[Dixielandjazz] FW: "Vaudeville Nation" reviewed

[Bill Haesler]

Dear friends,
This one via the Australian Dance Bands list.
I would love see it.
No mention of a catalogue or companion book.
A pity.
Kind regards,
Bill. 

Vaudeville's Dead, but What a Corpse!
Library gathers memorabilia for exhibit at Lincoln Center
by Michael Sommers
Newark Star-Ledger, November 25, 2005

NEW YORK -- "The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas" herself, singer Sophie
Tucker, bequeathed a truckload of scrapbooks detailing her 60
fabulous years in show biz to the New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts. 

Countless artistes and others in the profession have likewise
donated the paper trails of their careers to the library's archive,
based at Lincoln Center. More than mere paper, too: costumes,
recordings and tons of odd items.

Drawing upon this trove, the library has unveiled an
exhibit, "Vaudeville Nation," which details the origins, prime and
decline of vaudeville during the half-century between the 1880s and
1930s. 

The free-to-the-public display in the Oenslager Gallery can
pleasurably absorb a visitor's attention for an hour and more.

Laid out in tidy groupings in viewing cases and across the walls of
the gallery are relics of the entertainers, animal acts and freaks
who toured from one end of the country to the next performing "two-a-
day" showings. 

The amusement wasn't simply all song-and-dance routines, although
the popular conception of vaudeville today is probably that of a
fellow in a straw boater and a miss in fluffy ruffles spooning
to "Shine On, Harvest Moon."

In its heyday, the typical bill of fare at variety houses offered a
dozen assorted acts ranging from magic and acrobats to one-act
plays. As vaudeville waned during the Depression, performers went
into clubs or joined the glitzy "prologs" created as pre-feature
entertainment at movie palaces like the Roxy Theatre. Others, like
George Burns and Gracie Allen, rose to even greater fame on radio,
then TV. 

Not everything in old-time vaudeville was wholesome family fare. An
array of sepia 19th-century Sarony portraits reveals the beefy
blondes who paraded around in sexy tights with Lydia Thompson's
troupe of Victorian lovelies. Cyclonic singer Eva Tanguay, known as
the "I-Don't-Care Girl," made strong men faint. Muscle man Eugene
Sandow's rippling flesh made the ladies swoon.

One entire case is devoted to gender-benders of the early 20th
century such as glamorous Julian Eltinge, who had a Broadway theater
named after him; Karyl Norman, known as "the Creole Fashion Plate";
Bert Savoy, the bawdy hussy later felled by lightning, and the duo
of John and James Russell, whose comic specialty was impersonating
Irish immigrant maids.

The curators feature a considerable sampling of African-American
artists, especially those who lit up Harlem nightclubs during its hi-
de-ho era. A program for one of the 1930s Cotton Club revues boasts
an ensemble headed by Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters and the Nicholas
Brothers in the same floor show that introduced "Stormy Weather."

Broadway-goers who love the musical "Gypsy" will be tickled by
vintage ads ballyhooing the real-life "Dainty June and her Newsboy
Songsters." Devotees of the short-lived "Side Show" will see a
beautiful poster of attached twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, who
were, the tag-line crows, "born joined together." As for "Ragtime"
fans, circa 1915 photos reveal scandal-scarred Evelyn Nesbit being
wildly whirled about in an adagio dance number, while elsewhere
there's a significant array of Harry Houdini items.

Old recordings and a loop of Vitaphone shorts of leading variety
artists of the late 1920s offer vivid tastes of the talent.

For myself, the exhibit appears too neatly arranged. Vaudeville
represented such a wild profusion of American culture high, low and
in-between that providing something of a crazy quilt over-abundance
of miscellanea might produce a more appropriate atmosphere. There's
a dismayingly cool quality about these orderly lay-outs across
chaste white walls and within pristine cases that crimps some of the
potential excitement to be conjured from the colorful contents
of "Vaudeville Nation."

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