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an excerpt from the book
A Ghost In My Suitcase:
A Guide To Haunted Travel In America
Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage:
The Bird Cage Theatre - Tombstone, Arizona
by Mitchel Whitington
To get ready for this leg of our journey, I'd first recommend renting the movie Tombstone starring Kurt Russell as the legendary gunfighting sheriff Wyatt Earp. Walking down historic Allen Street, I defy anyone to keep the film's images from popping into their head. It is so easy to look around and imagine the places from all over town as they were in those bawdy old days: the Grand Hotel, Boot Hill, the O.K. Corral, and, of course, the Bird Cage Theatre.
In the movie, the Bird Cage is portrayed as a place for a traveling vaudeville show to entertain the locals, and the Earp brothers are shown sitting up in the "bird cages" with their wives as if they were theater boxes in a fancy establishment. Truth be known, no respectable lady would even walk on the street in front of the Bird Cage Theatre - much less set foot inside.
In reality, these theater-type boxes were individual rooms where the ladies of the evening who worked the theater could entertain their clients. It was possible to open the curtains in each box so that the ladies and their gentlemen friends could drink and watch the goings-on below on the floor, or the drapes could be pulled for a more intimate rendezvous.
In 1881, the famous Broadway writer/composer Arthur J. Lamb was visiting the Bird Cage Theatre with Eddy Foy, a great performer of the time. The business had just opened, and William Hutchinson - the owner of the establishment - had dubbed his theater and gaming house The Elite. It was the first visit to The Elite for both men, and they were studying the beautiful, plush interior of the theater. "It reminds me of a coffin," Foy remarked, "long and narrow."
Lamb just laughed and pointed up at the balconies trimmed in gold. "See those girls in the scanty costumes with the colored feathers in their hair? Well, they remind me of birds in little gilded cages hanging up there." After studying them a bit more, he said, "And like birds in cages, they probably don't have a chance in the world of making it out of this place."
Foy shrugged and said, "Sounds like you've got a good song there."
Lamb realized that his friend was right, and immediately started scratching the words down on a napkin from the bar. Later in the day, Lamb sat at the theater's grand piano, picking out a tune on the keys to accompany the words. Foy listened to the first rendition of the song, and reportedly told Lamb, "That's one hell of a good song, but not one for me. It's a song that only a lady should sing."
After working on the song for a bit longer, Lamb presented "She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage" to a then-unknown female singer booked at The Elite. She performed it that same night to a standing ovation and eight encores. Her name was Lillian Russel, and she became one of the stars of song and stage of the period. Lamb's song became a benchmark of nineteenth century music and the theme for the establishment. That first night after it was sung there, Hutchinson immediately changed the name of the place from The Elite to The Bird Cage Theatre.
One of the things that you'll learn when visiting the Bird Cage is that not only was it a theater, but it was also the home to many a game of chance. Doc Holliday was known to deal faro there occasionally, and it was on one such night when the famous "handkerchief duel" took place. Doc was drinking steadily as he dealt, like he often did, and was well on his way to inebriation when Johnny Ringo strolled in. Johnny was a known killer and member of the notorious "Cowboy Gang," and had been imbibing quite a bit himself on that evening.
When their paths crossed, Doc took a drink and taunted Johnny from behind the gambling table. "Care to buck the tiger? It's the gutsiest game in town." "Bucking the tiger" was another term for faro, so in essence Doc was daring Johnny Ringo to play a hand against him.
Ringo stopped, pulled off the signature red scarf that the Cowboy Gang wore, and waved it at him. "Care to grab the other end of this bandanna, Doc? It's the deadliest game in town."
Johnny was challenging Doc to one of the most fatal duels of the Old West, where each man took an end of a handkerchief, then drew their guns with the other. Because of the point-blank nature of the fight, both participants were almost always wounded, and often killed.
Doc smiled, staring at his adversary, and reportedly said, "I'm your huckleberry, Johnny - this may just be my lucky day." With that, he grabbed the dangling end of the red handkerchief and pulled his gun. Ringo pulled his at the same time, and in the split second before both men fired, an associate of Johnny's named Curly Bill Brocius slapped the killer's gun away, yelling, "Hell, Doc, he's drunk!"
Both men fired, and both missed - Ringo because his gun had been deflected away and Doc because he was so intoxicated.
When Holliday saw this, he laughed and told Bill, "Well, I drink more by ten in the morning than he does all day." With that, he strolled away, ending Tombstone's famous handkerchief duel.
When you visit the Bird Cage, you'll see many bullet holes in the walls that have been left there over the years as a reminder of its colorful past. The stories aren't limited to the six-guns of the West, however. One of the most famous tales concerns a working girl named Margarita. While the music was playing one evening and the ladies were entertaining their clients in the draped boxes upstairs, she was flirting with a high-stakes gambler named Billy Milgreen, sitting on his lap and lavishing him with attention. The girls at the Bird Cage were very territorial, so when Billy's "regular girl" came in, a lady known as "Gold Dollar," she was incensed at Margarita taking her client away so publicly. She pulled a stiletto knife and stabbed Margarita in the chest. It was such a vicious crime that some say she intended to cut the girl's heart out, and stopped only when she heard warnings that the sheriff had been called. She ran out of the back door of the theater, perhaps the one that visitors today walk through into the gift shop, and disappeared into the night. No charges were ever filed against her, because there was no murderess and no murder weapon. Oddly enough, a little over a hundred years later the stiletto was unearthed behind the building. It is now on display at the Bird Cage, a twenty-first century memorial to Margarita.
The theater today isn't an operating bar for tourists, but has instead been converted into a museum. You can walk along the floor in the footsteps of the Earp brothers and their friend Doc Holliday, and see literally thousands of items that are on display, from Bird Cage memorabilia to Tombstone city artifacts. Some folks might find it all a little kitsch, and in a few cases I'd be inclined to agree - witness the mummified remains of a mermaid, for example. But all in all, the Bird Cage Theatre is just plain fun. I stood there on the stage where performers such as Eddy Foy, Lillian Russel, Lotta Crabtree, Lily Langtree, and Lola Montez had entertained the rough trade of Tombstone, and just soaked in all of the ambiance of the place. It was magnificent.
With all the rich history of the Bird Cage, it's easy to understand how it got such a haunted reputation. Ghost hunters from around the country flock to the theater to take photographs and look for cold spots and other anomalies that signal the presence of an otherworldly visitor.
If scenes of violence or other intense emotion seems to be a focus for the presence of ghosts, then this theater would be a perfect place to find them. In 1882, The New York Times named the Bird Cage Theatre "the roughest, bawdiest, and most wicked night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast." During the time that it operated - nine years - the doors were never closed and the party went on 24/7. It was the site of the world's longest-running poker game, and the scene of twenty-six deaths from sixteen gun and knife fights. Between one hundred and two hundred bullet holes pockmark the walls, floors, and ceilings of the building. But with all that violence, one shouldn't forget the girls. The "gilded cages" were places of passion, and customers ranged from local businessmen stepping out on their wives to cowboys blowing through town seeking their fortunes. More raw emotion of every kind was probably vented here than any other place in Arizona.
So what spirits haunt the Bird Cage? Quite a few, apparently. Most ghost hunters return from a visit there with photos of inexplicable orbs of light in the main theater, on the stage, and even in the backstage area. The folks who work there tell stories of many guests over the years who have asked questions about things that they simply can't explain. Visitors will ask about the voices coming from the birdcage boxes, when there isn't a single person up there. People standing outside of the theater hear singing, sometimes accompanied by the tinkling of a piano, but when the sound is investigated the huge room is completely empty but for the silent pieces of the museum. Tourists and employees through the years have reported seeing people in clothing from the boomtown days of Tombstone. Initially mistaken for the many period actors in town, they disappear suddenly or fade away into the shadows. The one specter who has been reported with some regularity is a man in a visor who lingers on the stage.
The city of Tombstone itself is rife with visitors from the spirit world, and there are stories from many places in the town, including the old Boot Hill cemetery and Big Nose Kate's Saloon, which was originally the Grand Hotel. Perhaps none are as haunted, though, as the Bird Cage Theatre.
I enjoyed our stay in town, visited all of those places, and even watched the gunfight reenactment right there in the street. Of all the memories that I took from Tombstone, though, I think that I'll most remember standing on the stage of the Bird Cage, looking out across the theater, then closing my eyes and letting my mind wander back to those days of Wyatt, Doc, and the Clanton brothers.
Buck the tiger, Doc? Why sure, deal me in.
ISBN: 0-9740394-5-4
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