The Cherry Sisters:
From the cornfields to court
I have been a performer my entire life. From the time I was three, I have been on stage dancing and singing to my heart’s content. Lucky for me, I have some ounce of dancing ability, but I will be the first to admit that my vocals are comparable to those of a cat being dropped from a seven-story window. I think it takes confidence to own up to your capabilities, but an even greater confidence is required to own up toyour inabilities. For one small-town Iowa family of sisters, not even The New York Times could convince them of how truly horrendous their performances and singing were. I decided to delve into the world of the Cherry Sisters and their legacy of being the “worst act in vaudeville history.”
The five Cherry Sisters grew up on a farm on the outskirts of Marion, Iowa, in the late 1800s. The family consisted ofparents Thomas and Laura, brother Nathan, and the five girls: Addie, Effie, Ella, Lizzie, and Jessie. After the girls’ mother died, they continued to help their father and brother work on the farm. Their lives became increasingly more difficult when their father passed away in 1885 and their brother skipped town to go to Chicago, leaving them to fend for themselves. The girls vehemently decided to raise enough money to venture to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in hopes of locating Nathan by putting together a stage act to perform in their hometown. Their debut performance was on January 21, 1893, at Daniel’s Opera House right in Marion. The sisters planned the entire show themselves, from hand-painting signs to coming up with songs and short acts to perform before the audience. The only three to perform, however, were Ella, Effie, and Jessie.They sang and played harmonica for a little over an hour. The sisters were received politely enough by their neighbors, and they ended up making $250. The Cedar Rapids Gazette wrote the only slightly-positive review the sisters would ever receive: “The public wanted fun, the public got it; the young ladies wanted money, they got it.”
Addie, Effie, and Jessie Cherry
After their semi-successful debut performance, Ella, Effie, and Jessie were feeling ambitious enough to take their show on the road. The sisters performed in nearby Cedar Rapids where they rented out Greene’s Opera House for fifty dollars. Unfortunately, this time the girls were not welcomed with open arms. Their show elicited noisy responses from audience members blowing tin horns left over from the 1892 presidential campaign. The unforgiving audience also hurled rotten vegetables and burnt cigarettes at the sisters.Instead of viewing the noisy onslaught and vegetable massacre ascritical reactions, the sisters mistook them for approval and prided themselves on a successful show. Little did they know that the formerly generous Cedar Rapids Gazette was about to publish a punitive review on their “successful show” in the next day’s paper. The review read: “If some indefinable instinct of modesty could not have warned them that they were acting the part of monkeys, it does seem like the overshoes thrown at them would convey the idea.... Cigars, cigarettes, rubbers everything was thrown at them, yet they stood there, awkwardly bowing their acknowledgments and singing on.”
Greene's Opera House Program
Naturally, the sisters were outraged and swiftly brought the city editor to court for libel. The jury met right in the theater where the sisters had performed the night before. The sisters provided testimony in the form of a private performance for the magistrate and jury. Despite the atrocity of the sisters’ show, the jury still found the editor guilty and sentenced him to marry one of the sisters. Fortunately for him, neither party decided to enforce the ruling.
The trial sparked a different kind of fame in Iowa for the supercilious sisters. Suddenly, they were performing shows all across the state from Davenport to Vinton. Each audience greeted them in the same unruly way: by mercilessly hurling rotten fruits and vegetables and garbage directly at them. Vaudeville had never seen anything like it. Their “big break” came from their show in Dubuque. Their reputation preceded them, as the audience came equipped with rotten vegetables to hurl and tin horns, cowbells, and rattles to drown out their droning. One crowd member went as far as to spray a fire extinguisher at one of them. The sisters retreated from the stage several times. Upon their third return to stage, Addie Cherry was wielding a shotgun. Firepower did nothing to slow down the barrage of airborne vegetables, and the sisters retreated for good after a wash boiler was thrown on stage.
The sisters continued performing to boisterous audiences. Eventually, tales of their terrible show and its wild reception made their way to Oscar Hammerstein in New York City. He was bankrupt after his Olympia Music Hall at Broadway and 44th Street failed to draw in a sufficient audience. Hammerstein read an article in the Morning World about the Cherry Sisters and their Midwest tour. The paper described them as “so grim and so serious that audiences were rolling in the aisles with laughter.” Hammerstein reportedly said, “I've been putting on the best talent, and it hasn't gone over. I'm going to try the worst." He had stage manager Al Aarons bring the infamous act to New York and sign them under contract to perform at the Olympia.
Oscar Hammerstein Hammerstein's Olympia Music Hall
The Cherry Sisters’ vaudeville show Something Good, Something Sad opened at the Olympia on November 16, 1896. The sisters wore red calico dresses to perform, and they started out the night with their own rendition of “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” while Lizzie played the piano and Jessie banged on a large bass drum. Their song went like this:
"Cherries ripe, Boom-de-ay!
Cherries red, Boom-de-ay!
The Cherry sisters
Have come to stay!"
Their opening was followed by various musical numbers by each respective sister. Jessie sang “Fair Columbia” whilst draped in an American flag. Lizzie dazzled with a traditional Irish ballad, and Jessie portrayed a flower maiden who fell prey to Addie’s character Lothario in Effie’s vocal piece “The Gipsy’s Warning.” Later on, Jessie was featured as a “living sculpture,” hanging suspended from a giant crucifix in the piece entitled “Clinging to the Cross.” The audience was not sure what to make of the sensory onslaught at first, but it did not take long for the jeering and projectile-throwing routine to start up.
Reviews across the board were harsh. The World claimed “it was awful,” while the New York Times critic said, “All too obviously they were products of the barnyard and the kitchen. None of them had showed a sign of nervousness, none a trace of ability for their chosen work.”
The sisters were offended by the audiences’ reactions and would yell at and berate them. Hammerstein finally convinced them that the reactions were all orchestrations of jealous rival stars in the area. Readily fooled, the sisters continued to perform (now behind the safety of a fishnet) to sold-out audiences for two months. Hammerstein’s theater was saved, and the Cherry Sisters had some fame. They played at Proctor’s 23rd Street Theater to packed audiences for two more weeks before embarking on a US and Canadian tour.
Upon returning to Iowa, the sisters made a stop in Odebolt in February 1898. The same show and barrage of produce and insults ensued. Billy Hamilton, editor of The Odebolt Chronicle, published an extremely critical review of the sisters’ show. His harsh review went like this: “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 anon waved frantically at the suffering audience.The mouths opened like caverns, and sounds like the wailing 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 stringhalt and Jessie, the only one who showed her stocking, has legs with calves as classic in their outlines as the curves of a broom handle.”His review was published in The Odebolt Chronicle and reprinted in the Des Moines Leader and several other Iowa newspapers.
Addie Cherry filed a libel suit against the Des Moines Leader and The Chronicle for $15,000 in the Polk County District Court. She claimed that the review was “maliciously intending to injure your petitioner in her said good name, fame and credit...and exposing her to public contempt and ridicule." The judge was present for the show and decreed that “Any performance to which the public is invited may be freely criticized. Also any editor may publish reasonable comments on that performance.” The sisters lost in district court and appealed the case to the Iowa Supreme Court. On May 28, 1901, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court upheld the district court’s ruling in the famous Cherry Sisters v. Des Moines Leader case. The ruling stated: “If ever there was a case justifying ridicule and sarcasm, -aye, even gross exaggeration, - it is the one now before us. According to the record, the performance given by the plaintiff and the company of which she was a member was not only childish, but ridiculous in the extreme. A dramatic critic should be allowed considerable license in such a case.”
The Cherry Sisters v. Des Moines Leadercase was revolutionary because it set the legal precedent for the media’s right to fair comment and critical analysis. Before this case, most libel cases ruled in favor of the plaintiff if there was any defamation whatsoever. Once the courts witnessed the barnyard explosion that was the Cherry Sisters’ act, they could see for themselves how accurate all the reviews were, even if they were exaggerated. There was truth in the reviews, so the sisters did not have a case. Simply put, there was no proof of “actual malice.” This landmark case is still upheld as a precedent in modern-day court cases.
The sisters continued performing until the youngest sister, Jessie, died suddenly from typhoid fever while they were on tour in Arkansas. They retired back to their Marion farm with their amassed fortune of $200,000. None of the sisters ever married, and the money eventually ran out. They then moved to Cedar Rapids and opened a bakery where they, of course, served cherry pie. Effie attempted to run for mayor of Cedar Rapids in both 1924 and 1926, losing both times. After some time and a failed comeback, Addie died in 1942, and Effie died two years later, ending the family line.
The story of the Cherry Sisters and their legacy of atrocious vaudeville fascinates me. To start off, I have a special connection to Iowa because my father’s family resides there. I have been to most of the towns the sisters performed in, so I feel a connection to them somewhat. I am also a big advocator of theatre and the performing arts. The fact that the Cherry Sisters were women making a livelihood out of one of my favorite art forms in a time when women were all but powerless is pretty amazing in my opinion. I also commend the Iowa farm girls for making it big, albeit for all the wrong reasons. I cannot help but wonder how the sisters were so oblivious to the atrocity that was their act. How could they believe Hammerstein’s claims about jealous rivalries orchestrating the rowdy audiences? Surely getting pelted with rotten produce for seven years was enough to convince anyone. I read an opinion suggesting the possibility that the sisters were intelligent businesswomen, purposely coming off as naïve so they would continue to draw in money. However, I cannot help but conclude that they were truly blind to their terrible vocals. Otherwise, I do not think they would have fought against all of their critics so vehemently. They had shortcomings, but it is still fascinatingly remarkable that five sisters from small-town Iowa set the precedent for modern-day libel cases.
Links to Sources of Pictures