Before the documentaries of Ken Burns, there were historical pageants – a popular form of entertainment by means of which Americans also digested information about the history of their nation and their region.
From the 1850s to the 1950s, historical pageants, or folk dramas, as they were also called, were a characteristic feature of life in American communities, celebrating American history and/or a town’s founding, its most memorable historical events and its most prominent citizens.
Anyone willing to don a costume and a wig was more or less guaranteed a role, or, if the town happened to be a small one, multiple roles.
In July, at Ticonderoga’s Hancock House, we were reminded of one of the area’s most famous. That evening, the Lower Adirondack Regional Center forHistory presented a benefit, “Secrets of the Museum,” which also provided an opportunity to revisit some exhibits.
Among those is one devoted to the “Indian Pageant,” which was staged annually (with the exception of the World War II years) from the early 1930s through the late 1950s. It was presented once a year in mid-August in “the Forest Grove,” a privately-owned outdoor theater situated a few miles inland
from the spot where Samuel de Champlain raised his arquebus and shot three Iroquois, mortally wounding them.
The pageant was produced, directed and written by the Forest Grove’s owner, Tom Cook, a keen student of the Iroquois whose grove was once an Indian encampment. In its heyday, the pageant boasted a cast of 125 people and an audience in the thousands.
Another pageant which the Lower Adirondack Regional Center for History has explored on at least one occasion is one staged in 1924 by the National Women’s Party in a natural amphitheater at foot of Mount Discovery near Elizabethtown, NY.
An August 16, 1924 issue of the Lake George Mirror reported on preparations for the pageant. “Co-operation in neighboring towns is adding much to the efficiency of its management. Enthusiasm is growing everywhere and the numbers of people for whom transportation must be provided is growing steadily. Everyone in all communities (are being asked) to lend their motors.”
Attended by more than 10,000 people, the pageant was staged in honor of the adoption of the 20th amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. Its theme was the passing of the torch of freedom from one generation of women to the next.
Lake George Pageants
No doubt, many other communities throughout the area hosted pageants of their own, but we are familiar only with those staged in Lake George.
Lake George’s municipal historian, Margy Mannix, has researched them in detail. According to Mannix, Lake George’s historical pageants were not so much entertainments for visitors as civic exercises meant to strengthen the community.
“They promoted pride and patriotism,” she says. “We learned more about our particular place through the passage of time.”
According to Mannix, the first historical pageant to be staged in Lake George was in 1855 in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Lake George.
Highlights – if that is not too strong a word – included a long address in the courthouse titled “An historical discourse on the occasion of the centennial celebration of the Battle of Lake George, 1755,” by the Rev. Dr. Cortland Van Rensselaer (1808-1860), a prominent American clergyman.
Pageants were staged in Lake George again in 1912, 1926, 1929, 1933, 1938 and 1955. In Lake George, and no doubt in many towns, the residents relied
upon one vigorous, disciplined individual to write, produce, direct and cast the pageants.
In the 1920s, that role in Lake George appears to have fallen to Mrs. Charles Tuttle, who was able to persuade such prominent residents of “Millionaires’ Row” as the Ochses, the Peabodys, Louise and Sidney Homer and Marcella Sembrich to lend helping hands.
Edward Everett Horton and the Pageants of Lake George
For the pageants of 1938 and 1955, Lake George relied upon the John B. Rogers Producing Company, an established supplier of costumes, sets, lights, and
scripts for amateur theater. According to historians of these matters, the company could also supply singers, dancers and actors if the local population was lacking the requisite talent.
That was unlikely to be the case in Lake George, which could rely upon vacationing actors to give its pageants a bit of show biz flair. One such was Edward Everett Horton (1886-1970), who appeared in more than 120 films.
A frequent visitor and eventually, the owner of a cottage in Kattskill Bay, Horton served as a narrator in the Pageant of 1938. Horton embraced his role
as a local. “I address you not as a screen star from Hollywood, but as a resident of Lake George – your neighbor,” he said on July 18, 1938, in a short speech opening the performance of “The Romance of Lake George,” which told the early history of the Lake George.
Each night of the four-night run, Horton introduced the show, which was acted by 500 local amateurs, with a score performed by High school students from Lake George, Lake Luzerne, and Warrensburg. A New York Times story explained that the performance was done in pantomime with a narrator reading the text to explain each scene.
According to the Albany Knickerbocker News, the pageant “exceeded expectations in splendor and magnitude.” Every evening, roughly 1,500 people
filled Shepard Park to watch it. Among the audience, reportedly, were many of the state’s most prominent figures.
“It is an encouraging sign to see so many people willing to turn back the pages of history in order to put Lake George in the forefront of great vacationlands,” said Horton.
To fund the pageant, the event’s organizers came up with a novel idea. They printed wooden nickels called “Lake George Wooden Money” and the best thing about the fake “coinage” was that it worked. The Lake George wooden nickels, shaped like currency and stamped onto thin sheets of plywood, sold for a
dime.
Local merchants accepted the “money” at its face value, a nickel. The other half, five cents, went to support the historical celebration. Furthermore, many people just kept the “Lake George Wooden Money” as a souvenir, a reminder of the historical extravaganza.
Horton told a reporter who covered “The Romance of Lake George” pageant that when he returned to California after his vacation at Kattskill Bay that he would take back “a bunch of Lake George wooden nickels.”
Pageants declined in popularity as movie theaters, drive-ins and finally television displaced live, more public forms of entertainment. In the popular
imagination, however, historical pageants are still identified with small town American life. If you doubt that, stream Waiting for Guffman through your TV set.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Maury Thompson and Joseph W. Zarzynski contributed to this essay.
Illustrations, from above: Lake George Village’s Shepard Park, the scene of numerous historical pageants from 1912 to 1955 (Fred Thatcher photo, courtesy Bolton Historical Museum); Artifacts from Ticonderoga’s Indian Pageant (Lower Adirondack History Center); Following the National Women’s Party 1924 pageant at Mount Discovery, visitors paid respects at the Inez Mullholland; “The Romance of Lake George” souvenir pageant program.
