Stars of Vaudeville # 625: Malcolm Scott
Okay, someone has to make this into a movie. The younger brother of Scott of the Antarctic (the Quixotic but brave polar explorer who came in second to the South Pole after Roald Amundsen) was a music hall female impersonator. Malcolm Scott (1872-1929) had begun as a legitimate stage actor in 1886, but by 1903 he was playing the halls, billed as “The Woman Who Knows”. While his brother was at the bottom of the earth weathering sub-zero temperatures, Malcolm was doing comedic numbers based on Salome, Catherine Parr, Nell Gwynne, Boadicea, and a Gibson Girl. He toured American vaudeville in 1909 and 1916, and also performed in South Africa and Australia in addition to the U.K. Today is his birthday.
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 my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
