Dema Harshbarger

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Dema Harshbarger, from a 1921 publication.

Dema Harshbarger (September 8, 1884 — February 20, 1964) was an American businesswoman, concert promoter, and talent manager.

Early life

Dema E. Harshbarger was born in Knox, Illinois, one of the seven children of Richard Henry Harshbarger and Sarah Belle Lewis Harshbarger.[1] She survived polio and rheumatic fever in her youth.[2] She attended Knox College.[3] Soon after college, she went traveling with her music teacher Mrs. Parry; the two were among the rescued passengers in the wreck of the RMS Slavonia off the coast of Portugal.[4]

Career

Harshbarger started her career at the Century Lyceum Bureau in Chicago, booking lecturers and entertainers in small towns in Illinois and Indiana.[5]

From 1919 to 1921 she and Jessie B. Hall ran the Fine Arts Bureau in Chicago.[6][7] In 1921 she left Hall to become co-owner of Harrison and Harshbarger, a Chicago concert booking agency.[8] Their first exclusive client was tenor Charles Marshall,[9] and they helped to develop the "Organized-Audience Plan", a subscription model for entertainment bookings in smaller cities.[10] In the 1920s, Harshbarger was co-founder (with Ward French) and president of the National Civic Music Association.[11][12] "Through her service," explained a California newspaper in 1932, "more than one and a half million people in the forty-eight states are served with musical attractions."[13]

Harshbarger sold her agency to NBC,[14] moved to California, and was made head of the network's Artists' Bureau in 1936. She became manager and press agent of Hedda Hopper,[15] and was frequently mentioned in Hopper's gossip column.[16][17]

Personal life

Dema Harshbarger was a lesbian.

avocados.[21] She died in 1964, aged 79, in Los Angeles, California.[2]

In popular culture

Dema Harshbarger was played by Joyce Van Patten in the 1985 television film about Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, Malice in Wonderland.

References

  1. ^ Dema E. Harshbarger, "My Own Story" Green Book Magazine (October 1919): 20-22.
  2. ^
    Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  3. ^ The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi (1908): 399.
  4. ^ "Our Young People: Shipwrecked but Saved" The Herald of Gospel Liberty (February 8, 1910): 146.
  5. ^ "She Made $75 Her First Week in Booking Field" Lyceum Magazine (November 1919): 26.
  6. ^ "Fine Arts Bureau Expands" Lyceum Magazine (September 1919): 43.
  7. ^ "Bureau of Fine Arts" Music News (January 28, 1921): 8.
  8. ^ "New Chicago Firm Books Fifty Concerts for Marshall" Musical America (April 2, 1921): 30.
  9. ^ "Harrison and Harshbarger" Music News (March 4, 1921): 12.
  10. ISBN 9780252094590
  11. ^ Christopher Sampson, "Applauding a Movement: Eighty Years of Civic Music" Brown County Civic Music Association.
  12. Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  13. Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  14. Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  15. Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  16. ISBN 9781631681189
  17. ^ "Cinema: The Gossipist" Time (July 28, 1947).
  18. ISBN 9780670030170
  19. ISBN 9780300234992
  20. ISBN 9780547417745
  21. ^ Diana Wedner, "Realm of Creatures, Comforts" Los Angeles Times (November 25, 2007).
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