In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

N o t e s 1. Debut 1. Oscar Lewis, San Francisco: Mission to Metropolis (San Diego: Howell-­ North Books, 1980), 111–112. In Ameri­ cans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), Kevin Starr remarks on San Franciscans’ “impetuous love of theater and cuisine” and intense pursuit of pleasure, characteristics reflected in the city’s built landscape : “The construction of family housing lagged far behind that of business offices, hostelries (in­ clud­ ing the extravagant Palace Hotel, finished in Oc­ to­ ber 1878), theaters, opera houses, restaurants, and saloons” (239–240). 2. Constance Rourke, Troupers of the Gold Coast or the Rise of Lotta Crabtree (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925), 208–209. 3. Guillermo Prieto, San Francisco in the Seventies: The City as Viewed by a Mexican Po­ litical Exile, translated and edited by Edwin S. Morby (San Francisco: John Henry Nash, 1938), 46. 4. Rourke, 1925, 208, 210–211. As one such visitor would recall, “the theatre was as nearly perfect as it is possible to imagine, equipped with everything in scenery, properties, wardrobe , etc., that the most exacting star could demand.” See Rose Eytinge, The Memories of Rose Eytinge. Being Recollections and Observations of Men, Women, and Events During Half a Century (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1905), 249, 250. 5. In Women in the Ameri­ can Theatre: Actresses and Audiences, 1790–1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), Faye E. Dudden notes the mid-­ nineteenth-­ century popularity of a “special subset” of plays that “offered a kind of special pleading against the sexual reputation traditionally accorded the actress: she is either misunderstood or, despite her missteps, a good woman” (135–136). In Europe, this melodrama was titled Adrianna Lecouvreur; in the United States the heroine’s first name became “Adrienne.” 6. In her “Introduction” to Ameri­ can Debut: Source Materials on the First Appearance of the Polish Actress Helena Mo­ dje­ ska on the Ameri­ can Stage, introduced, translated, and annotated by Marion Moore Coleman, in Books and Things, new series 6–7, Winter 1964–Spring 1965 (Cheshire, Conn.: Cherry Hill Books), Coleman observes that Adrienne “was a favorite with visiting European stars who had preceded Mo­ dje­ ska here,” a success for the actresses listed above, if not for the German Marie Seebach. 7. San Francisco Daily Morning Call, 5 August 1877. 8. San Francisco Daily Morning Call, 19 August 1877. 9. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin remarked how uninspiring it was to hear about yet another foreign actress whose “broad, uncouth, and otherwise eccentric pronunciation was sure to offend” (21 August 1877). Daily Alta California, 21 August 1877. 10. Daily Alta California, 21 August 1877. 330 notes to pages 3–9 11. San Francisco Daily Morning Call, 21 August 1877; San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 21 August 1877. 12. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 21 August 1877. 13. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 23 August 1877. 14. Mo­ dje­ ska to Maria Faleńska, San Francisco, 29 August 1877, in Korespondencja, Vol. 1, edited by Jerzy Got and Józef Szczublewski (War­ saw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1965), 29. All translations of Polish sources are mine, unless otherwise noted. 15. Helena Mo­dje­ska, Memories and Impressions of Helena Mo­ dje­ ska (New York: Macmillan Company, 1910), 335. 16. All About Eve, directed and written by Joseph Mankiewicz (1950). 17. Valerie Takahama, “History Lessons,” The Orange County Register, 6 April 2000. 18. Mo­ dje­ ska to Stefania Leowa, San Francisco, 15 March 1877, in Got and Szczublewski, 1965, v. 1, 371. 19. Chłapowski to Józef Chłapowski, Anaheim, around 15 No­ vem­ ber 1876, in Got and Szczublewski, 1965, v. 1, 351. 20. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 82. In her gargantuan biography, Fair Rosalind: The Ameri­ can Career of Helena Mo­ dje­ska (Cheshire, Conn.: Cherry Hill Books, 1969), Marion Moore Coleman surmises that­ Mo­ dje­ ska “wisely had no wish to stamp herself a ‘ghetto actress,’ thus automatically cutting herself off from the mainstream of Ameri­ can artistic life and precluding any possibility of a future career on the Ameri­ can stage in general” (37). For a thoroughgoing history of Polish theater in the Ameri­ can diaspora, see Emil Orzechowski, Teatr Polonijny w Stanach­Zjednoczonych (War­ saw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1989). 21. See Karol Chłapowski’s letter to Anna...

Share