That's So Vaudeville

From the early 1800's, in America and Canada, until around the 1930's, Vaudeville genre performances prevailed in North America. A curious mix and mash of concert saloon performance style, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums and even burlesque, Vaudeville was the leading entertainment genre.

Types of acts you'd see if you went to the Vaudeville show:

Dancers, singers, ventriloquists, comedians, magicians, animal acts, classical and popular music musicians, male and female impersonators, skits of all kinds, one-act plays, excerpts of plays, minstrels, short films, athletes, acrobats, and even celebrity speeches and lectures.

No WONDER Vaudeville was so popular way back when!

I've got news for you - it's still pretty popular as a genre.

What decimated the wide-spread North American love of Vaudeville wasn't lack of interest...

Emergence of low-priced CINEMA brought Vaudeville down

But not in one fell swoop and not entirely.

The low prices and mechanization of Cinema materials that were able to be mass produced and mass delivered made attending a cinema film much more affordable during the Great Depression in North America.

With stress at a maximum and coins at a minimum, people still needed a way to let loose, get their minds off war, famine, sickness and poverty, so they flocked to the theatres where cinema managers raked in the cash and stuffed the theatres to capacity.

Plainly, Vaudeville continued in the new form available - on film as well as on the airwaves via radio broadcasting.

Actors like Buster Keaton, The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Jack Benny, who were all working on their stage careers managed great gains in popularity before Vaudeville's decline.

These talents struck back as soon as radio offered the opportunity - and they also set their skills into film right away, sort of rolling with the punches.

Those who knew success in the Vaudeville era simply dove headfirst into the new media available, however, the acts that would normally sustain them for months on tour on Vaudeville stages would be devoured by watchers and listeners of the new media forms in mere moments.

These Vaudeville celebrities had to scramble quickly to write and perform new material at a pace that was brutal as compared with the Vaudeville tour pace.

Some of our well remembered vaudevillians actually hit the scene during the decline, including Abbot and Costello, Kate Smith, Rose Marie, Judy Garland, The Three Stooges, and Bob Hope.

Who HASN'T SEEN and enjoyed the antics and talents of quick-footed, quick-witted stars like Judy Garland, Abbot and Costello, and Bob Hope?

Post-Vaudeville performers have actually been called 'The New Vaudevillians," and many were the staple personalities in a new genre of "Variety Shows" Though some of the audience-actor-connection and show spontaneity was forever lost in the filming process and the feel of 'onstage, live show' performances took a back seat. Occasionally, performers dedicated to the old style Vaudeville would be able to conduct tours of short duration but with the widespread showing capacity of film in cinemas/theatres and with television right on motion picture heels, true Vaudeville had to dwindle away.