8. Folly Theater, 15 Debevoise Street
Gleason worked as a part-time master of ceremonies at the Folly Theater every Monday and Friday night. “After graduation,” Gleason recalled in Family Weekly, “I went to work for $2-a-night amateur nights at the Folly Theater in Brooklyn.” The Williamsburg theater opened as a vaudeville house in October 1901. Its opulent design included a large central domed tower, classical statues, paintings and gilded mosaics.
Mae Gleason died in 1935, two months after her son’s nineteenth birthday. ‘‘My mother became my whole life. My instructor, my benefactor, my security,” Gleason told the Knight News Wire in 1977. “The night my mother was buried, I had to do the show at the Folly Theater. I had $1.36 when I walked from the stoop where I lived. I spent ten cents coming and going and had two waffles, with apple butter and cream. I had a nickel left when I got home. That is a standing start.” The Folly closed in 1939 and went unused until it was demolished in 1949.
