when he took the curse off a type of amusement generally associated
with dance halls, "stag" houses, minstrel shows and "The Black Crook",
had his eye on Aunt Jane. Vaudeville, born in France during the
Fifteenth Century, and named after Les Vaux de Vire, the home of its
father, Oliver Basselin, stood for something just a little more ribald
than variety. Mr. Keith resolved to stand for nothing of the kind.
Beginning in Boston, he soon invaded Philadelphia and New York with
shows so religiously expurgated that they couldn't have drawn the
slightest protest from a Presbyterian Synod.
Oaths might not be spoken at Keith's. Betighted damsels were banned
and barred--forbidden fair. Short skirts were permitted under certain
rigorous restrictions. One of the restrictions was that ladies who
wore short skirts must not wear silk stockings. I remember wondering
wherein the silk worm was more immoral than the cotton-gin, and
concluding that, despite the phrase "ugly as sin", Mr. Keith had
defined sin as anything attractive.
Virtue and vaudeville were synonymous for something over a decade. I
don't know precisely when people stopped going to hear the new
ditties, and began going to see the nudities. "Living pictures" began
it. "Living pictures", you may recollect, were ladies in pink union
suits. They were supposed to be popular because of artistic draping
and grouping, but the minimum of drapery always brought about the
maximum of popularity. It was but a step from union suits to non-union
suits; from fleshings to whitewash and bronze varnish. In 1906 London
went quite mad over a Venus whose entire wardrobe was applied with a
paintbrush. Eventually Venus rose from the sea in America, but, by the
date of her arrival, our own performers had so far outstripped her
that she didn't create even a mild sensation.
Koster & Bials' had paved the way with Charmion, who disrobed while
seated upon a flying trapeze. Oscar Hammerstein had done some
astonishing things at his Victoria Theater. Salome, driven out of the
Metropolitan Opera House, had taken refuge in vaudeville, garbed--if
one may use the word in connection with a costume somewhat less
extensive than a porus plaster--in a fashion that made it easy to
understand why John the Baptist lost his head. Maud Allen, in England,
and Ruth St. Denis, in the United States, were reconciling the
authorities to the nude in art, and making possible any sort of
display that had dancing or diving as an excuse. Annette Kellarman,
attired in a bathing suit that clung to her like a poor relation,
wakened wonderful interest in aquatic sports, while Lala Selbini
showed herself to be of the opinion that clothing was inconsistent
with good juggling, and a female person whose name escapes me
demonstrated that bare legs were a great help in playing the violin.
[Illustration: "_Venus rose from the sea_" (_With apologies to
Botticelli_)]
The Princess Rajah, an "Oriental" dancer who had attracted attention
at Huber's Museum, journeyed to Broadway, where an excuse for her
undress, and her wrigglings, was found in the faint pretence that she
impersonated Cleopatra. "Placing a snake in her bosom", read a note on
the program, "she danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her."
Remarkable as this behavior may seem on the part of a Roman General,
it was not wholly incomprehensible to theatre-goers who witnessed the
antics of Cleopatra. According to Rajah, the Queen of Egypt
demonstrated her sorrow chiefly by seizing a kitchen chair and
whirling round and round with it in her teeth.
Of the degeneration of vaudeville the most regrettable feature is that
it has brought about no change in the character of vaudeville
audiences. Perhaps I should say in their personnel, since their
character _must_ have been affected by all this tawdry bawdry and
sensationalism. True, one or two of the down-town theaters have become
noted for the "sporty" aspect of their audiences, and, necessarily,
all these houses have lost the patronage of women shoppers, country
people and stay-at-homes that once were so assiduously courted.
Mostly, however, the crowds that flock to such performances are made
up of young girls, shop assistants, and respectable middle-class folk
who look and listen unblushingly at sights and to sentences they would
not tolerate in their own circles. It does not seem possible that
this sort of thing can be without its influence upon their lives.
[Illustration: "_Danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her_"]
When vaudeville was written down as "spice", however, I had in mind
not so much its offences against propriety as its appeal to palates
that would reject solid food. Vaudeville addresses itself to amusement
seekers incapable of giving, or unwilling to give, concentrated and
continuous attention. This kind of entertainment calls for orderliness
of mind no more than does the newspaper headline. There is no sequence
of thought to be preserved, no logical procession of ideas to be kept
in line; the impression of the moment is sufficient and supreme.
Naturally, such a performance is attractive to undisciplined brains,
to empty brains, and to lazy brains. You need bring to a vaudeville
theater nothing but the price of admission.... It is this same asking
little that has made the popularity of moving pictures.
Vaudeville has about the same relation to the "theatrical business"
that insurance bears to other business. When a business man has
failed at everything else he tries selling insurance; when a
prominent actor has "closed" twice or three times in rapid succession
he "goes into vaudeville." The better element is infused without
fusing. The regulars are inclined to look askance at these volunteers,
resenting the fact that the latter use as a make-shift what _they_
have adopted as a profession, and insisting, often not without
justice, that, "while big names may draw the crowds, it is our work
that holds 'em." I'm afraid the attitude of many recruits does not
tend to lessen this friction. "Is there a 'star dressing room?'" a
well-known prima donna inquired loftily as she entered the theater
where she was to make her debut in "the two a day."
The juggler to whom the question was put, replied: "Yes ... for
falling stars!"
However, many of these "falling stars" perform the strange
astronomical feat of climbing back into the heavens. A very large
number of the men and women at present heading their own companies
have descended into vaudeville, as Antaeus occasionally descended
to earth, to renew their strength. One attractive play and Mr. V.
Headliner becomes Mr. Broadway Star. Robert Hilliard had been in the
varieties for years when he was restored to "the legitimate" by Porter
Emerson Browne's "A Fool There Was." Sarah Bernhardt, as everybody
knows, appeared at a music hall in London _en route_ to fill her
latest engagement in America. Here we have no "Divine Sarah", but
vaudeville has sung its siren-song successfully to Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, Lily Langtry, Charles Hawtrey, Henrietta Crosman, Henry
Miller, Arnold Daly, Lillian Russell, and numberless other mimes of
great reputation. This song is most aggravating to producers of
musical comedy, whose performers, when the librettist insists upon the
preservation of some of his text or when their names do not appear in
sufficiently large type on the program, always are ready to "go into
vaudeville."
[Illustration: "_You need bring to a vaudeville theatre nothing but
the price of admission_"]
A list of people at present offering one-act plays discloses no fewer
than twenty actors and actresses of recognized ability. There is
Marietta Olly, who did capital work in "The Whirlwind" at Daly's, and
Nat C. Goodwin, who, truth to tell, draws a big salary less because of
his histrionic than because of his matrimonial versatility. Frank
Keenan, Edward Ables, and Maclyn Arbuckle, who has made a hit in
Robert Davis' clever comedietta, "The Welcher", have been stars within
the twelvemonth and are now in vaudeville, as are also Amelia Bingham,
W. H. Thompson, Charles Richman, William Courtleigh, George Beban,
Lionel Barrymore, McKee Rankin, Edwin Arden, Sam Chip and Mary Marble.
Vaudeville produces its own luminaries, too--Cissie Loftus, for
example, and Elsie Janis, who "did a specialty" for years before she
was taken up by Charles Dillingham.
Many of the cleverest entertainers in the world are identified
exclusively with the varieties. There are Yvette Guilbert, Albert
Chevalier, Harry Lauder, and Alice Lloyd, each of whom has a following
as large and appreciative as that of Maude Adams or John Drew. Other
players, less widely known, go round the circuits year after year,
making themselves solid with a class of theater-goers that has come to
depend upon them for half an hour of amusement. Cressy and Dayne are
among these, as are Mr. and Mrs. Perkins D. Fisher, Clayton White,
Carrie de Mar, Irene Franklin and Tom Nawn. George Cohan's career
began in vaudeville, and no one who has owed twenty minutes of
laughter to his ability as a racounteur will ever forget the late Ezra
Kendal. Such men as Jesse Lasky and Joseph Hart, recognizing the
opportunities of "the two a day", have made elaborate productions of
what really are little musical comedies, and have presented them as
part of regular variety bills. Mr. Lasky's "The Love Waltz" and "At
the Country Club" were as pretentiously staged as any single act in a
comic opera.
It is not my desire or disposition to deny the cleverness of these
people or the attractiveness of their "turns." I doubt that today the
most wearied theater-goer could find a vaudeville bill without one or
two numbers that would entertain him. The point is that this
amusement-seeker would be obliged to take a vast quantity of chaff
with his wheat, to review an endless procession of clog dancers, trick
bicyclists, wire walkers, trained animals, tramp comedians, acrobats
and equilibrists before coming to that part of the program which might
interest him. Most of these fillers-in are notable chiefly for the
awe-inspiring quality of their English, and for their persistence in
performing dangerous feats that, when performed, add nothing to the
sum total of human happiness, knowledge or pleasure. I haven't been
able to discover why anybody should want to see a lion stand on its
head, or a gentleman tie his legs in a true lovers' knot, and I shall
never understand the public _penchant_ for hearing "The Anvil Chorus"
played on tin cans, since it can be played so much better on a piano.
One always thinks of the wit who, being informed enthusiastically that
some stunt or other was "very difficult", replied: "I wish it were
impossible."
The worst of the matter is that, there being comparatively few
performers of merit, the same people, doing the same things, return
again and again to the same theaters. I remember having seen one team
of comedy acrobats, Rice and Prevost, seven times in the space of a
single season, at the end of which period I had ceased to laugh
uproariously when one of the two humorists fell from a table and
struck his face violently upon the floor. Half the "turns" at the
Victoria this Saturday may be at the Colonial next Monday, so that,
unless you wish your entertainment, like your wine, well-aged, you
would do well to make your vaudeville excursions to one theater. It is
too much to expect the average variety performer to change his act
more often than once in a decade, and then he is likely to retain
everything that has been especially well received. Of course, you
remember George Ade's friends, Zoroaster and Zendavesta, who, at the
end of five years, substituted green whiskers for red, and advertised:
"Everything New."
The managers certainly are doing their best to be rid of Zoroasters
and Zendavestas. Their agents search every capital of Europe for new
talent, and no one makes a hit in the music halls of London or Paris
or Berlin without immediately receiving an offer to come to America.
Nor is there any limit to the figures mentioned in such an offer. The
salaries paid, both for imported and for native talent, were supposed
to have reached their utmost height in the palmy days of Keith and
Proctor, but they have doubled since Oscar Hammerstein announced on
his billboards that he was paying $1,000 a week to Marie Dressler.
There are half a dozen performers now who get $2,000, and one or two
who are reputed to receive even more. Any number of headliners earn
five hundred dollars, or seven hundred and fifty dollars, which, you
must remember, probably is in excess of the amount tucked into the
yellow envelopes of Otis Skinner or Ethel Barrymore.
There is one important difference between the salaries paid in
vaudeville and those paid "legitimate" players. The former cannot
consider their earnings as "net", since they are obliged frequently to
engage small companies, sometimes numbering twelve or sixteen people,
whose wages come out of the sum given their principal. Variety
performers defray their own travelling expenses, too, and those of
their assistants, together with such other expenses as agents' fees,
advertising bills, and similar incidentals. Formerly a great deal of
time was lost in long jumps, and between engagements, but managerial
combinations have considerably lessened this waste. The successful
vaudevillian rarely experiences a break in his bookings now-a-days,
and, especially if his act does not depend upon acoustics, he fills
out his season with roof gardens, summer parks, and perhaps a circus.
[Illustration: "_Their agents search every capital of Europe_"]
Variety people make up an individual nation in the theatrical world.
They have their own language, their own view-point, their own
ambitions and grievances, besides their own clubs, hotels and
newspapers. The most important of these societies are The Vaudeville
Comedy Club, which has rooms in Forty-sixth Street and gives an
annual benefit, and The White Rats, an aggressive organization that
has conducted spunky fights against greedy agents and the blacklist of
the United Booking Offices. The White Rats publish a weekly
periodical, yclept The Player, but the real trade paper of the
profession is issued in a green cover and called Variety.
The vaudeville performer--he insists upon alluding to himself as "the
artist"--actually appears on the stage about forty minutes a day. His
labor, however, is not quite so light as these figures make it seem.
He must put on and take off his makeup afternoon and evening, and he
must be in the theater during a good deal of the time that he is not
engaged. Monday morning he rehearses with the orchestra, and is
assigned a number on the program of the week--vaudevillians, like
convicts and hotel guests, being identified by numbers. His place in
the bill depends upon the length of his "turn", the stage room
required for it, and its nature. Acts that can be given in front of a
drop "in one" must be sandwiched between "full stage" acts, so that
scenes may be set for the latter without interrupting the performance,
and the experienced stage manager arranges his material with a keen
eye to variety.
As important as the star dressing room to a leading woman, as vital as
full-faced type to a star is his place on the bill to a vaudevillian.
By their numbers ye shall know them. Headliners are given a position
midway in the entertainment, and insist upon it as "legitimate" actors
upon the center of the stage. Minor acts open or close a show, and the
prejudice against being assigned to either end is so great that many
stage managers must sympathize with the Irishman who, being informed
that a large per centage of the victims of railway accidents are
passengers in the last car of the train, inquired: "Then, bedad, why
don't they leave off the last car?"
A layman may ask reasonably how the managers of variety houses are
able to pay double the salaries that prevail in other theaters, while
they exact only half the price of admission. The explanation is
simple. In the first place, as has been explained, they pay _nothing
but_ salaries--neither railway fares nor the cost of costumes and
paraphernalia. They are not compelled to make big and expensive
productions, to remunerate authors, or, most important of all, to
split returns with the managers of theaters in which their shows are
given. Henry B. Harris, or Frederic Thompson, presenting "The Country
Boy" or "The Spendthrift" at the Chestnut Street Opera House,
Philadelphia, or the National Theater, Washington, must divide
equally, or nearly equally, with the lessees of those places of
amusement. The vaudeville impressario assembles his own show in his
own theater, and takes the entire amount paid in at the box office.
Even in these times, an exceedingly good bill can be put together for
$3,000, and, if the running expenses of the theatre are $2,000, there
remains a wide margin of profit.
The United Booking Offices, which do business at 1495 Broadway, is as
complete a trust as any in America. The "offices" are maintained by a
combination that includes all the powerful vaudeville managers, and
all the big vaudeville circuits, from New York to San Francisco. There
has been sporadic opposition, like that recently made by William
Morris, who had the American and Plaza Music Halls in New York and a
few others throughout the country, but the end of this opposition
always has been compromise or defeat. Performers claim that they are
not permitted to play for rival managements under pain of being placed
on the dread "blacklist", and that, once so placed, they may as well
retire from the business. Whether this be true or not--it probably is
true--and however highhanded the conduct of the combination, the
observer must concede that business-like system, economical methods
and complete order have been established by the United Booking
Offices.
This combination includes the Hammersteins, father and son, who have
the Victoria Theater in New York; Percy Williams, who controls the
Colonial, the Alhambra, the Bronx, and two theaters in Brooklyn; B. F.
Keith, who operates theaters in the metropolis, in Boston, in
Philadelphia, and in Providence; and the heads of great circuits like
the Orpheum, and Sullivan and Considine's. There are eight handsome
vaudeville theaters on Manhattan Island, not counting the burlesque
houses and the places at which moving pictures form a large part of
the bill, and it is easy to estimate that, if each of these holds
fifteen hundred persons at a performance, twenty-four thousand men,
women and children witness a variety entertainment every week in New
York. This estimate does not include the "sacred concerts", which, in
spite of clerical and legal opposition, continue to flourish. On the
Sabbath, apparently, the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts
of song and dance, and every vaudeville theater in town runs full
blast on Sunday.
However bitterly their success may be resented, it is to the
newcomers, to the recruits from the "legitimate", that vaudeville
owes its steady advancement. One may sympathize with the acrobat who,
after a life time spent in acquiring proficiency in his specialty,
sees the big salaries being paid to men who devoted a week to
rehearsing some sketch, and who couldn't turn a handspring to save
their souls. The fact remains that vaudeville's claim to the
consideration of intelligent people rests largely upon these tabloid
comedies and dramas. The vogue of such clever little plays as "At the
Telephone", "The Man From the Sea", "Circumstantial Evidence", "In Old
Edam", "When Pat Was King", "The Welcher" and "The Flag
Station"--which, by the way, was written by Eugene Walter, author of
"The Easiest Way"--marks a step forward in the possibilities of "the
two a day." It enables such men as Will Cressy, whose whole output has
been of sketches, to venture upon higher ground, and it banishes more
surely the mixture of buffoonery and maudlin sentiment that formerly
passed as playlets.
The progress made in this sort of entertainment is indicated by the
unequivocal success of Frank Keenan in "The Oath", an intense little
tragedy, founded upon a theme used by Lope de Vega. Only ten years ago
this same Frank Keenan suffered complete lack of appreciation of his
fine work in an adaptation of Poe's "The System of Dr. Tarr and
Professor Feather." Many well-made sketches, logically planned and
skillfully written, still owe their presence in vaudeville wholly to
the reputation of their stars. "The Walsingham", as Walsingham Potts
used to say in Madison Morton's farce of "A Regular Fix", "is a sort
of guava jelly in which you swallow the bitter pill, Potts." Other one
act dramas of great merit fail altogether.
London successes like "The Monkey's Paw", and Paris successes, like
"The Submarine" and "After the Opera", have ended miserably in New
York. Such authors as Clyde Fitch have seen their work retired after a
fortnight's trial. Two tabloid pieces, "Dope" and "By-Products", from
the pen of Joseph Medill Patterson, author of "The Fourth Estate",
after scoring triumphs of esteem in Chicago, have not been given
bookings in the East. It is not yet true that any three one-act plays
in vaudeville, if given continuity and put together, would make a
passable three act play, but there are optimists among us who feel
that that time will come. We believe that, without being less
entertaining, less diversified, or less easily enjoyed, vaudeville
will come to be made up of fewer "Jewish" or "Irish" comedians, fewer
"sister acts", fewer trained seals, and a greater number of people who
have something really clever to offer in song or speech or
impersonation.
The place of the tabloid drama is secure, since it bears the same
relation to the ordinary drama that the short story does to the novel.
One day we shall have a Theatre Antoine or a Theatre des Capucines in
New York. The popularity of the short play, with all its opportunities
for skillful construction and good acting, will follow as the night
the day. The nudities and lewdities of last year and this are but a
passing phase. Whatever vaudeville was in the past, or is in the
present, it offers endless promise for the future.
_WITH THE PEOPLE "IN STOCK"_
Concerning Camille, ice cream, spirituality, red silk tights,
Blanche Bates, Thomas Betterton, second-hand plays,
parochialism, matinee girls, Augustin Daly, and other
interesting topics.
"Why is a resident theatrical organization known as a _stock_
company?" Blanche Bates repeated after me one afternoon when she was
playing in "The Dancing Girl" at the Columbia Theater, Washington.
"Simply because the people in it work like horses."
Miss Bates, whose name at that time probably was as unfamiliar to
David Belasco as any word in Arabic, knew whereof she spoke. She had
been for several seasons with T. Daniel Frawley in San Francisco, she
had had four roles and a row with Augustin Daly inside of two months
in New York, and finally she had cast her lot with a combination that
was whiling away the summer months by producing a new piece every
week in the hottest city in America. After a little time I'm going to
tell you just what labor is involved in producing a new--or, rather, a
different--piece every week. For the present, suffice it to say that
Miss Bates' witticism was founded on a whimsical view of facts, and
that the modern stock company is exclusively responsible for the
existence of that amazing anomaly, a hard-working actor.
Most actors are kept fairly busy three weeks each year, that period
being devoted to rehearsing the one play in which they appear during
the course of a season. Throughout the remainder of eight months they
are actually occupied about four hours per diem, and at the end of
these eight months they count on having four months for rest,
recreation and relaxation. This is not at all true of the man or woman
"in stock", who, in the language of the street, "is on the job"
twenty-four hours a day and, when there is special need of exertion,
gets up an hour earlier in the morning to make it twenty-five.