The Range of Laughter: First Person Reports from Entertainers of the Over There Theatre League

Abstract

This admonition to performers who volunteered to entertain American soldiers in France under the auspices of the Over There Theatre League, sponsored by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), was published on June 19, 1918, in vaudevillian Will Cressy’s weekly newspaper column “Three Minutes in One.”² Broadway producer Winthrop Ames, who spearheaded the Over There Theatre League, had toured American military camps in France in February—March 1918 and had seen for him-self how desperately the doughboys needed some morale-boosting, light entertainment. As the first contingent of entertainers awaited transport across the Atlantic, Ames asked Cressy (who headed one of the five units in that first wave) to use his column to reinforce some basic principles of performing over there.³

It is no picnic you are going on. You are risking life and limb. You are going to a cruelly oppressed, tired and tortured country; to see a people crucified and war-weary, but still brave and certain of victory. Compared with what others are doing, our bit is infinitesimal. We are going as bearers of a moment’s joy, and happiness, and cheer, in between the frightful hours spent out in the hell of the trenches at the Front.¹