The population of the village was 5,864 at the 2010 census. In February 2019, Bloomberg ranked Lar ...
, aged 78 years; death was due to congestion of his lungs.
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References
He built and lived at 90 Park Avenue in Larchmont, New York.
External links
Frederick Freeman Proctor
at Findagrave
Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry.com. Its stated mission is "to help people from all over the world work together to find, record and present fi ...
Further reading
*William Moulton Marston; and John Henry Feller; ''F.F. Proctor, Vaudeville Pioneer'' (1943)
*Richard Butsch; ''The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750-1990''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Proctor, Frederick Freeman
1851 births
1929 deaths
American entertainment industry businesspeople
Deaths from lung disease
People from Dexter, Maine
Businesspeople from Schenectady, New York
People from Larchmont, New York
Vaudeville producers
Businesspeople from Maine
Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)