A Thanksgiving Tableau

Grandon Hotel
Helena, Montana
Thanksgiving, 1897

The Grandon Hotel in Helena, Montana selected a menu with a particularly melodramatic scene on the cover for their Thanksgiving dinner in 1897. In a staged photograph, a well-dressed couple brings a basket of food for a poor wretch in the depths of despair. It was an unusual image that foreshadowed the imminent arrival of the silent movie.

When the Grandon opened in 1885, it was one of the best hotels in town. The single granite column that supported the northeast bay was one of its most distinguishing features. Helena was a wealthy mining town at the time. However, by 1897 the gold had run out in nearby Last Chance Gulch, and the small town of 12,000 carried on as the state capital.

As shown below, the menu begins with oysters. The Blue Points, which the Northern Pacific Railroad delivered to Helena, were shelled on the Eastern Seaboard and packed in milk containers before being shipped westward. After their 2,200-mile journey, the oysters were placed back on the half shells and served. This procedure was carried out each day in small towns across the country; Americans were crazy about oysters. In fact, the U.S. government reported that the per capita consumption was 660 oysters per year (compared to 120 for the United Kingdom and 26 for France).1

The wide selection of fancy dishes on the menu includes Green Turtle Soup, Caviar, Planked Whitefish, Broiled Quail, Braized (sic) Sweetbreads, Haunch of Venison, and Banana Fritters’ Glace au Rum. The dinner also includes some of the more customary dishes—Ham with Champagne Sauce, Prime Beef, Turkey, and Goose.

The bill of fare was printed on a blank card produced by the C. E. Morrell Co. of Elmira, New York. The artistic grouping of costumed participants is called a “tableau,” short for the French term tableau vivant meaning a “living picture.” Its roots in photography went back to the 1840s when there was a need to stay motionless for minutes to accommodate long exposure times. The tableau was also employed in the theater when actors would hold a pose in a quiet display at the end of an act.

However, since the photograph on the menu captures a dynamic moment of a drama, it looks more like a movie still than a traditional tableau. Motion pictures were still a novelty in 1897, often being made in one shot and shown in penny arcades. Still in all, things were about to change. Over the next ten years, 4,000 small “nickelodeon” cinemas opened across the country, marking the beginning of the movie industry.

Note
1. John Mariani, America Eats Out, New York (1991).