Lancton and Lucier

Little is known about the lives of Iva Lancton and Denver resident, Paul Sarconi, who performed under the stage name Paul Lucier.  Paul was born in Italy, and came to America at age 10. Iva had performed with her sister, then around 1901, retired from the stage for two seasons before returning to the profession. Iva worked in the vaudeville team Higgins, Melville and Higgins.  (Iva's sister and wife of Edward M. Waterbury, Laura Lancton, also performed on the vaudeville circuit, as part of Waterbury Bros. and Tenny), prior to meeting and marrying Sarconi. Paul toured as part of the Weary Willie Walker Co., and as Lucy and Lucier before forming the Lancton, Lucier Company.       The couple joined the Orpheum circuit in 1906, toured the country with an act entitled "A Fool's Errand" during the 1908-10 seasons, and "Heaps of Hilarity" during the 1911-12 season.       Paul first played the Lake Michigan Park Theater as Lucy and Lucier in 1905, and in the summer of 1906, according to Variety, spent "three weeks vacation in their cottage" in the area, and again played the theater in 1907,       Friends of the Keatons, Paul worked with Joe Keaton and Lew Earl to form the Actors'  Colony in 1908.  Lucier along with wife and daughter, Dorothy, settled in Muskegon for the summers, in a cottage on Walnut Street.       During the vaudeville season, Dorothy attended the Ursuline Academy in Muskegon and later, the Holy Name Academy of Grand Rapids while her parents toured the vaudeville circuit.  She resided with her grandmother, Mrs. Josephine Lancton in Muskegon.         Tragedy struck in 1916 when Paul Lucier was found dead in his room at the Grand Hotel in Chicago the morning after a performance by Lucier with the Montgomery and Hayes act.  According to a Denver Rocky Mountain News report, Paul had been ill, for about a week. Death, at the age of 36, was due to heart disease.       Following her husband's death, Iva continued to perform.  Newspapers from 1916-17 show Iva Lancton performing with Bonnie Gaylord, wife of another colony resident, Tudor Cameron, on vaudeville stages across the United States and Canada.  According to a Muskegon Chronicle May 1916 article, the pair, calling themselves The Apple Sisters presented a "talkfest" that took audiences, "into the dressing rooms of the theater."      In June of 1918, a report in the Muskegon Chronicle indicated Iva had remarried.  Her husband, Chester M. Braham, was a chemist from Freeport, NY.