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Vaudeville: Step Right Up! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: chuckles Clark, there's Chuck Josh's chuckles. Bryant. Yeah, that would
0:18
Speaker 1: have been way better. And there's Jerry just Jerry rolling
0:22
Speaker 1: hanging out too, and that makes this stuff you should
0:25
Speaker 1: Know about Vaudeville. Uh, my favorite day of the year
0:29
Speaker 1: is today, Uh, Vaudeville Day. No, I mean, you can
0:35
Speaker 1: never tell when it's gonna happen, and it will get
0:37
Speaker 1: hot again. But it's that first whiff of fall. Oh,
0:41
Speaker 1: I love that so much. It's so nice, isn't it.
0:43
Speaker 1: It's one o'clock in Atlanta and it's seventy three degrees humidity,
0:49
Speaker 1: which is for Atlanta that means zero humidity. Yeah, exactly,
0:53
Speaker 1: a little cool breeze blowing. Yeah, it's beautiful out Those
0:57
Speaker 1: leads are gonna start turning any second. No, we'll get
1:00
Speaker 1: hot as hades again before October. It just does Yeah,
1:04
Speaker 1: it does that, like it makes sure it's nice and
1:07
Speaker 1: balmy and muggy on Thanksgiving for some reason. And then
1:11
Speaker 1: in the winter it'll start to get nice, like you're like, okay,
1:14
Speaker 1: spring is here, and then bam, they dumped you with
1:17
Speaker 1: the only snowfall of the year in mid February. But
1:21
Speaker 1: is an odd place at least for this one day
1:23
Speaker 1: we get a little a little whiff of fall, a
1:26
Speaker 1: little whiff of football in the air. Yeah, the stank
1:30
Speaker 1: of football is in the air. So we're not talking
1:33
Speaker 1: about football, although I'm sure somebody did a jokey football
1:37
Speaker 1: routine at some point in the history of vaudeville, which
1:40
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about. We're talking about vaudeville. Like
1:43
Speaker 1: I just said, yeah, and this was an idea by
1:49
Speaker 1: the very guy who wrote it for us, or old
1:52
Speaker 1: pal Dave Ruse. He said, uh. He got very aggressive
1:56
Speaker 1: and said, hey, Chuck, since it's your turn to pick one.
2:01
Speaker 1: You know this thing on vaudeville or saw something on vaudeville.
2:05
Speaker 1: It sounded interesting, And I said, all right, smarty pants,
2:07
Speaker 1: good do it. He said, oh, you want me do it?
2:10
Speaker 1: Huh huh. Very. I'm surprised we haven't done this before though,
2:14
Speaker 1: because it's really cool and kind of I think it's
2:17
Speaker 1: appropriate that it's uh, sort of nearby our sitcoms too,
2:23
Speaker 1: for right, because this was like this was it, this
2:26
Speaker 1: was TV baby before there was TV. Yeah, and there's
2:29
Speaker 1: before we get started. I'm hoping you can help me
2:32
Speaker 1: figure this out. But we have definitely talked about the
2:36
Speaker 1: vaudeville circuit at length in another episode, and it's been
2:40
Speaker 1: driving me bananas because I cannot think of what the
2:43
Speaker 1: episode was. Was it freak Shows? No, I think it
2:48
Speaker 1: was more recent than that, within the last year or
2:50
Speaker 1: two it was. I don't think it was freak shows, man,
2:55
Speaker 1: I really don't. But I looked. I was like, wait
2:58
Speaker 1: a minute, have we done Vaudeville? But warm we definitely
3:00
Speaker 1: have not, because we talked about the circuit on another
3:03
Speaker 1: episode exactly. Yeah, that was so we talked about like
3:07
Speaker 1: the Poconos, the borsched Belt and all that. Yeah. I
3:10
Speaker 1: don't remember what we would have been talking. I don't
3:12
Speaker 1: think it had anything to do with desert survival. Luckily,
3:16
Speaker 1: we have a thousand people that listen to our show
3:19
Speaker 1: every week, at the very least eight hundred. Uh. Yeah,
3:24
Speaker 1: it's it's very familiar to me. I don't I don't
3:26
Speaker 1: know unless we did. Boud Villain just spaced both of
3:29
Speaker 1: us and didn't title it appropriately. We titled a podcast
3:34
Speaker 1: to remember, so we are talking vaud Villain. I think
3:38
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where even if you're gen Z,
3:41
Speaker 1: even if you're a boomer, it doesn't matter. Everybody's at
3:44
Speaker 1: least somewhat familiar cognizant that Vaudeville existed at some time
3:48
Speaker 1: in the past and had to do with um jokes,
3:52
Speaker 1: There were yucks involved. Um, it happened on stage. It
3:57
Speaker 1: was deeply racist in a lot of places, and for
4:00
Speaker 1: a lot of people that's like the sum total of
4:02
Speaker 1: what they understand about Vaudeville. But it is not h
4:06
Speaker 1: an overstatement to say that Vaudeville basically gave birth to
4:10
Speaker 1: every form of entertainment that we know and love today.
4:14
Speaker 1: It was a strange midwife between the theater and mass
4:21
Speaker 1: um commercial media. Yeah, did you write that down? That
4:25
Speaker 1: was good? I did. I didn't, but I'm like furiously
4:30
Speaker 1: rubbing it off in my form. Uh. You know, it's
4:33
Speaker 1: for sure deeply racist in some ways at times, which
4:35
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, but also deeply inclusive and that uh,
4:42
Speaker 1: all kinds of people performed Vaudeville. Everybody loved Vaudeville. I
4:47
Speaker 1: mean it spanned every sort of demographic you could imagine,
4:52
Speaker 1: from old to young and ethnic ethnicity to uh, wealthy
4:58
Speaker 1: people to poor people because it didn't cost a whole lot.
5:01
Speaker 1: You know, people would would literally save their pennies to
5:04
Speaker 1: get into these cheap dime Uh I was about say
5:07
Speaker 1: dime store, but whatever dime a ticket entry shows, right,
5:12
Speaker 1: and it was family friendly too, as we'll see, which
5:15
Speaker 1: was kind of revolutionary. Um and that actually established vaudeville
5:20
Speaker 1: is like a like a genuine American phenomenon. Yeah, I
5:23
Speaker 1: mean that was the deal. And you know, we were
5:26
Speaker 1: sort of the Vaudeville of podcast fifteen years ago in
5:30
Speaker 1: some ways because everyone else came out of the gate, say,
5:34
Speaker 1: you know what, FCC doesn't care what we say, Phil Florence,
5:40
Speaker 1: Phil foul And uh, looking back now, we were lucky
5:43
Speaker 1: enough to have a I guess fortunate enough to have
5:46
Speaker 1: a company at the time that was like you're not
5:49
Speaker 1: allowed to cuss and stuff, Uh, I don't even try stuff.
5:53
Speaker 1: We didn't and uh we we had to park our
5:56
Speaker 1: notoriously foul tongues at the door. And I think that's
5:59
Speaker 1: what helped our show out in a lot of ways,
6:00
Speaker 1: is that people listen to it in classrooms and in
6:03
Speaker 1: the car with their families and stuff like that. Right, absolutely,
6:06
Speaker 1: and like to to think today like of just randomly
6:10
Speaker 1: cursing casually and stuff. You should know. It's it seems weird.
6:14
Speaker 1: We could now if we wanted to. I mean, I
6:17
Speaker 1: don't want to chuck. Don't make me oh cus cuss nay. Instead,
6:23
Speaker 1: let's talk about Vaudeville. And we're gonna keep it clean
6:25
Speaker 1: and family friendly, just like Vaudeville. And we're gonna start
6:28
Speaker 1: chuck with actually the word vaudeville, which it sounds French,
6:32
Speaker 1: vaguely French, and um correctly so because it actually originates
6:37
Speaker 1: in the French language. That's right, apparently. And this is
6:41
Speaker 1: I think Dave was right on point. He says it
6:42
Speaker 1: has a pretty interesting etymology as far as etymologies go,
6:47
Speaker 1: this one seems to be kind of ironclad and interesting. Yeah,
6:50
Speaker 1: it's rare, because yeah, it's very rare. So uh. In
6:53
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century in France, it was a poet. His
6:56
Speaker 1: name was, I guess you would say Olivier Bassilie. But
7:01
Speaker 1: the ironic thing is he didn't know it. It took
7:06
Speaker 1: me a half a beat to get that one. It did.
7:09
Speaker 1: I was like, is there a latency here? Uh? And
7:12
Speaker 1: he was a poet who wrote a satire. He was
7:16
Speaker 1: I guess sort of like the Ray Stevens of his time.
7:22
Speaker 1: That's something that gen Z will not get for sure.
7:26
Speaker 1: God bless you for that, gen Z. And so what
7:28
Speaker 1: was the deal that? Where was he from? He was
7:30
Speaker 1: from the vau de Vie, which is the Vier Valley
7:34
Speaker 1: in French. And so um, these kind of silly, folksy
7:39
Speaker 1: country songs, often satirical, that you know, found their origination
7:43
Speaker 1: in the fourteen hundreds in France came to be known
7:45
Speaker 1: as chanson de vaudeville, so songs from the Vier Valley
7:50
Speaker 1: and basically, yeah, that would have that would have absolutely
7:54
Speaker 1: been a chanson de vaudevie. So um. Over time, I
7:58
Speaker 1: guess in France, everybody's sick of, you know, putting the
8:02
Speaker 1: Vier Valley on the map, and they just changed veer
8:06
Speaker 1: to veal, which means town. So technically vaudeville means valley town,
8:13
Speaker 1: which makes zero sense if you stop and think about it.
8:15
Speaker 1: But it doesn't matter because it gets the point across,
8:17
Speaker 1: because it's evolved to take on a different meaning over time. Yeah,
8:21
Speaker 1: and these in France they had uh fiata du vaudeville,
8:27
Speaker 1: which were these parody plays. And then when America, you know,
8:30
Speaker 1: Vaudeville is a uniquely American thing. Uh. Well, not uniquely American,
8:35
Speaker 1: because there were precedents in other countries, but Vaudeville itself
8:39
Speaker 1: became very American, and you'll see why. But they basically
8:42
Speaker 1: just said, hey, that sounds kind of fancy and French,
8:44
Speaker 1: and that was at a time in America and when
8:47
Speaker 1: they liked to name things fancy French things. Well, yes, also,
8:52
Speaker 1: so one of the things about Vaudeville that it's important
8:54
Speaker 1: to realize is that it was created for this burgeoning
8:58
Speaker 1: middle class where there like a lot more there's people
9:03
Speaker 1: had a little more spending money than they did before.
9:06
Speaker 1: There weren't conditions stunk, as we'll see, but there was
9:09
Speaker 1: a middle class developing and this was designed specifically to
9:12
Speaker 1: target those people. And they wanted to differentiate themselves from
9:16
Speaker 1: some of the predecessors, which were much bodier, much racier,
9:19
Speaker 1: much more drunken um and Vaudeville was like, no, we're different,
9:24
Speaker 1: even though it's a lot the same stuff. Yeah, England, Italy,
9:28
Speaker 1: they all had these sort of body plays where people
9:31
Speaker 1: would get hammered in the audience or and or on stage. Uh.
9:36
Speaker 1: In America, even pre Civil War, the shows were um,
9:41
Speaker 1: you know, they were very risque. They were kind of
9:43
Speaker 1: burlesque in nature, or you might have like, you know,
9:47
Speaker 1: sort of uh scantily clad. At the time, of course
9:50
Speaker 1: there was nothing like you would see today, but like
9:52
Speaker 1: a scantily clad uh ladies dancing, uh and then like
9:56
Speaker 1: two guys bare knuckle boxing right afterward and everyone is
10:00
Speaker 1: getting drunk. And I bet those were a lot of fun.
10:03
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, it sounds a lot like a
10:05
Speaker 1: Chelsea Handler show today. But a few gentlemen came along,
10:10
Speaker 1: in particular in the United States that said, hey, why
10:13
Speaker 1: don't we, like you said, open this up to the
10:15
Speaker 1: middle class, make it for everyone, and make it where
10:18
Speaker 1: families could come. Because they wanted to make money. I
10:21
Speaker 1: don't think they're on a crusade to clean up America's act.
10:24
Speaker 1: Is they wanted to get rich. No, but they were
10:28
Speaker 1: the kind of strict um like I guess taskmasters that
10:34
Speaker 1: that like, they had some really strange requirements as we'll see.
10:37
Speaker 1: Well we'll get to that in a second. But um,
10:40
Speaker 1: in addition to the variety shows, circuses were a thing.
10:43
Speaker 1: I think they we've never done an actual circus episode,
10:46
Speaker 1: have we. We've done a lot of the circus arts,
10:50
Speaker 1: but I don't know that we've done a full like
10:53
Speaker 1: circus apply. I think very us it's hilarious. So circuses
10:58
Speaker 1: were kind of coming of age at the time. UM.
11:01
Speaker 1: There were also side shows something called dime museums, which
11:04
Speaker 1: is basically like a storefront um where people would pay
11:08
Speaker 1: and just come look at some exhibits. And I saw
11:11
Speaker 1: I found this amazing contemporary yes, reporting from the Saturday
11:17
Speaker 1: Evening Post from June and it was basically UM an
11:22
Speaker 1: article written by one of the big vaudeville producers at
11:25
Speaker 1: the time, Percy G. Williams, and it was called Vaudeville
11:29
Speaker 1: and the Vaudevillians, and he's talking about some of the
11:32
Speaker 1: origins of vaudeville and he says that one of them
11:36
Speaker 1: the three biggest people to establish vaudeville was Benjamin Franklin Keith,
11:41
Speaker 1: and his first role as a manager was of a
11:44
Speaker 1: store show that featured a fat baby as the main attractions.
11:51
Speaker 1: Did that baby grow up to be? Is there a
11:53
Speaker 1: great ending there? Then the baby grew up to be
11:57
Speaker 1: DC Fields. Let's you should just say that everybody would
12:02
Speaker 1: believe you? Sure, I know that's It wasn't as funny
12:05
Speaker 1: because it was sobelievable. No, no, no, I love it.
12:09
Speaker 1: So b F. Keith was one of the guys. A
12:12
Speaker 1: guy named e F. Albie was another guy. They teamed
12:15
Speaker 1: up um As Cohorts in Boston and opened up the
12:19
Speaker 1: Bijou Theater and basically developed a and as you'll see,
12:24
Speaker 1: kind of with vaudeville, it wasn't just like, hey, listen,
12:27
Speaker 1: you know, we'll just do a show every now and then.
12:29
Speaker 1: They developed these circuits in these systems, in these tours
12:33
Speaker 1: and these basically management companies where they would just send
12:37
Speaker 1: people out all over the country, and it really kind
12:39
Speaker 1: of quickly became like a big, big business. Chuck asked
12:44
Speaker 1: me again, who the fat baby grew up to be? He?
12:47
Speaker 1: Is there a great ending like who that fat baby
12:48
Speaker 1: grew up to be? Yeah? That fathe? Take three? Hey?
12:56
Speaker 1: Yeah that who that fat baby? Take four? Hey, does
13:00
Speaker 1: have a great inning here that that baby grow up
13:02
Speaker 1: to be Tony Danza even better? Okay, that's Tony Dance
13:11
Speaker 1: is a better punch line in almost every joke. Agreed, man.
13:14
Speaker 1: And apparently Who's the Boss is having some sort of
13:17
Speaker 1: reboot in I saw it on Entertainment tonight. So um
13:22
Speaker 1: so it's true. So Tony Pastor was the guy who
13:26
Speaker 1: supposedly coined the term vaudeville or adopted the term vaudeville
13:31
Speaker 1: to describe this thing that was basically like those variety shows,
13:34
Speaker 1: except no not body. Um there was no liquor on
13:39
Speaker 1: the premises, which was a big one at the time. Um,
13:43
Speaker 1: the skits and the performers were all family friendly. The
13:47
Speaker 1: language was family friendly. It was like the kind of
13:50
Speaker 1: thing that like the whole family, from the little kids
13:52
Speaker 1: to the grandma and the parents could all go sit
13:54
Speaker 1: down and enjoy this this show together. Right. Um. And
13:58
Speaker 1: like I said, they had some really like strict requirements.
14:02
Speaker 1: I saw BF Keith, Benjamin Franklin Keith particularly did not
14:08
Speaker 1: like certain kinds of language. Um, he's he didn't like
14:13
Speaker 1: it if you said slab okay, son of a gun,
14:18
Speaker 1: holy g, which I think is maybe gali G. Yeah,
14:22
Speaker 1: I don't get that one. That one's weird. And the
14:25
Speaker 1: kuda gra chuck pants. Do not say pants around b F. Keith.
14:29
Speaker 1: You better say trousers or else you're gonna get what
14:32
Speaker 1: was referred to as a blue envelope. Right Yeah, and
14:36
Speaker 1: here's where it gets, Um, the whole notion of blue comedy,
14:41
Speaker 1: which is comedy that is got like foul language or whatever,
14:44
Speaker 1: like if you're doing blue work or blue comedy. There
14:47
Speaker 1: are a lot of different because you know, Dave said
14:50
Speaker 1: in here, uh, and Dave didnt make this up, but
14:53
Speaker 1: he saw that that may have been one of the
14:55
Speaker 1: origins of some people think it's the origin of the
14:58
Speaker 1: term working blue. We're doing blue comedy. And I looked
15:02
Speaker 1: into it and there were there there are a lot
15:04
Speaker 1: of different explanations. Um, I mean I saw like eight
15:08
Speaker 1: or ten and they all sounded pretty realistic. Everything from
15:12
Speaker 1: this one uh comedian named Max Miller who kept all
15:16
Speaker 1: his adult jokes in a blue notebook. That's kind of
15:18
Speaker 1: roundly been dismissed to In England after the Theater Act
15:23
Speaker 1: of eighty three, they had to submit plays to the
15:26
Speaker 1: Examiner of Plays like Capital the Capital p to audit
15:30
Speaker 1: the scripts and then send them back and say you
15:33
Speaker 1: can't get a permit with the script. And apparently they
15:36
Speaker 1: would do that in blue pencil. That sounded really realistic.
15:40
Speaker 1: But there were a bunch of different stories. But at
15:43
Speaker 1: any rate, perhaps if you got a blue envelope from
15:46
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin Keith that that could have been the origin
15:49
Speaker 1: as well. Who knows. Yeah, because it meant like he
15:52
Speaker 1: was sending you a note to say, like, you better
15:53
Speaker 1: tone your act down or you're gonna get the boot. Basically,
15:56
Speaker 1: that's right. And in addition to blue, a lot out
16:00
Speaker 1: of the terms we used today came out of Vaudeville.
16:02
Speaker 1: I saw um like killing them, killing them, not that
16:08
Speaker 1: word I just made up, just killed on stage, Yes, exactly, headliner,
16:13
Speaker 1: sure fire, lemon for like a bad thing, like a failure, um,
16:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of different stuff that I had no idea of.
16:21
Speaker 1: This just completely part of the common vernacular. Just came
16:24
Speaker 1: out of the vaudeville world. It's the origins of origins
16:30
Speaker 1: of popular entertainment. We're having a hard time today. I
16:35
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. I got marbles in my mouth.
16:37
Speaker 1: I'm all excited about fall. Maybe just take a break, okay,
16:40
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let's do that, all right. I'm gonna get
16:41
Speaker 1: these marbles out and we'll be right back. Okay. So
17:00
Speaker 1: this is something we've talked a lot about in various
17:02
Speaker 1: episodes over the years. But um, pre Civil War and
17:06
Speaker 1: post Civil War America were very different in how people lived.
17:10
Speaker 1: Pre Civil War about nine of Americans lived in the country.
17:15
Speaker 1: Um by the you know, mid eighteen eighties or so. Um,
17:19
Speaker 1: the industrial the Second Industrial Revolution comes around all of
17:23
Speaker 1: a sudden, it is almost flip flopped. It's about half
17:26
Speaker 1: and half of people living in cities and people still
17:28
Speaker 1: hanging out in the country. And in those cities there
17:31
Speaker 1: are obviously a lot of immigrants coming in like really
17:34
Speaker 1: really quickly, especially in places like New York obviously, and
17:38
Speaker 1: they were you know, didn't make a lot of money,
17:41
Speaker 1: but they worked really really long hours and had very
17:44
Speaker 1: little free time. And all of a sudden, there was
17:47
Speaker 1: this thing that you could do with your very little
17:50
Speaker 1: free time that costs like a nickel or a dime,
17:53
Speaker 1: and you could go in there for a few hours
17:55
Speaker 1: and kind of forget the drudgery of living in a
17:58
Speaker 1: tenement building and working in a factory. Yeah, and so like,
18:03
Speaker 1: not only did it bring like the people from the
18:05
Speaker 1: neighborhood around, because like one vaudeville theater owner might own
18:09
Speaker 1: ten theaters in one city like New York, so that
18:13
Speaker 1: they were they catered to the neighborhood, so you don't
18:15
Speaker 1: have to go very far. Um. Dave also points out
18:18
Speaker 1: that through some of like the the most cringe e
18:22
Speaker 1: and outright racist ethnic jokes and slurs that were part
18:26
Speaker 1: of the acts of some of these not all the acts,
18:29
Speaker 1: but enough of them that it was definitely a thing
18:31
Speaker 1: that it wasn't meant to be mean spirited, um, at
18:36
Speaker 1: least not in the vaudeville world that had definitely been
18:39
Speaker 1: means spirited before. UM. But say like if you were
18:42
Speaker 1: poking fun at Chinese immigrants and how they talked, or um,
18:46
Speaker 1: Irish immigrants and how they talked, um, it was a
18:49
Speaker 1: form of assimilation in a weird way because those very
18:53
Speaker 1: people were out there in the audience laughing along with
18:57
Speaker 1: everybody else. Or sometimes, as we'll see, um, people of
19:01
Speaker 1: that ethnicity may have been playing those you know, over
19:05
Speaker 1: the top stereotype versions of their ethnicity and and in
19:08
Speaker 1: a weird way it does. It is kind of how
19:11
Speaker 1: people came together and initially melted together when America was
19:15
Speaker 1: just beginning to be a melting pot. Yeah, was the
19:18
Speaker 1: initial melt right. Um. So let's talk a little bit
19:21
Speaker 1: about how these things went down, because there was a
19:24
Speaker 1: very kind of great motto for vaudeville, which was, if
19:28
Speaker 1: you don't like this, wait a few minutes and that's
19:32
Speaker 1: how it went down. They were variety shows in every uh,
19:37
Speaker 1: every essence of that word. Um. We've done a few
19:40
Speaker 1: variety shows over the years, and I definitely enjoy our
19:44
Speaker 1: stuff you should know live, which, by the way, look
19:47
Speaker 1: for some announcements soon for early next year. Yeah, West Coast,
19:52
Speaker 1: Hint Antonia. I definitely prefer those. But early on we
19:56
Speaker 1: did a few variety shows where we would have like
19:58
Speaker 1: some music and it can median and someone you were
20:01
Speaker 1: reading and uh, you know the someone uh interpretive dance.
20:07
Speaker 1: That's the one thing we liked. But those are always
20:09
Speaker 1: a lot of fun because I think we both enjoyed
20:11
Speaker 1: that spirit of the variety show. When you're a kid
20:15
Speaker 1: of the seventies and eighties, those were still very much
20:18
Speaker 1: a part of television growing up. Um, and they they're
20:21
Speaker 1: they're the you can draw a direct line from what
20:24
Speaker 1: you saw on you know, the Mandrell Sister Show or
20:27
Speaker 1: he haw right back to vaudeville. Uh. And the whole
20:31
Speaker 1: idea was, if you don't like it, wait a few minutes.
20:33
Speaker 1: They would have you know, maybe ten fifteen minute, twenty
20:38
Speaker 1: minute at the longest, the thirty minute act and then
20:41
Speaker 1: somebody completely different would come out next. Yeah, and um,
20:45
Speaker 1: Percy Williams kind of put it pretty plainly in that
20:48
Speaker 1: Saturday Evening Post article that like a vaudeville theater manager
20:52
Speaker 1: is entirely different from what he called the legitimate theater
20:55
Speaker 1: manager um in that every week you were coming up
20:59
Speaker 1: with a new you like show of ten twelve acts
21:04
Speaker 1: that you had to arrange just the right way to
21:06
Speaker 1: keep the audience entertained. You lull them into like complacency
21:10
Speaker 1: with a beautiful like ballet act, and then after that,
21:13
Speaker 1: like two acrobats who may or may not have been
21:16
Speaker 1: brothers came bounding out onto the stage, and after that
21:19
Speaker 1: there was a comedian who would just slay everybody. Um Like.
21:22
Speaker 1: It was very much laid out in the way that
21:25
Speaker 1: um that it was supposed to be, and it was
21:27
Speaker 1: all all vaudeville shows were laid out in the exact
21:30
Speaker 1: same way, but they're the different kinds of acts. Dave
21:33
Speaker 1: dug up a handbook from nineteen fourteen called how to
21:36
Speaker 1: Enter Vaudeville Your Favorites, Yes, proceed though I'm marked down
21:43
Speaker 1: five six seven. All right, Uh, well, my first favorite
21:47
Speaker 1: was the first one on the list, a shadow list,
21:50
Speaker 1: because those are just fun those are people who I
21:52
Speaker 1: guess do like the hand shadows and things, right, that
21:55
Speaker 1: would be my take on it too, Yeah for sure. Yeah. Um.
21:59
Speaker 1: My first him was a hobo act. And the reason
22:01
Speaker 1: why the reason why I chose hobo acts because I
22:05
Speaker 1: saw that, Um, Benjamin Franklin Keith's shows at his theaters.
22:10
Speaker 1: Even if you're doing a hobo act, you still had
22:12
Speaker 1: to wear a clean shirt. That's pretty funny. Yeah, You're like, no,
22:16
Speaker 1: but this is my outfit and said sorry sorry. The
22:20
Speaker 1: next on my list was the human Calculator act. Okay,
22:25
Speaker 1: I'd like that too. Yeah. Um, I've got one electrical act,
22:30
Speaker 1: which I mean we're talking like the beginning of the
22:32
Speaker 1: twentieth century, so electricity was really strange and exotic, and
22:36
Speaker 1: there were people who would have different acts. So, um,
22:40
Speaker 1: I found this site called uh Vaudeville America, and every
22:45
Speaker 1: single Vaudeville act that ever performed would have a little
22:48
Speaker 1: note card with like a little summation about their show,
22:51
Speaker 1: how it was received by the audience, how long it ran, um,
22:55
Speaker 1: and Vaudeville America has all of these things, and I
22:58
Speaker 1: found him for electrical act. It was all over the place,
23:01
Speaker 1: like it could be electricity used to trigger special effects
23:05
Speaker 1: or um it could be like a scientist demonstrating different
23:09
Speaker 1: things with electricity, or sometimes people took massive electrical shocks
23:14
Speaker 1: to the body to perform, like that was what they
23:17
Speaker 1: did as part of their electrical show. So that was
23:20
Speaker 1: definitely one of my favorites too. Yeah, I mean there
23:22
Speaker 1: were definitely some sort of Jim Rose Circus adjacent things
23:27
Speaker 1: like sword swallowing and stuff like that. Um, but my
23:30
Speaker 1: favorite my last two our statuary posing and uh paper tearing. Yeah,
23:39
Speaker 1: paper tearing. It was like I don't know about that one.
23:42
Speaker 1: I mean it must be well, I don't know. I
23:45
Speaker 1: was gonna say it must be like ripping phone books
23:46
Speaker 1: in f but it might not have been. Maybe it
23:49
Speaker 1: was tearing paper like a reverse or a gami or something. Yeah,
23:54
Speaker 1: that's what I would take it as for sure. It's
23:56
Speaker 1: basically a vaudeville show. Was uh comp elation of stuff
24:00
Speaker 1: that you would see today at halftime at NBA games.
24:05
Speaker 1: You know, like there'd be a dude like balancing a
24:08
Speaker 1: chair on his chin and on top of that or
24:11
Speaker 1: eight other chairs and at the very top of that
24:13
Speaker 1: is his wife. Like like that's the kind of stuff
24:16
Speaker 1: that you would see at vaudeville, and then you'd also
24:18
Speaker 1: see serious stuff too, Like there were tabloid plays where
24:20
Speaker 1: they would distill like a three four act play down
24:25
Speaker 1: into fifteen minutes, and it wasn't necessarily a comedy. It
24:29
Speaker 1: could be a tragedy. And these people just figured out
24:31
Speaker 1: how to do the reader's diegt version. So it was
24:34
Speaker 1: all over the place, and they they were laid out
24:36
Speaker 1: in just the right way by the vaudeville theater managers. Yeah,
24:39
Speaker 1: that was a great quote from this. Did you watch
24:41
Speaker 1: any of that PDS documentary? Yeah, it was very good.
24:44
Speaker 1: It was good. Uh. The quote from there was there
24:47
Speaker 1: was everything from a guy playing a piano to a
24:49
Speaker 1: guy eating a piano. Did you see that agent who
24:53
Speaker 1: described the guy who would eat a baby shark and
24:57
Speaker 1: then throw it up back into like a are and
25:00
Speaker 1: the shark would just swim around afterwards. It's I mean,
25:03
Speaker 1: that was vaudeville, um, And you know, like you said,
25:06
Speaker 1: they had to lay it out in such a way
25:08
Speaker 1: it was. It wasn't just willy nilly, you know, it
25:10
Speaker 1: was very intentional. And apparently the first act to be
25:14
Speaker 1: the first act of the last act wasn't a great sign. Uh,
25:18
Speaker 1: for you that well, probably what it probably meant is
25:20
Speaker 1: that you were either brand new or just not very good,
25:24
Speaker 1: and you didn't really have a great act. But they
25:26
Speaker 1: needed somebody because the opening act would be kind of
25:29
Speaker 1: the seating act, like people are still sort of getting
25:31
Speaker 1: in their seats and doing their thing, but they wanted
25:33
Speaker 1: to have something up there. I was about to say
25:35
Speaker 1: on the screen on the stage. Um. And then the
25:38
Speaker 1: last one, which is hysterical and goes counter to every
25:43
Speaker 1: show biz rule now, which was like leave them with
25:45
Speaker 1: something great. They wanted to purposely leave them with something
25:48
Speaker 1: not so great so they could just turn the house
25:51
Speaker 1: over and get people the heck out of there and
25:53
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be like more and more so they would
25:57
Speaker 1: It was like in Mexicali Grill in Athens when we
26:00
Speaker 1: would uh, we would crank like you know Public Enemy
26:03
Speaker 1: or you know, some really heavy metal or something at
26:06
Speaker 1: the end of the night, just to get people out
26:07
Speaker 1: of there. For sure, they called the last act on
26:10
Speaker 1: the bill of the haircut act because that performer would
26:14
Speaker 1: just see the back of everybody's heads on their way out.
26:16
Speaker 1: To be clear, we loved Public Enemy. The people that
26:20
Speaker 1: dined at Mexicali hated it. Sure, just wat chocolate and
26:25
Speaker 1: public Enemy to get people out of there if you need.
26:27
Speaker 1: The clientele at Mexicality, Rill and Athens in the mid nighties,
26:30
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, some email are just just like yeah,
26:34
Speaker 1: same draft. Um. So what that meant was that second
26:39
Speaker 1: to the last act was is what you would look
26:41
Speaker 1: at as sort of the the best act of the night.
26:44
Speaker 1: And sometimes yeah, that could be like a really big name.
26:47
Speaker 1: I mean it could be Harry Hudini on any given night.
26:50
Speaker 1: It could be um, you know, Al Jolson for better
26:54
Speaker 1: or for worse on any given night, like a huge,
26:57
Speaker 1: massive star. Like these the people who were um, who
27:01
Speaker 1: were the second to last act on a bill at
27:04
Speaker 1: a big vaudeville theater in a big city were probably
27:08
Speaker 1: the most famous people in the United States and Europe
27:12
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases. Like they were as famous
27:15
Speaker 1: as you can possibly get, legendary in their fields, beloved
27:19
Speaker 1: by all, like and you could go spend ten or
27:23
Speaker 1: twenty five cents, depending on how good the show was,
27:26
Speaker 1: and see those people like in your neighborhood, you know,
27:29
Speaker 1: depending on what city it was. Because like you said,
27:31
Speaker 1: the um, the whole thing that kind of spread Vaudeville
27:35
Speaker 1: far and wide was the fact that they created these
27:37
Speaker 1: circuits and so you didn't even necessarily have to live
27:41
Speaker 1: in a big city to see these people alive. Um,
27:44
Speaker 1: because if you had a theater in your town that
27:46
Speaker 1: was part of a circuit that originated in New York,
27:50
Speaker 1: they might end up there performing as the second to
27:53
Speaker 1: last act on the bill. And we'll, I mean, we'll
27:55
Speaker 1: talk more about circuits in a minute, but I just
27:57
Speaker 1: got very excited about that. Yeah, let's go back to racism. Yeah, okay,
28:03
Speaker 1: So you know we made the point that um or
28:05
Speaker 1: I don't know if we made this original point. Um,
28:08
Speaker 1: when the someone was doing what you would call like
28:11
Speaker 1: an ethnic dialogue act or a dialect act um, they
28:16
Speaker 1: would go up there and do this racial ethnic stereotype
28:21
Speaker 1: and it could be anything. It was like nobody was safe.
28:25
Speaker 1: It could be a big Italitian guy doing this is
28:27
Speaker 1: big spicy meatball thing. That's the only one I'm allowed
28:31
Speaker 1: to do, so that's all I'm gonna do. No, it
28:32
Speaker 1: could be like German, Irish, uh in any sort of
28:36
Speaker 1: European immigrant. They could be making fun of Jewish people,
28:40
Speaker 1: Chinese people, Native Americans who also had as we'll see,
28:44
Speaker 1: their own circuit, and they would also make fun of themselves.
28:47
Speaker 1: So it was interesting in that it was sort of
28:50
Speaker 1: a uh, it was sort of the great leveling ground,
28:54
Speaker 1: and that no one was really spared right right, And
29:00
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it was because a lot
29:03
Speaker 1: of the members of those same ethnic groups, like I
29:06
Speaker 1: was saying, performed those dialect acts where they were really
29:10
Speaker 1: hamming it up and really going over the top with
29:13
Speaker 1: these stereotypes of their own ethnicity. Um. And even black face,
29:18
Speaker 1: depending on the context was um depending on who is
29:24
Speaker 1: doing it was anti racist because one of the overlooked
29:26
Speaker 1: things about black faces as far as vaudeville is concerned,
29:30
Speaker 1: there were a number of African American vaudeville performers who
29:34
Speaker 1: did black face and actually preferred to do black face
29:37
Speaker 1: because it changed everything. It said, we're in an alternate
29:41
Speaker 1: universe here and the rules are kind of out the window.
29:44
Speaker 1: And then they could all of a sudden do it
29:46
Speaker 1: a take on a satire, let's say about the white
29:50
Speaker 1: guy who's running the vaudeville show and get away and
29:53
Speaker 1: get away with it, yeah, or make fun of the
29:57
Speaker 1: idea of black face done by white people, like make
30:00
Speaker 1: fun of black face acts as a black face act
30:05
Speaker 1: performed by an African American, So yeah, it gave them
30:08
Speaker 1: a lot more leeway to just kind of set things
30:11
Speaker 1: straight a little more. But um, the history of black
30:14
Speaker 1: faces terribly horribly racist. Um, but everything leading up to vaudeville,
30:20
Speaker 1: and some vaudeville acts were still terribly racist. But um,
30:24
Speaker 1: the stuff leading up to it was indisputably vilely racist. Yeah. Absolutely. Um.
30:29
Speaker 1: One of the biggest stars in the early twentieth century
30:34
Speaker 1: was a black man named Burt Williams. Very handsome, smooth,
30:39
Speaker 1: cool looking dude. If you look at pictures of this guy,
30:41
Speaker 1: he's like, he's like the Billy D. Williams of his time,
30:45
Speaker 1: Billy D. Williams. Did I get that right? Yeah? Okay,
30:48
Speaker 1: I don't know why that sounded wrong all of a sudden.
30:50
Speaker 1: Do you ever do that? Yeah, and you're like what
30:55
Speaker 1: it's called semantic satiation, really where you you do or say,
30:59
Speaker 1: you're speak something so much that it just loses its
31:04
Speaker 1: meaning and like doesn't look right spelled and all that stuff.
31:06
Speaker 1: You know, I thought I got it wrong, actually just
31:08
Speaker 1: figured out because in my head I had D as
31:12
Speaker 1: D period like an initial and not D e E
31:16
Speaker 1: like d Wallace, Billy D Wallace Williams anyway, Uh, he
31:22
Speaker 1: kind of looked like Billy D a little bit, very
31:24
Speaker 1: smooth looking guy. And he was the first black performer
31:27
Speaker 1: to star to star in the Zike Field Follies, which was,
31:32
Speaker 1: you know, one of the biggest vaudeville reviews in New
31:34
Speaker 1: York City at the time. And he and also all
31:37
Speaker 1: white too. Well, yeah, exactly. That's why it was important
31:41
Speaker 1: that he was the first black performer. Sure, but he
31:44
Speaker 1: was um. He did black face, of course, and he
31:47
Speaker 1: was on record as saying, like he said, quote, it
31:50
Speaker 1: was not until I was able to see myself as
31:53
Speaker 1: another person, and I think he meaning black face, that
31:56
Speaker 1: my sense of humor developed. So for him, I think
31:59
Speaker 1: he said it a lot of to come out of
32:01
Speaker 1: his shell sort of comedically. Fully. Yeah, there's um. They
32:05
Speaker 1: covered him really well in that PBS documentary and there
32:08
Speaker 1: was a quote from W. C. Fields. No word what
32:11
Speaker 1: Tony Danza had to say, but W. C. Fields said that, um,
32:15
Speaker 1: Burt Williams was the funniest man I ever saw and
32:18
Speaker 1: the saddest man I ever met. And what he was
32:21
Speaker 1: referring to is that Burt Williams is called the Jackie
32:24
Speaker 1: Robinson of of vaudeville because he broke that color. Berrier
32:27
Speaker 1: was the first one. But he also like seemed to
32:29
Speaker 1: feel like the weight of history on his shoulders, and
32:32
Speaker 1: he spent He just worked tirelessly to prove that he
32:35
Speaker 1: was at least as good, if not better than any
32:38
Speaker 1: white Carville performer, and supposedly, according to this PBS documentary,
32:42
Speaker 1: essentially worked himself to death at age forty. Yeah, but
32:47
Speaker 1: he was a great talent and um even even in
32:50
Speaker 1: his time he was considered just a legendary star and
32:53
Speaker 1: comedian but like beloved by all. Yeah, I'm gonna take
32:58
Speaker 1: issue with PBS and if someone else right in saying
33:00
Speaker 1: the same thing, I don't think you can say that
33:04
Speaker 1: someone is said Jackie Robinson of something before Jackie Robinson
33:09
Speaker 1: what people like to say, but like Jackie Robinson was
33:12
Speaker 1: the Burt Williams of baseball if anything, very nice, very nice.
33:16
Speaker 1: That's a great, great correction. Well, I think a lot
33:19
Speaker 1: of people just use that term now, you know, like
33:22
Speaker 1: somebody could say so and so is the Jackie Robinson
33:24
Speaker 1: of cave People. It took took was the Jackie Robinson
33:29
Speaker 1: of cave People. All right, I mean it still gets
33:32
Speaker 1: the point across into a prescriptive no no, no, no no.
33:36
Speaker 1: I'm moving on. Uh to al Jolson, who he mentioned earlier.
33:40
Speaker 1: He was one of the biggest stars in the world
33:42
Speaker 1: as well. He very famously uh don blackface. Uh. And
33:46
Speaker 1: he is someone who went on to have a huge
33:49
Speaker 1: career once movies came around. And won't you know, we'll
33:52
Speaker 1: get to the effect movies had on all that. But
33:54
Speaker 1: he started he was Jewish and he started the jazz singer,
33:58
Speaker 1: which was the big sort of first huge feature length
34:02
Speaker 1: talkie in n Yeah. And it's interesting that this vaudeville
34:07
Speaker 1: star became the first um talkie star for movies because um,
34:14
Speaker 1: that was that was a transition that that quickly took over. Actually,
34:18
Speaker 1: as we'll see um and I say, we take a break,
34:20
Speaker 1: chuck and come back to more vaudeville stuff about that.
34:23
Speaker 1: Let's do it. So now finally we're onto that part
34:43
Speaker 1: that I was so excited about. Circuits. Yeah, the circuit
34:47
Speaker 1: was the business model basically, uh, that allowed everybody to
34:52
Speaker 1: make a lot of money. Certainly the owners of these
34:55
Speaker 1: theaters and the people who UM had lots and lots
34:59
Speaker 1: of these performers signed up to exclusive contracts. Yeah, and
35:03
Speaker 1: just as an aside about that big money, UM, I
35:06
Speaker 1: put together Percy Williams Saturday Evening post information with our
35:13
Speaker 1: friends at west Egg the inflation calculator. Some of the
35:18
Speaker 1: some of the amounts that he was thrown out, like
35:20
Speaker 1: three dollars a week was not out of the question,
35:24
Speaker 1: um for a good like performer on vaudeville, and that
35:29
Speaker 1: meant you automatically made half a million dollars a year.
35:32
Speaker 1: But it just kept going up from there, like UM,
35:35
Speaker 1: I think the highest paid that he mentioned, um was
35:38
Speaker 1: a performer who pulled in three thousand dollars a week
35:41
Speaker 1: a week, yes, which is forty seven grand a week today,
35:45
Speaker 1: which is like over five million dollars in today's money
35:49
Speaker 1: for a year. It's like mid level podcaster money, right. Uh,
35:55
Speaker 1: the average American was making about bucks at the time.
36:01
Speaker 1: So if you're making three fifty dollars a week, and
36:04
Speaker 1: you know, it's the same today that the big entertainers
36:08
Speaker 1: sort of have always made lots and lots and lots
36:10
Speaker 1: of money because they could charge a lot or not
36:14
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but they could charge a lot
36:16
Speaker 1: of people money to buy to the cell tickets. Yeah,
36:19
Speaker 1: and Percy Williams also said one of the other distinctions
36:22
Speaker 1: between a legitimate theater house and a vaudeville theater house
36:26
Speaker 1: is that that legitimate theater might be happy to have
36:28
Speaker 1: five thousand patrons in a week, whereas on a really
36:31
Speaker 1: good week with a really good bill of vaudeville house
36:34
Speaker 1: might pull in thirty five thousand people in that week.
36:37
Speaker 1: So that kind of gives you an idea of just
36:38
Speaker 1: how popular it was because it wasn't high brow, it
36:41
Speaker 1: wasn't high falutin, it was understandable, it was funny, it
36:45
Speaker 1: was moving, um, and just about anybody could could tap
36:48
Speaker 1: into it and get it and be moved by it.
36:50
Speaker 1: So um. The The thing is, though, is if they're
36:54
Speaker 1: charging ten cents apiece, that's still only thirty dollars. So
36:58
Speaker 1: one of the ways these theaters made money is to
37:00
Speaker 1: have really good performers that they just squeezed because three
37:04
Speaker 1: hundred bucks a week was not the average, and apparently
37:07
Speaker 1: there were plenty of performers who all they wanted to
37:09
Speaker 1: do was perform, and if you could give them just
37:11
Speaker 1: enough money to get to the next show and maybe
37:14
Speaker 1: eat along the way, they would just keep doing it
37:16
Speaker 1: year after year. And that's how they really made their
37:18
Speaker 1: money was with those acts. Yeah, and they I mean
37:20
Speaker 1: these people were performing, um, fourteen to twenty times a week,
37:26
Speaker 1: you know, definitely two shows a day. Sometimes on the
37:28
Speaker 1: weekend they would do three or more. And they were
37:32
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure how much I guess the
37:34
Speaker 1: bigger star you get, you know, leverage is always worked
37:37
Speaker 1: the same way. You might have had a little more say,
37:40
Speaker 1: but unless you got to that tippy top point, like
37:43
Speaker 1: you were kind of doing what you were told and
37:45
Speaker 1: you were getting paid handsomely for it. But these people
37:48
Speaker 1: were working themselves to the bone on stage every day. Yeah.
37:51
Speaker 1: And I also have the impression that if you're a
37:53
Speaker 1: Volueville performer, even the top of the pile, uh, to
37:58
Speaker 1: to act like a a normal star, like a theater star,
38:02
Speaker 1: would be anathetical to the whole spirit of vaudeville. I
38:05
Speaker 1: think even like the biggest stars were still like, you know,
38:09
Speaker 1: work people, like they just got to work, and they
38:11
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't put on airs. I guess you could
38:14
Speaker 1: say is they would put it in Scotland, right, Uh,
38:17
Speaker 1: there was a black vaudeville circuit that was fully its
38:21
Speaker 1: own thing. Uh. Generally black owned theaters and there was
38:25
Speaker 1: a booking circuit of vaudeville circuit um called the Theater
38:28
Speaker 1: Owners Booking Association or TOBA t O b A. And
38:33
Speaker 1: they were again they were, you know, grinding these people
38:35
Speaker 1: through the entertainment grinder. Still paying them pretty well though
38:39
Speaker 1: although it was less than people on the white vaudeville circuit.
38:42
Speaker 1: We're getting paid and I think the theaters probably were
38:45
Speaker 1: cheaper as well. Um, but the performers used to joke
38:49
Speaker 1: apparently that t O b A uh stood for tough
38:52
Speaker 1: on black asses. Yeah, because they really like put them
38:56
Speaker 1: through the grinder, like you need to be here, and um,
39:00
Speaker 1: the gigs were guaranteed and there was you know, good money,
39:03
Speaker 1: like you said, but it was I get the impression
39:05
Speaker 1: too that it was more grueling. They're also a little
39:08
Speaker 1: bit looser, so you could get away with a little
39:11
Speaker 1: less family friendly content, a little more sexual innuendo and
39:15
Speaker 1: body humor. Um. There was one example they found called
39:19
Speaker 1: It was a husband wife duo called butter Beans and
39:21
Speaker 1: Susie and their big hit song was uh that Susie
39:26
Speaker 1: saying was I want a hot dog for my role m.
39:29
Speaker 1: So you know, just there you have it. One of
39:34
Speaker 1: the other um stars of the Black vaudeville circuit was
39:37
Speaker 1: Mom's Madly Isn't Madly? Or Maybely? Okay, that's what I
39:42
Speaker 1: thought too. So Mom's maybe was a star UM into
39:46
Speaker 1: the sixties and I think maybe even the seventies on
39:48
Speaker 1: television with this one vaudeville character that she came up
39:51
Speaker 1: with way back in the twenties, Um, and I saw
39:54
Speaker 1: that she was a trailblazer in that she came out
39:57
Speaker 1: as a lesbian in N one. Yeah, and they called
40:03
Speaker 1: her Moms. Her real name was Jackie, but they called
40:05
Speaker 1: her Moms because she was such like a maternal figure
40:07
Speaker 1: to all of the other performers on the vaudeville circuit,
40:10
Speaker 1: whoever she was on the bill with. You know, backstage,
40:13
Speaker 1: she's had kind of a maternal presence, so everybody nicknamed
40:15
Speaker 1: her Mom's and that led to that character that just
40:18
Speaker 1: carried her for decades on. Yeah. I mean she if
40:21
Speaker 1: you look up a picture of her, like I forture
40:24
Speaker 1: saw her on television in the seventies, right, she definitely
40:27
Speaker 1: looks familiar. So, um, did you see that there is
40:30
Speaker 1: still a theater, a black owned theater from the black
40:34
Speaker 1: vaudeville circuit? Um in Athens, still in operation today, the
40:38
Speaker 1: Morton Theater. Did you know that I've been to a
40:40
Speaker 1: play there. Yeah, so it started in nineteen and it's
40:43
Speaker 1: still going. It's awesome. There's another one in make in
40:46
Speaker 1: Georgia called the Douglas Theater. Uh. So it's it's cool
40:50
Speaker 1: that these are still around. I love it. Yeah. Uh.
40:53
Speaker 1: And then in addition to the Um Black Vaudeville Circuit,
40:56
Speaker 1: there was also a Yiddih Vaudeville circuit Um which Fanny
40:59
Speaker 1: b Ice, the inspiration for Funny Girl, came out of.
41:03
Speaker 1: There was that Native American volb Will Circle that you
41:05
Speaker 1: talked about. And I don't remember what episode we talked
41:09
Speaker 1: about it, and maybe Geronimo, yeah, or the Apache Wars
41:13
Speaker 1: episode we talked about how Geronimo joined Buffalo Bill's Wild
41:17
Speaker 1: West Show. That would be an excellent example of native
41:20
Speaker 1: Native American vaudeville from what I understand. Yeah, and they
41:23
Speaker 1: would do you know, they would uh sort of play
41:26
Speaker 1: up their ethnic stereotype as well for yucks, but then
41:29
Speaker 1: also do stuff like, you know, show off some of
41:32
Speaker 1: their their skills, like whether it's roping or dancing or
41:37
Speaker 1: you know, shooting arrows and stuff like that. So you know,
41:40
Speaker 1: it had something for everyone, and I think their audiences, um,
41:43
Speaker 1: we're pretty much exclusively although that's not true. They would
41:46
Speaker 1: perform for uh all kinds of audiences, right, yeah, I
41:51
Speaker 1: think basically everybody that It wasn't a segregated performance from
41:55
Speaker 1: what I understand, unless, of course, the theater was strictly segregated.
41:58
Speaker 1: Good point, So I should also I think we should
42:02
Speaker 1: point out, Chuck that when we're saying yuck's in this episode,
42:04
Speaker 1: we're saying it without a seat, like not yuck, but
42:08
Speaker 1: like a laugh, right, Just want to make sure everybody
42:11
Speaker 1: knows that because we're always talking about yuck in somebody's
42:13
Speaker 1: yum and they might be confused at this point. Oh yeah, yeah,
42:17
Speaker 1: yuck like a comedic yuck. Yeah, uk, exactly. I guess
42:22
Speaker 1: we can go over here towards the end some of
42:25
Speaker 1: the bigger stars who came out of vaudeville. I mean,
42:29
Speaker 1: it's sort of a a hit list of some of
42:31
Speaker 1: the most famous people of early televised entertainment when that
42:36
Speaker 1: came along, everyone from Jack Benny to Fred Astaire and
42:40
Speaker 1: Will Rogers and Bob Hope. You know they you think, like,
42:43
Speaker 1: were they old enough? They were generally child performers in vaudeville. Yeah,
42:49
Speaker 1: um so uh. I Also I saw George Burns one
42:53
Speaker 1: of them, and he apparently had been in vaudeville since
42:56
Speaker 1: he was seven, and he finally met his wife, Gracie Allen,
43:01
Speaker 1: and they became this amazing comic duo that went onto
43:04
Speaker 1: the radio and went onto the TV. Like they followed
43:06
Speaker 1: the trajectory that um that most like the the absolute
43:11
Speaker 1: cream of the crop, most successful vaudeville performers followed um.
43:15
Speaker 1: And for our younger listeners, George Burns played God in
43:19
Speaker 1: the John Denver vehicle, Oh God and Joker more familiar
43:25
Speaker 1: folk singer who you should listen to because he was
43:28
Speaker 1: the best. Would you call him a folk singer? Yeah, singer, songwriter,
43:32
Speaker 1: folk singer? What would you call him? Just called? I
43:39
Speaker 1: mean he was kind of his own thing. It was yeah, yeah,
43:41
Speaker 1: I mean he was definitely not like yacht rock or
43:44
Speaker 1: anything like that, because he was a mountain lion sure,
43:47
Speaker 1: who liked flying his plane high on cocaine. Was he
43:51
Speaker 1: high on cocaine? Yes, but that's not why you crashed.
43:54
Speaker 1: I think he ran out of gas. But they he
43:56
Speaker 1: did have cocaine into the system when they did the autopsy.
43:58
Speaker 1: That's sad. Uh. Quickly, I do want to mention Jack
44:01
Speaker 1: Benny's story because it's kind of cool. Uh. He was
44:05
Speaker 1: born Benjamin Kubelski and he was a violin prodigy. So
44:10
Speaker 1: his act at first as a vaudevillian as a child
44:13
Speaker 1: was a very serious sort of let me play my violin.
44:16
Speaker 1: But as the story goes, he bombed really bad one
44:20
Speaker 1: night and like cracked a really great one liner which
44:23
Speaker 1: made everyone laugh really hard, and then started sort of
44:26
Speaker 1: working jokes into his act, and before he knew it,
44:28
Speaker 1: he was a comedian. Yeah. Yeah, I guess Will Rogers
44:32
Speaker 1: had the same thing happened to him. He was a
44:34
Speaker 1: rope trick roper, roper, sure, and um he failed at
44:40
Speaker 1: some trick and made a joke and everybody laughed, and
44:43
Speaker 1: he's like, maybe I should try adding jokes to my act,
44:45
Speaker 1: and that kind of went from there. He became America's
44:47
Speaker 1: most beloved humorous after a while. That's right. Uh, But
44:51
Speaker 1: you teased earlier about movies, and I think I teased
44:54
Speaker 1: it too, And I think everybody sees where this is
44:57
Speaker 1: headed is movies came along, and movies throwing a movie
45:02
Speaker 1: on a TV on a on a movie screen in
45:04
Speaker 1: a theater as a heck of a lot easier than
45:06
Speaker 1: booking eight or ten human animal acts every single day
45:11
Speaker 1: of the week. Yeah, and um, apparently movies kind of
45:14
Speaker 1: started out as a vaudeville act, like you might see
45:17
Speaker 1: a ten or twenty minute short film as part of
45:20
Speaker 1: the show. Um and Keith Benjamin Franklin Keith and his
45:24
Speaker 1: partner Mr. Albi I don't remember his first thing. They
45:27
Speaker 1: are aptly they were the first ones to actually start
45:30
Speaker 1: showing movies at vaudeville shows. And then it started a transition, chuck,
45:35
Speaker 1: because they would need time to cool down the projector
45:38
Speaker 1: in between shows, and um, they would have vaudeville acts
45:42
Speaker 1: in between movies. So it went from a movie is
45:46
Speaker 1: just one part of a vaudeville bill to vaudeville just
45:49
Speaker 1: getting narrower, narrower and smushed down into these lesser roles.
45:54
Speaker 1: And then movies just kind of took off from there,
45:56
Speaker 1: and vaudeville got left in the dust, left in the dust.
46:00
Speaker 1: But again, if you look at early TV, uh, and
46:03
Speaker 1: even again into the fifties, sixties and seventies, that those
46:08
Speaker 1: were vaudeville shows. Heehaw and the man drell sisters and
46:12
Speaker 1: uh solid gold maybe not solid gold, kind of still
46:18
Speaker 1: dance focused. Yeah. What about Ed Sullivan? Yeah, probably so.
46:24
Speaker 1: Supposedly when he was canceled in nine seventy one, he said,
46:27
Speaker 1: Vaudeville has died at second death. Wow. Yeah, he dropped
46:32
Speaker 1: his mind after that. I love it. This is good stuff.
46:36
Speaker 1: You got anything else about Vaudeville? I got nothing else.
46:39
Speaker 1: Go out and support your local Vaudeville theater, that's all right,
46:43
Speaker 1: and then maybe see your roller Derby after that. Uh.
46:45
Speaker 1: And since I said roller Derby everybody, of course, that
46:48
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mail. Al Right, what we're
46:53
Speaker 1: gonna do today instead of listener mail is, uh, do
46:56
Speaker 1: a way overdue plug for a couple of things. But
47:01
Speaker 1: certainly our Kiva team, Um, many years ago, what year
47:05
Speaker 1: was this, I'm trying to see you two two thousand
47:09
Speaker 1: nine October two thousand nine, So this is close to
47:11
Speaker 1: the anniversary actually of when we started this team in
47:15
Speaker 1: the very early days of stuff. You should know. Kiva
47:17
Speaker 1: is a micro lending organization who uh does great work.
47:22
Speaker 1: Micro Lending organizations aren't perfect, but Kiva is a good
47:26
Speaker 1: one and they do a pretty good job of getting
47:29
Speaker 1: very small amounts of money sourced from around the world
47:32
Speaker 1: into the hands of entrepreneurs and uh sometimes in America.
47:37
Speaker 1: We usually in in developing countries who really need it. Right. Yeah,
47:40
Speaker 1: it's like you said, it's a great organization. We've our
47:43
Speaker 1: team has been going gangbusters for years. So let me
47:47
Speaker 1: just update everyone with a couple of stats. If you
47:50
Speaker 1: want to join, Kiva, doesn't cost anything to join, but
47:53
Speaker 1: to make a donation. I think you can donate as
47:55
Speaker 1: little as like twenty five bucks. Yeah, if you want
47:58
Speaker 1: to just get the ball rolling. And the idea is
48:00
Speaker 1: that these people pay the stuff back almost all the time,
48:03
Speaker 1: and then you can re lend that money. And I've
48:06
Speaker 1: been relending the same you know, from the same kitty
48:09
Speaker 1: of money I started with years ago. But we have
48:12
Speaker 1: now raised as a collective stuff you should know, team
48:15
Speaker 1: over twelve million dollars, which is staggering, uh four hundred
48:20
Speaker 1: and fifty five thousand loans uh plus you know and
48:25
Speaker 1: change and then for an average of almost forty loans
48:29
Speaker 1: per member and eleven thousand, five hundred and six team members.
48:36
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. It's really congratulations to everybody on the Kiva team.
48:40
Speaker 1: Keep it up and what else we got going, Well,
48:43
Speaker 1: hold on one other thing about the Kiva team. I
48:45
Speaker 1: always wanted to make sure to say, like, it's extremely
48:47
Speaker 1: inclusive and they're always happy to let any new member joined,
48:51
Speaker 1: so don't feel shy about it at all. And then
48:54
Speaker 1: the other thing we just found out about recently we
48:56
Speaker 1: didn't know is we have not one, but two Red
49:00
Speaker 1: Cross blood donation teams Stuff you Should Know teams. I
49:03
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know that was a thing. I
49:05
Speaker 1: didn't know there were blood donation teams at all. Now
49:08
Speaker 1: you do. So if you donate blood to the Red Cross,
49:12
Speaker 1: you can do it as a part of the stuff
49:14
Speaker 1: you Should Know team if you want, we'll be happy
49:17
Speaker 1: to support you anyway. We can't with T shirts, maybe UM,
49:21
Speaker 1: small grants, UM or just you know, our thanks in
49:25
Speaker 1: advance for being a good person. Let's go get a go,
49:29
Speaker 1: donate some blood butters in our name, get your sweet cookies. God,
49:35
Speaker 1: I love Nutter butters. Yeah they're great, but they're particularly
49:39
Speaker 1: great when you're down a pine of blood in your
49:40
Speaker 1: head swimming a little bit. That's the only time I
49:42
Speaker 1: have I m I can't buy Nutter butters and keep
49:44
Speaker 1: them in the house. You know. It's one of the
49:46
Speaker 1: weird things of America is that there's two types of
49:50
Speaker 1: Nutter butters and they're totally different. Have you noticed there's
49:54
Speaker 1: like a wafer like there's a wafer e kindly, Yes, No,
50:00
Speaker 1: it's square, it's very basic hashtag basic. But then there's
50:04
Speaker 1: the peanut shaped one that's a cookie. It's got you know,
50:07
Speaker 1: it's a cookie sandwich. This is like a filled wafer. Um. Yeah,
50:13
Speaker 1: And they're both Nutter butters, same logo, same packaging, just
50:16
Speaker 1: two different types of peanut butter cookies. Man, you know
50:19
Speaker 1: how disappointed I would be if I bought the wrong package.
50:23
Speaker 1: Hopefully this happening more than one person for sure, all right,
50:26
Speaker 1: So pay attention at the cookie everyone. So if you
50:30
Speaker 1: want to join our keyva team, go ahead. Uh it's
50:32
Speaker 1: at kiva dot org slash team slash stuff you should Know.
50:36
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, or just go to kiva dot
50:38
Speaker 1: organ search Stuff you should know. I'm quite sure you
50:40
Speaker 1: can do the same thing on the Red Cross Blow
50:43
Speaker 1: Good donation site. And you can also get in touch
50:47
Speaker 1: with us at stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
50:53
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50:56
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51:02
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