Stars of Vaudeville # 577: Tom Patricola
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Today is the birthday of Tom Patricola (1891-1950), the younger brother of popular vaudeville musician Miss (Isabella) Patricola. He was an eccentric dancer who clogged and tapped while playing the ukulele. He worked steadily in vaudeville throughout the teens and twenties and was closely associated with George White revues (five editions of the Scandals 1923-28, and one edition of the Music Hall Varieties, 1932). His most notorious turn was performing the Black Bottom with Ann Pennington in the Scandals of 1926. He starred in films from 1929 to 1938, first in musical shorts, features and Spanish language editions for Fox; later in cheaper shorts for Educational. In the early forties he had a couple of walk-ons in bigger budget movies, then retired.
To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. And don’t miss Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, to be released by Bear Manor Media in 2013.
