Stars of Vaudeville #26: Cinquevalli

The greatest juggler of his day and an influence on W.C. Fields and many others, Cinquevalli’s real name was the more prosaic Paul Kesner. Born in Lissa Poland in 1859, he was apprenticed at age 13 apprenticed to a gymnast/aerliast named…Cinqevalli. Kesner took his last name. It was a common practice for acrobats to do that in those days. As you’ll see from many another upcoming example, joining an acrobatic troup was literally like joining a family. (Opponents of domestic partnership and gay marriage take note!) By 1885, Paul C. had developed an act called “The Human Billiard Table” wherein he would play a game of pool on his own back. I guess he shot the balls…um…into his pockets!

His first U.S. tour was in 1888 (which was when Fields first caught him) and he returned in 1910 to work the Keith circuit, including 10 weeks at Keith’s Union Square—not too shabby. During World War I he was mislabled a German and that was it for his career. He died shortly after the war in 1919.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Those Whistling Lads: The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker

Maureen Van Trease is — if you’ll pardon the expression — a dead ringer for Dorothy Parker, that legendary quipster and writer of thanatoptic light verse, short stories and criticism. The picture above is of Parker but it might as well be Van Trease. (Although, at 5′ 0″, Van Trease would have towered over Parker , who stood a mere 4′ 11″. There is an excellent representation of the famous wit at Madame Tussaud’s. It is roughly the size of a six year old).

Perhaps to compensate for her physical slightness, Parker became larger than life. She is one of those whose legend was so large that it has long outlived its tiny creator. She ranks with Shaw and Wilde as one of the most quoted writers of modern times. She is the subject of Alan Rudolph’s 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Viscious Circle. New York even has a rather large and flourishing club called the Dorothy Parker Society , dedicated entirely to doing…Dorothy Parker type stuff.

Van Trease wrote and stars in Those Whistling Lads, an educational show about Parker’s life and work designed to tour colleges, and presented recently in the Planet Connections Theater Festivity. The play cleverly juxtaposes enactments of her poems and stories, with bits of Parker’s real life. Humor and tragedy go hand in glove in Parker’s life and art… suicide attempts, failed and aborted pregnancies, unrequited romances and alcoholism fueled her writing, making for some of the darkest “light comedy” in the written record. Van Trease does a good job of connecting the two levels of reality, although the show ends rather abruptly — could use some kind of definitive button, some assessment or conclusion for us to carry out of the theatre with us. Her performance is also great, undoubtedly closer to the real Parker than Jennifer Jason Leigh (who was much criticized for her slurred diction in the Rudolph film). And the rest of the ensemble gamely attack their multiplicity of parts in scenes both serious and silly. All in all, I think Mrs. Parker would approve.

Stars of Vaudeville #25: Mae Irwin

MAY IRWIN, “Madame Laughter”

Mae Irwin spent her career alternating between the legit theatre and vaudeville, but her most lasting legacy is the fact that she is one of the first vaudevillians (make that one of the first people) preserved on celluloid, in the 1895 flicker The Kiss. The film captured her for a brief moment in her starring role in the show The Widow Jones. That was the whole film, just the kiss. Talk about cutting to the chase! And here it is:

Born in Whitby Canada in 1862, she started out singing in the church choir. She debuted with her sister in a straight show at the Adelphi Theatre in buffalo in 1876. The pair worked as coon shouters and toured the Midwest. Tony Pastor spotted them in Detroit and brought them back to work at his Metropolitan Theatre in New York the following year. In 1883, Mae was booked as member of Augustin Daly’s company, where she starred for many years. In 1907 she returned to vaudeville, capitalizing on her skill and reputation as a low comedian, and her commodious, matronly body. She continued to work both vaudeville and the legitimate stage until retirement in 1920.

Douglas Gilbert recounted one notable occasion when she stepped out of retirement, however. At age 70, she was called frantically and begged to substitute for a performer who’d gotten sick at a benefit show. At that point, Mae a wealthy old woman who’d been out of performing for well over a decade. She told three stories and sang a song called “The Bully” and brought the house down.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Wagon Wheel

Readers of No Applause know that the romance of the gypsy forms an important part of the perpetual fairy tale circulating in my brain. “Travelers”, as they are often known: free spirits, outsiders, artists. Maybe it’s a stereotype, but it’s a glamorous one. Singing, dancing, drinking wine all day, banging a tamborine.

In reality, it’s not so pretty. The real life Roma continue to maintain their itinerant culture and are among the poorest people in Europe, still ostracized after centuries of persecution. Wagon Wheel, a new musical recently presented at the “Planet Connections” festival, purports to tell their story. I use the arch verb with reason. While a program note informs us that it is “Post World War II Eastern Europe”, there is no reference whatever to real events either historical or contemporary in the show.  It really seems set in a cocoon of fairy tale timelessness, which is okay by me (just don’t claim otherwise). “Eastern Europe” is a clue: Hungary? Poland? Romania? Vast differences among their cultures; even among their Roma cultures. (Recommended reading: Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, by Isabel Fonseca)

I am an advocate for authenticity and folkishness on the stage. This is why I am a fan of Viva Patshiva — who bring real gypsy melodies and dances to their productions unalloyed. (Full disclosure, I appeared in their Surf Reality “Under the Highway” incarnation as the token rich white guy). This is prefatory to saying that, to my surprise, I didn’t hate Erato Kremmyda’s mongrelized approach to the music for Wagon Wheel…a little gypsy flavor mixed with a lot of “Broadway musical”. Half way into the first number I went from gritting my teeth at the piano flourishes…to admiring the pretty melody. While there are twice too many of them, the songs are consistently gorgeous throughout. I would even play the CD.

The book’s problems are greater. Robin Sandusky’s story is fairly hackneyed; the entire arc of the plot can be discerned within the play’s first five minutes without the assistance of a crystal ball. Young Laszo ( Michael-August Turley) is unexpectedly vaulted  to King of the Caravan when the death of his father (Yoav Levin) reveals that the eldest brother Zjohai (Christopher Johnson) is of suspect parentage. A stickler for tradition, Zjohair insists that the unprepared Laszo (who looks about 14 years old) not only the assume the post, but also assume his arranged bride (Rebecca Odoriso0). Which might be okay if his own girlfriend (Ani Niemann) wasn’t carrying his child. Fiery people + jealousy + knives. You do the math. At any rate, something didn’t quite add up in this production. In spite of the tragic ending, the three Cockneys in front of me couldn’t stop giggling.

And yet…I can’t say why, but I think there may be potential in this show. It needs to be worked on. The Robert Moss Theatre (where I saw it) is too small, for one thing. I’m not sure if I even saw the show that is latently there. Perhaps if the singing and dancing were “let rip” on a much bigger stage, it would be easier to engage with it.  And the book has snags that need to be ironed out. Is this the real world? A gypsy folk tale? What do I look like, a mind reader?

Stars of Vaudeville #24: Arthur Tracy

ARTHUR TRACY, “THE STREET SINGER”

There is a tradition in American show business of the male singer being on some level a “bad boy”. Long before rock and roll, part of the image of the heart-throb was that he was a bit of a blade, a rake, a devil. There’d be a suggestion in his attitude of race tracks, of night clubs, of late hours. If he came calling, your parents would not approve at first; they’d give their grudging consent “once they got to know him.” This was the image of most of them: Al Jolson, Harry Richman, Harry Fox, and later Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, etc. etc, and on into the rock era, when parents would only give consent over their dead body.

That’s one vision of romance. There used to be another. The alternate vision is long dead, and was on its way to dying out long before rock and roll put the last bullet in its temple. That is the image represented by personae like Nelson Eddy’s characters, Sir Galahad, and Superman. A legacy of opera and operetta, this vision posits a lover who would never actually have sex with a woman: good-looking, virile and morally pure. Dudley Do-Right. Such was the persona, too, of Arthur Tracy.

Tracy had a musical childhood. He started singing at the age of six. His father taught him voice and violin, he also took professional lessons, and in his spare time he listened to Caruso records. An early booking at the Logan Theatre in his native Philadelphia lasted 11 months. Such success brought him to New York, where he started out in the amateur night at Keith’s 14^th Street. He won so much that the management made him M.C. so the audience wouldn’t think the competition was rigged. A few years of club dates and vaudeville followed, then roles in the Shubert operettas Blossom Time and The Student Prince.

In 1931, Frank Pepper of the act Salt and Pepper hooked him up with a scout a CBS. His voice was such a hit, he was booked for his own program, which was called “The Street Singer of the Air.” The persona had been invented specifically for the program, but it became his identity for all subsequent performances, based on his radio fame. In live performances the big show stopper was “Marta”, his radio theme song. News of “jazz” never reached this man; he knew just what to do with “Danny Boy”. Ladies thrilled to his rich, baritone voice, and his old-fashioned sentimentality, which seemed plucked straight from the mountains of Switzerland—just like the posies in a bouquet. He accompanied himself on the accordion.

And yet, audiences went wild. Police had to be called in to control the mobs. He was a star of radio and vaudeville in the early 30s playing the RKO and Loew’s circuits and setting records at the Palace and the Hippodrome. In 1935, he moved to England, where they understood his kind of performance even better. He stayed there six years. After this, he was never a star on the old scale, but he continued working for the next fifty years.

In 1982, his old rendering of “Pennies from Heaven” was used in the eponymous Steve Martin film. And shortly before his death in 1995 at the age of 92, Tracy sang “I Love You Truly” at the wedding of New York disc jockey Rich Conaty. This was easily one of the last dates played by an original vaudevillian.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Barbara Maier Profile

It was my privilege to interview an interesting and lovely New York character the other day. My profile on Barbara Maier is at:

http://thevillager.com/villager_320/vocalcoachvalued.html

Stars of Vaudeville #23: Clark and McCullough

Today is Bobby Clark’s birthday (the guy from whom I stole the glasses).

A tension exists in all comedy teams between the “funny” member(s) and the straight man or stooge. One gets all the glory and is everyone’s favorite – the other remains an unsung hero, truly appreciated by only a few aficionados. The situation can lead to strife, and there are numerous examples of the straight man turning to drink, exploding, and/or just quitting in disgust: Bud Abbot, Ed Gallagher, and Zeppo Marx are some prime examples. But the most extreme and tragic illustration of this psychological phenomenon is that of Clark and McCullough.

Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough were boyhood friends, born and bred in Springfield, Ohio. McCullough was the senior, having been born in 1883, five years  before Clark. It is McCulough who introduced Clark to tumbling, and they both took gymnastics lessons at the local YMCA. They made the official decision to team up and go onstage in 1900. Their first real employment was in minstrelsy, where they expanded their skills, learned to sing and dance and other show business fundamentals. From there, they went on to work as circus clowns at Ringling Brothers and others, billed variously as The Jazzbo Brothers or Sunshine and Roses. During these years (1906-11) they developed a routine that was to be a staple of their act for many years, a pantomimic routine involving the pair’s inability to to successfully deposit a chair on top of a table. McCullough, originally the comedian, would say: “It looks simple…but its actually quite complicated.”

By 1912, the boys’ characters had taken shape and they made the plunge into vaudeville as Clark and McCullough. Contrary to standard practice, them team put the “funny” member’s name first. How this evolved is not difficult to imagine. Bobby Clark was a scene stealer who hogged all the attention wherever he went. He was one of show business’s great grotesques; as with Ed Wynn or Groucho or Harpo Marx, he is more “clown” than comedian.  His get-up alone qualified him as a sort of honorary Marx Brother. His trademarks were a pair of eyeglasses which he drew directly on his face with grease paint, and a cane, which he apparently carried only to hook things with. Standing a mere 5’4”, and invariably with a cigar in his puss, he would charge around the stage like a scene-chewing dynamo, devouring anything and everything in his path. His leer was downright creepy, a little too real, and more dangerous than Groucho’s. A favorite trick of his was to spit his cigar out and catch it a couple of feet in front of his face, and continue smoking. McCullough was a sort of mixture of the straight man and stooge roles. Slow witted and innocent, he would feed Clark the set-ups for all the laugh lines. Clark wrote all the routines, which consisted of verbal non sequiturs, stunts and sight gags in such profusion and delivered so rapidly that it left the audience gasping for air.

Yet, while, the pair worked steadily in vaudeville, they never headlined.

And, in 1917, they spoiled their chance to do so by participating in the White Rat strike. They were put on the Vaudeville Managers Association’s blacklist and barred from big time. They made a hit in burlesque however, becoming some of the biggest comedy stars in the entire industry, so much so that by 1922, they were able to creep back into vaudeville and receive better and better bookings. In 1922 they were starring in a revue called The Chuckles of 1922 where they were spotted by Irving Berlin. He brought them back to the states to headline his Music Box Revue. It is their big shot. After this the team takes off, starring in numerous book musicals over the next decade, notable Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band, but many others. Vaudeville continued to play a part, and in 1928 they headlined at the Palace. Hollywood also beckoned, and they made several shorts for Fox in the late 20s and some films for RKO in the thirties, while continuing their work in the theatre.

In these later years, Clark literally stole the show, and McCullough had less and less to do. In the films, McCullough contributes little but a rasping laugh, which he does so often it becomes irritating. Sometimes he has no lines—he just laughs at Clark’s. Demoralized, he would ask for less to do, for the little he’d been doing he’d begun not to like. By the mid-30s, McCullough was hardly in their shows at all, and was barely missed. Following a nervous breakdown and a sanitarium stay, he committed suicide in 1936 by slashing his own throat with a straight razor. He’d stopped into a barber shop for a haircut, and picked up the razor when the barber wasn’t looking. Top that for a big finish.

Miraculous as it may seem, Clark managed to recover from this trauma after a few months and went on to become a bigger star than ever, headlining in numerous Broadway book musicals and even legit classics by Congreve, Sheridan and Moliere. He makes an appearance in the 1938 film The Goldwyn Follies. His last Broadway show was 1949, although he briefly came out of retirement for a regional tour of Damn Yankees in 1956. But the stage was Clark’s milieu– he never conquered another medium, which, ironically means that his fame was ephemeral and today he is every bit as obscure as his hapless partner. If only someone could have told that to McCullough.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Stars of Vaudeville #22: Cliff Edwards, a.k.a “Ukulele Ike”

A day late, but hopefully not a dollar short…

Best known today as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in the 1940 Disney film Pinnochio, Edwards (June 14, 1895 – July 17, 1971) probably gained his widest popularity on radio. He was also big in vaudeville, films, and had a successful recording career. As the name implies, he accompanied himself on the uke. He entered vaudeville in the late teens. In 1920, he paired briefly with singer/dancer Pierre Keegan in an act called “Jazz As Is”. He cut his first record in 1922. His pleasant, smooth voice with its folksy edge made quite a hit, and by 1924, he was playing the Palace. Broadway shows included Mimic World of 1921,  Lady Be Good (1924), and numerous others.

His film career was launched with  The Hollywood Revue of 1929 wherein first made popular the song “Singin’ in the Rain”.  More than 80 films followed. In clips, one who expects to find a Burl Ives-looking character based on his voice, will be surprised to see a good-looking young man with a Rudy Vallee like appeal.

In 1932, he launched his first radio show. In 1949, he launched two different TV shows on CBS: The Cliff Edwards Show and The 54^th Street Revue. He died in 1971.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

The Big Broadcast

In years gone by, when returning by car from vacations with my wife (usually on a Sunday night), I always looked forward to two certain landmarks that signified that we were back in New York. One was the red light on the broadcast antenna atop World Trade Center One.  The other was the sound of WFUV’s The Big Broadcast.

Helmed by the cheerful, mellifluous-voiced Rich Conaty, this 35 year old radio show might be called a nostalgia program but for the fact that very few people are old enough to be nostalgic for the records he plays. Never mind the oldies stations, playing “your favorite hits of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s”. Conaty strictly spins jazz from the 20s and early 30s. When I say strictly, I mean just that. Don’t go expecting to hear any radical young whippersnappers like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw on his show. That stuff is practically hip-hop as far as Conaty is concerned. The Big Broadcast is where to go to listen to the likes of Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and Bunny Berrigan. It’s the sound I like to think of as Little Rascals music.

For me, listening to a show like The Big Broadcast is radio at its most pleasurable. The experience is best in the dark, with only the light of the radio dial for illumination. The sounds of that era were warm and pleasant, not angry and harsh. It’s like being transported to some inexplicable, eternally safe planet. It’s an illusion, of course. They had their share of misery back then; and we have our share of happiness now. Perhaps the real pleasure lies in the mere act of taking a trip anywhere.

At any rate, the one thing you’re not supposed to do with an illusion, if you want to keep enjoying it, is look behind the curtain. But I find I can’t ever resist. I want to KNOW. At any rate, a few months ago it was my good fortune to spend some time with Rich and actually ride shotgun while he broadcast his program.

I don’t think the bloom is off the rose any. Mostly because Conaty remains an enigma. A lot of people who have an affinity with a previous time period tend to go whole hog, as a sort of lifestyle choice. This is increasingly prevalent in our post-post-modern age, at least in the cities. New York has whole subcultures where people pretend they’re F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker, or Bram Stoker characters, or 1970s-era punk rockers. People in this town go in for swing dancing, square dancing, step dancing. They wear bowlers, cowboy hats, feather boas. But if you were to ascribe any time period (besides now) to Conaty you might say the 1950s. Like the baby boomer he is, he tends to sport a Richie Cunningham, jeans-penny loafers-button down shirt kind of look.  He also drive a 1950 Nash. At the very least you might expect him to be playing Johnny Mathis records. But that’s too new-fangled. It is as though there were two levels of nostalgia going at once. Conaty is a guy in 2009, who looks like a guy from 1950, who just happens to like music from the 1920s.

Nor, equally mystifying, does he have any particular connection to the music. According to him, no one in his family was particularly musical. There are no bandleaders or coronet players lurking in the family tree. Not only did he not take music lessons, but no one in his family particularly listened to music.  As a kid growing up in Queens, Conaty’s main interest was collecting: coins, stamps, comics. Some time later, he simply switched to records.

And then, he says “in about 1969 or ’70, when I was still in high school, I heard this music on Hofstra’s radio station. I can’t articulate why it spoke to me. I never cared about music before. But I started to get into it. A lot of these artists were still around back then., I saw Paul Whiteman on the Merv Griffen show. Nick Lucas was on the Tonight Show. I saw Bing Crosby in early 1970 on his last tour.”

He attended Fordham as a communications major and took to the airwaves on the college station in 1973. He’s been on the air ever since. With a couple of thousand shows under his belt, he has had more than his share of experience with his heroes. “I got drunk with Cab Calloway one time, “he boasts, “He had the first CD player in the city of White Plains. I got to meet Soupy Sales, who had my favorite tv show when I was a kid. I used to do a live show with Les Paul. Woody Allen listens to the show. [Ed Sullivan impersonator] Will Jordan is a fan.”

According to Conaty, the online version of his show gets hundreds of thousands of hits, so he’s quick to praise the internet – as far as it goes. While it helps him gets his radio show out, he feels that a lot of the internet-only shows and stations lack some of the discipline of actual radio. “There are all these internet channels that play music 24/7, but with no commentary, no context,” he says, “there’s an educational aspect to what I do. How are you going to know to Google Bix Beiderbecke in the first place, if you’ve never heard of Bix Beiderbecke?”

And there’s an art to what Conaty does. He makes his set lists out carefully on yellow lined paper – and requires a particular pen with which to do so. He won’t repeat the same record until 20 other songs have played first. And he builds a show based on the tempo of the tunes, which he is able to do since he knows all the records by heart. To protect his priceless old 78s he’s copied most of them onto CDs for playing, a rare conession to modernity.

Still Conaty’s loyalty remains firmly where it has always been. The past.

“We’re the only show on the radio that gives the death dates of the artists we play”, he quips.

The Big Broadcast is on WFUV 90.7 fm Sunday nights 8pm-midnight, and also at http://www.wfuv.org/programs/bigbroadcast.html

…And the Fear Cracked Open

I’d step across the haunted grave of a martyred saint and then drag myself across the broken glasses of a thousand senior citizens to see any production by Audrey Crabtree and Lynn Berg, collectively know as Ten Directions. They act, they improvise, they clown, they teach, they perform in front of cameras as well as audiences, they act, direct, produce.

But this is New York! Everybody does that stuff! I am their fan because they perform with the skill, the professionalism and assurance of tightrope walkers. They never fail to get me goin’, which usually means laughing – hard – but it can also mean going “bleeccch!”

In their newest outing, which is also one of their oldest, I have the feeling we’ll get something a little bit different. I hear it’s mushy! In fact, if Goofy were here, he’d probably say “Garsh!”

…And the Fear Cracked Open, which is playing in the Brick’s Anti-Depressant Festival, was originally cooked up by the pair, when Crabtree was living and working in Minneapolis, and Berg, a friend and colleague from college, came to visit her. The piece was cooked up on the spot to fill an empty slot on the calendar at a local venue. Since Berg had recently been jilted by his fiancé a romantic theme was accessible, and because the two were living in Minnesota – where Scandinavian-Americans are famous for not saying what they think – they decided to do a piece about “a couple that loves each other, but tend to express themselves through game playing and manipulation.”

The piece must have struck a chord in Minneapolis, because its success emboldened the pair to take the show to the New York International Fringe Festival. This has been their town ever since. Since 11 years have passed since the initial production, Berg and Crabtree have recast the two main roles (originally played by themselves). Gavin Starr Kendall and Becky Byers will play the couple; Berg and Crabtree take other roles in the ensemble, including intriguing hints of a “fear bag” (picture above) and a puppet. These and many other surprises are promised. I, for one, intend to crawl over both graves and glasses to see them.

The show opens tomorrow night and has four performances. For complete info, go to: http://www.andthefearcrackedopen.com/