Vaudeville Documentary PBS

[Music] from the 1880s to the 1930s american popular entertainment had many names variety the two a day vaudeville vaudeville vaudeville for 25 000 performers presenting their act up to a dozen times a day it was always the business [Music] [Music] the business was conducted in lavish theaters in the heart of great cities and converted storefronts in towns so small there was only one road going in and out [Music] each performance had five acts or 10 or 20. you could get a seat in the second balcony for a nickel and stay all day there was nothing separating that performer on stage from me it was to me he was singing to me he was making cracks to me he was jumping and tap dancing to me at that moment and so was highly personal yes huh her poor father uh he died of throat trouble they hung him and her brother lovely chap but he's gone poor fella with good behavior he ought to be out in uh 1927 or eight vaudeville appealed primarily to the working class but among its biggest fans were franklin roosevelt winston churchill oliver wendell holmes woodrow wilson its biggest stars were the highest paid best known people in america [Music] ford billions danced sang juggled and joked better than anybody anywhere ever but they were still doomed [Music] hello [Music] they were doomed because vaudeville was just a diversion until new technologies are ready to steal the audience away forever i think the big majority of them just faded away and i think that was an awful loss to this country into this world they were equipped for better things than what happened to them but before radio movies and television vaudevillians were the entertainers our ancestors chose first and most at a time of revolutionary change in america they showed us who we were and who we were becoming this is their story the story of the stars and the thousands of others who never escaped the small towns in small pay who lost everything but their memories and their dreams [Music] there was a lot of us that could couldn't make a dime but we wouldn't give it up for anything in the world in 1903 the wright brothers made their first flight baseball had its first world series henry ford started his motor company and in 2000 theaters across north america audiences watched performers like reverend fields as confused german immigrants bang bang bang bang you you got to keep away three feet from the table do you see it yes sir well when i'm closer today they saw the great volcano moving people and motor vehicles around with his teeth and three young women throwing a handkerchief in the air who the young women were and why they chose to do a pajama handkerchief statue act has been lost the time but they did it and audiences wanted to see it audiences that had never existed before in 1840 9 out of 10 americans lived in the country a few decades later when vaudeville began nearly half lived in the city with millions more coming every year they didn't all come from michigan the carolinas and ohio some came from kiev kalamara and bologna five and a half million immigrants in the 1880s alone yearning to breathe free even before the statue of liberty was there to point the way they expected prosperity and happiness they found cramped tenements dull or deadly jobs and a huge gap between the rich and the poor survival not prosperity was the daily challenge in the burgeoning urban ghettos but in the nearby vaudeville theaters the newly arrived irish jews germans and slavs could see their countrymen making it at the same time many working people finally had spare time and spare change they were typists telephone operators book keepers no longer down on the mind or standing at the blast furnace at dawn no longer exhausted by their work now they were just bored by it they demanded entertainment and vaudeville had my baby [Music] the palace theater was my uh heavenly sanctuary it was every friday night my brother five years old and i would take me to the palace theater in chicago it was a two a day vaudeville house nine acts friday nights second balcony two bits as close to heaven as i'll ever get very often people will say well it was sensational as a negative like what could be more important than than giving people sensations taking ideas and making them felt [Music] sensational vaudeville was the right sensation at the right time but it didn't spring up overnight its origins were ancient and everywhere street performers jesters clowns yiddish brother singers and commedia dellarte players they were the first void vegans the word comedia comes up a lot the sort of the predecessor to vaudeville by a few centuries and you often see people say i have done a lot of comedian i've done a great deal of committee work in it and not to bad mouth anybody but what you sometimes see is somebody doing something that sort of in effect says if you'd read as much as i've read you'd find this very funny and uh that's what i hope in one's admiration and fascination with vaudeville one could stay away from what would become vaudeville began in what would become english music hall the lavish stage productions called pantos that british audiences have enjoyed for three centuries pantos have variety axe slapstick people and animal costumes and the most famous panto feature comic cross dressing like the pantomime dame a male comedian dressed as a woman famous dames like george roby became stars of the music hall where the usual acts were either comic songs and when i found it left me in the net oh dawg or the eccentric like little titch a very short man with very long boots [Music] vaudeville's acceptance of slapstick female and serious male impersonators is a direct result of its english origins [Music] english audiences gave their american cousins a love for the eccentric too like wilson kevin betty their act called cleopatra's nightmare won international praise for 60 years except in germany where the nazis condemn their bare legs as immoral pt bottom contributed to vaudeville by establishing a crude variety theater in his bowery dive museum and presenting the circus inspired freak acts that would also appeal to vaudeville audiences like chaz chase the eater of strange things in barnums immigrants and their children like joe weber and lou fields saw an escape from the ghettos and sweatshops that otherwise loomed in their future two other popular theatrical forms also contributed to vaudeville the million european jews who came west brought the yiddish theater with them like vaudeville it showed a robust passion for material and performance yiddish theater developed talent that would intrigue vaudeville audiences too [Music] none better or better than molly pecan [Music] is [Music] had the same british roots and some of the same attractions as vaudeville but there is a fundamental difference between the two the male burlesque audience came to see naked women and the family vaudeville audience didn't and though many vaudevillians also worked in burlesque it's impossible to say how many because they hid their involvement afterwards if you were in a town where burlesque company was or something and the breast people were in town one never stayed at the same hotel or eight in the same restaurants with them because they were declass a burlesque and portable are two different phases of show business burlesque is a series of sketches sketches broken up with in between chorus girls and strip women top banana joey faye created and performed hundreds of those sketches joey fay two other vaudeville stars with burlesque beginnings were fannie brice billed as a demure subreddit which means she kept her clothes on and bert lahr who did a burlesque inspired cop act with his wife 20 years before he became a cowardly lion she played a kind of poochie coochie dancer and dad who played a kind of crazy cop would uh come out with his hat a skew and his club and say what's the idea what's the idea what'd you get at stuff and she'd be sort of in a decollete and he'd say uh what's your name and she'd say molly bean and he say your sister's name is stringbean and she said yeah daughter's name is lamabean and she said yeah and he'd say don't you recognize me on your uncle's succotash he would do a sing and waddle around and throw throw his baton back and forth and then miss it and he they worked out this stuff but even featuring an ogling cop and a beautiful girl they worked it out clean vaudeville demanded it there were signs backstage saying no hells no dams no deity of any sort to be mentioned at any time and ladies must all wear silk tights it was policed vaudeville was family entertainment october 24th 1881 will remain forever as one of the most memorable milestones in the annals of the entertainment world for it was on this date in a little theater on 14th street just off broadway that the inimitable tony pastor startled the profession by presenting a straight variety show or what was to become universally known as vaudeville tony pastor insisted on propriety because that's what the new audience wanted a theater said where a child could bring his parents without fear of embarrassment featuring sedate quartets [Music] and it worked immediately even respectable women love this new entertainment especially a pastor innovation the door prize from silk dresses to sacks of potatoes [Music] so vaudeville success was due to a simple concept if you don't like this wait a few minutes and you may like this [Music] if you don't like prime evil country music you're sure to like a big star like trixie for ganza a little girl named lulu went down [Music] now this little girl named lulu who went to honolulu to learn to do the hula hula hoop no more can do the hula poor little lula poor hula hula is all black and blue i think seeing those acts those artists on stage those flesh and blood people and you flesh and blood up in that second balcony with all those other people in the audience also afforded a sense of community it was communal the many enjoying the artiste enjoying the gypsy entertainer the gypsy pastor and his successes created the form changing times provided the audience in the cities and eventually across the continent all that was needed was people with talent many of them came from that audience commercializing their existing skills developing new ones following their heroes into the light my favorite guy of course was jack benny who i loved he was a great man and a very sweet guy and i met him when i was 12 years old and here's a man walks in takes off his hat in his top coat fixes his hair and walks out of the stage does a monologue and kills the people and i said that's what that's the kind of work i want to do i loved what i was seeing on the stage at the standard theater in philadelphia and that's where my mother and father played with the orchestra and i liked what i saw up there so i would go home and try to imitate what i saw and i was doing it hey this feels good i like this i like it so much i had watched vaudeville from the 25 cent seats in the palace theater for years and i watched i watched all the acts i watched okay so i was sort of a little sure of myself because i was stealing from the best and i was using the you know i take the same jokes and i do them and i was very good at six or seven years old i went into the rko theater in yonkers and it was a friday and they had five acts of vaudeville and i watched them and i stayed and i watched them again and i got home and i started dancing out in the street dancing actually i was uh two years and nine months my mother says but i say i was three just to make it plausible uh i my mother used to take me to see all the shows the vaudeville shows and i would come home and i would imitate everybody [Music] searching for the secrets to stardom composer gerald mark spent a week in the wings studying houdini the last thing in his act was his being lowered into the tank and he would say this is a very very dangerous thing that i'm going to do and i never know whether i'm going to come out alive or not so i always kiss my wife goodbye and she always sat in the front row and she came up the stairs and he kissed her and then they lowered him into the tank and i watched this and watched it and watched it where did he get the key to open up the lock so he could get out of the tank and i finally saw it when she kissed him she gave him the key you took my kisses and you took my love you taught me how to care am i to be just the remnant of gerald mark sold his first vaudeville song when he was only 10 years old to the pit conductor of his neighborhood theater the next weekend he snuck into the premier performance [Music] and when i heard them go into it i did an awful thing in my pants i was so excited first of all what 18 months i got up my toes and danced around and mother in the family saw that and said wowie that's a marketable thing june havoc and her sister who became gypsy rose lee were in vaudeville because their mother was in it and she was in it so she said for the money and that was true of everybody they were businessman they were incidentally artists you know they weren't going for art they were going for survival it was all about money i mean groucho and my father never got past the sort of fifth or sixth grade buster keaton had exactly one day of formal education so they had no possibilities in american life although they became the metaphors of american abundance when the average american was making 25 a week the average salary of a dance act like ours was 350 a week after we played the palace and we became well so-called success we did a good show then we were booked on the orpheum circuit the interstate circuit for 450 dollars [Music] making a living as a variety performer was easy in only one way vaudeville was a most democratic entertainment gender race national origin even appearance didn't matter the godinis were hardly glamorous but they were incredible spinners and vaudeville audiences loved watching things spin [Music] julian elting was vaudeville's most famous female impersonator called mr lillian russell long after he lost his youthful charm but audiences still wanted to watch him [Music] i used to like to go down to the uh quarter drugstore and buy candy but my arms were so short i couldn't reach into my pants pocket to get off the change so my dad taught me how to stand on my head and that's what got me in the show business you know i'm a cello player so i played to cello and my brother played the piano and we sang a couple of songs after the show when we got off the stage my brother said where'd you get those lines i said i don't know i guess i made them up he said well make up some more i didn't know i was going to be a good comedian until i went into a show and whenever i would walk on the stage the audience would laugh in vaudeville if people wanted to watch it you could make a living doing it hundreds of possible acts are described in this 1914 handbook from playing the piano to eating the piano [Music] i have people like the man who swallows hot molten lead and spits up coins he also swallows a live goldfish and a live shark baby shark he will swallow both and he asks the audience now which do you want to come up first and they will stay the shark with the goldfish he'll throw that one up first and you'll hear it swimming around in the stomach and then you'll throw up the shark and you'll have them in two little jars and you'll see them still swimming there's still a lot he's a geek no he's not he's not a geek no he's not a geek he is a regurgitator there's a difference vaudeville's most famous regurgitator was the legendary [ __ ] ali [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] as mysterious as [ __ ] ali but a lot less graphic was a robbins the banana man he was a strange figure with a in a capacious black cloak huge and he would say nothing but take out objects and he'd unfold them one would become an easy chair another would become a sofa another finally became a grand piano time he finished after six seven eight minutes the whole stage was full of furniture huge truman and he'd simply walk off a robin's magic there is nothing more important although we've lost it in our moment than frivolity frivolity is the the species refusal to suffer vaudeville's attractions weren't always variety performers if people were famous for any reason audiences wanted to gark at them we were on the bill with gene harlow that was a vaudeville date that we did at the oriental and she had a maid with her and she did a scene with some guy and they did a scene from one of the movies that was vaudeville too charles lindbergh declined a hundred thousand dollars a week to appear in vaudeville evangelist amy simple mcpherson accepted five thousand dollars and bombed one reviewer said she wears a white satin creation sexy but episcopalian temperance crusader kerry nation enhanced her vaudeville act by handing out souvenir axes to remind audiences of her saloon smashing fame [Music] other famous folks actually tried to perform [Music] with mixed results from bay ruth to helen keller from robert bensley to jack johnson if he wanted to make direct contact with america show your stuff and make good money besides you went on the vaudeville stage as georgie justin said to me when you're a star when they love you they'll take anything you give them i said that's all well and good but how do you get there you've got to get there first you got help getting there wherever you could buy borrow or steal it acting and dancing schools flourished including a pittsburgh academy where young jean kelly helped touring vaudevillians polish their soft shoe and bnb's college of dance in new york where george burns taught tap i would go to the palace theater which was the the aim of every every performer in show business and i would try every door i found an open one and go in the theater's dark and i knew the layout went down to the men's room and stayed there in the dark until the lights came on and then i come up and worked my way along the wall way down so that i could be close to the stage and see exactly what the star of the evening does his behavior so that i could learn and when the girl came and asked for my stub which i didn't have i ran right back and got lost among the standees those were the days that all the vaudeville houses in chicago that's where i was born and raised had vaudeville and after the vaudeville acts they had amateur shows and i went down and i used to do my solo stars and stripes forever so i did about five weeks of amateurs and during those five weeks five nights a week in five different theaters i won the prize every night which of course was proof of something for arthur tracy winning amateur nights led to stardom in england at america [Music] with he didn't just have good pipes he created a personality the street singer a mysterious romantic wanderer wavering away under boudoir windows personality whether created like arthur tracy's or natural like joe frisco's was one of the vital ingredients of vaudeville's success [Music] we heard him we heard her we saw him we saw flesh and blood and we applaud it you saw them do it they did it boner or not mistakes or not behold the man behold the woman every night i bring her frank for the sound sandwiches thanks for the sandwiches oh my baby loves those fries well they'll just ripe little sandwiches i tried to win her with flowers flowers all kinds of sweetness till i found out my baby's weakness every night she whispers thanks for that you said four septic but i fear there's something wrong instead of her filling and cooing all she starts doing is chewing frankfurt sanchez sanchez all night long w.c fields became a juggler partly because the props were handy on his father's fruit cart but vaudeville was full of great jugglers fields once followed a dwarf who juggled 14 balls while riding a horse nine balls and one horse more than fields could do so he developed an intriguing personality who was harassed by everything children policemen billiard balls that character took fields to the top in vaudeville radio and film like personality enthusiasm was another quality every successful worldvillian had al jolson screamed you ain't heard nothing yet and meant it [Music] wow i love you how i love you my dear one of vaudeville's first great stars ran more than three miles on stage during her act and eddie peabody played his banjo like it was on fire [Music] three more payments in your mind honey i love this thing because audiences loved enthusiasm one musical instrument reached its autistic apotheosis in vaudeville the ukulele like the bongos an instrument where energetic playing is synonymous with good playing vaudeville had a lot of ukulele players the nights i'll fill the song i hope that i'm not wrong the secretest whole game in vaudeville is speed every act i ever saw was quick uh lenny oh leonard reed calling me this oh lenny i was just standing here telling the folks how great you are really you're wonderful lad good leonard reed and willie bryant started as a team in 1930 singing dancing doing it quick the first number alone was only a minute and 10 seconds that was a soft shoe then willie danced for two minutes and i danced for two minutes and then we finished with the stairs which is about three minutes and the talk was another two or three minutes nine ten minutes we never went over ten minutes or we had been fired i think we did 11 minutes and they were handled and the stage manager called us in said you know you did 11 minutes can you cut it personality enthusiasm and speed with vaudeville requirements but it is typical of the medium's perversity that an intentional lack of all three could still succeed [Music] benny ross and the gorgeously dull unenthusiastic practically comatose maxine stone well his life there anyway look i'll tell you what we'll do i'll play the piano you do that dance of yours let's get it over with [Music] ladies and gentlemen right at this part of my dance i do a trick i know you've all seen it before so i won't bother forget about it who wants to do it everybody needed time dancers needed space given the variety of stages they worked they learned to minimize the space they needed like the mayo brothers who performed real table dancing [Music] [Applause] [Music] we pushed that table out there and we danced on our table so we didn't have to worry about the rest of the stage no matter what it was or where it was we could work anywhere out and out in the sand if we had to [Music] a strong 10 minutes could still fail if there was nothing to set your act apart from hundreds of others so performers developed gimmicks unique signature pieces they called insurance xylophone's teddy brown's gimmick was his size the incongruity of a very large man daintily plinking away [Music] for a month for a year we worked on it and i tried all different types of sneak i tried all the every i could i couldn't get it finally finally one day it's a noise in my throat and it's a and they gotta laugh and i said that's it can you make the sneeze as loud as a yeah or as a shot as you eat [Music] m-i-s-s-i-s [Music] insurance was the material that always went over joseon singing many francis white singing mississippi [Music] is the use and reuse and constant re-reuse of signature bits is i think a vaudevillian it comes out of the baubillion tradition i myself would never have been able to do uh week after week exactly the same uh routine and that's why i don't think i would have done well in vaudeville at all as a person if even your insurance didn't work a successful boardvillian head of the talents are drawn ironized cody sang dance heal the sick and then shot at them i had a bow in iraq i'm an expert with a bow and arrow and i have people to stand there and i shoot arrows all around them and everything like that how tall was i then let's say three foot package you know singing dancing doing impersonations i did l jolts and then and eddie cantor then will rogers started as a wild west show cowboy then did rope tricks without talking then did rope tricks while talking then talked without doing many rope tricks and by then he was a star i was always a featured act because i did a novelty act like a one-man band i played on spoons washboard bicycle pumps lift chairs with my teeth singer dancer musician comedian impressionist max nesbitt and his brother harry did a whole vaudeville show in 10 minutes see my baby the sweetest little baby in all the world oh you ain't seen any baby yet you want to see my baby you know my baby keeps me up all night but what do you mean listen there were nine numbers in the act and i was in seven of them it was a wonderful act i tap danced i sang i didn't dodge you dance i toe danced i wept in a dramatic song about my dog when they started their careers june havoc bobby short billy barty bert lahr and a horde of others had an automatic gimmick they were kids some of the thousands of tots who invaded vaudeville from the very beginning producers like gus edwards specialized in turning children into marketable commodities i sure do remember the first time i walked down the portable stage i was with gus edges at the time and i was wearing velour pants with a safety pin and i looked down and the pants were open and i had no way of closing them they're vaudeville when i was a baby i was a little 12 year old boy i played the piano and sang and in those days we dressed up quite a lot and i wore white tails and i was called the miniature king of swing and sometimes the boy wonder and sometimes the schwarzkin i was built being younger than i really was you know they said jamie to christmas here's a three-year-old he's acting like an eight-year-old and i was eight years old [Music] among the greatest of all kid acts was the nicholas brothers now they weren't called the nicholas brothers and they were calling nicholas kids and these kids were big when harold came out to do the encore you couldn't hear you couldn't hear your ears people were screaming and hollering and when they said reed and brian put up the sign didn't mean hell we were out there i'm not kidding we were dancing halfway through our routine and they were plotting well he said we got them i said you got hell they're applauding for them they're not applauding for but we kept dancing we didn't get on as they say in show business so i said move over let's get off and they came back and bowed again we had to start our routine again and i'm not kidding they were still applauding when i was on my radio show people wrote in letters saying that's not a trial that's a 45 year old [ __ ] no child sings like that had a very strong deep voice like i do now and it was it wasn't the shirley temple kind of voice it was like a sophie tucker kind of voice and to see this little thing belting out these songs you know [Music] don't be like because of radio rose marie was already a star when she entered vaudeville an old pro at age six a lot of other kid act performers had to grow up fast i got hurt a lot but that everybody got hurt a lot dude being hurt wasn't any wasn't important the important thing was to cover that bruise and get out there what made it worth it i would say when my dad was very proud of me that he stopped hollering at me because when i was a child he would say to me you can dance a little more when i was three he'd say your toes aren't bleeding enough i remember dancing with blood in my toe shoes squishing squish squish squish my father used to have a thing like what do you think you do you sing just because you sing or something i don't look at it as a negative thing that my mother and dad took me out of school and made me go out on the road and no i think it was a positive positive part of my life i didn't get a lot of love from my family i was a workhorse and i was taking care of a lot of people and i went through a lot i looked to pets i looked to other people particularly the audience like i had a pet mouse for a long time until my father sat on it and broke my heart demo white started a kid's sister act with a kid who was not her sister like most juvenile performers she had a problem that adults did not the gary society upholders of the child labor laws they made arrangements with this society there that um my father would get arrested after each show and they would bail him out and i'd go back to the theater he i would do the second show they'd arrest him he'd go down and i played the week like that my father was arrested 182 times two officers came down stopped my act put a coat around me and took me off to the shelter where they asked behold i wasn't i said i was 16. i'd been rehearsed i was about nine and they then they did a little physical on me and found out they didn't even have any molars yet you know when you're 16 you've got molars so i suppose that a 12 year old colored lad playing the piano and singing might have posed a threat to some old vaudevillians you know and it was their bread and butter their life's blood their lives work and they were not pleased to see me on the stage i don't think the color of my skin had much to do with it i was a kid and a kid performer like an animal act uh is always a threat to other performers competition of all ages was a threat to performers but these men were a bigger threat they controlled the nation's theaters the big time middle time and small time circuits if they didn't like you you could have the best act on earth but there was nowhere on earth you could do it benjamin franklin keith who first used the french term vaudeville for variety entertainment and his manager edward f albee were the most powerful men in the business establishing a nationwide circuit and running it like a dictatorship western circuit owner alexander plantages was a failed klondike gold miner while impresario silvesta poli got his showbiz start melting the discarded heads in a wax museum vaudevillians knew these men and their empires as well as they knew their own acts there was the pantages circuit had 20 weeks of work the low circuit had about 25 weeks of work the orpheum surgery one was about 10 weeks of work the interesting thing oakland was a california theater and an orpheum theater and then we played other little towns all over california too and then down south was a camp time to oklahoma city to muskogee to dallas to houston to galveston to sweetport to new orleans uh new orleans mobile alabama i was dainty june the darling of waterville registered us pat off because we hit the big time by the time i was about six circuit owners controlled where an act played their theater managers controlled when it played placement on the program was crucial to an act success because it indicated how good you were if an act moved up down or off the bill everybody in the business knew it fred astaire once was replaced by a dog act and never forget it [Music] we're the reese brothers yeah we're headlining here this week oh yeah where is the dressing room you dressed upstairs in the deluxe suite is that the stars dressing room oh boy you're all mean in fact it's the only dressing room we got what that is the only dressing room we got for stars what time do we go on you open this show we don't open no shows the opening act of a vaudeville show was usually silent and easily ignored which is why ward vegans hated opening often a family say a lebanese family there was the older brother strong brother strong man and on his shoulders arms are two brothers hanging two brothers from his hips and on his on the top is a little brother and the little brother is hoisting a little sister at the top it was a fantastic act how long could he hold this how long did they hold it and then they would tumble down on their feet gracefully and their hands would be like that they'd make it that was a great act animals open too occasionally over the human performers objections nobody liked to follow animal acts you know oh lady alice was she was a very elegant dowager type who wore a beaded gown and then the highlight of the act was when she would they'd bring on this big velvet box and she'd put one arm inside the box the music would start up nice and loud and the rats would come across and walk all across her shoulder to her other hand and she'd wiggle him a little bit until they were all the right position and then the little rat would be up here and then she'd hold this kazoo up to the rat's face and the kazoo would go poop you know naturally the rat was breathing into it because she was covered from here to here with cream of wheat being the second act on the bill wasn't much better than opening the second night was always a couple of girls singing a sister team usually that type of thing [Music] in the third spot on the bill were short plays performed by legitimate theater actors like ethel barrymore for decades she trotted out a one act for vaudeville called the 12-pound look as i remember it it was a typewriter and that typewriter that she learned gave her the job outside the kitchen and somehow i as i remember it that's what it was about but it was something seeing her i'd never seen her in a play helen hayes alfred lund sarah bernhardt and many other theater actors found occasional work in vaudeville and playlists written by everyone from eugene o'neill to the drummer in the house band were the plays that were done in vaudeville were they very good plays no following the dramatic interlude were acts that woke up the audience like brown rich and ball hey wait a minute the music stuff well i didn't hear it oh she didn't hear it let's try it again i didn't a patch number if you read about the review you wouldn't believe it little girl goes through mayhem they would say and how she comes up with no bones broken as a miracle and things like that right before intermission were near headliners like rising stars or falling stars fuzzy knight became a famous sidekick in cowboy movies in vaudeville he achieved near stardom by making a sidekick out of his piano no no drinks today big acts played right after intermission big production numbers big bands big nut acts like jimmy duran i took a walk down broadway with my ten children yeah and a policeman come up to me and under arrest poor i said for what i didn't do nothing he said you must have done stuff with that crowd following you [Applause] i i did pretty good all by myself but they gave me a terrific write-up and they said she would make a good second act any place i didn't like that i thought i'm going to be next to closing or else but anyway i worked in a couple times i was next to closing the most coveted spot of the show where every act wanted to play was next to last you're so smart name three different kinds of nuts walnuts and chestnuts that's two and forget me nuts lovely if you were there you were a star or at least the best act on the bill what did you take up at school anything that wasn't nailed down [Music] you're too smart for one girl i'm more than one you're more than one my mother has a picture of me when i was two in 1922 when a lackluster dancer and seal trainer named burns teamed up with half of just another sister act named alan they moved from everywhere else on the bill to next to closing and stayed there [Music] we don't open those shows all right you can close the show and we don't close any show well you'll either open or close the show here we must be the only actor on the bill for performers the closing spot on a vaudeville bill was called playing to the haircuts because that's what they saw going up the aisle to drive audiences away and make room for the new audience managers would purposely book bad acts for closing acts like a one-man harp and ocarina combo [Music] [Applause] remember that audience was also an antagonist as well as a friend the old time avoid billions i killed that audience what happened i slew them i murdered them the words they used are violent words and so there was a hostility and love hostility and a hunger a need a yearning for adulation at the same time there was both it's very personal a love-hate relationship was there sometimes we simply killed the audience they loved it and sometimes i couldn't get off fast enough when i go out in front of an audience i'm going to a lover i said i'm going to go out there and i'm going to lay them out in the eyes because nobody i said is going to take it away from me i worked through chickenpox the mumps the measles i must have infected hundreds of people when they opened at the palace they were a huge success and they were booked after that in philadelphia where they flopped they didn't even run the week in philly where he was 90 miles away and i said that i don't mind if you walk out on me it's when you come towards me i get nervous the white audiences are harder to please than the black audience black jordan seemed to be starved for something to see and something to do because they were restricted to certain places the the black audiences up in harlem for example were tougher on hoofers than any white audience you've ever seen a white audience will give you a break the colored audience if you don't dance forget it there's some chicken wire in a oval shape up in the up in the ceiling and i said to the boss i said what's that he says well on saturday night they get kind of noisy here and he says to protect the band in the uh orchestra we lowered that i once watched my father in a show called the beauty part go out on stage and get a big laugh on a conjunction like butt or ant and i just could not understand it and i said dad how did you know that there was a laugh at that point and he said john i listened to the audience and they told me where the laugh was [Music] [Applause] hollywood's vaudeville recreations even though starring export billions are really accurate old men dance ancient routines perfectly without any rehearsal reality was different [Music] in horrible you perfected an act i mean perfected it we used to spend as much as an hour every once just on how far you down your bowel my father didn't mind my father said oh she loves it then she you know i to my father was gorgeous and beautiful and terrific but my mother didn't like the idea no she thought just bums are in show business it was sort of a and they're in their eyes it was sort of like indecent exposure you know well i mean i was making forty fifty dollars a week during my god during those days it was a big money i and uh but i couldn't take any of it home or anything because my father and i was in show business in one season bert law and his wife made these 48 stops across north america vaudevillians spent their lives on the road and the lars had it made the smallest town they played was davenport before the marx brothers hit the big time they played theaters where the three-piece orchestra was a piano player a piano and a stool when we traveled in vaudeville it was kind of rough we had an old chrysler my brother put and we we just never got the money never got paid to get on a train or get on a plane or anything like that so we used to get in the car and go no matter where we had to go we went by car you saved money my mother and my father my two sisters myself and the school teacher would all travel in this car and it was loaded we had everything that we needed and the dinner was ready mom would cook a great cook on a little two heater stove you know there were some hotels that were very homey very welcoming other hotels didn't want show people at all the early parts of audible you live in some awful crummy places we had to we didn't all become stars overnight i never became a star but i lived like one but you worked i mean you were you were a slave i was absolutely miserable i remember being in los angeles downtown with my mother and we had 25 cents and that was all we had we had no job i was about i guess three and a half it was in that part but my first paying job i remember my husband and i started forming an act together we got seven dollars a piece 14 of the two of us that's the truth i was shocked at being called a drag queen because i was an actor and then afterwards i said oh what the hell i'm making a living and that's it money is money i remember going to the music director one day and asking him if i could have a vacation he said you can take all the vacation you want he says you don't have to come back for one group of world villains the artist of color you don't have to come back wasn't just an idol management threat it was life itself vaudeville began in the 1880s just as the chinese exclusion act took effect prohibiting chinese immigration to the united states far into the next century vaudeville thrived as the supreme court affirmed in plessy v ferguson that separate but equal was constitutionally acceptable the social and political opportunities for minorities that were established in antebellum america were rapidly disappearing african americans and other ethnic groups were being put back in their place ironically one of those places was the stage [Music] the singer is italian his act is asian his musical instrument is hawaiian and his song was written by a nice jewish boy vaudeville reflected its time a time when america was becoming a melting pot whether some americans liked it or not [Music] i'm italian about italian ancestry my my real name many many years ago before mom and dad changed it was burt manzetti but it wouldn't fit on the marquee nobody wanted me knowing it really is an italian you were really looked down on then that went to the polish people and probably for the polish people and the jewish people and then you know and the same joke there were also greek stereotypes there was always the greek who ran the fruit store down the street or had the they had a little little shop the delicatessen god knows they were jewish stereotypes they were italian stereotypes there were popular songs written in the greek idiom in the jewish idiom in the italian idiom we grew up with those songs that was america was about all of those things i did an italian number in my act where i did very badly broken italian and sang with a little boy about how we were going to go back to the old country and make spaghetti and have kids and live the proper life and we'll leave the monkey behind all those things that were not valuable to the to the official culture were very very valuable to the pop culture their songs their sounds their linguistic mistakes everything was usable i got an idea reverend fields made a career out of the assimilation mistakes of every ethnicity but their own they were born orthodox jews but they never played jews they started in blackface or irishmen sometimes and became america's best-known [Music] not just [Music] brooklyn-born band and skank were the musical weber and fields building their act around other people's ethnicity they became italians praising pasta bazoola hungry women they were jews reciting hungry women i see them and weep [Music] softly when most americans only knew their immediate neighbors and worried that every new arriving ethnic group would take their jobs marry their daughters and overwhelm their communities acts like holy one and his orchestra showed people who didn't know any better that asians could do something besides laundry and could play something besides the gong miss toy now sing a famous chinese song [Music] ming and toy challenge their stereotype image by laughing at it like fanny price and the guy named ahmed hello they'll knock me off my camel without as much and funny as my fear he sold me to your faultless like a guy would tell a cow the hair of me they called me a name cause i think his favorite now [Music] is [Music] him the touching thing about vaudeville is it's like first generation america getting a foothold in the world of america singing about it celebrating it suffering it and giving all that longing and high times to the people giving it back as each new immigrant group got more of a foothold in america they filled more theater seats and what they saw themselves on stage changed for the better vaudevillians knew you don't get nasty about the irish in a theater full of irish but with african americans segregated in the balcony or excluded entirely from the audience there was no such thing in mainstream vaudeville as a theater full of them and it was that way for almost a century in the 1840s the minstrel show was america's first entertainment craze it started with northern white performers who observed blacks or negroes or slaves at that point um really entertaining themselves say i have an idea yes you'll be around here about a half hour before the show you mean you're gonna let me watch up close jim crow you'll practically be right on the stage [Music] we'll about and turn about and do just so every time i wheel about a jump jim crow give me back my clothes please what they did was to imitate some of the actions they saw some of the songs that they saw these slaves singing and to put on grease paint or black face blacks had little power to protest their characterizations although many tried whites could parody them but they could parody no one but [Music] [Applause] themselves [Music] eventually african americans formed their own menstrual companies billing themselves as real negro delineators [Applause] whites couldn't compete with their authenticity and often their talent so they turned their own mystical shows into vaudeville but blackface characterizations were still an essential part of the act [Music] [Applause] at the same time african americans were being lynched by the hundreds and shunned by mainstream society they were the subjects of the most popular music of the time so-called [ __ ] songs that like minstrel shows depicted black life is free careless and non-threatening to anyone [Applause] whites were led to believe that this young man's sole desire was to sing and dance for them [Music] if i saw a black face performer at that time i guess i was in my early teens i didn't think anything of it because it was the time that i was living it was the late 20s i can look back now i dislike having to say this but i realized my mother and father were bigots but i think everybody everybody in chicago were bigots [Music] on a summer evening [Music] [Applause] white ward billions maintained that white fantasy begun during menstrual times that separate but equal was okay with mammy and that blacks were simple happy creatures who loved to entertain and had lots of time to do it with just a little cotton picking here and there between fish fries and steamboat arrivals [Music] the myth lasted a very long time as topsy and eva vaudeville's duncan sisters were still working it in 1960 the duncans were the last minstrels real african americans were forced to go along with the myth by wearing ridiculous or stereotype clothing on stage and only playing versions of [ __ ] or zip [ __ ] because [ __ ] was the willing retainer he was that slave who who would sing songs like carry me back to o virginia on the other hand zip [ __ ] then becomes an aggressive black man who's still ignorant but is pretentious black performers almost always had to be in a racial context eunice wilson sings a fine number that has nothing to do with fruits and vegetables so why does he have to do it in front of giant watermelons [Music] i won't give up because i'm [Music] i remember once i had added a wonderful song called shoe shine boy worked for my repertoire and it was a perfect song for a kid of 12 13 to sing and i sang this song i didn't arrangement up with an orchestra and i so forth and i was booked into the oriental theater in chicago and they had there was a wonderful theater it was a wonderful line of chorus girls and a great choreographer and producer and so forth and when she heard about the colored boy coming to work at the theater her mind began to click apparently and when i got there she had a whole big production number about shoeshine boy and of course i was in it and i had to give up my nice arrangement and then perform in her production which included running up and down the chorus girls in front of them with a shoe shine cloth and shining their shoes and my nice white tail suit had been tossed aside and i was wearing some kind of stylized version of tatters and rags that was my final week in vaudeville now remember as a kid you know you know hold on there now now sapphire done told me that you owes me a nickel and i used to go like why do you talk like you know look to my mother why they talk like that the white performers who did menstrual c um did not really do black comedy at all i mean the jokes had nothing to do with blacks whatsoever they were basically gags that were taken and they were of um show business origin they were riddles and gags taken from the northern stage when blacks came in you had the emergence of an authentic form of black entertainment although they still veiled it with the stereotypes that have been set up by the white performers the the definition for acting is to do all of this is an act lyndon reed is an african american who played in both all white and all black vaudeville i told you why they put on cork not to be black but to get the expressions from the face when you put on cork and white lips you can move your lips around and everybody can see them moving around and that's a laugh and i think anything that you can do to get a laugh should be in show business show business is show business and i think that burnt cork for a lot of those vaudevillians was a mass so that when they came off stage they could disappear into the crowd and nobody would know who they were almost all the black comedians before 1950 wore blackface even for black audiences in the beginning they had to yeah let me tell you about that bull of my father you see right someone or two like the great comedian dewey pig beat markham five o'clock and that bull is so fast and so smart every afternoon about five o'clock he goes way up to the farther that pasture and race that train five and a half miles oh yeah would you believe it that bull beat that train by half a mile no took off his cork he lost the edge that he had in laughter i said pigment what's happening i said the bit is going he said i don't know i can't express myself anymore he said they made me take off the cork and the cork was not to prove that i was black they knew i was black he said but i negro that's what he said but i just lost the edge i can't feel like i felt when i had the cork on and he was broken hearted till the end pig meat was broken hard to tell the end that he had to take off cork pig meat markham was one of the last american performers to take off the mask his fans were surprised to discover that his face was darker than his makeup he had been lightening up not blacking up for 40 years in mainstream vaudeville only one black act was allowed per show if that but black performers did have a place to work and learn their craft the tobacco [Music] the toba circuit consisted of a whole black theater circuit consisting starting with chicago grand theater to st louis to kansas city to tulsa to oklahoma city i get excited just thinking about you know realize this has been 70 years ago since i did these dates on the toba circuit monologist bombs maybelline developed a routine to span six decades they fired me of course when they fired me when i lose my job i lose my man that is such a god well kind of oh you know that don't get me wrong and ain't no disgrace to be old but john if it ain't inconvenient i didn't think that much about it knock me out [Music] i love the dance at least i used to love them am i blue [Music] am i blue there was a lot for artists to be blue about working together an acronym that stood for theater owners booking association but for performers it always meant tough on black asses white orders bad theaters hardly any pay and mostly in the south [Music] [Applause] [Music] they call up and say bailey we got a [ __ ] here says he's yours his name is so-and-so and bailey would say yeah that's one of my [ __ ] he's at the theater let him alone and they would let him go you could not walk the street after dark in the south ladies i like it this time phone just rang this one here didn't you hear it oh no i didn't hello honor this guy yes mr e's office mr reed yes for you let's be from we got to make him think your big time always have a secretary leonard reed and willie bryant became stars at the apollo in new york like the toba theaters a place where african american performers could work before their peers to find their own voices in their own communities but to become national stars they had to deal with the white world and that was really easy as a young black performer i was not allowed to stay in many of the hotels where i worked i think that's to people who are young today unimaginable but it's quite true we never saw them at the same hotel we stayed at and they tried to keep this from the kids but i knew as a kid that the black people and the ethnic people had to go miles away out of the way to to get to a boarding house or get to a place that would serve them food if it was a white you know bill the white audiences white people on this stage and everything they would want us to stay in a black hotel you know but uh and that's another thing where my brother and i we sort of tried to slip that down too you know and go stand and found him while the other people stayed heaven's feet hey that's mommy yeah yeah man we're open [Music] and a refusal to be stereotyped some performers overcame like the nicholas brothers [Music] imagine we gonna say no if they asked us to blackface and put on [ __ ] thinking no they never did ask us that i mean and in all the years that we've been in show business i think they thought we'd be out of character to do that because they always see us in the tuxedos and the tails with class and grace and how they maybe that's why we never got too many uh parts in movies you know because we wouldn't do we wouldn't do the memory thing you know and stuff like that so yuri blake always wore a dinner jacket on stage he was proud of his music and insisted on showing that pride [Music] of all the vaudeville performers who overcame huge obstacles to achieve success and dignity the first the greatest was bert williams he started out a minstrel in 1893 and by 1910 was the most respected comedian on the american stage bird williams sample character although he himself said it was the same shuffling [ __ ] that was being portrayed by other people was done with such subtlety that he came across as a human being [Applause] [Music] hmm bert williams mesmerized the audience as a matter of fact one of the bits that he did in the 1919 follies was a shoe store and he describes how the shoes are too tight and uh my dad was a straight man he says well uh what size do you wear he says well i wear tens but elevens feel so good i wear twelve he just seemed to relax and everyone knew there was going to be a punchline but he waited and waited and he milked it for all it was worth and then he would say the punchline very calmly and his sense of timing was uh remarkable sat on his uh knees a matter of fact when i was about five years old he was a very nice kindly gentleman and all business in the 1916 film the natural-born gambler bert williams recreated one of his most famous sketches a mime poker game performed alone [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] burt williams was as robert townsend says the jackie robinson of show business not only the first black american to star with an otherwise white cast on broadway but the first black american in our history to be admired and respected by people of all races he died in 1922 only 46 years old he worked himself to death trying to prove something he had already proved decades before many times over [Music] you the most successful board billions no matter what their ethnicity and one reoccurring problem reverend fields had the problem for 60 years you take the knife like this you shook the knife down the oyster's throat their shapes their costumes and their act were instantly recognizable like that you shook the knife down the oyster's throat and cut his teeth out yeah no you don't cut his teeth out you take the oyster out of the overclock he's got over here i wish i had mine i got the ticket you laid oyster down and you get a can and rush the doctor oh no you don't rush it up you get the can full of fear there is no fear in this and i can't do this except this isn't webber and fields it's two other guys they call themselves impressionists or impersonators but the impersonated call them thieves hey what is that you got to have wait that's a newspaper i thought it was wrapping paper that's the evening news it feels like a post you father accused not only did he accuse people of imitating him there were people's names we couldn't mention in the house and danny k we couldn't talk about and we couldn't talk about burrell why not take all of me composer gerald marks wrote the classic all of me and sold it to singer bell baker all of me became associated exclusively with belle baker and irving berlin i got used to reading in the paper every once in a while that irving berlin wrote all of me the first time it makes you mad but then you get used to it and then when i'd occasionally run into berlin on broadway every single time he saw me said hey how do you like the way my song is doing [Music] by 1932 henry ford's motor company had turned out 186 million vehicles i don't want to wake up charlie temple the greatest of all kid acts made her first movie in 1932. now was the time to fight to fight for the best interest of our city fiorello laguardia tried to outlaw burlesque and there was only one all vaudeville theater left in america the palace the palace was open in new york we had a a contract to go in there and it's supposed to be a high epitome of everything to go away to the palace not to us to us we wouldn't work in harlem right anywhere so we had the contract the damn theater closed [Music] after more than a decade in bad health vaudeville was circling the drain to too many people it looked like this tired old routines performed in big empty theaters by tired old men times had changed and vaudeville hadn't changes the law of life and you have to adapt to different circumstances and if you don't change you die we were cowards vote billions were a bunch of cowards we were afraid to try some new material i worked the million dollar circuit for a little while i was at the close of i think i closed vaudeville i was the end of it because it was just a dance act and dance acts that's what happened to vaudeville you started losing the novelty acts and you started getting too many singers too many dancers just too many it became boring [Applause] if you had a great act and you were booked across the circuit they didn't want you to change your act that's what they booked that's what they wanted it got so with many of the acts that the audience knew the act as well as the fellow performing that is what finally killed vaudeville because we would play the same theater year after year year after year with exactly the same act and every vote villain was the same way audiences found other places to go exciting new places that were still convenient and cheap and they didn't have to give up vaudeville they buy an act and put them on a two reel and it was so sad because if it was a dumb act you know an act that didn't speak or sing but it was an act it did novelty things once they did that on film there was no place to go anyway the film went you didn't that was starvation all right everybody quiet please after the belt [Music] i fell in love [Music] the 1926 film demonstrating sound production techniques is also an opportunity to watch ward villains whit and bird give away their act it was a good act and nice to have it saved forever on film but nobody ever heard of wittenberg again [Music] some vaudeville theaters became cinemas with live acts between features vaudeville drew the crowds originally but eventually the vaudevillians were called coolers because their job was to fill the time it took the projectors to cool snow white and some doors is only about like an hour and 20 minutes or now 25 minutes long so every time the show the movie ended we have to do a show and that's where i third day i was exhausted i collapsed and they carried me off to the hospital but that is how i became a choreographer i played eight shows a day when i played the prayer mountain new york we do a show a movie a show a movie and in those days i can't understand some of these people who think that one show a night is too much work for them movies were bad for vaudeville but in some ways radio was worse it came directly to people in their homes you could attend in your underwear if you wanted to and in 1932 when almost a quarter of the audience was unemployed radio was all free people stayed home [Applause] and we wanted to hear it we would cluster around a radio backstage bands had always been in vaudeville but when radio made them famous they took over the whole show with live acts thrown in between sets but only a few for the majority of what vegans the handwriting was on the screen first the big screen and then the little one [Music] i know when milton berle first started to do his tuesday night show and say we were working one of the theaters in town you could shoot a cannon up the aisle there nobody get hurt and acts on the bill saying well we bought a restaurant are we going into the hotel business or we're gonna open a saloon or something or anything and people scrambling to save their lives and save themselves with dignity [Music] artists look everywhere for work state fairs [Applause] nightclubs and resorts like new york's catskills where pros like leo fuchs and yetta swirling could still do their stuff [Music] vaudeville had always been a major american export and that increased australian headliners like the contortionist napier and yvonne found themselves sharing the bill with american performers who couldn't find work back home [Applause] but the majority of vaudevillians stayed where they were and tried to adapt some were fantastically successful but for every artist who made it elsewhere there were a thousand others who couldn't won't you come and let me rock you in my cradle of love we'll cuddle all the time [Music] [Applause] headliner ruth edding retired voluntarily saying there wasn't much satisfaction singing into a microphone she was the exception [Music] most were like chanteuse racquel miller she was very famous once a genius according to sarah bernhardt but she just disappeared i think that most of the vaudevillians didn't make it they didn't know what was required i think that most of them got lost i never could make it in television because i could not remember vaudevillians were so used to what they were doing that you threw something new with them they'd get lost only a few from vaudeville actually ever made it in television and movies a handful that's about it they finally got in the interview a 20th century fox for a movie and talked to the casting guy not long because she said hey i saw you at the palace last week if we ever get a pot in a picture where a guy throws stuff around the stage we're gonna call you now it took me 20 years to get over that i figured ah these guys can't be that dumb they are artists of color discovered that the new media were less welcoming than vaudeville for the dance team toy and wing there was no place to go not many films not much television i've had white people say that to me like if you were white failed think of the things that that that could have happened to you doing the things that you do and being white 20th century fox should have starred us in movies but because of the color of my skin they didn't do it and they knew how great we were if there hadn't been a two white bam right away mother didn't think vaudeville was over mother thought vaudeville would come back she always thought that wherever she is she probably still does [Music] vaudeville died but it's always had a lively corpse during world war ii both headliners and acts that hadn't worked in decades went out again to entertain the troops [Music] vaudevillians knew how to satisfy people who desperately needed an escape because they had spent their lives learning how vaudeville was the great teacher what do you want to hear what is that the bumblebee you couldn't have stayed home today i mean [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you're still living off the energy of vaudeville if you like bob hope if you like bert lahr if you like the marx brothers if you like wc fields you know if you like buster keaton if you like charlie chaplin well where they went to school in waterville all the black vaudevillians you know made it easier because they broke ground you know like when we you know talk about bert williams because he was the first african american to perform he made it acceptable i mean i think without all these different performers no i wouldn't be here now what i learned in portugal was hit him fast get the laughs which later on paid off because i did the ed sullivan show and sullivan says can you do a minute and a half and i said beautiful right up my alley it's called the rabbit from the chapeau always something new huh you passes over the hat for the old duster passes over the hat inside what happened to the duster watching pretty close aren't you oh i need a sneaky audience a little tiny bunny get ready pete i'm coming down i get you this may come as news but i doubt it no rabbit we were taught our business as there is the best thing i've said we were taught our business it wasn't just the big stars who carried on vaudeville's skills and traditions [Music] for people like virginia mcmath too just another girl singer from independence missouri who learned to craft in vaudeville and picked up a new name along the way ginger rogers [Music] delma white kept her name but like ginger rogers went on to film musical comedy and her own all-girl orchestra [Music] she played one of the pushers in a cult classic reefer madness what do you want bring me some reapers before retiring with her husband female impersonator maurice tony millard to van nuys california [Music] leonard reed became a choreographer teacher and the comic sidekick of heavyweight champion joe lewis june havoc applied her vaudeville experience to a distinguished career on stage and screen television benefited from many vaudevillians like rose marie maury amsterdam and carl valentine the original crazy sitcom character man i could tell you of dozens of guys that are making big bucks today that i inspired when cbs canceled his show in 1972 ed sullivan said vaudeville has died its second death he was talking about format the every few minutes something different rule of vaudeville that television still follows especially in this multi-channel world that turns every viewer with remote control into a vaudeville producer [Applause] when you speak of channel surfing that's interesting the man woman at home creates his her own vaudeville bill they say switching from sports to it suddenly it's dull the guy hit a home run with bases full in the scores one so you switch to comedy act or for that matter to a documentary and so that's the vaudeville act isn't it there's the comic there's the sirius there's the acrobatic it's all there that's a new form still still doing that isn't there a kind of onalistic quality here isn't that kind of a doing it by yourself to yourself five six seven eight two three up you go one two and around and one two three up with the arms channel surfers aren't the only modern do-it-yourself ford villains the medium continues not quite dead because we still want to sing and dance laugh and wonder three four one two three four many of the dances are still being done today the soft shoe for instance even the the buck and wing still become an essential part of choreography in broadway on the broadway stage and they were certainly a part of choreography on the vaudeville stage [Music] every entertainment forum has borrowed from vaudeville professional sports has giveaways ladies [Music] night and take me out to the bowl game written by vaudevillian jack norworth even politics has vought vegan connections now my wife as i said knows i won't write for people unless i know what that what they do i said honey how do you like that this afternoon president johnson called me want me to write some jokes for him he says tell him you don't write for him will you see him work [Music] animated cartoons may be the most vaudeville-esque entertainments we have today so it's not surprising that dirty the dinosaur in 1904 one of the first animated cartoons was created by windsor mckay to use in his vaudeville act [Music] this is a little thing that came to me in the middle of the night the stand-up comedians of vaudeville allen doc rockwell frank fay developed many of the techniques and the jokes still in constant use the title of this poem is a jackie's lament it has something to do with a jockey it's a shame she'll never be fancied again she's putting on weight and she's gone in the feet when she jumped you could see it was a terrible strain she's old and she's fat and she does nothing but eat hey hey frank fay the vaudeville had an easy way a sort of velchmatzy world weary way face swooning faye going away so i always thought of whenever i see william buckley on tv i think frank fay because they both have that same fade away quality okay and now for your amazement some void build connections to contemporary entertainment are obvious gonzo the great will grow a tomato plant whilst playing the 1812 overture on the violin the international super hit muppet show took place in a vaudeville theater this act may not last long in fact it's over one legacy of live variety entertainment has been directly represented by a group of performers sometimes called new vaudevillians [Music] in our cultural memory there is even those of us who too young to have really seen vaudeville there is a cultural almost dreamlike memory of something that occupied this place in people's lives in this force of theatrical energy and it often has to do with a certain look and a certain feel a certain historical style and a certain kind of physical action and if you could touch on that then an audience will be very moved by it and what all these people have learned i can't say it too often is they learn how to corrupt an audience with pleasure and there is no harder or more noble thing in a theatrical profession than to do that you love a business you do it then you get paid for it how can you beat it a combination like that it's just magnificent we loved it what i've given up i don't think i've given up anything because i enjoyed what i was doing i loved it and so did my brother we had a ball one of my proudest stuff i'm proudest of that my brother and i for me get the opportunity to to do what we wanted to do on stage and nothing nothing took that away from us you know we did it all [Applause] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] hmm

Channel: Digital Dance

Views: 161,908

Keywords: vaudeville, history, PBS documentary, entertainment, cabaret, showbizz, showgirls, performers

Id: XHJXt3zyXJY

Length: 115min 30sec (6930 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020