Vaudeville
What is Vaudeville?
By Merriam-Webster dictionary definition:
1. a light often comic theatrical piece frequently combining pantomime, dialogue, dancing, and song.
2. stage entertainment consisting of various acts (such as performing animals, comedians, or singers).
The Rise of Vaudeville
Vaudeville descended from variety which occurred on the Lyceum circuit from the 1830s to the 1870s. The variety style gave vaudeville its mixed act structure and Lyceum set the touring precedent.
Tony Pastor, a ballad and minstrel singer, is credited both with giving the first vaudeville performance and with making it respectable. In 1881 he established a theatre in New York City dedicated to the “straight, clean variety show.” Unlike the variety style, vaudeville became family fun, appropriate for all ages and affordable for the middle class.
E.F. Albee and Martin Beck opened a successful Vaudeville house in Boston that would eventually support Albee’s ascent to the ultimate vaudeville manager, casting most of the vaudeville circuit himself. Every vaudeville performer wanted to be on Albee’s good side because he was the ticket to get them into The Palace Theatre in New York City. Today it is a Broadway house most recently home to SpongeBob SquarePants, but back in the early 20th century, The Palace Theatre was the peak of vaudeville.
Fun Fact: Daisy and Violet Hilton, the conjoined twins that inspired the musical Side Show, were Vaudeville performers in the 1920s.
“Only a vaudevillian who has trod its stage can really tell you about it ... only a performer can describe the anxieties, the joys, the anticipation, and the exultation of a week's engagement at the Palace. The walk through the iron gate on 47th Street through the courtyard to the stage door, was the cum laude walk to a show business diploma. A feeling of ecstasy came with the knowledge that this was the Palace, the epitome of the more than 15,000 vaudeville theaters in America, and the realization that you have been selected to play it. Of all the thousands upon thousands of vaudeville performers in the business, you are there. This was a dream fulfilled; this was the pinnacle of Variety success.” - Performer Jack Haley
Stars Who Started in Vaudeville
The Orpheum Circuit
The Orpheum Circuit was established by Martin Beck in the late 1890s in California. By the 1910s the Vaudeville chain system was firmly established across the US. The Orpheum Circuit was only one of a few Vaudeville touring circuits, but it was certainly the largest, stretching from Chicago to California and occupying 45 theaters in 36 cities. There are less than 20 Orpheum theaters still functioning today mostly as movie theaters. If you went to KCACTF in Madison, Wisconsin you may have noticed the huge sign for the Orpheum theatre. Yes, that theatre used to house Vaudeville acts in the 1920s. The closest still functioning Orpheum theatre to Muncie is in Galesburg, Illinois.
The Decline of Vaudeville
“This is it. Nothing better is every going to turn up for us. There’s no place left for us to work anymore, Mother. There is no more vaudeville. It doesn’t exist anymore.” -Louise Hovick the night she became Gypsy Rose Lee
To step onto a burlesque stage was professional suicide for a Vaudeville performer, but by the late 1920s, there was very little Vaudeville left to go back to. The movie industry took off in the 1920s with the rise of the "movie star" and with it came the decline of Vaudeville. When sound came into the movies in the 1930s there was no use for theatre for the everyman. The everyman wanted movies now.
The Great Depression (1929-1939) smothered the last gleaming embers of Vaudeville. Vaudeville was designed for a middle-class family audience. Middle-class families didn't have money to spend on trivial entertainment anymore. There was no longer an audience for Vaudeville. Many Vaudeville stars just disappeared, but some found their way into film, television, radio, or as Louise did, into Burlesque.