Vaudeville

Vaudeville - vôdˈvĭl, originally a light song, derived from the drinking and love songs formerly attributed to Olivier Basselin and called Vau, or Vaux, de Vire. Similar to the English music hall, American vaudeville was a stage entertainment consisting of unrelated songs, dances, acrobatic and magic acts, and humorous skits and sketches. From humble origin in barrooms and Read More...

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Vaudeville

1 .

American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years Vol. 2 ("Vaudeville and Popular Music" on p. 337)
by Russell Sanjek. 484 pgs.

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This volume focuses on developments in the music business in the twentieth century, including vaudeville, music boxes, the relationship of Hollywood to the music business, the "fall and rise" of the record business in the 1930s, new technology (TV, FM, and the LP record) after World War II, the dominance of rock-and-roll and the huge increase in the music business during the 1950s and 1960s, and finally the changing music business scene from 1967 to the present, especially regarding government regulations, music licensing, and the record business.

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Title Page

Contents

Part One 1790 to 1860

Chapter 1 Music Publishing in the New Republic 1790-1800

Chapter 2 the Business of Popular Music 1800-1860

Chapter 3 Sheet Music Publishing in Pre-Civil War America

Chapter 4 American Musical Theater 1800-1860

Chapter 5 the Music of God's Americans 1800-1860

Chapter 6 the Music of Black Americans 1800-1860

Part Two

Chapter 7 "The Singin'Est War" 1861-1865

Chapter 8 the Music of God's Americans 1865-1909

Chapter 9 Black Music in America 1860-1909

Chapter 10 the American Musical Theater 1865-1909

Chapter 11 Popular Music in the Age of Gigantism 1866-1909

Bibliography

Index
2 .

Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture ("Vaudeville and Burlesque: Consolidation and Excorporation" on p. 185)
by Robert C. Allen. 350 pgs.

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Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1: A Chronicle of Lydia Thompson's First Season in America

2: The Intelligibility of Burlesque

3: The Historical Contexts of Burlesque I

4: The Historical Contexts of Burlesque II

5: Ixion Revisited

6: The Institutionalization of Burlesque

7: Burlesque at Century's End

8: Burlesque in the Twentieth Century

Notes

Bibliography

Index
3 .

The Popular Theatre (1918) (Chap. 14 "It's 'Big Time' Vaudeville" and Chap. 15 "It's 'Small Time' Vaudeville")
by George Jean Nathan. 236 pgs.

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Title Page

Borzoi Pocket Books

Contents

Preface

Preface to the Second Edition

Chapter One: the Popular Theatre

Chapter Two: Its Plays

Chapter Three: Its Broadway and Its Playwrights

Chapter Four: Its Audiences

Chapter Five: Its Adaptation and Its Copeaus

Chapter Six: Its Music Shows

Chapter Seven: Its Criticism

Chapter Eight: Its Imagination

Chapter Nine: Its Comedians

Chapter Ten: Its Motion Pictures

Chapter Eleven: Its Actors

Chapter Twelve: Its First Nights

Chapter Thirteen: Its Typical Season

Chapter Fourteen: Its "Big Time" Vaudeville

Chapter Fifteen: Its "Small Time" Vaudeville

Chapter Sixteen: What Its Public Wants

Chapter Seventeen: in Conclusion
4 .

Dancing till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition Ballroom Dance (Chap. 4 "Taking the Palace by Storm: Exhibition Ballroom Dance in Vaudeville of the Teens and Twenties")
by Julie Malnig. 180 pgs.

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This volume explores the rich history of exhibition ballroom dancing from its heyday in the 1910s to the present. Malnig's record of this intimate, theatrical genre of dance features male-female teams as performers in cabaret, vaudeville, musicals, and, later, film and television. Exhibition ballroom dancing is also examined as a cultural and social phenomenon that promotes new cultural standards. This first comprehensive study of a unique dance genre and entertainment form utilizes primary sources, including promotional materials and print reviews, and is illustrated with original photographs.

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Title Page

Recent Titles in Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance

Contents

Preface

Note

Chapter 1 the Origins and Rise of Exhihition Ballroom Dance

Notes

Chapter 2 Dancing Deities: Career Paths of the Early Innovators

Notes

Chapter 3 Cabaret Dancing

Notes

Chapter 4 Taking the Palace by Storm: Exhibition Ballroom Dance in Vaudeville of the Teens and Twenties

Notes

Chapter 5 Exhihition Ballroom Dance in Early Musical Theatre

Notes

Chapter 6 Decline and Rebirth

Notes

Chapter 7 the Contemporary Renaissance

Notes

Appendix a Social Dances, 1908-1919

Notes

Appendix B Exhibition Ballroom Dance Technique, 1908-1919

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author
5 .

Humor and Ethnic Stereotypes in Vaudeville and Burlesque, in MELUS
by Lawrence E. Mintz. 10 pgs.

Journal Article

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6 .

Pages from the Harlem Renaissance: A Chronicle of Performance (Chap. IV "Improving Conditions on the TOBA Black Vaudeville Circuit")
by Anthony D. Hill. 186 pgs.

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Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Foreword

Acknowledgments

I: Profile of a Renaissance Man

Notes

II: J. A. Jackson's Page in Billboard a Chronicle of Performance

Notes

III: Setting Standards of Conduct

Notes

IV: Improving Conditions on the Toba Black Vaudeville Circuit

Notes

V: The Colored Actors' Union the National Association of Colored Fairs

VI: Reception and Impact of "The Page"

Appendices

Bibliography

Index
7 .

The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America (Chap. 2 "Curtain up and Curtain Down: The Age of Vaudeville")
by Lawrence J. Epstein. 343 pgs.

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From vaudeville to the movies to television: The complete (and often hilarious) history of how Jewish comedians transformed American entertainment.

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Title Page

Contents

Introduction: The World of Jewish Comedians

I: The Golden Door and the Velvet Curtain 1890-1930

1: The Land of Hope and Tears

2: Curtain Up and Curtain Down

II: The Years of Fear 1930-1950

3: Theater of the Mind

4: Laughing in the Dark

5: The Jewish Alps

III: The Years of Acceptance 1950-1965

6: The Magic Box

7: Is There Any Group I Haven't Offended?

IV: The Years of Triumph 1965-Present

8: I Need the Eggs

9: Masters of Their Domain

10: Kosher at Last

11: The Cost of Victory

12: Not the Last Laugh

Appendix Schlemiels and Nudnicks: The Sources and Nature of Jewish Humor

References

Acknowledgments

Index
8 .

Fools and Jesters in Literature, Art, and History: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook ("George Burns and Gracie Allen: The Jewish Vaudeville Tradition" begins on p. 106)
by Vicki K. Janik, Emmanuel S. Nelson. 552 pgs.

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Jesters and fools have existed as important and consistent figures in nearly all cultures. Sometimes referred to as clowns, they are typological characters who have conventional roles in the arts, often using nonsense to subvert existing order. But fools are also a part of social and religious history, and they frequently play key roles in the rituals that support and shape a society's system of beliefs. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for approximately 60 fools and jesters from a wide range of cultures. Included are entries for performers from American popular culture, such as Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers; literary characters, such as Shakespeare's Falstaff, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Singer's Gimpel; and cultural and mythological figures, such as Birbal, the American circus clown, the Native American Coyote, Taishu Engeki of Japan, Hephaestus, Loki the Norse fool, schlemiels and schlimazels, and the drag queen.

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Notes

Woody Allen: The Clown as Tragic Hero

The Anthropology of Fools

Notes

Robert Armin

Notes

Archy Armstrong

The Badin

Lucille Ball

Jean-Louls Barrault

Critical Reception

Beckett's Postmodern Clowns: Vladimir (Didi), Estragon (Gogo), Pozzo, and Lucky

Jack Benny

Birbal

Selected Bibliographv

The Bishop of Fools

Note

George Burns and Gracie Allen the Jewish Vaudeville Tradition

The Camp

Canio-Pagliacco and Petrouchka: Two Contrasting Images of Pierrot

Charlie Chaplin

The American Circus Clown

Commedia Dell'Arte

Selected Bibliograph

Native American Coyote Trickster Tales and Cycles

Notes

The Drag Queen

Sir John Falstaff

Feste

W. C. Fields

Folly in the Enduring Tradition

The Fop: Apes and Echoes of Men": Gentlemanly Ideals and the Restoration

Notes

Gimpel

Joseph Grimaldi

Notes

Forrest Gump: Innocent Fool

Hamlet

Hephaestus, Hermes, and Prometheus: Jesters to the Gods

Note

The Heyoka of the Sioux

Clowns of the Hopi

Selected Bibiliography

Knaves and Fools in Ben Jonson

Buster Keaton

William Kemp

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy Yin and Yang

Lear's Fool: (England: in William Shakespeare's King Lear: 1605

Loki, the Norse Fool

The Marx Brothers

Selecteid Bibliograpy

Notes

Merry Report

Paul the Apostle

Notes

Penasar of Bali: Sacred Clowns

Note

Pierrot: Dramatic and Literary Mask

Plautus's Clowns

Puck/Robin Goodfellow

Punch and Judy

FrançOis Rabelais

Martha Raye

Rigoletto

Schlemiels and Schlimazels

The Sleary Circus

Socrates as Fool in Aristophanes and Plato

Note

Will Sommers

The Sottie, the Sots, and the Fols

South African Political Clowning Laughter and Resistance to Apartheid

Ciritical Reception

Country Squires and Bumpkins

Selected Bibliographv

The Three Stooges

Taishu Engeki: Subverting the Patterns of Japanese Culture

Note

The Tarot Fool

The Tarot Fool in English and American Novels

Touchstone

The Vice Figure in Middle English Morality Plays

The Vice in Henry Medwall's Nature

Mae West

The Yankee

Zanni

Critical Reception

Selected General Bibliography

Index

About the Editor and Contributors
9 .

Popular Theatres of Nineteenth-Century France (Chap. 8 "The Vaudeville")
by John McCormick. 262 pgs.

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This is the only book to provide an account of how popular theatre developed from the fairground booths of the eighteenth century to become a vehicle of mass entertainment in the following century. Whereas other studies offer a traditional approach to the theatres of high culture, John McCormick takes the role of impartial historian, uncovering the popular theatres of the boulevards, suburbs and fairgrounds. He focuses on the social and economic context in which vaudevilles, pantomimes and melodramas were performed, and explores the audiences who enjoyed them.

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Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I

1: Les Theatres Secondaires

2: Equestrians and Acrobats

3: Away from the Centre—the Suburbs and the Provinces

4: 'Forains' and Fit-Ups

5: Audiences

6: Economics and Economic Problems

7: Censorship

Part II

8: The Vaudeville

9: Pantomime

10: The Feerie

11: The Early Melodrama

12: The Social Melodrama

13: Popular Fiction and the Theatre

Conclusion

Notes

Index
10 .

Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787-1799 ("Theatrical Singing and the Vaudeville" begins on p. 70)
by Laura Mason. 268 pgs.

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Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787-1799

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Revolutionary Scholarship and Popular Culture

Part I: From Old Regime to Revolution

Chapter One: Songs under the Old Regime

Chapter Two: Songs in the Street (1787-July 1792)

Chapter Three: Songs off the Street: Newspapers, Theaters, and Satire (1789-September 1793)

Part II: The Republican Crisis

Interlude: From Chant de Guerre to la Marseillaise

Chapter Four: The Revolutionary Song (April 1792-Pluviose Year III)

Chapter Five: The Reactionary Song (Brumaire Year III-Ventôse Year IV)

Part III: Ending the Revolution

Chapter Six: The Song in Retreat (Messidor Year III-Brumaire Year Viii)

Chapter Seven: Songs Silenced and Changed (From Ventôse Year IV into the Nineteenth Century)

Conclusion: The Impact and Legacy of Revolutionary Culture

Notes

Bibliography

Index
11 .

Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor ("Vaudeville and Burlesque" on p. 304)
by Alleen Pace Nilsen, Don L. F. Nilsen. 366 pgs.

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Who says you can't have a serious reference work on humor? This new resource offers a broad look at humor with more than 100 well-written and entertaining entries. Scholarly in nature, yet enjoyable to read, the Encyclopedia examines several aspects of humor, such as: styles of humor, subjects of comedy, media methods, academic endeavors, humor in society, historical aspects. This volume celebrates a century of twists and turns in American humor.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

L

M

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Bibliography

Index

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