I often like to say that vaudeville isn’t dead, it’s hiding in plain sight. Excellent examples of this are the Loew’s Theatre chain and MGM, the latest corporate iterations of what began as the People’s Vaudeville Company in 1904, a chain of combination vaudeville theatres and nickelodeons founded by Marcus Loew. Born May 7, 1870, Loew died in 1927 — before the death of vaudeville and the heyday of MGM.
Many consider Loew’s State (the chain’s Times Square flagship theatre) to have been the “last vaudeville house”, and his chain to have been the “biggest of the small time”. It closed in 1947.
To find out more about the history of vaudeville, including Loew’s State, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
[…] Blackbirds (1929). Only then did he go into white vaudeville, where he performed on the Keith, Loews, and Franchon and Marco circuits. He continued to perform in the presentation houses when they […]
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[…] 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 […]
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[…] were begun on Sullivan and Considine properties and the house of cards collapsed. Pantages and the Loew’s chain (which by that time was national) picked up Considine’s theatres for a song. Considine […]
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[…] variety shows at New York’s big presentation houses, the Paramount Theatre, and Loew’s State. When television came along, it was only natural for him to bring this hosting experience to the […]
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[…] came back into the act at that point, bringing his wife and child with him. The family worked the Loews, Gus Sun, and Franchon and Marco circuits. There were so many of them that they hired their own […]
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[…] It’s two-a-day for Keith, and three-a-day for Loew; […]
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[…] out to Jersey City’s Journal Square (it’s not so far) to check out the Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre. I first became aware of the project to restore this fabulous 1929 movie palace when […]
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[…] a tour of the Marcus Loew circuit in 1915, Brown retired from show business briefly when he learned his wife was about to […]
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[…] small time circuits for a year, during which time she established a very important friendship with Marcus Loew, king of the small time impresarios. She performed frequently at his theatre at 116 and Lennox […]
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