By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
“Clever comics and pretty girls at the Moulin Rouge of Buffalo,” read a 1940s matchbook for “The Home of Burlesk as you like it,” the Palace Burlesk. This photo was taken during the final show at the original Palace on Shelton Square in 1967.
Dewey Michaels opened the Palace Burlesk on Buffalo’s Main Street Shelton Square in 1925.
His Courier-Express obituary called Michaels “an irrepressible showman” who operated the original Palace for 45 years. He was 12 years old – not even to Lafayette High School, yet – when his career in showbiz began running the hand-cranked projector at his father’s Allendale Theater. He graduated to ad writer and usher, and was soon managing his own movie parlor.
The Palace Burlesk in Shelton Square, circa 1949. The Ellicott Square Building, to the right, is the only structure in this photo still standing today.
Buffalo didn’t have a vaudeville burlesque theater when he opened the Palace, but it filled a niche that’s foreign to modern audiences. There was more titillation than there was skin, in the brief parts of the show where there was any at all.
“Basically, I’m a prude,” owner Michaels said. “The kids at the downtown Palace saw more in their minds than they did on the stage,” wrote Doug Smith in a Courier-Express remembrance of Michaels.
“Compared with modern television, (the shows) were touchingly innocent,” wrote George Kunz in The News in 1993.
“Although the Palace had been known as a burlesque house, its programs were largely vaudeville … The Palace held a unique place in the heart of downtown Buffalo. Audiences were large and spirited … (and) exuded life. Pedestrians passing during showtime heard raucous, robust sounds of extravagant fun. The orchestra blared, drums rumbled and laughter, a rollicking outrageous laughter, tumbled out the doors onto Main Street.”
Newspaper ads for the Palace, 1948, 1956 and 1942. Rose La Rose was one of the queens of the burlesque circuit, and well-remembered by fans in Buffalo. Appearing as a part of her act in 1948 at the Palace was Joe DeRita, who later gained fame as replacement-stooge “Curly Joe” as a member of the Three Stooges through the 1960s.
Kunz continued: “To describe a Palace midnight show is to resurrect a bygone era. Waiting for a performance, hucksters circulated among the audience, peddling popcorn, ice cream suckers, candy, programs. The atmosphere resembled that surrounding a hockey game.”
In 1967, the original Palace Burlesk closed and was torn down in the name of progress and urban renewal. The spot where it once stood is now part of the open space between the M&T Tower and the Ellicott Square Building on Main Street.
A new Palace Theater was built at Main and Tupper. Courier-Express columnist Anne McIlhenney Matthews wrote with glee about new life for old burlesque only months after the original spot closed.
“With the calendar circled and the deadline established, Michaels is now on the telephone daily contacting booking agents and tracking down stars for the rebirth of burlesque in Buffalo’s downtown.”
While Michaels built one of the theaters that would be an anchor of Buffalo’s Theatre District, it wouldn’t be as the Palace. In 1978, the renovated building opened as Studio Arena Theatre and played a monumental role in keeping Buffalo’s cultural head above water during the darkest days of the region’s history.
The contribution to “what it meant to be a Buffalonian” was celebrated as Studio Arena opened with a tribute to Dewey Michaels and the Palace.
The Palace Burlesque becomes the Studio Arena, 1978.
“An old Buffalo joke had it that to receive a high school diploma, young men, at least once, had to skip the day’s classes and attend the Palace Burlesque. Only then could an education be considered complete,” wrote George Kunz.
At the opening of Studio Arena, Buffalo bon vivant and Courier-Express critic Doug Smith wrote of the relative innocence of the Palace.
“In the world of strip and tease, Dewey always fancied himself as something of a prude. That’s one reason his new Palace at 710 Main never was a financial success.”
Michaels himself directly blamed the proliferation of X-rated movie houses across the city.
The second Palace building continues to host live theater today as Shea’s 710 Theatre, but that’s not the only piece of the Palace that lives on.
In 1980, 83-year-old Michaels donated about 60 antique painted canvas backdrops to local schools and theaters – and one beautiful art nouveau piece to the Smithsonian.
Looking at the art that set the scene for comedians and performers like Phil Silvers, Abbott & Costello, W.C. Fields, Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis Jr., among scores of others, Michaels thought of all the great comedians who “worked scenes,” unlike the “strictly loser” modern crop of funnymen.
“Stand- up comedians are a bunch of kids who need microphones and tell jokes about their mothers. In my day, the stage wasn’t equipped with a microphone. You had to speak up,” said the octogenarian showman in a Courier-Express interview in 1980.
Outside of the Palace, Michaels brought boxing title fights to Buffalo and auto racing to the Rockpile. He also was active in raising money for the Variety Club.
Dewey Michaels died in 1982 at the age of 85, but memories linger in the minds of those boys who ditched school, tried hard to make sure their voices didn’t crack when telling the man in the ticket booth they were 18, and got equal amounts of eyes-full and imaginations-full in a bygone era.
