VAUDEVILLE QUOTES II

quotations about vaudeville

Vaudeville quote

The embarrassingly patronising minstrel shows, in which blackface performers obligingly fulfilled white stereotypes ... were on the wane. A new sort of mass entertainment called vaudeville was taking its place, in which black performers could "strut their stuff" without the need to dissemble, and sing of real-life experience. The performers in these travelling shows could call on a new, more truthful kind of song called the blues.

IVAN HEWETT

"Bessie Smith: the greatest female blues singer who ever lived", The Telegraph, August 13, 2015


If vaudeville is to be revived, its revival will hinge upon something other than the mere revival of the features that were largely instrumental in killing it.

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

The Theatre Book of the Year, 1942-1943


Vaudeville was a symptom of ... a time and a year when there was place for boyish fun and simple nonsense and engaging unconcern. It was a kid game for men in their kid moments. And men don't seem to have such moments any more.

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

"On Vaudeville", The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary


Vaudeville, like the vanished hansom cab, the window tables at Delmonico's and Sherry's, the four-hour lunches at Luchows and checkers at Lafayette, has paid the price of modern speed, money-grubbing and excited boredom. No longer is there time for such things; no longer are ease and casualness part of our lives; no longer are evenings to be sampled haphazardly.

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

"On Vaudeville", The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary


If vaudeville had died, television was the box they put it in.

LARRY GELBART

"Gelbart Holds Seminars on Comedy at Museum", New York Times, October 3, 1984


Vaudeville dominated showbiz for the half-century before the cinema replaced it (1880-1930). Within vaudeville was a subculture of outsiders. It served as a socio-economic ladder for those outside the pale of the native born and the middle class. Its expanding ranks filled rapidly with talents from immigrant and working-class backgrounds, especially Irish, Jews, and (a relatively few) African Americans. Collectively these representatives of submerged ethnicities and classes did much to undermine Victorian manners and moral attitudes. Where Victorian ways were formal and deliberate, genteel and austere, variety entertainment was exuberant, funny, irreverent, and sensual.

H. LORING WHITE

Ragging it: Getting Ragtime Into History (and Some History Into Ragtime)


Everybody's going to the clockwork vaudeville
Everybody wants to see the show
People crowd the door and scream and shout for more
While music and song fill the air

DAVID BENNETT

"Clockwork Vaudeville"


Vaudeville was characterized by sunny optimism -- acts that were uplifting, cheerful, and clean. It provided a fanciful, magical escape.

KAREN ABBOTT

"Say Farewell to 2016 at Quinault Beach Resort's New Years Eve Celebration", Grays Harbor Talk, December 25, 2016


I was raised never to carp about things and never to moan, because in vaudeville, which is my background, you just got on with it through all kinds of adversities.

JULIE ANDREWS

The Telegraph, May 4, 2010

Tags: Julie Andrews


Vaudeville was this much more open society, where women could work and actually make pretty good money.

JULIETTE FAY

"Nearly a century after its heyday, vaudeville returns", Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 15, 2017


Vaudeville was variety cleaned up -- at least in theory.

RICHARD BUTSCH

For Fun and Profit


Vaudeville was a people's culture. What has remained of vaudeville is the act -- a distillation of a performer's best material into a near-perfect performance piece: the product of personality, talent and skill -- the vaudevillian's reason for living.

FRANK CULLEN

attributed, Moon Over Vaudeville


It was the most democratic popular art in American history. To get onstage, all you needed was chutzpah and moxie. If you had the right stuff, you picked up the dance steps, the vocal style, the comic timing that could make you a star--maybe even one of the Marx Brothers. No wonder their mother, Minnie, loved vaudeville. And millions of fans and thousands of performers agreed. Yet despite its profound influence on every facet of entertainment, from the musical to the television sitcom, American vaudeville had a trajectory as astonishingly brief--if sparkling--as a Roman candle.

STEFAN KANFER

The Voodoo that They Did So Well: The Wizards who Invented the New York Stage


I have this dream, we're all at the table
Sharing verses, stories and song
Vaudeville Nanna and The Banjolele
She hands it to me and I play along
The best days of my life
Are somewhere up the road
With my family and friends
I can close my eyes
And I can see them, see them

PETER FRAMPTON

"Vaudeville Nanna And The Banjolele"


Vaudeville was the only thing I knew so I tried to break in. Unfortunately for me, vaudeville was already dead and gone.

LUCILLE BALL

interview, "Kicking Back with Lucy", September 1980


Before radio, vaudeville was the place where you could reach the masses and talk about current events and politics. That's what late night TV is today. And when entertainers become as dominant as Jon Stewart or Jimmy Fallon, it's inevitable they'll influence other artists.

CATEY SULLIVAN

"Vaudeville is Back in Chicago Theaters", Chicago Mag, October 5, 2015


Vaudeville was the theatre of the people, its brassy assurance a dig in the nation's ribs, its simplicity as naïve as a circus.

DOUGLAS GILBERT

American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times


I do not like vaudeville, but what can I do? It likes me.

ANNA HELD

attributed, Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway


Everything I know I learned in vaudeville.

JAMES CAGNEY

attributed, Moon Over Vaudeville


During its pinnacle, Vaudeville was both the king and queen of entertainment.

MAUREEN MCCABE

Moon Over Vaudeville