Vaudeville was a genre of variety entertainment prevalent on the stage in the United States and Canada, from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. A genre (ˈʒɑːnrə also /ˈdʒɑːnrə/ from French "kind" or "sort" from Latin: genus (stem gener-) is a loose set A variety show or variety entertainment is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts especially Musical performances and Comedy Skits and Theatre (or theater, see spelling differences) is the branch of the Performing arts defined by Bernard Beckerman as what "occurs when one The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page Events and Trends Technology Development and commercial production of Electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression. Developing from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary burlesque, vaudeville became one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America. The concert saloon was an American copy of the English Music hall, and the forerunner of the Vaudeville theater The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits variety acts dancing, and Music, Generally considered in contemporary times as a highly inappropriate and dehumanizing term a freak show is an exhibition of rarities "freaks of nature" — such Dime Museums were institutions that were briefly popular at the end of the 19th century in the United States. Burlesque is theatrical entertainment of broad and parodic humor which usually consists of comic skits (and sometimes a strip tease) Each evening's bill of performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts. Types of acts included (among others) musicians (both classical and popular), dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and short movies. A musician is a person who plays or writes Music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music An instrumentalist plays a Dance (from French danser, perhaps from Frankish) is an Art form that generally refers to movement of the body usually rhythmic A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience primarily by making them laugh Animal training refers to Teaching Animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli. Acrobatics (from Greek Akros, high and bat, walking is one of the Performing arts, and is also practiced as a Sport. A play, or stageplay, is a form of Literature written by a Playwright, almost always consisting of Dialogue between Fictional characters A sportsperson ( British and American English) or athlete (principally American English is any person who participates regularly in a Sport. A celebrity is a widely-recognized or famous person who commands a high degree of public and media attention minstrel was a medieval European Bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories about distant places or about real or imaginary historical events

Etymology

The origin of the term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the expression "voix de ville", or "voice of the city". Terminology is the study of terms and their use Terms are Words and Compound words that are used in specific contexts Another plausible etymology finds origins in the French Vau de Vire, a valley in Normandy noted for its style of satirical songs with topical themes. Etymology is the study of the History of Words &mdash when they entered a language from what source and how their form and meaning have changed over time French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The Vire is a River in Normandy in France whose 128 km course crosses the départements of Calvados and Manche Normandy (Normandie Norman: Normaundie) is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. ^[1] Though "vaudeville" had been used in the United States as early as the 1830s, most variety theatres adopted the term in the late 1880s and early 1890s for two reasons. First, seeking middle class patrons, they wished to distance themselves from the earlier rowdy, working-class variety halls. Second, the French or pseudo-French term lent an air of sophistication, and perhaps made the institution seem more consistent with the Progressive Era's interests in education and self-betterment. The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of reform which lasted from the 1890s to the 1920s Some, however, preferred the earlier term, "variety," to what manager Tony Pastor called its "sissy and Frenchified" successor. For Tony Pastor the saxophonist and bandleader see Tony Pastor (bandleader. Thus one often finds records of vaudeville being marketed as "variety" well into the twentieth century.

Beginnings

From newspaper promotional for vaudeville character actor Charles Grapewin

A descendant of variety, (c. Charles E Grapewin ( December 20, 1869 – February 2, 1956) was an American Vaudeville performer and a stage 1860s-1881), vaudeville distinguished itself from the earlier form by its mixed-gender audience, usually alcohol-free halls, and often slavish devotion to inculcating favor among members of the middle class. The form gradually evolved from the concert saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more genteel form was known as "Polite Vaudeville. "

The true beginnings of vaudeville in America probably lie in New Orleans and the "medicine shows" that toured small towns throughout the country, giving small town America a glimpse into the Music Hall culture of Paris and Great Britain. New Orleans (nʲuːˈɔrliənz nʲuːˈɔrlənz French: La Nouvelle-Orléans) is a major United States port city and the largest city in Louisiana Music hall is a form of British theatrical Entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960

In the years before the Civil war, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860. Europeans enjoyed types of variety performances years before anyone even had conceived of the United States. On American soil, as early as the first decades of the nineteenth century, theatre goers could enjoy a performance of Shakespeare, acrobats, singers, presentations of dance, and comedy all in the same evening. As the years progressed, seekers of diversified amusements found an increasing number to choose from. A handful of circuses regularly toured the country, dime-museums appealed to the curious, amusement parks, riverboats, and town halls often featured "cleaner" presentations of variety entertainment, while saloons, music-halls, and burlesque houses catered to those with a taste for the risqué. In the 1840s, minstrel shows, another type of variety performance, and "the first emanation of a pervasive and purely American mass culture," grew to enormous popularity and formed as Nick Tosches writes, "the heart of nineteenth-century show business. " Medicine shows traveled the countryside offering programs of comedy, music, jugglers and other novelties along with their tonics, salves, and miracle elixirs, while Wild West Shows provided romantic vistas of the disappearing frontier complete with trick riding, music, and drama. Juggling is a physical human skill involving the movement of objects usually through the air for entertainment (see Object manipulation) Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in America's growing urban hubs.

Problematically, the term "vaudeville," itself, referring specifically to North American variety entertainment, came into common usage after 1871 with the formation of "Sargent's Great Vaudeville Company" of Louisville, Kentucky, and had little if anything to do with the "vaudeville" of the French theatre. Variety showman, M. B. Leavitt claimed the word originated from the French "vaux de ville" ("worth of the city, or worthy of the city's patronage"), but in all likelihood, as Albert McLean suggests, the name was merely selected "for its vagueness, its faint, but harmless exoticism, and perhaps its connotation of gentility. " Leavitt and Sargent's shows differed little from the coarser material presented in earlier itinerant entertainments, although their use of the term to provide a veneer of respectability points to an early effort to cater variety amusements to the growing middle class.

In the early 1880s, impresario Tony Pastor, a former ringmaster with the circus turned theatre manager, capitalized on middle class sensibilities and spending power when he began to feature "polite" variety programs in several of his New York City theatres. Impresario, from the Italian impresa an enterprise or undertaking is a traditional term still very much in use in the Entertainment industry for The middle class, in colloquial usage consists of those who have some economic independence but not a great deal of social Influence or power. The City of New York The usual date given for the "birth" of vaudeville is 24 October 1881, when Pastor famously staged the first bill of self-proclaimed "clean" vaudeville in New York City. Events 69 - Second Battle of Bedriacum, forces under Antonius Primus the commander of the Danube armies loyal to Vespasian, defeat Year 1881 ( MDCCCLXXXI) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Hoping to draw a potential audience from female and family-based shopping traffic uptown, Pastor barred the sale of liquor in his theatres, eliminated questionable material from his shows, and offered gifts of coal and hams to attendees. Upper Manhattan denotes the more northerly region of the New York City Borough of Manhattan. Pastor's experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit.

Popularity

Performance bill for Temple Theatre, Detroit, December 1, 1902. The manager's comments, sent back to the circuit's central office weekly, follow each act's description. The bill illustrates the typical pattern of opening the show with a "dumb" act to allow patrons to find their seats, placing strong acts in second and penultimate positions, and leaving the weakest act for the end, to clear the house

1) Burt Jordan and Rosa Crouch. "Sensational, grotesque and 'buck' dancers. A good act. . . . " 2) The White Tscherkess Trio. "A man and two women who do a singing turn of the operatic order. They carry special scenery which is very artistic and their costumes are original and neat. Their voices are good and blend exceedingly well. The act goes big with the audience. " 3) Sarah Midgely and Gertie Carlisle. "Presenting the sketch 'After School. ' . . . they are a 'knockout. '" 4) Theodor F. Smith and Jenny St. George-Fuller. "Refined instrumentalists. 5) Milly Capell. "European equestrienne. This is her second week. On account of the very pretty picture that she makes she goes as strong as she did last week. " 6) R. J. Jose. "Tenor singer. The very best of them all. " 7) The Nelson Family of Acrobats. "This act is composed of three men, two young women, three boys and two small girls. The greatest acrobatic act extant. " 8) James Thornton. "Monologist and vocalist. He goes like a cyclone. It is a case of continuous laughter from his entrance to his exit. " 9) Burk and Andrus and Their Trained Mule. "This act, if it can be so classed, was closed after the evening performance. " Typical provincial venue on the circuit: "The Opera" in Kirksville, Missouri

B.F. Keith took the next step starting in Boston, where he built an empire of theatres and brought vaudeville to the people of the United States as well as Canada. Kirksville is the county seat of Adair County, Missouri, United States. Benjamin Franklin Keith (January 26 1846 &ndash March 26 1914 was an American Vaudeville theatre owner generally credited for the evolution of variety theater into An empire (from the Latin " Imperium " denoting military Command within the ancient Roman government) is a State that This article is about venues for live Theatre performances for information about venues for Film projection see Movie theater. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, managed the chain to its greatest success. The Pulitzer Prize, ˈpʊlɨtsɚ PULL-it-sər is an American award regarded as the highest national honor in Newspaper journalism, Edward Franklin Albee III ( "AWL-bee" born March 12 1928 is a three time Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright known for works including Circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudeville's greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength, enabling a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the single theatre booking system by contracting acts for regional and national engagement that could grow from a few weeks to two years.

Albee also gave national prominence to vaudeville's trumpeting of "polite" entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women, and children. Acts who violated this ethos (e. g. , using the word "hell") were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the week's remaining performances or with the canceling of their contracts. In spite of such threats, performers routinely flouted this censorship, often to the delight of the very audience members whose sensibilities were supposedly endangered.

A reproduction of this 1913 how-to booklet for would-be vaudevillians has been published^[2].

By the late 1890s, vaudeville had large circuits, small and/or large houses in almost every sizable location, standardized booking, broad pools of skilled acts, and a loyal national following. At its height, vaudeville played across multiple strata of economic class and auditorium size. The three most common levels were the “small time” (lower paying contracts for more frequent performances in rougher, often converted theatres), the “medium time” (moderate wages for two performances each day in purpose-built theatres) and the “big time” (possible remuneration of several thousand dollars per week in large, urban theatres largely patronized by the middle and upper-middle classes). As performers rose in renown and established regional and national followings, they worked their way into the less arduous working conditions and better pay of the big time. The capitol of the big time was New York City's Palace Theater (or just “The Palace” in the slang of vaudevillians), built by Martin Beck in 1913 and operated by Keith. The Palace Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 1564 Broadway in midtown- Manhattan. Martin Beck is a fictional Swedish police Detective who is the main character in a series of ten novels by Sjöwall and Wahlöö, collectively titled The Featuring a bill stocked with inventive novelty acts, national celebrities, and acknowledged masters of vaudeville performance (e. g. , comedian and trick roper Will Rogers), the Palace provided what many vaudevillians would considered the apotheoses of already remarkable careers.

While the neighborhood character of vaudeville attendance had always promoted a tendency to tailor fare for specific audiences, mature vaudeville grew to feature houses and circuits specifically aimed at certain demographic groups. African American patrons, often segregated into the rear of the second gallery in white-oriented theatres, had their own smaller circuits, as did speakers of Italian and Yiddish. African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. Yiddish (yi [[wiktייִדיש ייִדיש]] yidish or yi [[wiktאידיש אידיש]] idish, literally "Jewish" is a nonterritorial High (For a brief discussion of Black vaudeville, see Theater Owners Booking Association. Theater Owners Booking Association, or TOBA, was the Vaudeville circuit for African American performers in the 1920s and 1930s ) White-oriented regional circuits, such as New England's "Peanut Circuit," also provided essential training grounds for new artists while allowing established acts to experiment with and polish new material. At its height, vaudeville was rivaled only by churches and public schools among the nation's premiere public gathering places.

Decline

There was no abrupt end to vaudeville, though the form was clearly staggering by the late 1920s. The continued growth of the lower-priced cinema in the early 1910s dealt the heaviest blow to vaudeville, just as the advent of free broadcast television was later to diminish the cultural and economic strength of the cinema. Television ( TV) is a widely used Telecommunication medium for sending ( Broadcasting) and receiving moving Images, either monochromatic Cinema was first regularly commercially presented in the United States in vaudeville halls; the first public showing of movies projected on a screen took place at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in 1896. Koster and Bial's Music Hall was an important Vaudeville theatre in New York famous in cinema history as the site of the first public exhibition of the Vitascope The first showings consisted mostly of short segments of performances by vaudeville performers.

Lured by greater salaries and less arduous working conditions, many early film and old time radio performers, such as W. C. Fields, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Edgar Bergen, and Jack Benny, used the prominence they first gained in live variety performance to vault into new media. Old-Time Radio (OTR and the Golden Age of Radio refer to a period of Radio programming lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until W C Fields ( January 29, 1880 &ndash December 25, 1946) was an American Juggler, Comedian, and Actor Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton ( October 4 1895 &ndash February 1 1966) was an Academy Award -winning American The Marx Brothers were a popular team of sibling Comedians who appeared in Vaudeville, stage plays film and television Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky February 14, 1894 - December 26, 1974) was an American Comedian, vaudevillian (In so doing, such performers often exhausted in a few moments of screen time the novelty of an act that might have kept them on tour for several years. )

Other vaudevillians who entered in vaudeville's decline, including The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, Kate Smith, Bob Hope, Judy Garland, and Rose Marie used vaudeville as a launching pad for later careers, leaving live performance before they had ever risen to the meteoric height of national celebrity. The Three Stooges were an American Vaudeville and Comedy act of the early to mid–20th century best known for their numerous Short subject films William (Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (born Louis Francis Cristillo performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith ( May 1, 1907 &ndash June 17, 1986) was an American Singer, best known for her rendition Bob Hope, KBE KCSG ( May 29, 1903 &ndash July 27, 2003) was an American comedian and actor who appeared in Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10 1922 – June 22 1969 was an American actress and singer Rose Marie (born August 15, 1923) is an American actress who had a successful singing career as Baby Rose Marie, but is perhaps best known

By the late 1920s, almost no vaudeville bill failed to include a healthy selection of cinema. Earlier in the century, many vaudevillians, cognizant of the threat represented by cinema, held out hope that the silent nature of the "flickering shadow sweethearts" would preclude their usurpation of the paramount place in the public's affection. With the introduction of talking pictures in 1926, however, the burgeoning film studios removed what had remained, for many, the chief point in favor of live theatrical performance: spoken dialogue.

Theatre owners discovered that rental costs of films--when held against the price of performers, newly unionized stagehands, booking fees, lighting, orchestra, etc. --vastly increased their profits. Performers tried hanging on for a time in combination shows (often referred to as "vaudefilm") in which, in an inverse of earlier vaudeville, live performances accompanied a cinema-centric performance.

Inevitably, managers further trimmed costs by eliminating more of these comparatively costly live performances. Vaudeville also suffered in the rise of broadcast radio following the greater availability of inexpensive receiver sets later in the decade. Even the hardiest within the vaudeville industry realized the form was in decline; the perceptive understood the condition to be terminal.

The 1930s, with standardized film distribution and talking pictures, only confirmed the end of the genre. By 1930, the vast majority of theatres had been wired for sound and none of the major studios were producing silent pictures. For a time, the most luxurious theatres continued to offer live entertainment, but the majority of theatres were forced by the Great Depression to economize. The shift of New York City's Palace Theatre, vaudeville's center, to an exclusively cinema presentation on 16 November 1932 is considered the final death knell of the art of vaudeville. Events 534 - A second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published Year 1932 ( MCMXXXII) was a Leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar.

Like the attempts to tie its birth to Pastor's first clean bill, no single event may be accurately considered as anything more than reflective of its gradual withering. Some in the industry blamed cinema's drain of talent from the vaudeville circuits for the medium's demise. Others argued that vaudeville had allowed its performances to become too familiar to its famously loyal, now seemingly fickle audiences.

Though talk of its resurrection was heard throughout the 1930s and after, the demise of the supporting apparatus of the circuits and the inescapably higher cost of live performance made any large scale renewal of vaudeville unrealistic.

In the early days of television, the Ed Sullivan Show ruled the Sunday night airwaves from the late 1940s to the early 1960s with content and format that, it was often noted, "had a vaudeville flavor to it"^[3]. The Ed Sullivan Show was an American television Variety show that ran from June 20, 1948 to June 6, In fact the Museum of Broadcast Communication calls it "an extension of the vaudeville tradition. "^[4]. Former vaudeville performer Milton Berle, became "Mr. Mendel "Milton Berle" Berlinger ( July 12, 1908 &ndash March 27, 2002) was an Emmy -winning American Comedian Television" with a format that was similarly reminiscent of vaudeville.

Architecture

The most striking examples of Gilded Age theatre architecture invariably rose from the largess of big time vaudeville magnates. In American history, the Gilded Age refers to major growth in population in the United States and extravagant displays of wealth and excess of America's upper-class during Though classic vaudeville reached a zenith of capitalization and sophistication in urban areas dominated by national chains and commodious theatres, small-time vaudeville included countless more intimate and locally-controlled houses. Small-time houses were often converted saloons, rough hewn theatres or multi-purpose halls, together catering to a wide range of clientèle, though many small towns had purpose-built theatres.

Post-Vaudeville

As the genre declined, most performers left the theatre; here the kid hoofer Ray Wollbrinck, once called "the cleverest buckdancer on the vaudeville stage"

Some of the most prominent vaudevillians continued the migration to cinema, though others found that the gifts that had so delighted live audiences did not translate well into different media. Some performers whose eclectic styles did not conform well to the greater intimacy of the screen, like Bert Lahr, fashioned careers out of combining live performance, radio and film roles. Bert Lahr ( August 13, 1895 – December 4, 1967) was a German-Jewish American Tony Award -winning comic actor and vaudeville comedian Many others later appeared in the Catskill resorts that constituted the "Borscht Belt". The Catskill Mountains (also known as simply the Catskills) a natural area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany Borscht Belt is an informal term for the summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in Sullivan and Ulster Counties in Upstate New York which were And many simply retired from performance and entered the workaday world of the middle class, that group that vaudeville, more than anything else, had helped to articulate and entertain.

Yet vaudeville, both in its methods and ruling aesthetic, did not simply perish but rather resounded throughout the succeeding media of film, radio and television. The screwball comedies of the 1930s, those reflections of the brief moment of cinematic equipoise between dialogue and physicality, reflect the more madcap comedic elements of some vaudeville acts (e. The screwball comedy is a subgenre of the comedy Film genre. It has proven to be one of the most popular and enduring film genres g. , The Three Keatons). In form, the television variety show owed much to vaudeville, riding the multi-act format to success in shows such as "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar and, of course, The Ed Sullivan Show. A variety show or variety entertainment is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts especially Musical performances and Comedy Skits and Your Show of Shows was a live 90-minute Sketch comedy Television series appearing weekly in the United States on NBC, from 1950 Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar (born September 8, 1922) is an Emmy Award -winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man The Ed Sullivan Show was an American television Variety show that ran from June 20, 1948 to June 6, Even today, performers such as Bill Irwin, a Macarthur Fellow and Tony Award-winning actor, are frequently lauded as "New Vaudevillians". William Mills "Bill" Irwin (born April 11, 1950) is an American Actor and Clown noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American The Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Awards, recognize achievement in live American Theatre and are presented

References to vaudeville and the use of its distinctive argot continue throughout Western popular culture. Terms as “a flop” (an act that does badly), for example, have entered into accepted usage in the American idiom. Many of the most common performance techniques and "gags" of vaudeville entertainers are still seen on television and on film. Television ( TV) is a widely used Telecommunication medium for sending ( Broadcasting) and receiving moving Images, either monochromatic Vaudeville, like its dime museum and variety theatre forebearers, also continued and solidified a strong American absorption with foreign entertainers.

In the early 21st century, Vaudeville as a concept has been revived in New York City, notably on the Lower East Side. A number of performers - many associated with the venues / promoters Surf Reality and the venue the Bowery Poetry Club - reference vaudeville when describing their type of performance. Surf Reality's House of Urban Savages, also known as Surf Reality, was a 65 seat performance venue on Manhattan 's Lower East Side from 1993-2003 The Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space founded by Bob Holman in 2002. Notably, Surf Reality has produced a show called "Radical Vaudeville" for several years on end.

See also

Related forms

• Blackface
• Borscht Belt
• Burlesque
• Cabaret
• Chautauqua
• Concert saloon
• Music hall
• Nightclub
• Revue
• Tom Shows

New Vaudevillians

• The Quiddlers: Comedic Pantomime
• Michel Lauzière: Visual Comedy and Music
• Rudy Coby: Magician
• Mr. Methane: Professional Flatulist
• Esther's Follies: Austin Texas vaudeville theater

References

External links

• 1913 Book: How to Enter Vaudeville
• Vaudeville Ventriloquists
• Legends of Vaudeville
• American Vaudeville Museum
• Virtual Vaudeville
• Glossary of Vaudeville Slang
• Listen to the Song "Will It Play In Peoria"
• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – J. Willis Sayre Photographs
• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Prior and Norris Troupe Photographs
• University of Washington libraries Digital Collections - 19th Century Actors Photogaphs