Integrative Arts 10

Vaudeville and the Variety Show

Costello: Now, when the guy at bat bunts the ball--me being a good
catcher--I want to throw the guy out at first base, so I pick up the ball and throw it to who?

Abbott: Now, that's he first thing you've said right.

Costello: I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!

-From "Who's on First" Sketch

Outline of PBS Special on Vaudeville

Types of Acts: Singers accompanied by quacking duck, tap dancing, stand-up comedy, Babe Ruth singing, duets, contortionists, punching bag act, speed bag, acrobats, unicyclists, accordion, ukulele (playing or eating), drag acts, living tableaus, midget acts, freak acts, bucolic comedy, Houdini’s magic show, spinning acts (plates fabrics people), shadowists, Bird imitators, hand cuff chain and trunk acts, Chapeaugraphy, lightning calculators, equillibrists, clay modelers, fancy diving and swimmers, living picture models, statuary posing, paper tearing, whistlers, Billiardists, hypnotic acts, eccentric acts, hobo acts, comedy cartoonists, Ethiopian entertainers, Feats of strength, Electrical acts, Knockabout acts, Risely artists, Iron jaw acts, cometists, gun spinners, trick pianists, rolling globe acts, Tabloid plays, Novelty ladder acts, parody singers, yodelers and mind reading , live goldfish swallowers, throw-up acts (regurgitator acts), prop comedy, house building, house demolition, street singer, spoon player, lasso tricks, melodramatic weeping songs, kid acts, twin acts, nut acts, monologists, impressionists (theives),

1880s - 1930s Variety, Vodevile, The Business, Two-a-Day
Performers did their bit 12 times a day
25,000 performers
Chicago Theatres
Converted storefronts of small towns
5cents all day
Direct audience address (highly personal)
Stand-up comedy
Working class entertainment
Best known stars well paid
Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields vocal duet

Vaudeville audiences always drawn to new technologies
Wright brothers 1903 first flight
First World Series
Ford motors established
urbanization
1840 90% rural
1870 50% rural

5.5 million immigrants in 1880s

Harry and Max Nesbitt

Palace theatre - 2-a-day 25cents

Puck and White (comedy singing duo)

Origins of vaudeville stretching to Commedia dell’arte

Bill Irwin - comedy in vaudeville was not dependent upon historical precedent

Pantos - English Variety Shows - Dames (drag shows) comic songs

Little Titch - midget act

P.T. Barnum - bar room vaudeville house - freak acts

Chas Chase - cigarette eater,

Joe Webber and Lou Fields - Double Dutch act

European Jews and Yiddish Theatre influenced vaudeville, exotic singing by Molly Picon

Burlesque - Male audience, naked women, chorus girls
Fanny Brice - Demure Soubrette

Vaudeville - Family oriented, clean humor, no hells, damns and no mention of dieties, women must wear silk tights

Bert and Mercedes Lahr -

Tony Pastor - first to present family show
"where a child could bring his parents without fear of embarrassment"

door prize - sacks of potatoes, dresses etc.

Constant variety,

Zeb Carver & his country cousins

Trixie Friganza - Comedy contrabass song

Jack Benny

Material stolen

Little Kids so taken up with Vaudeville, they emulated and became performers

RKO Theatre in Yonkers

Rose Marie

Houdini

Songs sold to pit conductors

Amateurs able to get into

Gypsy Rose Lee

Vaudeville was about survival and money not the art

Buster Keaton had one day of formal education

Orpheum circuit.

"we had a hunger for something more important than fame. Food."
-george burns

Billy Barty - Midget

1914 - how to enter vaudeville
book detailing

A. Robbins - Banana man

Hellen Keller in Vaudeville

Dancing schools - Gene Kelly teaches dance in Pittsburgh

Amateur acts after the vaudeville shows

Personality of the stars was crucial to vaudeville’s success.

Harry Rose- singer

W.C. Fields - juggler persona

Enthusiasm

Eva Tanguay -

Eddie Peabody - Banjo soloists

Carl Ballentine - doing it quick

Never over ten minutes

Personality, enthusiasm and speed were essential, but not having any of the three was still a good shtick.

Space constriction made acts restrict their acts to small areas. Ie. Table dancing

Mayo brothers

Teddy Brown and his orchestra - gimmick is size

Insurance was material that the audience loved like Jolson’s Mammy

Iron eyes Cody - Indian Act

Will Rogers - Rope tricks

Jack Spoons - spoon player

Rose Marie - entered radio as a seasoned professional at the age of six because of training in vaudeville

Thelma White

Gary Society - child labor law activists

"Never trust a man I can’t buy." - Ben Franklin Keith

Big Time / Middle Time / Small Time

Ben Franklin Keith - coined ‘Vaudeville’ in America

Lowes circuit -

placement in show was critical ranking of the success of your act.

Ethyl Barrimore - Singing operettas

Sarah Bernhart -

Burns and Allen - George had a trained seal act before teaming up with Gracie Allen from a sister act.

"There isn’t anything on earth so obstinate and perverse as an audience."
-Al Jolson

Acts perfected by constant rehearsal through performance.

"Being a Negro in America is… inconvenient." - Bert Williams

Chinese exclusion act 1890s - kept Chinese from emigrating

Double Dutch, Double Jew act

Ethnicity portrayed by other ethnicity’s only

Irish

Minstrel Days

The Duncan Sisters performed into 1960s

Real Negro Delineators

Minstrel shows run by blacks still restricted to audience expectation, black face was worn by blacks

Separate but equal was

Sambo singing Carry me back to old Virginee

Watermelon and chicken eating, gambling, stereotype

Live Black Comedians had to wear blackface until 1950s

One black act per vaudeville show

Toba: Theater owners booking association
White owners and deplorable wages and conditions
Black performers called it "Tough on black asses"

Black performers were not allowed to stay in the hotels they played.

Nicholas Brothers- refusing stereotypes, these performers retained their dignity and class by not wearing stereotypical costumes.

Bert Williams - d. 1922
1893 - Starts in Minstrel shows
1910 - Most successful black comedian

"Bert Williams has done more for the race than I have. He’s smiled his way into people’s hearts." - George Washington Carver

1919 follies - Shoestore Sketch

1916 film The Natural Born Gambler
Performs poker game mine routine alone

The Funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever met." -W.C. Fields

Webber and Fields and many other famous acts were being ripped off.

Do motion pictures harm children? They do if their parents are in Vaudeville.
n vaudeville joke 1929

Shirley Temple - extension of kid act in movies

Fiorello Laguardia - Tried to outlaw burlesque

Palace was the only vaudeville theatre left in America by ….

Film - Happy Hottentots

Vaudeville could not adapt to new technologies. Booking companies would not allow the acts to change their acts.

Too many of the same things.

Vaudeville acts were hired once by motion picture makers and the act was never needed again.

Many vaudevillians only had one act

Radio came into the home and was free entertainment.
Even the vaudevillians listened…

Radio placed the emphasis on the musical acts and

" I was waiting for you to get done so I could see Donald Duck"
n a child to Eddie Cantor

Vaudevillians move their acts to state fairs and night clubs. And some even went overseas.

Some vaudevillians were able to move into cinema technology because of looks or voice.

Vaudeville's transformation from Burlesque

Music Hall, Vaudeville and Burlesque

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