Joe Bignon
Impresario of the Birdcage Theater
Tombstone, Arizona ~ 1880's
Joe
Bignon was the owner and operator of the most famous theater in the Wild West
~ "The Birdcage"
There have been hundreds of stories told about the Birdcage and all the antics that went on both on stage and in the audience, and some of those stories are probably true !
There are quite a few facts and stories that have been published about Bignon's career over the years. He was born in Montreal, Canada in 1851 and after working as a dancer and actor in Minstrel Shows and Circuses, made his way West. He is cited as having managed the Theater Comique in Tombstone in 1879 and he may have played there in with Brewster's Minstrels. We do know that Bignon and Brewster played Prescott on April 25th, 1881 as evidenced by the following newspaper clipping.
In
1886 Bignon returned to Tombstone and purchased the Birdcage, becoming its
second owner and manager. By that time however the boom was well past in Tombstone
with the mines flooding and a major strike by the miners so many folks were
pulling up stakes and leaving. Bignon built an Opera House in Kingston, New
Mexico in 1887 and later managed a theater in Albuquerque. In 1891 he was
reported as bringing his "Birdcage" to Phoenix to entertain the
frisky legislators who were in session, and to open the Elite Theater. By
1892 Bignon had returned to Tombstone and when gold was discovered in Pearce,
he tore down his house and moved to Pearce to open yet another theater. This
time the theater evolved into a movie house called the Idle Hour and eventually
Bignon was reduced to operating a soda pop stand before he died in 1926.
But there
is more to the story. When Bignon moved to Pierce he took with him the liquor
bar and piano from the Birdcage, and in the 1930's, these were saved by a
well known amateur historian from Tucson named George Chambers. This story
was confirmed to this author a number of years ago by an elderly gentleman
from Benson who as a young man had the job of hauling ice from Wilcox to Pearce
by wagon. This man was Matt Lee and he told the story of seeing Joe Bignon
do his Hottentot Monkey Routine one last time and swinging out over the audience
by hooking the tail of the costume in the rigging of the stage. All good things
must come to an end and this last time the tail broke and Bignon ended up
in the lap of a startled customer. Showman to the end, Bignon got up and danced
off as if it was all part of the act.
So what about the piano? Well in 1982 there was an upright piano for sale in Tucson that the owner said came from the basement of a house owned by George Chambers. This is Bush & Gerts Cabinet Grand, serial number 2435. The piano atlas dates this instrument as having been made between 1885 and 1890, and has been beautifully restored by Walt Brown, a member of the Piano Technician's Guild. This wonderful antique piano that may have been used in the famous Birdcage Theater is now in the Professor Hall's Cinema Museum in Prescott.
For more information, Contact George C. Hall
Copyright 2000, George C. Hall