ABSTRACT
When Corbyn found out that Lydia was preparing to make her way west, he telegraphed frantically to New York. His troupe was put hurriedly onto a train, and rehearsing their “new” burlesque (a version of Lydia’s old friend Endymion now entitled Luna) flat out as they chugged across the country, they arrived in California ahead of Henderson’s team. The attraction that had been booked for Maguire’s Opera House for the coming week was paid off, and Luna was shoved at all speed onto the stage. But Corbyn and Maguire’s haste proved their undoing. Only Harry Beckett came out of the flung-together performance with any credit. Rose Massey as Diana (“loud and vulgar”) and Ada Harland as Cupid (“lacks style”) were not liked, and even Eliza as Endymion, although voted the best actress and most attractive performer of the bunch, didn’t connect. “Not one of them,” wrote a local reviewer,
is half so clever or bright and nimble or imbued with the true spirit of burlesque as the despised Elise Holt who was so terribly cut up by the critics here … to sum up there is a quantity of shimmering golden hair, several buxom bodies, some enticing calves, but not much burlesque; what these blondes are wanting in is talent for honest fun, they are deficient in dancing and the essence of burlesque is made up in cheek and loudness.
