Oliver Morosco (June 20, 1875 – August 25, 1945) was an American theatrical producer, director, writer, film producer, and theater owner. Morosco brought many of his theater actors to the screen.[1]
Oliver Morosco created the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company with film businessman Frank A. Garbutt in 1914. [2] The company was merged with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players-Lasky Corporation in 1916.
(However, historian Michael Locke reports:
Property records show the building was originally a carpenter's shed owned by Frank Alderman Garbutt, one of Los Angeles' early pioneers. Hobart Bosworth purchased the property from Garbutt in 1914, transforming it into a movie studio with Llewellyn Iron Works serving as the building contractor.
The Bosworth-Morosco Studios is the oldest studio in Los Angeles, built for veteran film actor, director, writer, and producer Hobart Bosworth and Oliver Morosco a theatrical producer, director, writer and theater owner in 1913 and still operational today.
Located at 201 North Occidental Boulevard.)
Biography
Born Oliver Mitchell in Logan, Utah, to John Leslie Mitchell and Esmah Badure Montrose. The Mitchells divorced, and Esmah Mitchell took her two sons to California, eventually arriving in San Francisco. At the age of six, Oliver and his brother Leslie[3], three years his elder, were hired by Walter M. Morosco (1846–1901) to perform in his acrobatic troupe, the Royal Russian Circus, then a regular attraction at Woodward's Gardens, a popular San Francisco amusement park.
Walter Morosco made an arrangement with Esmah Mitchell to become the foster father of her sons and to give them his name. He was a theatrical impresario as well as an acrobat, and operated Morosco's Grand Opera House,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] one of San Francisco's leading theaters. When Oliver was a teenager, his foster father took over operation of another San Francisco venue, the Amphitheater, and of The Auditorium at San Jose, California, and made Oliver the manager of both houses.
In 1899, Oliver Morosco moved to Los Angeles to begin his independent career as a theatrical impresario. He took over the lease on the troubled Burbank Theatre and soon made it a success with a series of stock companies and shows featuring the popular actors of the day. Such stars as Wilton Lackaye, Richard Bennett, Edgar Selwyn, and Margaret Illington appeared at the Burbank Theatre. A number of original plays were first mounted at the Burbank and later performed in New York City. These included "The Rose of the Rancho" by Richard Walton Tully, and actor-playwright Edgar Selwyn's "The Country Boy" and "The Arab."
In 1908, Morosco became the lessee of the new Majestic Theatre on Broadway in Los Angeles.
In 1911 took over the former Los Angeles Theatre on Spring Street which had for several years been the Los Angeles home of the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit, renaming it the Lyceum Theatre.
He also entered into a partnership with the Belasco-Meyer interests of San Francisco to take over management of their theaters on the west coast, including the Belasco Theatre (aka the Follies Theatre) in Los Angeles, the Burbank's chief rival as a stock house.
In 1913, he opened the Morosco Theatre on Broadway, the most luxurious theater yet built in Los Angeles. (This theater remains standing and was later renamed the Globe Theatre.)
Though Los Angeles remained his home, Morosco began producing plays in New York City in 1906 and mounted over 40 productions on Broadway including Peg o' My Heart and The Bird of Paradise both starring Laurette Taylor.
He contributed lyrics to a Victor Schertzinger song he had added to L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk's musical, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, which he produced in 1913. Through this show he discovered Charlotte Greenwood and made her a star. In 1917, he opened the Morosco Theatre in New York.
In 1919–1920, he produced the Edward Everett Rose-scripted satirical melodrama, The Master Thief, starring Francis X. Bushman and Beverly Bayne.
In 1926 the once successful Morosco filed for bankruptcy, his fortune lost in part due to a large speculative purchase of land in California where he planned to create a development called "Morosco Town."
Death
At the age of 69, Morosco was struck and killed by a streetcar in Hollywood. He had been married four times and was the father of Walter Morosco the film producer.
Oliver Mitchell Morosco was cremated in Santa Monica. The location of his ashes are unknown. However, there is a cenotaph in the Enterprise Cemetery in Enterprise, Morgan County, Utah.
Filmography
As Producer
Captain Courtesy (1915)
Kilmeny (1915)
The House of Lies (1916)
Her Father's Son (1916)
His Sweetheart (1917)
The Highway of Hope (1917)
Jack and Jill (1917)
As Writer
Pretty Mrs. Smith (1915)
The Wild Olive (1915)
So Long Letty (1920)
The Half Breed (1922)
Further reading
Life of Oliver Morosco; The Oracle of Broadway, Written from His Own Notes and Comments. Morosco, Oliver, Helen McRuer Morosco, and Leonard Paul Dugger. Caldwell, Id: Caxton Printers, 1944.
References
1. "The Moving Picture World." 1915.
2. Long, Bruce (January 1991). William Desmond Taylor: A Dossier. ISBN 978-1-4616-7434-4.
3. Leslie Morosco(Univ. of Washington, Sayre collection)
4. "War Memorial Opera House" (PDF). verplanck consulting. Archived from the original on 2016-04-13. ...the Wade (later Grand) Opera House. Located on the north side of Mission Street, just west of Third Street, the Grand Opera House perished in 1906, along with most of the city's other opera houses, including the Tivoli Opera House and the Orpheum Theater.
5. "Grand Opera House, Mission St. [No. 2.]." content.cdlib.org.
6. Smith, James R. (4 January 2018). San Francisco's Lost Landmarks. Quill Driver Books. ISBN 978-1-884995-44-6 – via Google Books.
7. "PCAD - Wade's Opera House, San Francisco, CA." pcad.lib.washington.edu.
8. "Daily Alta California 29 February 1876 – California Digital Newspaper Collection." cdnc.ucr.edu.
9. Miller, Leta E. (4 January 2018). Music and Politics in San Francisco: From the 1906 Quake to the Second World War. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-26891-3 – via Google Books.
10. "Photograph of Grand Opera House." Calisphere.
11. Miller, Leta E. (4 January 2018). Music and Politics in San Francisco: From the 1906 Quake to the Second World War. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-26891-3 – via Google Books.
12. File:LLOYD(1876) INTERIOR VIEW OF WADE'S OPERA HOUSE pg162.jpg
13. "Theaters - San Francisco Block by Block." sfblockhistory.wikidot.com.
14. "San Francisco." www2.ouk.edu.tw.
15. http://art.famsf.org/souvenir-program-wades-opera-house-january-17-1876-36444
16. "San Francisco Call 12 February 1907 – California Digital Newspaper Collection." cdnc.ucr.edu.
17. "Grand Opera House." oac.cdlib.org.
18. "Grand Opera House, Mission St. [No. 2.]." oac.cdlib.org.
19. Wade's Opera House, later Grand Opera House, later Morosco's Grand Opera House
20. "Wade's Opera House souvenir program." oac.cdlib.org.
21. "Daily Alta California 13 January 1876 – California Digital Newspaper Collection." cdnc.ucr.edu.
22. "PCAD - Grand Opera House, San Francisco, CA." pcad.lib.washington.edu.
23. "SF Theater Quiz - San Francisco History - Guidelines Newsletter." www.sfcityguides.org.
24. "Morosco's Grand Opera House." www.worldcat.org.
25. "Cover of Wade Opera House and Art Gallery program." oac.cdlib.org.
26. "Photograph of drawing of the interior of the Grand Opera House." oac.cdlib.org.
27. "The Great Quake: 1906–2006 / Days before the disaster."
28. "The Changing Faces of St Patricks." St. Patrick Church.
29. "The passionate 1879 battle over 'The Passion.'"
30. http://www.artandarchitecture-sf.com/carusos-dream-causes-pianos-to-fly.html
31. "The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire - HistoryNet". www.historynet.com.
32. "The San Francisco Horror • Chapter 1." penelope.uchicago.edu.
33. "Is that my head or an Earthquake?" 23 January 2013.
34. "San Francisco City Directory." Crocker-Langley. 1905. Grand Opera House, North Side of Mission between 3rd Street and 4th Street (page 799)
"Oliver Morosco: A Bit of History." The Grizzly Bear, May, 1907
"Combining the Stock Companies." Randolph Bartlett, Out West, July, 1911
Press Reference Library, Southwest Edition, 1912, p. 216.
"Oliver Morosco Accused by Wife." The New York Times, May 9, 1920
"Oliver Morosco Weds Miss Selma Paley." The New York Times, April 2, 1922
"Morosco Bankrupt, His Debts $1,033,404." The New York Times, February 19, 1926
"Mrs. Oliver Morosco Sues." The New York Times, September 15, 1928
"Divorces Oliver Morosco." The New York Times, October 11, 1928.
"Morosco Gets License to Wed." The New York Times, November 17, 1929
"Wife Sues Oliver Morosco." The New York Times, August 7, 1934
"Divorces Oliver Morosco; Wife Says Producer Had Too Many Facets to His Nature." The New York Times, September 6, 1934
"Heyday on Broadway." The New York Times September 17, 1944.
"Morosco Killed Under Street Car." The New York Times, August 26, 1945.
"Top Slander" Time Magazine, September 3, 1945
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