During the vaudeville era, the Cherry Sisters of Marion, Iowa, built a reputation as the worst act to ever grace the stage. But that didn’t stop crowds from packing into theaters to watch them sing, dance, play musical instruments and perform dramatic readings — or, more accurately, to gawk at their unmistakable lack of talent.
The sisters’ variety act grew increasingly boisterous as people “laughed and cheered more than they would for a genuine comedian,” according to Vaudeville, Old & New. Riots sometimes broke out in the audience, and scathing newspaper reviews followed the Cherrys wherever they went. One such article, published in 1893 in The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, noted that “their knowledge of the stage is worse than none at all.”
“They weren’t very good,” said Dom Caristi, professor emeritus of media at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. “It was known, shall I say, on the circuit that it was funny how not great they were.”
The reviews became so brutal that the sisters sued The Des Moines Leader for libel in 1898, in a case that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court of Iowa. That landmark ruling — which favored the press — helped shape journalists’ right to criticize public performances, securing the Cherrys’ legacy beyond their infamous act.
An act so bad it was good
It all started in January 1893, when Addie, Effie, Ella, Lizzie and Jessie Cherry first took to the stage at a local opera house. Their parents had died in the preceding years and their brother, Nathan, had run off to start a new chapter, leaving the five sisters on the family farm. Historians have speculated that they sought to raise money to visit the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago or pay off the farm’s mortgage, according to Darryl W. Bullock in “The Infamous Cherry Sisters: The Worst Act in Vaudeville.”
The American Weekly once reported that the Cherrys “began as the four worst professional actresses in the world and ended without improving one iota” (the act eventually featured just four of the sisters). Almost from the start, audience members at their shows grew rowdy, in some instances peppering the stage with rotten fruits and vegetables.
After their second professional appearance, in Cedar Rapids that February, the Evening Gazette wrote that the Cherrys “couldn’t sing, speak or act” and that “cigarettes, cigars, rubbers — everything was thrown at them, yet they stood there, awkwardly bowing their acknowledgements and singing on.”
The sisters weren’t deterred and soon began touring the Midwest. Word spread locally — then nationally — that the Cherrys were “the single most inept act then performing on the stage,” and people would “happily travel miles and pay good money to see them fail,” according to Bullock.
Their show remained “wild and boisterous.” On at least one occasion, a sister brandished a shotgun to fend off rambunctious audience members. Theater managers reportedly even installed screens to protect the women — and, perhaps, add some drama to the spectacle.
“Some wondered whether they realized how low-quality their act was, or whether they were in on some sort of gag by performing so poorly,” said Erin Coyle, associate professor of media law and the First Amendment at Arizona State University’s journalism school.
‘Rough treatment’
Some news reports sympathized with the sisters. In an 1893 article titled “Rough Treatment,” The Davenport Daily Times noted that there was “no excuse for the rowdyism that characterizes the audiences at their engagements.” The Sterling Standard in Illinois went further, writing that the Cherrys “surely possess more decency and good sense than do the men who compose the average Iowa audience.”
According to “The Infamous Cherry Sisters,” many reviews “descended into full-blown misogyny,” with critics mocking the sisters “for their looks, their beliefs, their political affiliations, their decision to remain unmarried, and more besides.”
Three of the Cherry Sisters pose for a portrait in 1893. (Unknown photographer/Des Moines Register/Public domain)
That vitriol only increased after famed theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein booked the Cherrys at New York’s Olympia Theater in 1896, as the venue faced financial troubles. Hammerstein’s son reportedly said they “had tried the best, so why not try the worst?”
After their New York debut, a review in the New-York Tribune read, “Miss Jessie narrowly escaped being pretty, but her sisters never were in any such danger. To make up for this discrepancy she has the thinnest voice of all.” A New York Times review, titled “Four Freaks from Iowa,” described their performance as “an experiment of a peculiar and unusual sort.”
Sisters sue Iowa newspaper for libel
After the sisters returned to Iowa, Billy Hamilton, editor of The Odebolt Chronicle, published one of the most blistering reviews of the Cherry Sisters yet. Part of it was reprinted in The Des Moines Leader:
Effie is an old jade of 50 summers, Jessie a frisky filly of 40, and Addie, the flower of the family, a capering monstrosity of 35. Their long skinny arms, equipped with talons at the extremities, swung mechanically, and (soon) waved frantically at the suffering audience. The mouths of their rancid features opened like caverns, and sounds like the wailings of damned souls issued therefrom.
For the Cherrys, the review crossed a line. They sued the Leader for libel in 1898, seeking $15,000 in damages. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court of Iowa, which ruled against the sisters in 1901.
The court’s decision described their act as “not only childish, but ridiculous in the extreme.”
“A dramatic critic should be allowed considerable license in such a case,” the court said. “The public should be informed as to the character of the entertainment, and, in the absence of proof of actual malice, the publication should be held privileged.”
The ruling held that a public performance may be “subject to hostile criticism” so long as the criticism was not motivated by malice. (The court’s use of “actual malice” differs from the modern legal standard established decades later in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which concerns publishing a falsehood with knowledge that it is false or reckless disregard for whether it is false.)
“The Cherry Sisters were famous performers in their time, so this opinion is really important because it clarifies that editors should be able to publish information about public performers, even if it’s not positive — as long as the commentary published about these performers is fair,” Coyle said.
Landmark ruling shaped modern defamation law
Following the ruling, the sisters faced tragedy as Jessie died of typhoid fever in 1903. Effie unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Cedar Rapids — twice — in the 1920s, and the surviving sisters occasionally attempted comeback performances.
They eventually faded from the spotlight, but the 1901 court decision “changed the libel laws in the United States forever” and ensured “the Cherry Sisters were from that point on an indelible part of U.S. culture,” Bullock wrote. It would be cited in judicial rulings on fair comment and criticism for decades to come.
“The idea of that kind of ‘fair comment’ had been around even longer, but … that case codified it,” Caristi said. “It put it into the legal code that this is an acceptable doctrine.”
While the 1901 Supreme Court of Iowa decision technically only applies to other Iowa courts, “It provides guidance to everyone else,” Caristi said. “It has been around over a century, and courts regard it, in most states, as the way that things should be done.”
The basic premise of the ruling, according to Caristi, is that public displays — whether artworks, performances or, nowadays, movies — are essentially inviting comment. So long as a review focuses on the public nature of an act, it can be characterized as fair comment and criticism, he said.
The impact of the ruling is still felt more than a century later, as journalists continue to face legal threats in an evolving media landscape. “Scholarship sometimes talks about ‘chilling effects’ that arise when people are fearful that they could be sued for libel or other things, and that fear then inspires them to engage in self-censorship,” Coyle said. “The Cherry Sisters case is very important from the perspective of reducing some of that fear.”
Coyle added, “It’s hard to imagine how different journalism might be today without this qualified privilege.”