The whole character of the entertainments in moving picture and
vaudeville theaters has been revolutionized. The buildings are veritable
temples of art. The class of the entertainment is constantly improving
in response to a demand which the business instincts of the managers
cannot fail to recognize. The situation is simply this: The American
people, with their wonderful thirst for self-betterment, which has
brought about the prodigious success of the educational papers, the
schools and the Chautauquas, like to have the beautiful things in art
served to them with inspiriting amusement. We, as a people, have been
becoming more and more refined in our tastes. We want better and better
things, not merely in music, but in everything. In my boyhood there were
thousands of families in fair circumstances who would endure having the
most awful chromos upon their walls. These have for the most part
entirely disappeared except in the homes of the newest aliens. It is
true that much of our music is pretty raw in the popular field; but even
in this it is getting better slowly and surely.
If in recent years there has been a revolution in the popular taste for
vaudeville, B. F. Keith was the "Washington" of that revolution. He
understood the human demand for clean entertainment, with plenty of
healthy fun and an artistic background. He knew the public call for the
best music and instilled his convictions in his able followers. Mr.
Keith's attitude was responsible for the signs which one formerly saw in
the dressing rooms of good vaudeville theaters, which read:
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|Profanity of any kind, objectionable or suggestive|
|remarks, are forbidden in this theater. |
|Offenders are liable to have the curtain rung |
|down upon them during such an act. |
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Fortunately these signs have now disappeared, as the actors have been so
disciplined that they know that a coarse remark would injure them with
the management.
Vaudeville is on a far higher basis than much so-called comic opera.
Some acts are paid exceedingly large sums. Sarah Bernhardt received
$7000.00 a week; Calve, Bispham, Kocian, Carolina White and Marguerite
Sylvia, accordingly.
Dorothy Jordan, Bessie Abbott, Rosa Ponselle, Orville Harold and the
recent Indian sensation at the Metropolitan, Chief Caupolican, actually
had their beginnings in vaudeville. In other words, vaudeville was the
stepping-stone to grand opera.