Cherry Bombs
Following the death of their parents and the desertion of their two brothers in the early 1890s, the five sisters of the Cherry family—Ellie, Lizzie, Addie, Jessie and Effie—found it impossible to maintain the family’s small and arid Iowa farm. In need of money and wanting to take a trip to Chicago, in 1893 the sisters decided to take a cue from Andy Hardy and put on a show.
Having been raised strict fundamentalists, the sisters wrote a few melodramatic sketches, a few patriotic and religious numbers, rehearsed a dance number or two, and prepared a couple recitations, which they then put together into a full show which they performed in a local hall for an audience made up of their neighbors.
Unlike other performers who made a decent living on the vaudeville stage, like Chaz Chaste, Molly Pecan, or Sally Rand, the Cherry Sisters had absolutely no discernible talents of any kind. No, that’s not quite fair. The Cherry Sisters were simply godawful. They couldn’t sing, they couldn’t dance, they couldn’t act, and they weren’t even much to look at. That their neighbors in the audience during that first show applauded politely at their antics was perhaps the worst curse that could have befallen them. Because even if they had no talents, the sisters did have determination and an unshakable belief in themselves.
The Cherry Sisters, apparently convinced they were on their way straight to the top, did indeed make it to Chicago, where for reasons unknown a vaudeville promoter agreed to take on their act and made it part of a touring company of third and fourth rate acts that limped around the tiniest of corn belt theaters. The Cherry Sisters soon found, however, that audiences full of strangers were much less prone to politeness than audiences full of neighbors. Worse, these strangers—mostly farmers of assorted kinds—also had easy access to rotting fruits and vegetables.
Theater owners began finding it necessary to string a net across the front of the stage in order to protect the performers, especially as the objects hurled by audience members grew heavier and sharper. Moreover, other performers began abandoning the show and new acts refused to sign on, figuring it was better to starve than risk their lives and careers by being associated with the sisters.
Eventually the undaunted sisters were forced to go solo (they were after all making more money than they’d ever seen), and a strange thing happened. Audiences, once mortified and angered by the sheer, pathetic gall of the Cherry Sisters belief that they were “entertaining,” started laughing. Perhaps people were simply trying to find some justification for having spent good money to sit through such an unholy spectacle, but the laughter spread, even as the tomatoes and chicken gizzards continued flying. As the laughter spread, so did word of the act. It wasn’t long before the owner of New York’s struggling Olympia Theater caught wind of the Cherry Sisters, and brought them to Midtown. (At this point Ellie abandoned the act, choosing to stay at home while the Cherry Sisters went on to perform as a quartet.)
New Yorkers, being a smug and ironically-minded lot even in the late 19th century, flocked to the theater to laugh at these talentless ugly hicks, and the Cherry Sisters became a smash.
After a hugely successful four-week run at the Olympia, the Cherry Sisters moved on to another Broadway theater for a few more weeks before taking their act back out on the road. By then, thanks to unbelievably vicious newspaper reviews and snickering word of mouth, the act became a must-see wherever they stopped. The following is excerpted from an 1898 review written for a Lakeview, IA, paper, The Old Bold Chronicle, during a few stops in their home state:
The audience saw three creatures surpassing the witches in Macbeth in general hideousness.
Effie is an old jade of 50 summers, Jessie a frisky filly of 40, and Addie, the flower of the family, a capering monstrosity of 35. Their long, skinny arms, equipped with talons at the extremities, swung mechanically, and soon were waved frantically at the suffering spectators. The mouths of their rancid features opened like caverns and sounds like the wailings of damned souls issued therefrom. They pranced around the stage with a motion that suggested a cross between the danse du ventre and a fox trot, strange creatures with painted faces and hideous mien. Effie is spavined, Addie is knock-kneed and stringhalt, and Jessie, the only one who showed her stockings, has legs without calves, as classic in their outlines as the curves of a broom handle. The misguided fellows who came to see a leg show got their money’s worth, for they never saw such limbs before and never will again–outside of a boneyard.
The first glimpse of the Cherries was worth the price of admission. One shriek of laughter swept over the house. Not even in the woods around Sac City, nor in the wilds of Monona county, could three such raw and rank specimens of womanhood be found. The men howled and the women shook with merriment. There were no vegetables thrown, but there was lots of talk. It would take the sisters six weeks to answer the questions that were fired at them. At intervals Effie and Addie would jaw back and threaten to stop the show, but the boys never let up. When Jessie came out in her bare feet many solicitous inquiries were made about the condition of her corns, and she was freely advised to trim her toenails. And such feet! No instep, flat …….and Z wide. Jessie, however, is not sensitive. She calmly went on with her part, evidently considering her feet her “strong” suit.
The sisters sued the paper for libel, but as the story goes after they performed their act for the judge, he threw out the case. And that raises a question that remains a point of some debate to this day—namely, were the Cherry Sisters in on the joke, or did they honestly believe in their own righteous talents? Unfortunately, evidence from the time, like so much else about their career, is contradictory. The following is another excerpt from the above 1898 review.
The Cherries honestly believe that they are giving an entertainment surpassing anything on the stage, and that their audiences hoot them because they can’t appreciate true merit. They have been systematically stuffed by every manager who has engaged them with the notion that they are away up. If they were not stuck on themselves no money could induce them to stand the jeering they get. But having salted down $60,000 in the bank and purchased several large farms with the proceeds of their foolishness they are willing to keep it up as long as they can make it pay. Their personal characters are above reproach; they are virtuous both from necessity and choice, as any one will conclude at sight of them. The most skilful [sic] impersonator would find it impossible to burlesque the Cherry girls. They are nature’s own raw material, unique and inimitable.
Whether or not the sisters were simply in it for the money, it’s clear that the endless mockery took its toll. On at least one occasion one of the sisters dragged a shotgun onto the stage and threatened an audience member. And there was the brief following mention in another 1898 issue of The Old Bold Chronicle”
The Cherry Sisters are not sweet-tempered girls. Frequently they exclaimed in passing upon their audience to persons who conversed with them that they would like to have revenge. They stayed in Sac City until Saturday morning, the guests of the Hendrickson House. Before leaving they purchased a knife and a revolver and freely stated their intention of shooting if they met another audience of like character.
In 1901, before anyone was shot or stabbed during a performance, the Cherry Sisters retired from show biz. Although they had apparently stashed away a good deal of money during their brief run, they still attempted to keep themselves busy. Unfortunately, everythingthey attempted—farming, running a small bakery, even writing—ended in sad failure. Whether the rumors of their gathered fortune were exaggerated or the draw of the crowd was simply too strong, the Cherry Sisters made a few half-hearted attempts to return to the stage, even as they began to die off one by one. But it was too late. By the early ‘30s, the laughs were gone, replaced by uncomfortable silences and empty theaters. In the end, however, there’s no denying they still had a better run than most. And what that says about us, I don’t even want to guess.
by Jim Knipfel