A Brief History of Vaudeville

Vaudeville flourished from the late 19th century into the Depression era. It was one of America's most famous forms of entertainment at the time. Tune in as Katie and Sarah take a look at this family-friendly variety show from America's bygone days.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Fara Down And today's podcast
brings together too unlikely bed fellows Josephine Baker and Harry Houdini.

(00:23):
And that's because we're going to give you a brief
history of vaudeville, which flourished from the eighteen nineties to
the nineteen thirties. And it all started with variety shows
in the eighteen fifties and sixties. These were geared toward
men and well, you know, let's think of today's buddy comedies.
They're not generally known for being particularly high brow. You

(00:44):
might describe them as vulgar or obscene. But we also
have genres like burlesque and circuses, dine museums, medicine shows,
and wild West shows, and all of these kind of
come together along with European musical tradition, minstrel shows, and
Yiddish theater. Vaudeville takes all of it, except of course
for the burlesque, mixes it up, makes it family friendly

(01:08):
and puts it on stage so the wife and kids
could come. Now, along with the guy opening up all
sorts of profits for the men who ran the business.
And there's a fantastic notice to performers described by Edwin Royal,
who was a vaudevillian. I keep trying really hard not
to say vaudevillain. I'll keep trying in Scribner's in and

(01:30):
here it is. You are hereby warrned that your act
must be free from all vulgarity and suggestiveness in words, action,
and costume while playing in any of Mr Blank's houses,
and all vulgar, double meaning and profane words and songs
must be cut out of your act before the first performance.
If you are in doubt as to what is right

(01:50):
or wrong, submitted to the resident manager at rehearsal such
words as liars, slob, son of a gun, devil, sucker, damn,
and all other words unfit for the ears of ladies
and children. Also, any reference to questionable streets, resorts, localities,
and bar rooms are prohibited under fine of instant discharge.

(02:12):
Well son of a gun, Katy, let's get going, sir,
that that's inappropriate. So the man who many consider the
father of vaudeville, Tony Pastor, staged the first popular show
of this kind in one in New York, and there's
no liquor, of course, and he might even give you
a ham if you come for the show, or some coal,
so immediately family friendly. Yeah, I would be more inclined

(02:35):
to go to a show of someone giving me a ham.
There's an awesome website that's designed by Rick Easton of
uv A, which you can easily find if you type
vaudeville into Google. He's one of the first results. Um
and he says that the guy we should be talking
about as the father of vaudeville is Benjamin Franklin Keith,
who started off his career with a museum featuring Baby

(02:55):
Alice the Midget Wonder, but ended up being the man
who really understood his American audience. You know, they wanted
high and low. Yeah, they like this crazy circus stuff,
but they also want real respected actors, somebody who they
could maybe tell their friends, Oh, I'm going to see
you know Mrs so and so the respected actor, and
they get to see some strong men's stuff on the side,

(03:18):
So like Snooky and Meryl Streep on the same stage.
As I explained it to Sarah earlier, this brought in
the respectable crowd, which one over Boston's Catholic Church, which
was very much in control of the city, so don't
underestimate their power. And they supported him because they wanted
more of this clean entertainment rather than people going to saloon,
family friendly stuff. Get the guys taking their wife and

(03:40):
kids out to a vaudeville show instead of hanging out
at the bar. So what is a vaudeville show. It's
a dozen or so acts, none as longer than thirty minutes.
And we've got all kinds of performers, magicians, strong men, acrobats, comedians, dancers, singers, jugglers,
trained animals. And you know how much we love airs, monologuists, impressionists,

(04:02):
actors performing one acts, contortionists. Honestly, it sounds really fantastic.
I'd like to go to one. But what is it
like if you're if you're one of these people, if
you're a strong man or a contortionist or a dancer,
and it's it's a hard life. You're basically singing for
your supper. It was hard to break into show business
then as it is now, and you show up for
an open call, you do your best to try to

(04:24):
stand out um auditioning for this impassive judge, and then
you either make it or you don't, and it's a
lot more likely that you don't make it. And maybe,
if you're lucky, you have some sort of gimmick that
makes you stand out, say seven chap dancing kids, and
then you get your chance on stage, and if the
audience likes you, you're in. They might book you again,

(04:45):
and if they don't, you're starting again. The cane off
or whistle from the wings and the experience as an actor.
According to Mr Royal, you're saying it might be a
little embarrassing for a respected actor to get on stage
with circus freak, but uh, the money might win you over.
You could sell your integrity for a little bit of up.
It was also steady work. It was nice to be

(05:08):
part of a company who arranged all your touring schedules
for you and your care the logistic, Yeah, it took
care of the business of traveling around the country performing
at all these different theaters. You were essentially looked after,
and you had a steady salary on the way, or
at least a fairly steady salary. And we're also talking
earlier about advertising, because of course you couldn't list twenty

(05:30):
people on the bill who were performing, no one would
even look at it. So you've got to pick a star,
someone with name recognition, someone who's gimmicky and cool enough
for people to want to come in um, someone like
the gorgeous Lilian Russell perhaps, and that made that person
the headliner on the posters, and fame followed if you
were lucky and a darn goood salary. But many stars

(05:53):
who we think of from later genres actually started off
as fond billions. Fred A Stare, for example, starts at
age seven, and it wasn't unusual for people to start
that young, and it was very common for families to
be on stage together. Whatever I think of performing families,
the first to come to mind is always the Flying
Wallenda's I think just because I like their name, stand
out name. But there were a lot more than that.

(06:16):
The Seven Little Boys were these seven top dancing kids
of Eddie Foy Senior. Apparently I think my family missed
out on a big opportunity because there's are six of
us and none of us. Not too late, Katie sign
them all up for topping maybe sometime soon. Some better
known stars were the Three Stooges. Well, I guess only
two of them were brothers, but we're going to count

(06:37):
them and the Marx Brothers even if Gummo and Zeppo
didn't really work out, and the comedians like the three
stooges of the Marx Brothers are really big hits. Even
though it's with all these rules, you know, no um,
no slob, no damn non a gun um, it seems
like it would probably be really really hard for them
to make clean jokes. We can't have a Richard Prior

(06:59):
on stand and I don't think the aristocrats really would
have played there. And Royal had a good quote about
that too. He said, from the artist who balances a
set of parlor furniture on his nose to the academic baboon,
there was one concentrated, strenuous struggle for a laugh. No
artist can afford to do without it. It hangs like
a solemn and awful obligation over everything. So consequently, because

(07:22):
we can't have sexual jokes, we end up with a
lot of race based jokes and including the use of
black face like we mentioned, and many acts are done
by two comedians who sort of play up comedic stereotypes.
The Jewish boy, the fat boy. You know, they assume
a role and run with it and insult to one another,

(07:43):
and just as many comedians then stole each other's jokes
as they do now. It was fairly notorious pitfall in
the business. But there were a lot of other people
who got their start in vaudeville UM, including the father
of modern bodybuilding, strongman Eugene Sandow, caustic comedian W. C. Fields,
the adored cowboy comedian which the title I enjoy, Will

(08:06):
Rogers Um, Lillian Russell, like we mentioned our entertainment star
Al Jolson, singer Bessie Smith, and Houdini. Of course, of
course he's already talked about. Even though vaudeville was not UM.
It was not the right Milia, No, it wasn't. It
didn't highlight his type of skills. He was up there
doing card tricks and and that's not what pain. That

(08:26):
was before he understood showmanship. We've also got one of
my personal favorites, Sophie Tucker, who was known as the
last of the Red Hot Mama's and she started singing
at the kosh Er Diner her family owned. She was
actually forced to perform in black face when she started
on Vaudeville. The oft repeated story is that her producer
thought she was too fat and too ugly to be

(08:47):
on stage without it, and when she lost her makeup
at a gig, she appeared on stage without it, told
the audience that before then she had been forced to
perform in it, and people loved her. Yeah, we've also
got The gold Bergs, which is notable because it becomes
not only a huge radio success after Vaudeville meets its end,

(09:08):
but the first major American sitcom and the one that
sort of defines the sitcom genre. I also really love
Eva Tanguay. I might be saying her name completely wrong,
and there's a fantastic article about her by Jody Rosen
on Slate called Vanishing Act in search of Eva Tanguay,
the First rock Star, which you should definitely read. But

(09:30):
the list of famous vaudevilliams is way too big to
tackle in one podcast, So I think we're going to
do follow up about some of our favorites, and we'd
also like to know about some of your favorite old
movie stars for a future podcasts, So write to us
at History podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
see if they make the cut. So We've talked about

(09:51):
the performers a lot now about vaudeville, but talking about
the business, it's a really, really big business. I mean,
this is before this, before Hollywood, this is four TV.
We have more than twenty five thousand performers in theaters
in every community. This is the big entertainment for the country.
And most vaudeville theaters were part of a circuit, which

(10:13):
meant that one guy controlled a whole chain of theaters.
The big ones where the United Booking Office and the
Orpheum circuit. The United Booking Office had four hundred theaters,
just to give you an idea of the scale of this,
and this is why the companies are able to travel.
And this is the benefit that comes from being in
a vaudeville troupe, that you go to the four hundred

(10:33):
theaters and everything's already worked out for you. Some of
these theaters opened at breakfast and stayed open until quite
late at night. Um that way they could give a
few performances in one day, four or five. And if
you owned a circuit, you could get tens of thousands
of people in and out if you could sell out
the house, and the biggest house of them all was
the Palace Theater in New York City, and it was

(10:55):
a huge deal to headline here. I mean you could
compare it to maybe Math and Square Garden. Today we're
bigger than that, I'm not sure. And the big men
of the business where the afore mentioned Mr Keith and
his partner Edward F. Albi, yes, the father of the playwright,
and their partnership in eight five pretty much gave them
a monopoly. Albie got his start in the circus and

(11:18):
became basically a Vaudeville dictator. And Martin Beck was another
biggie here. We've brought him up before in our Houdini podcast.
But he builds the Palace and he heads the Orophum
circuit Um and another one you've probably heard of, the
William Morris Agency. Mr Morris himself wages this battle against
Albion Keith to break up their monopoly. But Vaudeville, of course,

(11:43):
didn't last. And while the video may have killed the
radio star, the radio and the talkies killed Vaudeville. So
vaudeville shows had begun screening little bits of movies, but
before long the actual vaudeville acts were sidelined in favor
of the film. So it was the movie that was
starring with some vaudeville acts on the side. And soon
people abandon vaudeville altogether for radio and movies. The Great

(12:05):
Depression didn't help um and the New York Palace shut
down in ninety four. That was the last big house
that was left. They didn't know what they were doing.
If they saw TV today, they might have changed their minds.
But a lot of really huge film stars got their
start in vaudeville. It was sort of a place to
get some experience, make your presence know and maybe make

(12:27):
a name. And well, when it was so cutthroat, if
you were going to make it on vaudeville, you'd be
able to make it make it in Hollywood. So we'll
end with another note from vaudeville management. Gentlemen will kindly
avoid the stamping of feet and pounding of canes on
the floor, and greatly oblige the management. All applause is
best shown by clapping of hands. Please don't talk during acts,

(12:50):
as that annoys those about you and prevents a perfect
hearing of the entertainment. So I think Verizon would be
sponsoring this today or something we'd like to amend it
so you can't take out your iPhone or BlackBerry and
check your emails and texts. Uh. Consider that a public
service announcement from the girls of stuff you missed in
history class. And that brings us to today's listener mail.

(13:17):
So this email is from jose who is writing us
about our Nelly Bligh podcast and her stunt in the
Insane Asylum. He writes, the building is now called the Octagon.
This building was renovated not too long ago, and many
of the residents say that they sometimes feel people following
them where they can hear footsteps and things of that nature.
And he goes on after this to write that I

(13:39):
was walking to the lobby one day late at night
and I felt a rush of wind on my face. Creepy.
But as a side note, he writes that the building
is totally green now is the first lead certified residential
building in New York City, and it has the largest
array of solar panels in New York City. So what
an about face for this this disturbing building? And if

(14:00):
you have something cool you'd like to tell us, you
can email us at History Podcast at how stuff works
dot com. We've also got a Twitter at Missed in History,
you should come and follow us and if you'd like
to read more about one of the famous people we mentioned,
we talk about Eugene Sandow and our ten Biggest Bodybuilders article,
which you can find if you search on our homepage

(14:20):
at www dot how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff works dot com and be sure to check out
the stuff you missed in History class blogged on the
how stuff works dot com point page