Secret passageways under Chinatown, remnants of a bygone Bowery beer hall, a rooftop film studio…Author David Freeland writes of these and more in his book Automats, Taxi Dances and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure.  Freeland seeks to find continuity through history, using the lens of leisure activity in New York. He is more interested in what’s hidden and forgotten, the “fossils and impressions of former existences,” as he explained in a talk at Columbia GSAPP on November 19th.  Though a historian by practice, his process is more archeological than pedagogical. He says that “looking at discordant architectural and design related spots can give you clues to the history of the place.” His inherent curiosity led him to uncover the original roof of the Atlantic Garden beer hall on the Bowery, which by all accounts had been completely demolished. Looking up at the ceiling of a souvenir shop in Times Square, he noticed patterns that turned out to be the remnants of a once elaborately decorated automat (waiter free restaurants with vending machines) from the early 20th century. Most poignantly, none of the buildings he writes about are landmarked, despite the history behind them.

Here’s a look at a few locations from his book that you can check out:

Underground Passageway in Chinatown

Doyers St. 1890 (Source: Flickr user Straatis)

On numbers 5-7 Doyer Street in Chinatown, the Chinese theater once stood on this curvilinear street. Folklore says that the obtuse angle of this street contributed to gang warfare, as rival gangs could approach each other from opposite ends of the street unseen. An underground escapeway leading from the theater to Chatham Square still exists, now populated by acupuncturists, feng shui and travel agencies. Actor Ah Foon was escorted through this tunnel in 1909 one night, knowing that his days were numbered after repeatedly taunting a rival gang in performances. He made it safely to his apartment but was shot on the landing in the middle of the night.
What to See: Enter on Doyer Street, between Pell St and the Bowery, from a doorway east of the yellow Co Co Fashion sign, descend through multiple staircases and wander along hallways until a staircase leads you out onto Chatham Square. Untapped pictures of this forthcoming…

The Atlantic Garden, 50 Bowery and 20-22 Elizabeth Street (backside)

Interior of the Atlantic Garden (Source: NYPL Digital Gallery)

The largest and most famous of the Bowery beer halls, this sumptuously decorated building opened in 1858. It had its own brewery, shooting gallery, an all female orchestra, a giant mechanical music box (the orchestrian) and movie screens. The battle over a Sunday liquor license lasted over forty years, with constant raids and arrests of bartenders, waiters and the owner himself. Despite all this, the Atlantic Garden was one of the more democratic sites in 1880s New York—a place for immigrant families (predominantly German and Italian, but there were even some Asians!) to escape the swelter of the tenements.

20-22 Elizabeth St. (Source: Curbed)

The clue for Freeland: the roof shape. From there, he discovered a 19th century stone projection off the roof.

What’s Left: On Elizabeth Street, now occupied by the Jing Fong Restaurant and the Cantoon Garden Restaurant. On Bowery, a row of jewelry stores.

How to Get There: N/Q/R/W/J/M/Z/6 trains to Chinatown

Ultimately, what is Freeland’s message? The epilogue encapsulates his wide-eyed, detective-like perspective. Not a strict preservationist, he wonders how history will be passed down when the physical signs disappear:

When future New Yorkers explore their neighborhoods, what will they see? Will they be able to trace history…by finding visual cues and investigating them? New Yorkers are a curious lot…The challenge they will face in the future is that exploring history becomes more difficult once the physical markers themselves are gone.

Directed by David Shiner, Cirque du Soleil is putting a contemporary twist on Vaudeville by infusing this classic form of theatre with a modern flair. Http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/vaudeville  Banana Shpeel is currently playing its world-premiere at The Chicago Theatre on State Street

“THE TWO BLACK CROWS”

Moran and Mack have the dubious distinction of being the last major blackface team to work in vaudeville. As a boast, that’s sort of like putting “Kappelmeister to the Fuhrer” on your C.V.

Mack had been a stage electrician who told jokes all the time. Alexander Pantages suggested he go on stage. one night he was on the same bill as Garvin and Moran, and – just like that — Mack stole Moran.

Using the formula established by McIntyre and Heath, mack was the slow witted comical one; Moran, was the straightman, always frustrated by his partner’s stupidity.

MACK: Wish I had a thousand ice cold watermelons.

MORAN: Glory be. I bet if you had a thousand ice cold watermelons, you’d give me one.

MACK: Oh, naw! No, siree. If you are too lazy to wish for your own watermelon, you ain’t gona get none of mine!

Oh, git along, now, you two!

The team had great succes in vaudeville and in revues such as the 1917 Over the Top, Zeigfeld Follies, Earl Carroll’s Vanities, and The Greenwich Village Follies. In 1927 they recorded their sketch “The Early Bird Catches the Worm” on Columbia records. The team was featured in the 1928 Paramount film Why Bring That Up?

A dispute arose when Mack, who owned the act, refused to give Moran more than a tiny share of the take. Moran quit and a man named Bert Swor was brought in (though billed as Moran). This version of the team did 1930 film called Anybody’s War. The film did poorly, so Moran was re-hired at a high salary and the team resumed touring the RKO circuit.

The team was discussing a deal to do a series of shorts with Mack Sennett in 1937, when tragedy struck. The three men were driving to New York together when they were involved in an accident that killed Mack. Moran continued to perform but there was an ever decreasing market for his work.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

This Hollywood hoofer paired off with the best of them (Ebsen, Astaire, Bolger) but always worked best when in the solo spotlight. Her intense individualism explains how she got into dancing in the first place: her parents put her in ballet lessons to help her get over her shyness. She started out performing in Gus Edwards revues in Atlantic City as a child. Edwards convinced her parents to allow her to travel with the act to New York. For the engagement, she applied herself with rare, almost massochistic rigour (e.g., tying sandbags to her feet) to learn tap. Scouts spotted her and cast her in the 1929 show Follow Through, which was where her career truly took off. Subsequent Broadway shows included Fine and Dandy, Hot Cha, and George White’s Scandals. She broke into films with Broadway Melody of 1936, and continued with Born to Dance (1936), Honolulu (1939), Lady Be Good (1941), Ship Ahoy (1942) and the Red Skelton vehicle I Dood It (1943). In 1939 she did a brief tour of what was left of vaudeville, dancing and doing impressions of Kathryn Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart. In 1943, she retired to marry actor Glen Ford. She played the role of housewife and mother until an acrimonious divorce in 1959, shortly after which she made a brief comeback, performing at night clubs in Las Vegas.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

 I was delighted to find this 1908 Orpheum Theatre program (for $10) because it features TWO fascinating acts. The first is the Zancigs, the mentalists I wrote about in my last blog. Look toward the bottom of the program at #8 for their name.

If the print is too hard to read, it says: “THE ZANCIGS  Two minds with but a single thought” In their marvelous demonstration of thought transmition (yes, they spelled it wrong—it isn’t  unusual to find spelling errors in these programs) which has made them the Master Mystics of five continents. The Zancigs offer to forfeit $100 to any person whose name they cannot transmit correctly.”

      We can tell the Zancigs are the headliners here because they are slotted in the next-to-the-last position. In vaudeville, this was the best spot in the program, reserved for the biggest star of that week, known as the “headliner.”

      The last slot was usually a “dumb act”—not dumb as in stupid, dumb as in silent, because the audience would start to leave during the last act and their noise and confusion would have ruined a vocal act. In this case, the Holman Brothers, Swedish gymnasts, had final billing.

COMING NEXT: Which is the other unusual act on this program?

FRANK FAY

“Of all the great vaudevillians, I admired Frank the most” — James Cagney.

Almost all of the great comedians speak with reverence about Frank Fay. He originated the stand-up comedy style we associate with Hope, Benny, Carson, Leno and Letterman, the extremely polished “American Institution” style, an unspoken confidence that says “an army of people made me possible.” You might call such performers “comc laureates”, almost branches of the U.S. government. As opposed to the more burlesquey Milton Berle-Henny Youngman-Rodney Dangerfield approach, these are not men who take or deliver a pie in the face, cross their eyes, or say “take my wife, please”. What they do is tell America the jokes they will repeat around the water cooler at work the next day. While there was no t.v. in Fay’s heyday, he was the king of the Palace, the flagship theatre of the top vaudeville chain in the nation.

There was much to set Fay apart. Unlike most vaudevillians, Fay was no populist. He cultivated the aloof arrogance of the aristocrat – his trademark was the barbed put-down delivered on the spot with dependable lethalness. That is what audiences prized him for.

He was charming, dashing, and impeccably dressed, with a broad handsome Irish face something like the actor Ralph Fiennes’. He had a very distinctive, swishy style of walking that was almost effeminate, but it was so effective that both Bob Hope and Jack Benny emulated it to their dying day. [Surely Hope will pass on by the time this goes to press].

He generally finished his act with a sardonic version of “Tea for Two”, wherein he would stop every few bars in order to tear the song apart:

Tea for two, and two for tea (spoken: ) Ain’t that rich! Here’s a guy that has enough tea for two. So he’s going to have tea for two. I notice that he doesn’t say a word about sugar!

Well, it ain’t exactly Duck Soup, but with his wavy hair, straight teeth and twinkling eyes, one gets the feeling that fay sold his jokes through charm.

He was born in San Fransisco in 1897 to vaudevillian parents. He played his first part at age three in a Chicago production of Quo Vadis? His first vaudeville act was the team of Dyer and Fay, but it must have been pretty awful: Fay later downplayed his involvement with it. By 1918 he had established himself as a monologist, and by 1919 he played the Palace. “The Great Faysie”, as he styled himself, was appallingly successful on the vaudeville stage. To play the Palace – at all — was the very highest aspiration of most vaudevillians. A select handful ran a week there. In 1925, Fay ran ten weeks. So he might be a little forgiven if it went to his head.

But there is something to the old adage that what lives longest are not words but deeds. Today Frank Fay lives on in the recorded memory as a notorious S.O.B. and a mean drunk, with nary a kind anecdotal word from anyone who knew him. Milton Berle once said, “Fay’s friends could be counted on the missing arm of a one-armed man.”

An early example of the arrogance that was to overshadow his reputation throughout his career occurred at this early stage. In the incident, which became notorious throughout theatrical circles, Fay let the audience wait several minutes while he struggled to tie his tie in the dressing room. “Let ‘em wait!” he apparently snapped at the stage manager, establishing a tradition that would not be revived until rock and roll was invented forty years later.

Fay didn’t go in for slapstick. He used to taunt Bert Lahr by saying  “Well, well, well, what’s the low comedian doing today?” Fay’s bag was verbal wit, and he pulled no punches, offtstage or on. To Berle’s challenge to a battle of wits on one occasion, Fay famously said, “I never attack an unarmed man.”

Apparently, Fay had one of those smirking faces that’s just itching to be smacked. On one occasion, he attempted to humiliate bert wheeler by dragging him onto the stage unprepared, and firing off a bunch of rehearsed lines at him to which he was supposed to attempt rejoinders. Tired of such treatment, Wheeler unnnerved him by remaining silent the whole time. when fay finally cracked and said “what’s the matter? why don’t you say something?” Wheeler said “You call these laughs? I can top these titters without saying a word” and smacked him on the face – to howls from the audience. Some riun-ins were far less light-hearted. Milton Berle recalled having watched Fay perform backstage from the wings, which is a real no-no with some performers. Berle heard him say “get that little jew bastard out of the wings” and something about “that little kike”, so (according to him) he grabbed a stage brace and busted open Fay’s nose with it. Lou Clayton also let him have it across the jaw for his smart mouth.

Even when fay meant to be nice he was rotten. Introducing Edgar Bergen for his first Palace date, he said: “The next young man never played here before, so let’s be nice to him.” As any performer can tell you, such an introduction is patronizing at best, sabotage at worst.

Bastard or not, Fay’s vaudeville success led to several Broadway shows during the years 1918-33. He even wrote and produced two starring vehicles for himself (a la Ed Wynn): Frank Fay’s Fables (1922) and Tattle Tales (1933).

Through his friend Oscar Levant, Fay met and married Barbara Stanwyck, then a young chorus girl who’d just gotten her first Broadway show (Burlesque, 1927) In 1929 they did a dramatic sketch, as “Fay and Stanwyck” at the Palace. Later that year, they were called to Hollywood, so Frank could star in the film Show of Shows. Fay and Stanwyck’s marriage and their experience in Hollywood later became the basis of a Hollywood movie – A Star is Born.

In Hollywood, as everywhere he went, Fay did not make a lot of friends. A standard joke of the time went “who’s got the biggest prick in Hollywood?” Answer: Barbara Stanwyck. The womanizing, alcoholic Fay’s career floundered, while Stanwyck’s flourished for decades. In 1935 the two were divorced, and Fay continued his downward spiral, until 1944, when he was chosen to play Elwood P. Dowd in the original Broadway production  of Harvey.

Fred Allen said: “The last time I saw Frank Fay he was walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand.” He passed away in 1961, a humbler, and, one hopes, a wiser man.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

     More than a century ago, Julius and Agnes Zancig, a Danish-American couple, brought their astonishing mind-reading act to America’s vaudeville theaters. “Two minds with but a single thought!” gushed the programs. Billed as the Master Mystics of Five Continents, the Zancigs claimed to have performed in Japan, China, South Africa, Europe, and India, where they supposedly learned the Oriental secrets of telepathy.  Their act was so good that it confounded skeptics and convinced many newspaper reporters, scientists, and prominent people that the couple was truly telepathic.   

     Of course, they weren’t. An elaborate code was at the heart of their success, a code that dozens of challengers and tests failed to expose. Only after their deaths would the secret be revealed by a magician and a psychic researcher. In Sensational Tales of Mystery Men (1929), the magician wrote, “The pair worked on a very complicated and intricate code. There was never any question of thought transference in the act. By framing his question in a certain manner Julius was able to convey to his wife exactly what sort of object or design had been handed to him. Long and continual practice had brought their scheme as near perfection as is humanly possible. On several occasions confederates were placed in the audience and at such times the effects seemed nothing short of miraculous. All their various tests were cunningly faked and their methods were so thorough that detection was an absolute impossibility to the layman.” In Rudi Schneider (1930), the psychic researcher wrote “The Zancigs’ performance took years of study to perfect, and several hours practice daily were needed to keep the performers in good form. I have the Zancigs’ codes in my library and know the hard work that both Mr. Julius Zancig and his wife put into their ‘act,’ a matter which I have discussed with Mr. Zancig himself.”

     Read descriptions of their acts at : http://www.gabrielleray.150m.com/ArchiveTextXYZ/Zancigs.html

We who have not felt the sting of a proper World War in 64 years cannot appreciate the deuced inconvenience such a development can be, especially where important matters like show business are concerned. Prior to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, successful British and American entertainers spent a good deal of their time on boats. Performers like Houdini, Will Rogers and W.C. Fields literally had steamer trunks with customs stamps from the great world capitals plastered on them. When the shooting started, all that dried up. Americans were deprived of their favorite British Music Hall stars for the most part; though some brave Americans continue to travel to the embattled countries. Some, like the indefatigable Elsie Janis traveled right into the war zones to entertain the troops.

Patriotism in the era amounted to a mania. Prior to America’s entry into the conflict, thespians like Alla Nazimova could present pacifist playlets in the vaud houses. Once we entered the war, such messages were out; Irving Berlin’s “Over There” was more in keeping with the times. As will happen in wartime, even the most heterogenous cultual institution of all — vaudeville — spoke with a single voice on this issue. Shortly after America joined the war, George M. Cohan called a special meeting of vaudevillisn to see who would join the war effort. Every hand shot up.Vaudeville vets like Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks did their part by crisscrossing the nation selling millions in war bonds. And some were to pay the ultmate price. Vernon Castle, one-half of the nation’s premier dance team enlisted in the RAF (he was Canadian) and died in a crash.

The official Armistice, 88 years ago today, was to result in the usual post-war boom. This one brought a flood of entrepreneurial capital that was to result in investments in new entertainment media like network radio andtalking pictures…and thus the end of vaudeville.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

I’ve always loved dressing up. As an only child with no other children within miles of our house, imagination and a pup named Sparky were the best friends a girl could have. We’d spend hours outside, costumed (both of us) avengers fighting evil doers hiding in piles of leaves, howling to rally fantastical troops of badgers, bears, and reluctant felines. These are the moments of my childhood I remember vividly.

I still love dressing up; a pair of horns are always in my bag, because sometimes, I feel like being an Imp and sometimes a costume just helps solidify the feeling—I’m a child at heart forever. Imagination is a wonderful tool for relieving stress, and without it, I’d be further away from sane than I am already. I get strange looks occasionally, but I get the feeling they wish they had a pair too.

Last week on Thursday, I attended the first of a four part series for Asheville Vaudeville at BeBe Theater. There was a fiddler who charmed larger than life boa constrictors, a gypsy hula-hoop dancer, a pup who jumped through hoops, bowling pin jugglers, a great magician who was also one of the best comedians I’ve seen in forever, folks wearing top hats…coupled with the classic interior of the theater, the performers and emcee were so thorough in their presence, I felt as though Sparky were there with me and we were part of their traveling show.

With the current recession and cuts in both public programs and arts funding, Asheville Vaudeville has a noble goal: give to charity, feed the starving artist, and provide a much needed respite from the daily doldrums. The sold out show provided 500 meals for MANNA food bank, hired over 20 artists, and from the crowd’s response, any doldrum that managed to find it’s way in certainly didn’t make it out. Accomplishing all three goals on the first night=overwhelming success.

On the first Thursday of the next 3 months, this great troupe of talented people will take to the stage with brand new acts. The first sold out at the door, so make sure you get your tickets for upcoming shows early. Tickets are now on sale at Malaprops and will be on sale at the door.

Next performances December 3rd, January 7th, and February 4th. Shows are at the BeBe Theater on Commerce St. and begin at 7:30 PM.

You can follow them on Twitter, @AsheVaudeville and join the group Friends of Asheville Vaudeville on Facebook to stay abreast of happenings.

For more photos from the first Asheville Vaudeville, check out my Flickr set.

The title of Marie Dressler’s autobiography, Confessions of an Ugly Duckling sums up her career in a nutshell. Despite being a trained opera singer and a gifted actress, she had the body of a football player and the face of a mastiff. Unconquerable nature decreed that she must therefore play comedy and this she did to great popular effect for many decades.

She was born Leile Koerber in Cobourg, Canada in 1869. As a child, she wanted to be a bareback rider in the circus, so her family was actually relieved when she declared she wanted to be an actress. When she a mere 14 years old, she answered an ad for a place in a traveling stock company, and got the part. Her great size allowed her to claim to be an adult; she also brought along her sister to “chaperone and play small parts.” After an unhappy love affair with one of the company, she decamped  and joined up with an opera company. Though she was merely in the chorus, she had the temerity to dream about one day playing the role of Katisha in The Mikado, thoroughly learning the part in her spare time. Miraculously, the company decided to do The Mikado, the actress playing the part of Katisha sprained her ankle, and the assigned understudy was unprepared. Marie went on. For the next several years, she was to tour with various opera companies, her salary gradually increasing to the point where she could support her entire family.

In 1896, she appeared with Eddie Foy in Chicago in a production of Little Robinson Crusoe. When Robber of the Rhine a play by Maurice Barrymore, flopped at the 5^th Avenue Theatre, she found herself stuck in New York and out of work. To earn some money, she sang at the Atlantic Garden on the Bowery and Koster and Bial’s. Numerous parts arrived in time, including one in Princess Nicotine with Lillian Russell. Her first big hit was the 1896 The Lady Slavey, which ran for four years.

From 1900-04, she worked in vaudeville and burlesque doing coon songs and impersonations. She continued to return to the vaudeville stage periodically throughout her career, even while succeeded in other arenas. Between plays, she would work up a vaudeville sketch with a partner. One, called Tess of the Vaudevilles played 10 weeks straight at Proctor’s 58^th Street. In 1919 she headlined at the Palace.

In legit, Joe Weber hired her for his company casting her in Higglety-Pigglety, Hotel Topsy Turvy etc, and many other farcical “burlesques”. Her biggest meal ticket was a play called Tillie’s Nightmare, 1910, which ran for 5 years, and then kept extended its life through motion pictures. In 1914 Mack Sennett did a film version starring Dressler called Tillie’s Punctured Romance which also included Charlie Chaplin. Any illusions that Sennett had suddenly acquired class by bringing this Broadway play to the screen will be dispelled by the titles of the sequels he did which also starred Dressler: Tillie’s Tomato Surprise (1915) and Tillie Wakes Up (1917).

Work dried up for Dressler in the 1920s, but in the 30s things were looking up indeed. Hollywood came knocking with a string of great roles. The talking Dressler proved herself to be a hot ticket. She played grand dames and homeless women with equal gusto. Among the films she did were Anna Christie (1930), Min and Bill, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar (1930), and Dinner at Eight (1934). The last film was released posthumously. But she had the pleasure of knowing that she was Hollywood’s number one box office draw for the last four years of her life.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

ED WYNN, “THE PERFECT FOOL”

In an age of grotesque comedians, Ed Wynn was one of the most outre, easily in a league with Groucho and Harpo Marx and Bobby Clark. Promoted as the “Perfect Fool” , his instantly recognizable get-up was almost that of a circus clown. His egg shaped body was covered in a too-tight jacket and baggy pants. A tiny derby topped his head. His eyebrows were highly arched, like a cartoon’s, and large round glasses framed his glassy, fishy eyes. His quavery voice, lisp and frequent use of the phrase “ya know” were almost certainly the basis of the vocal characterization of McDonald’s “Mayor McCheese” character. It can hardly be surprising that Wynn was quoted by his grandson as saying,  “I never wanted to be a real person.”

Real or not, Jack Benny called him “the world’s greatest comedian”. George Burns said he was “the greatest of us all.” Critic John Mason Brown called him “the King of Nonsense and the Emperor of Idiocy.”

Isaiah Edwin Leopold was born in Philadelphia in 1886. His father was a middle class hatter who’d immigrated from Prague, a domineering character, who would have like to see his son follow in the family business. By 1901, the boy made his stage debut as Ed Wynn (an interpolation of his middle name). The next year, he partnered with Jack Lewis to form a team known variously as “Win and Lose, The Rah Rah Boys” and “The Freshman and the Sophomore.” This act, which satirized college students, aimed to be more intelligent than the Weber and Fields-style knockabout Wynn was accustomed to seeing on stage. (“Rah! rah! rah! who pays the bills? Ma and Pa!”)

Wynn performed in numerous vaudeville sketches and solo pieces over the years. Notable among these was “The Boy with the Funny Hats,” (based on cutting up he had done in his father’s shop as a youngster) and his 1913 sketch “The King’s Jester” which he debuted at the Palace. The premise of the latter sketch had Wynn as a court jester scheduled for execution unless he could make the King laugh. His many attempts leave the King stone-faced. Finally, in desperation, he whispers something into the King’s ear. The King laughs. Wynn says “I didn’t know you wanted THAT kind of joke!” and kicks the King in the rear. Blackout.

In the mid-teens he began to work in Broadway revues, starting with the Zeigfeld Follies in 1914. In the 1915 edition, there occurred one of the most notorious anecdotes in the annals of show business. While W.C. Fields was doing his famous poolroom routine, he noticed that he was getting laughs in all sorts of places where laughs shouldn’t be. He looked down and saw that Wynn had snuck under the pool table and was making faces at the audience. Horning in on another performer’s act is a big no-no, for starters. To doublecross Fields was suicide. Without acknowledging that he had seen Wynn, Fields waited for the right moment, and then cracked Wynn over the skull with his pool cue, knocking him out cold. The audience roared, thinking it was all just part of the act and Fields went on coolly with his routine.

Presumably Wynn learned his lesson that day, though it was soon to become moot – by the twenties, he was producing, directing, writing and starring in his own Broadway vehicles, proving that any resemblance between Wynn and an actual idiot was purely illusory.  Wynn’s leadership in the Equity strike of 1919 made him persona non grata with Broadway producers. No one would hire him. Many a performer would have thrown up his hands. Wynn responded by putting on his own show Ed Wynn’s Carnival at the New Amsterdam theatre in 1920. It was an instant sell-out.

Audiences warmed to Wynn for a variety of reasons. His own taste in gags was surreal. (A typical Wynn invention is his “fool-proof alarm clock” – a lit candle stuck in one’s ear at bedtime.) At the same time there was warmth and a genuineness to his performances. He seemed almost maternal as he shepherded his performers around stage, and a fundamental sincerity underlay all of his preposterous pronouncements, which not only helped to make seem a literal idiot, but also served to make him likable. At no time did you get the idea that he thought he was above that character. He WAS that character. That quality of honesty was to serve him well when he began to take on dramatic roles in his later years.

The series of shows Wynn produced through the twenties and early thirties were Wynn’s highest realization as a performing artist. To this day, despite ample record of Wynn’s comic genius on film, radio and TV, one continues to think of this string of Broadway smashes as the pinnacle of Wynn’s career. Each was based around the familiar character Wynn had been developing in vaudeville. Among the most successful of these tailor-made starring vehicles were The Perfect Fool (1921), The Grab Bag (1924), Simple Simon (1930) and The Laugh Parade (1931). His last Broadway vehicle was a wartime effort to revive vaudeville, 1942’s Laugh, Town, Laugh.

From 1932-37 he played “The Fire Chief” on the eponymous radio program sponsored by Texaco. The show helped to make Wynn a household word throughout the nation. In 1949, the first television program bearing the name The Ed Wynn Show debuted on local a Los Angeles station. (This is the show where Buster Keaton’s comeback is said to have began). Wynn then worked as one of four rotating hosts of NBC’s Four Star Revue, alternating the slot with Jack Carson, Danny Thomas, and Jimmy Durante. In the fifties, he began to stretch himself with dramatic roles in such productions as Rod Serling’s original TV version of Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956) and the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank. Wynn continued to play variations of his old character right through to the end however, notably in various Disney movies, such as Alice in Wonderland (voice over as the Mad Hatter), The Absent-Minded Professor, and Mary Poppins. Wynn died in 1966, thankfully not long enough to see some of his most endearing mannerisms appropriated by an eight foot tall talking cheeseburger. Although, with his sense of humor, he might have been fine with that.

DISTINGUISHED PROGENY: Ed’s son Keenan Wynn was a well-known character actor in Hollywood from the 1940s through the 1970s. He started out as Van Johnson’s comic foil in romantic comedies. Younger viewers would recognize him in such films as Dr. Strangelove (“You know who you’re gonna have to answer to? The Coca Cola Company” ) and Nashville (“That’s my niece. She’s from California.”)

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

WILLY: We were born in Russia.

REPORTER: What part?

WILLY: All of us!

REPORTER: Were your parents Russian?

WILLY: No, they took their time.

REPORTER: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

WILLY: Yes, we have one brother, who’s deaf and dumb and he stutters.

REPORTER: Deaf and dumb, but he stutters?

WILLY: Yeah, he’s got three fingers missin.’

Willie and Eugene Howard were among the first openly Jewish entertainers to tread the American stage. Not only were they Jewish but they played Jews, which was a peculiarly vaudevillian concept. Just as real Irishmen (like Eddie Foy, Harrigan and Hart, and Maggie Cline) played stage Irishmen, and real Blacks (like Walker and Williams, Mantan Moreland and Pigmeat Markham ) played stage Blacks, Willie and Eugene played caricatures of Jewish people.

In their field, they were tops. George Jessel said “Willie Howard was the best of all the revue comics, bar none”. In 1929,  Variety called Eugene “a flawless straightman”.

EUGENE: Why, I’ve had my nose to the grindstone fifteen years.

WILLY: (regarding his nose) You should have seen it before he started.

Actually surnamed Levkowitz, the boys were born in Neustadt, Silesia, Eugene in 1880, Willie in 1883. The family immigrated to Harlem. The early part of their story parallels that of the Jolson brothers. The father was a cantor who taught his boys to sing in hopes that they will serve God. Instead, they run off and join the theatre.

Willie and Eugene both began their careers in 1897, but independently of one another. Eugene’s first job was in the chorus of a show called The Belle of New York at the Casino Theatre. Willie was hired to sing from the balcony at Proctor’s 125^th Street, a common stage trick in those days.  It was also how Al Jolson got his start. Zeigfeld hired Willie to do this bit for his show The Little Dutchess but his voice started to change, and so he was let go.

Willie and Eugene teamed up for the first time in 1902 with a sketch they called “The Messenger and the Thespian”.  The boys did dialect humor, opera parodies and comedy crosstalk. Willy was an an expert at foreign accents, and though he usually did Yiddish, there were times when he would also do Spanish or Scottish or any number of others. The situation usually featured Willie as some sort of troublesome servant (frequently a waiter or a bellhop), and Eugene as an authority figure (a customer or manager of some kind). Willy could also do killer impressions of top vocalists of the day such as George Jessel, Al Jolson, Gallagher & Shean, and Eddie Cantor. the visual effect was enhanced by the fact that Willie stood less than five feet tall, weighed 95 lbs., and had caved in shoulders, wild eyes and “professor” hair. Signature bits included “French Taught in a Hurry” in which did rapid doubletalk; “Quartets from Rigoletto”, which he would perform with large, buxom ladies (stealing glances at at their breasts the whole time); and “Comes the Revolution”, in which he would play a radical agitator.

Willie and Eugene worked strictly in vaudeville for the next ten years, and then in 1912, began to intersperse their vaudeville bookings with numerous turns in major Broadway revues like the Shuberts’ Passing Show series and George White’s Scandals. The last of these was Ballyhoo of 1932.

Eugene retired in 1940 to manage Willy, who performed in several more Broadway shows and in night clubs before passing away in 1949. Eugene joined him on the other side in 1965.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Far, far away, in a land where the mellow glow of the morning sun lightly skims the snow – softer than a stolen kiss, swifter than a swallow – and the minute-dial of the vintage Vostok watch stops functioning in a biting blizzard, a convoy of caravans dot the backwoods east of the Ural Mountains. In the afternoons, people from nearby villages swarm to gasp at fire-breathers and goad at tightrope walkers. In the nights, discordant roars and shrill caterwauling rise above the thunder in the Siberian skies and brilliant pyrotechnic parades ride above the thickness of the smog.

Welcome to Vaudeville.

The ringmaster, a boisterous samovar of a man, introduces the French circus to the heterogeneous hordes of people – Muscovites, third- and fourth-generation Ukrainians and Kazakhs, indigenous Yakutians, and Turkic descendants – as the last circus that has not surrendered to nouveau cirque; the last circus that has not blotted its escutcheon by succumbing to the money-making snares of the contemporary circus. He declares that his circus’ only true love is to thrill its patrons with the charm of the circus of yore. “Let the show begin,” he bellows into the microphone.

Trapeze artistes swing from the upper airy lofts of the giant tent; they perform the corde lisse – adroitly intertwining the silken vertical ropes with their sinewy limbs and dancing gracefully in mid-air to the somnolent tune of a folk song – and the crowd applauds impassively; they are visibly bored of the “dancing in the air”. Unicyclists juggle plastic balls as big as watermelons but as light as opened tin cans while creaking along a curvy path, and the eyes of the throng begin to droop. “Zut alors!” swears the ringmaster under his breath.

“Bring on the lions, Esmeralda!” he roars, trying to hide the nervousness in his sonorous voice. A sudden blast of Wagner’s funeral march jolts the audience, having slipped into a moment of sleep, into consciousness. The zaftig trainer flings open the cage and the lion languidly stretches out one pathetic paw. A crack of the leather whip on its derriere and the animal springs into action. It gives a low growl before starting its routine: circle the periphery of the inner ring – it had to represent its pride back in Africa with due pride, especially in the company of the cunning Siberian huskies – and then perform various stunts on its two limpid legs. Despite the poor lion’s gallant attempts at entertaining the onlookers, some of them still snore lightly in their seats. By now, the ringmaster looks distressed, only short of shouting diatribes.

On tenterhooks now, the ringmaster is desperate to try anything that would save his circus and him from falling flat – face first – on the cold, muddy snow. He decides to let the 1940s – the fury of Operati¬on Barbarossa – work its melodramatic magic on the apathetic crowd; something ought to incite this dispassionate lot of rustics!

“Ladies and gentlemen, ze grand finale – Rhönradturnen, the German Wheel!”

Instantly, a pall of stillness casts itself upon the moment. Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu – as germane to Germany as can be – wafts in the quietude. As the unmistakably German twins – tall, blonde and beautiful – arch their long backs in the womb of the wheel and turn it into motion with their practiced fingertips, gasps escape the chafed lips of the crowd. And as the twins deftly maneuver their way, from inside the wheel, onto the platform from where the audience sits – their blood boiling as the twins inch nearer – one bellicose Yakutian youth throws a particularly succulent red tomato at the wheel. Out of balance, the wheel drops to the ground. And the crowd – like one big spleen-venting copier machine – rises to rejoice!

The ringmaster, heaving a sigh of relief, thanks Germany for ever being anti-Slav, anti-communism, and anti-Russia. It saved Vaudeville from vanishing.

Now, why would I change up and start mentioning a old Jewish vaudevillian magician and actor who deliberately flubbed his tricks for bad, but good jokes?

Carl Ballantine as Lester Gruber of "McHale's Navy." He died yesterday at the age of 92 (Courtesy: InnerToob)

Because I liked Carl Ballantine, born Meyer Kessler. And I liked him when he was Lester Gruber, one of the seven wise-ass crew members of the PT 73, otherwise known as McHale’s Navy. It was always one of his fantastic, money-making schemes among the other sailors and the Marines that landed the crew in trouble with Captain Binghamton (Joe Flynn), otherwise known as Old Leadbottom. And it took Commander McHale (Ernest Borgnine) and sometimes pure luck in the appearance of a sympathetic admiral, to always bail them out of it.

From Wikipedia:

Ballantine was born in Chicago, Illinois. In his early career, Kessler did a straight manipulation act but gave up “real magic” when he realized he could not be as good as some of his peers. He changed his name to Ballantine early on after he noticed a bottle of Ballantine whisky in an advertisement and decided that the name of his magic act was to be “Ballantine, the World’s Greatest Magician”. He proved successful enough that he became the first magician to headline in Las Vegas.

Nicknamed the “Jipper,” Kessler was inspired at age 12 by his barber who would do magic tricks with thimbles while cutting the boy’s hair. His first job was working as a printer. In Chicago in the 1930s, Kessler was doing professional straight magic, first as “Count Marakoff” & “Carl Sharp”, then, since the early 1940s, switched to comedy magic as “Carl Ballantine.” He was billed as “The Amazing Mr. Ballantine” when he played the New York Capitol in 1950, the Ed Sullivan TV show in 1953 and the Las Vegas El Rancho Vegas in 1956. He won Tannen’s “Louie” Award and the 1985 AMA Performing Fellowship.

Ballantine is probably best remembered as Lester Gruber, one of the PT boat sailors in the television series McHale’s Navy (1962-66). He appeared as Lycus the slave merchant, on Broadway in the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. His most recent film appearance was in Aimee Semple McPherson, a 2006 biopic about the notorious female evangelist.

The guy kept on working, even taking a bit part on The Cosby Show above.

From News from Me:

[...]Carl started out as a real magician but soon discovered he was better at making audiences laugh than at dazzling them with trickery. So the tricks got deliberately lousier and he got more and more successful. [...]

It brought him fame, fortune and much acting work. He was one of those guys who worked, if not all the time, then as often as liked. He was best known for his role as Gruber on the TV series, McHale’s Navy, and he logged hundreds of guest shots on television, in the movies and on stage. [...]

Carl did hundreds of commercials, including a memorable one for California Raisins in which he supplied the voice for a Claymation™ character that looked like…Carl Ballantine. He also did cartoon shows, one of which was Garfield & Friends, where he had a recurring role on as a con-artist character named Mr. Swindler.

Ballantine died in his sleep yesterday. He had a full and funny life; he made me and thousands of others laugh.

(Of the original cast, the following are yet alive: Ernest Borgnine (McHale), Tim Conway (Parker), Edson Stroll (Virgil), Bob Hastings (Carpenter), Gavin MacLeod (Happy), and Yoshio Yoda (Fuji). Of Yoda–who played POW and seaman cook Takeo “Fuji” Fujiwara–it is said that the actor eventually changed his name to James Yoda. According to Edson Stroll, he became a Toyota executive, and an American citizen.)

Ballantine is survived by his daughter, Sara.

Will Rogers’ place in the hearts and minds of Americans transcended the limits of mere show business. He was regarded as a kind of American Saint, a sort of cross between Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln and George Bernard Shaw. A “cowboy philosopher” who expressed harsh and amusing truths in a bluntly honest way reminiscent of the blurted pronouncements of children and old folks – funny because shocking because true. Co-star Peggy Wood called him a “puncturer of self-made balloons”. Rogers became larger than life, a sort of symbol of the common man. His fame and relevance only grew until the day he died, and when he did, at the age of 55, it was a national day of mourning.

He was born in 1879, in what was then known as Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). His full name at birth was Colonel William Penn Adair Rogers, after an admired military leader. Rogers was roughly 1/6 Cherokee Indian. (father 1/8, mother ¼). He was fond of saying “My folks didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”

Contrary to his image, it is a shock to learn that Rogers grew up a spoiled rich kid. His father was a well-to-do rancher  (60,000 acres) and politician. In the Indian Territory days he was a member of the Cherokee Senate; he was also a delegate to the convention that drafted the Oklahoma Constitution. Perhaps the only hint of Will’s earlier life of privilege that he retained was an unapologetic fondness for polo in his later years. The youngest of 7 children, Rogers was the baby of the family, and got away with plenty of mischief.. His mother died when he was 10, leaving his upbringing even more unsupervised.

Like many vaudevillians, Rogers didn’t finish school, but not out of need or neglect in his case. He was wild and undisciplined and was thrown out of many schools, most of them private boarding schools. Even so, he was quite close to graduating when he finally quit for good. As a kid, he spent all of his time doing rodeo tricks and it got him into plenty of trouble. He would rope girls with a lasso for kicks. He once broke the arm off a statue by roping it; on another occasion he roped and injured the teacher’s horse. He was addicted to all sorts of practical jokes. Also, as later became well known, his grammar and spelling were atrocious, which might have been charming in a syndicated column, but surely can’t have sat well with his teachers.

Rogers ran away from military school at age 18 to go on a cattle drive. During those months, he lived the life of a real cowboy, living outdoors on the range, sleeping on the ground at night, eating meals around a campfire. In 1901, he competed in riding and roping contests in a rodeo show run by Colonel Zach Mulhall. Realizing he’d never be tops in the rodeo world, in1902 he departed for Argentina to work on ranches. Dissatisfied with that experience, he next worked a cattle boat en route to South Africa. While in that country, he happened to meet a traveling vaudevillian named W.C. Fields in (where else) a bar. Shortly thereafter, Rogers finally became a performer for good. He joined Texas Jack’s Wild West Show as a rider and roper, working there for 9 months. as “the Cherokee Kid”. From there, he went on to work at the Wirth Bros. circus in Australia, and wended his way home by way of San Francisco in 1904. Almost immediately, he rejoined Col. Mulhall for a rodeo exhibition at the St. Louis fair. In 1905, Mulhall brought a “small picked bunch” with him for a performance at Madison Square Garden.

When the engagement closed, Rogers stayed behind in New York to break into vaudeville. He had trouble getting managers to book him at first but finally debuted at Keith’s Union Square during the 6-8 slot, the so-called “dinner” show. Not many people were there, of course (they were all eating dinner!). Rogers went on 5^th in the bill and was a hit anyway. In no time, he was booked at Hammerstein’s Roof.

His early act was almost entirely an exhibition of skills. He’d make a spectacular entrance on Teddy, his horse, jump off and send him into the wings with a slap on the hindquarters. He began his sequence of tricks to the accompaniment of the orchestra playing familiar cowboy songs. He had an assistant named Buck McGee who rode a horse around stage that Rogers would rope in various ways. Felt was attached to the horse’s hooves so he wouldn’t slip on the stage. One of Rogers’ tricks was to toss two lassos at the same time, one over the rider and one over the horse’s hooves. Other tricks included the Texas Skip (where he jumped in and out of a vertical loop), and the merry-go-round, where he passed the spinning rope from hand to hand, under his legs, and behind his back. His show-stopper was the “crinoline”, in which Rogers played a lasso out so far it went way out over the audiences heads. Like a golfer with his various clubs, Rogers had a whole array of different sized (length, width, thickness) ropes to accomplish his different tricks. Most of these tricks can be seen in the 1922 film The Ropin’ Fool.

Contrary to popular belief, Rogers had some patter in his act from the very beginning, in the form of little remarks to cover his flubs. Despite the fact that he was the premier lariat artist of his time, such failures are common even to masters. How to deal with them is the mark of a true performer. “I don’t have any idea I’ll get it, but here goes”, is reported to have been his first line on stage. Initially he was flummoxed, not to say angry, that people laughed when he spoke. To an audience of New Yorkers, Will’s folksy turn of expression and his Western accent were alien things, just as nutty in their way as Fanny Brice’s Yiddishisms. When he perceived that this was to his advantage, Rogers relaxed some and played it for all it was worth. He began to cook up lines, especially for the act. Many remarks taken for ad libs are in fact worked out in advance. “I’m handicapped up h’yar, the manager won’t let me swear when I miss, ” always got howls. He’d written it out earlier on a piece of hotel stationary.

Gum chewing was another early trademark. In that era of propriety and “elocution” public gum chewing was considered rude. Rogers was so natural and unapologetic about it, he helped make it socially acceptable. He even worked business with the gum into the act. If he missed a trick, he might pause a minute, then go upstage and stick the gum on the scenery then go back and try the trick again, as though the gum had hindered him somehow.

Rogers began to extend the reach of his jokes to cover other performers or the condition of the theatre itself. A favorite lark was to rope a stagehand and drag him onstage. The gesture strikes on as analogous to his verbal humor – it was an impish way of saying, “Come on, buster, you’re no better than the rest of us, I’m gonna see that you remember that.”

The act was a true novelty at first; no one was doing this sort of thing in vaudeville, though after he became successful he had many imitators. In those days most comedians self-consciously crafted personae for themselves over a number of years. Weber and Fields didn’t speak in Dutch malapropisms and hit each other over the head at home.  Rogers (like most modern comedians ) was “himself”. Of course, unlike many modern comedians, his actual identity was intrinsically interesting. Rogers was immediately in great demand all over the country. When he arrived at a town he would help publicize his performance by riding down the main street on a horse with a sign reading “Will Rogers, the Lariat King”.

From 1906-7 he toured the major European capitals. He was much adored wherever he went, except Germany, where he was nearly arrested for roping a fire warden who happened to be standing backstage during his show. The humorless audience nearly lynched him and he fled the country. In the age of Kaiser Welhelm, Germans didn’t like the idea of being “cut down to size.”

In 1910, Rogers developed a new, more streamlined act, discarding the expensive horse roping equipment and entourage, and concentrating a bit more on the humorous monologue. Some rope tricks were retained however. In some ways the new act was more “vaudevillian”. Rogers would swing his lasso while riding a unicycle, climbing a stepladder, or rolling a cigarette. He even sang something called “The Hound Dog Song”.

“I wish there was a vaudeville like there was in those old days,” Rogers once said, “No branch of entertainment was ever so satisfying to work in.” Still, you’ve got to grow in some direction. In 1912, he was cast in the musical The Wall Street Girl which also starred Nora Bayes. It was his unfortunate duty on opening night to have to announce the sinking of the Titanic to the audience.  Following this acted a sort of master of ceremonies in a Shubert revue The Town Topics, which was lavish that it collapsed after just a few weeks.

In the summer of 1915, Will accidentally dove into a shallow pool, damaging his right arm and side. The incident forced him to learn many of his tricks with his left hand, and to develop his humorous patter even more, thus strengthening his act still further.

That year he debuted on the very first night of the very first season of  Zeigfeld’s Midnight Frolics. Because the same audience returned to this show every night, Rogers needed a constant influx of new material. His wife Betty suggested that he go to the newspapers for topical events. Rogers began scanning the paper every day for what he called “fresh laid jokes”. This act, usually prefaced by the familiar remark, “All I know is what I read in the papers,” was immensely successful. In 1916, he moved down to the Follies, the more prestigious Zeigfeld show, in addition to his nightly turn in the Frolics. With three shows to do a day, Rogers relied on three separate editions of the newspaper a day for fresh material. (The modern equivalent would be to constantly monitor the internet or a cable news network).

Ziegfeld and Rogers were strange bedfellows indeed. Zeigfeld, the humorless, but sophisticated urban womanizer vs. the very married, apparently incorruptible, almost child-like Rogers. The two never had a contract, but made their agreement on a handshake, and neither of them ever let the other down.

In 1916, Rogers had the terrifying honor of performing for Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the first time in history a standing president was publicly kidded by a comedian in person. Wilson took it all with good humor, and the tradition has never gone out of fashion to this day.

In 1918, he began to star in movies, and he would do so right through the silent era and well into the era of talkies. His first roles were straight dramatic parts for Samuel Goldwyn, but by the mid-twenties he was into more appropriate territory with Hal Roach comedies. Still, these were slapstick, and Rogers was never a pie-in-the-face sort of comedian. He was primarily verbal. Starting in 1929, he did 20 talkies for 20^th-Century Fox. These films were huge hits, proving you had to HEAR Rogers. In 1931, he was of the nation’s top ten box office attractions. The following year he was second in the land, and in 1934, he came in first. To give some perspective on what time has wrought, the Marx Bros. and W.C. Fields were far less popular cinematic draws at that time. Notable films from the thirties included the original version of State Fair,  Dr. Bull,  Judge Priest and Steamboat Round the Bend. He was the master of ceremonies at the 1933 Oscar award ceremony.

Based on the success of his self-penned monologues, he began writing for publication. His first book The Cowboy Philosopher at the Peace Conference came out in 1919. For various newspapers he covered every political convention starting in 1920. His much cherished humor column began was published 1922-35. Critics began to compare him to Twain and Ade. The writing was ungrammatical and misspelled (and unlike those other humorists it was unintentional) but it was nonetheless wise and witty. In 1925, he toured on the lecture platform, commanding high fees for engagements that lasted 1-2 hours in towns all over the country. He even played Carnegie Hall, the first time a comedian had done so.

His radio career spanned 1926-35. In 1933 he started The Good Gulf Show featuring “the famous alarm clock”. Rogers would set the clock, and when it rang, wherever he was, he would stop talking. The fifteen minute show consisted of unedited live topical extemporization. Rogers was most effective during the depression, when his warm, reassuring voice in the home had the same effect as Roosevelt’s. It made people feel better. During the 20s he had been popular because he was an oddity—a sort of throwback to the Wild West days. During the depression he was popular because he symbolized the common man and he told the unvarnished truth about what was going on. His work was akin to that of Carl Sandburg, John Steinbeck and other chroniclers of the era. FDR loved him, and Rogers loved FDR right back.

Rogers’ restless love of travel, and his boundless trust in his fellow man combined to cut his life short at the age of 55. A huge fan of aviation, which was still technically in its infancy, he jumped at the chance to fly with Wiley Post to map a postal route from Alaska to Siberia. Not to put too fine a point on it, Rogers was such a trusting man, he flew in a home-made plane with a one-eyed guy to a place without any airports. The 1935 plane crash hit the nation hard. Not since Lincoln’s assassination had the whole country mourned a single man so intensely. By the end of life, Rogers had outgrown show business entirely. He was simply a great man.

His legacy lives on. In 1940, Will Rogers, Jr. was elected to congress. James Whitmore played Rogers in many one man shows beginning in 1969. In 1991, Keith Carradine starred in The Will Rogers Follies on Broadway.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

From poverty and marriage at age 13, Ethel Waters was to go on to earn one of the highest salaries in vaudeville ($3000-4000 a week), becoming a huge star of stage and screen.

Waters got her feet wet on the TOBA circuit, debuting at Baltimore’s Lincoln Theatre at age 17. By the mid-twenties, she was a star of black vaudeville, and other opportunites started to open up. In 1925 she had a double breakthrough, inking a contract to record for Columbia Records, and securing a booking to success Florence Mills at the Plantation Club. In 1927 she starred in the Broadway show Africana at the Daly Theatre. In that year, too, she crossed over into mainstream vaudeville, debuting at the New York Palace. By the following year, she was headling at the Chicago Palace. In 1930, she starred in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds with Mantan Moreland and Buck and Bubbles. In 1933 she introduced the song Lena Horne was later to become famous for “Stormy Weather”, at the Cotton Club. That year she also made the short Rufus Jones for President featuring a pint-sized Sammy Davis, Jr. A star of radio and live performance throughout the 30s and 40s, she also principal roles in the films Cabin in the Sky (1943) and Pinky (1949) . She was in both stage and screen versions of Carson McCuller’s Member of the Wedding (1950 and 1952, respectively). For the last two decades or so of her life, she would only sing spirituals, and criss-crossed the country with evangelist Billy Graham, paving her way for her inevitable passage to Glory in 1977.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

A pox upon me for a clumsy lout. Yesterday was Fanny Brice’s birthday and I completely forgot to do her blog post. Well here she is, better late than nevah.

Best known today via Barbara Streisand’s portrayal of her in the musical films Funny Girl and Funny Lady, Brice was actually rather unlike Streisand in appearance. Tall and gangly like Olive Oyl, with two bright crescent-shaped eyes on either side of her parrot-like nose, Brice was always using this mug for low comedy effect, crossing her eyes, and so forth. She usually spoke with a Yiddish accent for laughs, although she didn’t actually speak that way herself. Brice made her fame parodying the sort of women she wasn’t (cinematic vamps and high-class society dames with English accents), thereby allowing the audience to laugh at them and her at the same time. She also became very well known for singing sentimental character songs crafted around the names “Sadie” and “Rose”.

Born Fanny Borach in 1891, her parents ran a saloon in Newark where Fanny sang and danced as a child. Her father was a drunk from Alsace. Her mother, who wore the pants in the family, was from Hungary. The mother ran the saloon, but the father drank the profits. So they moved to Brooklyn, where the mother sold real estate, which you couldn’t drink, at least.

At age 14, Fanny won an amateur contest at a Brooklyn theatre when she sang “When You Know You’re Not Forgotten by the Girl You Can’t Forget.” She took the name “Brice” from a  neighbor. She got a job early in the chorus of a Cohan musical starring Victor Moore The Talk of New York (1907) but was fired for joking around during rehearsal.

Hired by the Columbia Burlesque Wheel, she commissioned two songs from the then unknown Irving Berlin. One of them was “Sadie Salome, Go Home”. She was a hit in The College Girls in 1910. She performed in the Zeigfeld Follies in 1910 and 1911. Like Jimmy Durante, she was one of the few to make it big in show business PRIOR to working in vaudeville. When she worked in vaudeville it was strictly prestige dates such as Hammerstein’s Victoria and the Palace. A number of Shubert musicals followed, such as The Whirl of Society (1912) and The Honeymoon Express. In the years 1916-23, she returned to the Follies. In the late 20s, it was back to vaudeville.

Her one shot at a real starring role in a talkie, the 1927 vehicle My Man (based on her theme song) was not a real hit. As Joe Smith of Smith & Dale said, “She was a very funny girl, but a good actress for only about fifteen minutes.” The truth was, she couldn’t act—she mugged too hard, and played her roles from too great a distance. You can see it in the 1936 film The Great Zeigfeld: in her big dramatic scene, in which she plays herself, she is definitely weeping tears of glycerine.

Brice divorced her husband, jailed gangster Nick Arnstein in 1927 and married impresario Billy Rose in 1929. A number of Rose vehicles followed, such as Sweet and Low (1930), and Billy Rose’s Crazy Quilt (1931), with Phil Baker and Ted Healy. She did a Zeigfeld Follies in 1934, where she introduced her popular character Baby Snooks. In 1936 she separated from Billy Rose. Illness (spinal neuritis) and divorce caused her early retirement from the stage. She moved out to L.A. where she starred as Baby Snooks on radio, and took bit parts in movies for the remainder of her career. She died in 1951 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The 1939 film Rose of Washington Square is supposedly based on Brice’s relationship with Arnstein. Unfortunately, it stars Alice Faye and Tyrone Power, which is sort of like casting mayonnaise and white bread in a story about mustard and pumpernickel. Lacking any hint of humor or spice, the film also makes the traditional Hollywood mistake of featuring 1939 music and fashions in a story set twenty years earlier. Funny Girl (1968) gets it better, but somehow seems to be more about its star Barbara Streisand than about Brice. The film focuses on Brice’s problematic relationship with Arnstein (Omar Sharif), who comes off in the movie – unaccountably – as a saint. the 1975 sequel Funny Lady is about Brice’s rocky marriage to Rose. Brice herself managed to make a cameo from beyond the grave in the 1983 Woody Allen film Zelig, thanks to Modern Movie Magic.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Today is the birthday of two major vaudevillians who’ve grown to be unfortunate footnotes. Of Jack Pearl, I have only to say, “Vuz you dere, Charlie?”

And now, on to–

WALTER C. KELLY, “The Virginia Judge”

Grace Kelly’s uncle Walter was one of the few unalloyed racists in big time vaudeville. While many, such as As Jolson or Sopie Tucker may have put on blackface, the racism of their acts were a complex mixture of love, scorn, homage, condescension, admiration and disrespect. No such hash complicated Kelly’s feelings. His act consisted of his interpretation of life in a courtroom he had witnessed as an aspiring ward politician in Newport News, Virginia. The characters were chiefly the no-nonsense Southern judge who presided there…and the parade of tremulous, “no-account” blacks who faced his summary justice. Much humor was accomplished by the unsentimental swiftness and the wit with which he brought sentence – a form of humor not foreign to fans of Judges Wapner, Judy and the many others that have graced television screens since the 1980s.

JUDGE: First case on the docket—Sadie Anderson.

PRISONER: Yes, sir, that’s me.

JUDGE: Thirty days in Jail. That’s me.

** * * *

JUDGE: Jim, this is the third time you have been here for cutting people. Tell me, how old are you?

JIM: I’se jest twenty-fo’, Jedge.

JUDGE: Well, Jim, you will be just twenty-five when you get out.”

*****

JUDGE: Rufus Johnson, you are charged with larceny of two chickens from the premises of Howard Brooks on Brierfield Road. What have you to say about it?

RUFUS: Well, Jedge, I never was near Mr. Brook’s house and the Lord may strike me down dead if I stole those chickens.

JUDGE: Well, Rufus, you stand aside for ten minutes, and if the Lord don’t strike you, I will give you thirty days.

*****

It’s all very amusing until you remember that the Lord struck plenty of black people dead for stealing chickens and equally minor – often nonexistent – crimes. Lycnhing was a palpable reality at the time of these comedy routines, and at the time the Virginia Judge was making audiences fall down in the aisles, black people in the South weren’t laughing. If your only exposure to the racial politics of American justice is a movie like Sounder, you still already know that a black man on trial for petty larceny in the South was no joke.

Nevertheless, people loved Kelly. He started out in an amateur capacity, making his fellow Democrats laugh at a smoker at Big Tim Sullivan’s club in 1900. Vaudeville engagements resulted and within a few weeks, he climbed up the ladder from Tony Pastor’s to Keith’s Union Square, and then a tour of the Keith and Proctors wheels. By 1904, he was a headliner at Percy William’s Alhambra. He continued to do the Virginia Judge bit until the demise of vaudeville. For the last stretch, he worked as much as he wanted to and earned one of vaudeville’s highest salaries. But the fact that he refused to perform on a bill with the legendary Bert Williams in 1909 will tell you the color of his money.

When vaudeville expired, Kelly was big enough a star to jump to Broadway shows and Hollywood films, including a 1935 adaptation of his Virginia Judge material. In 1938, the Lord struck Walter C. Kelly dead in the form of an errant – or perhaps deadly accurate – motorist.  Le’s jes’ say he got runned over  by a karma.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Today is Ned Harrigan’s birthday. Harrigan was one of George M. Cohan’s favorite performers, and the inspiration for the eponymous song.

From No Applause:

The two biggest Irish comedians to come out of the variety scene, becoming the most popular stars of the American theatre of the 70s and 80s, was the team of Edward “Ned” Harrigan and Tony Hart. A New York native, Harrigan made his debut in San Francisco in 1867, singing (to his own banjo accompaniment) at some of the principal stages of the Barbary Coast: Butler’s Melodeon, the Belle Union, the Olympic, Gilbert’s Melodeon and the Pacific Variety Hall. Clog dancing was also one of his specialties. From singing and dancing, he worked his way up to comedy sketches, playing an impressive range of character roles: blackface parts, a Swedish servant girl, Chinese laundrymen, Irish landlords, and so-called Dutch (or German) characters.

His first partner, Alex O’Brien, was such a drunk that Harrigan was forced to bring him to the “House for Inebriates” on a wagon. His next partner Sam Rickey worked with him clear across the continent, arriving in New York in 1871. Advertised as “the noted California comedians” they did their Dutch sketch “The Little Frauds” at the Globe Theatre on the Bowery. Unfortunately, Ricky was an even bigger drunk than O’Brien was, and wound up in the gutter himself.

When Harrigan was 26 he hooked up with Hart, only 16 years old and then calling himself “Master Antonio”. Born Anthony Cannon, in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1855, he was placed in reform school at age 9 for announcing that he wanted to go into the theatre. He escaped and ran away to New York, singing, dancing and doing odd jobs at circuses, saloons and minstrel shows. By the time he and Harrigan joined their fortunes, Cannon had become famous for one particular number, a tear-jerker called “Put Me in My Little Bed”, which he sang dressed as a young girl. Audiences were crazy about Hart. Nat C. Goodwin said: “Hart caused more joy and sunshine by his delightful gifts than any artist of his time. To refer to him as talented was an insult. Genius was the only word that could be applied. He sung like a nightingale, danced like a fairy, and acted like a master comedian.”

Harrigan hired Cannon to replace Ricky as “Fraulein” in his sketch. That was when Cannon changed his name to Hart, deciding that sounded better with “Harrigan”.

A regular gig at New York’s Theatre Comique allowed the team to demonstrate their many talents. The variety show was 3 ½ hours long, followed by an afterpiece of 40 minutes. Harrigan and Hart might do several different turns in this course of such a show: blackface routines, brief sketches interspersed with dancing, juggling and singing. By 1876, when they assumed joint ownership of the Theatre Comique, the afterpieces became so popular that they became the focal point of the entire performance, and variety was dropped…

(c) 2004 Trav S.D.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

THE DOLLY SISTERS

Two, two, two Dollies in one! The Duncan Sisters were more talented, the Hilton Sisters were more freakish, but no sister act was more beautiful, or more beautifully outfitted, than this pair of Hungarian identical twins.

Born Yansci and Rozicke Deutsch in Budapest in 1892, the girls moved to Brooklyn at age 5, where they quickly became “Jennie” and “Rosie”. Their mother enrolled them in ballet school; this was to be the full extent of their formal training. A completely unreliable Hollywood movie has them doing Hungarian folk dances in a social club in 1904 to cover their uncle’s gambling debts. The verifiable record has them debuting professionally at Keith’s Union Square in 1909. Legend has it that they chose the name Dolly because a friend said they were as cute as little dolls.

In 1911, Zeigfeld booked them for the Follies, and in so doing created the personae and mystique that was to be the basis of all their future stage (and offstage) success. For their Siamese twin dance routine, Zeigfeld draped them in fabulous costumes of the sort that were to be their mainstay throughout the rest of their careers, accentuating the latent exoticism of their almond-shaped eyes, black hair, and small, svelte bodies, with Asiatic finery, jewels, head-dresses and finger-cymbals. They seemed to be from the Far East, and back then, Hungary was pretty far east. To this reviewer, the whole concept bears an unfortunate resemblance to the miniature twin goddesses in the 1961 Japanese horror film Mothra. “Return the egg! Please, return the egg!”

Throughout their careers, they were as famous for who they were dating, who they were marrying, and how much money they had, as for any stage “accomplishment”. They went around with the likes of Diamond Jim Brady and the Prince of Wales. When they were marrying, they tended to do it tandem, perhaps each independently following the rhythmic imperatives of their identical DNA. In 1913, Rosie married Jean Schwartz, author of the Jolson hit “Rock-a-bye Your Baby (With a Dixie Melody)”. The next year, Jenny married Harry Fox, inventor of the Fox Trot.

Jenny and Fox made a sort of team for awhile, appearing at the Palace and Hammerstein’s Victoria together and in revues like the 1915 Stop! Look! Listen! Jenny and Dolly starred in separate films in 1915, Rosie in D.W. Griffith’s The Lily and the Rose, and Jenny in The Call of the Dance. In 1916, they were back as a permanent team again, starting a relationship with the Palace that was to last many years, and co-starring in the Far East espionage thriller The Million Dollar Dollies.

The Dollys not only had twin marriages, they had twin divorces. Jenny divorced Fox in 1920; Rosie and Jean Schwartz split up in 1921. In the 20s, Paris became their home base, becoming the toast of the town with engagements at the Folies Bergere and the Casino de Paris. Their last American engagement was the Greenwich Village Follies of 1924.

Like Josephine Baker and Peggy Hopkins Joyce, the Dolly Sisters became closely identified with the spirit of the 20s, the opulence, the decadence, the frippery and the frivolousness. They mattered not for how they sang or danced, but how they looked while doing it. Nor did they have any desire to be artists. It was clear that, to them, the stage was just a means to an end. Once they were well fixed (by the late 20s), they retired, and spent all their time dating royalty and gambling in Monte Carlo.

In 1927 Rosie married tobacco heir Mortimer Davis, whom she traded in for department store heir Irving Netcher in 1931. In 1933, Jenny was involved in a major auto accident with her fiance, the French aviator Max Constant. She endured 15 separate operations to restore her once matchless face, selling off her jewelery in the process. In the end, it was futile; her looks were forever gone. It is said that she regretted having survived without her beauty. In 1941, she proved it by hanging herself.

In 1945, George Jessel made the lives of the Dollies into a preposterous bio-pic starring June Payne and Betty Grable. The film was a huge hit in its day – but it has nothing to do with the Dolly Sisters. In 1962, the seventy year old Rosie unsuccessfully attempted suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. She was to live on in ignominious old age for another eight years.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

LOW DOWN

Voodoo Vaudeville have not had the easiest of times. Their rushed transfer to the Three and Ten after the collapse of the Sundown Show Bar has clearly hampered their act, which already suffers from a lack of organisation. That being said, the show is fantastically good fun, and what better to do at half-past midnight than indulge in weird, wacky, sexy cabaret fun?

REVIEW

The opening night of the Fringe was certainly a spectacle. This reviewer found himself toddling into the Three and Ten at midnight, where too many drinks were drunk before hauling myself upstairs for the half-past midnight showing of Voodoo Vaudeville’s newest show. I was hoping for a little light entertainment, something to ease the mind on the way to booze-addled sleep. What I got was bizarre, fascinating and entertaining, although terribly unorganised, which was sometimes refreshing, but often a little annoying.