On a cool March evening in 1976, an orange-robed, bearded man sat cross-legged on a wooden dais on the Lobero Theatre stage. Sri Swami Satchidananda was one of the West’s most well-known teachers of classical Yoga and, in 1969, had welcomed 400,000 young people to the Woodstock Music and Art Fair with an opening prayer.

By the mid-1970s, Satchidananda had moved to Santa Barbara, where he had created a Yogaville West community up on San Marcos Pass.

C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder (his family name) was born in southern India in 1914. As a young man, Ramaswamy worked in his family’s motorcycle import business. After his wife died only five years into their marriage, Ramaswamy left his two young children with his mother and embarked on a long spiritual pilgrimage through India. After years of wandering as an ascetic sadhu, begging for his food and studying with one teacher after another, he found a holy man named Swami Sivananda, who became his guru. In 1949, Ramaswamy was given the monastic name Satchidananda.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Satchidananda was a hugely popular spiritual teacher across India. In 1965, the German-American artist Peter Max invited Satchidananda to visit New York. Max recalled the conversation. “Swami, America needs you very, very much. It would be really nice if you could come to America.” ‘America needs me?’ he asked. I told him that the youth were experimenting with drugs to expand their consciousness and the whole country was undergoing great change. His teachings of yoga were what we needed. Then the Swami told me, ‘Okay, if there’s a need, I’ll come.’”

In the 1960s, the average American knew little to nothing about yoga and meditation. A weekly PBS television show, called Yoga for Health with Richard Hittleman, started airing in 1961. But yoga only started to become widely known when the counterculture and New Age movements started to explore new lifestyles and world views – especially Eastern spirituality – in the late 1960s. As the “Woodstock Guru,” Swami Satchidananda played an important role in introducing yoga and meditation into Western popular culture.

From 1974 – 1978, when Satchidananda moved his winter headquarters to the Santa Barbara foothills, the Lobero stage became his favored public venue. Tickets to hear the Swami sold for $2.50 and his unprepared, humor-filled lectures focused on his system of Integral Yoga. Satchidananda described Integral Yoga as “a flexible combination of specific methods to develop every aspect of the individual: physical, intellectual, and spiritual. It is a scientific system which integrates the various branches of yoga to bring about a complete and harmonious development of the entire person.”

In late 1977, Satchidananda submitted plans to create an Integral Yoga Institute on 62 acres of land on San Marcos Pass, just above San Antonio Creek Road. The centerpiece was to be a 35-foot high, pink, nine-sided interfaith temple. Predictably, neighbors objected to the aesthetics of the structure and traffic impacts, and after several county hearings, the plans were withdrawn. Within a few months, Satchidananda moved his headquarters east to what became Yogaville East in Buckingham County, Virginia.

Additional Resources:

• New York Times – Swami Satchidananda
• Integral Yoga SF – About Our Founder
• Integral Yoga Magazine
• LA Times – Swami Satchidananda
• Telegraph – Swami Satchidananda

In December 1869, José Lobero (born “Giuseppe” in Genoa, Italy) announced his plans to construct a grand opera house in Santa Barbara, even though the town had fewer than 3,000 residents.

Señor Lobero’s dream was not unique. With the prosperity that followed the Civil War, most small towns and cities in America also wanted an opera house.

On Washington’s Birthday in 1873, the Lobero Opera House finally opened, on the site of an old wooden schoolhouse at Canon Perdido and Anacapa streets. It featured a suspended horseshoe balcony and could seat 1,300. At the time of its opening, the Lobero was the largest adobe building in California and soon established itself as the cultural heart of Santa Barbara.

During that era, one of the most colorful theater impresarios and traveling entertainers was an Irishman named Jack Langrishe, popularly known as the “Comedian of the Frontier.” Jack was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1825, and emigrated to Boston when he was 20 years old. Within a few years, he was working in Boston taverns and theaters as an actor, comedian, and magician. In 1860, Langrishe and his actress wife Jennette saw an opportunity for touring entertainers in the western frontier, and his “Langrishe and Company” found a lucrative niche performing in mining towns in Colorado and Montana.

In 1876, Langrishe and Company arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota. Two years earlier, Colonel George Armstrong Custer had led an expedition into the nearby Black Hills and had found gold, setting off a wild gold rush which brought thousands to claim stakes on the Sioux-owned land. In 1876, Deadwood had grown to over 25,000 residents and was a lawless, violent town, but it was also a place that was hungry for entertainment.

Jack and Jenette Langrishe wasted no time in the thriving boom town, and they opened Deadwood’s first theater in July 1876. Just one week later, Wild Bill Hickok was murdered by Jack McCall in a neighboring saloon. An impromptu court was immediately called to order and the Langrishe Theater was requisitioned for McCall’s murder trial.

For three years, the Langrishe Theater was the center of Deadwood night life, with nightly vaudeville and minstrel performances playing to a packed house. Entertainers were sometimes paid in gold dust. Calamity Jane was a theater regular.

David Milch, the producer of the hit HBO series Deadwood, described Jack Langrishe as “a brilliant producer who made a fortune and, of course, lost every cent in hare-brained investments. He insisted every season on doing two Shakespeare plays, and invariably somebody tried to murder him during the performance because, strangely enough, Shakespeare wasn’t big in the mining camps.”

In September 1879, a devastating fire destroyed much of Deadwood, including the Langrishe Theater. Rather than rebuild, the Langrishes decided to take to the road. During an 1884 tour of the west coast, they arrived at the Lobero Opera House for a one-week run. Music for the performances was provided by the Santa Barbara Orchestra.

The Independent wrote, “The Langrishe troupe arrives today on the steamer, and will open tonight in Lobero’s Theatre. They deserve a full house.”

California audiences, including Santa Barbareños, loved Langrishe, and newspaper reviews were very positive.

The line announced on the bills, “A Whole Laugh Every Half Minute”, proved a literal truth, for it was one solid, undying, long-drawn burst of mirth, sometimes swelling into a roar, but never ending until the curtain fell, and the audience went home with aching sides.”

“Those who have not seen this company have missed a genuine treat, since they do not offer the trash generally considered good enough for us, but present good plays in an artistic and entertaining manner.”

Jack Langrishe retired from the stage in 1885. He and Jenette moved to Idaho, where he published a small newspaper, served as a state senator, and occasionally wrote plays.

• General Tom Thumb
• Freak Show – Britannica
• BBC News – Freak Show Blogs

Death on the stage is as old as the history of theater. The ancient Greek playwright Sophocles famously depicted the on-stage suicide of the warrior Ajax, and melodramatic death scenes were commonplace in plays in the late 1800s.

But the real thing – actors who die during a performance – are as rare as they are shocking. One of the most famous, and ironic, real-life onstage deaths occurred at the Lobero on April 1, 1938.

Joseph Greenwald was born in New York in 1878 and grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As a boy, Greenwald was so enamored with the theater that he set up his paperboy box in front of a Bowery theater just so he could meet the actors and get to know the staff.

In his 30s Greenwald joined a repertory company, playing a different character each week. His salary was $25 a week and out of that, he had to buy his own wigs and costumes. In his first year as an actor, Greenwald played 38 roles. In 1926, at the age of 48, Greenwald got his first real break and joined the cast of the wildly successful comedy Abie’s Irish Rose. The play, about an Irish Catholic girl and a Jewish man who marry despite the objections of their families, was a huge commercial hit but was scorned by critics for reinforcing ethnic stereotypes. When asked to give his review of the play, Harpo Marx famously quipped, “No worse than a bad cold.”

Greenwald continued with Abie’s Irish Rose for a two-year tour of the English provinces and then stayed on to act in several shows on the London stage, including the prized role of Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. On his return to New York, he married a vaudeville comedienne named Lonnie Nace and continued with his busy career as a character actor in a number of Broadway plays.

In November 1937, the Clifford Odet play Golden Boy premiered on Broadway. Golden Boy was the story of a musically talented young Italian American named Joe Bonaparte who had to choose between his love of the violin and a lucrative, though a physically damaging career as a boxer. The play ran for 250 performances and was a financial and critical hit.

Several months after its successful Broadway run, Golden Boy was prepared for a West Coast tour. The actress – and future legendary acting teacher – Stella Adler was chosen to direct the play. Ms. Adler cast an up-and-coming young actor by the name of Francis Lederer for the play’s lead role of Joe. Joseph Greenwald was selected to play Mr. Bonaparte, Joe’s father. After several weeks of rehearsals in Los Angeles, Golden Boy was scheduled to open at the Lobero Theatre for a two-night “break-in,” before traveling to San Francisco.

Golden Boy’s West Coast premiere took place on April 1, 1938. The Lobero was sold out and the audience included a number of newspaper reporters who were eager to review the smash Broadway comedy. Working as the stage manager and minor actor (with only two lines) was the 21-year-old Glenn Ford. Ford would become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1940s and Golden Boy was only his second professional stage job. Ford recounted the night of April 1 in a biography written by his son Peter, Glenn Ford: A Life. “Actors are a very superstitious breed. So there was already a feeling of uneasiness among some in the cast. The curtain went up and everything went smoothly until the second act.”

It was at this moment in the play that Joseph Greenwald in the role of Mr. Bonaparte showed a friend an expensive violin he had just bought his son Joe.

BONAPARTE

My Joe gotta big talent. Yesterday I buy-a-him a present!
(With a dramatic flourish he brings a violin case out of the bottom part of a sideboard)

CARP (as the case is opened)

It looks like a coffin for a baby.

BONAPARTE

(looking down at violin in its case)

His teacher help me to picka him.

CARP (the connoisseur)

Fine, fine – beautiful, fine! A cultural thing!

BONAPARTE (touching it fondly)

The mosta golden present for his birthday which I give him tonight.

CARP

How much, if I’m not getting too personal, did such a violin cost you?

BONAPARTE

Twelve hundred dollars.

CARP (shocked)

What?

BONAPARTE

You’re surprised of me? I waita for this moment all my life.

After uttering the words “all my life,” Joseph Greenwald suddenly collapsed to the stage.

As reported by the national press, “The audience believed it to be part of the plot when Joseph Greenwald, a well-known Broadway character actor, collapsed last night as he said ‘all my life.’ But Greenwald’s collapse was genuine. He died of a heart attack. Not until members of the cast shouted for the curtains to be drawn did the audience know that Greenwald had been stricken.”

As Glenn Ford explained,

“I rushed onto the stage immediately. He was lying in the arms of one of the other actors. He was already dead. God, what an experience.”

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The stunned audience was ushered out of the theater and their tickets were refunded. Golden Boy’s performance the following night was canceled, and the show was shut down for a week until another actor could be hired to replace Joseph Greenwald. His replacement turned out to be Lee J. Cobb, who had appeared in a different role in the Broadway production.

In 1939, Golden Boy was made into a movie starring William Holden as Joe and Lee J. Cobb as his father. In 1964, author Clifford Odets was lured out of semi-retirement and asked to write a musical version of Golden Boy specifically for Sammy Davis Jr.. And in 2013, a Broadway revival of the original play opened and was a critical hit, receiving 8 Tony Award nominations including Best Revival of a Play.

Sources

• https://www.newspapers.com
• https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/04/02/98119092.html?pageNumber=15
• The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage

On February 23, 1931 a standing-room-only audience filled the Lobero to hear singer Paul Robeson unleash his rich timbered bass-baritone in a program that ranged from classical arias to southern spirituals.

Presented by the Community Arts Music Association (CAMA), one reviewer wrote that “the singing of Paul Robeson wrought an unaccustomed miracle at the Lobero Theatre last night and caused the sedate audience to abandon its reserve for an enthusiasm which could only find vent in shouts and bravos.”

Paul Robeson was born in 1898 In Princeton, New Jersey. His father was a Presbyterian minister who had been a North Carolina plantation slave until he escaped in 1860. Robeson’s mother was a Philadelphia schoolteacher, who died when Robeson was only 9.

In 1915 Paul Robeson won a scholarship to attend Rutgers University and became only the third African American ever to attend the private college. Robeson was an exceptional university scholar and football star and was twice selected as a first-team All-American tight end. In his 1919 valedictorian speech, Robeson asked his classmates to work for the equality of all Americans, a mission he devoted his entire life to fulfilling.

After graduating from Rutgers, Paul Robeson married, earned his law degree from Columbia University, and even played a season in the National Football League. At the urging of his wife Essie Goode, Robeson tried out for and won a leading role in the play Taboo, which debuted at a Harlem theater in 1922. Set on a plantation in Louisiana before the Civil War, Robeson’s performance received rave reviews and highlighted his acting ability and extraordinary singing voice. In 1924, Robeson landed the lead role in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones and accompanied the play when it went on to London.

Compared with America, the Robeson’s found England to be refreshingly free from racial prejudice. Essie wrote, “that here in London they could, as respectable human beings, dine at any public place.” While theaters in New York would only allow blacks to sit in the balcony, and white hotels would refuse accommodation, the Robeson’s found London society – and Europe in general – to be much more accepting.

In 1928 Robeson played “Joe” in the London production of the American musical Show Boat. His singing of “Ol’ Man River” became a cultural sensation, and he was summoned by Buckingham Palace to perform for the royal family. The couple bought a house in London, and Robeson was cast to play Othello, one of the first black men to perform the role.

In 1931 Paul Robeson returned to America for a series of concerts. The tour began at New York’s Carnegie Hall in January and initially featured an evenly mixed program of classical arias and southern spirituals. By the time Robeson performed at the Lobero in February, the program consisted mostly of spirituals.

Robeson’s Lobero concert was a presentation of the Music branch of the Community Arts Association (CAMA) as part of its 12^th season and was a phenomenal success. The Santa Barbara News-Press reported, “Long before the date of the concert, the theater was sold out. During the last few days, the demand for seats has exceeded that of any other concert the committee has sponsored. Last evening scores of persons who came to the theater optimistically hoping to gain entrance had to be turned away. Unfortunately for those who were deprived of hearing the concert, seats were not sold on the stage, otherwise another 200 persons might have listened to the magnificent voice.”

Critics raved about the quality and sincerity of Robeson’s singing. The influential theatrical producer Irving Pichel wrote,

“Robeson sang with so complete a simplicity and unaffected identification with the content of the songs that they were indescribably moving.”

After completing his American tour, Robeson returned to Europe and increasingly became an advocate for social and political causes. As the Smithsonian Magazine explained, “After a visit to Eastern Europe in 1934, where he was nearly attacked by Nazis in Germany, Robeson experienced nothing but adulation and respect in the USSR—a nation he believed did not harbor any resentment or racial animosity toward blacks. ‘Here, I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life,’ he said. ‘I walk in full human dignity.’”

In the 1950’s, after refusing to sign an affidavit declaring he was not a Communist, Robeson was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Because of the negative publicity over his positive views of the USSR, Robeson was blacklisted from performing, his name was removed from the college All-America football teams, his recordings and films were removed from distribution and he was even condemned by leaders of the civil rights movement.

Yet Robeson held fast in his beliefs. “I care nothing–less than nothing–about what the lords of the land, the Big White Folks, think of me and my ideas,” Robeson later wrote, in Here I Stand. “For more than 10 years they have persecuted me in every way they could–by slander and mob violence, by denying me the right to practice my profession as an artist, by withholding my right to travel abroad. To these, the real Un-Americans, I merely say: ‘All right–I don’t like you either!’”

In 1963, suffering from chronic health issues, Paul Robeson retired from performing and public life. Essie Robeson died in 1965, and Paul passed away in Philadelphia in 1976. He was 77 years old.

Sources

• Community Arts Music Association (CAMA)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson
• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-paul-robeson-said-77742433/
• https://www.nytimes.com/1976/01/24/archives/paul-robeson-dead-at-77-singer-actor-and-activist-paul-robeson-the
• https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/paul-robeson-story-how-american-icon-was-driven-death-be-told-film-9874111.html
• http://archives.nypl.org/scm/20649
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh9WayN7R-s