Putting It Over in American Vaudeville

Abstract

The October 1905 issue of Midway, a monthly periodical for amusement park professionals, claimed that vaudeville was “the acme of variegated theatrical entertainment” ¹ and served as a superior model of good business practices for all performers. According to Midway, vaudeville’s success derived from the “joyously, frankly absurd,” and represented “the almost universal longing for laughter, for melody, for color, for action and for wonder-provoking things.” More importantly for this study, the article asserts that vaudeville

strikes directly at the heart [of the] interests and the foibles of the day. Vaudeville is creative and progressive. The mind of the vaudeville creator runs, lightning-like, ahead of the public craving for the ever “new”; and his voyage of discovery leads him into strange haunts… [where] human nature parades all her eccentricities and moods, at his beck, for the delectation of legions of pleasure seekers. ²

The “new” in all its permutations was the watchword in America’s early twentieth century. Vaudeville embodied the “new” onstage and ref lected the arrival of the new immigrants, the new middle class, and the new woman. The new was a harbinger of the industrial age, when machines, factories, automated assembly lines, and offices with white-collar middle managers began to dominate daily life. This was especially true of major urban centers like New York, Boston, and Chicago. The industrialization of American life also created new leisure time for the middle class, along with the disposable income to devote to this newly created free time, which became accessible to an ever-increasing number of Americans.