Stars of Vaudeville #12: Alla Nazimova

Originally posted in 2009. 

One of the great actresses of the early twentieth century, Nazimova was also one of vaudeville’s great sensationalists.

She was born Mariam Edez Adelaida “Alla” Leventon in Yalta on this day in 1879. As a child she had studied the violin, but fear of her stern father prevented her from formal dramatic study until the age of 17. She was accepted to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko’s Philharmonic School in Moscow, which merged with Stanislawski’s newborn Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. She struggled on in minor roles and as a stage manager with the theatre for a few years, and then split off the work with the Kostroma stock company. While acting there, she met met Pavel Orlenev, a friend of Chekhov and Gorky. The two became collaborators and lovers. From touring the Russian provinces, in 1904 they went on to success in Berlin and London. In 1905, they were a hit in New York, where the Shuberts were so impressed, they offered to produce her if she would stay in the U.S. and learn English. She did.

Her 1906 performance as Hedda Gabler was such a hit that she went on to star in most of Ibsen’s major plays over the next few years. She almost always did “important” realistic plays, usually with progressive political themes. A gorgeous woman, with enormous eyes and a sensuous mouth, she reinforced the sensationalism of her feminist forays by giving them sex appeal. This is what made her a hit in vaudeville.

In 1914 she debuted a one act at the Palace called An Unknown Woman which pleaded for more sensible divorce laws. A querulous Edward Albee cancelled the act at the urging of a Roman Catholic clergyman, although Nazimova was paid in full for her services. In 1915, she returned with the pacifist playlet War Brides, which was especially timely given the conflict overseas. This turn was such a hit she toured the Orpheum Circuit with it, and then turned it into a 1916 movie. The film version was a major success, resulting in Metro offering her a 5 year, $13,000 a week contract in 1917—a deal better than even Mary Pickford’s. For the next several years, she was a major movie star and the mansion she built “The Garden of Alla”, one of the center’s of the Hollywood social scene. Her contract her total creative control, and unfortunately, as time went on her use of it alienated both critics and audiences. Her exotic sexuality was often exploited, which  critics found “lurid” and “preposterous.” She lost audiences by indulging her artistic impulses. She began to allow free reign to experimental set designer Natacha Rambova, who became her lover. Rambova became the wife of Rudolph Valentino, was Nazimova’s co-star in Camille (1921). Though Camille was a success Metro started becoming uncomfortable with all of this art, and cut Nazimova loose. She produced two films on her own in 1922, A Doll’s House and Salome which continued with the stylized sets and acting. They tanked at the box office unfortunately, and Nazimova was to play only small roles in Hollywood thereafter.

It is perhaps for this reason that she returned to the Palace for several vaudeville engagements through the 1920s. One of the playlets she introduced was a feminist drama called India, co-written by Edgar Allen Woolf. Major theatre roles of her late career included Christine in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), O-lan in Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth (1932), and the leads in major revivals of Ghosts and Hedda Galbler which she directed in 1935 and 1936 respectively. She died in 1945.

Now, here’s her artistic take on the Dance of the Seven Veils from her 1923 version of Salome:

To find out about  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.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy please check out 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

Time Has Been Kind to Liberace

How do we explain Liberace to our children? Do we try? Or should they be left to grapple with life’s enigmas on their own? Won’t that make them stronger?

Born on this day in 1919, his full name was Wladziu Valentino Liberace. He started playing piano at age four with his father’s encouragement, and was obsessed with Paderewski, whom he got to meet backstage once when he was eight. While he did play some classical concerts in the late 30s and 40s, he also played dances, theatres, parties, and the like and he liked having popular music in his repertoire, and was already bringing showmanship and flair to his performances by then. (He cited Hildegarde as one of his influences). Sadly, vaudeville was gone by the time he came along, so he mostly worked the nightclub circuit.

By the 1940s he was already becoming the Liberace we all came to know and love, although as the years went on he would push the envelope further and further. But by the 40s he was already playing his signature grand piano, with a candelabra, billing himself as “Liberace — the most amazing piano virtuoso of the present day”. Amazingly, he became (at times) the highest paid performer in show business, though it’s really hard to see whom his music pleased. Serious (classical) music lovers thought his music too low brow; and yet it is way stodgier than any sort of jazz, swing, big band or rock music. Yet he sold millions and millions of records (mostly, I would imagine to the little old ladies who were his core audience). But for the wider world the main point of Liberace was always the visual. It’s impossible to imagine Elvis’s 1970s incarnation without him. Or Elton John. Or Prince, for that matter.

Sadly, he was killed by AIDS in 1987. I didn’t know that until yesterday, because it wasn’t public knowledge at the time he passed away. Sadly he stubbornly attempted to keep his gay identity a secret his entire lifetime (although it was a secret to no one). But the decision to keep it a secret was a shame, because I think the true news of his death would have hit the public hard, might have touched the hearts of some people who felt unmoved by the crisis then going on.

At any rate, time has been kind to Liberace.  I watched this clip below yesterday, and was just in awe. No irony intended. We made a big joke of him when he was alive, but this is a man who knows how to entertain an audience. This is a spectacle you cannot look away from. Is there anyone like him around today?

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

Stars of Vaudeville #11: Julian Eltinge

Originally posted in 2009. 

The most famous female impersonator of the vaudeville era, Julian Eltinge was a point of cultural reference as late as the early 1960s when Lenny Bruce dropped his name in a stand-up routine. Two quotes give a sense about how this sort of act divided the audience: W.C. Fields famously said “women went into ecstasies over him. Men went into the smoking room”. On the other hand, Jesse Lasky said that “neither men nor women could take their eyes off him”

Born William Julian Dalton in Newtonville, Massachusetts in 1883, he was already in drag by age 10. After performing in the Boston Cadets’ annual review dressed as a little girl, he was so successful that the following year they wrote the whole show around him in a skirt. Soon thereafter he moved to Butte, Montana, where, while taking cakewalk lessons at Mrs. Wayman’s Dance Studio, he chanced to do an impression of some chorus girls who also took the class. Mrs. Wayman couldn’t help but notice that he was better at it than the girls themselves. She suggested he try female impersonation, which he did (with some misgivings), acting in an amateur production called My Lady.

Soon he was getting national bookings. In 1904, he starred in the book musical  Mr. Wix of Wickham, his first big break. Next he tried vaudeville, where he generally received great reviews. A typical turn had him coming out as a Gibson Girl, then emerging as a “dainty young miss in a pink party dress”. Apparently his singing voice was far better than that of most other female impersonators, as was the illusion of femininity. A stocky man, he had his Japanese male dresser “Shima” corset him up and then spend two hours on his make-up and dressing. His bag of tricks included: powder, eye make-up, rouge, make up and powder on shoulders and arms, painted nails, and numerous wigs. He even shaved his fingers. Graceful and classy, Eltinge, as he was now called, was always said to be in good taste. — “inoffensive.”

The act went right to big-time: Keith’s Union Square (1905), the London Palace (1906), the New York Alhambra (1907). In 1908, he worked the short lived Cohan and Harris Minstrels. In 1909 he introduced two new dance routines in his vaudeville act. “The Goddess of Incense” was a Hindu themed number.  “The Cobra Dance” was slow and sensual. His 1910 act had four parts.  First he impersonated “the Lady of Mystery”, by coming out in a long black gown. Then, for contrast, he was a “simple young woman in a bright blue dress singing ‘Honeymoon in June’”. Next he was a woman from the colonial era, and last of all he was a contemporary woman doing “That Spanish American Rag”.

1910 saw The Fascinating Widow,  his greatest stage success, in which he portrayed…a man forced by circumstances to disguise himself as a woman. (What great casting! It calls to mind the 1971 Columbo episode where Rich Little portrayed a pyschopathic Las Vegas impressionist). By 1912 Eltinge was so popular, he had a theatre named after him , which was renamed the Empire in 1956 and is now now a multiplex cinema.

Concurrent with the launch of Eltinge’s own film career in 1915, he launched his own magazine, Julian Eltinge’s Magazine and Beauty Hints which offered beauty tips of the sort that would be most of the most use to unattractive or masculine women: how to dress so as to seem slimmer, how to cover up unsightly facial hair, etc.

After three years in films, Eltinge returned to vaudeville with an 18 minute act at the Palace. The act consisted of 4 songs, 4 costume changes and “the Julian Eltinge Players”.

He continued to headline in big time throughout the 1920s. As vaudeville whithered in the 30s, he toured with his own show “the Nine O’Clock Review”. As the depression worsened, the vogue for female impersonation shrank down to nothing. By 1940, Eltinge had sunk to the lowest low conceivable. Due to a Los Angeles law forbidding public appearances in female clothing, he did his act NEXT TO a clothes rack full of ladies’ outfits. (h’m…did Ed Wood see this particular show?) He passed away the following year.

Eltinge always insisted that it was all just an act, an illusion, the same as might be accomplished by a magician, a ventriloquist, etc.To prove it, he separated himself  from the gay subculture and any hint of “perversion”,  overcompensating with macho offtstage behavior, fistfights , beer drinking, boxing, horseback riding (western style, natch). He circulated stories about himself beating up guys who impugned his manhood. Above all, he claimed not to even like dressing in woman’s clothing – it was just something he did to make money. There’s a great gag in Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances where the young hero, desperate to find a bride, runs into a theatre and propositions someone, emerging with a black eye for his efforts. Then we see a sign: it was Eltinge.

All of this is all well and good and it’s almost convincing…until you stop and remind yourself, yeah, yeah, that might be true…but you’re STILL a female impersonator, fellah. No man puts on a dress and make-up every night just because he needs the work. Think about it.

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.

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

Victoria Libertore: No Need for Seduction

By the way, that photo above is by Jim R. Moore

I hope I’m not dating myself for loving Victoria Libertore’s work as much as I do and for the reasons I do. When I first came to this city, her brand of autobiographical solo work was branded “performance art”. I haven’t heard the term in a long time, mostly because everyone has come to acknowledge that it is what sensible heads always said it was — theatre. But yes, it has aspects of other art forms and other methods of discourse. Autobiography is certainly a non-fiction form; but so is biography, and biographical plays get done all the time. And Vic’s work (much like the late Spalding Gray’s) could also sit comfortably on a shelf containing “humor” alongside more literary figures from Mark Twain to Sarah Vowell, although her work often takes turns for the darker.

Whatever it is, it reminds me of the late 80s, when a lot of such work was being done. At the time I thought I hated it but now I realize I only hated most of it because I hate most of everything, as is the lot of the critical personality. I certainly didn’t hate masters like Spalding Gray or Karen Finley, for example. And then I begin to see a good rationale for calling it performance art. The material being presented to the audience is the artist herself. Not just her story, but her totality: her personality, her body, her intelligence, her charm. The experience sinks or swims on whether you like or care for the person standing right in front of you on stage. That’s something you’re born with, like a fingerprint, or a part in the hair. The line between self-indulgence and generosity has to do with a value judgment on the audience’s part as to whether you the performance artist are giving us your life…or you are stealing an hour or two of ours. And unless you are absolutely fascinating in every respect, the latter has always got to be the case.

Fortunately, Libertore is fascinating in every respect. Walking in, the Duchess and I were like, “This’ll probably be about an hour long”. Going home, we noticed the show had lasted nearly two. Not only didn’t I notice or mind, but was sad to see it end. One can watch Libertore and watch her and watch her. Not because she is attractive to look at (which she undoubtedly is) but because she behaves with the class and gravity and self-assurance of a stage veteran. She already seems like a giant to me, though I get the sense that she is also at the beginning stages of a journey that will make her even more of one. (Her audience is now almost entirely LGBT, and that mostly — like her — L. As someone who is none of those things, I think the power of her work is universal and she can pack in people of every orientation, who will be addicted once they discover her).

The present piece No Need for Seduction is centered around a marriage proposal on a vacation with her lover to Bali, and all the issues it dredges up: commitment, loyalty, honesty, guilt, doubt, fear. Hoo boy, it really should be required viewing for the red state people who seem to have such a deep hatred for something they clearly know nothing about. One of them (sadly, inevitably) is the artist’s father, who has that and a few worse sins to atone for, even within his own scheme of the world’s moral architecture.

One of the countless reasons the journey Vic takes us on is so watchable is that she is so tough and strong and funny. When hitting inevitable rough patches in her story, she never begs for sympathy. In the worst performance art I used to see back in the day, the artist would pump up crocodile tears and bawl on cue night after night about their own misfortunes. It turned my stomach, but it always seemed to work on the rabble around me in the audience. Vic, by contrast, involuntarily broke into tears a couple of times on opening night — and then employed a little humorous and original strategy she’d clearly devised to steer herself out of the predicament. The woman’s eye is on the ball. Her objective is to tell an important, moving and entertaining story. It is not to cry. Furthermore, she is the last thing from a Saint and is adamant about telling us so in her self-deprecating way. (Such people, in my view, stand a much better chance of becoming one).

The piece is very well written, structurally tying together many disparate elements (sex, phobias, death) in a way that is not forced but organic and really works. And the fabric that overlays that skeleton, full of vivid and juicy detail, is so enjoyable you don’t want it to stop. Like the gregarious storyteller that she is, Vic goes on many digressions, but (and I paid careful attention) they were always germane, always led back to the theme. In fact, everything reflected back to the point, including the little Kali face Vic makes when she enters the stage, which at first just seems like she’s just sticking out her tongue. (So kudos too to director/ dramaturg Leigh Fondakowski).

Lastly, to return to my opening sentence, about dating myself. I can’t believe I hear myself saying this (as I increasingly do) but it’s awfully nice to see some work for a change that’s mature, that’s about something, that’s by and for adults. It’s really nice (depressingly refreshing, in fact) to spend two hours in the company of someone who thinks and feels and cares for essences as much as much as forms. It is the ability to do so that explains the play’s title. But you’ll have to see the show to truly understand. I advise you to do so. It’s at Dixon Place through May 25. Tickets and info are here.

And here’s a cool video interview with Victoria and Vaudevisuals’ Jim Moore right here: https://vimeo.com/65926332

R.I. P. Taylor Mead

Just got word that the great Taylor Mead has passed on. He was kind of what “downtown” used to be all about, the star all of those seminal early off-off Broadway plays by the likes of Frank O’Hara, and underground films by Warhol and Ron Rice. Somehow a legend grows up around such things – -I wonder how legendary it felt in the moment? At any rate, there’s something so pure and trusting about what he did. Nowadays everyone has their eye on the clock, the bank balance, and the headlines. Mead (apparently aided by a tiny inheritance or trust, but still) never did anything but pure, imaginative work, unsullied by the garbage-think of business. How I envy(d) him.

I only knew him a little. He came to the original New York production of my play Universal Rundle in ’88 or ’89. At the time (and for a time thereafter) he was doing a bit of collaborating with the play’s star T. Weir “Tom” Wright. Most of the times I saw him perform were around then, through the early 90s. He was one of the best ad-libbers I’ve ever heard.

Later the two of them were booked to perform at this series of after-hour psychedelic cabarets I produced in the basement of the Williamsburg Art & Historical (WAH) Center. I have to say these were probably the most amazing shows I ever put on, although the folks who took part in them and attended were mostly my friends from the music world; few, if any of my theatre friends showed up. I recall Tom, Taylor and me driving to the WAH center (an atmospheric old Victorian bank building at the base of the Williamsburg bridge) in Tom’s old shitbox of a 30 year old car, with soft drink cups all over the floor, and a couple of large dogs running around the back seat. On this occasion, the one time properly speaking I socialized with him, Taylor was as droll, dry, and acid as he was onstage (there was no line between on and offstage for him). This was around ’98 or ’99. He was well into his 70s then. When he passed away yesterday he was well on the way to 90. Who was the last bohemian to grow that old? Whoever he was, I bet he didn’t have a day job!

Anyway, here’s an excellent interview, wherein he reminisces about his fellow Superstars. (It’s not all skittles and beer):

“The Girl I Left Behind Me” Opens Tonight

Tonight through May 19 at 59e59 Theaters –

The Girl I Left Behind Me, written by Neil Bartlett and Jessica Walker, and directed by Mr. Bartlett for Brits Off Broadway.

From the press release:

“From the swaggering cross-dressers of the Victorian Music Hall belting out their innuendos in black tie and tails, to the ambiguous boy-heroes of Mozart and Strauss, to the back-room tuxedoed blues singers of the Harlem Renaissance, this is a provocative, flirtatious and deliciously personal one-woman guide to a whole forgotten chapter of female performance. With just a piano, a microphone and a few well-chosen items of male attire, mezzo-soprano Jessica Walker conjures up an entire world. Ranging from Victorian and Edwardian Music Hall and American vaudeville, to some well-known hits like “Burlington Bertie from Bow” and the achingly beautiful “After The Ball”, each song is illuminated by the stripped-down musical settings and by Walker’s very personal singing style, bringing alive both the songs and the stories of the women who sang them for a contemporary audience.”

The Girl I Left Behind Me begins performances on Tuesday, April 30 for a limited engagement through Sunday, May 19.  Press opening is Sunday, May 5 at 7:30 PM.  The performance schedule is Tuesday – Thursday at 7:30 PM; Friday at 8:30 PM; Saturday at 2:30 PM & 8:30 PM; and Sunday at 3:30 PM & 7:30 PM. Performances are at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues). Tickets are $25 ($17.50 for 59E59 Members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or go to www.59e59.org.

On Charles Ludlam

Today is the birthday of one of my heroes, Charles Ludlam (1943-1987). I consider it one of the great ironies of my life that I moved here just a few weeks after he died. I would have been a devotee of his company, and probably an aspirant to join it, if I’d dared attempting such a thing. Ludlam’s way of making theatre is the only way I could possibly care about, and he’s gone, and there’s no hub for it, no center for it, no National Theatre, no Comedie Francais, no aesthetic philosopher, no lightning rod. There are plenty of pretenders floating around (myself included) but you can just tell  –  we’re in the shadows of a taller giant. Even his anointed successor Everett Quinton (whom I was thrilled to get to work with last year) shook off the mantle — it weighed too much. But I did get to see several of Everett’s productions with the Ridiculous, and to see the great Ethyl Eichelberger, another Ludlam acolyte, a number of times (like Ludlam, Eichelberger too was lost to AIDS, although indirectly).

The common ground, for me, anyway, is an abiding interest in classicism and a respect for comedy as an art form with a millenia-old tradition. When I was 19, strictly on my own, I was seeking out Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, Menander, Shakespeare, Moliere. Ludlam the playwright derived his inspiration from these writers (in addition to camp sources like old Hollywood movies). I think he is our greatest comic playwright; the nation awaits a better one, at any rate.

Ludlam the showman sprinkled his works with stuff from the vaudevillians bag of tricks: drag, quick-change, magic, ventriloquism, hypnotism, puppetry, etc etc.

Ludlam also revived the concept of the actor/ manager. There are so many of them running amuck nowadays in the indie theatre world that I think people absolutely take it for granted that such a thing is accepted. I assure you, when I moved here in the late 80s, few people (practically none) dared form theatre companies of which they themselves were the principal artists. At your day job, when co-workers would say, “Oh, you have a play up? What company is doing it?” and you’d say “My own!”, they’d reply, their voices dripping with condescension, “Oh, I see. A vanity production.” It was Ludlam who revived that old 19th century idea of a company devoted to its own work, a model he legitimized by pointing out that dance companies do it all the time. Most of the early off-off companies, the Living Theatre, etc, were ensemble-based.  Indeed, the Ridiculous Theatrical company was a different sort of company when Ludlam joined it…but in short order he had transformed it into a cult of Ludlam. Even Bertolt Brecht’s son was one of its members.

For many, of course, he is a gay icon. There’s the drag of course, the pinnacle of which was his performance as Camille. For some reason, the mix of classicism and comedy has been known to attract a long line of gay writers, not only Ludlam, but Oscar Wilde, Joe Orton, and undoubtedly the ancients themselves. I, on the other hand, was once swept off my feet by a woman on the basis of her relationship to the late Ludlam (among other things). It’s almost like he was a Svengali (a role he should have played). I wish I’d been around when he was hypnotizing adherents and audiences.

I’ve just realized I haven’t given you the facts; just assumed you knew who he was. I think I will do just what your school teacher would do: send you to books.  There are three indispensable books you MUST read.

His complete body of plays, all 30 of them, from the mid 60s through the mid 80s. It is 905 pages, and a heavy thing to lug around or else my nose would be in it ALL the time. Buy it here. 

Scourge of Human Folly is a book of Ludlam’s essays and utterances on the art of theatre and more, his wit and wisdom, his Poor Richard’s Almanack, his Thus Spake Zarathustra, his Analects. It is an amazing book, I think. One is not accustomed to hearing Americans (especially in the theatre) talking about art in this way: normally it’s all business, business, business. Ludlam’s mind was like that of a 18th century European. He was too good for this crappy earth. You can buy this book here. 

The definitive biography, available here. 

Also, he has a decent role in the Dennis Quaid-Ellen Barkin movie The Big Easy. 

Lastly, something so cool I can hardly stand it. Knowing he had made some silent films, I had sought in vain to see them in preparation for my book Chain of Fools. Now  I am ecstatic to see that scenes from The Sorrows of Dolores (which he was working on at the time of his death) is available on Youtube, as is Museum of Wax, which is DOUBLY cool, because it was shot in Coney Island in the 80s! I guess you KNOW what I’ll be watching tonight. Here’s part one of Museum of Wax to get you started:

To find out about  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.

And please check out 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

Stars of Vaudeville # 646: Florence Bindley

A post in celebration of Women’s History Month. 

Originally from New Jersey, Florence Bindley (1868-1951) made her name initially as a male impersonator in both American vaudeville and English music hall in the 1890s. Her first Broadway show was The Captain’s Mate (1894), but her hot streak came about a decade later with A Midnight Marriage (1904), The Street Singer (1904), The Belle of the West (1905), The Girl and the Gambler (1906) and In the Nick of Time (1908). (As the poster for her biggest hit The Street Singer above demonstrates, by then she had given up the drag). She was to marry actor Darwin Karr, who acted in Hollywood film from 1911 through 1922. They both passed away in Los Angeles, Karr in 1945, Bindley 6 years later.

To learn more history about 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.

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

Moms Mabley & Arte Johnson on the Flip Wilson Show!

Today is the birthday of Star of Vaudeville #310: Moms Mabley (for more on this show business pioneer see my article here). And the day is already off to an awesome start. Look at this great comedy sketch I found: Arte Johnson plays a French beautician; Moms and Flip Wilson (as his drag character Geraldine) play his VERY challenging customers:

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

Stars of Vaudeville # 639: Wilkie Bard

Today is the birthday of British music hall comedian Wilkie Bard (1874-1944). He was just over 20 when he debuted with “Never ‘ave a Lodger for a Pal”. He appeared most often in a very clownish get-up with a band wig and two large circles for eye brows. He also appeared in drag sometimes as a pantomime dame. Numbers he was associated with included “I Want to Sing in Opera” and “The Night Watchman” He played American vaudeville a few times, playing Hammerstein’s Victoria in 1913, and the Palace in 1919 and 1923, followed by a national tour. Here he is singing “I Want to Sing in Opera”

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