The records of the Harmount company reveal a lot about both the nature of early 20th century "Tom Shows" and the economics of mass entertainment in the era just before mass communications. Below are selected items from the Harmount and Fred D. Pfening III Collections at The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University. Most of them date from around 1915, and are organized to approximate the sequence that recured each time, summer and winter, the show went on the road.

Many of the Harmount performers were family members, but to complete the cast and, just as importantly, the band, the manager had to find and sign actors and musicians. The two contracts left and right below are for the Advance Agent, Ben Fuller, whose name appears on many of the other items in this exhibit, and the father-daughter combination who took on the parts of Band Leader and Eva. Note that these performers were signed for the same 1915-16 tour in different Ohio towns, and that the Band Leader made a brief appearance on stage to swell the crowd at the play's auction scene. On the back (below middle), contracts set out the rules of behavior each member of the company was supposed to adhere to throughout the tour:

       

Below, left: inside the front and back covers of his account book for the 1915-16 tour, manager B. F. Harmount kept track of Tommers he met or heard about, presumably not just for future reference but also to fill any vacancies that occur suddenly during the tour (see final item on this page). His notes suggest musicianship mattered more than acting ability.
Below, right: sometimes out of work Tommers found Harmount, as did Miss Bessie Lee, apparently stranded at an actors' hotel in St. Louis. She found him by writing to the company "c/o Billboard Magazine," which forwarded her letter to the group on the road in Lowell, Indiana. This indication of a national "Tom Show" network is one story the envelope from Miss Lee's letter tells; the other is the carefully torn out stamp, a recurring pattern with the envelopes among the Harmount papers. This kind of care to save 2¢ indicates how closely the company watched costs. (There's no indication, by the way, whether Miss Lee found a job.)

                   

In June, 1915, with the company already on its summer tour, C. B. Harmount was also thinking about improving the production's special effects in the winter tour, and possibly adding a second unit, as many "Tom Shows" had done over the years, to take the show on more than one road at a time. Those thoughts led to these two letters. Left: from the company that furnished the lights used to produce the "water and snow effects" Harmount claimed as one of his company's biggest attractions (see the first and last items in the THEATERS section below); from this letter we get a sense of how both electrification and "Moving Pictures" are entering the Tommers' world. Right: from the company that designed and created the "drops" (dyed canvas sets) the company carried from town to town (you can see the drops themselves in THIS SECTION of the archive). No "#2 show" was ever organized.

   

It was the responsibility of the local theater to post ads in advance of the company's performance (see the THEATERS section below), but it was up to the Harmount Company to provide the posters and other promotional material. Such material was called "paper" in the trade. Donaldson Lithographing Co. (Newport, Kentucky) and the Erie Lithographing Co. (Erie, Pennsylvania) were two of the largest producers of the brightly colored posters that let the native population know a show was coming to town; the multiple-sheet posters were big enough to cover a whole fence or even the narrow side of a barn, . (You can see many of their UTC posters in THIS SECTION of the archive.) "Paper" also included the single-color "heralds" that were posted to announce the date, time and location of each show. (SEE A HERALD.)
Below: in addition to correspondence from the companies that handling printing for the Harmount's, an inventory of the types of UTC posters available from Donaldson c.1915, and Fuller's wire to Harmount requesting the money he needs to pick up the newest batch of paper for the next set of stops on the tour.

           

       

The bigger "Tom Shows," playing the major cities, advertised widely in the newspapers. It's not clear how big the Harmounts' budget was for that kind of advertising: "news paper add.--$4" is an item in one of Harmount's account books (see the TOUR EXPENSES--TROUPE section further down). But in at least the one case below, they arranged with a restaurant to have their coming attraction included on the bill of fare:

Beginning at least in the 1870s, the "Tom Shows" targeted children as a specific audience, or at least as a good means to get adults to see the show. The "matinee cards" below were a staple form of promotion for most companies, and often were handed out to children as they left school:

           

On their summer tours the Harmounts traveled with their own "theater" -- a canvas "big top" they set up fields across the midwest. During the winter season, they had to arrange bookings in local theaters. The four items below all display aspects of that process. As you'll see from the two solicitations at left, an important question always concerned competition from other "Tom" companies, half a dozen of which would also be touring the midwest at any one time. The other big question concerned the "percentage": the way the box office proceeds would be divided between the "house" (theater) and the "company" (Harmounts). The Harmounts always hoped for 75¢ of every $1, but often had to settle for 70 or even 60¢. Far right: the company traveled with many of its own sets and props, but also expected theaters to furnish some of each; the props they needed are listed on this "programme." (A sampling of replies from theaters owners in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri is available HERE.)

           

Below is the Harmount publicity kit for 1914-1916, which would have been sent to theater managers to help promote the coming show. The middle page contains a number of paragraphs for insertion in the local papers; a few handwritten notes by Fuller indicate that the items were printed at least a couple times. The 3rd page includes a review, and a more elaborate list of the props the company expected the theater to supply -- including "twenty boys for parade." This was a familiar practice in the world of the "Tom Show," using locals to swell the size of the parade that typically led from the railroad station to the theater. "Boys" were paid with free passes to the next performance (see TICKETS below).

Based on a comparison of the dates between Fuller's account book for the 1915-16 tour (below) and Harmount's (TOUR EXPENSES--TROUPE), the advance agent typically traveled about a week ahead of the company, making sure "paper" was received from the printers and distributed to the theaters, scouting for theaters to fill open dates in the schedule and so on. The total expense money that Fuller received (top row right) was $2339.92, which helps us get a sense of the scale of the enterprise -- just as the 2¢ the total is carried out to reminds us of how carefully this kind of touring theatrical company had to budget. The bottom row contains sample pages from his record of payments; the big items there are his own transportation and "paper" and other promotional costs (the envelopes were used to send flyers or cards to patrons on mailing lists maintained by the theaters (see the BOOKING FORM above).

   

                   

These five pages are from two of the account books that C. B. Harmount kept during the 1915-16 tour. They are organized by stop, and begin with income: the gross ticket sales, and how that was divided between Co[mpany] and House. Based on Harmount's numbers and the price of tickets during this period (10, 20, 25, 30 and 50¢), it looks as if they typically played to audiences of 250-700, and altogether to perhaps 45,000 people during the over-90 performances on this tour. These numbers are very difficult to pin down, however. It's easier to be precise about the expenses: salaries, room and board along with advances to Fuller are the biggest items, but the upkeep of the dogs is surprisingly expensive. "Tom," "Leo, "Paul" and "C. Davis," for whom "overhalls" were purchased in Lapeer, may have been the "Colored Quartette" that is featured prominently in the company's promotional material (unfortunately, I found no documentary sign of these performers in the Harmounts' papers).

               

From the business perspective, these tickets are what it finally came down to, including the separate tickets that Tommers usually sold to the "Concert" that followed the play (and that helps explain why musicianship was so important an item on a Tommer's resume). How many tickets the Harmounts sold or gave out, for a specific show, in a specific town, in the course of a season, over the 27 years they were on the road -- these numbers don't appear in the books. Harmount's advertised itself during this period as a "$20,000 Production," but it's not clear how that figure was arrived at. An addendum to Fuller's contract (see above) stipulates that he'll be given a bonus if the tour's net profit is $2500. If the average ticket price was 25¢, that's 10,000 people over the cost of putting on the show.

           

On 14 February 1916, when Tad Harmount wrote the letter below, his father and brothers were traveling between shows in Homer and Union City, Michigan. Tad was in Detroit, apparently looking for a good bargain in trucks to replace the horses and carts that hauled the company around in the summers. His letter gives us a sense of what "troubles" Tommers had to contend with to keep the show going on. The pianist has left the troupe. Despite those "rules of behavior" on the contracts, "Mrs. Sutton" and "Doc" are acting up, not for the first time it seems. (Whoever "Doc" was, he was a main performer: in Harmount's account books he gets $40/week, which made him as highly paid as the Band Leader and Eva put together.) And of course it wasn't enough for the show just to go on, as we're reminded by Tad's last line -- "have you made any thing or not" . . .