THE HISTORY OF VAUDEVILLE

INTRODUCTION

Imagine a world sometime in the future when no one knows what the word television means. Suppose something more exciting has come along and everyone has forgotten about television. Perhaps another economic depression has come along and no one can afford to pay the high priced actors in Hollywood. Maybe a holo-deck, like the one in the Star Trek series, really has been invented and all the actors in television can make more money in holo-deck programs. Maybe the owners of the holo-deck company have bought all of the television stations and studios, and shut them down, so that people have to buy holo-decks instead of televisions. Maybe all of these things have happened at the same time and that’s why no one remembers television. Well, that is exactly what happened to vaudeville. Vaudeville was THE most popular form of entertainment in North America from 1875 until 1932, and now it is a word that most students have never heard, and most people know very little about. This part of our study guide is designed to give teachers and students an idea of what vaudeville was, placing it in the context of the Civil War, the Great Depression, the inventions of radio, movies, and television.

A Classic Vaudeville Poster

WHAT IS VAUDEVILLE ?

Vaudeville was THE most popular form of entertainment in America between 1875 and 1932. Before the invention of radio, movies and television, most theaters around the country presented vaudeville shows. Every place from big cities to small towns had its own vaudeville house, and performers would travel from one town to the next throughout the year. Vaudevillians were skilled in comedy, juggling, magic, clowning, acrobatics, singing, mime, music, and dancing. The performers themselves molded these skills into original acts, using music, costuming, dialogue, and their own personalities to enhance the presentation.

The Three Keatons - "Buster" is the little one

HOW DID THE WORD VAUDEVILLE ORIGINATE ?

Vaudeville, like many forms of theatre, dance, and music, had its origins in Europe. The word VAUDEVILLE was originally derived from two French phrases: Val de Vire, which meant "valley of the river Vire" and voix de ville, which meant "voices of the town." The valley was a place where people would entertain each other in the evenings with ballads, folk songs, and general merry making. In the city streets, popular theatre gave rise to the Theatre de Vaudeville in Paris in 1792.  

WILD AND WOOLLY BEGINNINGS !!!

Although the word is French, the form of entertainment known as vaudeville developed into a distinctly American art form. Vaudeville had its beginnings in the wild, wild west. Saloon owners would hire performers to do their acts in hopes that they would bring more customers into the saloons. Originally it was called variety, but the exotic French word "vaudeville" seemed to attract more people, and so it became vaudeville. There was one man who was a driving force to clean up vaudeville in the early days. His name was Tony Pastor, and he developed the first vaudeville theatre in New York City. Despite its wild and woolly beginnings, in the mid 1800’s vaudeville moved out of the saloons and into the theatres. In 1871, Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Co. opened at Weisiger’s Hall in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1904, Will Rogers made his vaudeville debut at the Cleveland Theatre in Chicago. Vaudeville had become a very clean, classy form of entertainment for the entire family.

The Palace Theatre in New York City circa 1928

VAUDEVILLE FOR EVERYONE J

The great appeal of vaudeville was that it was entertainment for everyone. You didn’t have to be rich to buy a ticket, like the symphony. You didn’t have to understand Italian to follow the story or get the jokes, as in opera. All you needed for a vaudeville show was the desire to laugh and have fun. Vaudeville performers were not picky about who their audiences were, and in turn vaudeville audiences were not picky about who their stars were. It was on the Vaudeville stage (not theatre, opera, symphony, radio, or movies) that the first African-American star was born. His name was Bert Williams. It was the vaudeville stage that opened it’s arms to the numerous immigrants of all nationalities at the time of North America’s greatest waves of immigration. Chinese, Irish, German, French, Russian, Scottish immigrants and more all found places to perform on the vaudeville stage.

The reasonably priced, fun-filled ticket attracted equally diverse audiences. Women found their highest paying jobs on the vaudeville stage, often making 100 times more than what they’d make in the sweatshop job market of the late 1800’s.

Florence Mills - The first African-American woman to take vaudeville by storm in the 1920’s

THE VAUDEVILLE CIRCUIT

Vaudeville was divided into circuits. A circuit was a chain of vaudeville theatres in different cities and towns that would band together and hire the same group of acts from the same booking agents. The theatres on a circuit would usually all have the same name. Some of the best known vaudeville circuits were the Orpheum, Pantages, Palace, Paramount, Keith, and Hammerstein’s. There were three important groups of people in the vaudeville circuit: the Theatre Managers, the Booking Agents, and the Vaudeville Acts. Vaudeville was definitely "Show Business" and each of these three groups helped to make the whole thing work. 

THE THEATRE MANAGERS

Each theatre would usually have it’s own manager. Sometimes the managers would own the theatres themselves, and sometimes a business person or entrepreneur would own the theatre. In that case the manager would be hired by the owner to run the theatre. The theatre managers were on the business side of show business. They would run the vaudeville theatre’s day to day operations such as selling tickets, making sure the shows started on time, and a thousand other details. They also made the final decisions as to which acts would play at their theatre, and in what order the acts would appear when they arrived. The theatre managers had the power to fire an act after only one performance if they did not like the act.

The running order was listed on a call board, and performers would hope for the best spots. The opening act had the difficult task of warming up the audience. The important second-to-last spot on the bill was a great honor reserved for famous headliners, legendary performers like Sophie Tucker, Nora Bayes, Sarah Bernhardt, Ethyl Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, or Ethel Merman. The last spot was reserved for the "dumb show," meaning a spectacle act without words, because at this point people were already starting to leave the theatre to make room for the next audience. 

THE BOOKING AGENTS

This is what gave a vaudeville circuit its name. Oddly enough the theatres were not named after the theatre managers, but after the booking agent or booking agent’s company. The Keith circuit was named after B.F. Keith, the booking agent. The Hammerstein circuit was named after Oscar Hammerstein, Sr., father of the lyric writer Oscar Jr. of Rogers & Hammerstein fame. Most booking agents had one theatre that they managed and called home. This theatre also housed the office where they did all of the booking for the rest of the circuit. One agent would be responsible for booking all the acts that played the theatres in their particular circuit. For instance, when the Orpheum circuit started it had only half a dozen theatres in California, but the same agent, Martin Beck, did all the booking for these theatres. Therefore if you were a juggler and wanted to get booked into the San Francisco Orpheum, you had to get booked by the agent for the Orpheum circuit. The booking agent would usually hire an act to play all of the theatres on the circuit. This idea of having each set of theatres controlled by a single booking agent or company is still the way the movie industry works today. One company, for instance United Artists Cinemas, will show only movies made by that company, and not those of their competition. The booking agents were also part of the business side of Show Business.

A Vaudeville Bill from the Palace Theatre

THE VAUDEVILLE ACTS

This was the show part of Show Business. This was the fun part, the part the audience came to know and love. At its peak in the 1920’s there were 20,000 vaudeville acts in the country, and over 2 million people saw vaudeville shows EVERY DAY! The line - up of the show, or who was playing in the show that week, was called the vaudeville bill, the vaudeville bill would change every week. There were usually nine or ten acts in a vaudeville bill, although sometimes there were as many as twenty. The acts were incredibly varied but they had one thing in common. They were all clean family fun ! The Palace in New York City, the most famous of all the vaudeville theatres, had a sign backstage to remind the performers that "This Theater caters to Ladies and Gentlemen and Children. Vulgarity will not be tolerated.".

There were an endless variety of acts: singers and dancers, jugglers and clowns, magicians and escape artists, comedians and mimes, acrobats and daredevils, animal acts and puppets, musicians and minstrels, rope spinners and horseback riders. Sometimes a well-known individual who was not a vaudeville act would appear to share their life experiences with an audience. This was true of Hellen Keller and Babe Ruth when they each played the Palace Theatre in the 1920’s. There were solo acts, duets, trios, acts with 40 people, and even families who performed together like the Marx Brothers or the Dolly Sisters. Though their acts were very diverse, vaudevillians all shared a great love for traveling and performing. 

HOW VAUDEVILLE HELPED BREAK DOWN RACIAL BARRIERS

Vaudeville was the first popular entertainment in America to have an African-American celebrity, Bert Williams. He was loved and admired by all races as a comical genius. The path to acceptance wasn’t easy and the following chronicle is not pretty; however, it IS part of our history. It also illustrates the openness of the vaudeville society long before the rest of show business caught on.

Before the Civil War, and before slavery was abolished, there was a form of entertainment called minstrel shows. These minstrel shows started in 1828 and were popular from 1841-1870. The white performers would cover their faces with burnt cork. This style of make-up was called black-face make-up. The performers would then go on stage and mimic the "down on the farm" lifestyle of the slaves on the southern plantations. This was done through music, song, dance, and acting. Although this type of show today would be considered racially degrading, in the mid-1800’s it was popular with the white audience of the time. After the civil war these minstrel shows lost their popularity. But some of the minstrel acts moved onto the vaudeville stage, bringing their black-face make-up with them. These performances in vaudeville led to African-Americans themselves putting on black-face make-up and creating vaudeville routines. Initially African-American performers put on black-face so that they would be accepted by the audience, since the mostly white audience had never seen African-American entertainers. Bert Williams, however, did not poke fun at his own race but was a comic genius in his own right. He would use his comic talents to create universal situations that would be humorous to the low-income members of his audience who were themselves newly arrived immigrants. Ironically, when Vaudeville houses banned black-face make-up, Bert Williams felt he had lost a big part of his stage act. This was similar to a clown removing his make-up and no longer feeling like he was funny.

Bert Williams - One of the comic greats!

In 1918 Nobble Sissle and Eubie Blake became the first African-American entertainers NOT to use black-face make-up. They were singer/songwriters on the vaudeville stage. Vaudeville had opened it’s doors to the African-American entertainer while the rest of show business (theatre, radio, and movies) still hid behind closed doors. 

HOW VAUDEVILLE DIED L

Everyone says that Vaudeville died. But if so, what killed it? Vaudeville did not just dry up and blow away because all of the performers became too old. There were plenty of young performers of great talent coming along then, as there still are today. Vaudeville did not die out because the public’s interest in vaudeville faded. Instead the interest was taken away by other things. Vaudeville did not die a natural death, it was murdered, and in part by its own performers. There were three main things that teamed up to kill vaudeville: Radio, The Great Depression, and Talking Movies .

Weber & Fields - Vaudevillians on the Radio

RADIO

Although Guglielmo Marconi of Italy sent the first radio signals in 1895, experimental radio broadcasts did not begin until 1910 when Lee De Forest broadcast a program from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. The first radio station was liscensed in 1921, when radio started putting entertainment on the air. It was the new thing that everyone was obsessed with, somewhat like the Internet is today. The first broadcast was Opera, and soon followed Music, Symphonies, Politicians, and Vaudeville.

Some of the Vaudeville routines would work on radio, and some would not. Imagine trying to listen to Enrico Rastelli, the world’s greatest juggler of all time and also a vaudeville act, on the radio. It would not sound like much, unless he was dropping a lot. But some vaudeville routines would play wonderfully on the radio. Bergen and McCarthy did a famous ventriloquist act. Edgar Bergen was the ventriloquist, and Charlie McCarthy was the dummy. This was all verbal comedy, and went over great on the radio. Edgar Bergen is also Candice Bergen’s (Murphy Brown’s) father. George Burns and Gracie Allen were another vaudeville pair that were hilarious both on the vaudeville stage, and later on radio.

Bergen and McCarthy with Mortimer Snerd !

ECONOMICS AND DIRTY DEALS

Economic issues played a role in vaudeville’s decline. Why would the audience go out and spend from one to three dollars to see the same stars they could stay at home and listen to on the radio for free? Not only could the audience hear the stars on radio for free, but very often the radio show would be broadcast right from the vaudeville theatre, and just skip the acts that didn’t work well on the radio, like the jugglers. This was helped along by the new policy of the Palace Theatre which dictated that all of the performers who were able to do the radio shows broadcast from the theatre must do so.

The Palace Theatre was the biggest vaudeville theatre, and by 1920 it was the seat of power for the newly combined Keith/Albee/Orpheum circuit, 3 vaudeville circuits all rolled into one. In 1928 the business tycoon Joe Kennedy (future president John F. Kennedy’s father) bought 200,000 shares of stock in the Keith/Albee/Orpheum circuit, then run by E.F. Albee (grandfather to the playwright Edward Albee). But Joe Kennedy pulled a fast one and ran Mr. Albee out of the business by taking over the controlling interest--one of the earliest economic hostile take-overs. It was Mr. Kennedy’s policy that all the vaudevillians who could do their acts on radio would have to do so. Although this policy created a great many radio stars, it was the first serious sickness for the aging art of vaudeville. 

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The stock market crashed in 1929 and America went through 10 years of the worst economic crisis in history. People were jobless, homeless and without food. This was before unemployment benefits or welfare. People could no longer afford the basic necessities of life, never mind the little luxuries like going to a vaudeville show. For the theatres it became cheaper to show a movie than to hire real live vaudeville acts. The audience also wanted big stars, and big stars were expensive. It was easier to get a big star into your theatre by showing the movie they were in rather than by hiring the stars themselves. A movie in the 1930’s might cost only 50 cents whereas a vaudeville show might be one, two, or even three dollars.

The Marx Brothers - A hit on stage & screen ! 

TALKING MOVIES

Movies became vaudeville’s biggest competition. In 1925 Al Jolson’s "The Jazz Singer" came out at The Warner Theater in New York City. It was the first ever moving picture synchronized to sound, and it was a hit! But movies didn’t take over all at once, in fact they sort of sneaked up on vaudeville and jumped it from behind. In the middle 1600’s physicists were experimenting with the beginnings of the Magic Lantern, an early slide projector, but it wasn’t able to project an image clearly until the 1780’s. The Magic Lantern shows became quite elaborate using different slides and effects. The first form of moving pictures did not exist until May 9, 1893 when Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of his Kinetoscope at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. The Kinetoscope was a box you looked into to see the very short moving pictures. Only one person could view them at a time, but soon Kinetoscope parlors where you could pay to see a short movie inside the box became popular all over the world.

The First Kinetoscope parlor, April 14, 1894

MOVIES IN VAUDEVILLE & VAUDEVILLE IN MOVIES

When the first projected movies started coming out in 1895 they were little more than a curiosity, but soon they found their way into vaudeville. Movies without sound were at first very short, two or three minutes. These would be shown in the vaudeville theatres with maybe one or two "shorts," as they were called, appearing in each vaudeville show. The movies grew in length and they would eventually replace entire vaudeville acts, so that instead of having nine vaudeville acts, a theatre might have only seven acts and two "shorts". In 1905 Harry Davis converted a storefront in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the first theatre in America devoted entirely to moving pictures. Since the price was five cents, or a nickel, it was called a Nickelodeon. When the Warner brothers, Paramount, and Fox all started building their own theatres in the mid 1920’s they would show movies and vaudeville acts together. As with radio, many of the vaudeville stars got involved in this new technology. This time, however, it was the silent stars who could make the transition from vaudeville to the new medium.

Buster Keaton started out in Vaudeville with his parents as "The 3 Keatons". Charlie Chaplin also got his start on the vaudeville stage and later directed and starred in his own silent pictures. Ginger Rogers performed as a singer in vaudeville before dancing in films with Fred Astaire. But for the vaudeville stars who would spend their entire lives learning one act, like juggling, magic, or acrobatics, you could only film your act once and then everyone would have seen the movie of the act instead of the act itself. The end of the Vaudeville era is usually regarded as November 16, 1932. This is when the Palace Theatre started mixing moving pictures into their vaudeville shows. By 1935 the Palace Theatre, once the leader of a 600-theatre vaudeville circuit, had become a movie house with no live vaudeville shows at all.

Bobby May - The Great American Juggler

Juggling

In LAZER VAUDEVILLE, you will see some of the most difficult and unusual juggling in the world! Carter Brown performs incredible feats of dexterity with bicycle rims or "hoops" as they are called. At one point in the show he keeps ten of them simultaneously spinning around his body. This art has its roots in the great hoop acts of vaudeville in the early 1900’s, when bicycles were a new and exciting invention. Some of the antique wooden hoops are still used, but Carter Brown has updated and refined the skills to create a modern version unparalleled in the world today.

Carter Brown brings hoop rolling back to life.  

Juggling has played a role in the culture and traditions of many nations around the world. Even the Egyptian hieroglyphics show images of people tossing balls in juggling patterns. In Europe and Asia, juggling has had a very long and diverse history. Chinese jugglers have generally used fewer objects at one time, adding physical skills such as acrobatics and dance to increase the difficulty and artistry of their work. They even juggle with their feet - this is called antipodism. Russian circus jugglers have specialized in large numbers of objects, keeping up to eleven rings airborne and passing even more between people. Jugglers from France, Germany, Switzerland, England, and other European countries combined these techniques with clowning and character work to make their performances more appealing to a larger public. American jugglers have continued this trend, performing a wide variety of skills while striving for original forms of presentation. In LAZER VAUDEVILLE you will see phenomenal ball, club, and ring juggling, with a few surprises thrown in! Cindy Marvell, another member of the cast of LAZER VAUDEVILLE, was the first woman to win the International Jugglers Association’s Championship in 1989. The IJA, as it is called, holds a convention in a different state every year and publishes a magazine and roster of jugglers and events throughout the United States and abroad. Anyone can become a member - see the information at the end of this guide.

Cindy Marvell - The first woman ever to win the International Juggler’s Association World Championship. Shown here with 7 balls !

Rope Spinning

You will see the Neon Cowboy performing many of the classical western rope spinning tricks, such as the Texas skip, the wedding bell, the double rope spin, and the giant fifty-foot wedding bell. These tricks are named for the shapes created by the ropes, which stand out very clearly in the blacklight.

Rope spinning is an art similar to juggling in that it involves a lot of manual dexterity. The more hours one practices, the better one becomes. The ropes are made of cotton so that they are flexible enough to spin properly. You can order a book about roping called "Rope Tricks" by Frank Dean from DUBE in SOURCES. Complete with photos of Will Rogers, the great American rope spinner, the book also teaches you how to make and manipulate your own spinning rope!

Will Rogers - Roping around the vaudevillians ! 

Comedy

The performers in LAZER VAUDEVILLE combine comedy with physical skills such as clowning, slapstick, and character work. Rather than simply telling a joke, the comedy arises from unexpected situations and spontaneous interactions with the audience. Improvisation has always been an important part of vaudeville. The performers must turn awkward situations into comedy, bringing out the humor of a fumble or a confused volunteer.

Physical comedy often revolves around an everyday situation gone wrong. When more than one person is involved, there is usually a silly or mischievous character and a "straight man", or serious person, working in opposition. Note the differences between the old film comedians such as the Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and the modern stand-up comedians performing today. Though much can be learned from observing the timing and delivery of other performers, there is no substitute for a live audience and the process of gathering material from daily life when it comes to creating your own comedy routines.

BACK