VAUDEVILLE!

American media throughout history!

There’s a common string of thoughts that pop up when discussing history, regardless of what part it may be. There’s always that thought and question of, “What did those people do to entertain themselves?” or, “What was entertainment like in the olden times?” and for them that usually brings up the idea of a kid chasing a rolling wheel with a stick, and the realization of how boring that was.

Though truthfully that isn’t the case, entertainment had a very huge variety and catered to almost any sort of audience. And we’re not talking about people sitting around reading books and doing nothing, we’re talking about people actually going out and seeing something. Which in this day and age is remarkably amazing to think about, going out to some place and watching actual people do stuff, which now can be viewed in your living room though we’ll get back to that later.

Now, when it came to the entertainment of the time,various methods and various games were often used for children to pass the time, One such way was through the use of light, which was now on it’s way to light every home, and shadows. Which is what they called a “Shadow Pantomime, and consisted of “A sheet was hung with a candle behind it.  The “performer” would then manipulate the hands to produce shadows in the shape of various animals for the delight of the children who would guess the animal being portrayed.”

Riveting..

Now, you might be saying, even then that could have gotten old quite quickly, and in retrospect that may be true, though that wasn’t all. So, you may be wondering, what sort of things did people go see? And that can be summed up into one word, THEATER!

That’s right, most kids now a days dread the idea of going to a theater and seeing some sort of performance, and only go because they’ve got some sort of extra credit english assignment attached to it and really need to not show their boredom while in the theater behind me, seriously kid, get your feet away from my head, there is seriously someone sitting next to me, kid-GET YOUR NASTY ADIDAS AWAY FROM MY HEAD-

-wait what? Anyway!

THEATER!  The stepping stone to what we know today, tomorrow and everyday since.

And what sort of things did these people see in these venues? Well to start, something we called, Vaudeville!

 

Vaudeville, by definition is, “A type of entertainment popular chiefly in the Us in the early 20th century, featuring a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque, comedy, and song and dance”

So, exactly what the name entails, vaudeville was a mix musicals, skits, acts and anything far and few between. This gave rise to not only things that we’d call popular culture, but it gave rise to a whole audience of new and sometimes naughty acts. This would range from the absolutely incredible, to the absolutely sultry. And that would give rise to some amazing and downright strange acts. Such as family singing all the way to things like a horse dance. Which is actually recorded in a performance bill, “ Burk and Andrus and Their Trained Mule”
Though that doesn’t mean it didn’t have it’s fair share of amazing acts, one of which is a very familiar name centred around a man by the name of Harry Houdini.

Yes, the man who’s famed escapes and illusions are still studied and are still trying to figure out, whether it came to clever sleight of hand to amazing feats of endurance houdini was one such figure to come out of these circuits. Some of the most famous illusions include that of;

The Chinese Water Torture Cell!

The Milk can escape!

And the famous disappearing elephant!

Houdini was actually one of the biggest headlining act in vaudeville, and was actually one of the most well paid, though we sort of know about his later life and death..
Though Houdini still ranks high up with some of the most well known acts of vaudeville.

And on the same circuit, there was a more revealing, more naughty, and more downright eye catching acts…
Which surprisingly was not burlesque. When it came to vaudeville, like said before, every actor had some sort of an act attached to them to bring the masses, which would be oddities and some sort of gimmick that would be attached to it. Burlesque, originally did not emphasize the scantily clad women with all of the cliques that we like to tag burlesque with. Burlesque actually was the equivalent of a very lewd parody of the day.More of the equivalent that our modern day prime time shows.

So you might be asking, why does this make such a big deal? Why do I need to learn about this? How did this shape my entertainment?

Well, you have to look at it in a different light.

Vaudeville was a large platform for entertainment that became a sort of mainstream for america. Anywhere from outlandish acts, strange new musicals and contemporary ideas that are still being carried on. They focused on sketches that went anywhere from something new to reviews of contemporary events. These were comedy acts that we’re still using by the name of stand up.

This brought many of the the mainstream pop culture to the masses, and in a way this was america’s very first version of variety television.  With special guests, musical acts, which may sound somewhat familiar now a days. And it even transcended that!  As said here, “It was symbolic of the cultural diversity of early twentieth century America. Vaudeville was a fusion of centuries-old cultural traditions, including the English Music Hall, minstrel shows of antebellum America, and Yiddish theater.”

So one way you have to look at these are like that of your weekend entertainment, that sort of thing you look forward to, or what I as a kid referred to as a ‘Saturday Morning Cartoon’.

And a lot of time in these cartoons you’d hear jokes that are sort of in the popular culture or jokes that teach, and all of that sort. So what you get is a kind of a good idea of what the mentality of the time is. And you also have to consider who exactly vaudeville produced, people like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Bob Hope, all followed the Vaudevillian formula and had that lead to their success.  So, in a way, you really have to thank vaudeville for just about most the modern stage dramas, comedies, and most things on television that you see.

The thing is, that this became part of a problem, most people didn’t exactly have access to all of these major theaters or major events, and while most had local events, it still was difficult to bring these spectacles to the masses. And that was one thing that papers were able to do, but that would eventually see a change soon to come…