Entertainment At Its Peak: Vaudeville - Essay Example

Number Entertainment At Its Peak: Vaudeville Vaudeville is a distinctly American entertainment form. The days of vaudeville really lasted only about 75 years, but it paved the way for modern entertainment. Vaudeville had roots in the ancient tradition of the traveling minstrel show enjoyed by audiences for centuries. Medicine shows, Wild West shows, and circuses all traveled the U.S. before vaudeville took root. Vaudeville was an “institutionalization” of these simpler entertainment forms on a whole new, Americanized level. Theaters became corporate chains, managers controlled acts and assets, and agents sprang up to represent multiple performers to theater managers (Martin). Entertainment in the days before television and movies varied widely in its quality and audience. “Legitimate” theater was typically serious and appealed to elite audiences. Drama and opera were the norms on these stages, and audiences paid good money to attend. Variety stage, also known as vaudeville, was the working class family’s answer to outside entertainment. The late 1800s mark the rise of the “middle class” with money to spend on public entertainment, and a deep desire to escape the workaday world for a few hours. Top vaudeville acts could command $2.50 cents a seat, but with an act or two playing almost any day of the week in any small town in America, vaudeville appealed to the masses who were looking for a lot for their money. Singing, dancing, skits, short plays, and often animal acts were the mainstays of vaudeville. Comedy was the key element in almost all acts. Burlesque shows were popular in this era, too, but tended more toward vulgar comedy, nudity, and striptease. Burlesque was not considered family comedy, and most respectable women would not attend (LOC). House managers decided in the late 1800s that they could more than double their incomes if women and children attended shows. Big venues insisted performers clean up their acts and cut out the racy humor and nudity. Vaudeville became respectable entertainment, with songs, dances, acrobatics, and dramatic sketches for the whole family. Striptease went to the burlesque (Kanfer). Vaudeville Audiences Vaudeville was uniquely personal. The actors were right there, live people on stage in front of a live audience who interacted with performers. “Whoopee cushion humor” (Martin) had its appeal. Vaudeville exploited the American sense of humor in every aspect of the variety show. In its earliest days, vaudeville audiences consisted of immigrants who were looking to escape their dreary days in factories and tenements. The end of the Victorian era was fast approaching, so Americans could lighten up and laugh. Vaudeville introduced America to popular entertainment as big business, and within a few years, the up-and-coming middle class had time and money to spend on such entertainments (Martin). Child acts and family acts appealed to audiences because they could relate to the entertainment under the lights. Traveling acts had to adjust their shows to each night’s venue. Theater managers, of course, had a lot to say about how a performer should do his act, but they adjusted on the fly in response to audience response. Vaudeville performers had to be flexible and have a broad range of styles, jokes, and songs available to them in order to satisfy sometimes fickle audiences. Vaudevillians had to be ready to adjust at a moment’s notice. In fact, the “breadth of vaudeville’s audience and the substance of its entertainment made it the comprehensive entertainment of its time” (DiMeglio 195). Talent was necessary, but flexibility even more important. Audience participation was a must in almost all vaudeville acts. and vaudevillians used audiences to their comedic advantage. Hecklers were common for these traveling entertainers, and it was the astute actor who could turn a heckler into an ally, or turn the tables on a heckler to make the rest of the audience laugh at him. The most important aspect of entertaining these audiences was keeping them laughing until they couldn’t breathe. It’s common today for comedians to call someone up on stage to lend a hand with a magic trick or skit, just as it was in the heyday of vaudeville. Vaudeville is enjoying a revival in modern-day America, with all the charm and appeal of the variety act turned up a few notches. Martin quotes a modern-day vaudevillian as saying, “The audience doesn’t know whether to cry, laugh, or throw up.” This was the aim of all past vaudevillians, too. The famous Marx brothers never let an opportunity to flirt with girls in the audience pass. (The Marx brothers were also known for carrying chorus girls on the handles of their motorcycles when traveling between venues.) Some actors, on their way out of town, would leave a note for the next act with girls’ names and phone numbers, or the location of the town’s red light district (DiMeglio 96). Onstage, the performers stayed as family friendly as their venue demanded, but behind the scenes they made the most of their traveling lifestyles. Making It To the Big Time It wasn’t easy to make a living off vaudeville performances. Audiences were sometimes tough, and house managers tougher still. In vaudeville’s heyday, some 20,000 acts performed across America, and less than two percent made a good living (Kanfer). In little theaters in small towns all over America, vaudeville acts earned $15 a week. Surprisingly, small theater audiences were often the toughest, throwing vegetables and feeling free to heckle any and all comers to the stage. There were often several acts slated to perform for the evening, and even headliners would count themselves lucky if they got to perform uninterrupted. There was sometimes an open stage at the beginning of the evening, and self-promoting acts or locals could try out material. The vaudeville acts doomed to the obscure small-time stage dreamed of bigger things to come. Medium sized theaters in bigger cities paid performers from $75 to a few hundred dollars a week. Once a performer made it to the medium-time, he or she only had to hang on and keep performing well in order to be noticed by big-time theater managers. Having an agent was absolutely necessary to moving up in the world. Audiences were far more receptive to the acts, but still demanded quality entertainment if they were going to pay upwards of $2 for a seat. The pinnacle of vaudeville let performers command over $1,000 a week, in an era when the average Joe brought home $40. These performers were the emperors and divas of entertainment, and audiences followed them with the same rabid fandom we follow Hollywood glitz and glamour today. One opera singer of the era, Fritzi Sheff, carried a vast amount of luggage and an entire entourage, and had her dressing room redecorated before she came to play at a major venue (Kanfer). Some acts used the “small time” to hone their skills on the way to the “big time.” Julius Marx literally invented his character Groucho over the course of years on small stages. Fred Astaire had a vaudeville act with his sister, Adele, and triumphed over being canceled on the small stage. George Burns had a lot of trouble landing a job in his early days, until he finally dumped his dog act in favor of Gracie Allen. Bob Hope, W.C. Fields, and Milton Berle all started their careers on the vaudeville stage, honing their acts nightly in response to audience approval (or disapproval). Lawrence Welk began his career as an un-agented small-timer driving a car that broke down every twelve miles (DiMeglio 90). A True Variety Show Vaudeville provided a bridge between high-brow theater and low-brow burlesque. It formalized and standardized entertainment for the masses. A multi-act evening might consist of trained seals or acrobats for an opening act, followed by kids singing or dancing. Next, a comedy or short one-act play entertained the audience, usually with a “medium-time” headliner. After that, the “eccentric novelty act” brought out a magician or mentalist. Houdini got his start on the vaudeville stage. That was usually the end of part one, and part two of the evening’s entertainment opened with choruses, orchestras, or trained lion-and-tiger acts. The next-to-closing spot was reserved for the real headliners. Then, as the audience was putting on its coats and hats, the finale act sang off-key or juggled badly as people walked out the door (Kanfer). Almost anything was fair game for performers, with close adherence to moral standards, of course. Music was a huge part of vaudeville. Duets were especially popular with audiences, and family acts were big hits. Vaudeville’s music gets its roots in the ancient tradition of the traveling minstrel show enjoyed by audiences for centuries. Between 1915 and 1918, composer Jerome Kern was just making his start with a series of musical comedies known as the “Princess Theater Shows.” After spending some formative years at Piccadilly Circus in London, Kern returned to the United States and began to write songs which were inserted into dozens of Broadway musicals (“legitimate” theater). Oh, Boy!, Oh, Lady! Lady!, and Oh, My Dear! grew out of small vaudeville stage roots and hit the big time on Broadway (Ewan 77-86). If you’ve ever seen the 2002 Hollywood movie Chicago, you may wonder where the producers and writers got the idea for a musical based on the trial of a murderess. There’s a real example in vaudeville. Florence Burns shot her lover, and when she was released on probation, she used her free time to play on the stage of the famous Victoria House. Critics did not love her, but the crowds happily paid their admission fees to catch a glimpse of a woman who got away with murder. Florence was only one of several women who got their fifteen minutes of fame on the vaudeville stage after committing or attempting murder. And the Lights Go Down There’s no doubt at all that vaudeville continues the influence us even today. This distinctly American entertainment is the root of sitcoms, stand-up comedy, and modern movies such as Chicago and Mama Mia. The rise of cinema, with its talking movies and romantic comedies, eclipsed vaudeville eventually. Movies were more profitable because they could reach a greater number of people per dollar spent on production. The once grand theaters that graced almost every small town in America gave way to department stores and moving-picture houses. Vaudeville faded like an aging actress. Even though vaudeville as an entertainment form is enjoying some revival today, it’s not the same as it once was (Martin). Vaudeville superstars and small-timers made the transition from variety show onstage to Hollywood as best they could. As the vaudeville era wound to a close and talking movies took over the hearts of Americans, vaudeville stars found new work in Hollywood (DiMeglio 161). While most vaudeville musical comedies were loose collections of catchy tunes (Ewan 166), as the era moved away and movies came to the forefront, the musical comedy matured into plot-driven features carried along by the singing and dancing. These movies were churned out by the hundreds and needed big, talented casts to carry them. It wasn’t only the headliners who were sought after by Hollywood studios; chorus lines and supporting roles needed filling, too. Vaudevillians, always on the hunt for the best-paying venue, simply settled in Hollywood and worked in the movies instead of traveling from small town to small town in search of audiences willing to give them a few minutes of their time. It was the end of an era, but the beginning of a new way for Americans to seek entertainment. Author’s Note: While he never became a big star himself, I also learned that one of my ancestors regularly performed on the Vaudeville stage. A great-grandfather entertained audiences with his saxophone, jokes and a lady assistant who provided visual context to the noises he made on the instrument. Works Cited DiMeglio, John. Vaudeville U.S.A. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University, 1973. Easton, Rick. 2002. “Vaudeville! A Dazzling Display of Heterogeneous Splendor.” University of Virginia. 5 Nov. 2008 . Ewen, David. The Story of America’s Musical Theater. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1968. Guthrie, Tyrone. In Various Directions. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Kanfer, Stefan. “Vaudeville’s Brief, Shining Moment.” City Journal, Spring 2005. The Manhattan Institute. 5 Nov. 2008 . Library of Congress. “The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920.” Oct. 1996. 5 Nov. 2008 . Martin, Douglas. November 24, 2002. “Old-Time Vaudeville Looks Young Again.” New York Times. 5 Nov, 2008. . Read More