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In vaudeville, billing was everything. The placement of an act on a playbill reflected the success... or lack of success... of that act. This playbill will explain the importance of those rankings as well as examples of acts and abbreviated background information. Big time vaudeville shows could consist of eight to twelve acts with an intermission in the middle. On the smaller circuits, the playbill might only be six or eight acts with no intermission. The amount of acts depended upon the size of the theater and the ticket prices charged. Regardless of the theater or circuit in which they were played, all vaudeville acts were ten minutes in length. In that way, if the audience became bored or restless with one segment of entertainment, the ticket holders knew that something different would soon appear.

My fantasy playbill will be presenting a spectacular consisting of twelve acts plus intermission, much longer than the typical vaudeville offering. This was done to examine the significance of the acts that were performed in that era. NOTE: This is not a comprehensive list of what was performed in vaudeville. If you can think of something to do on stage, somebody built an act around it. Many such acts were incredibly stupid, lame or just plain weird. One gent would play the ukulele... and then eat it.

I have taken some great liberties with my fantasy vaudeville playbill. 1 Twelve acts make it The Big Time of all Big Time shows... running two hours and twenty minutes. 2 The sacred Caucasian rule of only one 'Negro' or 'Colored' act per playbill has been slaughtered. Personally, I believe that that rule was less about racism and more about talented Black performers stealing away jobs from their less innovative, fearful Caucasian brethren. 3 Real people are mixed in with the fictitious representational characters. All these real entertainers would have been headliners not satisfied with anything less than top billing. My inclusion of them should not be considered a demotion of their status. Rather, it is my way of remembering and honoring them.

Somebody has to announce these acts.

Vaudeville did not die out in the 1930's. Bob Hope (1903 - 2003) took it on the road with the USO. Ed Sullivan (1901 - 1974) transformed it into the television variety show. The Ed Sullivan Show was on CBS from June 1948 to June 1971, an amazing run of twenty-three years that showcased over 10,000 performers. Each week's show could... and most likely did... feature highbrow ballet & opera, teen musical groups, Broadway acting legends, young stand-up comics, old vaudeville routines, circus-style novelty acts and something for the kids. "Ed (Sullivan) does nothing... but he does it better than anyone else on television." - Alan King, American comedian (1927 - ?) On the surface, Ed Sullivan displayed wooden mannerisms, frequent fumbling and constant malapropisms… of which impersonators adored. In reality, however, he was a man of intense passions & beliefs. On the negative side were his feuds with Walter Winchell, Jack Paar and Frank Sinatra. He also denounced performers with pro-Communist sympathies. On the positive side, Ed Sullivan had a sharp eye for new talent, such as The Beatles, and vigorously sought to showcase it. He also openly embraced entertainers of different ethnic backgrounds, Black performers especially, and battled reluctant sponsors & TV executives to give them air time. Ed Sullivan judged performers on their abilities, not by the color of their skin. In his own way, Ed Sullivan fought for Civil Rights before it was a movement. A showman is one who is the proprietor and exhibitor of a show. Ed Sullivan was the last vaudeville showman.

Basically, three women posing as flowers as they vocalize wind & rain sounds with the occasional bird call thrown in.

The first or opening act in a vaudeville house was always the weakest act on the playbill. Generally it was also a Dumb Act that employed no necessary dialogue. Why? Because of the noise in the auditorium due to late arriving audience members and candy butchers who were hawking their wares. Theater managers put the most easily ignored acts on first... which was why performers hated being first.

Sister Acts were often not comprised of sisters or even blood relations, just women of similar ethnic backgrounds who performed together. While Sister Acts usually consisted of two or three women, their number could be, in rare cases, as many as nine or ten. The youthful women in Sister Acts always portrayed themselves as good wholesome churchgoing ladies who would never do anything shocking or offensive, a deliberate attempt to separate themselves from their racier burlesque counterparts.

Because of stragglers still wandering into the theater, the second act was almost as bad as being the opening act. The second act could consist of singers, in solo or in pairs, doing simple numbers before a curtain. Others were loud and flashy with lots of physical action, such as jugglers or knockabout dancers. Whatever was in the number two spot could not rely heavily on dialogue because the performers' words would have gotten lost in the din of the audience.

Why a plate-spinning/juggling act? Because this is the kind of cornball wholesome entertainment that was popular then. It also harkens back to The Ed Sullivan Show, the bridge uniting old-time vaudeville with modern tastes. Ed Sullivan was the last vaudeville impresario and the godfather of the music video, displaying those gifts quite often in the same show. Besides recordings of The Ed Sullivan Show being a partial documentation of vaudeville lore, Ed Sullivan himself was an eccentric character worth remembering, displaying both the talents of an emcee and of a good sport willing to assist in some acts. For more about Mr. Sullivan, look above.

Vaudeville Name Rule 1 Any vaudevillians with the words "The Amazing", "The Terrific", " The Stupendous", etc. preceding their names were usually not worthy of such self-aggrandizing hype, especially if they were in this menial spot on the Playbill. Vaudeville Name Rule 2 Vaudevillians rarely worked under their real names. A large percentage of Jewish performers Anglicized their names so they would be more appealing to Protestant audiences. (For example, the fictional Ali Gold's real name is Abraham Goldberg.) Vaudeville Name Rule 3 Vaudeville was considered a less than honorable trade. Some vaudevillians used stage names to prevent a taint on their real family names. Vaudeville Name Rule 4 If a vaudevillian failed miserably with one act and was unable to be booked, the vaudevillian would change his or her name, develop a new act and try again.

Cute adorable children performing on stage are box office gold... which is what really warmed the blackened souls of theater managers and bookers.

Rose Marie Mazetta (1923 - ?) had two performing careers. Her first was as Baby Rose Marie, an angelic cherub with the deep whiskey-soaked singing voice of Sophie Tucker. She appeared on the vaudeville stage, in short subjects such as Baby Rose Marie The Child Wonder (1929) and in several early talkie movies including International House (1933) which also starred W.C. Fields, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Bela Lugosi, Rudy Vallee and Cab Calloway singing "Reefer Man." Her second career was that of a gravel-voiced, wise-cracking movie & television comedienne. Besides numerous appearances on the original Hollywood Squares (1966-1982), Rose Marie will be best remembered as Sally Rogers, gag writer for the fictitious Allan Brady on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966).

Child vaudevillians were usually the result of family acts. If a child was talented and popular with audiences, the act would often be restructured around the youth. In an age where everyone in a family worked just to keep food on the table, show business was an easier occupation than most. All, however, did not share that view. One such group was The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, also known as the Gerry Society. Founded by reformers Elbridge Thomas Gerry and Henry Bergh, the nation-wide organization's goal was to rescue children from parental abuse. That meant children working in any venue were being mistreated, be it in dangerous textile mills, picking crops in the fields or performing on stage. Kids were supposed to be in school. Whether that was or was not abuse depends upon the vaudevillian biography you read. At that time, most people, adults and children, had to do hard labor twelve hours a day just to survive. The majority of former child vaudevillians believe they had a better life than most of their counterparts. The Gerry Society was also not uniform from city to city. Many of their officials were outwardly corrupt or lax, enforcing the laws only when it was politically practical. Others turned the rules into shams. A child vaudevillian's father would be jailed after every performance... where upon he would pay a fine and be released so he could be in the next show. Was the Gerry Society a group of true revolutionary reformers, a pack of lazy bribable officials or a bunch of worthless busybodies meddling in vaudevillians' affairs? It depends upon whose memoirs you read. While some entertainers bemoaned their loss of a "normal" childhood, most acknowledged that they had a marvelous upbringing that they would not have changed for anything. This does not mean vaudeville children had it easy. Even with the required private tutors, most did not get a descent education. Many grew up learning every aspect of show business... but little else. One cannot fairly judge the situation then by today's standards, however. That was a time when American education itself was not standardized. The quality and criteria of schools varied widely from state to state. Many children, regardless of occupation or family, did not get the schooling they needed.

A melodrama about temperance & the evils of hard liquor so broad and corny that it would be laughable by today's standards.

On the first half of the playbill was generally a ten-minute dramatic narration, a tragic scene from a drama or a one-act play. These productions were advertised as socially relevant dramatizations but, in actuality, they were habitually edited-down and had their melodramatic aspects played up so much that they were not especially good nor representative of the original work.

My version of these mini-dramas utilized some of the dialogue of the time... in which women were proud to be barefoot & pregnant, satisfied to not work for a living and were striving for the vote because they were second-class citizens. Men were privately encouraged to slap their wives if they got out of line and to exclude them from "manly" pursuits. Today, this melodrama would come across as a crude farce if not insulting to feminists. My characters are a crude drunkard of a husband, the evil bartender (who is also the devil), the husband's boozing sidekicks (demons in disguise) and the righteous shrew of a wife that drove the husband to drink in the first place. When the wife returns to chop up the bar with an axe, there is a momentary blackout on the stage. In the darkness, a drop of the "wrecked" tavern is lowered and the counter is turned around to display the "damaged" side.

Song and Dance Teams were the backbone acts of the vaudeville circuits. Every show had them in one form or another.

I want to honor the entertainers in the old Negro vaudeville circuits for the groundbreaking work they did in regards to modern music and dance. Yet I do not want to stereotype them only as Minstrel performers even though what they did stemmed from those roots. As history has revealed, those old vaudevillians opened doors that later performers passed through. That, in itself, may be more than enough.

Now this is something I would have paid good money to see.

Right before intermission was the spot on the playbill for the secondary headliner. Those people were young entertainers on their ways up, old-timers on their way down (and out) or those who were not typical vaudeville performers. The latter group was often famous and/or notorious in other fields and gave lectures for their causes or told anecdotes in their areas of expertise for additional publicity and money. This included celebrities like Aimee Semple McPherson, Babe Ruth, Carry Nation and (with a translator) Helen Keller. Some performers tailored their acts for this spot on the playbill because they could earn more money being a secondary headliner on a major vaudeville circuit than they could as the top headliner on the smaller circuits.

Mark Twain did solo sold-out lectures, becoming the first celebrity American author. While he would have never taken second billing, he loved good performers and relished mocking those who were not. I have included Mr. Twain in my playbill because he was more than just a man who wrote books and newspaper articles. Mark Twain was one of the greatest orators of his time and a personal hero of mine.

Directly after intermission, big splashy acts with major production numbers were performed. The following acts could be almost anything but, whatever they were, they were superior to what was seen before intermission.

Every decent vaudeville bill needs an Animal Act. Animal acts have been around since before ancient times because people love to watch well-trained critters.

Why penguins? Because cartoon versions of them are fun to draw, they are mostly black & white for better printing and they are relatively small compared to dogs or horses.

Edward "Ed" Gallagher and Al Shean were one of most famous male comedy teams in vaudeville, largely based upon their self-titled patter song, "Mister Gallagher And Mister Shean". Gallagher and Shean constantly changed its lyrics to reflect current topics, a clear departure from most vaudeville routines which never ever changed. This topical freshness made Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean was one of the most popular and parodied songs of that era. It is still sung today whenever vaudeville revivals are performed.

Gallagher & Shean's act was a classic Olio/Crossover Act. An Olio Act was done in front of an Olio/Advertising Curtain close to the footlights, keeping the bulk of the stage concealed so it could be prepared for the next act. (Gallagher and Shean, however, usually employed a Drop that portrayed the Egyptian desert.) The Crossover part meant that, at the start of the act, one member of the comedy team would enter from Stage Left while the other from Stage Right. They would come together in the middle, pretending to "accidentally meet by chance." This "Long time. No see. What's new with you?" opening gambit would then be the start of their comic conversation.

What makes Gallagher and Shean noteworthy today? Their offstage antics were even more interesting than their act. Gallagher, a straight man, joined up with Shean, a well-known sketch writer and knockabout comedian, in an operetta called The Rose Maid in 1912. In 1914, they quarreled and split up, not speaking to each other for six years. Thanks to Shean's sister Minnie Marx... mother of the Marx brothers... the pair were reconciled in 1920. In 1921, they introduced their signature tune. Their partnership was short lived. In 1925, they quarreled and split up again. Shean continued on with the show while Gallagher returned to vaudeville to do an act with a then unknown Fifi D'Orsay. Several years later, Ed Gallagher suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by marital problems with his fourth wife, work-related stress and alcoholism. He died in a sanitarium in 1929 at the age of fifty-six. Al Shean, the uncle of the Marx Brothers and one of their comic mentors, had a long career in vaudeville, movies and the legitimate stage. He died in 1949 at eighty-one. Gallagher and Shean's off-stage bickering was legendary, eventually becoming the inspiration for the Neil Simon's play and movie The Sunshine Boys. They were also notorious for their legal battles with the Shubert organization. Gallagher & Shean had signed a contract with the Shubert with the promise they would star in a Broadway production. They then discovered they had been tricked, with the Shuberts planning to send them out on a vaudeville tour for half their salary. When Gallagher & Shean were offered leads in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies, they immediately signed. Lee Shubert wasted no time in suing. What resulted was "The most preposterous trial in theatrical history." The lawsuit claimed that Gallagher and Shean "were unique and extraordinary" talents and that the Shuberts could use those talents however they wished. Gallagher and Shean countered that they did not want to tour and that they were not extraordinary talents, merely mediocre players who got a lucky break. The trial was a sensation, due in part to the Ziegfeld publicity department. Gallagher and Shean's defense was show biz personalities who swore that the pair were devoid of all talent. Will Rogers testified that his two friends were "a couple of bums". Stories of witness not called included gorgeous Ziegfeld showgirls and a mime who refused to speak. The Shuberts brought forth an equal number of witnesses who testified to the "irreplaceable" talents of Gallagher and Shean. It was Lee Shubert's own stammering evasive testimony, however, that publicly painted him as a shady crook. The judge ruled in favor of Gallagher and Shean, allowing them to stay with the Ziegfeld Follies. When the Shuberts appealed, the decision was reversed. Gallagher and Shean fulfilled their contract touring in The Greenwich Village Follies.

I conclude my playbill with these remarks: Many vaudevillians, regardless of ethnicity, heritage or talent, did not get the respect or kudos they deserved. Now they are passing out of memory. Well, I remember them, even if it is second-hand, and I say thank you for the entertainment they provided and how they advanced American show business.

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