Before Hollywood: The History of Vaudeville

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Welcome to Civics and Coffee, a history podcast. The show all about United States history, delivered to you and the time it takes to enjoy your morning cup of coffee. I'm your host, Alicia, a historian trained in United States history with a passion for telling both the known and unknown parts of America's past. So grab your coffee and get ready for some bite-sized history. Hey everyone, welcome back. On February 28, 1883, former carnival barker Benjamin Franklin Keith opened a theater on Washington Street in Boston, initially called the Gaiety Museum, for a small entry fee of just ten cents that curious patrons could peek inside to find such exotic exhibits as a quote unquote captured mermaid or a tattooed man. On the second floor of the museum, however, guests would find a completely different set of entertainment. Singers, dancers, even animal acts. It was a variety show that wasn't the seedy and toddry business that the nightly burlesque performances were known for, nor was it the overly sophisticated operas frequented by the upper class. These acts, a mishmash of chaos that was made for the masses, eventually became known as vaudeville. Most popular in the decades after the Civil War, Vaudeville was an influential, accessible variety show enjoyed by millions of Americans. It represented a distinctly American culture and became the first form of truly mass entertainment. Its influence and impacts helped lay the foundation for music, television, and cinema, and transformed our relationship with performers, creating the foundation for our modern celebrity culture. Yet as quickly as it peaked, vaudeville disappeared, swallowed up by the next best thing, the movie picture. So this week I am diving into the history of vaudeville. How did it get started? How did it change American entertainment? And what was its impact on the culture? Grab your cup of coffee, peeps. Let's do this. Vaudeville was a quintessential American form of entertainment in that it drew from a multitude of sources. Even the name vaudeville has French ancestry, representing the diverse landscape in which it evolved. According to Arizona State University's American vaudeville collection, the earliest vaudeville type performance dates back to as early as 1819 and was brought to American shores by a French troop of entertainers. It usually consisted of a collection of unrelated acts strung together in a single performance, with or without an intermission, and included everything from dancers to acrobats and musicians to magicians. Performances continued throughout the 1860s and 1870s, but they were mostly tailored to male audiences, and were thus limited to concert saloons, a place known for drinking and carousing. In his analysis on the legacy of vaudeville, historian David Menod explains that some cities also offered family-friendly venues where variety shows could be enjoyed, and that these were often lumped together in the same areas as concert saloons to create the earliest, crudest versions of theater districts. So while vaudeville existed prior to the war, the entertainment medium really gained momentum in the 1880s, and that was thanks to a gentleman by the name of Tony Pastore. Known as the quote-unquote father of polite vaudeville, he was the first to recognize the economic potential in establishing a venue where folks could take their families for entertainment. Pastor was an Irish American who got his start in the nascent show business industry, doing performances in blackface minstrel shows, working as a comic singer, acrobat, and clown, among other acts. He learned the ropes working for P.T. Barnum as part of his early work in quote-unquote museums. These museums, otherwise known as dime museums, were basically the early versions of the freak show, and were part of the more uncouth forms of entertainment, like circus acts or wild, wild west shows. In 1865, Pasteur moved away from performing and into management, just as variety shows were starting to move out of concert saloons, which were, again, associated with heavy drinking and smoking. And thus in 1881, Pastor opened the first family-friendly entertainment venue in New York City. His theater, located on 14th Street, did not allow smoking or drinking, which meant that it was a place that welcomed women and children. Pasteur's decision started a trend, and eventually theaters throughout the Northeast followed suit. This includes in 1883 when Benjamin Franklin Keith opened his museum, Turned Theater, in Boston. This new form of quote-unquote polite vaudeville spread across the country to places like San Francisco, where men like Gustav Walter were all taking advantage of the opportunity to win over new audiences. Theater owners did their best to accommodate women's delicate sensibilities, but that does not mean it translated to actual ticket sales. Like most things with vaudeville, female audience levels varied depending on location, and true statistical data is hard to gauge as there's limited demographic information available. Vaudeville performances were also adaptable, offering performances in languages other than English when the situation demanded it. Again, this varied depending on location and need, and mainly occurred in cities and areas where there was a concentration of immigrants. From what I could gather, a good portion of these shows included performers who spoke Hebrew and included programs that were translated. Now, this is not to suggest that shows were racially sensitive or otherwise inclusive. In fact, where vaudeville included other race representations in their performances, they were often highly stereotyped, if not outright racist portrayals. Some performances included minstrel shows, where performers would don blackface, usually by using burned cork to darken their skin, and play into stereotypes about black Americans. Others incorporated indigenous performers who, after running away from boarding schools, turned to vaudeville as a way to freedom and independence, only to be forced to participate in a cliched version of what audience members believed about members of indigenous communities. So while it could be argued that vaudeville theater owners took steps to make their spaces a bit more welcome for women, children, and immigrants, there were still significant racial shortcomings permeating performances. And theater owners still had the shadow of Jim Crow to deal with, and he loomed large over the industry. There were some who feared that admitting black patrons risked losing white dollars, since the idea of commingling audiences was completely unacceptable to many. Throughout the South, theaters set up segregated seating, while other theaters simply refused to seat black patrons altogether. As a result, a small cropping of separate vaudeville theaters emerged throughout the country, in both the North and the South, geared for black Americans. While they never reached the same height as other vaudeville theaters, there were enough to be recognized. There were five quote unquote colored vaudeville theaters in Memphis alone, with cities such as Chicago, New York, and Indianapolis all opening separate black patron-only theaters. None of these, of course, were owned by black Americans. That would be simply too much to ask. So what exactly made vaudeville such an attractive form of entertainment for the average American? First, accessibility. Vaudeville shows were available for cheap prices, with entrance fees offered as low as 10 cents for adults and five cents for children. And they were offered on a flexible schedule. Shows were frequent, meaning patrons did not have to worry about missing out. Some theater owners took this idea to the extreme. In 1885, Benjamin Franklin Keith, the gentleman who opened the family-friendly vaudeville theater in Boston, introduced the idea of continuous vaudeville, whereby performances ran on a nonstop loop. This understandably took a toll on entertainers who had to be ready to perform four times in a 24-hour period. To prevent boredom, theater owners also made sure to switch out the show, sometimes on a weekly basis. As historian David Madod explains, vaudeville was successful in part because it, quote, sold entertainment as a way of relieving stress, in part through relaxation, but also by improving one's mood, end quote. Vaudeville was the first form of entertainment where people could gather and just have fun. It was not a special event like attending the opera, nor was it something low class. Prices were kept low to make vaudeville convenient, and thus hopefully an attractive option for people to spend their precious leisure time. Theater owners endeavored to make their locations attractive places for patrons to be. Theaters tended to have upholstered seats, which was a marked departure from the hard wooden chairs that were popular in concert saloons. Proprietors also looked for creative ways to make their establishments a bit more stylish. In 1883, Rudolf Aronson opened the Casino Theater, the first rooftop theater in New York City. Inspiration came when Aronson noticed a significant decrease in attendance during the summer months, the result of a bad combination of high temperatures and poor ventilation in the old theater building. He decided to move his venue to the roof, where he could also take advantage of a loophole in the state's liquor law, which prohibited alcohol sales inside the theater, but allowed sales outside. His theater turned out to be a massive success and prompted a series of copycats, including Madison Square Garden, who built an amphitheater on its roof in 1890. But the real draw in vaudeville came from the performers on stage. As David Minod asserts, vaudeville was the quote, birthplace of the modern celebrity performer, end quote. Minod goes on to explain, quote, vaudeville celebrities were products of a culture that prized self-made wealth at a time when wealth was still associated with merit-based achievement, and this influenced the creation of celebrity, end quote. The origins of the vaudeville celebrity can be found partially in print media as advertisers began shifting more attention toward women. What we would call a star profile in modern language was classified as a type of coverage geared for women and was something advertisers were increasingly interested in supporting as they were eager to attract women toward their products. Thus, vaudeville performer backstories were frequently included in printed media for distribution, creating a false sense of familiarity between patron and entertainer. Vaudeville performer profiles were touted as everyday Americans who just happened to have incredible talent and the right personality to reach the heights of fame. Their backstories were almost always a work of at least partial fiction drafted by press agents who were focused on ensuring people bought tickets to their next performance. Journalists who covered these performers either lacked the resources or the desire to do much digging to verify the veracity of the stories they were given, usually just happy to have something they could print. Press agents were happy, of course, as this allowed them to control the narrative. The early version of the press release eventually became so fantastical that even the press wasn't buying it anymore, prompting performers to sit for interviews. Yet even these interviews seemed to have stunning similarities, with a not insignificant number of performers emphasizing the rags to riches part of their story. Performers were also vocal about their salaries, boasting about receiving payments of up to $3,500 a week, a manipulation on the part of theater owners and press agents to communicate just how popular and in vogue vaudeville truly was. Of course, this was also a half-truth, since an overwhelming majority of vaudeville players earned nowhere close to that amount of money. In 1902, the average weekly salary was about $25 per week. Early vaudeville performers were mostly men, with women breaking into the business around the turn of the century. And it was even harder for black women to try to earn a living in vaudeville who faced both gender and racial barriers. As historian June Sochin explains, quote, while all women had to overcome the hoarish image associated with show business, black women have the additional burden of the color line. Besides the prejudice that prevailed, the actual color of the woman's skin played an active role in deciding whether or not she could be on stage. The darker the woman's complexion, the less likely that she would be booked onto the show. While black Americans built a role for themselves in vaudeville around the turn of the century, it always remained small. Two black women who broke barriers, not only as performers but as entrepreneurs were the Griffin sisters. Emma and Mabel Griffin, born in 1874 and 1877, respectively, made their debut at the Cole and Middletons Dime Museum in 1894 as chorus girls and would eventually go on to create their own theatrical agency in December 1913. But again, they were the exception. They were listed as two of only 262 black women across the country classified as actors or showmen, demonstrating just how infrequent it was for black women to enter this space. With vaudeville's popularity on the rise and the public enamored with the newly minted stars of the variety show, vaudeville theaters cropped up throughout the country. By 1896, there were roughly 200 theaters in the United States, with some theaters capable of hosting over 1,000 paying customers per show. At the height of vaudeville's popularity, there were well over 1,000 theaters, with one estimate claiming as many as 5,000 theaters throughout the country, and an estimated 5 million Americans taking in a vaudeville show every week. It became, as David Minon tells us, quote, the cultural experience most commonly shared by Americans, end quote. The growth led to some standardization in terms of timing and the number of acts performed, and as vaudeville expanded, what drew paying customers also evolved. It became less about attending an interesting, entertaining variety show and became increasingly focused on seeking out the performance featuring the most well-known star. In true American capitalist style, certain theater owners collaborated to block out competition, pooling their resources to ensure they secured the best acts. Owners believed that if they booked the right talent, they did not need to worry about advertising, since the tickets would sell themselves. And for a while, they were right. Vaudeville enjoyed a prolonged run in popularity, running from the mid-1870s through the 1930s. It was highly influential, and some of early Hollywood's biggest stars earned their chops in vaudeville, including Will Rogers, Fred Astaire, and Mae West. Even Harry Houdini played the vaudeville circuit. Yet, as new forms of entertainment developed and became available to the masses, vaudeville lost its luster. Much like video killed the radio star, you could say that cinema killed the vaudeville star. The sad part is vaudeville had a hand in its own demise. In constantly trying to stay fresh and new, some theaters took to showing the early versions of silent movies. Pretty soon technology made it so proprietors could open a movie house. Between the cinema, cabarets, musicals, and reviews, there were simply too many options for folks to spend their money, and before you could say vaudeville, it was all over. But that doesn't mean we don't still see the impacts of vaudeville today. From our weird obsession with celebrities to our fondness for variety shows, vaudeville's legacy is far-reaching. It ushered in a new form of mass entertainment that was meant purely for the joy of escaping reality to take it a show. In this way, it helped democratize entertainment, paving a new path for things like film, radio, and television. Thanks, peeps. I'll see you next time. I look forward to our next cup of coffee together.