Eleonora and Ethel Olson
Their story At The Movies touches on homesickness for the Old Country while The Baseball Game recounts a Norwegian woman's misadventures with the national pastime.
The humor in the stories rings true because the Olson Sisters knew their subject firsthand — whether it be a meeting of the ladies' aid, a piano lesson, or a scene witnessed on a train.
Ethel, a native of the Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago, set her monologue The New Bookcase in a store on Milwaukee Avenue, one of the area's busiest commercial streets, while mentioning the locally published Skandinaven.
A couple of weeks later Ethel was performing before a large gathering in Orchestra Hall; being called upon for an encore, she gave the story."
[1] While on tour the Olson Sisters appeared in small town opera houses, civic halls, churches, and college auditoriums.
In the summer, when warm weather made these facilities unusable, they performed in the big brown tents of the traveling Chautauqua.
Eleonora and Ethel were perennial favorites with Chautauqua's rural audiences; in 1915, for instance, they were booked for the entire summer season on the circuit.
An article from that same year in Sanger-Hilsen comments on their popularity: "Among the many troupes that visit us out here in the West, Eleonora Olson's takes a leading place.
The article praises the musical talent of the sisters and their accompanist, and of Ethel it says: "Her Norwegian dialect stories can make even the most stiff-necked pessimist crumple with laughter.
Their mother, Johanna, also had a fine singing voice, and the Minneapolis Daglig Tidende credited her with having instilled a love of music in her children.
"[5] In 1905 Eleonora joined the Skovgaard Concert Company, and for the next twenty years she actively pursued a musical career.
She was frequently a guest soloist with choirs, glee clubs, and choruses and sang both sacred and secular music.
[1] "The benefit concert for Luther hospital held last night at Fournier’s Academy was without exaggeration one of the most delightful and enjoyable entertainments ever given in this city.
Miss Eleonora Olson then ascended the platform and gave a vocal solo in magnificent style accompanied by Mrs. William Danforth.
On Victor, Edison, Brunswick and Columbia Records they were marketed as Norwegian-American artists and their comic monologues emphasized.
[9] Eleonora Olson recorded Norwegian versions of three popular hymns for Victor: Bliv Hos Mig, Mester (Abide With Me), Jeg Trænger Dig Hver Stund (I Need Thee Every Hour) and Engang Min Livstraad Briste Skal (Saved By Grace).
Papers including news clippings and published items, programs, recording agreements and photographs of Eleonora and Ethel Olson are available for research at The Minnesota Historical Society.
The event, which celebrated the area’s Scandinavian past, also highlighted the careers of Olle i Skratthult (Hjalmar Peterson), Slim Jim and the Vagabond Kid (Ernest and Clarence Iverson) and the Olson Sisters.
