Vaudeville

   Vaudeville grew out of the culture of incorporation that defined American life after the Civil War. It marked the beginning of popular entertainment as big business, and depended on the white collar workers using their leisure time to take part in the performances. Variety showman, M.B. Leavitt claimed the word originated from the French "vaux de ville" ("worth of the city, or worthy of the city's patronage"), but in all likelihood, as Albert McLean suggests, the name was merely selected "for its vagueness, its faint, but harmless exoticism, and perhaps its connotation of gentility." (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/easton/vaudeville/vaudevillemain.html)
   Vaudeville is a touring act that is made up of stand up comedy, musical numbers, magic, circus, slap stick and even animal tricks. A couple  of the most popular Vaudeville performers were B.F. Keith and E.F. Albee, who were both parts of traveling circuses, people from all over would go to Vaudeville acts just to see them perform. Hartley Davis who was a well known journalist who wrote many articles on Vaudeville stated, "the origins and success of vaudeville can be attributed to the attempts of men like B.F. Keith to bridge the widening gap between high and low entertainment."
   An example of a a few acts in a Vaudeville show would be the following: (http://www.musicals101.com/vaude3.html)


   DUMMY: My father killed a hundred men in the war.
   VENTRILOQUIST: What was he? A Gunner?
   DUMMY: Nope, a cook.


  
   YOUNG MAN: I want to ask for the hand of your daughter in marriage.
   OLD MAN: You’re an idiot!
   YOUNG MAN: I know it. But I didn’t suppose you’d object to another one in the family.

   A few acts that one could also find in Vaudeville shows were burlesque acts or freak shows. The freak shows would consist of many very tall and very short men and women, people with disfiguring diseases, fire eaters, and people with many tattoos and piercings. They also called these people freaks or nature.

   According to http://www.musicals101.com/vaude1.html appearing in vaudeville was no vacation. A successful act toured for forty or more weeks a year, doing "one nighters," split-weeks or weekly stands depending on a theatre’s size. The number of performances per day varied from circuit to circuit. Performers put up with these demanding schedules because even those who did not reach the level of headliner (which is whose name appeared on the sign as the main act for the show) could make good money. In 1919, when the average factory worker earned less than $1,300, a small time Keith circuit performer playing a forty-two week season at $75 per week earned $3,150 a year. 

  

  

   Found at www.youtube.com are the videos I posted above, one showing an act between three brothers, music is being played in the background while they dance to it, the other incorporates a Vaudeville performance with an animal, so you can see a couple different styles.
   There have been numerous attempts to revive vaudeville – a hopeless task, given the changes in American popular culture.According to xroads.virginia.edu the last live echo of vaudeville was Radio City Music Hall, which kept the presentation house format alive until economics forced it to become a concert venue in 1979. It is fair to suggest that vaudeville's legacy lives on through television, where the remote control allows viewers to skim through choices to find entertainment to their liking?