Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 467

Price Realized: $ 330
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(MUSIC--MINSTRELSY.) Havery's United Mastodon Minstrels (changed by hand to "Genuine Colored") Sharing Contract. Long folio leaf, partially printed, and accomplished by hand; docketed on the reverse. Signed by the troupe's manager Charles Frohman. Philadelphia, 1879
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A contract for Haverly's "Genuine Colored" Mastodon Minstrels to perform at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. This contract stipulates that the minstrels were to get a share of the house take, based on the receipts at the door, a common practice even today. Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels was a black-face minstrel troupe created in 1877, when J. H. Haverly merged four of the companies he owned and managed. Amongst the best known troupes of it day, the Mastodons entered every new town in two columns, spread out as far as possible and led by a brass band. Beginning in 1878, a drum corps joined their ranks so that they could tour one part of a city while the band played in another. After sufficient marching, the two units joined up and led intrigued spectators into the theater. The company's manager, Charles Frohman, showed off a three-foot-tall iron safe when the troupe arranged for accommodations, with a golden "Haverly's Mastodon Minstrels" blazoned on its side; only the troupe knew that the safe rarely held anything of value. Haverly's was not only one of the best-known, it was probably the largest troupe, sometimes numbering over twenty performers plus band etc.