posted January 26, 2010
A family you should know...
We spent a little time around Ralston Street and Whitaker Park a week or so ago, and I was reminded of a photograph I’ve had kicking around various homes for six decades. I’ll tell a little story about it, then let the webpage track naturally into a column I wrote in 2005 that bears on the photographer.
The story is of a
young whippersnapper named Breckenridge at play in Whitaker Park, across Ralston
from his home. A guy in a pre-WWII sedan drove up on University Terrace and
stopped, and asked me if he could take my picture. That act would conjure up all
anticipation of heinous acts today with Amber Alerts appearing on the
destination signs of the four Reno Bus Lines’ buses plying their way
around
town. But this was harmless. I stood by a tree and he took my picture with what
appeared to a six-year-old to be a pretty serious camera. He asked me where I
lived, I pointed across the street and he said he’d bring me a picture in a
week.
A week went by and
true to his word, he parked in front of our house, walked up and rang the
doorbell. I saw him and told my dad that the guy with the camera was here. My
dad went to the door.
Pandemonium ensued. Laughing like I’d never heard with a “C’mon in and have a beer,” and an introduction of the man to my mother (my mother was from Petaluma and had only lived in Reno for a month.)
The photographer’s name was Bud Loomis, actually E. Frandsen Loomis, Esq. in the phone book, but "Bud" to his friends. Like my dad who grew up a block or two from him down by the Truckee and attended Reno High with him. Bud went to the University (Sigma Nu, natch) then to law school (Stanford??), and left for China to act as an advocate to the Chinese government before China closed its borders to Westerners and threw him out. The war separated the men; this was their first reunion in a dozen years. And they did have a beer. Or two. And I still have the picture. The background is the home on the NW corner of Ralston and University Terrace. I keep threatening to have someone take my picture by the same tree, which is now larger (as am I), but the windows on the old mansion-turned-rest home are still evident (current photo at right, the upper window open, the lower one draped.)
If it ever quits raining, maybe I’ll take that picture. In black-and-white.
I’m attaching an old column on this rainy afternoon. If anybody likes this story I’ll attach another, older column about the Bundox downtown, which Bud and Cebe Loomis decorated with stuff Bud brought back from China. Maybe we’ll get that next week.
Here’s a story of the Reno Little Theater, and matters properly relating thereto:
The Reno Little Theater
On August 24th of 1894 the Afdeling Waldemar Lodge #12 of the Dania Society held their summer ball at Laughton’s Resort west of Reno, all 120 or so of the members and their attendant brides, and the gala was considered by most accounts as a success, save for Hans Block and Peter Rasmussen winding up with a broken wrist and an amputated thumb, respectively, during a vigorous old-country Danish dance. But notwithstanding those inconveniences, according to the Reno Evening Gazette a day later, all were looking forward to next year’s party.
Time marched on, and the Waldemar Lodge #12, through the beneficence of several local Danes, one recorded as an Andrew Frandsen, were able to acquire property on North Sierra Street at Seventh Street, and build a handsome brick home for the Dania Society. In August of 1925 they christened that building, with no further bodily injuries reported in the Gazette.
A decade later, a young thespian named Edwin Semenza would fire up a group called the Reno Little Theater, reportedly kicking in bucks a few of his own to make the thing work and offer a play. On April 15th of 1935, The Three-Cornered Moon opened with an all-star cast in the Frandsen Education Building at the University of Nevada, that building named for Peter Frandsen, a nephew of Andrew and another icon in the early local Danish community. A side note here: Peter was large in charge of the College of Agriculture but I’m hesitant to state that he was ever the dean of that college. The play was an instant hit with the local townsfolk, and the new little theater’s offerings continued on a regular basis – three or four first-rate, straight-from-Broadway offerings a year – for six decades to follow.
The little theater’s productions soon moved to the State Building downtown – on a personal note I watched “42nd Street” on the Sunday before I wrote this column in 2005 and judge it to be one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in Reno, and I’ve seen a bunch – at the Pioneer Theater, or Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts or whatever the cognoscenti call it now. The Pioneer Whatever now occupies the site of the wonderful old State Building. The RLT – Reno Little Theater – held their plays in that venue for many a year. And through Semenza’s guidance, their consistency and quality of production was remarkable, and I can’t go too much further into this column without mentioning a name: Blythe Bulmer – actress, director, mentor – Semenza and Bulmer, what a team for so many years, and how lucky our little city was to have them. How we could use their dedication today…
The Danish community in Reno waned, (their predominant occupation was as dairy cattlemen), and their need for a building of their own ground to a halt. In October of 1941 they sold their little brick building on North Sierra at Seventh Street to a Dr. S. K. Morrison, who immediately resold it without profit to the Reno Little Theater and carried back a mortgage at an attractive rate while the theater, now with a venue all its own got the momentum growing. Through Semenza’s stewardship, the theater became a successful business, as well as artistic, success, and the mortgage was retired ahead of schedule.
That early prewar year was frenetic, with much work being done on the former Dania meeting hall to convert it from a hall to a first-class theater facility. The plays continued through the war years, and the casts of characters in the Nevada Historical Society’s clips – where I got invaluable assistance in putting this together – contain the names of some well-known Reno folks. Some work was undertaken on the building in the mid-1950s, necessitating closing of the theater, and Semenza negotiated the use of a church on West Seventh Street just off Virginia, and the theater operated as a theater-in-the-round with great success – he called it the “Circlet Theater” – little more than a stage in the middle of the church akin to a boxing ring with no ropes. In 1954, hometown writer Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s “Track of the Cat” was a hot draw into the Circlet Theater, which was so successful that it operated for a while even after remodeling was completed in the main theater. I was in one matinee audience to enjoy it.
The thrust of downtown Reno changed; while the popularity of the Reno Little Theater never waned the business side of the endeavor dictated a sale of the old Dania Society/theater building and in July of 1999 the property was sold to Circus Circus, for that casino’s new parking lot parking lot. I miss it.
Curiously and probably apropos of nothing, one name has surfaced in this column and last week’s which some readers will recall concerned the Christian Science Church: the name is Frandsen. Cattleman Andrew Frandsen basically endowed the Dania Society’s building, later to become the Reno Little Theater. His daughter, Anna Frandsen Loomis endowed the Christian Science Church, later to become the Lear Theater. And Anna Frandsen Loomis’ son, E. Frandsen (Bud) Loomis, was chairman of the Reno Little Theater’s building committee when the theater acquired the theater from the Dania Society.
But he found time to take my mug shot…
