• Photograph: View of stage in a music hall or theater, showing Trick House set and performers
Photograph: View of stage in a music hall or theater, showing Trick House set and performers
Photograph: View of stage in a music hall or theater, showing Trick House set and performers

Photograph: View of stage in a music hall or theater, showing Trick House set and performers

MSS 027 Box 1 Folder 8 Item 12


1890s (Date manufactured/created)
Albumen photograph of a stage in a music hall or small theater, showing a set and actors onstage. The Great Pantomine Trick House is the subject, and the clown actors are father and son Fritz Smith and Edwin "Eddie" Fritz Smith.  Young Eddie, in a polka dot costume, is atop the house, while Fritz, in a striped costume, is shown to the right of the house. Their partner Lewis Leslie plays the role of a policeman.   The "Trick House" is upstage center.  It was made to look like a brick house with a window and door.  A  policeman stands stage right of the house, a clown kneels above the window, and a second clown stands stage left of the house.  The trio's antics running around, into, and out of the house formed the slapstick entertainment, a popular type in vaudeville.  Fritz Smith's skill as an acrobat, leaper, and tumbler were part of the appeal as he performed physical feats in the course of the action.  Young Eddie would have done similar tricks. Observers, likely members of the orchestra, are visible at the bottom of the photo.  A penciled notation on the back reads "Fritz, Leslie & Eddie."  The photograph dates to the 1890s, but likely before the end of the decade, because Fritz was injured around that time and had to stop performing leaping and tumbling, which were part of the act.

Eddie performed with his father, who was a professional clown known as "Fritz."  (Fritz has been apprenticed at the age of 8 to become an acrobat; clowning was a later part of his circus and vaudeville career.)  Eddie was one of five children in the Smith family but the only one who followed a career in the entertainment business as his parents had.  

Fritz Smith was a circus performer who emigrated to America in the early1870s.  He was born in Liverpool, England, the son of a tailor, and was apprenticed to a "mountebank" from the age of 8 to 15 to learn tumbling, leaping, and acrobatics.  He performed with his master, William Chantrell, and other apprentices as the Chantrell Family.  Fritz won a prize, a silver belt in recognition of his talent, when he was about 13 or 14.  After completing his apprenticeship he taught his older brothers Sidney and Alfred, and for about five years the three performed throughout Great Britain and in Europe as the Fritz Brothers.  After Alfred was killed in an accident on stage, Fritz struck out on his own and partnered with another acrobat about the same age, James Cassim, The two traveled, among other places, to India, possibly because James' father had emigrated from India (his mother was Scottish), and they also performed in Spain and in France.  The two of them left England sometime in the first half of 1870 headed to South America with a newly formed circus company, Courtney and Sanford, who promised to pay high salaries. The company opened in Lima, Peru, on June 1, 1870.  Ultimately Fritz and his partner Cassim were left stranded, along with other performers, when the company went bankrupt and the owner disappeared.  They finally succeeded in returning to the coast and finding a ship to get them to San Francisco where they performed for some time before heading east across the U.S.  They worked in San Francisco for a time and then began working their way east.  In New England Fritz met Catherine "Kitty" Sharpe and the couple married in August of 1874.  She was a sand dancer, also known as a clog dancer or jig dancer, performing on stage in music halls and vaudeville; she also performed comic songs.  The couple had five children.  They traveled with their eldest child to Australia, where their second child was born.  The journey proved to be quite an ordeal, and caused Kitty to refuse to travel overseas again.  Fritz's entire career was devoted to performance and he became the head clown for Barnum & Bailey in the late 1880s.  Fritz knew James A. Bailey very well, as he worked for Bailey and his partner James Cooper prior to Barnum & Bailey.  He was also previously employed by the Adam Forepaugh circus enterprise. Kitty did not want him to travel abroad when Barnum & Bailey decided to go to England in 1889 so Fritz  left the circus to work on stage, creating the Great Pantomime Trick House Act with a short succession of partners.  He performed with his second son and namesake "Eddie" as clowns, and Eddie later became a partner in the Trick House Act.  Fritz was forced to retire from stage after an injury in the Trick House Act, but he continued to be involved in the entertainment world.  The Smith family settled in Saratoga Springs, New York, around 1883 when their third child was born, and Kitty and Fritz remained their until they died.  Kitty's parents and one of her sisters and her husband also settled in Saratoga Springs, forming an enclave of circus and vaudeville performers.
Gift of Susan Crozier Fairchild
MS-0027-108-012