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Some day when you emerge from the Varsity, 13th and P, and look up at
the weather your eyes may come to rest on “The Oliver” in old fashioned
lettering on the battlements of the ancient building, and for a moment
you may idly wonder about the playhouse’s past. It does in truth have
considerable past, reckoned in terms of famous actors who trod its
boards, of orators who thundered in debate over silver and gold
standards, suffrage for women and other problems of the past.
The theater, first known as The Lansing, opened in 1891 with Ed Church
in charge, and with Lillian Lewis and her company gracing the stage in
“L’Article 47” with the sinister subhead “The trail of the serpent is
overall.” Yet Gen. Victor Vifquain, rhapsodizing in the opening night
souvenir booklet, said: “The Lansing will become an athaeneum where a
husband can take his wife and daughter, the brother and sister without
fear of bringing a blush upon the cheeks of those whose modesty is of
priceless value to them and to the community of which they are the
ornaments and the pride.” Anyway, it was a good old chest-expanding
sentence.
A Journal man who has attended shows at this theater off and on for 50
years gives us the following list of famous players he recalls having
seen at the Lansing (later Oliver): John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, Edwin
Booth, Laurence Barrett, Joe Jefferson, Emma Eames, Sol Smith Russell,
Blanche Bates, Billie Burke, George M. Cohan, Weber & Fields, Willie
Collier, Otis Skinner, Maxine Elliott, Robert Mantell, Elsie DeWolfe,
Nat Goodwin, Dustin Farnam, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Trixie Fraganza,
DeWolfe Hopper, Virginia Harned, Elsie Janis, Margaret Illington, Mary
Mannering, Julia Marlowe, E. H. Sothern, Lillian Nordica, Alice Nielsen,
Chauncey Olcott, May Robson, Eleanor Robson, Stuart Robson, Madame
Modjeska.
Vividly connected with the history of the theater, as it is with Lincoln
itself, is the name of Frank C. Zehrung, to whom death came recently.
For almost 70 years a citizen of Lincoln, he was for perhaps half that
time manager of the Oliver.