Written by Patrick Murphy, Executive Producer
KETC
St. Louis
Invitation - February 3, 1918
I've had enough of the war news for today, and I bet you're not thrilled by the prospect of another night at home listening to the Victrola. So grab your hat, and let's go out. The 20th century will be over before we know it.
I checked the Amusement Section of the Post-Dispatch. We've got some interesting choices.
Want to go high hat? The Sheldon is featuring a chamber music quartet. (A dollar a ticket though is a little rich for my blood.) Downtown the Odeon is featuring a seventeen year old kid violinist - Jascha Heifitz. (Never heard of him.)
If you're in the mood for something a little more risqué, we could take in some Burlesque. The Max Spiegel Review is playing at the Gayety with Midgie Miller (always a crowd pleaser). They're sponsoring the Perfect Figure contest "open to all local models" (oh you kid!). The Standard Real Burlesque is featuring "Social Follies" and "Basketball Girls" (Feeling athletic?)
Vaudeville is more up my alley. Two bits and you've got yourself an evening - fifteen cents for the cheap seats. At the Grand Opera House ("Biggest and Best Vaudeville for the Price") the headliner is Mississippi Misses, "featuring dances of all nations". Also on the bill are Kate Watson the Hoosier Girl, the Mehlvilles (A Study in Electrics), and Balancing Stevens (A Talkative Eqilibrist).
Feeling patriotic? At the Columbia the big act is "Lincoln of the USA" - followed by "Torcat's Novelty, the World's Only Trained Rooster". Imagine that.
Meet you under the clock.
Post Script - 2007
There's hardly a trace left of the old vaudeville houses today. The Orpheum Theater (1917) is still standing downtown at 9th and St. Charles. At Delmar at Grand some faded letters on a brick wall remind us that the old shell of a theater there was once the Liberty (1915), which hosted movies, vaudeville and burlesque. The Princess (1912) and Empress (1913), both near Grand and Olive, are parking lots.
The origin of the term vaudeville has faded as well. The genre of shows consisting of a series of short acts performed on a stage before a live audience was originally called variety, but vaudeville sounded French, and French sounded classier - and, actually, that was the idea.
In the years after the Civil War a growing American middle class was seeking its own brand of entertainment. There was a strong class division in the United States, revealing itself in the gap between low and highbrow entertainment. In 1849 immigrant and working class patrons of the Bowery Theater attacked the affluent audience at the Astor Place opera house, sparking a riot that killed more than twenty people. Somewhere between the burlesque house and the opera there had to be room for something new.
So vaudeville became the entertainment option for the middle class. Not highbrow. Not baudy. It could be silly, sentimental, patriotic, nostalgic, or moving - but it was always clean. Women were encouraged to attend. And when circuits - like the Orpheum - connected acts and theaters in cities from coast to coast, vaudeville put the business in show business.
There were small, medium and big time circuits, from which the term big time (as in, "now you've made the big time") became a part of the American lexicon. One circuit censored acts' more ribald material by passing out censures in blue envelopes - thus the term blue material.
Vaudeville enjoyed a run of over fifty years. But by the 1920s people had new options. They could stay home and listen to the radio. Or if they preferred to go out, they could watch films. In fact, some vaudeville houses started showing films as part of their bill.
Grand Avenue through Midtown became St. Louis' Great White Way as movie palaces replaced the smaller vaudeville houses. St. Louis' Grand Central was the first theater built exclusively for movies, playing The Jazz Singer in 1927 - the first talkie ever seen and heard in St. Louis. It closed in 1931, making way for a new wave of even grander movie palaces - the St. Louis, the Missouri, the Fox.
But vaudeville lived on through its stars who moved on to film and radio. The baby boomers grew up watching many of them on television - Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Fred Astaire, Bob Hope, the Marx Brothers, and the Three Stooges.
Vaudeville was an intersection of cultures. Even though the audiences were racially segregated, African American performers like Bill Bojangles Robinson and Bert Williams got their starts on the boards of vaudeville. It gave immigrants with talent and drive a chance to become a part of the American dream and contribute their own cultures to the mix.
Being part of an audience is gradually disappearing from the American experience. Nowadays we seek entertainment options we can enjoy by ourselves. The home entertainment center is replacing the neighborhood theater. So it's harder to imagine the thrill of "going out". Laughter is richer when it comes from a crowd. Amazement, when shared, is more intense. Our grandparents understood that. But even though the theaters, performers and the crowds have passed on, we remember the dancing and the songs, the jokes and one-liners, and the personalities who - city by city, theatre by theater and show by show, secured a place in our national consciousness. That's how vaudeville lives today.
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