Haverly's Genuine Colored Minstrels

minstrel show / late 1800s-early 1900s




Meanwhile, Haverly entered the market of black minstrelsy and bought Charles Callender's Original Georgia Minstrels
in 1878, renaming them Haverly's Colored Minstrels. Haverly promoted the troupe with the same panache he employed
for the Mastodons, and he bought other black troupes to increase their size. He also reinforced the belief that
black minstrels were authentic portrayers of African American life by moving to a format of almost all plantation-
themed material. In place of Turkish baths, audiences got
"THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD,
CANEBRAKE, BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT".

In 1880, he even went so far as to create a mock plantation in a Boston field with over a hundred black actors in
costume, including "overseers, bloodhounds and darkies at work ... indulging in songs, dances [and] antics peculiar
to their people"

In 1881 the 65-strong Haverly's Colored Minstrels opened at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, where
The Times wrote: "There can be no doubt of the spontaneity of the outbursts of sound, or of the enjoyment with which
the performers take part in the dances and frolics of the evening. The heartiness of their fun seems to communicate
itself to the audience."

Peter Fryer notes, "There were 20 dancers, a banjo orchestra, and 8 players of bones and
8 of tambourines -16 musicians who sat in two rows on the stage and made 'a most picturesque display in unison'."

The huge troupe was successful, but Haverly found it difficult to manage both them and the Mastodons. He sold the
Georgia Minstrels to Charles and Gustave Frohman in 1882.


  • Widow Bedott; 5th Ave Theatre (1901)

  • J.H. Haverly


    Return to Vaudeville Acts Index