Barrison Sisters
The Barrison Sisters were a group of five sisters who enjoyed great success as dancers and singers in the vaudeville theater in the 1890s .
The sisters were all born in Denmark in what is now Copenhagen . In detail it was
- Lona (Abelone Maria, 1871–1939)
- Olga (Hansine Johanne, 1875–?)
- Sophia (Sofie Kathrine Theodora, 1877–1906)
- Inger (Inger Marie, 1878–1918)
- Gertrude (Gertrud Marie, 1881–1946)
In 1886 the mother Erika Bareisen (née Corvinius, 1851–1905) emigrated with the children to the USA in New York , following her husband Niels Bareisen (1849–1905), who was an often drunk umbrella maker. The name "Barrison" was created by Anglicising "Bareisen", the birth name of all sisters.
Even as children, the sisters caused a stir everywhere by always wearing the same clothes and walking next to each other like organ pipes, each with long blond curls, one head taller than the other. Imre Kiralfy believed he had discovered the natural leaders of his new children's mass ballet in them and let them go on stage for ten minutes with several hundred other children in front of a packed house with the words “Do what you want”. In the German Amberg Theater in New York, on the other hand, they were better prepared for their performances by learning a gavotte . After learning English, all the sisters appeared in children's roles in various theaters, for example Gertrude, the youngest, as Eva in Uncle Tom's hut .
The actress and theater producer Pearl Eytinge (1854-1914) suggested in late 1892 that all five sisters appear together, wrote a short pantomime number and studied it with the five sisters. The premiere was in March 1893 in the variety program of the Eden Musée, soon followed by a solo appearance by Lona and a second pantomime number by all the sisters. With the income, the family was able to afford to move from the rented apartment to a small house.
Since the discoverer Pearl Eytinge became addicted to morphine and alcohol, the management was soon taken over by her lover William Fleron (1858-1935). This, also a Danish immigrant, began a relationship with the eldest sister Lona, married her in 1893 and became the manager of all the sisters. He wrote a new program with which the sisters went on tour in the United States. They were now popularized with bold dances and sayings.
The breakthrough came in Chicago in September 1893 in the newly opened "Trocadero" by theater producer Florenz Ziegfeld . Fleron was told the sisters would have a huge success in Paris, so they went there by ship in November 1893. There they were engaged first for a month at the Casino de Paris and then for six months at the Folies Bergère , where they appeared in the same program with Loïe Fuller , Yvette Guilbert and other celebrities with unaffected impartiality . They then toured France and Belgium in the summer of 1894.
The sisters' mother had gone to Europe with her and accompanied her during her engagement in Paris, after which she went to Denmark and never returned to America to her husband. Fleron took close control of his wife's sisters, the youngest was still a child, and the engagement in Paris turned into a two-year European tour.
In the Berlin winter garden they performed for eight months in 1894/95. On stage they now offered crude, drastic texts with naive, artificial singing and striptease interludes. The most famous number was a scene in which, during a dance, they asked the audience: "Do you want to see my pussy?" After getting the audience to enthusiastic reactions, they lifted their skirts, underneath which they wore specially sewn underwear Face of a living kitten looked into the audience.
The theater critic Alfred Kerr attended a performance in the winter garden in February 1895. He wrote: “The crux of the matter with all the noise are five young ladies of moderately pleasant appearance. [...] In pink dresses, which they wear medium-short like school girls, they come hitched up, now each a doll in their arms, now each a kitten in an apron. […] They deliberately behave like children and do not try to hide the delicate quality of their underclothes from the audience. ”In connection with the role representation of sexual willingness to act, this is described by Sylke Kirschnick 2007 as a“ stereotype of the sexualized child woman ”. The youngest sister Gertrude Barrison, on the other hand, named 1931 as the reason for the success: "In a time of the most hypocritical morality, they moved like young foals who had never had to endure the pressure of the bourgeois bridle." In addition, as sisters they were inseparable and had separate ones Awards from strangers are always boycotted. And she took over the view of Hugo von Hofmannsthal , who had already written back then: "The more complicated the traditions were that they make fun of, and the less they seem to be aware of their superiority, the greater their victory."
In order to compensate for the absence of individual sisters and to give Lona more space for solo performances, an English actress was integrated into the group as the sixth alleged sister "Ethel Barrison", in Vienna there was even a seventh for a short time as "Mabel". However, only “five sisters” were announced in the programs. The sisters' fame increased further through detailed newspaper reports about alleged or actual affairs of individual sisters with young men of noble descent, once even about the suicide of a nobleman out of unrequited love.
The sisters returned to America in 1896, but their concept, which was highly successful in Europe, was less well received by the public. After they had fulfilled their eight-week contract, there were no other performance opportunities, so they went back to Europe. In the meantime, the magazine Der Artist under its editor-in-chief Hermann Otto had started a campaign against them and they were banned from making further appearances in Prussia. They toured Europe for eight months and separated in August 1897. Only Lona and Gertrude continued their dance careers alone.
- The eldest sister Lona continued to perform her solo program for several years, in which she came on stage with a white horse. After religious and moral protests she was banned from the Berlin theaters in 1901. In October 1908, the press reported that she had died in a car accident with her lover, Philadelphia Captain Clarence Weiner. However, her sister Gertrud wrote in 1931 that she had retired to Copenhagen and moved to Vienna after the war. She died in 1939.
- Olga married a Hungarian and went to Budapest. She was the only one who found her way in civil life and was the only one who had children, a daughter and a son who took part in the First World War. She was still alive in 1931, although another source dates her death to 1908.
- Sophia married the American manufacturer De Lisser. She could not cope with the narrow atmosphere of a civil marriage and died young.
- Inger performed together with Gertrude in Russia for a while. Then she married the Danish millionaire Jacobsen, according to Gertrude she “could not console herself for the silence of the song at the sound of money.” She died in 1918.
- The youngest sister Gertrude Barrison , who was still a minor when the group split up, first went back to her mother in Denmark and then to Paris. From 1906 she lived in Vienna and had a successful dance career as a solo artist there. She died in 1946 as the last of the sisters.
In the first decade of the 21st century, the group became known again in the United States because the vodka brand "Five Wives Vodka" was named after them, with a photo of the group on the bottle.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Some Suicidal Sisters The Argonaut, October 26, 1896 (English)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Gertrude Barrison: The end of a world sensation - the dance archetype of our days February 1931.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j David Monod: The wicked Barrisons. In: Jessica Hecht, Music and International History in the Twentieth Century, 2015. Reading sample
- ↑ Gertrude Barrison on www.cyranos.ch
- ^ Matthias Pasdzierny: Review of Gienow-Hecht, Jessica CE, Music and International History in the Twentieth Century at www.h-net.org, November 2015.
- ↑ Sylke Kirschnick: Thousand and One Signs, 2007. Reading sample
- ↑ Who were the Barrison Sisters at www.lechzen.de, accessed on December 8, 2016
- ↑ Keira Dirmyer: Photo on Five Wives vodka bottle is of risque vaudevillian group Salt Lake Tribune June 4, 2012
- ↑ a b c d All results for Bareisen on www.myheritage.de, accessed on December 7, 2016
- ↑ Program text “Morgenstimmung” 2007 at www.rosebreuss.com
- ^ Alan Farnham: Does Five Wives Vodka Offend Mormons? . Abcnews.go.com. May 30, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2016.