Cad Wilson
Cad Wilson was a vaudeville entertainer on the American stage from before 1893 when she performed at the Orpheum in San Francisco. In 1894, she was the feature act at the Vienna Buffet in Los Angeles. She was not known to have a great figure, or voice, but she had hypnotic stage presence and a very elaborate wardrobe.1)
Cad travelled north in September 1898 with her agent Robert Blei.2) They arrived in Dawson on the steamer Ora.3) It was one of the last boats to come downriver from Whitehorse. Blei had managed professional theatres in Chicago, Portland and Seattle. He and Joe Cooper bought the Dawson Combination Music Hall at the end of September and renamed it the Tivoli.4) Cad entertained at the Monte Carlo [Tivoli?] and her theme song, “Such a Nice Girl, Too,” received “ecstasies of applause.”5) A number of her songs were popular already, but Cad made them memorable.6)
Cad Wilson left Dawson in August 1899 after Robert Blei’s theatre burned down. She was the best paid act in Dawson.7) She was only in Dawson for one season and left town with a reported $26,000. One time she persuaded a man known as the Sawdust King to spend $1,740 on champagne and received a healthy commission.8) The Eldorado miners gave her a nugget-encrusted belt that she could wrap around her waist one and a half times. She placed the belt on display in San Francisco after leaving the Klondike.9) Old-timer Al Loblay remembers that the belt was made of $20 gold pieces.10)
Wilson performed in San Francisco in the fall of 1899 and went to Nome the following year to play at the Standard Theatre. She is not in the papers after that until 1908 when she and ten other women are named in a San Francisco divorce case.11)