George LeMaire

Today is the birthday of George LeMaire (Meyer Goldstick, 1884-1930).

I grow highly intrigued by the show biz LeMaire family (George, Rufus, William and Sam), as I find scattered references to them all over the place, but no concentrated, centralized run-down. (Perhaps the place for that will be here, once I learn more).

The brood was from Fort Worth, Texas. George seems to have been the oldest. He was the vaudeville partner of Billy B. Van and was also in the team of Conroy and LeMaire. He was spoken of as one of the best straight men in the business. Sophie Tucker’s autobiography is full of references to his early mentorship of her during their vaudeville days. By 1913, he had made it to Broadway. Of his nine Broadway shows, nearly all of them are revues: the Passing Show, the Ziegfeld Follies, George White’s Scandals, the Broadway Brevities, and his last, Rufus LeMaire’s Affairs, produced by his brother in 1927. In 1928 he went to Hollywood to work on comedy shorts, initially as a writer, but also as a director, producer and actor shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, his life and career were cut short by a heart attack in 1930, and most of his films have been lost.

To find out more about vaudeville 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.