Morris Meyerfeld, Jr.

Morris Meyerfeld Jr.
Morris Meyerfeld ca. 1900s
Born	(1855-11-17)November 17, 1855 Beverungen, Westphalia Germany
Died	June 20, 1935(1935-06-20) (aged 79) San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Occupation	Entrepreneur and Theater Owner

Morris Meyerfeld Jr. (November 17, 1855 – June 20, 1935) was a German-born American entrepreneur who through the Orpheum Circuit dominated the vaudeville market west of the Mississippi for nearly two decades.

Moses Meyerfeld (later known as Morris Meyerfeld Jr.) was born in Beverungen, a small town that occupies both banks of the Weser River in the Westphalia region of Germany. As a boy he received his education at schools in Cologne before sailing on the SS Frisia to America in the spring of 1874; the year his father, Herz Meyerfeld, died. Morris Meyerfeld was the middle of three brothers who immigrated to America between 1872 and 1876 to settle in San Francisco. Morris, Joseph (Josef) and Jesse (Jesaja) all went on to be merchants engaged in similar lines of commerce as their uncle Moses Meyerfeld (1829-1892), a San Franciscan cigar wholesaler who came to California from Germany in 1850.

In 1879 Meyerfeld was asked to take over operation of a successful dry goods store in Vallejo, California by the shop's owner, his maternal uncle, Salomon Dannebaum, At around this time his brothers were employed by L. Siebenhauer & Co.in San Francisco, Jesse as a tobacco dealer and Joseph as a foreman. A few years later Mayerfeld and his brother Jesse formed a business partnership with John S. Mitchell and Levi Siebenhauer. From their place of business on 116 Front Street, the firm Meyerfeld, Mitchell and Siebenhauer engaged in the manufacturing of cigars and as wholesalers of wines and liquors. Through this enterprise Meyerfeld would be placed in a position within a few years to assume ownership of the city’s financially strapped Orpheum Theatre.

Also known as the Orpheum Opera House, the 3,500 seat venue on O’Farrell Street between Stockton and Powell was built by Gustav Walter in 1887 and was for a time the most luxurious theater in the West. Walter, a native of Prussia, became successful at the Orpheum putting on variety shows that appealed to wide audiences often with exotic acts from the East Coast and Europe rarely seen in the West. With his success in San Francisco Walter began to expand his organization, by then known as the Orpheum Circuit, to include leases on theaters in Los Angeles and Kansas City. In 1897 Walter turned the Orpheum into a vaudeville only venue and shortly thereafter became overextended and was unable to pay the Orpheum's $50,000 liquor bill owed to the firm Meyerfeld, Mitchell and Siebenhauer.