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Don Tomkins and Ruth Love: Juvenile Dance Team

Don Tomkins and Ruth Love, Juvenile Dancers in Vaudeville
Don Tomkins and Ruth Love, Juvenile Dancers in Vaudeville

We learn of the juvenile dance team of Don Tomkins and Ruth Love from the Sobels’ Pictorial History of Vaudeville. Tomkins (1907-1987) is said to have introduced the Varsity Drag to vaudeville audiences in the 1920s.

After the team split, Love danced in the Broadway shows Billie (1928-29) and Show Girl (1929). Tomkins’ Broadway shows included Good News (1927-29), Follow Thru (1929), Ballyhoo of 1930, and Free for All (1931). He was also in the film version of Follow Thru (1930), as well as seven film shorts: Freshman Love (1931), Words and Music (1931), Love Thy Neighbor (1933), Poppin’ the Cork (1933), Art Trouble (1934), The Winnah (1934) and The Love Department (1935). He returned to Broadway one last time with Lucille Ball in The Wildcat (1963).

To learn more about vaudeville, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, 

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.