Vaudephone #25: Trav S.D.

Hello and welcome again to Vaudephone, your one stop shopping for all the best contemporary variety acts!

Today we feature — me! With a very special message for  – you!

(Watch me muff the penultimate verse, but then, that’s only what you’d get in live performance! Rough ‘n’ ready, down ‘n’ dirty…)

And please note the swell theme music, by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Don’t miss Vince and his swingin’ band for dinner and dancing every Monday and Tuesday at the Edison Hotel! (Details are here).

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

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 then there’s my new book to buy: 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

Vaudephone #24: Noah Diamond

Hello and welcome again to Vaudephone, your one stop shopping for all the best contemporary variety acts!

Today we feature the terrific Noah Diamond, a show biz Renaissance man: vaudeville performer, cartoonist, tour guide and creator of political cabarets (go here for my full biographical run-down on him). In this week’s Vaudephone, he performs his “United Nations  Song”, which was a hit of our show Travesties of 2012 in last years New York Musical Comedy Festival.

Please note the swell theme music, by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Don’t miss Vince and his swingin’ band for dinner and dancing every Monday and Tuesday at the Edison Hotel! (Details are here).

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

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.

Vaudephone #23: Michael Townsend Wright

Hello and welcome again to Vaudephone, your one stop shopping for all the best contemporary variety acts!  Today we feature the terrific Michael Townsend Wright, a show biz vet what IS a show biz vet (go here for my full biographical run-down on him). In this cool clip, he does the parts of both Smith and Dale in their famous Dr. Kronkite sketch (Michael sat at the feet of Joe Smith in his last days to learn from him).

Please note the swell theme music, by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Don’t miss Vince and his swingin’ band for dinner and dancing every Monday and Tuesday at the Edison Hotel! (Details are here).

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

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.

Vaudephone #22: The Lady Aye, Sweetheart of the Sideshow

Aloha! Here we are with this week’s Vaudephone! And a worthy one it is, containing as it does the great Lady Aye (for more info on this interesting performer go here).

Please note the swell theme music, by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Don’t miss Vince and his swingin’ band for dinner and dancing every Monday and Tuesday at the Edison Hotel! (Details are here).

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

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.

Vaudephone #21: Dandy Darkly

Well, we meant to take a couple of months off, but we ended up taking a year. That’s how it flies sometimes in this cockamamie chicken coop. Anyway, we’re back with our old school variety arts web series Vaudephone! Look for a new act every week (if the creek don’t rise!)

Helping us re-launch it, I can’t think of anyone more blindingly original than the one and only Dandy Darkly (go here for more background on this extraordinary performer).

Please note the swell theme music, by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Don’t miss Vince and his swingin’ band for dinner and dancing every Monday and Tuesday at the Edison Hotel! (Details are here).

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

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.

Vitaphones at the Film Forum Tonight !

Here it is! This is an annual event I’ve come to look forward to like the coming of Christmas every year: the annual Film Forum showing of old Vitaphone vaudeville shorts by Ron Hutchison of the Vitaphone Project. Ron was a huge help to me on No Applause and continues to do the work of the angels in preserving and promoting these old films. Tonight’s headliners include Ethel Waters, Ruth Etting, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Abe Lyman and Orchestra, 7-year-old Sammy Davis Jr., and many others. Show times are 2:40 and 6:10 tonight only. More info is here.

For some more background on Vitaphones and vaudeville go here. And to see some shorts films made by me and Jim Moore inspired by Vitaphones with contemporary vaudeville performers go here. The Vaudephone project is back in business, by the way; we’ll have new Vaudephones online in just a couple of weeks!

Rerun Vaudephone: Juliet Jeske

Our Vaudephone taping schedule is officially on hiatus as I work on my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. We will be resuming with a whole batch of new and exciting contemporary variety performers starting in June. In the meantime, please enjoy  the dynamite Princess Sunshine (Juliet Jeske)

ALSO: please note the swell theme music, by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Don’t miss Vince and his swingin’ band for dinner and dancing every Monday and Tuesday at the Edison Hotel! (Details are here).

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

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.

Rerun Vaudephone: Jenny Lee Mitchell

Our Vaudephone taping schedule is officially on hiatus as I work on my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. We will be resuming with a whole batch of new and exciting contemporary variety performers starting in June. In the meantime, please enjoy the incomparable Jenny Lee Mitchell as Deirdre Pazzeco in “sopravvalutato”:

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

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.

Poor Baby Bree Opens Tonight!

The incomparable Poor Baby Bree revives her show I Am Going to Run Away at LaMama tonight (full details here). We love her so much we made her our first first Vaudephone recording. For an enticing sample of what she does, see below:

Vaudephone #18: Al Duvall

And now here’s the 18th installment in our Vaudephone series, Al Duvall and his Monotone Baritone, singing two hilarous numbers, with Franklin Bruno at the keys:

Vaudephone is a co-production of Travalanche/ the American Vaudeville Theatre, and Vaudevisuals.com.

ALSO: please note the swell theme music, by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Don’t miss Vince and his swingin’ band for dinner and dancing every Monday and Tuesday at the Edison Hotel!  (Details are here).

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.