Donna in the News – Maryland Theatre, Hagerstown, MD, November 1920

Updated 4 November 2026

(Originally published 1 August 2026)

By Don Taylor

In mid-November 1920, my grandmother, Donna Montran, headlined the vaudeville bill at the Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown, Maryland. She appeared with Tom Rooney’s Bathing Beauties in A Beach Promenade, billed by Hagerstown’s Daily Mail as “Donna Montram.” Tom Rooney, Donna’s husband of nearly five years, presented the act; they married on November 24, 1915.

The Daily Mail tells the story in three items: a Saturday ad promising the act for the following week, the engagement ad itself, and a glowing review that ran on November 12, 1920.

The Engagement

Donna played the Maryland Theatre for the last half of the week, Thursday through Saturday, November 11–13, 1920. Opening night fell on Armistice Day, the second anniversary of the end of the Great War.

The theatre began advertising the act on Saturday, November 6. Its big ad for the Monday–Wednesday bill ended with a teaser:

THE PRIZE WINNER OF THE YEAR COMING THE LAST HALF OF NEXT WEEK — TOM ROONEY’S BATHING BEAUTIES WITH DONNA MONTRAM IN “A BEACH PROMENADE.” TEN OF CALIFORNIA’S SELECTED PEACHES — ALSO OTHER BIG ACTS.

The engagement ad billed the act as the “Supreme Triumph of the Year.” The Maryland ran three shows daily, at 2:30, 7:30, and 9:00 p.m.

The last ad I found ran on November 12. From Hagerstown, the act moved on to the Pastime Theatre in Union Hill, New Jersey, for November 15–17, 1920.

The act also appeared in the local theatrical calendars on November 8, 9 and 12, where Donna’s name ran in the same column as Man o’ War.

The Production and Cast

A Beach Promenade was a bathing-beauty revue in the style made famous by Mack Sennett’s films. Tom Rooney presented Donna with a line of young women billed as Californians. The review said they had “won nationwide popularity by their appearance before the moving picture camera.”

The act mixed singing and dancing with a parade of costumes “representing the various nationalities, and seaside resorts in this country.” The ads promised ten “Selected Peaches”; the reviewer counted “eight in all, and Miss Donna Montram.”

The rest of the bill, as advertised:

The race film showed the October 12, 1920 match race at Kenilworth Park in Windsor, Ontario. It was Man o’ War’s final race, and he beat the 1919 Triple Crown winner Sir Barton easily.

Reviews and Reception

The Daily Mail’s November 12 review on page 3, headlined “Rooney’s Bathing Beauties Score Big Success at Md.,” called the act a hit. It described crowds outside the theatre on opening night:

That there was something unusual or extraordinarily attractive being offered at the Maryland would be the conclusion that most everybody would arrive at had they seen the throngs of people entering the Maryland Theatre last evening.

The writer singled out Donna and the troupe as headliners:

Tom Rooney’s bathing beauties, eight in all, and Miss Donna Montram, in their exhubrant beach promenade headlined the show, but not in the usual way.

The review praised the costumes and the staging, saying the act’s “triumph over the first night audiences will go down in history, for not in a blue moon has any completely captivated the audience the way this offering did.” It concluded that “the new show that is now in it’s second day is certainly a sure fire winner, from every viewpoint.”

The baboons drew laughs “most every minute of the time,” and Bob Milligan “won many rounds of applause.” The reviewer called the race film “well worth seeing” and the whole program “one of the greatest bills of vaudeville offered in this city.” The review never mentioned that Tom Rooney and Donna were husband and wife.

A note on the name. The Daily Mail printed her as “Donna Montram” throughout this engagement. The spelling turns up repeatedly in sources from this period when she toured with Tom Rooney. I have kept the paper’s spelling in quotations because that is what was printed.

Theatre Profile

The Maryland Theatre was Hagerstown’s leading vaudeville and photoplay house in 1920. Its ads promised “All that’s good in Vaudeville and short snappy Photoplays,” backed by the ten-piece Maryland Concert Orchestra. Charles Thropp was general manager. Its rivals that week were Nixon’s Academy, presenting the musical comedy Honeymoon Night, and the Palace, showing Wanda Hawley in Food for Scandal.

History of the Theatre

The Potomac Realty Company built the Maryland for about $200,000. It opened on May 10, 1915, with a live orchestra and the five-reel feature The Commuters. Tickets cost 10¢, or 35¢ for a box.

The Maryland began as a vaudeville house. Sound films arrived in June 1928 with The Jazz Singer, and it became primarily a movie theatre. Warner Bros. ran it from 1930 to 1953, followed by Stanley Warner and RKO-Stanley Warner.

Full-time movies ended in November 1973. A fire on February 8, 1974 destroyed the front block and lobby, but the auditorium survived. A local funeral director, Gerald N. Minnich, bought the building in 1976 as it faced demolition. Restored by local citizens, it reopened in 1978.

Location Today

The Maryland Theatre still stands at 21 South Potomac Street in downtown Hagerstown. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (November 13, 1976). A centennial restoration followed in 2015, and a five-level Performing Arts Center opened beside it in 2019. It is home to the Maryland Symphony Orchestra and seats about 1,293.

Theatre Specifications

Significance

Hagerstown is one of the best-documented stops on Donna’s 1920 Beach Promenade tour, with a teaser ad, an engagement ad, and a full review. The ads also confirm that Tom Rooney himself presented the act, so the couple was touring together five years into their marriage. The engagement closed just eleven days before their fifth wedding anniversary.

It is also a reminder of what vaudeville audiences got for 44¢: Donna’s revue, a comic, trained baboons, a newsreel, a comedy short, and film of the most famous racehorse of the day.

I love finding these little theatrical calendars and ads — the kind of thing nobody kept on purpose, but which somehow survived. Seeing my grandmother’s name beside Man o’ War in the same column makes that week feel vivid. Hagerstown clearly gave her a warm welcome that November.

Sources

1. Maryland Theatre advertisement, Daily Mail (Hagerstown, MD), November 6, 1920.
2. Maryland Theatre advertisement, Daily Mail (Hagerstown, MD), November 12, 1920.
3. “Rooney’s Bathing Beauties Score Big Success at Md.,” Daily Mail (Hagerstown, MD), November 12, 1920, p. 3.
4. “Theatrical Calendar: Attractions at the Local Theatres This Week,” The Herald-Mail, November 8, 1920, p. 5.
5. “Attractions at the Leading Theatres,” The Herald-Mail, November 9, 1920, p. 5.
6. “Attractions at the Leading Theatres,” The Herald-Mail, November 12, 1920, p. 5.
7. Maryland Theatre history, The Maryland Theatre.
8. Maryland Theatre (Hagerstown), Wikipedia.
9. Maryland Theatre, Hagerstown, Cinema Treasures.
10. Academy Theatre (Nixon’s Academy), Hagerstown, Cinema Treasures.
11. Kenilworth Park Racetrack, Wikipedia.
12. The California Bathing Beauties at the Pastime Theatre, Union Hill, NJ, Nov 15–17, 1920, dontaylorgenealogy.com.

Newspaper items accessed via Newspapers.com.

This article was researched and written by the author. Claude (Anthropic) was used as a research and drafting aid, and Grammarly was used for editorial review and copyediting.