By the mid 1920’s, vaudeville had reached its greatest peak. By then, shows required more and more on glamour, novelty, and lavish sets, as they competed with the thrill of the new. Radio was king, but for a long time, elite vaudeville houses like New York’s Palace Theatre refused to have radio stars perform, preferring instead to provide a more highbrow alternative for the masses. But then the masses stopped coming. Running scared, celebrity acts were added to the bill, radio stars, movie stars, but nothing helped – movies were cheaper – a nickel! – while a ticket at the Palace went as high as two dollars. Meanwhile, the rise of the automobile was giving Americans something new to do with their leisure time as well.

As vaudeville faded, many stars who were once household names on the circuit – W.C. Fields, Al Jolson, George Burns, Mae West – made their way to Hollywood and became stars of the silver screen. Countless others faded into obscurity. But the pulse of this peculiarly American art form beats on.

There was no "death knell" for vaudeville; rather, it went out slowly, sputtering a few last gasps as it was eclipsed by, first radio, then film. But its vestigial traces surround us, and I don’t just mean the countless theatres that have been transformed into second-run movie palaces. While we no longer have many travelling bands of novelty acts hoofing around the cities and towns, several have popped up in the last few years, often hawking their acts for the "alternative" crowd or using acts of derring-do to promote cultural and political change (see The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus). In other places, too, the influence of vaudeville remains.

Late night TV hosts keep the short comic sketch alive. MTV videos shoot song after song into your living room. Teen comedies rely on pie-in-the-face gags that were old when Grandpa was a teen. Maybe in the end, it comes down to this: the public thirst for a song, a dance, a man stepping on a rake, is damn near unquenchable.

V. Chaser

(In Which Nothing Much Is Said And The Audience May Disperse)

The chaser was designed to clean the palate and prepare the audience member to rejoin the workaday world. In later years, it was often a cinematic number or a newsreel.

In closing, your humble author wishes to leave you with an odd little story from the vaudeville stage, for no other reason that it is both amusing and horrible. The year was 1926. The place was The Palace. An acrobatic tumbler named Sie Tahar was the first act on the bill, and on opening night, as he was about to go onstage, he turned to Bill Clark, the stage manager, and said with a grin, "They say opening acts always die at the Palace. Me no die." He went on, did his act, and returned to his dressing room, where he keeled over and literally dropped dead. True story. Have a nice day.

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All Illustrations from www.americastory.gov
Photomodified by Oates