News Items from The Kansas City Journal ~ Old News That's New to You from Vintage Kansas City.com

January 26, 1910

MABEL HITE LOVES TO WRITE.

But Refused to Make Out Check for

Furs She Says Were Not Stylish.

NEW YORK, Jan. 25. -- Mabel Hite, formerly of Kansas City, wife of "Mike" Donlin, the former Giant ball player, while not busy "coaching" her husband's "game," loves to write checks. She admitted this in a little by-play while on the witness stand in the Third district municipal court. She was defendant in an action brought for $185 for a fur neck piece and muff ordered last September for her mother. That Mabel's checks are always honored was not questioned. She simply refused to write one, although wanting to, when the furs, she says, did not prove to be of the latest styles. Mrs. Donlin's counsel admonished her several times not to lose her temper during cross-examination.

Labels: Mabel Hite, New York

November 8, 1908

WANT MABEL HITE

AND MIKE DONLIN

KANSAS CITY ACTRESS AND HUS-

BAND IN GREAT DEMAND.

"Legitimate" Managers Are Offering

All Sorts of Inducements to Get

Them to Forsake the Vau-

deville Footlights.

Offers for the services of Mabel Hite, Kansas City's "own soubrette," in the legitimate are flowing in upon M. S. Bentham, the agent for Miss Hite and her husband, Mike Donlin, who are appearing for the first time together in New York city at Hammerstein's this week.

Flo Ziegfeld, Jr., has offered Miss Hite a two-years' contract at a large salary. Other legitimate managers would like to ascertain the amount of Ziegfeld's figure in order that it might be raised.

At present Miss Hite and Mr. Donlin have their minds only upon vaudeville. The Hammerstein engagement, taken for a "try out," is at $1,000 weekly. Owing to the success there, the act now asks $1,500 for local engagements and $2,000 weekly outside New York. Mr. Bentham has booked the pair for several weeks ahead, but at what figure is not known.

The success of Mabel Hite and Mike Donlin in vaudeville probably surprised no one more than Mike Donlin himself. When the vaudeville appearance was broached to him late in the summer, he literally "threw up his hands." Donlin declared he would not listen to it; that he would be a "frost," "lemon," and applied all known eptihets to himself he could in an attempt to dissuade his wife and Bentham from proceeding with the scheme of their double appearance.

Donlin was perfectly assured of Miss Hite's complete success but feared for himself. At last, when he did agree to the plan he confidentially informed Bentham: "I am doing this to please Mabel, and I look to you to kill it off." Even when the Hammerstein contract was placed before him, Donlin insisted he had said nothing but $2,500 would take him on a stage. This was in furtherance of his plan to escape vaudeville, but Miss Hite persisted, winning the day. Now it is reported Mr. Donlin, who is surprising his best wishers this week, has no regrets.

Following the Hammerstein engagement Hite and Donlin will travel over the Percy G. Williams circuit.

Among the telegrams received Monday afternoon by the couple were the following: "Go to it, Mikey. Heard of you this afternoon. Wish you could play ball as good as you act, but don't do any of our stuff. Good luck to you and Mabel. -- Montgomery and Stone."

Labels: Mabel Hite, New York, theater, women

August 26, 1907

BACK TO THE GIANTS.

MABEL HITE SENDS MIKE

DONLIN EAST TO REFORM.

CUT OUT OF WIFE'S SONG.

TWO VERSES MISSING FROM

"I'M MARRIED NOW."

Grease Paint and Gay Costume Hide

Aching Heart of Kansas City

Actress -- Penitent Ball

Player Is Put on

Probation.

MABEL HITE.
Pretty Kansas City Actress Who Has

Put Her Husband, Mike Donlin, of the

New York Giants, on Probation.

CHICAGO, Aug. 25 (Special). -- Grease paints and uncouth costume can hide a breaking heart from the laughing audience on the other side of the footlights, but when Mabel Hite yesterday afternoon sought the only refuge she had, a 4x5 dressing box -- it couldn't be called even by courtesy a room -- large tears stole down a woebegone, little face.

She wiped them off with the corner of a Turkish towel, taking a bit of the rouge with it and hoped Mike would get better.

For the pretty little Kansas City girl sent Mike Donlin, the ball player, who is her husband, down to New York, buying his ticket and giving him the price of a Russian bath, which boiled out the remnants of the various liquids that had developed four days' spree, with an assault on a cabdriver and a cell in the police station for trimmings.

Donlin has promised to cut out booze in the future and sign with the New York Giants and if he's good for the next six months he can come back -- otherwise a divorce.

WORRIED SO CAN'T SLEEP.

I can't stand it any longer," said the little comedienne -- she's a child in figure and manner. "Now you don't think it's such a dreadful thing for a woman's husband to get drunk and in the newspapers, do you? But it means so much when you love a man and he'd promised not to do it. And every time it happens it's so much worse and it worries me so I can't sleep and I have to go out before that audience and act like a fool and make them laugh, and sing my songs and dance, and my heart is breaking. For he's good to me, except when he forgets himself."

A little while before she'd been singing "For I'm Married Now," and the appreciate ones on the other side of the footlights who'd called her back six or seven times, didn't know how hard -- how extremely hard -- it was to carry a smiling face through the trying ordeal.

TWO FAMILIAR VERSES OUT.

But she'd cut out two verses, and old players who remembered them and had heard about Mike knew the reason.

I'd like to go with you to lunchin'
But I've got a hunchin
That I'd get a punchin'
And I just hate to wear a veil
For I'm married now.

That was one of the verses that was eliminated from her song in "A Knight for a Day" at Whitney's. The other was:

Tell Mike a lie
I'd best not try.
I may be fly --
But no fly gets by him.

And the villain -- he admitted he was all that and was most penitent -- was in the office of the playhouse. He had slunk past the policeman who has been on guard for the last three days, fearing a possible outbreak by the ball player and was waiting to send a message of extreme contrition -- a message that Mabel wouldn't receive in person.

CALLAHAN CHIEF PEACEMAKER.

There were plenty of peacemakers, but nothing but a six months' probation will answer for Mike. James Callahan, his friend and manager of the Logan Squares, who had straightened matters up with the police, told how the husband and wife had slept in his house, at Thirty-fifth street and Indiana avenue, last Thursday night, unknown to each other.

After the cab episode, and after Callahan had got the soused one out of a police cell, he took him home. Mabel, who lives a block away, went to Callahan's house in great trouble.

A little earlier Thursday night Donlin went to the theater and demanded to see his wife. His breath was thick and he talked loud. Jouhny Slavin took him down to the corner and argued him into a cab, and that was why the scrubwoman's part in the show that night -- Donlin's role -- was performed by an understudy.

Donlin met Mabel Hite a year and a half ago in New York, and they were married soon afterward. He never saw her act before the marriage. She was in vaudeville or something similar. Off the stage she's girlish and pretty. Donlin met her at a dinner party.

Labels: arts, Indiana avenue, Mabel Hite, marriage, newspapers, sports, Thirty-fifth street