During the early 20th century, vaudeville, a type of entertainment that consisted of a string of unrelated acts, was extremely prominent. With vaudeville appearing after the Civil War, vaudeville served as one of the many ways changes were brought to American society and morale. Because of this, vaudeville would become to be extremely influential on the future of the theatre business in general. In fact, it was vaudeville that truly made theatrical entertainment a bigger business in the first place. However, vaudeville only rose to prominence with the help of the Reconstruction Period and subsequent years after the Civil War. During this period, better communication and transportation systems were being created. Many businessmen used such improvements to their advantage to form networks of theatrical productions. After the Civil War also brought increased leisure time to many which would be soon filled with watching theatrical productions such as vaudeville ones. When watching a theatrical production before the Civil War, it was not uncommon to have audience members disrupting the show as well as attacking actors when they were onstage or backstage. Many businessmen with their newly formed theatrical networks, wished to change this so that all would appreciate and respect the theatre.
An example of a prominent businessman of this network is Benjamin Franklin Keith. Many find him to be the main man behind the rise of vaudeville in America. Keith partnered with the Bijou Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts and used this theatre to reconstruct the public eye's view on theatrical business. Keith was severely strict on what was allowed in the Bijou Theatre, and this included tangible items as well as the actors' and audience members' attitudes. Such examples of this included the banning of derogatory or sexual comments for the audience members as well as the prohibiting revealing costumes for the performers. Keith envisioned his theater to be a place of respect and cleanliness, for he believed if a theater prioritized such things a more enjoyable and successful performance would come as a result both for the performers and audience members. Keith believed it would also be successful because, with a more decent theater, it would appeal to a larger population. Specifically, Keith made efforts to ensure that women and children would be able to enjoy the performances. In fact, Keith regularly invited Sunday schools to rehearsals of certain acts to ensure that the act was decent to their standards. Because of Keith's efforts, such a kind of theater became praised and was soon expected of every professional theater.
Many young vaudeville performers would later rise to fame in their older years. One such performer would be Judy Garland, born Frances Gumm. Judy Garland is famously known for performing the onscreen roles of Esther Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis and Dorothy Gale in the The Wizard of Oz. Before her movie stardom, Garland performed in multiple vaudeville acts, beginning at only the age of two, alongside her two older sisters. The trio was known to be the "The Gumm Sisters" and their specialty was singing and dancing to current songs. This would be as opposed to other types of acts such as acrobatics, clowning, or even acts involving animals. Below are two recorded performances of Judy Garland's, or at the time, Frances Gumm's.
The Gumm Sisters: "The Land of Let's Pretend"
The Gumm Sisters: "That's the Good Old Sunny South"
Sources:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/easton/vaudeville/vaudevillemain.html
I find it amazing how quickly entertainment has evolved over the years, and while the vaudeville was an extremely important entertainment form, many new forms came along not long after. In fact, the vaudeville was just one of the key points in the evolution of entertainment in America, first stemming from live minstrel show, to eventually the vaudeville. Not long after, the use of projected film movies came into use, more commonly known as nickelodeon films. These nickelodeons came from the word nickel, meaning that people only had to pay 5 cents per movie, which was much cheaper than vaudevilles, causing it to quickly come into popularity. The first nickelodeons were actually shown in vaudeville theaters, as a supplement to the collection of live acts. Even now, more than 100 years after the first showing of a nickelodeon film, we still see its impact with the name of an extremely popular television channel with the same name.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-nickelodeon-opens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_(movie_theater)
It's interesting to learn how the grand Broadway shows that many love today grew from the interests of major business owners during the Reconstruction era. These shows really brought out mass audiences that were culturally and economically diverse, from a variety of social levels and backgrounds. Trying to appeal to the diverse audiences and also influenced by the many cast members in these variety style shows, most vaudevilles incorporated different styles of cultural entertainment into them, combining English music halls, American minstrel shows, Yiddish theaters, and so much more into an extravagant and enjoyable performance. I would guess that these diverse vaudeville shows likely paved the way for other forms of cultural art coming into public life, like jazz and gospel music in the early 1900s. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/vaudeville-about-vaudeville/721/
ReplyDeleteThis post is very interesting, I like how you incorporated the bit at the end with Judy Garland, I never knew that she was in anything besides movies. Also, I was a bit confused and interested by the fact that you said that people used to attack the actors prior to the civil war. Did you ever find out why that is? The origins of theater are quite fascinating, in fact, I found an interesting article that relates the concept of live performance with the Speakeasys of the Prohibition era. It covers how one Vaudeville actress actually ran the clubs in order to keep live performance alive during this time. Thanks again for such a great post! http://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/program/speakeasies-flappers-red-hot-jazz-music-prohibition
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