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5 unusual facts about vaudeville


Étienne Arnal

He was twenty years at the Vaudeville, and completed at the various Parisian theatres a stage career of nearly half a century.

John Francis Wheaton

He served as an adviser to heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, worked as a community organizer with Vaudeville entertainer Bert Williams, and served as counsel for Marcus Garvey's first wife in a publicized and contentious divorce.

Joseph Tabrar

Joseph Tabrar (5 November 1857 – 22 August 1931) was one of the most famous songwriters of British music hall (similar to American Vaudeville), probably most famous for the song "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow" (1892).

Lil' Darlins Vaudeville

The Lil' Darlins Vaudeville Show is a fast paced comedic variety performance which pays homage to the days of Vaudeville.

Singin' Sam

Singin’ Sam aka Harry Frankel (January 27, 1888, Springfield, Ohio -June 12, 1948, Richmond, Indiana) was a minstrel performer, vaudevillian and popular personality during the early days of radio.


Abbie Mitchell

In London she premiered the principal role in the 1903 musical In Dahomey, produced by the team of George Walker and Bert Williams, with music composed by her husband Cook.

Arthur Morris

Speculation linked his difficulties on the field to his personal relationships: during the tour Morris had fallen in love with English showgirl Valerie Hudson; he spotted her when she was performing in the Crazy Gang vaudeville show at London's Victoria Palace.

Bernie Brillstein

Brillstein was born in Manhattan, to Moe and Tillie Brillstein, who all shared the Manhattan home of his uncle, the vaudeville and radio performer Jack Pearl.

Byham Theater

Built in 1903 and opened Halloween night 1904, the then-named Gayety Theater was stage and vaudeville house, and it featured stars such as Ethel Barrymore, Gertrude Lawrence, and Helen Hayes.

Charles J. Ross

Ross married actress Ada Towne (known professionally as Mabel Fenton) on June 9, 1887, during a stopover at Deadwood, South Dakota amidst a vaudeville tour of the American West.

Charmian

Charmion (1875–1949), American vaudeville trapeze artist and strongwoman

Comédie en vaudeville

It became a common feature of the earlier opéras comiques, such as those written by Charles Simon Favart or composed by Egidio Duni, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, and François-André Danican Philidor, and began to frequently utilize new music, although still labelled "vaudeville".

Contraption

Circus Contraption, a one-ring circus, vaudeville and dark cabaret troupe based in Seattle, Washington

Florence LeMar

Described as being "a refined Vaudeville novelty for all the family", the act toured music halls and variety stages throughout Australasia.

Frederick Hallen

Before her vaudeville days Fuller was on the legitimate stage in productions like the libretto Adonis, by Edward E. Rice and William F. Gill and Edward E. Rice’s Evangeline, in which she stepped in to replace Fay Templeton when the actress was unable to go on stage.

George Brasno

George Brasno and his sister Olive Brasno started out as a brother and sister midget act in a partnership with Buster Shaver's vaudeville act.

Governor's Comedy Club

It has two sister clubs also on Long Island: The Brokerage Comedy Club & Vaudeville Cafe (opened in 1980) in Bellmore, and McGuire's in Bohemia.

Hamateur Night

The premise of the film is rather simple; it features a vaudeville-style amateur talent night with a format that resembles the much later television program The Gong Show in that it features a judge who strikes a gong to stop the performance of any entertainer whom he deems bad.

Ina Ray Hutton

In 1934 she was asked by vaudeville agent Alex Hyde to lead an all-girl orchestra, the Melodears, which featured musicians including trumpet player Frances Klein, pianist Ruth Lowe Sandler, saxophonist Jane Cullum, guitarist Marian Gange, trumpeter Mardell "Owen" Winstead and trombonist Alyse Wells during its existence.

Jack Wasserman

:Vancouver erupted as the vaudeville capital of Canada, rivaling and finally outstripping Montreal in the East and San Francisco in the south as one of the few places where the brightest stars of the nightclub era could be glimpsed from behind a post, through a smoke-filled room, over the heads of $20 tippers at ringside.

James William Carling

When in America, James supported himself as a sidewalk artist and Vaudeville caricaturist before devoting his talents to illustrating the poem "The Raven".

June Duprez

The daughter of American vaudeville performer Fred Duprez and Australian Florence Isabelle Matthews, she was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England, during an air raid in the final months of the First World War.

Kelligrews Soiree

It was patterned on Irish music-hall songs like "The Irish Jubilee" and "Lanigan's Ball", and makes reference to "Clara Nolan's Ball", an American vaudeville song of the nineteenth century.

Koster and Bial's Music Hall

Koster and Bial's Music Hall was an important vaudeville theatre in New York, famous in cinema history as the site of the first public exhibition of the Vitascope on April 23, 1896.

Larry Keigwin

Keigwin has also created Keigwin Kabaret, a fusion of modern dance, vaudeville, and burlesque presented by the Public Theater at Joe's Pub and by Symphony Space.

Leon Liebgold

Aside from working in his youth as a vaudeville performer and actor on stages in Poland, Liebgold gained fame by acting in several Yiddish language films including Yidl Mitn Fidl and The Dybbuk.

Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer

During this period Maurer also maintained a composing partnership Aleksey Nikolayevich Verstovsky in the opera-vaudeville form.

March of Dimes

The name "March of Dimes"—coined in the late 1930s by vaudeville star Eddie Cantor as a play on the contemporary newsreel series "The March of Time"—was originally used for the foundation's annual fundraising event that requested each child donate a dime.

Maria Galvany

She allegedly performed only once in the United States, appearing in vaudeville in San Francisco during 1918, but she never managed to sing at New York's Metropolitan Opera House.

Minnie Marx

Marx and some of her sons appear briefly as characters in Glen David Gold's novel Carter Beats the Devil; the narrative identifies her as Minnie Palmer, and only gradually offers clues that the struggling vaudeville act traveling with her are the later-famous Marx Brothers.

Moms Mabley

A veteran of the Chitlin' circuit of African-American vaudeville, she later appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Pantages Theatre

Pantages Playhouse Theatre in the historic Exchange District of Winnipeg, Manitoba; first opened as a vaudeville house in 1913, and continues to operate as a leading venue for performing arts in Manitoba

Pierre-Chéri Lafont

After several years at the Nouveautis and the Vaudeville, on the burning of the latter in 1838 he went to England, and married, at Gretna Green, Jenny Colon, from whom he was soon divorced.

Riff Markowitz

He moved to Palm Springs in his 50s intending to retire, but his continuing interest in theatre led to the offer to restore a vaudeville theatre, which became home to The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies.

Rose Ouellette

Ouellette was a leading figure of the very popular burlesque and vaudeville genres which dominated the theatrical scene in Montreal from the 1920s until the 1960s.

Russell Alexander

Russell Alexander (February 26, 1877 in Nevada City, Missouri – October 2, 1915 in New York City) was an entertainer and composer, active primarily with vaudeville shows and musical comedy organizations.

Sidney Lanfield

In the early 1950s the reputedly strict taskmaster-director moved to television where his vaudeville and comic background in films were put to use in television comedies including Where's Raymond?, McHale's Navy and The Addams Family.

Sonny Clay

The group played in Sydney and Melbourne to great success, but problems with unions and with venue changes (their initial bookings were on vaudeville stages, but additional dates in dance halls led them into race-related trouble with local authorities) resulted in their gaining some notoriety.

The Actors' Temple

Many vaudeville, musical theater, television, and nightclub performers attended services there, including Sophie Tucker, Shelley Winters, Milton Berle, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Joe E. Lewis, Edward G. Robinson, as well as several of the Three Stooges.

The Ingenues

Managed by William Morris, the group performed frequently for variety theater, vaudeville and picture houses, often billed as the opening stage show before double features.

The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle

The film tells of novice American dancer Irene Foote (Ginger Rogers) who convinces New York-based British vaudeville comic Vernon Castle (Fred Astaire) to give up slapstick comedy in favor of sophisticated ballroom dancing.

Théâtre Lyrique

The libretto by Dumanoir and d'Ennery was based on Charles Perrault's Chat botté (Puss in Boots) and a vaudeville by Eugène Scribe called La chatte metamorphosée en femme.

Vosburgh Stakes

The inaugural race, as well as the second running, was won by Herbert M. Woolf's colt Joe Schenck, named for the vaudeville star, Joseph Thuma Schenck.

William Denny

William F. Denny (c. 1860–1908), American vaudeville performer and pioneer recording artist

William Overgard

Rudy was a Bonobo Chimpanzee who otherwise resembled actor George Burns, right down to the cigar, wise cracks, and career in vaudeville, movies, and standup comedy.

Willie Howard

:For the vaudeville team, see Willie and Eugene Howard

Willie Nile

Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, Nile came from a musical family—his grandfather was a vaudeville pianist who played with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Eddie Cantor; his uncles played boogie-woogie.


see also