June 18, 2025
"DISCOVERED" EMMA DUNN.
Thaddeus Gray Found Her Singing
and Dancing in Bowery Theater.
Thaddeus Gray, who is leading man of the company supporting Miss Jane Kennark at the Auditorium for two weeks' special engagement, has the distinction of "discovering" Emma Dunn, the popular ingenue of the Woodward company for several years and now playing the negro servant with Frances Starr in "The Easiest Way."
"I don't like to name the year," said Mr. Gray yesterday, in speaking of the matter. "Miss Dunn's many friends here might consider it telling tales out of school, but it was not so terribly many years ago and Miss Dunn was a very young woman, not yet out of her teens, at the time. I went down from Boston to New York with H. Percy Melton of the Lothrop stock company of Boston, to get a soubrette and comedian for the company. None of the agencies at the time had anybody to offer and by some means we found our way to the old Globe theater on the Bowery, which was little more than a museum. At least they gave a number of forty-five minute plays at frequent intervals during the day. My attention was particularly attracted to a singing and dancing soubrette, who proved to be the Emma Dunn who afterwards became such a favorite here. We engaged her and John Weber and for several years Miss Dun was put through the grind of the Lothrop stock of Boston, getting the experience which made her such a favorite, when she came West. Perhaps it may be a matter of new to Kansas City theatergoers that Emma Dunn was a singing and dancing soubrette at any time in her interesting career."
