Tag Archives: vaudeville

Culturally Diverse

“Vaudeville’s attraction was more than simply a series of entertaining sketches. It was symbolic of the cultural diversity of early twentieth century America. Vaudeville was a fusion of centuries-old cultural traditions, including the English Music Hall, minstrel shows of antebellum America, and Yiddish theater. Though certainly not free from the prejudice of the times, vaudeville was the earliest entertainment form to cross racial and class boundaries. For many, vaudeville was the first exposure to the cultures of people living right down the street.”

—American Masters, “About Vaudeville,” October 8, 1999, PBS

While anti-Semitism was common during vaudeville’s heyday, many Jewish performers had starring roles in theater as well as in film and television in later years. Yiddish theater had an enormous influence on the cultural life of Jews throughout America and abroad. In this film clip, Molly Picon, the most famous actress in Yiddish theater, is seen singing “Abi Gezunt (As long as you’re healthy),” from the 1938 film, “Mamele.” Molly Picon, born Margaret Pyekoon in 1898, “performed with Michael Thomashefsky’s Yiddish repertory troupe at the Arch Street Theater (including, at age fifteen, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with alternate performances in Yiddish and English) and in cabaret from 1912 to 1915.” [Jewish Women’s Archive] Like Teresa in The Life Fantastic, Picon started to perform at an early age. She gave her first performance on a stage at age five!

Here are several sites which give a sense of the importance of Yiddish theater to Jews throughout the world and specifically in America.

On the occasion of the 100th birthday of the National Yiddish Theater, Folksbiene, this video talks about the history of the theater. Note how Yiddish theater influenced composers on the broader stage, including George Gershwin and the Sherman brothers, composers of Mary Poppins.
Michael Tilson Thomas, the conductor, created this homage to his grandparents, early and influential actors in the Yiddish theater, The Thomashefskys.
These two biographies of the most famous actress and theater owner in Yiddish theater, Molly Picon, one from Masterworks Broadway and the other from the Jewish Women’s Archives

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Helen Keller on stage

From Helen Keller Kids Museum Online, American Foundation for the Blind, Braille Bug

Celebrities appeared on the vaudeville stage, even those who weren’t considered performers. It was a place for the community to hear famous speakers and noteworthy people of their day.

Here’s Helen (Keller) in her dressing room in a vaudeville theatre. She is sitting at a makeup table (which does not have a mirror), brushing her cheek with a giant powder puff. Behind her, hanging on the wall, are many elaborate outfits, including a silk robe, a dark evening dress, and a full-length fur coat. Helen has on a sleeveless, patterned dress that goes down to her toes and shiny high-heeled shoes.

View more photos of Helen Keller, and Anne Sullivan, at the Helen Keller Kids Museum Online on the American Federation for the Blind website.

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Q&A with Liza K, part 3

What propelled you to write a story based in show business?

Vaudeville has fascinated me since I was little girl. That’s when my father told me the romantic story about my great-grandparents, who eloped and ran away to join a traveling theater troupe. My great-grandmother was a singer and pianist, and her husband played the fiddle. The couple’s elopement—and their divorce later on—caused a scandal in the small town of Shreve, Ohio, where my great-grandmother grew up. Because some people considered vaudeville as “one step up from burlesque,” my grandmother was ashamed of her history. She refused to answer my questions about her parents and their stage careers.

I have always loved live theater, and once considered becoming an actor. In high school I acted in plays and I spent the summer before college studying acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. Though I didn’t pursue a stage career, that summer taught me invaluable lessons about creating characters.

Interior of the Tabor Opera House today. For more about this theater, visit taboroperahouse.net.

Many years later, I visited the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, a restored and spectacular vaudeville theater. As I walked down the silent aisle between rows of plush seats, I thought about my great-grandparents and their story, which had never been told. Though the characters in The Life Fantastic are invented, and though it takes place in a different time and place, my great-grandparents’ adventure in the theater inspired me to write the novel.

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Maeve’s Warning

When Thunder Comes In The Life Fantastic, Maeve warns Teresa to be careful in her friendship with Pietro, an African American vaudeville performer. She tells Teresa that black men and boys in the South “get lynched if they look at a white girl.” Maeve also shares the story about a civil disturbance in Springfield, Illinois in 1908, where a white woman lied about being raped by an African American. Two black men were arrested, and when they escaped lynching, white residents rioted, causing massive destruction in the black community. The woman’s lie wasn’t discovered until after the riot ended and a number of people were killed. After that, Maeve’s father took part in Ku Klux Klan meetings.

Many people think that the KKK was only active in southern states, but in the novel, Teresa remembers her father talking about the Klan having meetings in Vermont. Do you know the history of the KKK? Are you aware of their continuing presence in America today?

Learn more with these recommended books:

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan: the True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate, written by Rick Bowers, National Geographic Society, 2012.

They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group, written by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.

When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders, written by J. Patrick Lewis, illustrated by Jim Burke, R. Gregory Christie, Tonya Engle, John Parra, and Meilo So, Chronicle Books, 2012.

Witness, written by Karen Hesse. Scholastic, 2001.

Wreath for Emmett Till, written by Marilyn Nelson, illustrated by Philippe Lardy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004.

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Q & A with Liza K, part 2

Question: Have you talked first hand with people who remember vaudeville?

My grandfather (on the right) and a colleague next to his WWI plane, in France. This photo was shot a few years after The Life Fantastic takes place. Grandpa crashed twice but survived to tell the tale.

Answer: Yes. My paternal grandfather, who was born in 1893, told me how much vaudeville meant to him as a young man. Grandpa’s father died when he was very young. He was raised, in part, by his grandparents, and started working—taking court dictation—when, as he said, he was “still in short pants.” Grandpa worked to pay his way through college and then started his own business, so vaudeville was the only entertainment he could afford. He would sit up high in a theater’s cheapest seats, often staying for more than one show. He loved the music and the comedy routines. When I was young, he used to sing me the songs he remembered from those days, including some I included in The Life Fantastic—such as “Everybody works but Father—he sits around all day.” My parents were appalled that, when I was four years old, I knew all the words to “There lay Brown, upside down, lapping up the whiskey off the floor. ‘Save the booze!’ the fireman cried, as he came running through the door.” I always wished I could have sat beside Grandpa in those theaters.

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Blacks and Vaudeville

Marvin Jones and his son Pietro are two of the characters in The Life Fantastic. An African American father-and-son dance team, they appeared on vaudeville stages across the United States. In spite of challenging color barriers in place throughout the country, they learned the unwritten rules and abided by them so that they could continue to perform.

Popular comedian Dewey “Pigmeat” Markham is featured in the PBS documentary, “Vaudeville,” in a 19-minute segment on blacks in vaudeville.

Learn more about the challenges presented to black performers on this segment from PBS’ Vaudeville on “Blacks and Vaudeville,” narrated by Ben Vereen. This segment also focuses on successful black performers such as the Nicholas Brothers (whose dance routines are similar to those performed by Pietro and his father), and the comedian Bert Williams, who some called “the Jackie Robinson of show business.”

The full show from PBS American Masters, Vaudeville.

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The Trajectory of a Celebrity

Nora Bayes

Not all stars of the vaudeville stage are still remembered today. One of the most well-known singers in the 1910s and 1920s was Nora Bayes. Born in Joliet, Illinois as Eleanora Sarah Goldberg, she was on-stage by the time she was 18. She was a star of the Ziegfield Follies.

If you know the songs “Shine On, Harvest Moon” (probably written by Dave Stamper) or “Over There” (written by George M. Cohan) and you’ve heard the first recordings of those songs, then you’ve heard Nora Bayes singing.

Another huge hit for her was “How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)?”

And yet her name has not lived on. An interesting classroom discussion would be to talk over which celebrities today will still be known in one hundred years … and why. Why is Will Rogers still a fairly well-known name today but Nora Bayes isn’t?

You can listen to Nora Bayes singing here,

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Vaudeville Palaces

Bijou Theater, Boston, MA (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The theaters built for vaudeville were incredibly fancy, a little heaven on earth for the communities in which they were built. B.F. Keith’s Bijou Opera House in Boston boasted an illuminated waterfall that flowed underneath a heavy glass stairway. The theater was the first in the country to be completely illuminated by electricity—which was installed by Thomas Edison himself.

B.F. Keith Theater, RIggs Building, and National Metropolitan Bank opposite the U.S. Treaasury in Washington, DC

The B.F. Keith Theater in Washington, DC, had a six-story-high auditorium with red leather seats, walls covered in red silk, and a stage curtain that was ruby red with gold fringe. The lobby walls were marble. This theater was at first leased to Plimpton B. Chase who produced “Chase’s Polite Vaudeville,” but then a vaudeville impresario, B.F. Keith, added the theater to his other 29 locations on the East Coast. Keith sought to boost audiences by presenting wholesome family entertainment. Will Rogers, Ed Wynn, the Seven Little Foys, Rudy Vallee, and Eddie Cantor all appeared in this theater, performing before high society members including two presidents of the United States.

B.F. Keith Theater lobby, Washington, DC

Read more about Chase’s Theater and the B.F. Keith Theater in Washington, D.C., and the Bijou Theater in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Borrowing: Abbott and Costello

When Teresa observes other performers on stage, she’s thinking about how she can make her own performances better. There was a great deal of “borrowing” from other people’s routines among the vaudeville tours. This comedy sketch, perhaps one of the most famous of all time, was performed by Bud Abbott and Lou Costello from burlesque to vaudeville to radio to movies to television.

Abbott & Costello Who’s On First from annemieke knowles on Vimeo.

The following path, from the Abbott and Costello Wikipedia entry, gives an example of how that borrowing occurred.

“Who’s on First?” is descended from turn-of-the-century burlesque sketches that played on words and names. Examples are “The Baker Scene” (the shop is located on Watt Street) and “Who Dyed” (the owner is named “Who”).

In the 1930 movie Cracked Nuts, comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey examine a map of a mythical kingdom with dialogue like this: “What is next to Which.” “What is the name of the town next to Which?” “Yes.”

In English music halls (England’s equivalent of vaudeville theatres), comedian Will Hay performed a routine in the early 1930s (and possibly earlier) as a schoolmaster interviewing a schoolboy named Howe who came from Ware but now lives in Wye.

By the early 1930s, a “Baseball Routine” had become a standard bit for burlesque comics across the United States. Abbott’s wife recalled him performing the routine with another comedian before teaming with Costello.^[1]

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The Ropin’ Fool, Will Rogers

Will Rogers (photo: 1936, Clarence Bull, public domain)

Many famous performers of the 20th century—including stars familiar to me when I was growing up—started in vaudeville. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Charlie Chaplin, Ma Rainey, Bert Williams, Mickey Rooney, Jack Benny, and scores of others found early success on the vaudeville stage. I listed some of these luminaries in the Author’s Note of my new novel, The Life Fantastic, but after an email exchange with wise reader Vicki Palmquist, I realized I had omitted a performer with one of the most fascinating journeys: the comedian, “Ropin’ Fool,” columnist, and entertainer, Will Rogers.

Part Cherokee, Will Rogers grew up on a ranch near the Verdigris River in what was then Oklahoma Territory. He was lifted onto a pony as soon as he could walk, and was soon riding all over the ranch and roping cattle. He was incredibly skilled with lariat tricks, but his constant practicing got him expelled from boarding school. Home on the ranch, he perfected his roping routines and was soon performing in Wild West Shows that were popular at the time, calling himself “The Cherokee Kid.”

Drawn to vaudeville, Rogers brought Teddy, his cow pony, to New York City. After many rejections, he finally attracted attention when he and Teddy roped a crazed steer running loose in Madison Square Garden. The vaudeville theater impresario, Will Hammerstein, hired Rogers to perform on the roof garden of his Victoria Theater during the dead hours of 6-8 pm. Rogers and Teddy rode the elevator up to the roof and came out onstage together. (The pony wore felt boots so he wouldn’t slip on the stage floor.) Vaudeville revues often included a “dumb [silent] act,” which was Rogers’ role on the playbill. Calling himself “The Ropin’ Fool,” his intricate tricks were wildly popular.

One night, he made a mistake and commented on it, earning a laugh from the audience. Soon, he was making jokes as he roped. As his reputation grew, he was hired to perform with the Ziegfield Follies, the city’s most lavish and spectacular theatrical revue. Ziegfield expected Rogers to perform silently while his actresses (billed as “The Most Beautiful Girls in the World”) changed their costumes. But Rogers began to comment on the news as he twirled his lariat—and the audience loved it. He learned that he couldn’t tell the same joke twice, so he read many editions of the local papers, jotting down jokes to use that night. Since Ziegfield expected Rogers to be a silent entertainer, he was furious—until he watched a show and heard the laughter. He then gave Rogers top billing.

Will Rogers’ motto became, “All I know is what I read in the papers.” Eventually, he turned his onstage commentary into a daily column that was carried in 500 papers, six days a week. He wrote his columns on a portable typewriter, composing on trains, in cars—and even on the single-engine plane that carried him to his death in Alaska. His humorous, down home philosophy appealed to millions of Americans and buoyed them up during the Great Depression. When he died, the country went into a deep mourning that many compared to the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination.

Rogers’ trajectory was amazing. The “Ropin’ Fool” became a stand-up comedian, film star, public speaker, and writer; the most-read columnist in America. He assumed—correctly—that most Americans read the daily newspapers, so they would get his jokes. Many of his commentaries on government and politicians are eerily apt for the present time. And he managed to poke fun without vitriol. Rogers claimed, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

Will Rogers Santa Monica California home When my sons were young, we spent a year in southern California. We often drove out to Will Rogers’ ranch—now a state park—to kick a soccer ball around or take a hike. Inside Rogers’ comfortable ranch house, decorated with mementos from his career, we could see the balcony where Rogers stood and threw his lariat, lassoing house guests as they passed through the living room. As our country suffers through a dangerous, partisan era, I’m reading his commentaries with a wistful longing for his gentle, yet pointed humor.

Will Rogers quote

(Full disclosure: I’m lucky to have the perfect resource on my shelf, a biography of Rogers written by my dad, Richard M. Ketchum: Will Rogers: His Life and Times. American Heritage Press, 1973.)

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