Abraham Lincoln Erlanger

Erlanger, A[braham] L[incoln] (1860–1930), producer and manager. As a young boy in his native Cleveland, he sold opera glasses at the Academy of Music and was later appointed treasurer of the Euclid Avenue Opera House. Erlanger soon developed a cynical business philosophy and, to go with it, an unwieldy collection of Napoleonic memorabilia. The blocky, balding, bull‐faced man directed and produced contemporary melodramas, eventually going into partnership with a lawyer, Marc Klaw. The pair came east and bought out the Taylor Theatrical Exchange, changing its name to the Klaw and Erlanger Exchange. Among the celebrated performers they represented were Effie Ellsler, Joseph Jefferson, and Fanny Davenport. Theatrical bookings of the day were loosely organized and often chaotic, so in 1895 the pair met quietly with producers Charles Frohman, Al Hayman, William Harris Sr., Samuel F. Nixon‐Nirdlinger, and Fred Zimmerman to attempt to bring some order to the system, and in the following year the group established what became known as the Theatrical Syndicate or Trust, with Erlanger in effective control. Within a short time the Syndicate controlled several hundred theatres across the country and denied theatres to performers and producers who refused to meet its often unreasonable demands. Such distinguished players as Mrs. Fiske and Sarah Bernhardt were reduced to performing in tents and lesser theatres but won huge audiences and widespread admiration for their defiance. In 1907 the Syndicate seemingly attempted to take over vaudeville as well, but in a short while sold out to Keith for well over a million dollars, suggesting to many that the move was merely a gigantic blackmail attempt against Keith. Erlanger's stranglehold would eventually be diminished by the Shuberts and the coming of films. Although most theatre figures looked on him as a vicious, callous, arrogant man, Erlanger had a number of loyal admirers, such as George M. Cohan and, until he fought with them late in their careers, Florenz Ziegfeld and Charles Dillingham. He bankrolled most of their productions, including the first Follies. Beginning with The Great Metropolis (1889), he produced hundreds of plays in New York and silently underwrote many others. Although he took public credit, usually as co‐producer, for such plays as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1910), Kismet (1911), Pollyanna (1916), The Famous Mrs. Fair (1919), and To the Ladies (1922), he was better known as producer or co‐producer of such musicals as Forty‐five Minutes from Broadway (1906), The Pink Lady (1911), The Count of Luxembourg (1912), Two Little Girls in Blue (1921), and Honeymoon Lane (1926).