| A Century Ago... |
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 Builders Frederic Thompson and Elmer S. Dundy  Poster from the Keith-Albee era of ownership The specs of the Hip were jaw-dropping. According to Nicholas Van Hoogstratten in his book Lost Broadway Theatres, “it would seat more people (4,500-5,200 depending on how the space was configured) more times per week (14) to watch more performers (1,000, give or take a few horses or elephants) on a stage twelve times bigger than a regular Broadway house.” Its gigantic stage was outfitted with a retractable hydraulic floor and swimming pools for water shows of the sort film fans now associate with Busby Berkley and Esther Williams. The house was specifically designed to showcase mammoth fantasy spectacles like A Yankee Circus on Mars and Neptune’s Daughter, and to make them available at popular prices. Despite high attendance, Thompson and Dundee were unable to make a go of it, and the Hip changed hands a number of times before the Keith-Albee vaudeville chain got a hold of it in 1923. The Hippodrome was a unique space in which to present vaudeville. In order to fill its cavernous stage, acts were booked that were presentationally “big”, such as the comic trick horseback rider Poodles Hanneford, Bobe Pender’s Knockabout Comedians (the outfit that brought young Cary Grant a.k.a Archibald Leach to American shores), Houdini with his large escape contraptions, Powers Elephants (an act that could fit in no other vaudeville venue), and ballerina Anna Pavlova who now had unprecedented distances across which to sautee. The Hip changed hands again in ’29 just as vaudeville was dying and the Depression was blowing in, but it enjoyed one last triumph. In 1935, Billy Rose staged his monster spectacle Jumbo there, a musical unsurpassed in theatrical lore for sheer scale. The show closed in 1936, and in 1939, the Hip was torn down and the world became that much smaller again. (Adapted from No Applause: Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, by Trav S.D., to be published by the Faber & Faber imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux in November, 2005)
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