06/23/2026
Badgers of the Past : Tracking Down the Women of the "Red Domino Club" 1910-1911
It started with a single, unmounted vintage photo found for sale. The back had a cryptic handwritten note: “Red Domino 1910–11,” a photographer's mark for Carl Thomas on West Mifflin Street in Madison, Wisconsin, and a list of names with Greek letters ( Gamma Phi Beta, Delta Gamma, Pi Beta Phi, Alpha Phi).
As an obsessive historian, I couldn't just let it sit. Here is how that one photo opened a window into the early days of university theater at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
To verify the photo, I turned to UW's 1912 Badger yearbook (covering the 1910–1911 academic year). I found the exact match!
The Red Domino Club was an exclusive, all-female dramatic society formed to give women a dedicated stage presence when university theater was heavily male-dominated. The yearbook layout maps the faces to the names on the back of the photo:
Top Row: Fay Vaughn, Alice Ringling (of the famous Baraboo circus family; daughter to Augustus Ringling, 1 of the 5 brothers!), Mary Conover, Mabelle Bredette, Gladys Scribner
Middle Row: Sibylla Stitzer, Marion Spencer, Norma Roehm, Phoebe Twining (Club President), Lucy Fox, Dorothy Frankenburger (daughter of UW's long-serving Professor of Rhetoric)
Bottom Row: Edith Winslow, Agnes Johnson, Nora Buell.
What were these women working on when they sat for the camera? Historical programs and newspaper ads reveal the exact production.
On Saturday, December 10, 1910, the Red Domino Club partnered with the Edwin Booth Dramatic Club (the men's theater group) at the historic Fuller Opera House in Madison. They performed "The Road to Yesterday," a fantastic time-travel comedy moving between 1903 London and 1603 rural England.
The original program shows exactly who did what:
Norma Roehm starred as Elspeth / Lady Elizabeth Tyrrell
Mabelle Bredette played Malena / Black Malena
Phoebe Twining played Eleanor / Elinor Tylney
Mary Conover, Fay Vaughn, and Lucy Fox filled out key supporting roles.
Edith Winslow and ** Dorothy Frankenburger** ran the logistics backstage as Business and Property Managers.
Tickets cost between 25¢ and $1.00—drawing huge local crowds out into the December chill to see the university's finest talents.
The original silver gelatin print was flattened and faded. By carefully restoring the image values while preserving the authentic backdrop and original features, the stunning details of the era come alive. You can see the heavy vertical pleating of their linen shirtwaists, the delicate lace inserts at the throat, and the structural precision of their Gibson Girl hairstyles.
What began as an anonymous antique listing is now a fully documented moment in Midwest history, restoring identity and voice to thirteen young women who took the stage 116 years ago.
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Photo found, researched and restored by Midwest Rural Roots Genealogy & Family Trees
Red Domino (Dramatic Club) 1910-1911
Photographer : Carl Thomas, 26 West Mifflin Street, Madison, Wisconsin
Group portrait of the Red Domino Dramatic Club of 1910-1911 at the University of Wisconsin Madison with the following names noted on the reverse side: Edith Winslow, Sibyl Stitzer, Norma Roehm, Marion Spencer, Alice Ringling, Agnes Johnson, Phoebe Ann Twining, Mary Conover, Nora Buell, Lucy Wells Fox, Mabel Bredette, Gladys Scribner, Dorothy Frankenburger
