Vaudeville
NAME: Vaudeville.
ACHIEVEMENT(S): The most popular form of popular entertainment for its era.
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
DATE/PLACE OF ESTABLISMENT: 14th October, 1881.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH:
DISCIPLINE: Vaudeville.
FIELD: Theater.
LANGUAGE: English.
FOUNDER: Tony Pastor, ‘the father of Vaudeville’
DESCRIPTION/DETAILS:
Vaudeville, although the name is of French origin, is essentially an American form of variety theater. Replacing the popular beer-hall entertainment of the mid-nineteenth century, Vaudeville was in its heyday from the late 1800s to the early 1930s, when it was squeezed out by radio.
As a form of variety entertainment, Vaudeville was suitable for the whole family, not just the male audiences of the saloon dancing-girl shows. Tony Pastor, the founder of Vaudeville and an entertainer himself, set up his first variety company in 1865 and quickly moved on to run his own theater.
In 1874, he took over the management of the Metropolitan Theater, on Broadway, where, the following year, he first called the entertainment a “Vaudeville.” His shows catered for men wishing to smoke and drink during the show, as well as for women and children in matinee performances.
The term ‘Vaudeville’ originated in 15th century France. Olivier <an originator was> Basselin*, of the Vau de Vire (the Valley of the River Vire in Normandy), wrote a series of satirical drinking songs set to popular tunes.
These songs were known as ‘Vaux-de-Vire.’ By 1764, the term had been corrupted into the word ‘Vaudeville’.
The name was applied to political ballads and gradually came to mean a form of light comedy. After various transitions, the word was used to describe sketches in the Variety theater in Paris and from there was adopted by Pastor.
In the summer of 1881, Pastor moved his stage to the Germania Theater, which he renamed Tony Pastor’s New Fourteenth Street Theater and he opened on the 14th October. The first show featuring comedy, acrobatics, singing and dancing was billed as ‘catering to the ladies and presenting for the amusement of the cultivated and aesthetic Pure Music and Comedy, Burlesque and Farce.’
Tony Pastor’s New Fourteenth Street Theater was the most popular theatrical venue of the decade and gave new direction to Benjamin Franklin Keith, Frederick Francis Proctor and Oscar Hammerstein. All three of them set up their own theatrical ventures and developed Vaudeville.
Performers usually came from poor urban families, many from the Lower East Side of New York. Vaudeville gave them an escape from society’s prejudices, since in the theater, all actors, no matter their origin, sex or religion, were equal. In fact, many of the most successful entertainers were women, Jews and African-Americans. Acts were widely varied, with song, dance and comedy routines, mimers, ventriloquists, trained animals and conjurers.
As well, there were demonstrations of new inventions, eccentrics, female and male impersonators, monologues and even famous criminals telling tales of their past. All that was needed was a good sketch that would hold the audience for seventeen to twenty minutes.
The genre became successful enough to attract some of the great names of European and American theater. These included Sarah <performer was> Bernhardt*, and Buffalo Bill <performer was> Cody*.
In 1932, the Palace Theater Broadway, which had become the home of Vaudeville, closed and the end of Vaudeville was now inevitable. One of the major reasons of its disappearance was the arrival of the motion picture and in many cinemas, which were in fact converted theaters, the films were for a while interspersed with Vaudeville acts.
Other factors that contributed to the decline included increased ticket prices, as Vaudeville tried for ever more lavish and increasingly novel productions and, at the same time, prohibition diverted business to night-clubs, particularly those with entertainment and where alcohol could be bought illicitly.
ASSESSMENT: An American institution, important in its day as ‘the people’s entertainment’.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Vaudeville, 19th-century theater genre
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Slide, Anthony, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut & London, 1994.