Charles Rogers and Co - The Movie Mania

In this blog, I'll be delving into the Charles Rogers & Co act 'The Movie Mania'. If you'd like to read more about Charles Rogers and Co and their later act, 'The Ice Man', please click here!

Sadly, as is the case for 'The Ice Man', no pictures of the act or its performers have yet surfaced. As always, if you have any pictures or information about Rogers and his work (or any Roach folk!) that you'd like to share with us, Matthew and myself would be more than happy to hear from you - you can email us at roachwriters@gmail.com. ☺

'The Movie Mania' was toured by Rogers and his company throughout the USA during the mid-to-late 1910's. It is synopsised (and named instead as 'The Movie Rehearsal') in a 1917 Variety review as the following; 'two men and a woman in a comedy sketch...Scene is laid out in a picture studio, comedian and soubret applying respectively for the positions of leading man and leading lady to the director, who acts as a feeder to their burlesque attempts to act. The comedian is genuinely funny, the soubret does very well, but the feeder is a trifle weak. It is a funny small time act and the house fairly rocked with laughter'.

A later Variety review from 1918 essentially confirms that Rogers is the comedian in the act, and that his character played on his being a 'rube' (country bumpkin) from the fictional English hamlet of Bucksville (perhaps sentimentally named after Buckinghamshire, the county in which Rogers attended school at Taplow College - this has previously been discussed here, but expect more updates and developments on this soon!). 

Advertisements confirm that the soubret (this is a theatrical term for an often flirtatious female stock character) is played by Rogers' first wife, Irene Bell, and the 'feeder' by James Houston - the act was directed by Nat Sobel. I hope to research each of these people further at some point!

Like 'The Ice Man', 'The Movie Mania' was later adapted as a film and renamed as 'The Movie Man', synopsised only as being 'light satire and comedy' in The Film Daily.

As is the case with 'The Ice Man', I'll continue to snoop and search for more materials relating to 'The Movie Mania' and update you all if I find anything - what a dream it would be to have a picture surface of the company someday! ☺ At some point, I also plan on writing up a big ol' list of all the tour dates and locations for Charles Rogers and Co - perhaps they could have performed new you!

Until then, however - I've been relentlessly digging through the British Newspaper Archive for the past couple of months to get further information on Rogers' childhood, as well as his career prior to his relocation to the USA - and let me tell you now, that digging has turned up some gold! ☺ 

As always, thanks so much for taking the time to join me in learning more about Charles Rogers and his fascinating career, and thanks so much for reading Matthew and I's blog (and apologies for our slight radio silence as of late - we haven't forgotten about our blog or our readers, and dedicated research has been happening behind the scenes!).

Written and researched by Holly Foskett.