Never Count Vaudeville Out

Where Variety Went From Cheap To Free

So vaudeville died, did it. Or did it? I’ll say no for purpose of this meditation, and for having watched acrobats, comics, dog acts, and what not for a past several nights of You Tube cruising, plus DVD’s dug from storage. Vaudeville left plenty of performers, if not their performances. Television from beginning absorbed acts that would prove ephemeral as if done live for a turn-of-century public. In short, ninety-five percent of it is gone. Would we declare vaudeville dead if all of old TV survived, let alone was available for us to watch? Here’s my tally of Ed Sullivan shows to be seen in their entirety today: thirteen. Three with Elvis Presley, four with the Beatles, and six, if you can afford them (out of print, and $299.99, from Amazon), with the Rolling Stones. There is a four-episode group featuring the Stones that is more affordable. I mention this to point up the shocking dearth of Sullivan shows that we can enjoy today. He hosted variety hours from the late 40’s into the 70’s. That’s nearly as long as vaudeville had flush years. Do some math here: A big-time vaude house normally changed bills once per week. So did Ed. They had headliners plus meat-potato acts. Ed too. Vaude as done live is gone --- and there’s the case as well for Sullivan’s backlog. Does it all survive? And if so, who owns it? Presumably Andrew Solt’s estate. But who in a right mind would release all of Ed Sullivan on disc? Stream them maybe, and for all I know, someone already has.

There’s argument yet over death or survival of vaudeville. Adherents, ones like me who’d like to think movies and TV preserved variety in some state of authenticity, will say it lasted well past recorded demise of the late 20’s-early 30’s, when per se vaudeville went smash. Performers who were there and saw the vessel sink give no quarter, however. Fred Allen was among most eloquent of these. He wrote flat in his 1956 memoir that “Vaudeville is dead.” Any of us who thought otherwise were kidding ourselves. “A few diehards who knew and enjoyed vaudeville hover over their television sets, hoping for a miracle. They believe that the electronic device is a modern oxygen tent that in some mysterious way can revive vaudeville and return its colorful performers of yesteryear to the current scene. The optimism of these day and night dreamers is wasted. Vaudeville is dead. Period.” Allen stood for many who spoke truth to unrealistic hope. Writers pointed out that radio and presentation houses were no substitute for true vaude. Airwaves locked performance to microphones, and with radio of course, we’d not see performers perform. Big theatres with vast stages were no improvement. How could a lone artist register? The term “presentation house” meant groups, ensembles, lined up to amuse thousands watching. Bands or orchestras clicked best, these perceived as equal to grandeur of palaces designed to host them.

Read any interview with a veteran entertainer and they’ll get around to days in vaudeville. Those that worked the real thing, as in two-a-day and tank towns, are gone now. Even Baby Rose Marie has passed. Was there ever so close a fraternity as emerged from vaudeville? These people came of a common climb that was easy for nobody. All from top to bottom knew what it was to ride smoky trains and have audiences jeer at them. Vaudeville was the great leveler for all of show business. I don’t think it bred a single overnight sensation. Fortunately, there is a lot of oral history. The acts are there too, thanks to films learning to talk in time to capture vaude while it still thrived. Shorts were done by the peck in the late 20’s, most a single reel which was time enough to memorialize a routine or sketch. There is even Weber and Fields in a DeForest Photophone snip. Makes me wish Lillian Russell had lived a little longer (d.1922), but at least we have Alice Faye’s approximation from 1940. That’s as good a way as any to know vaudeville, movies that celebrated it made by those who lived or at least knew of circuit/touring life. Vitaphone volumes, generously had from Warner Archive, make the case for vaudeville as Great Lost Art, a notion put forth from a start, all agreed that this was entertainment to unify each and all of America. But wouldn’t movies, radio, and TV do as much in their own ways?

Toby The Pup!

Much lamentation came with demise of true vaude. Talker screens got blame, then lavish theatres that used live acts to prop film fare. Sometimes it was hard to know where a tail wagged dogs, as with Sinatra or Martin/Lewis at vast venues and no one knowing what hell the movie was, even those that sat through twice to see hot favorites sing/mirth again. Radio meantime sucked up variety artists like a sieve, excepting “dumb” acts where visual routine was all. One wag said (though many claimed the quote) that television was the box vaudeville was buried in, which I suppose is accurate if not over-gloomy for demand vaude vets enjoyed again. But weren’t they kept busy through the war at camp shows? Lots argued a new fan base was born via armed force exposure to acts aged in wood that was variety. Again to disappearance of all that TV, deprivation so severe that we don’t even know what we’re missing. I watched a Sullivan Talk Of The Town (12-18-49) on YT. Ed opened with a “nostalgia” spot, as in fifty year back-glance at a gay, if vanished, 90’s. The guy who, in 1896, composed the tune for Sweet Adeline (Harry Armstrong) was there to sing it with a barbershop quartet. Then W.C. Handy, himself and aged 76, played St. Louis Blues, “The Most Widely Known Ragtime Composition.” Then Maude Nugent, who wrote Sweet Rosie O’Grady in 1896, sang and danced it. Are music historians aware of these appearances? And what of other Talk Of The Town shows? (there’s but a single complete one at You Tube) As with lost silent movies … best not to think about it. Will they be on TV or at theatres in Heaven? If not, maybe I’ll just stay here.

I am not a Beatles or Elvis faddist, though I much like them both. What I’ll say with certainty is that nobody else has lately watched their Ed Sullivan appearances in order to catch the other acts, that my sole goal toward understanding of old and (revolutionary) new on evenings that made amusement history. I recall bond shared with anyone when you asked what they recalled of the Beatles on 2/9/64 Sullivan, a toasty way to make friends right off, but no good for glassy Bug Off Old Man you get for mentioning it now. What memories can all folks share today? Talk about Elvis and they’ll stick you in a nursing home. But I’m not here to protest those things. I want to celebrate the Vagabonds singing Up The Lazy River, the Brothers Amin (acrobats), Conn and Mack (tap dance), and Toby The Dog. All these and more were there with Elvis, and host Charles Laughton. I said Charles Laughton, subbing for Ed on 9/9/56, and funnier than any comic he introduced. I think the word for Charlie here was nonplussed, but how he made that work. I’ve never seen CL pour molasses so lovingly. Did even Ed, presumably watching at home or at a distant hotel, figure he applied it too thick? Laughton twitches, gulps, eye-pops, and ad-libs to beat whatever bands he’ll introduce. I would like to have seen him duet with Elvis. What missed opportunity. Just thinking --- if Presley knew Laughton at all, it was probably from something like Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, for September 1956 was point where bulk of CL’s old movies were just beginning to show up on television.

Elvis for youth today would register “old” as The Vagabonds and trick dogs undoubtedly did to kids in 1956. Sullivan’s live audience was markedly more subdued than a madhouse that would cheer the Beatles eight years later. They even applauded long-form Lincoln-Mercury ads that were virtual shows in themselves. “Comedy and Magic” was a hard sit in any case where you’re waiting for the star act to come back, Sullivan doling both Elvis and The Beatles early, then late, on respective programs. He’d be a gracious host, but Ed was no fan, having been around too long for that. I’ll bet Sullivan missed pure vaudeville. He sure did more than anyone to keep it alive. Look at it this way: The Sunday night show being live, it was certainly “Big-Time” in every sense of a then-word, watchers getting nine or ten acts, if you’d forgive commercials. Folks liked to figure Ed Sullivan for a hopeless square, but he could and did give off warmth for artists he admired. Watch him laud comedian George Kirby on that Talk Of The Town survivor, a career boost for Kirby if ever there was one, and we’ve seen clips where Ed tells a world what a fine young man Elvis is. You had to see Sullivan enough to know his expressions and read his humor. The man was not for nothing the biggest long-run ratings-getter in the business.

Comedians McCall and Brill

I felt tension in the 1964 audience, and so surely did acts other than the Beatles, an alien force having taken over their show world. Ed led with the Mop Toppers, promised they’d be back, then left the crowd dangling. Fred Caps and his “card and salt-shaker trick” immediately followed, him as wanted as a dog with froth on its mouth. You feel the mob simmering as they’re fed variety their grandparents might have seen and disdained. The cast of “Oliver” got the frost, any other night a surefire boff, but not this one. The “comedy/office” sketch by McCall and Brill is a slow and endless drip before lions-as-in-Beatles re-enter the arena. Dividends may have been better than the husband-wife team expected, as press and curious hordes forevermore inquired of them what this level of pressure was like. Ed Sullivan no doubt felt for the hapless lot. Wonder if he warned them of the chipper they'd be fed into. Frank Gorshin sustains the best, to my reckoning. Ed estimated in a newspaper interview that 74 million watched that February night, him paying the Beatles $8,000 for a total of three appearances. “Distinguished families” wanted tickets for their children, reported Sullivan, the kids coming in groups. In November ’64, nine months after the first Beatle appearance, Ed confessed his own preference for Jan Garber’s music over the Liverpool lot, and that teens eventually would too, “Anyway, I think the whole thing is on the way down now.”

More at Greenbriar Archive of vaudeville clinging to life in the 40's.