Overview

Mae West, Sarah Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore and Helen Keller are perhaps among the best known women to appear on vaudeville stages. Each came to vaudeville by a different path with a different offering, as did all of the performers detailed in this book. Mae West entered vaudeville with a song and dance routine when she was 13 years old and went on to a stellar career in movies, radio, nightclubs, recording and comedy. Occasionally the great dramatic actress Ethel Barrymore dropped in to the Palace Theatre to present one-act plays. Dramatist Sarah Bernhardt was being celebrated by the British for her fifty years on the dramatic stage when she agreed to appear in the U.S. Helen Keller appeared on the stages of first-class vaudeville houses with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, telling about how she overcame the handicaps of blindness and deafness. This book tells the stories of 80 women who were among the top vaudeville acts in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when entertainment was often live variety shows in theatres across the country. The author begins by summarizing the history of women in the performance industry and tracing the lifespan of vaudeville. The performers are then divided according to the nature of their acts: singers, singer-comediennes, comediennes, dancers, sister acts, actresses, male impersonators and novelty acts. Biographies of the performers appear in order of the date they entered vaudeville, thus tracing the chronology of individual performers and the history of vaudeville itself. The final chapter is on the headliners' heritage; it takes a broad look at the group according to ethnic background, socioeconomic background, family life, and issues such as what happened to them after vaudeville died.

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