AMERICA 1900-1910 -- 'SHOW TIME' (Part 1)

SEIFERT

Posted By: David (email)
Date: 3/11/2004 at 11:34:39

'AMERICA 1900-1910'

'Show Time'

----------------------------

A THOUSAND HITS, COUNT 'EM

Introducing in a 15-minute act, juggling, unicycling, magic, hand balancing, ragtime piano and violin playing, dancing, globe rolling, wirewalking, talking and cartooning. Something original in each line -- SOME ENTERTAINMENT!

--Advertisement For a One-Man Vaudeville Act

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

America was ravenous for entertainment as the new century got under way, and show business responded with a richer, more varied fare than the country had ever seen. Movies, sometimes called "flickering flicks" were in a groping infancy (a 1902 newsreel faked the eruption of a volcano by showing a beer barrel exploding in the sun). Spectacular circuses traveled from city to city in special trains of as many as 90 railway cars at a time. An inspired Tin Pan Alley sold two billion copies of sheet music in the single year 1910.

The legitimate stage achieved an all-time high of activity with more than 400 stock and touring companies carrying drama to the nation, and four or five plays opening on Broadway on an ordinary night. Many of these plays were of a new, earthy texture, and theater audiences, long used to lofty Shakespearean repertory and melodramas of the Jack Dalton genre, sometimes found themselves being brought down too far too fast. When, in a daring new production called The City, the word "goddam" was abruptly uttered -- the audience rose for an intermission in such horror and hysteria that the New York Sun critic fainted dead away in the ensuing crush.

For the average man of the decade, the favorite entertainment was vaudeville. Practically every town in the country had a vaudeville theater. Sometimes the performances lived up to their billing, and sometimes they did not even come close. Solid comedy acts like The Three Keatons, with young Buster as The Human Mop, delighted audiences with their patter and knockabout acrobatics. On the other hand, reaction was decidedly mixed to the usual vaudeville collection of ventriloquists, juggler, singers and animal acts. The standard gags from rapid-fire comics -- "I sent my wife to the Thousand Islands for a vacation: a week on each island" or "You can drive a horse to drink, but a pencil must be lead" -- might receive any response from belly laughs to stony silence. And the Cherry Sisters, billed with awful irony as "America's Worst Act" (though the sisters insisted they were great), were indeed so bad that they always sang behind a net, which protected them from elderly fru!
it and vegetables thrown by the audience. On the following pages is a sample of these performers, some of them the finest in the history of American theater. Others, like Adgie and Her Lions and the Southern Four, enjoyed merited obscurity.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A NEW ENTRY IN SHOW BIZ

In 1903 a 12-minute epic called The Great Train Robbery became the first truly suspenseful movie. Photographed at a Lackawanna freight yard in Paterson, New Jersey, it set a permanent style for dramas that were depicted in several scenes. Within five years, 10,000 stores across the nation were converted into nickelodeons, small theaters that offered movies for a five-cent admission price.

-------------------------------------

Notices to the audience periodically appeared on the nickelodean screens:

'Next Week This Theatre Will Have Talking Pictures.'
Talented Actors & Actresses Will Be Behind The Screen.

'Ladies Without Escorts -- Cordially Invited.'

'Somebody's Baby Is Crying -- ?Is It Yours?.'

'When Leaving This Theatre - Please Turn The Seat Up.'

'Gentlemen Will Please Refrain From Smoking, Spitting
Or Using Profane Language During The Performance.'

'Ventilated and Disinfected Every Day.'

'Don't Spit On The Floor -- Remember The Johnstown Flood.'

'GOOD NIGHT'....

To Be Continued . . .'Constellation of Leading Ladies'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
March 8, 2004