Acting

Fanny Lindbeck,
Our grandmother, acted on stage at the Wildey Theatre.
It came up in conversation with Mom again and I wanted
to write it down while fresh in my mind.
I grew up less than a block from the Wildey. It really dominated my life. We went to all the new movies, we went to summer all day movie marathons, we went to socialize, get away, eat junk food and keep cool.
So I never thought about the Wildey not having movie film shows. That there was a time before the movies.

Before the movies was Melodrama, music revues, stage plays. In fact the early films looked like the stage shows because they were done by the live performers, the vaudevillians, the actresses like Fanny.

I had people call me Fanny for a time I suppose thinking I had adopted her personna.

Today Mom talked again of the melodrama Fanny was in where she had to be killed in an electric chair. Her younger sister Emma was in the audience and thought it was all real. Mom said when Fanny went to Highland on the train, that her father put an end to her career. She was single at that time.

So as I connect with the theater people of my yesteryear, I recall Fanny who looks like she

might have been famous. I wonder what part of her that I carry that drew me

to get involved in all things theatrical? Although I left theater as well in my early HS years,

I still carry a nostalgia for the dramatic. If only our paths had been longer together, perhaps, she could have shared with me what is was like to put on a show, wear grease paint of the day and to hear the roar of applause in 1910?