Onstage with Evelyn Archer

 

Evelyn Archer, newspaper photo, 1927;
earliest known picture of her. 

One of the lovely aspects of early-twentieth-century American life was the wide-open opportunity for reinvention. Not just once, but as often as necessary. You could hop on a train and disappear into cities and small towns. Abandon everything, even your past! Not a breadcrumb left behind.

Eva Sterry Hubbard, born in Wisconsin in 1878 or 1880 or 1885, got out as soon as possible. She would have done well enough in the river city of Eau Claire, the daughter of Martin, a county clerk, and Alice, a descendant of settlers, who liked to address the crowd on patriotic holidays. 

Perhaps Eva consulted an astrologer and saw her future in the theater, so off she went to Chicago. While time ticked on and the century wound down, she probably worked as a cabaret dancer. Burlesque had kicked and teased its way into the city with the 1893 Columbian Exposition.    

Eva decided to take a stage name—“Evelyn Archer”—and her star rose a bit. Cast in Quo Vadis?, a six-act drama about Nero’s destruction of Rome and the rise of Christian martyrs, Evelyn toured Jim Crow America with performances in Indiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Missouri, and Kentucky.

In 1901, she married James Dille Barton, born Dillie Barton Black in Newark, Ohio, son of a Scottish immigrant physician.

Barton was at least 12 years older than Evelyn but the same age in ambition. He, too, escaped his hometown, along with his given name, because he saw his future in show business. The couple left Chicago and went east where J.D., as he dubbed himself, hit the jackpot as a theatrical agent and producer.

J.D. Barton, passport photograph

They settled in a New York City suburb, Mount Vernon, and built a grand house. Evelyn had a baby, bought a brindle bull puppy, and forsook the theater for a while. She and J.D. gadded about town. When they visited the circus, a monkey reached through the bars of his cage, grabbed a $300 diamond pin from Evelyn’s lapel and swallowed it “with a little jerk of his neck,” noted a reporter. The circus refused to chloroform the monkey or reimburse the Bartons. 

Archer appeared on Broadway in 1918.

The marriage ended quietly and the glitz receded. Evelyn and her little girl moved to a more modest house several blocks away. Evelyn landed a few Broadway roles, including The Copperhead (1918), opposite Lionel Barrymore. Before long she heard the siren song of Florida.

St. Petersburg, 1920s

The 27^th state had become its own brand of the Wild West, a place for reinvention; perfect for Evelyn. She and daughter Polly, now about 11 years old, arrived in St. Petersburg right after the end of World War I when the land boom began its rumble. By the mid-1920s, real estate speculation reached a frenzy as investors snapped up waterfront lots for hotels, apartment houses, and casinos. 

But September 1926 spelled devastation. The Great Miami Hurricane wiped out the coastline, local banks, and investors. In fact, the hurricane triggered Florida’s economic decline well before the 1929 Wall Street crash.

Evelyn landed on her feet, or perhaps on her Cuban heels. She had married Fred Rittenhouse, a prominent dentist and realtor, in 1925. Newly launched as president of the “New York Society”—an association of 330 New Yorkers who wintered in Florida—Evelyn regained social stature and influence.    

Cuban heels were all the rage in the 1920s.

After Polly won a few beauty contests, Evelyn brought her daughter back to New York City, helped her get a job with the Ziegfield Follies, and guided her toward movies. As Polly Archer, she appeared in Java Head, The New School Teacher, and The Enchanted Cottage in the early twenties.   

Her greatest feat was yet to come. On New Year’s Eve, 1929, Polly wed a local theater owner while soaring high over St. Petersburg in a “Tin Goose,” Henry Ford’s three-engine airliner.

Polly Archer's wedding photo

The city sparkled 1,500 feet below as the bride and groom walked to the rear of the plane, where the Reverend J.A. McClure performed the ceremony at the stroke of midnight.

The guests threw rice as the plane began its descent. Two hundred people greeted the bridal party at the end of a grass runway at Piper-Fuller Field.

Polly’s career languished and she became an apartment building manager in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, the snowbird population grew and Evelyn came to preside over an empire. Inevitably, as the years passed, she lost her cache and had to let go.

I guess they made the best of things, a mother and daughter who didn’t land in the place they’d hoped for.

*Evelyn Barton Rittenhouse died in 1970, outliving Polly by eight years. J.D. Barton flourished as a writer and producer, including his 1907 drama Through Death Valley, based on his encounters with rattlesnakes while living in Arizona.       

 

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