In 19th century Tombstone, the Bird Cage Theater had entertainment for everyone

Tombstone’s Bird Cage Theater opened in 1881 in what was then a young, remote boomtown. The Bird Cage was a variety theater — one of hundreds that were popular back then across the country and around the world.

Variety theaters were hubs for all manner of culture and nightlife — singing, dancing, acrobatics, feats of strength, comedy, oration, impersonations, magic and illusions, sporting exhibitions, novelty acts and the production of popular plays. In an up-and-coming border town, the Bird Cage was a place where a wide cast of characters could come together.

Michael Paul Mihaljevich is an expert on the history of the Bird Cage, which still stands today. Mihaljevich wrote a book called “The Bird Cage Theater: The Curtain Rises on Tombstone, Arizona’s National Treasure.” When he joined The Show, he said the theater took pride in the diversity of its offerings.

Full conversation

MIHALJEVICH: In order to entertain people, you have to be willing to accept a wider range of things — anything that can kind of draw a crowd — and the range of things that would be shown on that stage were pretty typical for variety theater in the Western United States. It included, you know, staples like singing, dancing, acting. But you had physical exhibitions of strength. You had, in some cases, sporting exhibitions. You had oration.

A lot of the things that were shown at the Bird Cage for entertainment might mirror even some of the things we see today. They were topical and they would play off of things that would really arouse laughter or emotions out of a crowd in that day, whether it be politics or just social issues, or even elements of mining town life.

Sometimes these things would make their way into acts.

DINGMAN: It does feel remarkably old fashioned — the idea that there would be one single destination where you would get your fix for theater, for music, for comedy, for speech-giving, magic shows. It seems like it was all welcome.

MIHALJEVICH: Yeah. You have to kind of think of, in terms of context of this, you’re living in a time when, generally, the only way you’re entertained is when you have something physically in front of you. Where today, we supplement that with all kinds of streaming services and television. I mean even go back to radio — which is maybe in our grandparents time — was, you know, the preferred medium.

You didn’t have any of that. That’s why variety theaters in the 19th century were so successful, because they supplemented every way that we’re entertained today in one building.

DINGMAN: Yeah, well, you profiled some of the 250 or so folks that made their names at the Bird Cage. Give us an example of one who you were particularly intrigued by.

MIHALJEVICH: There was a girl, she grew up in a real small farming community in western Pennsylvania. She worked at a hotel, and she was a “strong woman act” and she would kind of entertain hotel guests by picking up chairs with her teeth, lifting them off the ground.

And, anyway, this drew kind of a crowd. She ended up becoming recruited by some of the top circuses, and she came down to Tombstone. She was actually recruited out of San Francisco and was one of the first performers there. But she toured all over South America, through the Caribbean. Her lifestyle — always on the move. It’s living out of travel trunks. It is to never know a home.

DINGMAN: Well, I’m really glad you brought up this idea of home, Michael, because this strong woman performer you were talking about, whose name, we should say, is Millie de Granville.

MIHALJEVICH: Yes, thank you. Appreciate that. Yes. I didn’t mention her name.

DINGMAN: Oh, no. Well, I mean, this idea that a place like the Bird Cage, for someone like her who didn’t have a traditional home, was a kind of a home, right? I mean, is that fair to say? It was a place for people who maybe didn’t necessarily fit in anywhere else?

MIHALJEVICH: I would say people driven to get into variety theater — a lot of times it was financial. I mean, there was a lot of money to be made. And there was also kind of a glamor to it. It was kind of a middle- to higher-level degree of celebrity. And I think there’s a percentage of the population today that is a bit motivated by the idea of gaining some celebrity.

DINGMAN: Yeah, I would say so.

MIHALJEVICH: I wouldn’t say that they’re entirely misfits. I mean, they were very skilled people that I think were just taking advantage of an opportunity. Maybe the same way we’ve seen social media personalities explode on YouTube and so forth. It’s an opportunity, and people will fill that if they feel like they have a chance at it.

DINGMAN: Talk a little bit about what the energy would have been like on a typical night, if there even was a typical night at a place like the Bird Cage. Our producer, Sativa, found this really wonderful account — This is from the Tombstone Epitaph. This is an article from 1920 describing the patrons at the Bird Cage.

And it says, “The grisly old prospectors, desert rats, the gamblers, the cattle thieves, the eastern fugitives from justice and dark pasts, the stage robbers and the West’s highest society rubbed elbows in the uproar and din of the Bird Cage Theater.”

MIHALJEVICH: Yeah, that’s a great quote. I do remember reading that. There is a bit of poetic romanticism, I think, in recollection, looking backwards, maybe in the same way we talk about the good old days of our youth — if I can say that at 44.

DINGMAN: You can, you can.

MIHALJEVICH: But it was an extremely lively atmosphere inside. I mean, you had people very willfully spending twice as much on alcohol as they could buy a drink anywhere else in town, simply because there was a buzz in the air and performers on stage. But the owners were also really, really liked people in the community.

I mean, they were involved in local — the churches, the high political social groups. So there were a big cross section of people that were converging in this really small building.

Very unique atmosphere. Young men who generally were working mines, you know, with money to spend, unchaperoned. You had Civil War veterans up on stage there too. Like any industry today that has financial opportunity to it, there are people drawn to it from a whole range of life walks.

DINGMAN: Well, I’m really fascinated by this comparison that you’ve made, Michael, to social media today, where I think it could be easy to look at something as special and old as the Bird Cage Theater and feel like it has nothing in common with social media content creation platforms.

But in a way, these are both American performance venues that celebrate kind of the same thing, which is if you have some very specialized skill and voice, these are places that celebrate that and will elevate it.

MIHALJEVICH: You’re 100% right. And I think it’s so easy to look at these two things that we’re talking about, social media and 19th century variety theater, and see that they’re obviously different, but they draw from the same pattern of people wanting to satisfy their financial wants by recognizing an opportunity, by putting themself out there and gaining viewership.

And for us to pursue an opportunity now, there are absolutely parallels that are drawn from the same human nature. And I find that really, really compelling — and maybe a little less obvious.

DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah. And oddly, I don’t know, I appreciate the framework of thinking about social media as an extension of the 19th century Old West variety show rather than a poison that is slowly infecting us all, as some have argued.

MIHALJEVICH: Yeah, sure. Well, it’s interesting you say that because variety theaters in the 19th century were extremely polarizing. I mean, you pick a social topic today that is the most polarizing — I’ll let you fill that in — variety theaters were it. I mean, they were seen as places that were demoralizing young kids and bringing in crime and vice.

And it’s important when you’re looking at the Bird Cage because you think, well, if these venues are controversial, there’s a lot of people that are slanted against them, how much negative slant was put towards the Bird Cage? And I found not one negative slant. They were on top of it and really tried to run it in a very upscale manner, which was not an easy thing to do.