Glee Club 1921-1922 season

Source: Corks and Curls

The 1921-1922 season of the Virginia Glee Club was conducted (at least in part) by Francis Harris Abbot. Officers included Frederick R. Westcott, president; Fred B. Gentry, vice-president; Fred B. Greear, manager; C. Venable Minor, stage manager; and Edgar H. Rowe and Willis Todd Carey, assistant managers. Bernard Peyton Chamberlain initially served as manager but resigned.

The group toured the show "I.O.U." in early January of 1922, with stops in Richmond, Petersburg, Newport News, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Covington, Charlestown and Hunting, West Virginia, the White Sulphur Springs, the Hot Sulphur Springs, and Staunton, Virginia.

The reception of the Glee Club in the broader University seems to have been lukewarm, though the show itself seemed to have been good. An editorial in the May 1922 Virginia Reel opined:

The University of Virginia Glee Club! What does this term mean to those who hear it? What should it mean? Does it stand for consistently good productions? We are afraid that it does not. This year it has stood for a good show, one that was well received wherever it was played; last year it was comparatively poor; the year before that, comparatively good. So year in and year out our Glee Club varies greatly, some years being quite good, others being more than bad. It has not been consistently good.

But shouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t it be the finest Glee Club in the South?

The whole truth seems to lie in the fact that enough interest is not taken in its work. It means little or nothing to be in the Glee Club here at Virginia, and the only reward the few men who do take an interest in it and work for it receive is the half-hearted “pretty good” that lasts no longer than it takes to mutter it.

Now, granted that perhaps the shows in the last five or six years have not been model, have not been “knock-outs,” there is no reason why the students should not back the Glee Club and take an active interest in its success. There is talent at the University; why should it be kept so completely hidden as it has been in many cases. The Glee Club should mean something and should be supported.

Few people realize that a good Glee Club, such as that of Amherst, can do as much for the university or college it represents as any team or publication. What Amherst team ever made Amherst favorably known to Virginia students to the extent that their Glee Club did by their appearance here? How many undergraduate organizations in any colleges or universities command such a write-up as the following which appeared in the March number of the Theatre Magazine in reference to a page of illustrations of the last Princeton show:

The “Triangle” Show, an extra-curricular activity of the Princeton undergraduates, is eagerly anticipated each year, and not only by their friends, but by the general public as well, who have learned that the Triangle Club may be depended on for real talent, tuneful lyrics, and a production professional in its artistry and smoothness.

The Princeton Triangle Show is literally “eagerly anticipated” each year and its success helps create compact alumni support of that University, not to mention the influence it exerts on prep school men who are making up their minds where to go to college.

A real, sure-enough, well-supported Glee Club is something to be proud of. It stands for ability, talent, and hard work. Certainly we have these three things here. Why don’t they line up and do so with real student support behind them? Next year’s club will be what the students make it. Why not the Finest Glee Club in the South?

Concerts

• Concert in Culpeper (1921)
• Concert in Richmond (1922) - Feb 22
• Concert in Lynchburg (1922) - Mar 24
• Concert in Roanoke (1922) - Mar 25

Roster

This roster was as listed in the 1922 Corks and Curls and may not include all participants in the season.

Thomas Leigh Williams, Wright Yount, Harry Glenn Kaminer, Charles H. Lewis, Louis Hager, J.R.V. Daniel, Richard Keith, John A. Morrow, Richard Peard, Fred N. Ogden, Samuel Cheek, John Dismukes Green, McAlister Marshall, Henry Jefferson Lawrence, Nolan Hussey, Merrill M. Pye, Milton Goldstein, George C. Saunders, Segar P. Ellis, William C. Stephenson, Walter G. Stephenson, John Maxwell Davis, Ronald Ames, John Howard Beebe, Robert F. Stone, David Louden Black, Charles Greene Andrews, Robert Gorham, Edmund R. Rutledge, Harold Matthews Shuff, John W. Avirett, W. Hardy Hendren, Randolph Conroy, Charles O. Conrad, Horace Fisher

References

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1920-1921	Glee Club of the 1920s	1922-1923