J. H. Haverly was an entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

 and promoter

Promoter (entertainment)

An entertainment promoter i.e. music, wrestling, boxing etc is a person or company in the business of marketing and promoting live events such as concerts/gigs, boxing matches, sports entertainment , festivals, raves, and nightclubs.- Business model :Promoters are typically hired as independent...

 of blackface

Blackface

Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

 minstrel show

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

s. During the 1870s and 1880s, he created an entertainment empire centered on his minstrel troupes, particularly Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels

Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels

Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels was a blackface minstrel troupe created in 1877, when J. H. Haverly merged four of the companies he owned and managed.- Promotion :...

 and Haverly's Colored Minstrels. Under his guidance, these troupes grew to impressive sizes and featured elaborate sets and costumes. They toured widely, enlarging minstrelsy's audience to encompass the entire United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 as well as England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Haverly's methods sparked a revolution in minstrelsy as other troupes scrambled to compete. As the costs of minstrelsy increased, many troupes went out of business.

Early endeavors

Haverly was one of a new wave of theater troupe owners and managers

Management

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...

 who had not entered the profession as a performer himself. He borrowed the spectacular techniques of famous showmen like P. T. Barnum

P. T. Barnum

Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, scam artist and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus....

 to promote his theater companies. In the late 1870s, he turned his eye to the lifeless minstrel show, observing that other entertainments, such as stage plays, operas, and variety shows, had "increased and enlarged their dimensions until their proportions and attractive qualities [had] appeared unlimited." Minstrelsy, on the other hand, had remained much as it had been in the days of the Virginia Minstrels

Virginia Minstrels

The Virginia Minstrels or Virginia Serenaders was a group of 19th century American entertainers known for helping to invent the entertainment form known as the minstrel show...

 and Ethiopian Serenaders

Ethiopian Serenaders

The Ethiopian Serenaders was a blackface minstrel troupe from the 1840s. Their first major performance was for John Tyler at the White House in 1844 as part of the "Especial Amusement of the President of the United States, His Family and Friends"...

.

His answer would be a company of minstrels "that for extraordinary excellence, merit, and magnitude [would] astonish and satisfy the most exacting amusement seeker in the world." He gathered up a large pool of talented performers and combined them into a single troupe. Aiming his advertisements

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 at the family market and emphasizing his shows' freedom from base humor, they toured the whole United States, not just the Northeastern circuit to which minstrelsy had previously been mostly limited.

Haverly's success in minstrelsy allowed him to finance other ventures. At the height of his fortune, he owned and managed three minstrel troupes and four comic theater groups, in addition to three theaters in New York and one in each of Brooklyn, Chicago, and San Francisco, three mining and milling companies, as well as stock in many others. Haverly's stock investments did not perform as he had wished, and by the end of 1877, he was in debt by as much as $104,000. However, he tried to skirt bankruptcy with another gamble.

Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels

With four minstrel companies as his raw materials, he created a single troupe, dubbed Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels

Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels

Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels was a blackface minstrel troupe created in 1877, when J. H. Haverly merged four of the companies he owned and managed.- Promotion :...

. He flooded New York with posters and newspaper advertisements twice the size of the ads placed by other troupes. These trumpeted the Mastodons' size: "FORTY—COUNT 'EM—40" members. He paraded his minstrels through every city they played, preceded by a brass band

Brass band

A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands , but are usually more correctly termed military bands, concert...

. In 1878, he added a drum corps

Drum and bugle corps (modern)

A drum and bugle corps, also known as a drum corps, is a musical marching unit consisting of brass instruments, percussion instruments, and color guard. Typically operating as independent non-profit organizations, drum corps perform in competitions, parades, festivals, and other civic functions...

 that could play simultaneously in another section of town. He found other ways to emphasize the troupe's size, one being a series of curtains pulled back in succession, each revealing more than a dozen men standing behind it.

Haverly's shows were also more visually stunning than anything that had preceded them. One program read, "The attention of the public is respectfully called to the magnificent scene representing a Turkish Barbaric Palace in Silver and Gold", and the production delivered what had been promised. In addition, a lavish royal palace appeared at one point, followed by a succession of non-connected scenes: "Base-Ball", "The Strong Defending the Weak," "United We Stand," and "The Dying Athlete". The show ended with a circus

Circus

A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...

-like production in the tradition of Barnum. The show represented Haverly's mantra as a producer: "I've got only one method, and that is to find out what the people want and then give them that thing . . . . There's no use trying to force the public into a theater."

Haverly's shows were different, and he took every opportunity to emphasize this in his advertisements. He stressed the high costs of production. He continued to purchase minstrel troupes throughout the 1870s and 80s and to absorb them into the Mastodons. The troupe had over 100 members at one point.

Haverly's Colored Minstrels

Meanwhile, Haverly entered the market of black minstrelsy and bought Charles Callender's

Charles Callender

Charles Callender was the owner of blackface minstrel troupes that featured African American performers. Although a tavern owner by trade, he entered show business in 1872 when he purchased Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels. Renaming them Callender's Original Georgia Minstrels, he and...

 Original Georgia Minstrels in 1878, renaming them Haverly's Colored Minstrels. Haverly promoted the troupe with the same panache he employed for the Mastodons, and he bought other black troupes to increase their size. He also reinforced the belief that black minstrels were authentic portrayers of African American life by moving to a format of almost all plantation

Plantation

A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...

-themed material. In place of Turkish baths, audiences got "THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, CANEBRAKE, BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT". In 1880, he even went so far as to create a mock plantation in a Boston field with over a hundred black actors in costume, including "overseers, bloodhounds and darkies at work . . . indulging in songs, dances [and] antics peculiar to their people" The huge troupe was successful, but Haverly found it difficult to manage both them and the Mastodons. He sold the Georgia Minstrels to Charles

Charles Frohman

Charles Frohman was an American theatrical producer. Frohman was producing plays by 1889 and acquired his first Broadway theatre by 1892. He discovered and promoted many stars of the American theatre....

 and Gustave Frohman

Gustave Frohman

Gustave Frohman was a theatre producer and advance man. He was one of three Frohman brothers who entered show business and he worked for most of his career alongside his brother, Charles Frohman. These two financed a number of theatre productions, often featuring African American actors...

in 1882.