Writing for Vaudeville | Page 3

in the later seventies and the early
eighties "variety" was on the ebb-tide. It was classed even lower than
the circus, from which many of its recruits were drawn.
Among the men who came to vaudeville's rescue, because they saw that
to appear to the masses profitably, vaudeville must be clean, were F. F.
Proctor in Philadelphia, and B. F. Keith in Boston. On Washington
Street in Boston, B. F. Keith had opened a "store show." The room was
very small and he had but a tiny stage; still he showed a collection of
curiosities, among which were a two-headed calf and a fat woman.
Later on he added a singer and a serio-comic comedian and insisted
that they eliminate from their acts everything that might offend the
most fastidious. The result was that he moved to larger quarters and ten
months later to still more commodious premised.
Continuous vaudeville--"eleven o'clock in the morning until eleven at
night"--had its birth on July 6, 1885. It struck the popular fancy
immediately and soon there was hardly a city of any importance that
did not possess its "continuous" house. From the "continuous"
vaudeville has developed the two-performances-a-day policy, for which
vaudeville is now so well known.
The vaudeville entertainment of this generation is, however, a vastly
different entertainment from that of even the nineties. What it has
become in popular affection it owes not only to Tony Pastor, F. F.
Proctor, or even to B. F. Keith--great as was his influence--but to a host

of showmen whose names and activities would fill more space than is
possible here. E. F. Albee, Oscar Hammerstein, S. Z. Poli, William
Morris, Mike Shea, James E. Moore, Percy G. Williams, Harry Davis,
Morris Meyerfeld, Martin Beck, John J. Murdock, Daniel F. Hennessy,
Sullivan and Considine, Alexander Pantages, Marcus Loew, Charles E.
Kohl, Max Anderson, Henry Zeigler, and George Castle, are but a few
of the many men living and dead who have helped to make vaudeville
what it is.
From the old variety show, made up of a singer of topical songs, an
acrobatic couple, a tight-rope walker, a sidewalk "patter" pair, and
perhaps a very rough comedy sketch, there has developed a
performance that sometimes includes as many as ten or twelve acts,
each one presented by an artist whose name is known around the world.
One of the laments of the old vaudeville performers is that they have a
place in vaudeville no more. The most famous grand opera singers and
the greatest actors and actresses appear in their room. The most
renowned dramatists write some of its playlets. The finest composers
cut down their best-known works to fit its stage, and little operas
requiring forty people and three or four sets of scenery are the result.
To the legitimate [1] stage vaudeville has given some of its successful
plays and at least one grand opera has been expanded from a playlet.
To-day a vaudeville performance is the best thought of the world
condensed to fit the flying hour.
[1] Legitimate is a word used in the theatrical business to distinguish
the full-evening drama, its actors, producers, and its mechanical stage
from those of burlesque and vaudeville. Originally coined as a word of
reproach against vaudeville, it has lost its sting and is used by
vaudevillians as well as legitimate actors and managers.
2. Of What a Vaudeville Show is Made
There is no keener psychologist than a vaudeville manager. Not only
does he present the best of everything that can be shown upon a stage,
but he so arranges the heterogeneous elements that they combine to
form a unified whole. He brings his audiences together by advertising
variety and reputations, and he sends them away aglow with the feeling

that they have been entertained every minute. His raw material is the
best he can buy. His finished product is usually the finest his brain can
form. He engages Sarah Bernhardt, Calve, a Sir James M. Barrie
playlet, Ethel Barrymore, and Henry Miller. He takes one of them as
the nucleus of a week's bill. Then he runs over the names of such
regular vaudevillians as Grace La Rue, Nat Wills, Trixie Friganza,
Harry Fox and Yansci Dollie, Emma Carus, Sam and Kitty Morton,
Walter C. Kelly, Conroy and LeMaire, Jack Wilson, Hyams and
McIntyre, and Frank Fogarty. He selects two or maybe three of them.
Suddenly it occurs to him that he hasn't a big musical "flash" for his bill,
so he telephones a producer like Jesse L. Lasky, Arthur Hopkins or Joe
Hart and asks him for one of his fifteen- or twenty-people acts. This he
adds to his bill. Then he picks a song-and-dance act and an acrobatic
turn. Suddenly he remembers that he wants--not for this show, but for
some future week--Gertrude