Theatrical Syndicate

The Theatrical Syndicate was an organization that controlled the booking of the top theatrical attractions in the United States, starting in 1896. The organization was composed of six men, each of whom controlled theatres and bookings.

Early in 1896, six men gathered for lunch at the Holland House in New York City. These men were Charles Frohman, Al Hayman, A. L. Erlanger, Marc Klaw, Samuel F. Nirdlinger, and Frederick Zimmerman. All were theatrical managers and/or booking agents with influence throughout the country. Frohman and Hayman owned theatres in New York and the surrounding area, Erlanger and Klaw were booking agents for almost all the major theatres in the South, and Nirdlinger and Zimmerman controlled theatres in the Ohio region. Frohman also owned a chain of theatres extending to the West Coast. At lunch, the men discussed the disarray in American theatre. These men had essentially formed the outline of the Theatrical Syndicate. In order for the Syndicate to succeed, it needed to form a monopoly. Within weeks of their lunch meeting, the men organized all the theatres which they owned or represented into a national chain, marking the beginning of the Theatrical Syndicate.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, theatre companies in America thrived by touring. In order to take control of the situation, the Syndicate needed only to possess key theatres between the major touring cities. In order to take control of a city, the Syndicate did not need control of theatres within the city. It needed only to control theatres on the routes approaching the city. The first city to be completely overtaken by the Syndicate was Philadelphia because of the influence of Nixon and Zimmerman.

At the start, 33 first-class theatres were owned by the Syndicate. Frohman, Klaw and Erlanger became the booking agents for the whole organization. Company managers no longer organized their tours by dealing with individual theatre managers. Instead they had to go through the Syndicate, which would arrange their tour for them.

The Syndicate was praised among certain circles. Daniel Frohman, the brother of Charles Frohman, gives an account of the creation of the Syndicate. He writes that after discussing the growing chaos in the business of theatre, "they decided that its only economic hope was in a centralization of booking interests, and they acted immediately on this decision." Those who praised the Syndicate believed that they had saved theatre by standardizing bookings. In the time prior to the formation of the Syndicate, routing of road-based companies was described as chaotic. Smaller travelling companies would find themselves in massive amounts of debt because of stiff competition. Klaw, who acted as the spokesman for the Syndicate, was quoted as saying, "The Theatrical Syndicate has brought order out of chaos, legitimate profit out of ruinous rivalry."

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