An editorial from the Los Angeles Herald, March 15, 1900

MARRIED TEACHERS

The board of education has established the rule, and emphasized it by dismissing a recently wedded teacher, that female teachers in the public schools cannot retain their positions after marriage.

The foundation upon which the board bases its action is not so clear to the general public as it might be, because that body declined to set forth its views and reasons in the case cited; but the issue is not a new one, and while there is something to be said on both sides, the policy of the board will doubtless meet with very general approval.
There are from time to time cases where the enforcement of the rule regarding married teachers would work injustice and hardship, and result in loss to the educating strength; and the officials will doubtless make no hard and fast regulation.

For instance, it would not be wise to make the rule retroactive so as to turn out a competent married teacher of great experience; good teachers are no so plentiful as to be held so lightly.

But, on the other hand, it is well to make it clear that as a rule a choice must be made between teaching and

matrimony; that when a teacher enters the married state she must give up her position in the schools.

It is needless to give the reasons for such a policy. That ground has been threshed over many times. There are very few women who can manage a home and a school at the same time. The one or the other must suffer, possibly both.

•

•

Amusements

Orpheum. Tonight! A vaudeville bill that makes things buzz!

Papinta.

Matinee today — Papinta Day.

Costly, elaborately gotten up souvenirs — a Papinta reception. A new Papinta march by Conductor Frankenstein. Any seat 25 cents!Trovollo, from Europe, the master; Pauline Moran, coon song shouter and picks; Cushman, Holcombe and Curtis, “The New Teacher”; Kathryn Osterman, new sketch, “Tomorrow at Twelve”; Harris and Fields, furiously funny; The Passparts will make you quiver; De Witt and Burns, prize gymnasts.Prices never changing. Best reserved seats down stairs, 25c and 50c; entire balcony, 25c; gallery, 10c. Matinees Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; any seat, 25c; children, any seat, 10c. Telephone Main 1447.

 

Los Angeles Theater. C.M. Wood and H.C. Wyatt, lessees. Friday night and Saturday matinee, March 16 and 17, 8:15 p.m. and 2:15 p.m. sharp.

Paderewski in two selected piano recitals. Seats now on sale. Secure them early. Special trains will run from all Southern California points.

Prices. Orchestra, $4.00; balcony, $2.00, $3,00; gallery, $1.00 and $1.50; boxes and loges, $5.00 seat. Seats reserved by telegram or telephone. Tel. Main 70.

Morosco’s Burbank Theater. Oliver Morosco, lessee and manager. Crowded all the time. Tonight and all week. Matinee Saturday. Mr. James Neill and the incomparable Neill Company in A Parisian Romance. Note: Children under 6 years of age not admitted to any Neill performances. Next week: “Held by the Enemy.”

Later, Neill took up acting in front of the camera. He played opposite Blanche Sweet in The Golden Chance (1915) and was in Cecil B. Demille’s King of Kings in 1927.

Oliver Morosco was the eminently successful theater impresario. According to “Baring the Heart of Hollywood” (1921), his real name was Mitchell, though why he would choose to change it is a mystery to me. “Mitchell, or Morosco, is a talented man who started in the theatrical business with a stock house in Los Angeles. He developed ability as a producer and now has extensive theatrical interests in both New York and Los Angeles. Morosco did not long survive the merger with Famous Players and soon left the corporation . . . .”

Saucer Track. Races! Races! Velodrome Saturday night, also Sunday night, March 17 and 18. Greatest racing carnival ever witnessed in Los Angeles. Watch the press Thursday and Friday for particulars. Admission, 25 cents.

The Velodrome, managed by H. Fleishman, was a skating rink and bicycle track on the northeast corner of South Main and 10th Street (present Olympic Boulevard). It is now occupied by the 13-story California Market Center.

Imperial Hall. 242 S. Broadway, 243 S. Spring St. Grand orchestral concert. Every evening from 6 to 7 and 8 to 12. Ladies’ and gentlemen’s cafe and oyster parlor. R.J. Stahmann, manager.
•

Photo and publicity blurb from the Los Angeles Herald, March 15, 1900

POINTS ABOUT PAPINTA
    • Papinta loves birds.
    • Papinta has 61 horses.
    • Papinta has blue eyes.
    • Papinta uses 17 trucks.
    • Papinta is an exbicyclist.
    • Papinta has black hair.
    • Papinta weighs 139 pounds.
    • Papinta is 24 years of age.
    • Papinta earns $7.33 a minute.
    • Papinta is of Spanish descent.
    • Papinta’s height is 5 feet 6 inches.
    • Papinta employs 11 men in her act.
    • Papinta’s father was a millwright.
    • Papinta is an excellent swordswoman.
    • Papinta is the niece of Senator Mitchell.
    • Papinta has been on the stage six years.
    • Papinta owns a stock ranch worth $48,000.
    • Papinta never took a solitary dancing lesson.
    • Papinta was an orphan at the early age of 11 years.
    • Papinta once danced four straight months in Havana.
    • Papinta’s lily-dance dress contains 500 yards of white silk.
    • Papinta carries baggage weighing nearly 3,000 pounds.
    • Papinta’s favorite novelist is the famous Bulwer-Lytton.
    • Papinta has 119 poems written in her honor by alleged sane men.
    • Papinta owns diamonds valued at many thousands of dollars.
•
From the Martinez Historical Society Web site

Caroline Hipple Holpin known as “Papinta the Flame Dancer” was an Indiana native. Her husband, William, who was originally from Wisconsin, bought 100 acres in Ygnacio Valley in 1897. They had married in Chicago 10 years earlier.

During their first years together they moved about often. From Omaha to Denver to Portland, then to San Francisco to Minneapolis, and back to Chicago. While in Chicago, William, a lover of horse racing and the theatre, talked his wife into becoming a performing artist.

William found Caroline a dance teacher and they bought a complicated set of mirrors called the “crystal maze,” which reflected light from calcium arc lamps. During her act “Papinta the Flame Dancer” managed to keep 50 yards of silk in motion. Within a few years her exotic performances became quite popular and lucrative. She performed in the capitols of Europe, [in] Cape Town. South Africa, and then on many stages in the United States.

The Ygnacio Valley property had been purchased so William could pursue his dream of raising racehorses. In March 1905, Caroline's life started downhill. While performing in Rochester, New York, she received word that William had died at their ranch of “acute gastritis.” He was 35 years old.

Her father-in-law claimed William[’s] and Caroline’s marriage license and other important papers had disappeared mysteriously. He claimed to be the rightful heir to the ranch. The case was in the courts for a year and a half, finally being resolved in Caroline's favor.

She continued to perform. On August 10, 1907, Caroline died just after finishing a performance in Dusseldorf, Germany. Speculation was she was overcome by the fumes from the arc lamps.

 

From The Grizzly Bear, the publication of the Native Daughters of the Golden West, January 1908

Papinta ordered a $1,600 tombstone for her husband’s grave, with admonition that it should not be sent to or arrive in Martinez on a Friday, or the 13th. It reached there on April 18, 1906. That day the monument maker’s place was swept away in the great fire [of San Francisco].

Carolyn Hipple Holpin (Papinta) and her husband, William, are buried here.

 

Image from the Martinez Historical Society.
•

For a personal look at Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, click for
He Usually Lived With a Female: The Life of a California Newspaperman

*