Donna Darling Collection – Part 88

Treasure Chest Thursday
By Don Taylor

This week, for Treasure Chest Tuesday, I look at clippings from a page of the Donna Darling Collection.

Clipping: Plaza – Let’s Go – Donna Darling Collection

“Plaza – Let’s Go” showed the movie “The U. P. Trail” from Zane Grey’s great novel. For Vaudeville, “Donna Montran and Her ‘Bathing Beauties’ is the headliner. This ad doesn’t say when or where the show occurred. However, Donna went by Montran in her Bathing Beauties shows during 1920 and 1921. Along with Donna on the bill were:

• Billy and Eddie Gorman – Passing Songs of 1920
• Bo Peep and Jack Horner – Kathlyn Arnold and George L. Cohan.
• Bart Doyle – Chesterfieldian Entertainer
• The Great Richards.

It also mentions the show played Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday. And in the margin between two clippings was a handwritten note that said “Worchester Mass.”

Image rotated horizontally for readability.

Analysis

Worchester Evening Gazette 27 Dec 1920 via Genealogy Bank.

My review of available online newspapers found an ad, via Genealogy Bank, from the Worchester Evening Gazette, 27 December 1920, that is almost identical. It advertised “Plaza – Let’s Go” and included the same vaudeville acts. Other newspaper issues and pages indicated that Donna’s show played at the Plaza in Worchester on December 27, 28, & 29, 1920.

That fills a gap I had in her show schedule from her playing at the Palace Theater in Hartford, CT, December 22-25 and playing the Plaza Theater in Bridgeport, CT, between 30 December 1929 and 1 January 1921.

Actions

• I added the following to her list of shows:

December 27-29, 1924 – “Donna Montran and Her ‘Bathing Beauties’” played Plaza-Let’s Go in Worchester, MA.

• There are four more clippings from the Donna Darling Collection which relate to this show. Additionally, I found six articles in three newspapers on Genealogy Bank that document the show even more. I will include them in detail when I write about this show in detail.