Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Dang Dutch comedy acts! You would not believe the Amish Stand-Up we
have here in Big Valley.

Haveing acted in Bus and Truck productions, I have to wonder how
aweful travel was for a lot of the circut performers. Trains are not
fun!
  

    
Marian Spitzer's book was one of my sources for the book...rare to get
such an inside view of how the vaudeville business worked in book
form. The Providence show was a "learning experience. I'm a first time
author. In New York, the contacts at all the venues know that I'm also
a performer and are set up for the unexpected things I may do at an
event -- usually non sequitur style comedy, a ukulele tune, and the
like. I didn't think to stress this in Providence and so found myself
in a very intimate setting, with all the chairs in a
circle...appropriate for reading from a personal memoir or a bit of
storytelling, but REAL wrong for me. It's not their fault, they couldnt
have known. So I ended up talking about the Four Cohans (which was
part of my prepare presentation--they were from Providence) and just
kind of informally talking to, and kidding around with the audience.
One of the guys who showed up was a mentalist, and another was an older
man recalling all the great acts he had seen at local theaters. Such
connections have been an unexpected bonus for having written this book!
As for train travel, as joyless as it is today, think how awful it was
a century ago! But they were used to such discomforts...another way to
look at it is that WE are really pampered! 
  

    
Damn, I'm sitting here in Philly, thinking kafclown got that book
right out from under my nose, grrr.

Travis, I am struck by tone with which you close your book,
specifically by the bleakness of your view of contemporary society,
presented as a backdrop for the boundless virtues and horizons of
vaudeville to come.  It feels right, like a good ballyhoo, but it also
leads me to wonder if you really feel so grim about the cultural
landscape around us.

I am also curious about how you feel about the fringe festival
movement, particularly in the US.  Are you seeing fringe festivals
(variety shows on a larger scale?) as a positive development for
vaudeville performers?

(Disclaimer: I am inferring that there is such a movement afoot here,
given how recently the New York and Philly Fringes began, plus the fact
that DC is about to join in.)
  

    

San Francisco has a fringe, too.
  

    
Wally, I thought you moved back to Chicago!  I was superpacked for time at 
the conference, but would have loved to have dinner with you or something.

Ah well, next time!

Didn't know about the DC Fringe-- have to check it out.

<http://www.capfringe.org/> Oops, No longer accepting applications.


The mentalist was no doubt Rory Raven, a friend of mine.

Regarding Fringes, I'll be interested to hear Trav's answer.  For me, I'm 
not sure I'd  classify Fringe festivals as variety shows on a large scale.  
They are festivals, but they provide a limited opportunity (4 or 5 shows) 
to do your work, but it has to be a complete show.  To my mind the thing 
about vaudeville is that you could perfect your 10 minutes, and do your 10 
minutes for a very long time.  Fringe Festivals offer variety to the 
customers, but they are all discreet shows, not discreet acts.  You have 
to pay separately for each show, generally.

The Spitzer book mentions Joe Jackson.  I met Joe Jackson Jr., who 
continued doing the same 20 minute "tramp clown stealing the bicycle" act 
that his dad did-- when I met him, he and his dad had been performed the 
same 20 minute act for over 107 years combined.  After Vaudeville, Joe Jr. 
moved to the Ice Capades, and to circuses in Europe.

 That was a tight 20 minutes!
  

    
You'll think I'm nuts, but I came up with a formulation as I was
writing this book, one that's too jarring for a book on vaudeville. The
formulation is this: "The end of ALL theater is orgiastic sex and
ritual murder". I mean this as a historical formulation...meaning that,
given enough time, any spectacle culture will inevitably degenerate to
bestial extremes...lust and bloodlust. Unfortunately, we only have one
true historical example, although it is my guess that the cycle had
happened countless times in prehistory. I see many indications in the
present age, that we are trending in that direction. I think we are
becoming a cruel and callous people, and as evidence (besides the
obvious aesthetic evidence) offer up the manner in which our
democratically elected leaders conduct our foreign and domestic
affairs. I am a fatalist. I think there is really nothing to be done
about it but to try to swim against the tide. keep your head down and
try and stay out of the shit storm. As for the Fringe moment, I think
it is very encouraging---there's tons of creative ferment out
there...and it does feel related to the proliferation of vaudeville. 
  

    
Also anyone interested in vaudeville might want to check out the New
York Public Library for the Performing Art's exhibition, VAUDEVILLE
NATION now on at Lincoln Center. Information on the show can be found
at
http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/exhib/lpa/lpaexhibdesc.cfm?id=404
An online exhibition can be seen at 
http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/vaudeville/

Al Hirschfeld once told me that vaudevillians spent their whole life
working up 12 minutes of material. He felt that those who were lucky
enough to make it to TV were done for because once they did their act
once they had nothing left.

He loved it of course, and was a "vaudeville bum" often cutting school
to go to the Palace. He loved Houdini and saw all of his performances.
He was eventually invited backstage by the magician who showed him a
couple of tricks.

On the same bill at that time was Buster Keaton and his family's act.
As a Keaton fan I was anxious to know about it, but Hirschfeld, who had
tremendous recall, especially for performances, only had eyes for
Houdini's act, and didn't remember a thing about it.

One would think vaudeville would be perfect for today's audiences who
have short attention spans. Maybe revues, with the quick succession of
songs, skits, and showgirls, would be better for audiences today.

It seems to me that in order to have something akin to vaudeville you
still need the theaters to play in, and this country has allowed its
performing place infrastructure to disappear. Now if something could be
done on the regional theater circuit, then you might have something.

Travis, where are the best places to see any, if any can be seen,
vaudeville style entertainment today?
  

    
I'd have to say the venues and the companies that have done or are
doing vaudeville or vaudeville style projects are too numerous to
mention -- I've come across scores of them in the last couple of
decades. At the moment, you have a pretty fair chance of catching
vaudevillians in the act at Coney Island USA (season permitting),
Galapagos, the Slipper Room, Bowery Poetry Club, the Supper Club, Mo
Pitkins, etc etc. Theater for the New City, where I work books a
vaudeville show of some description at least every few months, and this
is true of dozens of other off-off-Broadway theaters, as well. This is
just in NYC--most of the major cities have a similar scene. 
  

    
How uncharacteristically remiss of me, Mr. Leopold, to have forgotten
to mention that I myself am fronting my own vaud unit -- we'll be
performing at the Makor branch of the 92nd Street Y tomorrow night
(January 17). Your books on Irving Berlin and Hirschfeld look like
must-reads, by the way, and I promise to check them out!
  

    
Thanks for the information on venues in NYC. I've been to some and
will check out others. I'm not in town again until Wednesday so I will
miss your act, but hope to catch it soon. Do you have a website or
someplace where one can check out the schedule? And is there any place
on the Web which might list vaudeville performances in other cities?

And thanks for the plug for my Irving Berlin book (which I will host a
discussion on here starting next week) and my Hirschfeld's Hollywood
book. Although from those two titles, one would think I only work on
centenarians. Fortunately my portfolio is a bit bigger.

Did you have a chance to see the NYPL exhibitions? I would be curious
of your impressions. And while on the subject of reviews, do you have
any thoughts onthe PBS documentary a few years back on vaudeville?

Working on Berlin, I found a treasure trove of material on vaudeville,
only some of which I used in my book and companion exhibitions. Frank
Tinney, the great blackface comic from vaudeville, was in two Berlin
shows: WATCH YOUR STEP (1914) and a MUSIC BOX REVUE of 1923. I loved
Joe Laurie's description of Tinney who had “the quality of a
mischievous kid when he was telling a joke.“ After performing in
England, Tinney had to submit his earnings to the tax authorities. He
was questioned his expense of over $700 for the burnt cork he used to
black up. He responded "I only use corks of the best champagne."

I have found that as I go out to do interviews for my book, the one
thing that  seems to always get people worked up is when one talks of
blackface and the ethnic comedy songs. In this era of pc, these things
make people mighty uncomfortable, despite the fact that the songs were
a sign of acceptance and blackface was akin to commedia. Have you found
that in your work? What do you tell people?
  

    

What's always struck me about vaudeville is that, while it often
does involve a performer with mastery of a certain physical skill, 
it is rooted in the relationship the performer has with the audience.
 
Some of the most intensely wonderful vaudeville performers I've seen
can hold an audience transfixed for a very long time without
really.doing.anything.  Their 'not doing anything' builds and 
builds and intensifies the enjoyment.  Think George Burns maybe,
standing with his cigar and mugging and bit.  Think Jack Benny.
There are contemporary performers who can do that.  Reverend
Chumleigh comes to mind as one of the best.  

Oh yeah sure he can walk a slack rope or do various illusions,
but it's the patter 

There are quite a few festivals in the U.S. and Canada where it's 
possible to see some of the best vaudeville being created and performed 
today.
  

    

There are quite a few festivals around the country and the world
where it's possible to see concentrations of excellent contemporary
vaudeville performances.

Some of them are summer festivals in the U.S. and Canada, such as the
Oregon Country Fair (near Eugene, OR, 3 stages with 3 days of nothing 
but vaudeville from 11 a.m. to 7 pm), Edmonton Children's Festival, 
Winnipeg, Bumbershoot in Seattle, even some of the theaters in Branson, 
MO, are featuring excellent vaudeville acts.  

One of the strongest concentrations of vaudeville acts is at the
annual Moisture Festival in Seattle.  This will be the 3rd year,
March 21 - April 9, with shows almost every night. Their promo
calls it comedy/variety, but that's mostly a marketing issue in that
a general audience these days wouldn't know what to expect from 
something called vaudeville. See  http://www.moisturefestival.com/

There's a fine almost indistinguishable line between a lot of 
contemporary circus and vaudeville, such as with the Bindlestiffs.
Circus Contraption and Cirque de Flambe fall into that category. 
They're both out of Seattle but they tour, too.  

Little pockets of vaudeville performance pop up all the time in smaller
venues.  Here in S.F. there used to be weekly shows at the Odeon bar
until it changed management a few months ago.  It'll pop up again 
somewhere else. 
  

    
What kind of living could the run-of the-mill working (not big name)
performer make? 
  

    
A great source of vaudeville anecdotes: show biz autobiographies of
people who found success in the first years of TV.  A huge number of
them started there, and they have tales to tell.  For whatever reason,
when I was a kid I got on a jag of reading such books for a year or so.
  

    
Here's a whole bunch of responses to a whole bunch of things:

* I once got to meet Al Hirschfeld -- he was close to 100 then and had
just written a book. he was completely lucid and funny. I was charmed
and amazed. 

* I reviewed the NYPL exhibition for the NY Sun. I liked it for the
most part. The exhibition seems collections-driven, which is cool
because NYPL has such incredible materials. I did find it somewhat
narrative-poor...I think the curator is looking to make her own points,
and intentionally avoiding the contributions of particular individuals
in favor of more of a "social history". Key figures like Keith,
Pastor, Proctor, and many others deserving of major mention get scant
attention at all...whereas architectural drawings of post-vaudevillian
picture houses take up lots of space. It's quibbling on my part,
really. It's not the exhibition I would do, but it's a wonderful
exhibition.

* Making vaudeville all about the sins of blackface is to me
equivalent to saying the history of humanity is the history of
enslavement of the mistreatment of minorities. The mistreatment of
humanities is one part of the human story: a cruel, tragic indefensible
part. But it is not the whole story. Thus also with vaudeville and
blackface. In my book I call blackface "heinous", I compare it to
Nazisim...I probably stress how egregious minstrelsy and coon songs
were 50 times. I have been singled out in most other reviews for my
sympathetic treatment of the career of Bert Williams, America's first
African American star., Yet a reviewer in Newsday ignored everything
else in my book, and claimed that my book's message was the blackface
was just okay. Vaudeville was an amazingly complex phenomenon,
embracing business history, sexual history, cultural history, theatre
history, a dozen different ethnic groups. It existed in a racist
society, and in that society, it was considered entertaining for some
performers -- black and white -- to exagerate and even misrepresent the
characteristics of African Americans (much as they also did with Irish
Americans, German Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans and
even "Yankee Americans"). Some people think because this sin is part of
the story, it needs to be the whole story. For me, that's another
book. There are lots of good books about minstrelsy and blackface. A
book about vaudeville is not the same thing, nor should it be. I did
have a similar feeling about the American Experience documentary. While
that film has lots of really great aspects, it made the mistreatment
of blacks 30-50% of the story. To me, that's ANOTHER documentary. I
say, it's better off to do an ENTIRE documentary about blacks in
vaudeville. But a documentary that purports to be about vaudeville in
general is grossly distorting the story to make half of it about the
500-1000 African Americans (at most) who performed or aspired to
perform there. And beyond this -- as you say, David, and as I also  
say in my book,  for a lot of white performers, blackface was not all
about putting blacks down...but more like a kind of secret
wish-fulfillment to BE African American. This continues throughout the
decades...from Elvis Presley to Mick Jagger to Eminem. That is also at
least a part of the blackface story, if you want to have any kind of
nuanced view of it.

* I serve on the advisory board of the Bindlestiffs (who I've known
and worked with for ten years), and both they and Circus Contraption
have mounted shows recently at Theater for the New City, where I work.
Circus, burlesque, side show, vaudeville...there's a lot of interest in
all these forms, and much bleedover among them. 

* A performer who is not a star can make NO sort of living at all
today.  None. This is the main consequence to performers of the absence
of the vaudeville industry. There is no tiered system of performer
levels. You are either a star...or are you are waiting tables. In fact,
many people who are quite well known still can't earn a lving. For
example, many stand-up comedians you see on Comedy Central work at
comedy clubs for something like sixty dollars a gig. It won't even pay
for their drinks that night. 
  

    
About money. I was actually thinking more about during vaudeville's
hay-day. What kind of living could these family acts make? Could they
buy a house? Etc...
  

    
There are a whole lot of older performer's houses out in Maine and 
"upstate NY" (ie Rhinebeck, Ossining, and Westchester)  It was much 
cheaper to have your family out somewhere else in the hinterlands and on 
the road.  I remember I was driving somewhere with Benny Reehl and he kind 
of went down a list of pretty famous vaudevillians/mimes/variety 
performers who had houses in Maine.   (Nowadays, Avner the Eccentric, Fred 
Garbo, and Michael Trautman  are three that come to mind immediately, and 
I'm sure there are tons others.  The Bindlestiffs are moving to Hudson NY, 
because they are being kicked out of their Billyburg digs, which by the 
way, were not particularly palatial.

As for comedians who wait tables-- it's the truth-- it's very difficult to 
makemoney as a comedian if you live in NY or LA-- that's because so many 
people are giving it away for free, hoping to get on Conan or Leno, get a 
sitcom treatment, and become Tim Allen. 

The working comedians-- those that aren't stars, but work primarily as a 
comedian-- a lot of them live regionally, where it's much cheaper to live, 
but they have a circuit of gigs that they do.  It's much harder to get 
famous that way, but it's a living.

I wouldn't agree with Travis, though, that you are either a star or you 
are making NOTHING.  There's still a fair amount of play if you are 
willing to do cruise ships, amusement parks, birthday parties, rotarian 
gigs, etc.  The best paying gigs are industrials-- for corporations.  
Corporations pay huge money for private shows-- in fact there's a fairly 
large market for magicians, mentalists, jugglers, and comedians who are 
developing corporate presentations that revolve around concepts like 
teamwork and interpersonal communication in order to pay the rent.

Most vaudeville/variety performers have an "Educational" show that they do
in the schools-- it's the one place if you've got the right show, 
curriculum based,  you can still do okay. (And with budget cuts that's 
changing too!)  I've been  resisting it for a while, but may have to give 
in.  (I'd come up with a  concept for a show called "Figuring the Angles 
with Euclid the Geometric Clown -- coming soon to an elementary school 
near you!)  I've got a few other shows I may have to resort to in order to 
feed my fleas)

What is true is that there's no way to build your act on a day by day 
consistent basis.  You've got to book your show (45-50 minutes) and then 
be pretty good at it to get re-booked.  It's very difficult to try out new 
material, since you've got to be pretty good right away in order to keep 
getting jobs.

Overall. performers make remarkably little, have absolutely no job 
stability, and have no guarantee of future income.  And most of us 
continue to do it anyway!
  

    
As for back in the day, though, you could make a living at it, before
achieving stardom, through it was a rather precarious one. It was
rather like being a free-lancer is today. You're never quite certain
WHERE the next dollar is coming from, but if you keep hustling, you'll
land jobs (You also better carefully save money to tide you over during
the dry spells). The other fact is, if you chose to be a vaudevillian,
you had no choice BUT to earn your living at it, because you had to
travel...so there was no way you could hold down a "day job". A
middle-class level of living was definitely possible for a mid-level
vaudevillian though, to answer your question. 
  

    

I have to chime in and agree with Adam that there are quite a few highly 
skilled vaudeville performers making really good livings today who are not 
in any way considered stars, and they're not household names either, but 
they are able to buy homes (as long as they're not in NY or CA), send their
kids to school, have decent middle class lives.  In addition to the
occasional theater shows, they do tons of work on cruise ships, in
industrials, for corporate showss, and in places like Branson, MO,
which all pay quite well.   To kaflclown's list of people, I'll add
Charlie Brown, Rhys Thomas, Flying Karamazov Brothers, Tom Noddy (although
he works in Germany a lot, I have to admit), Karen Quest, Henrik Bothe, 
Michael Davis, and all the people who've been working at the various 
Teatro Zinzanni shows over the past couple of years. 

Of course as with any freelance occupation, whether it's writing code
or dog-grooming or running a PR agency, you really never do know
when the next gig or contract will come in, but that's not unique to
vaudeville, or even to the performing arts.
  

    
yeah, I don't work the circus biz so have to confess I don't know much
about contemporary gigging. But it turns out Mr. Brown was asking
about the heyday
  

    
Mr. Brown? Is my dad here?
  

    
My list was actually artists who live in Maine, off the beaten path (but  
apparently on the way or near some old vaudeville routings on the east
coast, which is what we were originally talking about.)

Hey, this conversation is just like a vaudeville-- if you don't like it,  
it's likely to change in less than 8 minutes, so wait a little.

My time working with the Bindlestiffs on Times Square was very 
vaudevillian-- one hour shows with a clown/juggler, a burlesque act, a    
magician, and some sideshow stuff.  (And the article that was written 
about the Palace of Variety and my show there in the NY Times  was titled 
"Old-Time Vaudeville Is New Again")

Of course one of my favorite stories about what is old or new is that  
sometime in the late   1980's, there was a San Francisco New Vaudeville 
Festival, which held a   competition for best "New Vaudeville" act.  As 
it turns out, first place was taken by George Karl, an OLD Vaudevillian 
who had worked routings in the late 50's, and spent most of his time 
working the variete stages of Europe.  George had an amazing hat juggling 
comedy act that worked at a frenetic pace. 
  

    
Something that we've briefly glossed on is that a vaudeville performer 
TODAY means somebody who has "an act" -- juggler, mentalist, dog trainer, 
bird specialist ( a few years ago, an old British guy came up with Big 
Apple Circus doing a bird act which was phenomenal!)

But looking through travis's book and the Palace book, I'm struck by how 
many of the "Acts" were one act plays which I can only assume were 30 
minutes long or so-- or were the "plays" really short skits that featured 
actors?

Any idea Travis about how long these plays were?
  

    

(Sorry for the continuing drift, but there are many stories from those New 
Vaudeville festivals held at San Francisco State University, first in 1985, 
I believe.  The revered British variety artist George Carl was invited
as a special guest there, and his genius was certainly known in advance
to the organizers.  His wonderful 'getting caught in the mic cord' act
can be seen in the film Funny Bones.)
 

Back to the older acts.  
  

    
George Karl's act is legendary! and just my cup of tea! And someone
(not ME!)would do well to start a vaudeville festival. The Bindlestiffs
have expressed hopes for making something like that happen, but they
always have their hands full! (usually with balls, tops, swords, and
bullwhips)
Adam, I think those plays ranged from 10 minutes to half an hour,
probably averaging 15 minutes. I just read that some of Eugene
O'neill's first efforts were for the vaudeville stage. Another feature
(hard to conceptualize) were so called "tab shows", meaning tabloid
musicals. By tabloid they didn't mean scandalous subject matter but a
shortened version. Essentially the act would be en entire musical
comedy squished into a half hour. The act might be a huge company of
two dozen people (the Marx Bros. had such an act at one point). These
plays (and also dramatic monologues an poetry readings) were a HUGE
part of historic vaudeville, and actually much closer to the kind of
vaudeville I personally write and perform.