Cal Stewart’s celebrity as a phonograph performer has regrettably drawn attention away from another pioneer of audio theater who was identified to the public simply as “Mrs. Cal Stewart.” There has long been confusion as to her identity, thanks in no small measure to the confusion that has prevailed over Cal’s own basic biographical details. Based on more long hours of research than you can safely shake a stick at, I can now confidently identify three different women who were identified over the years as “Mrs. Cal Stewart”:
- Lillian Evelyn Halvosa, a.k.a. “Sue Stuart” (from 1898 to 1901)
- Florence Rice (from ca. 1902 to 1914)
- “Gypsy Rossini” Hazel Waugh (from 1914 to 1919)
It was the second of these, Florence Rice, who joined Cal in making phonograph records, and she was also the only one of the three who appears never officially to have married him. On the other hand, Cal had a long-term relationship with another woman even earlier in his career, before he became a phonograph performer, and although she wasn’t ever identified as “Mrs. Cal Stewart,” I’m going to start my account with her because she seems, in some respects, to have established a pattern for what was to follow.
“Miss Jennie Morton”
Cal Stewart’s earliest documented female associate was a singer and dancer identified in advertisements as “Miss Jennie Morton.” This may have been her real name, but it might also have been a stage name; for the moment, I’m going to withhold judgment on that point. As far as I’m aware, Cal and Jennie first turn up together in February 1895 on the bill of the Eden Musee in St. Joseph, Missouri, one of Jacob Edwin Sackett’s entrepreneurial combinations of dime museum and variety theater. The Eden Musee was then already a personally memorable venue for Cal Stewart. since it was where—on January 11, 1892—he had played his first gig after abandoning his earlier career with the Wabash railroad, as he later recalled:
My first appearance after I left the road was at Sackett’s Museum and Theater at St. Joseph, Mo., and I didn’t look much like a comedian either with a railroad man’s togs on. I remember how the other performers laughed at me on the sly and then talk about what was likely to happen after the first show. But a man who could hold his own on the Wabash wouldn’t let a little thing like that bother him, and so I sailed in when came my turn and, in theatrical parlance, took it away from all of them. They could not follow me and the manager was compelled to put me down to close the show, though he told me afterward that he would have bet even money that I would finish in stage fright. (“Cal Stewart Tells About Old Timers,” Daily Review [Decatur, Illinois], April 17, 1910, p. 17.)
Cal Stewart’s life story still has more holes in it than a sieve, but this episode seems to have marked his first foray into stand-up comedy in the vaudeville tradition, as opposed to appearing onstage as part of a larger cast in a play such as A Messenger from Jarvis Section or Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Eden Musee contained a “curio parlor” or “lecture hall” where curiosities of all sorts were displayed and discoursed upon, a “Bijou stage,” and a downstairs “theatorium,” and patrons were ushered through all three spaces in that order. In January 1892, Stewart had been assigned to the theatorium, which would indeed have permitted him to close the show as he claimed:
Down stairs the bill will embrace Happy Cal Stewart, the original Jersey farmer, in character specialties, the Hennings family, in a creation of comedy imitations, Geo. Edwards, the German dialect comedian, and the Stone Brothers, in acrobatic song and dance. (St. Joseph [Missouri] Herald, Jan. 10, 1892, p. 3.)
He’d gone on from St. Joseph to perform similarly in minor entertainment houses around the country, but his visit in February 1895—a little over three years later—apparently marked the first time he’d returned to the site of his initial success. This time he was upstairs on the Bijou stage, and so was “Miss Jennie Morton,” although as yet without any explicit linkage to him.
On the platforms in lecture hall Oklahoma Bill and Prairie May appear, and in addition to displaying they describe in an amusing manner an interesting collection of typical western relics. The next department in rotation is the Bijou stage and a performance of a highly creditable nature lasting nearly one hour is given by Mr. Archie Collins, Happy Cal Stewart, Miss Jennie Morton and Miss Leo Collins. The latter lady has for several years posed as a model for the celebrated artists of Europe and America. Therefore her portrayal of a series of living pictures is absolutely grand. This part of the programme at an end the audience is sent down stairs to the theatorium, where a decided surprise awaits them in the shape of an opera company…. (St. Joseph [Missouri] Herald, Feb. 26, 1895, p. 5.)
Reading between the lines, we might imagine Cal Stewart encouraging a female acquaintance inexperienced in show business to join him onstage at the Eden Musee, and her protesting that she didn’t feel she was up to it, and Cal reassuring her that things had gone well for him when he’d made his own first foray into vaudeville there just a few years before. Pure speculation, of course. But Cal and “Miss Jennie Morton” were soon to reappear together in other places far removed from St. Joseph, implying that they were by then traveling in each other’s company, and not just two unconnected performers whom chance had thrown together for a one-week gig.
In early June 1895, Cal and Jennie presented “a country dialect farce” at Keith’s Union Square Theatre in New York (“The Theatrical Week,” New York Times, June 9, 1895, p. 13). Later that same month, they appeared in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre Record, June 29, 1895, p. 8), and that autumn saw them on the stage in Buffalo, New York (Buffalo Courier, October 31, 1895, p. 10, with Cal identified as “Col. Stewart”). In February 1896, the pair put on a sketch called “Uncle Josh’s Visit” in Trenton, New Jersey (Trenton Museum advertisement in Evening Times [Trenton, New Jersey], Feb. 17, 1896, p. 2). When they returned to the same venue that fall, their act was advertised in more detail (Trenton Museum advertisement in Evening Times [Trenton, New Jersey], Nov. 18, 1896, p. [4]):
CAL STEWART
The famous Yankee Comedian, just got in town with
a load of pumpkins and a few jokes.
JENNIE MORTON
Singing and Dancing Soubrette, pronounced by press
and public the most artistic exponent of the Spanish
character dance now upon the American stage.
From this we learn that Jennie both sang and danced; that she specialized more particularly in the “Spanish character dance,” which I interpret as referring loosely to the kind of performance immortalized in the 1894 film Carmencita; and that she was identified as a soubrette—a term for which I turned to the wise words of Wikipedia for illumination:
In theatre, a soubrette is a comedy character who is vain and girlish, mischievous, lighthearted, coquettish and gossipy—often a chambermaid or confidante of the ingénue. She often displays a flirtatious or even sexually aggressive nature…. A soubrette voice is light with a bright, sweet timbre, a tessitura in the mid-range, but lacking extensive coloratura…. Many young singers start out as soubrettes but as they grow older and the voice matures more physically they may be reclassified as another voice type…. Soubrette roles are typically found in comic operas or operettas and they usually portray good-looking, youthful girls who are flirtatious, saucy, and street-wise.
In January 1897, Cal and Jennie once again presented their “true-to-life sketch, called ‘Uncle Josh’s Visit,'” this time at the Pleasure Palace in New York City (New York Dramatic Mirror, Jan. 9, 1897, p. 18; Jan. 16, 1897, p. 19). We can infer that this sketch must have depicted a “visit” by Uncle Josh to a big city involving a sequence of naïve blunders, although Morton’s role is less obvious—could she perhaps have leveraged her soubrette qualities and faux-Spanish dancing for playing the part of the sophisticated city bunco-steerer? During this same period, Cal also appeared repeatedly on the stage without Jennie, but even so, appearances by the Stewart and Morton team spanned a solid year and a half, from June 1895 through January 1897. After that point, their partnership seems to have dissolved, and I find no later references to a “Jennie Morton” in vaudeville.
Maybe Cal’s relationship with Jennie Morton had been strictly professional. However, I can’t help noticing that Jennie fit a rather distinctive profile that would later be shared in part or whole by each of the future “Mrs. Cal Stewarts”: a young woman, probably significantly younger than Cal, who aspired to a stage career based on a combination of acting, music, and the assumption of an “exotic” identity (in this case, that of the Spanish dancer). Jennie Morton seems to have been very much Cal’s “type,” so to speak.
Lillian Halvosa, a.k.a. “Sue Stuart”
On March 31, 1898—a little over a year after the last known stage appearance of the Stewart and Morton team—Cal Stewart married Lillian Evelyn Halvosa in Westerly, Rhode Island. The documentation gets his bride’s surname wrong more often than not. According to James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island, 1636-1850, First Series, Vol. XI (Providence, Rhode Island: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1900), p. 159, it’s “HALVASA Lillian E., 18 years, born England, now of Westerly, and Calvin E. Stewart, 35 years, born Virginia, now of New York City, March 31, 1898.” Meanwhile, the New York Dramatic Mirror, April 9, 1898, p. 19, states: “Cal Stewart, the Yankee impersonator, was married on March 31 to Lillian E. Halrosa. The ceremony took place at Westerly, R. I.” Last but not least, a marriage announcement on page 11 of that same issue correctly gives the name as “Halvosa.” So: one correct spelling out of three.
Lillian Halvosa’s baptismal record (from familysearch.org)
Parish records show that Lillian Halvosa had been born on August 4, 1879—and baptized on August 31—at Bootle St. John, near Liverpool, the daughter of a stone-mason named William Charles Halvosa and his wife Elizabeth. Her family was of Cornish origin—”Halvosa” seems to be a variant of the place-name Halvosso—and had resided on a more permanent basis in Penryn before emigrating in the mid-1880s to America and settling in Barre, Vermont. In the long run, the best-known member of the immigrant family was probably Lillian’s younger brother Philip John Halvosa, who became a respected union leader and journalist (“Philip J. Halvosa Dead,” Boston Daily Globe, Dec. 8, 1915, p. 17; Typographical Journal 48 (1916), p. 66). But Lillian had her own brush with stardom, as we’ll see.
Lillian was just eighteen years old in 1898 when she married Cal Stewart, whose age was recorded at the time as thirty-five. That would have made him nearly twice her age. We know from the baptismal record that Lillian’s age, at least, was given correctly. Cal’s may or may not have been; at this point, we really don’t know for sure. Based on the birth year typically cited for him on the basis of his death certificate, 1856, he would have been even older—forty-two—but every source giving Cal’s age during his own lifetime would put him in his early-to-mid thirties in 1898, so I suspect thirty-five is probably about right.
It was around the time of this marriage that Cal Stewart began working in earnest as a recording artist. This isn’t the place for me to go into details, but a brief summary is in order. Cal’s first commercial recording had been a single, isolated, one-off disc made for Berliner on July 9, 1897. Then, sometime shortly before the beginning of April 1898, he had “talked” three or four more disc records for Berliner, and their popularity had opened the door for Cal to begin doing similar work for other companies that recorded phonograph cylinders, which at that point involved performing selections over and over again “by the round” and would have provided him with a steady and sizable source of income. As the theatrical press announced: “Cal Stewart will begin an indefinite engagement with a phonograph co. in New York on May 3 [1898]. He will make records of stories in Yankee dialect” (New York Dramatic Mirror, Apr. 30, 1898, p. 18).
Cal’s new line of work would have brought him into close and constant contact with a new group of professional colleagues in his fellow recording artists. These included Roger Harding, who sang for the phonograph, and Fred Hylands, who played piano accompaniments. A little over a year after Cal had become a serious professional phonograph talker, Harding and Hylands dedicated a song they had composed together, entitled “Pretty Kitty Clover,” to Cal’s wife, identified simply as “Mrs. Cal Stewart.” It appeared as an imprint of Hylands, Spencer & Yeager, a sheet music publishing enterprise in which Hylands was a partner, and in which one of the other partners—Len Spencer—was also a well-established phonographic performer. The two copies required for copyright registration were received on June 29, 1899. The sheet music for “Pretty Kitty Clover” is quite rare—WorldCat lists only a single institutionally held exemplar, at the British Library—but fortunately I have an original printing in my own private collection, which is my source for the following:
Portrait of “Mrs. Cal. Stewart” from the cover to the sheet music for Pretty Kitty Clover, music by Fred Hylands, words by Roger Harding (Hylands, Spencer & Yeager, 1899).
[Download]There’s a girl that resides in the house next to ours
She’s pretty she’s stylish and neat,
The boys in the neighborhood all send her flowers
For beauty she cannot be beat,
For them she don’t care she told me last night
She dearly loved one don’t you see,
‘Twas then I was filled with the greatest delight
The one that she mentioned was meChorus × 2
Pretty kitty clover,
Fairest on land or sea,
Pretty kitty clover
You are very dear to me,
Perhaps it may sound foolish,
But believe me when I say,
That for pretty kitty clover
I would work both night and day.She’s a smile for each neighbor that passes her by
A kind word to all if in need,
When the boys hear I’ve won her they’ll each heave a sigh
And say that I’m lucky indeed,
And when she’s my wife I’ll shield her for life
No sorrow shall darken our door,
I’ll stay home at night and I’ll gaze with delight
On kitty the girl I adoreChorus × 2
Hylands, Spencer & Yeager routinely took advantage of their connections to the recording industry to engage in cross-marketing, and a number of their other imprints appeared with portraits of well-known recording artists on their covers, including “You Don’t Stop the World From Going ‘Round” (Len Spencer), “The Prize Cake-Walker is Old Uncle Sam” (Dan W. Quinn), and “A Picture No Artist Can Paint” (George W. Gaskin). These recording artists then helped promote the songs in turn, assisted by the trade press. We read in the Phonoscope (April 1899, p. 12):
“A Picture No Artist Can Paint” is the title of a beautiful new descriptive ballad just issued by Hylands, Spencer & Yeager. George Gaskin says “it’s a gem, and I am to have the crack at it in the ‘phones.”
When Len Spencer sang “You Don’t Stop the World From Going ‘Round” for the gramophone, he introduced it in his spoken announcement as “the latest negro success” (Berliner 0142)—surely an aspirational gesture rather than an objectively descriptive one. To a point, “Pretty Kitty Clover” seems to have fit into this same promotional model, insofar as George Gaskin made it part of his phonographic repertoire (Columbia 4214), although I’m aware of only one surviving copy of this brown wax cylinder, in the Belfer Archive at Syracuse University, which isn’t currently accessible. But the dedication to “Mrs. Cal Stewart” is harder to interpret. This may simply have been a tribute—a gesture of friendship with no ulterior motives. But the fact that a large halftone printing plate for a portrait of Lillian was available hints that she too might have been active as an entertainer, and perhaps as a singer. Could Hylands, Spencer & Yeager have hoped she would help them promote their song in return for them helping to advance her career with the dedication? But then why identify her only as “Mrs. Cal Stewart”? Was the goal instead to take advantage, however obliquely, of Cal’s growing reputation? Cal was first and foremost a spoken-word performer, but he already had a few songs in his phonographic repertoire: “The Three Little Owls and the Naughty Little Mice,” “I’m Old But I’m Awfully Tough” (identified at this point as “Laughing Song”), and probably “Jersey Sam, the Farmer’s Man” (which I haven’t heard). Still, “Pretty Kitty Clover” wouldn’t really have fit in with the rest of his repertoire. One final possibility comes to mind: could the lyrics have been intended as a mildly humorous reflection on Cal’s relationship with his young wife—a playful jab at him from two of his co-workers?
Perhaps it may sound foolish,
But believe me when I say,
That for pretty kitty clover
I would work both night and day.
Whether Lillian had any stage experience before her marriage to Cal or not, she definitely turned to acting afterwards—and not as “Mrs. Cal Stewart.” Not as “Lillian Halvosa” either, though. As we’ve seen, that clearly wasn’t an easy name for non-Cousin Jacks of the late nineteenth century to wrap their brains around: “Lillian what? Can you repeat that? Halvasa? Halrosa? Oh, hell, you write it down.” Instead, she went by the stage name Sue Stuart (see Argus and Patriot [Montpelier, Vermont], June 24, 1903, p. [3]—a crucial source that, once I discovered it, allowed all the other pieces of the story to fall neatly into place). Lillian’s stage name appeared in print at least once as “Sue Stewart” (“Talk of the Town,” Barre [Vermont] Daily Times, June 18, 1903, p. 5), and I doubt it was mere coincidence that she had chosen a variant of her husband’s name for this purpose. The first specific show I’ve found a reference to her participating in is The Greatest Thing in the World at Wallack’s Theatre in New York, which ran from October 8 through November 16, 1900. We read:
“Sue Stuart, last season with the Sarah Cowell Le Moyne company during the engagement of ‘The Greatest Thing In the World’ at Wallack’s theater, New York, has been engaged by Deicher & Hennessey for an ingenue role in the ‘Put Me Off at Buffalo’ company, in which they are to star Fisher and Carroll.” (“Histrionic Chitchat,” Deseret Evening News, June 29, 1901, Part 2, Image 10.)
Simultaneously with Lillian’s engagement with The Greatest Thing in the World, Cal went out touring with a play of his own: Uncle Josh Weathersby Abroad. Much to my dismay, I’ve never found a script for it, or a complete cast list either. However, we know who at least one member of the cast was, apart from Cal himself:
“1900—May E. Abbey was a candidate for ingenue honors, playing the role of Lillian Weathersby in “Uncle Josh Weathersby Abroad,” in the support of Cal Stewart, who had just opened his season, this day settling down for a lengthy run of two nights, at the Lyric Theatre, Allentown, Pa.” (“The Calendar of Past Performances: Where you once could find our screen stars upon this very date—September 19th,” The Movie Pictorial, September 19, 1914, p. 30.)
Two points stand out for me here. First, Cal gave the “ingenue” character in this play the name Lillian—his wife’s name—which seems no more likely to be a coincidence than Lillian’s choice of “Stuart” as her stage name. Second, Cal had ended up casting someone other than Lillian in this role: namely, May Abbey (1875-1952), who went on to be a semi-prominent movie actress in the 1910s. Could this have been a source of friction? Had Cal perhaps wanted Lillian to play the role herself, and she turned him down? Or had Lillian wanted to play the role, and he turned her down? Either way, Uncle Josh Weathersby Abroad seems to have been a flop. Presumably in connection with this show, T. W. Barnhill of the Penn Phonograph Company in Philadelphia ended up loaning Cal $104 when his “theatrical venture had met reverses and he had 17 people at Broad Street Station who were dependent upon him for transportation.” Barnhill wrote to the Edison company sometime during 1900 asking them to help him collect on the loan—for a citation, see Randy McNutt, Cal Stewart: Your Uncle Josh (Fairfield, Ohio: Weathervane Books, 1981), p.12, which unfortunately doesn’t give the letter’s date or current whereabouts.
As far as I can tell, it was with Put Me Off at Buffalo, during the latter half of 1901, that Lillian first landed a role significant enough to appear in published cast listings, and her marriage to Cal didn’t long survive this break into theatrical stardom, such as it was.
Sue Stuart was granted a divorce from Cal. Stuart on Nov. 25. (“Gossip of the Town,” New York Dramatic Mirror, December 7, 1901, p. 17.)
Two weeks after the divorce, Lillian made the front cover of The Cast, an illustrated periodical dedicated to the New York theatrical scene.
On our front cover this week is a very good picture of Miss Sue Stuart, who plays the part of Madam Hand, the Gypsy Fortune Teller in Fisher and Carroll’s Musical comedy “Put Me Off at Buffalo,” which will appear at the grand Opera House, Brooklyn, the middle of January, under the management of Frank Hennessy. (The Cast [New York], December 9, 1901, p. 5.)
For the next few years, Lillian—now in her twenties—went on to appear in a number of major Broadway musical comedies. IBDB lists “Sue Stuart” as a member of the chorus in The Roger Brothers in Harvard (Sept. 1—Oct. 25, 1902); as Peggy Prued in The Roger Brothers in London (Sept. 7, 1903—Jan. 1904); as Belle Martelle in In Newport (Dec. 26, 1904—Jan. 14, 1905); as Grace Gaston and Mrs. U. B. Damm in the double feature Lifting the Lid / The Whole Damm Family (June 5—Aug. 26, 1905); and as Bella McCann in Fritz in Tammany Hall (Oct. 16—Nov. 18, 1905). And this apparently isn’t a complete list of her roles during that period, since just before The Roger Brothers in London, she had reportedly “been starring the last season in ‘Sweet Sixteen'” (Argus and Patriot [Montpelier, Vermont], June 24, 1903, p. [3]).
LEFT: Detail of cast listing for The Whole Damm Family, including “Miss Sue Stuart,” from The Critic 47:3 (Sept. 1905), p. 209; RIGHT: Publicity photo of “Sue Stuart” during the run of Fritz in Tammany Hall, San Antonio (Texas) Daily Light, November 5, 1905, image 32.
We can probably date the apex of Lillian’s career to March 1905, when large-format portraits of “Sue Stuart” appeared simultaneously in Munsey’s (the same picture used on the front cover of The Cast) and Burr McIntosh (a different and perhaps more recent picture).
Portrait of “Sue Stuart” in Burr McIntosh (March 1905). Author’s collection.
But then her moment in the spotlight abruptly ended. I haven’t found a single cast listing for her anywhere after the close of Fritz in Tammany Hall in November 1905. That’s not to say she left show business. The federal census of 1910 lists “Lillian E. Halvosa,” surname digitally indexed as “Haboos,” as a guest at the Hotel St. Margaret in Manhattan, age 30, divorced, born in England, immigrated 1881, occupation given as “actress—stage.” The next decennial census enumerated “Lillian E. Halvosa” on January 5, 1920 as resident in the fifth ward of New York, age 30, divorced, born in England, immigrated 1890, employed as an “artist” in the “theatrical” industry. Note that she allegedly hadn’t aged at all in the ten years between censuses, and that the year of her immigration to the United States had moved forward as well.
In the meantime, she had formed a relationship with a man named Joseph William Schloss, eponymous founder of the J. W. Schloss Company of New York City—a prominent manufacturer of buttons, patented collar supporters, and such. An immigration record shows the two of them returning together from a trip to Havana, Cuba, on January 26, 1915, with her listed under the name “Sue Stuart” as 26 years old, and allegedly born in “Barry Vt.” in 1889. She’s listed as single, and he’s listed as married, although this contradicts other records that also list him as single (e.g., here and here).
Schloss may not have been comfortable actually wedding a divorcée on religious grounds, even if he had no qualms about traveling abroad with one. But within just a few months of Cal’s death on December 7, 1919, the two of them did finally get married (see New York Times, Mar. 14, 1920, p. 22, and this record). Incidentally, it’s only from the documentation of this marriage that I know Lillian’s middle name was Evelyn.
Card of button moulds manufactured by J. W. Schloss Co., N. Y. Author’s collection.
The next federal census enumerated “Lillian H. Schloss” on Apr. 14, 1930, resident in New York City assembly district 10, age 44, married, immigrated 1888, eighteen at the time of her first marriage, born in England, occupation now given as “none.” She was continuing to fudge her age, since she was actually fifty years old at the time.
Postal card for J. W. Schloss Co. (type UX22, issued 1910). Author’s collection.
When Joseph W. Schloss died in 1932, his obituary identified his widow as “Lillian Sue Stuart,” once again echoing her erstwhile stage name (“Deaths,” New York Times, Mar. 9, 1932, p. 21; Mar. 10, 1932, p. 21). According to a family tree record posted by an Ancestry.com member, Lillian lived for another quarter century before dying in New York City on January 22, 1957, but by then she had fallen into such obscurity that I can’t find any confirmation.
Lillian and her second husband, Joseph W. Schloss, as shown in a passport application of January 24, 1922. (They had used the same photographs in an earlier application of April 1, 1920, but this copy was scanned better.)
So that’s the tale of the first “Mrs. Cal Stewart,” as far as I’ve been able to piece it together: a Cornish immigrant who married him at a very young age, left him for a brief moment of theatrical stardom, and later became the wife of a prominent button manufacturer who could support not just her but her collars as well.
To be continued.
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