Class 
 
 8wk_Jl3. 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
VAUDEVILLE 
 
\ 
 
SARAH BERNHARDT 
 
 
VAUDEVILLE 
 
 THE BOOK by CAROLINE 
 CAFFIN * THE PICTURES 
 m MARIUS DE ZAYAS 
 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 NEW YORK ' MCMXIV 
 
Copyright 1914 by 
 Mitchell Kennerley 
 
 
 JAN -2 1915 
 
 ©a.A393082 
 
IF we offend, it is with our good will 
 That you should think we come not to 
 offend ; 
 But with good will to show our simple skill. 
 That is the true beginning of our end 
 Consider then — we come ; but in despite 
 We do not come. As minding to content 
 
 you, 
 Our true intent is all for your delight. 
 We are not here that you should here repent 
 
 you. 
 The actors are at hand; and by their show 
 You shall know all that you are like to know. 
 — From the Clown's Prologue in A Mid- 
 summer-Night's Dream. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THE caterer of amusements has learned 
 not only to supply the programme 
 but also to stimulate the zest and eagerness 
 with which it is anticipated. For this pur- 
 pose he must spice his offering with novelty, 
 more novelty and always novelty. Nowhere 
 is this truer than in Vaudeville, for so rapid 
 are the changes in the public appetite that 
 the whole character of the entertainment 
 may vary from one season to another. What 
 is popular this year may vanish next, and no 
 prophet can foretell the favorites of three 
 years hence. 
 
 So in this book no attempt is made to cover 
 the field of Vaudeville, for that field is as 
 limitless as humanity itself. A few impres- 
 sions which have projected themselves with 
 more or less vividness upon the ever moving 
 
 3 
 
4 FOREWORD 
 
 picture of public favorites during the last 
 few years, is the utmost that I have attempt- 
 ed. Of the many whose "intent is all for our 
 delight" I have spoken of only a few. And 
 well I know that, even as I write, new faces, 
 new motives, new achievements are pressing 
 forward to take their places in the shifting 
 panorama. 
 
 New York, 1914. 
 
 • 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 I. The Force of Personality 25 
 
 II. The Appeal of Character 
 
 Study 43 
 
 III. The Entertainer as a 
 
 Craftsman 61 
 
 IV. Music and Near-Music 76 
 V. The Lure of the Dance 96 
 
 VI. Plays and Sketches 115 
 
 VII. Versatile Mimics and Pro- 
 
 teans 134 
 
 VIII. Some English Visitors 151 
 
 IX. Marvels of Strength and 
 
 Skill 168 
 
 X. Mysteries and Illusions 187 
 
 XI. Miscellaneous Fun- 
 Makers 199 
 
 XII. Some Other Turns 216 
 5 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Sarah Bernhardt 
 
 Frontispiece T i™° 
 
 Eva Tanguay 
 
 25 
 
 Gertrude Vanderbilt 
 
 30 
 
 Laddie Cliff 
 
 35 
 
 Jefferson d'Angelis 
 
 39 
 
 Nora Bayes 
 
 43 
 
 Harry Lauder 
 
 50 
 
 Mrs. Brown Potter 
 
 54 
 
 Yvette Guilbert 
 
 57 
 
 Maggie Cline 
 
 61 
 
 Lillian Russell 
 
 66 
 
 Marshall Montgomery- 
 
 71 
 
 Ethel Green 
 
 74 
 
 Sophy e Barnard 
 
 76 
 
 Lulu Glaser 
 
 81 
 
 Charles F. Seamon 
 
 86 
 
 Eunice Vance 
 
 91 
 
 Gertrude Hoffmann 
 
 96 
 
 Ruth St. Denis 
 
 102 
 
 Roszcika Dolly 
 
 106 
 
 Bessie Clayton 
 
 111 
 
 Valeska Suratt 
 
 7 
 
 115 
 
8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Arnold Daly 120 ' 
 
 Ethel Barrymore 125 
 
 Nance O'Neil 130 
 
 Cecelia Loftus 134 
 
 Marshall Wilder 140* 
 
 Kathleen Clifford 147' 
 
 Marie Lloyd 151 
 
 Vesta Victoria 156 y 
 
 Alice Lloyd 160 
 
 Kitty Gordon 165 
 
 Annette Kellerman 168 
 
 Will Rogers 175 
 
 Dainty Marie 180 
 
 Charmon 184' 
 
 Ada Reeve 187 
 
 Houdini 192 
 
 Ching Ling Foo 197 
 
 Ray Cox 199 
 
 Bert Williams 202 
 
 Frank Tinney 204 
 
 Nat WiUs 207 
 
 Isabel d'Armond 209 
 
 Kate Elinor 211 
 
 Mclntyre and Heath 213 
 
 Gertrude Barnes 216 
 
 Al Jolson 221 
 
 La Petite Adelaide 224 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 OUR true intent is all for your delight." 
 This line, from the halting prologue 
 of the Clown's Play in A Midsummer- 
 Night's Dream might well be taken for the 
 motto of Vaudeville. For it is ever the aim 
 of the Vaudeville performer to seek the 
 chord which shall evoke an answering vibra- 
 tion in his audience and to attune his offer- 
 ing in a key which, in spite of modulations 
 and varying harmonies, shall strike constant- 
 ly on that string. 
 
 The ability to recognize this answering vi- 
 bration seems to call into play a sort of sixth 
 sense, in response to which those whose "true 
 intent is all for our delight" evolve for them- 
 selves an individual technique to accentuate 
 the key in which they pitch their appeal. 
 Into the discovery of this keynote and the 
 creation of the technique it is inevitable that 
 
 9 
 
10 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 there will enter something of that mysteri- 
 ous quality which we call Art. 
 
 So little time is allowed to each performer 
 that their appeal is necessarily frankly di- 
 rect. It hides itself behind no subtleties but 
 is personal and unashamed. It looks its 
 audience straight in the face and says, in 
 effect, "Look at ME! I am going to as- 
 tonish you!" It makes no claim to aloof- 
 ness or impersonality, but comes right down 
 to the f ootlights and faces the crowd and 
 tells it "All for your Delight We are — 
 here." 
 
 I was witnessing once a performance in 
 Vaudeville, in which one of the turns was a 
 little one act comedy by an actor of consid- 
 erable repute on the legitimate stage. I am 
 not going to tell his name though most of 
 you would know it if I did. Behind me sat 
 two young ladies, one of whom evinced her 
 familiarity with the various turns by a run- 
 ning commentary on the age or novelty of 
 each act and comparisons of it with other 
 turns by the same performers ; by explana- 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 tions of what was coming and a narration 
 of personal details concerning the perform- 
 ers of the nature that find their way into 
 the "theatrical notes" of the daily papers. 
 When it came to the turn of the aforesaid 
 actor the following conversation took place : 
 
 "D'ye know this one, Mame?" 
 
 "No, but I heard of him starrin' in high- 
 brow stuff on Broadway." 
 
 "What did he quit for?" 
 
 "Search me!" 
 
 The comedy began and the actor made his 
 appearance, absorbed in his part, taking no 
 apparent notice of his audience. The com- 
 ment behind me was resumed. 
 
 "Well! he certainly is a bum actor. See 
 him turn his back on the audience!" 
 
 "Seems to be actin' to himself, don't 
 he?" 
 
 "H'm, guess that's why he had to leave 
 Broadway." 
 
 The play continued. As the interest de- 
 veloped the conversation languished some- 
 what but presently I heard a loud whisper: 
 
12 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 "Say, he does make it seem sort of real, 
 don't he?" 
 
 "Yes, but he don't act." 
 
 "Aw! but it's sort of real, ain't it?" 
 
 The climax found both ladies too absorbed 
 to talk, but after the curtain fell on the third 
 or fourth recall the final verdict was ren- 
 dered. 
 
 "It did seem sort of real, but he ain't got 
 no manners. I guess that's why he had to 
 quit Broadway." 
 
 It was evidently the frank, personal ap- 
 peal that these ladies missed, and the imper- 
 sonal response to his curtain calls was the 
 last straw that caused their resentment. 
 
 To provide true delight for a vaudeville 
 audience you must have as a provoking cause 
 some achievement apparently greater than 
 that of the individuals in the audience. If 
 the medium of the appeal be daring, the risk 
 must be greater — or appear to be — than the 
 man in front would care to face. If humor 
 be the medium, not a single line must miss 
 fire. If it be vulgarity, it will be grosser 
 than the audience, as individuals, would 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 stand for. If it be skill, it must be proved 
 as you watch it. You could never amuse 
 an audience by displaying to it a specimen 
 of skilful and minute engraving, the result 
 of many years of toil. But let them see 
 a cartoonist dash off a rough sketch in a 
 few lines made before their eyes and he has 
 secured their delight. In every case the ef- 
 fect must be vivid, instantaneous and un- 
 mistakable. 
 
 It is a very catholic and hospitable en- 
 tertainment, embracing more forms of 
 amusement than we could enumerate, this 
 that we now call Vaudeville. Its name has 
 little connection with its actual purpose and 
 is only the latest of a long line of aliases, 
 and not particularly appropriate at that. 
 For the word owes its origin to a little 
 French village in Normandy in the valley 
 of the river Vire, named Vaudevire or Val- 
 de-vire. Here lived, in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, one Olivier Bassel or Basselin, a poet, 
 the composer of convivial songs, which be- 
 came popular and were sung by the common 
 
14 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 people, and introduced into plays and en- 
 tertainments. The name was thus given to 
 all such songs, and later to the entertain- 
 ments into which they were introduced. Dr. 
 Johnson alludes to Vaudeville as a species 
 of comic opera, or dialogue interspersed with 
 lively songs. The songs were often Rabe- 
 laisian in their frankness or cutting in their 
 satire, but this was in accordance with the 
 age in which they flourished. Just why the 
 name has superseded the older one of 
 "Varieties" I do not know. 
 
 But under its various names and in every 
 clime this form of entertainment has flour- 
 ished. The Indian Fakir, the Turkish 
 Story Teller, the Egyptian Snake Charmer, 
 the Japanese Wrestler, the plaintive mando- 
 lin-accompanied ditties of the Cingalese, 
 each makes appeal for the delight of the 
 audience. 
 
 Here are some of its aliases : the Oriental 
 Bazaar; the Village Fair of Merrie Eng- 
 land; the Cafe Chantant of France, where 
 originally performers and audience were all 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 one; the old English Music Hall, with its 
 master of ceremonies, announcing with a 
 blow from his mallet: "The next number on 
 our programme, gentlemen," and advising 
 "Order your drinks, ladies and gentlemen"; 
 the old Museum of this country with its 
 freaks and monsters and "educational fea- 
 tures" as additional attractions ; and later the 
 Variety Theatres where many of our present 
 favorites passed their apprenticeship. 
 
 It was only in comparatively recent years 
 that the management of these entertain- 
 ments sought to make of them places of 
 harmless amusement and recreation for all 
 classes of society, to which women and chil- 
 dren might go unescorted without fear. The 
 man who frequented the old English Music 
 Hall did not take his wife or mother or 
 sister. 
 
 Watch the audience trooping into a New 
 York Vaudeville house. There is no more 
 democratic crowd to be seen anywhere. It 
 differs from a theatre audience in the fact 
 
16 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 that usually more than half is composed of 
 men. There are many reasons for this. One 
 of them is the permission to smoke in parts 
 of the house. Another is the familiar cry of 
 the "tired business man" who doesn't want 
 to be asked to think, or even to keep his mind 
 continually on one set of characters. It is 
 something of a mental effort to watch the 
 development of a play that lasts the whole 
 evening. Then there are many men who 
 dislike continual conversation. I suppose 
 no women object to this. 
 
 An excuse once offered to me by an habi- 
 tue of the Vaudeville for preferring that 
 form of entertainment to a play was that, 
 in Vaudeville, if one turn be bad you al- 
 ways hope that the next will be good ; where- 
 as in a play, if the first act be bad, you know 
 that the rest will continue to grow worse. 
 
 Anyhow, men of all degrees come troop- 
 ing in; some alone, some in batches, and 
 some accompanied by women, or more often 
 by one woman, wherein again is a difference 
 from the theatre-going party. Meanwhile 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 at the Matinee women will arrive alone and 
 in parties, especially at the uptown houses 
 or in Brooklyn. There is a large proportion 
 of non-New Yorkers, men in town on busi- 
 ness trips, college boys come up for a lark, 
 business men with an hour to spare before 
 an appointment. I sat one afternoon in 
 front of a group of well-built, upstanding 
 young Irishmen whose conversation seemed 
 to prove them to be police officers off duty. 
 They discussed politics discreetly without 
 naming names, especial interest being shown 
 in the sins of omission and commission of 
 one "John" to whom "the organization" had 
 shown some favor, though he was voted "too 
 stand offish, never goes around with the 
 boys." One of the group was escorting a 
 lady and only when "John" failed as a topic 
 of conversation did he introduce her to his 
 companions with the suave : "Have you meet 
 my lady friend," and the conversation was 
 adapted to suit her range of ideas. 
 
 On another visit I sat next to two dear 
 little old Brooklyn ladies who were delighted 
 
18 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 with the audacities of Gertrude Vanderbilt, 
 because she "looked so like dear Eloise." On 
 the other hand they declared a visiting Eng- 
 lish singer to be a "perfectly odious person. 
 She distorts herself in such an unwomanly 
 way." 
 
 Now, betwixt these contrasting elements 
 — and the extremes are even greater than the 
 two I have named — the programme must fill 
 in the breach. There must be something for 
 every one and, though the fastidious may 
 be a little shocked (the fastidious rather like 
 to be shocked sometimes), they must not be 
 offended, while the seeker for thrills must 
 on no account be bored by too much 
 mildness. 
 
 It is, therefore, no easy task which con- 
 fronts the manager. And added to his other 
 worries is a demon of which he lives in fear. 
 He seeks it out in every act. He gazes sus- 
 piciously at every visitor for fear the latter 
 has it concealed somewhere. I do not know, 
 but I strongly suspect him of holding a cere- 
 mony of exorcism every Monday morning, 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 sprinkling every crevice and cranny, every 
 bit of scenery, every prop, "sealing unto him- 
 self" against its baleful influence every 
 sceneshifter, limelight man and orchestra 
 leader, and even then being worried and 
 haunted with dread of it. 
 
 And the name of this hideous demon — its 
 dreaded name — is Highbrow! Of course it 
 never has intruded. Occasionally some her- 
 etic manager has dared to take a chance 
 and allow a suspect to appear on his boards. 
 If the venture succeeded, we know for cer- 
 tain that it was free from the taint. For it 
 is the first law of the cult of Vaudeville that 
 "Highbrow Stuff Never Pays." 
 
 With memories of Sarah Bernhardt still in 
 our minds, we may doubt this theory. High- 
 brows have been known to claim kinship with 
 her and with others who have appeared in 
 Vaudeville. But NO! These cannot be 
 Highbrow. These are Successes, and as 
 such appeal to ordinary human beings. But 
 the World moves, and sometimes a curious 
 tremor indicates that even the firm-rooted 
 
20 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 prejudice against the Highbrow is being 
 shaken by a suspicion that perhaps, after 
 all, he too is a human being and appeals to 
 other human beings. 
 
 Let us look again at our audience. There 
 it sits, waiting for the show to begin, good- 
 natured, eager to be amused, willing to ac- 
 cept its entertainers at their own valuation 
 just so long as they are amused. It will ap- 
 plaud faintly even an unpopular turn from 
 pure unwillingness to be hypercritical, but 
 its genuine appreciation is unmistakable. I 
 am not referring to "tryouts" or "amateur 
 nights," where the baiting of the performer 
 is as much a part of the show as the slaughter 
 of horses at a bull fight. Those are an- 
 other story. But I have frequently heard 
 people speak slightingly of a performance 
 and then applaud at its close from pure 
 goodwill to the performer. 
 
 "What are you applauding for, you said 
 it was a poor turn?" I once heard a woman 
 ask of her escort, who had indeed condemned 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 the act as "rotten." But he replied good- 
 naturedly 
 
 "Oh, well! He's got his bread and butter 
 to earn like the rest of us." 
 
 But the manager knows that, good-na- 
 tured and tolerant as the audience seems, its 
 patience would soon be exhausted if he al- 
 lowed it to be abused. It would make very 
 little open demonstration, but it would cease 
 to frequent his house, regardless of the 
 fact that he too has his bread and butter 
 to earn. 
 
 It is that feeling of good-fellowship that 
 makes the audience love to be on confidential 
 terms with the performer, to be treated as 
 an intimate. It loves to have the actor step 
 out of his part and speak of his dressing- 
 room, or hint at his salary, or flourish a 
 make-up towel. There are no secrets, no re- 
 serves between them, they know each other 
 as man and man — or they think they do. 
 For the actor has studied the little weak- 
 nesses of his audience, and plays up to them. 
 
 For he knows that, above all things, the 
 
22 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 audience is there to laugh. Give it an ex- 
 cuse for that, and it is his. It will seize any 
 excuse to indulge in this, its favorite pas- 
 time, and, if it may not laugh with you, it 
 will need very little to make it laugh at you. 
 The slightest contretemps in the perform- 
 ance, and your audience is in a gale. The 
 unexpected appearance of a cat on the stage 
 and every chance of seriousness is gone. 
 Even when laughter was intended, I have 
 heard a queerly pitched laugh from the au- 
 dience attract the amusement of the house 
 'from the performer to itself and almost 
 break up the show. 
 
 But there are performers to whom these 
 interruptions would be well-nigh impossi- 
 ble. They dominate their audience and hold 
 them enthralled under their spell. They 
 have learned, either by experience or instinct, 
 so exactly the key in which to pitch their 
 appeal, in order to evoke that answering 
 vibration from their audience, that they can 
 sound it at will, modulate it into what har- 
 monies and expression they please, and ever 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 be sure of the response. Let us watch some 
 of them as they do it, and try to catch a hint 
 of their methods, and possibly analyze the 
 reason of our response. 
 
 The show is about to begin. The orches- 
 tra leader is in his place, tapping with his 
 baton the call to attention. The music starts, 
 the curtain rises. 
 
 "The actors are at hand and by their show 
 you shall know all that you are like to 
 know." 
 
EVA TANGUAY 
 
VAUDEVILLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Force of Personality 
 
 A CHARACTERISTIC Vaudeville 
 turn, and one dear to the heart of 
 every true Vaudevillian, is that of the Song 
 and Dance artist. He or she, for the turn 
 may include either or both, seems to be the 
 epitome of Vaudeville. The audience may 
 be forced into admiration by the superb act- 
 ing of a Bernhardt or the dancing of Ruth 
 St. Denis, but it never loses consciousness 
 that these are exotics, who demand a certain 
 readjustment of its point of view. But it 
 settles back into its seat with comfortable, 
 confidential good humor when one of its 
 own song and dance artists approaches it 
 with the direct, familiar appeal of this child 
 of its own creation. It knows for a cer- 
 25 
 
26 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 tainty when it may laugh and when it may 
 sigh, and it may be asked to do both in one 
 breath: but the appeal will not be puzzlingly 
 subtle or rarefied, nor will it leave any doubt 
 as to just how one should feel about it. The 
 only elusive quality in these turns is that ever 
 interesting one of personality and on this 
 each song and dance artist founds his in- 
 dividual edifice. 
 
 For at first glance the special favor for 
 this or that artist may seem to be a mys- 
 tery. Here is one whose voice is meagre 
 and whose dancing is negligible. Yet her 
 appearance is greeted with salvos of ap- 
 plause; while another, with pretty face, 
 graceful dancing and sweet singing voice, 
 attracts but languid approval. But as we 
 become better acquainted with the methods 
 and appeal of the different artists we find 
 it is ever the strong personality and the 
 ability to get it across the footlights and 
 impress it upon the audience that distinguish 
 the popular performer. And the ability to 
 do this, quite as much as the ability to sing 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 27 
 
 or dance, is a matter of special study and 
 watchful experience. Of course it looks 
 easy and natural, as if it were no effort; 
 but when you see the same turn given by the 
 same artist two or three times you become 
 aware of how little that is effective is left 
 to chance, even in what seem like impromptu 
 effects. That genial familiarity, that confid- 
 ing smile which seems to break out so spon- 
 taneously, the casual entrance and glance 
 round the audience — all have been nicely 
 calculated and their effect registered, but 
 with the artist's sympathy which informs 
 each with the spirit of the occasion and robs 
 it of mechanical artifice. 
 
 Let us look at the performances of two 
 or three of those who have created a me- 
 dium of their own, whose appeal has that 
 originality which for want of a better name 
 we must call genius. 
 
 A singer, yes — She can dance too, if need 
 be, but never mind that, it is the singing in 
 her case that counts — Miss Nora Bayes. A 
 figure, slight, almost fragile, but suggest- 
 
28 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 ing graceful curves. The arms from neck 
 to finger-tips, the outline of the eyelids, the 
 poise of the head, the line from neck to feet, 
 all are drooping curves, very pliant and ever 
 changing. Is there such a thing as sparkling 
 languor? If there is, she has it. She greets 
 the audience with a slow, sideway glance 
 that seems to sweep, curving out from her 
 eyes over her face. Then a flash of teeth 
 and dimples, and again the face is almost 
 serious, with a little wist fulness, as though 
 she would hate to think that you might not 
 like her. Now she turns again with sudden 
 glance, to see if you caught the curving 
 smile which followed the signs of your ap- 
 proval. 
 
 Her song is given so simply and naturally 
 that it is hard to catch the artifice of it. 
 There is a roguish sense of humor which 
 brightens the eyes and curves the lips and 
 sensitive little nostrils in a flashing smile, 
 never straight at the audience, but sideways, 
 with an archness which flatters you that she 
 is confident you can see the humor as well 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 29 
 
 as she can. And, withal, there are a certain 
 delicacy and gentleness about her which 
 makes you want to meet her halfway. She 
 needs no boisterous energy; you do not wish 
 that she should have to work too hard for 
 you. She can emphasize a point by a sly 
 glance or a piquant moue, far better than 
 by loudness or force. Her singing of 
 "Kelly," one of the best of her songs in re- 
 cent years and Irish through and through, 
 had no particular energy or forcefulness,but 
 was even a little deprecating in its sauciness. 
 There is something in the quality of her 
 voice that suggests what Kipling calls the 
 "throaty sob," and it is not entirely absent 
 even in her merriest moments. It is gen- 
 uinely Irish, characteristic of the nation 
 which is merry in its fighting and saddest in 
 its songs. 
 
 A&> Afc >fl% «jfc Afc Afc jig, 
 
 Now let us turn to an artist of the Dance 
 and Song with the emphasis decidedly on 
 the Dance — Gertrude Vanderbilt. 
 
 Whatever nationality may claim her de- 
 
30 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 scent, Gertrude Vanderbilt may fairly be 
 admitted to be a typical American girl. The 
 long straight limbs, alert and yet a little 
 drooping in their lines; the free and un- 
 afraid carriage of the head ; the arms rather 
 long in proportion; the shoulders a trifle 
 broad and carried erect, — all these may be 
 duplicated many times any fine winter after- 
 noon on Fifth Avenue or the main thorough- 
 fare of almost any city in the Union. And 
 not only in physical makeup but in the spirit 
 of her performance we find the epitome of 
 much that characterizes the American girl. 
 For she is in high spirits, carried along by 
 a flood of youth and energy that makes for 
 the joy of life. And added to this are a natu- 
 ral grace and the audacity that comes from 
 never having met with defeat. Difficulties 
 she may have encountered, yet one is con- 
 vinced that they proved but a source of stim- 
 ulation and were eventually overcome. So 
 now she faces you with laughing cordiality, 
 pleased that you are pleased with her, but 
 never doubting for a moment that you 
 
r>K5^s ^ 
 
 GERTRUDE VANDERBILT 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 31 
 
 would be. She sings with frank, unpreten- 
 tious simplicity, not over-anxious to make 
 points but by no means without a sense of 
 humor. And then she dances and all the 
 world seems young. So gay, so happy, so 
 pleased with herself and with everything 
 else that her good humor is infectious ! The 
 long limbs are compact of suppleness and 
 agility, and swirl in quite surprising orbits. 
 The sinuous figure bends and turns and 
 skims over the ground, bounding with long, 
 boyish strides, carefree, laughing, joyous. 
 
 She is appearing with her clever partner, 
 George Moore. Perhaps it is their little 
 burlesque melodrama, "The Villain still 
 Pursued her." And the villain glides and 
 grasps and stealthily approaches with truly 
 villainous intensity, the grotesque angles of 
 his limbs and their jerky movements full of 
 dramatic drollery. And the lady flits with 
 playful elusiveness around him, fully en- 
 joying the fun and entering into it with 
 dash and vigor, laughing at the absurdity of 
 the thing just as frankly as the audience 
 
32 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 does. When they dance together it is as a 
 happy boy and girl having a good time. 
 She is breezy, daring and buoyant, but free 
 from coquetry or conscious allurement. As 
 he whirls her round in a mad, headlong spin, 
 she laughs from sheer love of the dare-devil 
 adventure of it, assured of her own cool- 
 headed poise, while he accepts her audacities 
 in the spirit of frank camaraderie. The 
 technical achievement of their dance is by no 
 means extraordinary, but it is easy, graceful 
 and very nonchalant, amused with itself as 
 well as happy to amuse others. Laughing, 
 romping, swirling youth; they seem to be 
 just old enough to know that they are young. 
 No wonder that even the most staid among 
 their audience feel a glow of sympathy for 
 these happy young people in whom they 
 recognise an echo of the gaiety and irrespon- 
 sibility of eternal youth. 
 
 ******* 
 
 And what is this long-legged, sauntering 
 creature who lolls on to the stage, too bored 
 and supercilious to greet the audience with 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 33 
 
 anything but a stare of surprise at their 
 "queerness"? It is Laddie Cliff, he of the 
 wonderful legs and abnormally vacant coun- 
 tenance. Some almost imperceptible sign, a 
 twitch of the eyebrow, a turn of the head, 
 and the audience are made aware that he 
 is as conscious as they of the ludicrousness 
 of his silliness. Otherwise, so absolutely is 
 he absorbed in his impersonation, that the 
 contemptuous surprise of his regard would 
 be intolerable. He regards all those peo- 
 ple out there as such extraordinary crea- 
 tures, don't cher know? And he relates with 
 the baldest self-complacency the amazement 
 that his own eccentricities have created in 
 others. The fragile legs seem scarcely able 
 to support the languid body and really to 
 need the assistance of the stout walking stick. 
 In a voice high-pitched and querulous he 
 recounts the lack of appreciation shown by 
 a vulgar world or makes a few cynical ob- 
 servations on life in general. And yet, de- 
 spite self-complacency and cynicism, there is 
 nothing ill-humored about this callow philos- 
 
34 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 opher, who retains some of the illusions of 
 youth in spite of the would-be worldliness 
 displayed either as the Eton schoolboy or 
 the very young man-about-town. His catch- 
 words of commonplace phrases, with their 
 unexpected twists of meaning, set you 
 laughing with him as well as at him. 
 
 And while you are laughing, the strange, 
 pipestem legs begin to twinkle and cavort 
 in the most astonishing convolutions. The 
 seemingly languid body sways in unison, 
 while the sharp-featured, vacant face 
 watches in amazed disapproval, which con- 
 stantly jerks the limbs out of the rhythm of 
 equilibrium and throws them into impossible 
 attitudes and angles, from which predica- 
 ments they extricate themselves with agile 
 dexterity and continue their capers. This 
 way, that way, they fly ; feet soaring to weird 
 heights, seemingly far higher than anatomy 
 allows. And the disapproving face calls 
 them down with the suddenness of a mother 
 catching her offspring stealing jam from 
 the top shelf of the pantry. Then to show 
 
LADDIE CLIFF 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 35 
 
 that theirs is no guilty conscience, up they 
 fly again, those gay, irresponsible legs. It's 
 just a little way they have, so please excuse 
 them, the face seems to say. And thus it 
 continues, the face apparently surprised and 
 apologetic for the unconventionalities of 
 those anatomy- and gravitation-defying 
 legs. 
 
 Laddie Cliff's songs are slight. Possibly, 
 sung by any one else, they would amount 
 to nothing out of the ordinary. But given 
 with his mixture of cunning and simplicity 
 there is not one that does not hit the bull's 
 eye of humor, in spite of the English of 
 it. 
 
 Now, having looked at one artist who 
 sings more than she dances ; at another who 
 dances better than she sings; and at a man 
 who both sings and dances, let us look at 
 another, a very puzzling enigma and a con- 
 tradiction of every preconceived notion that 
 we may have as to what constitutes a suc- 
 cessful entertainer. A Song and Dance 
 
36 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 Artist who does not dance, cannot sing, is 
 not beautiful, witty or graceful, but who 
 dominates her audience more entirely than 
 anyone on the Vaudeville stage — Eva Tan- 
 guay! 
 
 How shall we account for the almost 
 breathless intensity with which the audience 
 awaits her entrance? We suddenly find that 
 every one is sitting up, straight and eager. 
 The orchestra is playing with new vim. The 
 instruments seem sharper and louder. The 
 very lights appear to burn brighter, so tense 
 is the atmosphere of expectancy. What is 
 this noise that breaks on our ears? A loud 
 chattering voice, high-pitched, strident, vol- 
 uble. Look! Here she comes, with quick, 
 fluttering steps and restless outstretched 
 hands, a dynamic personality all nerves and 
 excitement. 
 
 The first thing that strikes you in her 
 appearance is the trim, alert figure, held so 
 tense and straight that energy exudes from 
 it. Then your eye is arrested by the wild 
 mop of stiff, tousled blonde hair, which 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 37 
 
 seems so charged with electric vigor that no 
 amount of combing or brushing could alter 
 its assertive unruliness. It seems as if the 
 exuberance of her intense vitality radiates 
 through this raffish aureole, setting the sur- 
 rounding atmosphere agog with vivacity. 
 
 Presently, you notice the saucy, broad, 
 good-humored face, with large, smiling 
 mouth and pertly turned-up nose. The eyes 
 are small and impudent and snap and 
 sparkle as though they were black, but I 
 strongly suspect that they are really blue. 
 Every inch of her from the topmost spike 
 of yellow hair to the tip of her never-rest- 
 ing toe is alive, nervous, vital. 
 
 The whirlwind of sound and the patter 
 of restless, aimlessly pacing feet continue in- 
 cessantly. The voice has no music in it. 
 It emphatically and unhurriedly retails its 
 self-centred chantings or it shrieks against 
 the full blare of the orchestra and mightily 
 prevails. The steps make no attempt at 
 rhythmic movement. Sometimes they prance 
 in gleeful abandon with a wide fling; but 
 
38 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 the greater part of the time it is patter, pat- 
 ter, patter, first in this direction, then in 
 that, back and forth, up and down, nowhere 
 in particular, turning sharply in the mid- 
 dle of a step to go in the opposite direction 
 — just the undirected romping of a healthy, 
 restless child. 
 
 And naively, childishly, self-conscious are 
 her songs — if one can call them songs. Mere 
 recitation of her own eccentricities, her ex- 
 travagances, her defiance of all conventions, 
 with a refrain of "I don't care," phrased in 
 one way or other, forms the topic. There 
 is no appeal in her attitude toward her pub- 
 lic, just a saucy, impudent grin. "I don't 
 care" she seems to say; "this is my stunt — 
 like it or not, it's fun to do it, so I don't 
 care!" And the audience likes it. 
 
 Why? Well, I have tried very hard to find 
 out, even to the extent of questioning my 
 neighbors. The replies I have received 
 have not been very illuminating. "She is 
 different," said one. That is true, but is that 
 enough? "She is so clever," said another. 
 
JEFFERSON d'aNGELIS 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 39 
 
 To my further question, "In what way?" 
 there was no satisfactory reply. "She is so 
 happy," was another suggestion, but watch- 
 ing closely I was not convinced. Exuberant 
 vitality, excitement, and self-assertiveness — 
 yes, all these in abundance, but happiness? 
 No, she only "makes a noise like it." 
 
 I wonder if the secret, after all, is that she 
 is the epitome of that strong force of mod- 
 ern civilization — advertising. It is more 
 than the press-agent's work, though that 
 has been very well done. We have come, 
 already impressed by the amount of her sal- 
 ary, her continual engagements, her popu- 
 larity. But she herself tells us and keeps 
 on telling us how extraordinary she is, how 
 successful, how unassailable by criticism and 
 how popular. Again and again we are re- 
 minded that money is flowing in on her. 
 Again and again we are informed that she 
 is unique. And this reiteration, so forcibly 
 and believingly uttered, with an assurance 
 that we really are interested, hypnotizes us 
 into a belief that we are. The public likes 
 
40 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 it, it is the secret of the success of advertis- 
 ing and here is that success embodied. 
 
 It must be admitted that she is good ad- 
 vertising material. She has vivacity that 
 impresses her audience as spontaneous; as- 
 surance that looks like conviction and a good 
 humor that passes for frankness, while per- 
 sonality and vitality she has in abundance. 
 These form foundation enough on which to 
 raise a perfect sky-scraper of illusion at 
 which every passer-by will gape and about 
 which the man in the street will glibly quote 
 any information put into his mouth by an 
 interested exploiter, proud to be familiar 
 with so audacious an enterprise. "Make 'em 
 talk, make 'em laugh!" Behold the end de- 
 sired by the cult of self — Advertisement! 
 
 It is when a concrete accomplishment is 
 attempted that you discover how flimsy is 
 the edifice. In the so-called "Salome" we 
 look in vain for any expression of even the 
 most elemental of the passions of that grim 
 drama. For the abandon of the dance we 
 see only the exuberant prancings of a gig- 
 
FORCE OF PERSONALITY 41 
 
 gling girl. Her horror at the reanimation 
 of the head of the murdered prophet has 
 no more of awe in it than has the hysterical 
 shrieking of a servant maid, alarmed by a 
 mouse. 
 
 The best act that I have seen Eva Tan- 
 guay do was one which introduced two droll 
 little baby boys. There was a touch of 
 genius in that. For they are not seraphic, 
 angel-faced infants, but homely little tow- 
 headed tykes, full of the very mischief, 
 who go through their burlesque of her 
 with gusto and spar at each other at its 
 close as joyously and whole-heartedly as 
 is the nature of all vigorous self-asser- 
 tive young animals. And in her attitude 
 toward them there is no sentimentality or 
 mawkishness, but a wholesome, breezy fel- 
 lowship, kindly and good-hearted. 
 
 Yet the fact remains that what the audi- 
 ence expects from her is energy, not art, 
 and this is all that she lays claim to. She 
 is an enigma hard to solve. Either she is 
 the Circe of the Force of Advertising, in- 
 
42 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 toxicating her admirers with the exuberance 
 of her own verbosity. Or else she has in- 
 deed caught something of the elemental 
 dynamic buoyancy that enables mankind to 
 over-ride disaster and, having caught it, is 
 radiating it upon a nerve- wracked world. 
 Anyway, she is an Enigma. 
 
 
NORA BAYES 
 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Appeal of Character Study 
 
 EVERYONE of us prides him- or her- 
 self on being a student of human na- 
 ture. We like to discover little traits and 
 foibles in our fellows and to believe that, 
 unless they are totally depraved and wrong- 
 headed, we can understand them and make 
 allowance for their "queerness." So the por- 
 trayer of character who will show to us 
 types sufficiently unusual to pique our in- 
 terest and curiosity, but human enough for 
 us to recognize the essential characteristics 
 not only amuses us with his emphasis on 
 the humor of his study but flatters us by 
 making us feel how thoroughly we under- 
 stand human nature. 
 
 Of course we don't, not even the wisest 
 of us. We understand a few essentials, com- 
 
 4a 
 
44 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 mon to the average of humanity, and are 
 amused at the strong strokes with which the 
 portrayer sketches in the individualities. At 
 the best we translate what we observe 
 through the medium of our own dispositions, 
 all of which differ, so that at the same per- 
 formance we are all receiving different im- 
 pressions, and that is as near understanding 
 as we can hope to get. Usually the por- 
 trayer must exaggerate the peculiarities or 
 we should miss their significance, just as 
 we are continually missing the significance 
 of individual traits in real life. 
 
 The great portrayers of character in lit- 
 erature, such as Balzac and Dickens, knew 
 this and knew, too, how to call our imagina- 
 tion into play to fill in the outlines left blank 
 or only faintly indicated. Consequently 
 we feel that the characters they portray are 
 as familiar to us as our own personal friends, 
 if not more so. Similarly, on the stage, the 
 character-comedian presents his types with 
 a few bold strokes that stimulate our imagi- 
 nation, and an extra emphasis on certain pe- 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 45 
 
 culiarities that do not necessarily distort but 
 make larger and more distinct the features 
 they wish to portray. The effect is not un- 
 like those photographs taken at Coney 
 Island, in which the head of the sitter is 
 printed about four times larger in propor- 
 tion to the body, but the likeness is unal- 
 tered. 
 
 The characterizations of both Albert Che- 
 valier and Harry Lauder are emphasized in 
 this manner. The salient traits of their sub- 
 jects are made larger and more perceptible 
 but never wilfully distorted. The humor- 
 ous appeal comes by an enforcing of native 
 peculiarities, not by inventing absurdities. 
 
 It is a long time since Albert Chevalier 
 first introduced to us his London Coster. 
 We had not known the type on this side of 
 the Atlantic; and, truly, I believe that be- 
 fore the day of Chevalier very few British- 
 ers were really familiar with this strongly 
 individualized clan living in the very heart 
 of their metropolis. For he is not an ordi- 
 nary cockney, this coster with his quaint 
 
46 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 costume and ready wit. His clan lives apart 
 from their neighbors. He "keeps hisself 
 to hisself" as he would tell you, marries the 
 sister or daughter of a fellow coster and has 
 his social set, distinct and separate as the 
 caste of a Hindoo. He differs somewhat in 
 appearance from the ordinary cockney. His 
 features are more strongly modeled ; and his 
 body, though smaller, is more strongly knit. 
 His tongue is fully as glib but his vernacular 
 is peculiarly his own and of a pungency 
 not always acceptable to outsiders. I speak 
 in the present tense, but they tell me he is 
 no longer found on 'Empstead 'eath on 
 Bank 'olidy," in his smart square-cut coat of 
 smooth cloth with velveteen collar, cuffs and 
 pocket flaps; his flaring "trousies" and rows 
 and rows of "pearlies," twinkling up and 
 down his person; his low-crowned "bowler" 
 or his cloth cap adorning the head of his 
 "donna," while her feather-bedecked head- 
 dress flaunts on his own close-cut poll. I 
 even hear that no longer does he drive his 
 "moke" to Epsom to view the classic Derby, 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 47 
 
 with his Missis by his side in her regulation 
 plumed hat, proud and independent as the 
 occupant of the smartest equipage on the 
 hillside. I am glad I saw him in his prime, 
 with his holiday wreath of cut paper of 
 gaudy color round his hat ; I am glad, if only 
 because when I hear Chevalier in his coster 
 songs I feel even more sure than most peo- 
 ple that I can understand. But I suppose 
 that seventy-five per cent, of the audience 
 feels just the same way. 
 
 For Chevalier places him there before 
 us, a vital human creature, rich in diversi- 
 ties of humor and pathos and sentiment, 
 alive and convincing. What a glorious as- 
 surance there is in his whole demeanor! 
 What a swagger in that long, darting 
 stride! His voice, coarse and vibrant with 
 the cockney twang, at times can soften to 
 melting, shamefaced tenderness and pride, as 
 he teUs us of "My Old Dutch" or the "Lit- 
 tle Nipper." He has supplied the sugges- 
 tive outline of a picture of rude interiors, 
 rich in hearty human feeling, and our imagi- 
 
48 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 nation fills in the details to whatever extent 
 we choose and the wife and little son are 
 as real as if they stood before us on the 
 stage. 
 
 Then see him, as with jaunty, imperturb- 
 able good temper and humorous apprecia- 
 tion, he describes how he "Knocked 'em in 
 the Old Kent Road," or pays his tribute to 
 Mrs. "Enery 'Awkins!" Every line of his 
 body responds to the varying sentiments. 
 The cock of the head, the square of the el- 
 bows, the raised shoulders, the foot thrust 
 forward, heel down, toes elevated in his ag- 
 gressive moments, the explanatory flirt of 
 the thumb in this direction or that, the dig- 
 nified but angular carriage in his tender 
 moments. What pictures they all make! 
 Ever there are a frankness and sincerity 
 about him, and impulsiveness and simple- 
 ness of motive. And then, when from sheer 
 gladness and jubilation he can express him- 
 self no other way, he breaks into a double 
 shuffle, and heels and toe beat a tattoo, light 
 and rapid as the roll of a kettle drum, while 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 49 
 
 head and hand perform humorous gestures 
 of their own. Or else, he takes his hat from 
 his head and with an impudent, comical ges- 
 ture, replaces it an amazing angle which 
 gives fresh grotesqueness to his figure; and 
 this he will do in half a dozen diif erent man- 
 ners, each with a distinct expression of its 
 own. 
 
 There are other pictures, too, a Chelsea 
 Pensioner, a broken down actor, an old 
 countryman, each one notable in its way but 
 none as vital and human or so distinctly a 
 creation as the coster. Chevalier has even 
 attempted the "legitimate drama," but his 
 performance, though creditable in itself, was 
 not what the public wants from him. He 
 has made us acquainted with this quaint 
 coster fellow and, if we set out with the hope 
 of meeting him, we are not content to be 
 put off with some one else, no matter how 
 worthy that someone else may be. And if 
 it is true that the genuine breed of this ur- 
 ban peasant is dying out, long may we have 
 
50 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 our Albert Chevalier to keep its memory 
 green. 
 
 In many respects Harry Lauder is akin to 
 Chevalier. They both work from the inner 
 nature to the outward expression of their 
 subject. They both represent the peasant — 
 shrewd with the native shrewdness not 
 taught in books; both have a philosophy 
 gained by experience not by study. But 
 Lauder's Scot has consciously summed up 
 his experience and has grown canny, while 
 Chevalier's coster is still much of a child of 
 impulse. 
 
 Probably, if you met Harry Lauder un- 
 known on the street, you might say that he 
 was too thick set and heavy featured to 
 make a good actor. But then, on the street 
 he would not be walking with that perky 
 strut and his eyes would not be twinkling 
 nor could you watch the slow crafty smile 
 wrinkling his nose as it spreads over his 
 face. If you have seen all this, there is 
 no longer any question of acting. For the 
 time being he is the character he interprets 
 
HARRY LAUDER 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 51 
 
 and his whole face and body are moulded 
 to the requirements of that character. 
 
 As Chevalier's peasant is a peasant of 
 the town, so Lauder's is essentially the peas- 
 ant of the country. Slow thinking, cau- 
 tious, deliberately studying those he comes 
 in contact with, a little self-conscious, watch- 
 ing the effect he is producing. He tells in 
 his broad Scottish accent of his waggeries, 
 but, even while he is convulsed at his own 
 pawky humor, he stops to give us a sharp 
 glance to make sure we are not laughing at 
 him instead of with him. He is careful to 
 explain that he is no "fule," whatever you 
 may take him for. He quite appreciates his 
 own value and don't you forget it. He struts 
 and preens himself, while he mentions as one 
 of the admirable points of his "Daisy" that 
 "She's very fond of Sandy." The jaunty 
 cock of his head shows that he thinks her 
 taste good in the matter for he is no end of 
 a fellow, this Sandy in his smart uniform, 
 with his little swagger stick. And he tells 
 you with a sly leer that he is a gay dog, the 
 
52 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 "pet o' all the slavies"; why! it's just terri- 
 ble the way he breaks hearts. Or he de- 
 scribes the wedding orgies with chuckling 
 reminiscence of the vagaries and antics in 
 which the usually hard-headed, hard-work- 
 ing guests indulged by the time they were 
 a "wee bit f oo\" Or with unctuous, baccha- 
 nalian fervor he descants on the virtues of 
 the "wee deoch-an-Doris." 
 
 Then there is that young scamp, the "saf t- 
 est o' the Family," with all his impish tricks 
 to take advantage of his title. He may be 
 an idle young scrapegrace, but how he seems 
 to lick his lips over the memory of his devil- 
 ments and then blinks at you over his big 
 nose, as if he were as innocent as a lamb, 
 so that you applaud his evil deeds and make 
 yourself accessory after the fact. 
 
 But the song of songs, with which Harry 
 Lauder never fails to win every heart in his 
 audience and which he is never excused, is 
 "I lo'e a lassie." He comes forward, this 
 solid, rather heavy- featured peasant, in his 
 kilt and plaid and bonnet, carrying a stick, 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 53 
 
 all coils and convolutions. But he is not 
 grotesque. There are a strength and hon- 
 esty about him, and a rugged simplicity of 
 manner. He begins to tell us, confidentially, 
 just because we look like good fellows that 
 he can talk to and he is bubbling over with 
 the joy of it. His face lights up with a 
 wide embracing smile ; the words come, halt- 
 ing and cautious at first, for he is not going 
 to tell us if we laugh. But soon he is pour- 
 ing out his whole heart, the words coming 
 softly, yet still slowly, as if there were a joy 
 in their utterance which he was loath to 
 hurry. He has told us his secret, and now 
 he runs back to see if "she" is approaching. 
 And how light and sure and poised is that 
 thickset frame when it is in motion! How 
 springy the step as he hurries forward to 
 tell us behind his hand that "she's comin'!" 
 As she trips in, his whole body is inflated 
 and glowing with pride ; and, indicating with 
 a wag of his head, he tells us "that's her." 
 It is such a fervent, loyal ecstasy, and the 
 honest fellow is so sure that we sympathize 
 
54 .VAUDEVILLE 
 
 and just a little envy him, that we are filled 
 with goodwill for him and his Scotch Blue- 
 bell. 
 
 He is so human and simple that we forget 
 the art of it. What has he done? There 
 was no supreme effort in it, no extraordi- 
 nary vocal effects. He only just sang a lit- 
 tle ballad in such a way as to make us for- 
 get we were one of a crowded audience of 
 miscellaneous individualities and set us 
 thinking of a stretch of heather-covered hill- 
 side and the throbbing heart of a man. 
 
 I have not said anything about his 
 dancing, and yet those heavy-looking limbs 
 can flicker and jig and fling with the light- 
 ness and poise of a premiere danseuse. And 
 always the dance belongs to the character 
 he is representing — perhaps that is why I 
 didn't mention it before. 
 
 If you doubt the fact that Harry Lauder 
 is an artist, take up any of his songs and 
 in cold blood read it through and try to im- 
 agine it sung by a "fairly good" comedian. 
 There is a very slight thread of idea strung 
 
MRS. BROWN POTTER 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 55 
 
 together as warp and it is the singer him- 
 self who supplies the woof which binds the 
 whole into the fabric which he spreads for 
 our delight. 
 
 There are, of course, many character 
 comedians, portraying in burlesque or gross- 
 ly caricatured sketches this or that type. But 
 there are not many who create an actual hu- 
 man character as do these two, Albert Che- 
 valier and Harry Lauder. There are in 
 my memory, however, at least two clean-cut 
 comedy characters portrayed by Lilian 
 Shaw, strongly contrasted and vividly por- 
 trayed. 
 
 The first was a slim, chic Parisienne, 
 dressed quietly but very much a la mode; 
 not a grisette and not quite an aristocrat. 
 For she had not the demureness of the 
 French girl who has always been chaper- 
 oned. In fact, there was something of the 
 hardness of the girl who consciously has 
 to look out for herself, knowing that her 
 action may provoke comment. A man ac- 
 costs her, she turns on him indignant at the 
 
56 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 outrage. But she shows that she is not taken 
 by surprise. In fact, she would have been 
 more surprised, if she had escaped atten- 
 tion, — she might even have been disappoint- 
 ed. But she must make it quite clear that 
 she is "Demoiselle tout a fait comme il f aut." 
 So she hurls voluble condemnation at the 
 offender, and with a toss of the head picks 
 her way daintily away from him; not, how- 
 ever, without a quick backward dart of the 
 eye to be sure that he has lost none of the 
 impressiveness of her rebuke. 
 
 The next picture was a tired, bedraggled 
 young German mother, struggling with that 
 misfit period when the responsibilities of a 
 growing family rob her of her youthful 
 rights to the fun and frolic and prettiness 
 for which she still longs. She comes in with 
 her baby carriage. She is conscientiously 
 clean and mended and patched in all her be- 
 longings, but with no vestige of the comely 
 prettiness which doubtless captivated her 
 Fritz in the days when she went with him 
 to dances. Her hair is flattened down, 
 
YVETTE GUILBERT 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 57 
 
 smooth and tight; her shabby, faded shirt- 
 waist rather badly ironed ; her shoes, old and 
 patched and clumsy. She sits near the baby 
 carriage and regrets the old days when she 
 used to put on her best clothes and go with 
 her Fritz. Now Fritz goes and she stays 
 at home and does all the thousand and one 
 jobs which her conscientious housewifery im- 
 poses on her, just as if she were not the same 
 pleasure-loving little soul she had been in 
 the days of her courtship. 
 
 It was all admirably realized in the few 
 verses of the song and in the tired energy 
 with which she fussed over the baby ; and the 
 quiet sense of humor was never lost, so that 
 the sketch did not stray into any sentimen- 
 tality. 
 
 In speaking of character interpretation 
 there is one name to which we must not fail 
 to pay tribute for wonderful impressionistic 
 sketches — that is the name of Yvette Guil- 
 bert. It is many years since she flashed 
 across our stage dazzling her audience by 
 the brilliancy of her work. Her methods 
 
58 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 were very individual and her sketches had 
 something of the character of those of the 
 modern cartoonist who suggests instead of 
 drawing many of his most vital lines. Her 
 personality was always puzzling and elusive. 
 She was retiring and yet daring. She was 
 chic and yet gauche. She was sophisticated 
 to the last degree and yet retained an aloof- 
 ness which was impregnable. 
 
 Who that ever saw her in her early days 
 can forget the curious impression that her 
 first appearance always created. The sur- 
 prise, the gasp of disappointment when the 
 audience first caught sight of this oddly 
 dressed, awkward, lounging figure. That 
 Yvette Guilbert, whom every one said was 
 so brilliant, so spirituelle? That long- 
 limbed, awkward creature who did not know 
 what to do with her thin arms? And then, 
 suddenly her whole personality was trans- 
 formed and became expressive — magnetic. 
 Her face showed an ever-changing picture, 
 illuminating and interpreting her songs — 
 those bitter-gay songs of the life of the un- 
 
 
CHARACTER STUDY 59 
 
 derworld of Paris. They were not pretty; 
 they were the songs of those who laugh to 
 hide even from themselves the despair of 
 their own hearts. Some of them were mock- 
 ing and impudent, as though the singer sang 
 to keep her courage up. Some were care- 
 less and ironic. But all of them throbbed 
 with life. They might be full of deviltry, 
 but they were human and made their lis- 
 teners aware of their vitality. 
 
 Later she changed all this. After an ab- 
 sence of some years she came back to us 
 singing songs, still vital and in touch with 
 life, but now it was the life of the French 
 peasant, of simple, religious folk who ac- 
 cept hardship as God's will. These songs 
 were as naive as the others had been sophis- 
 ticated. Christmas carols, cradle songs, old 
 ballads of the Saints. But into these too 
 she breathed the breath of life. And such 
 is the power of the soul to mould to its use 
 the body, that the long-limbed, keen- faced 
 singer of the streets seemed to transform 
 
60 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 herself into the likeness of the tranquil, 
 sturdy peasant. 
 
 In each of her studies she showed that 
 wonderful power of the artist to create for 
 you not only the actual characters and en- 
 vironments of the song itself, but to sug- 
 gest the relationship of these to life, to the 
 universe — which is the true realism. 
 
 It is in these later songs that she is fol- 
 lowing the true bent of her sympathies and 
 preferences. Keenly as she analyzed the 
 dwellers in the city, it is to the peasant that 
 her heart belongs. She interprets their quiet, 
 toilsome lives with the same breadth and 
 insight as did the great modern Dutch 
 painter, Israels, not spending time on the 
 representation of minute accessories but in- 
 tent on reproducing the human characteris- 
 tics and spiritual nature of the originals. 
 
MAGGIE CLINE 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Entertainer as a Craftsman 
 
 IN spite of differences of personality or 
 of the character they represent for the 
 moment, there are certain technical accom- 
 plishments which, consciously or instinctive- 
 ly, are used by every successful artist. We 
 have already spoken of directness and it is 
 hardly necessary to do more than mention 
 lucidity. The speech, however homely, must 
 be absolutely clear and unobscured. It must 
 be equally easy to hear and understand. 
 And the action must be just as concise. 
 
 There is another quality, however, of 
 which we become conscious only b^ degrees. 
 It is the feeling for rhythm — the sense which 
 indicates the exact timing and phrasing and 
 accent which are most expressive. The 
 rhythms vary; some performers command a 
 61 
 
62 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 large range of them while some employ only 
 a few. With some the rhythm is very 
 marked. One can feel distinctly the phras- 
 ing in speech and action. The pause — the 
 movement of the head or hand — the pacing 
 across the stage — we can feel how they are 
 timed and accented. This is especially the 
 case with some of the older school of per- 
 formers. But it is no less true of the 
 younger, though the effect is less marked; 
 for it is an essential of what is known as the 
 ability to "get it over." 
 
 Let us review, then, some of the work of 
 one whose reign as a Vaudeville favorite, 
 though long, shows as yet no sign of wan- 
 ing, and who is past mistress of this art — 
 Maggie Cline. 
 
 Of course when any one says "Maggie 
 Cline," everyone else answers "Throw him 
 down, McClusky." And certainly that great 
 and glorious Irish shindy is memorable for 
 its vigor, thoroughness and the rapturous 
 joy of the participants. I never did know 
 what it was all about, but would it be the 
 
THE ENTERTAINER 63 
 
 genuine article if I did? However, I know 
 that there was a broth of a boy in it who 
 was the cause of himself and everyone else 
 having the time of their lives ; that someone 
 was thrown down and among the lot of them 
 they made more noise than was ever before 
 heard outside of Donnybrook Fair. It 
 seems to take every available stage hand to 
 help to make that noise, and "then some." 
 And, when the whole-souled, high-spirited 
 daughter of Erin who was the prime insti- 
 gator of the shindy brings them all out on 
 to the stage to acknowledge the applause, 
 she treats them as her sons and brothers and 
 cousins and blarneys and chaffs them with- 
 out mercy, to the huge delight of the audi- 
 ence and her own chuckling amusement. 
 
 But this vigorous, rollicking jollity is not 
 the only notable quality of Maggie Cline's 
 work. Let me call your attention to the 
 clean-cut gestures, conveying the greatest 
 possible expression with the least possible 
 exertion; and also to the wonderful timing 
 of these gestures, so that with perfect natu- 
 
64 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 ralness they group themselves into phrases, 
 as it were, culminating in an emphasis as 
 rhythmically adjusted as the accented word 
 in a line of poetry. 
 
 This is apparent even in the first stepping 
 onto the stage. They know their business 
 so well, these old timers. The implements of 
 their craft are so absolutely under their con- 
 trol that they lose not a single moment in 
 bringing them into play. One might almost 
 say that they begin to influence their audi- 
 ence even before they appear on the stage, 
 and certainly with the first step from the 
 wings the sympathetic current is started. 
 
 So Maggie Cline walks on, firm-footed, 
 leisurely, composed. Then she looks out to 
 her audience and smiles, cheerful, friendly 
 and familiar; advances a few steps; then 
 stands, the smile embracing the whole au- 
 dience and establishing a kinship with it. 
 We know that we are going to like her and 
 we feel sure that she likes us. 
 
 The song begins. We hope it is one of 
 the Irish ditties in which she is so truly her- 
 
THE ENTERTAINER 65 
 
 self, full of unctuous humor and rollick- 
 ing fun, with eyes a-twinkle at the droll 
 turns and twists of her story, not finically 
 fine, but honest, frank and generous. There 
 is no attempt at smartness in her songs. 
 They deal with plain folk and are expressed 
 in plain words. But watch the exactness of 
 the gesture which suggests rather than at- 
 tempts to depict: listen to the modulation 
 of the voice which allows the imagination 
 to carry it to a force and intensity not ac- 
 tually attempted. With the squaring of an 
 elbow and the raising of one shoulder she 
 sketches for you in a momentary gesture 
 the Spanish dancer, just as with the fling of 
 a cloak and the uptilt of the chin she por- 
 trays the haughty matador. And both are 
 given just the right emphasis and timed to 
 the right moment to keep their place in the 
 rhythm of the song, while still providing the 
 piquancy of a surprise. 
 
 Then, once in a while, at a climax she will 
 let go of all restraint and gesture. Voice 
 and action are allowed their full vigor. The 
 
66 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 result is dynamic and she seems to glory in 
 it. But these unrestrained moments serve 
 as a contrast, not a contradiction, to her more 
 ordered efforts. It is as though she said, 
 "we are all friends here together and this 
 is just a burst of natural high spirits, quite 
 spontaneous." But, even in these, she knows 
 how to time them so that they shall never 
 seem forced or too long continued. It is 
 evidently inborn, this rhythmic sense, as 
 well as trained by years of experience, but 
 it makes all the difference between effective- 
 ness and ineffectiveness. 
 
 Another favorite of an older generation, 
 Fay Templeton, was not in her early days, 
 strictly speaking, of the Vaudeville stage. 
 But I am going to claim her for Vaudeville, 
 since she has made a successful appearance 
 in this field and because she most admirably 
 illustrates the charm of this quality of 
 rhythm. 
 
 From the moment of her entrance every 
 action falls into its allotted place, ruled by 
 
LILLIAN RUSSELL 
 
 / 
 
THE ENTERTAINER 67 
 
 this unfailing sense of rhythm. The music 
 is gay, but her entrance is nonchalant. As 
 we see her to-day, her figure does not lend 
 itself to the exploitation of the modern style 
 of sheath gown, so very wisely she does not 
 count on the latest move as an asset. In 
 fact, she completely defies all laws of "the 
 latest thing," and makes her appearance in 
 garments ample and flowing, but somehow 
 contriving to look very chic. 
 
 She has come well onto the stage before 
 she seems to be aware of the applause which 
 greets her. Then her eyes are raised in 
 radiant response, so happy is she that the 
 audience thus welcomes her. A few steps 
 more; then she stops, apparently at ran- 
 dom, but really the whole entrance from the 
 first appearance, from the smile to the stop, 
 have completed a perfect phrase. It is not 
 stepped, one, two, one, two, in time to the 
 music, but the phrase harmonizes with it in 
 a way more subtle and far more attractive. 
 
 And then she sings : really and truly sings. 
 For Fay Templeton has the trained and de- 
 
68 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 veloped voice of a singer. So her songs are 
 not talked or shouted, nor produced in that 
 extraordinary manner which some peculiar 
 tradition has fastened on to Vaudeville. Do 
 you enjoy ragtime? Her songs, it is true, 
 are not ragtime, but watch her movements, 
 even the most ordinary flutter of her hand- 
 kerchief and you can get from it all the joy 
 of syncopated accent, the accent which goes 
 not with the beat but in a recognized rela- 
 tion to it. 
 
 The actual measure of her songs is apt to 
 be simple and well accentuated — a waltz or 
 a two-step. And against this background 
 her rhythmic movement and gesture form 
 a sort of embroidery. I do not say that this 
 is consciously premeditated or counted out; 
 but the rhythmic sense of the artist is de- 
 veloped to such a degree that even the small- 
 est detail, the turn of the head, the glance 
 of the eyes, is adjusted in its time and em- 
 phasis in relation to the whole. Meanwhile, 
 the seemingly impromptu asides : the taking 
 of the powder-puff from its hidden recepta- 
 
THE ENTERTAINER 69 
 
 cle in the parasol handle, the placing or re- 
 moving of the monocle — these are done with 
 a conscious art and to a nicety of effective- 
 ness which makes them delightful. 
 
 But there is something more than tech- 
 nique to admire in Fay Templeton's art. 
 She can, from very simple material, present 
 to us a little human drama made up of a 
 mixture of drollery, pathos and sentiment. 
 See her in "So long Mary," dressed in a 
 plain, sensible walking-suit, such as any busi- 
 ness woman might wear, brightened up with 
 a red tie and hat ribbon. Her plump figure 
 radiates good-nature, but her face has a 
 cheerfulness just a little too determined and 
 steadfast to be natural. You feel convinced, 
 somehow, that behind that smile there is a 
 heart as heavy as the clumsy-looking suit- 
 case she is carrying. Yes, she is going away, 
 and she is not so happy about it as she would 
 have you think. And presently six pretty, 
 slender young girls file in, their dresses an 
 elegant counterpart of Mary's plain one. 
 They show quite considerable regret at part- 
 
70 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 ing with their older companion and adjure 
 her "Don't forget to come back home," flick- 
 ing away a regretful tear as they say it. 
 Then they file out and their place is taken by 
 six youths who also show a kindly sorrow 
 at parting with this good-natured comrade. 
 But, after all, the main interest of the young 
 fellows is in the six elegantly dressed girls, 
 and they follow in their train, leaving Mary 
 to struggle with her burdens as best she 
 may. When next we see them each one has 
 linked himself to one or other of the slender 
 young girls and in spite of their kind words 
 Mary is left to trudge alone, still dragging 
 the heavy suitcase and keeping a brave face, 
 grateful for their lightly proffered sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 There is no sigh of self-pity, no look of 
 envy at the young people so engrossed in 
 themselves, but one feels the pathos of it 
 all the same. So when at last a kindly- faced, 
 greyhaired fellow appears and assumes all 
 Mary's burdens and tucks her hand under 
 his arm the burst of applause is a demon- 
 
MARSHALL MONTGOMERY 
 
THE ENTERTAINER 71 
 
 stration of genuine relief. We had watched 
 the creation of a charming little genre pic- 
 ture that did not need the gush of sentimen- 
 tality which followed. But audiences some- 
 times like to smell the orange blossom and 
 hear "they lived happy ever after." It is 
 their tribute to the obvious. 
 
 And now I am going to speak of a per- 
 formance of quite a different character, the 
 effectiveness of which, however, is largely 
 dominated by this same quality, used with 
 so much authority by these other two artists 
 — the quality of rhythm. 
 
 Marshal Montgomery is a ventriloquist 
 who has the traditional grotesque doll and 
 goes through much of the quick question 
 and answer that is the stock in trade of his 
 craft. But he introduces a feature which 
 seems to pass beyond the bounds of pos- 
 sibility in that, as he makes his figure talk, 
 volubly, distinctly and continuously, he 
 lights for himself a cigarette, smokes it, 
 leisurely puffing, pours himself out a drink 
 
72 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 and unhurriedly imbibes it, and eats, I think, 
 an apple. And the voice of the figure goes 
 on with no apparent regard for what its 
 actual producer is doing. 
 
 Now apart from the technicalities of voice 
 production necessary for ventriloquism, 
 which I do not pretend to understand, I be- 
 came, as I watched this performance, sud- 
 denly conscious of another technical medium 
 which the performer employs. He has an 
 absolute command of a dual rhythm, one of 
 which he uses for the figure and the other 
 for his own actions. Much of the illusion 
 is gained by the skill with which he keeps 
 these two rhythms apart and yet manages 
 them so that the pause in one shall coincide 
 with the accent of the other. The rhythm 
 for the doll is jerky and staccato, rude and 
 uncouth, but quite individual. Indeed, it 
 materially helps to invest the creature with 
 a sort of character of its own. That of the 
 manipulator is smooth, leisurely, suave and 
 self-assured. The movement of the hand 
 which pours the drink or lights the cigarette 
 
THE ENTERTAINER 73 
 
 is steady and unhurried, while the gestures 
 of the doll are flurried and emphatic. But 
 ever and anon during a pause in the chatter- 
 ing monologue of the doll the ventriloquist, 
 using for his own action a different rhythm, 
 takes the required sip or puff. But, because 
 the sip or puff is only part of the whole ac- 
 tion, which consists in putting the article to 
 the lips and afterward placing it on the ta- 
 ble, whereas the pause in the doll's mono- 
 logue marks the end of a phrase, the coinci- 
 dence of the two escapes detection. The 
 exact and conscious timing of the action so 
 as to cause no apparent break in the volu- 
 bility of the doll's voice is a wonder and de- 
 light to watch. This effective use of rhythm, 
 a new one to me, so far from lessening my 
 appreciation of the cleverness of the illusion, 
 increases it a hundredfold. 
 
 Though the rhythmic feeling in the tech- 
 nique of the players of the older genera- 
 tion is more marked and its use more con- 
 scious, it is quite as much an element in the 
 success of the modern style in spite of the 
 
74 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 assumption of spontaniety. Take, for in- 
 stance, the songs of Ethel Green. Her man- 
 ner seems quite unpremeditated, even a little 
 tentative and hesitating, as if not quite sure 
 of her relations with her audience. It is 
 not that she is at all uncertain of the humor 
 of her song, but perhaps these people will 
 not see it. When they do and signify their 
 appreciation, she dimples and smiles at them, 
 so glad to have come to a perfect under- 
 standing. Don't you feel a sort of rhythm 
 in those softly deprecating glances, and then 
 the gradual dimpling friendliness and finally 
 the arch sauciness of the toss of the head 
 with which her last line is given? There is 
 a nicely maintained balance which works 
 up to a strongly felt moment when the claim 
 of the artist is established with her audi- 
 ence. 
 
 Gertrude Barnes, in her story-tel^ng 
 songs, given with such perfect simplicity, 
 knows well how to make her points with no 
 apparent effort. But the simplicity is really 
 the effect of exact phrasing. How effec- 
 
ETHEL GREEN 
 
THE ENTERTAINER 75 
 
 tively she uses her rag-time syncopations in 
 "Row, row, row." The narrative patters 
 along with no very marked beat but just a 
 subtle swing at the back of it which makes 
 it haunting and melodious. That is the way 
 with much of the modern rhythm. The reg- 
 ular beat is overlaid with a swing which con- 
 tradicts it but does not lose sight of it. Then 
 back it slips into strongly accented throbs 
 for a space, to be sure that we shall not 
 overlook the fact that, however impromptu 
 and unmeasured the flow may seem, to be 
 effective it must be regulated by some 
 rhythmic sense. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Music and Near-music 
 
 WE, of the Vaudeville Audience, all 
 love music. Individually we may- 
 differ as to what particular variety of noise 
 we honor with the name of music, but our 
 own brand we, each, love fervently. 
 
 In Vaudeville we are offered a gorgeous 
 variety of brands: from melody extracted 
 from the unwilling material of xylophones 
 and musical glasses through the varying of- 
 ferings of singers and instrumentalists, both 
 comic and serious, to the performance of 
 high class chamber-music or the singing of 
 an operatic diva. 
 
 For the purposes of this chapter we will 
 eliminate the singers who use the song sim- 
 ply as a medium to get over to the audience 
 some amusing patter. We have looked at 
 76 
 
SOPHYE BARNARD 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 77 
 
 some of these in other chapters and our 
 Vaudeville sense will not allow us to give 
 too much attention to any one form of 
 amusement. So now let us listen to music as 
 music. 
 
 Let it be admitted that the Vaudeville 
 house is not the place in which the musical 
 connoisseur looks for music of the highest 
 rank. There is no aim to compete with the 
 Philharmonic Society or the Boston Sym- 
 phony Orchestra. But for all that there are 
 some good music and fine musicians and no 
 lack of appreciation for them. Perhaps it 
 is not to be denied that the strange and curi- 
 ous are as highly favored as the artistic ; and 
 a violinist may excite as much applause by 
 playing "Suwanee River" on one string as 
 by the most exquisite rendering of a violin 
 Fantasia by Brahms. But there are always 
 some in the audience who are grateful for 
 the best, even if they are not so noisy in their 
 acknowledgment of it. There has been from 
 time to time a large array of talent, mu- 
 sicians of repute, both instrumentalists and 
 
78 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 singers, who have found their way on to the 
 Vaudeville stage for a longer or shorter 
 period. 
 
 The stars of Musical Comedy and Light 
 Opera drift with apparent indifference from 
 one sphere to the other and sooner or later 
 they are likely to be heard in Vaudeville. 
 In the heyday of her vocal triumphs Lillian 
 Russell sang for a short time in Vaudeville, 
 where her crisp, well-assured individuality 
 and her familiarity with the technique of 
 her craft, quite apart from her well adver- 
 tised beauty, would always make her wel- 
 come. 
 
 Quite recently we have heard such ac- 
 knowledged singers of note as Lulu Glaser, 
 whose popularity in Vaudeville is no less 
 than in Musical Comedy; Grace La Rue; 
 Ina Claire, fresh from her triumphs in "The 
 Quaker Girl"; Kitty Gordon, with her lus- 
 cious beauty and limpid voice and gowns of 
 startling magnificence; Laura Guerite in a 
 miniature musical comedy, specially written 
 for her; Jefferson d'Angelis, cultivator of 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 79 
 
 abundant crops of laughter as well as singer 
 of ability, and many more beside. 
 
 But while these luminaries flash across the 
 horizon from time to time like splendid com- 
 ets the constellation of Vaudeville numbers 
 stars of its own which belong to it by right. 
 There is "The East side Caruso," a young 
 Italian whose voice has tones which are not 
 unlike those of the famous tenor; while his 
 ingenuous gratification at the favor he wins 
 is much more charming in its naivete than 
 the sophistication of the better known ar- 
 tist. 
 
 Jose Collins is a Vaudeville prima-donna 
 who knows the art of voice-production and 
 can render her songs with telling effect. She 
 has dramatic feeling too and identifies her- 
 self with their sentiment in the way which 
 her audience looks for. She can melt easily 
 and naturally from one to another of the 
 pictorial poses that have been arranged to 
 accompany her songs. Also, she wears mag- 
 nificent gowns. 
 
 Another favorite is Eunice Vance, who 
 
80 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 sings her songs with real musical feeling, 
 while not forgetting the popular appeal 
 which her audience craves. 
 
 There is, too, some delightful singing, in- 
 cluded in a little drama which presents a 
 real human problem. It is enacted by So- 
 phye Barnard, Lou Anger and Company 
 and is entitled, "The Song of the Heart." 
 It introduces to us a young prima-donna 
 about to make her debut in the opera of 
 "Thais." Her husband and family, although 
 opposed to her career, are to witness her 
 triumph from a box. But just as she is 
 prepared to make her first entrance the hus- 
 band appears, imploring her to come with 
 him to their child who lies at the point of 
 death and is calling for her. The impres- 
 ario pleads with her. He has helped her 
 through the arduous years of study and begs 
 her not to abandon her purpose now that 
 its achievement is within her grasp. The 
 overture has already begun and the dis- 
 tracted woman is hurried on to the stage. 
 She has sung the first part and returned to 
 
LULU GLASER 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 81 
 
 her dressing-room to sing the aria offstage 
 before she realizes the agony of her position, 
 but as she again comes before the public her 
 distress unnerves her. She falters, hesitates, 
 her voice breaks and she is unable to pro- 
 ceed. Hisses and hoots from the audience 
 drive her from the stage. Horrified at the 
 cruelty and heartlessness of the public she 
 throws herself into her husband's arms, im- 
 ploring him to take her back to their child 
 and determining to devote herself to them 
 henceforth. 
 
 Sophy e Barnard has made a great impres- 
 sion not only with her rendering of the mu- 
 sic but also with her acting of the part of 
 the heroine. But it is the singing which 
 gives to the performance its distinction and 
 which remains in the memory as especially 
 enjoyable. 
 
 Meanwhile, besides the instrumentalists 
 who delight us with the one instrument of 
 their choice we have versatile artists who 
 play with equal facility any instrument from 
 violin to saxophone. There is Charles F. 
 
82 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 Seamon, who seems to be equally familiar 
 with every instrument one can name. Wood, 
 brass, strings, — so long as it is an instru- 
 ment of music he is its master. Of each he 
 seems to be not only the facile manipulator, 
 but the diviner of its special capability of 
 expression and to be able to wring from it its 
 special quality of vibrant tone. 
 
 Not only the acknowledged instruments 
 of the orchestra have their exponents but 
 we have wizards who wring sweetness from 
 accordions, ocarinas or other weird instru- 
 ments. Unnumbered effects are obtained 
 from the piano by performers who play a 
 different melody with each hand, or change 
 the key every few bars or play complicated 
 settings using one hand only. Or "Violin- 
 sky" executes for us the most complicated of 
 exercises on the violin, winding up with a 
 piano-cello duet which he performs alone. 
 The bow of the 'cello is strapped to his right 
 knee while the right hand manipulates the 
 strings as he plays the air on it. The left 
 hand, meanwhile, plays on the piano an elab- 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 83 
 
 orate accompaniment. Of course we do not 
 look for a great deal of soul in such per- 
 formances, the exhibition is much more a 
 thing of skill and ingenuity. 
 
 There are quartettes and sextettes that 
 play with considerable charm. And because 
 it is necessary to diversify even these varied 
 offerings we find them presenting them- 
 selves in fanciful guises, such as gypsies, 
 Spanish peasants and toreadors; or weav- 
 ing a little pictorial setting around their mu- 
 sic as in the representation of the Colonial 
 mansion with its guests keeping up the old 
 tradition of Hallowe'en, whereby the first 
 to speak must blow the Fairy Horn. 
 
 I call to mind a group of clever instru- 
 mentalists who after playing cornets, trom- 
 bones and other better known instruments 
 gave an excellent performance on some huge, 
 strange-looking tubas, during which all the 
 lights in the house were extinguished except 
 rings of electric light around the mouths 
 of their instruments. There was something 
 very uncanny in those rings of light emit- 
 
84 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 ting deep, full-diapasoned tones, seemingly 
 of their own volition, for the performers 
 were quite invisible. 
 
 I don't know that this evident necessity 
 for something over and above the music 
 pleases me. It seems to betoken an inability 
 on the part of the audience to give itself 
 sympathetically to the deeper enjoyment of 
 music and smacks too much of mere rest- 
 less craving for novelty. It would seem as 
 if the audience will take no step toward the 
 entertainer but must not only be entertained 
 but coaxed into allowing itself to be en- 
 tertained. In the old days when the singer 
 sat with the audience and was not above 
 sharing a mug of beer with an ardent ad- 
 mirer he might be asked for this or that fa- 
 vorite ditty and the audience joined in the 
 chorus. But it seems that this divorce which 
 has put the footlights permanently between 
 them has cut so deep as to paralyze the de- 
 sire of the audience to cooperate even men- 
 tally with the performer. 
 
 And so the audience is losing the full en- 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 85 
 
 joyment of music because it insists on hav- 
 ing it combined with some more obvious 
 form of amusement. The beauty of a song 
 well sung is not really enhanced by being 
 combined with feats of horsemanship nor 
 are we really receiving increased pleasure by 
 mixing the two. There is much to be de- 
 sired in the sympathetic appreciation of an 
 audience that demands the combination. It 
 is not doing its share. 
 
 Therein lies the trouble. The audience is 
 inclined to become inert and to rely on the 
 performer not only for "delight" but for 
 the creation of the mood in which to ac- 
 cept it. 
 
 As for joining in a chorus it is seldom that 
 the audience can be induced to make more 
 than a very half-hearted attempt at it. 
 Sometimes, as was very cleverly done by 
 Emma Cams, a singer is "planted" in a re- 
 mote part of the house who takes up the 
 strain, not too noticeably at first, but just 
 enough to encourage others to join. Grad- 
 ually this one trained voice overtops all the 
 
86 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 rest, who are usually doing little more than 
 hum shamefacedly at best, and then stop to 
 listen to him until he is left singing alone. 
 Of course, with an experienced actress like 
 Miss Carus on the stage, who knows how 
 to work up the interest by the first expres- 
 sion of pleased surprise, followed by the 
 questioning look, the effort to locate the 
 singer, then the confirming approval and 
 at last the congratulatory delight, this is 
 very effective. But, after all, this is only 
 one more effort to capture the audience by 
 novelty and does not really make any de- 
 mand on their cooperation. 
 
 But still, as I have said before, the Vaude- 
 ville audience does love music, provided it 
 happens to be of its own peculiar brand. 
 Witness its devotion to the Male Quartette. 
 This particular brand flourishes perpetually 
 in its bald simplicity. And "flourishes" 
 seems a peculiarly appropriate word. For, 
 though I have not been able to substanti- 
 ate it as a scientific fact, it would seem that 
 Quartette singing has a magical effect in 
 
CHARLES F. SEAMON 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 87 
 
 increasing the singer's girth, especially 
 toward what might be called the equatorial 
 zone. Occasionally a Quartette will com- 
 prise one thin singer and he is the basso pro- 
 fondo. For the rest, the higher the voice 
 the greater the circumference. And Oh! 
 the oozing sentimentality of these fat men! 
 "If you should go away" they will "kneel 
 down and pray." If they do, it seems only 
 too probable that a derrick would have to 
 be rigged in order to raise them to their 
 feet again. Those well padded knees, how- 
 ever, show no signs of abrasions on cold, 
 hard floors. Still, in mellifluous numbers, 
 they regret that they "lost the angel that 
 guides" them when they "lost you!" It is 
 sad, it is heart-breaking! but it does not 
 seem to have worried them to the extent of 
 growing thin about it. Why should they, 
 when they can sing and grow fat? 
 
 Perhaps I do them injustice in doubting 
 their agility. Anyhow, they always run 
 quite quickly off the stage. That is one 
 of the regulations, — Run off — Walk on. 
 
88 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 Perhaps they would lose breath if they ran 
 on, but I should like to see it tried just 
 once. Perhaps it would break some long 
 cherished tradition and things would never 
 be the same again. 
 
 Many of these Quartettes sing sonorous- 
 ly, but others sing stentoriously. I remem- 
 ber one three hundred pound tenor with 
 a voice that could subdue a boiler factory in 
 full blast, standing with his hands hardly 
 meeting across his waistcoat, bawling at us 
 "As a broken heart needs gladness, as the 
 flow-ers nee-ee-eed the deuw, as a ba-by 
 needs its mo-otherrrr — That's how I — need 
 yeou!" 
 
 He had quite a wonderful voice. The 
 other three singers had been specially en- 
 gaged to cope with it and they did their 
 best. But it got away from them and 
 drowned them out and, though they were 
 red in the face with their exertions, they 
 barely escaped from the flood of it. 
 
 But there are many Quartettes with which 
 it is quality not quantity that is the ulti- 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 89 
 
 mate aim and, when this is the case, the 
 offering is one of the most delightful turns 
 that appear on the programme. 
 
 Every now and then we find on our pro- 
 gramme an item of rare musical distinction. 
 Such is the performance of Theodore Ben- 
 dix's ensemble players. This Quartette of 
 players contrives very happily to give us 
 real music while not entirely ignoring that 
 personal appeal which their audience craves. 
 Their playing is manifestly for the audi- 
 ence. There is none of the aloofness and 
 impersonality that marks the high gods of 
 Olympus. The players do not disdain to 
 look into the faces of their audience and 
 gain fresh inspiration as they see the an- 
 swering response to the throb of the ele- 
 mental stir of their music. They give free 
 play to the temperament and abandon with 
 which the response fills them. Listen to the 
 playing of Sarasate's Gypsy Fantasy, by 
 Michael Bernstein and give yourself up to 
 the pulsing beat of life which stirs through 
 the out-of-door world. Feel your blood 
 
90 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 tingle with the response to the rise of the 
 sap in springtime, and the song of the first 
 robin and the sound of the wind in the tree- 
 tops and the bursting of buds on the bough 
 and all the sweet sounds of nature which 
 beckon to us from the ages, when our tribe 
 wandered the long road, following the pat- 
 tern of its people and slept beneath the can- 
 opy of stars. 
 
 Such organizations, too, as the Russian 
 Balalaika Orchestra, are a genuine pleasure 
 from a purely musical standpoint. They 
 feed the imagination instead of stunting it, 
 and by the charm of their rendering of their 
 characteristic music call up pictures to the 
 mind, fraught with an atmosphere strange 
 and convincing. Hear them play the folk 
 song of the Volga boatmen. At first it is 
 monotonous and heavy, timed to their labori- 
 ous breathing as they pull their long strokes 
 against the stream. Then it swells into the 
 passionate cry of yearning for some better 
 lot, some longed-for rest from labor. Then 
 once again it settles down into the monoto- 
 
EUNICE VANCE 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 91 
 
 nous dirge-like chant, dying away in the far 
 distance as the boat disappears up the misty 
 river. 
 
 These are the things which weave the real 
 spell of music and lift us for the moment 
 above the commonplace and personal. But 
 they call for a cooperation on the part of 
 the imagination of the hearer. And if a 
 touch of the dramatic in the bearing of the 
 performers can awaken that imagination, 
 we need have no quarrel with it. But some- 
 times this dramatic bearing usurps the 
 throne which should be occupied by the mu- 
 sic itself and we find our audience intent 
 on the peculiarities of the performer instead 
 of yielding themselves to the sway of his 
 music. So, when Francesco Creatore's or- 
 chestra plays, fully one-half of his audience 
 are absorbed in watching the antics and ec- 
 centricities of the conductor. The wild flap 
 of hair over his forehead, which, as he waves 
 his head in crazy excitement, threatens to 
 blind him — the crouching grasp with which 
 he seems to be plucking a melody from the 
 
92 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 atmosphere, or the defiant rage with which 
 he flings it at the performers — the beckon- 
 ing, the nodding and all the capers in which 
 he indulges, become so engrossing that the 
 actual music passes unheeded. It is true 
 that he can stimulate his audience to a 
 thrilled enthusiasm; yet the spell is not that 
 of music but of his own excitable, effer- 
 vescent personality. 
 
 And while we are speaking of the music 
 we must not forget the Vaudeville orches- 
 tra which does such gallant work in aug- 
 menting our delight in each and every one 
 of the many turns. It is no light responsi- 
 bility that rests on the head of the leader of 
 a Vaudeville orchestra and his company of 
 musicians. They can mar if they cannot 
 actually make a turn successful. Notwith- 
 standing a bill that changes completely at 
 least once a week, the leader must be al- 
 ways perfectly familiar with entrances, ex- 
 its, cues and effects desired by each indi- 
 vidual performer. Besides playing for all 
 the song and dances with their special pe- 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 93 
 
 culiarities of pause or acceleration of the 
 time, supplying accompaniment for instru- 
 mentalists, introducing each turn and play- 
 ing overture and exit march there are many 
 other numbers which look to the orchestra 
 for assistance. 
 
 There is the "thrilly" music for the sen- 
 sational play; the specially accentuated ac- 
 companiments to animal acts. Then the 
 acrobats, trapeze and wire acts and other 
 daring feats must have their own particular 
 variety of accompaniment, and the long 
 whirring roll of the drum with its clash of 
 cymbals to mark exactly the climax of some 
 notable feature, and the sudden silence, as 
 though the orchestra itself were too amazed 
 to play for the hair-raising episode which 
 caps the whole performance. Each and 
 every one of these must be timed to the ex- 
 act second or the effect will be spoiled. 
 Moreover, the leader of the orchestra will 
 often be expected to join in some dialogue 
 with the comedian or to interrupt some spe- 
 cialty, or "fill in," in one way or another, in 
 
94 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 the many efforts to bring actor and audi- 
 ence into personal relation. 
 
 And — by no means the least of his re- 
 quirements — the leader of the orchestra 
 must not allow himself the indulgence of 
 looking bored. He may be wearied of hear- 
 ing the same joke repeated twelve times in 
 a week, the same song with the same em- 
 phasis occurring twelve times, the same sur- 
 prise which he has seen eleven times before, 
 but his face must not betray him. The first 
 violinist or even the drummer, though a per- 
 son of tremendous importance, may look as 
 they feel. I have even seen them yawn dis- 
 creetly, but the leader must keep up a sem- 
 blance of geniality even if inwardly bore- 
 dom reigns supreme. 
 
 His is the position of the commanding 
 officer who marshals the forces in battle, 
 keeping the ranks in line and filling up the 
 gaps made by those who fall. He must ob- 
 serve a tradition like that of the British 
 army, that though the rank and file may lie 
 down under cover, the commanding officer 
 
MUSIC AND NEAR-MUSIC 95 
 
 must remain in full view, bearing the brunt 
 of the enemies' fire with unflinching mien, 
 regardless of praise or blame. We are his 
 debtors, we of the sheltered onlookers who 
 may leave the field, if so inclined, without 
 a spot on our honor. Here is our salute to 
 him and the brave battalion under his com- 
 mand. We dare not refuse it, for have I 
 not said already that we, of the Vaudeville 
 audience, all love music? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Lure of the Dance 
 
 THE modern revival of the love of 
 dancing may be said to have shown its 
 first tentative blossoming in this country 
 when, to the wonder and delight of all lov- 
 ers of the beautiful, Ruth St. Denis made 
 her first appearance on the Vaudeville stage 
 in her Temple Dance of Rhadda. She crept 
 in unheralded, unknown, and it was only by 
 degrees that it was rumored that something 
 new in the world of art was being revealed. 
 For so entirely was her conception that of 
 an artist, so thoroughly had she absorbed 
 the mystical atmosphere of Oriental lore and 
 saturated her presentation in it; moreover, 
 so impersonal and abstract was her perform- 
 ance that it became something more than 
 mere amusement and claimed a place in the 
 category of art. 
 
 96 
 
GERTRUDE HOFFMAN' 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 97 
 
 Not, however, that there was ever any 
 lack of dancers on the Vaudeville stage, but 
 the interest in their work was not very vital, 
 except on occasions when the appearance of 
 such stars as Carmencita fanned to a brief 
 glow the flame of popular enthusiasm. The 
 reign of the waltz, as demonstrated by 
 Letty Lind and Sylvia Grey, had lan- 
 guished. The old fervor of the buck and 
 wing dancers had become mechanical and 
 sophisticated and the ragtime syncopation 
 of the negro music had not yet inspired any 
 more individual expression than the merest 
 imitation of negro antics, hardly worthy to 
 be called dances. Such entertainers as still 
 relied on dancing as their medium of expres- 
 sion received small encouragement, so that 
 with few exceptions they attempted little 
 more than a display of agility and technical 
 accomplishment. 
 
 But the appearance of Ruth St. Denis, a 
 native born American who evolved her art, 
 expressive as it is of the spirit of the Orient, 
 in her own country, was followed by the ar- 
 
98 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 rival first of Isadora Duncan, an American, 
 it is true, but one who had developed her 
 art in the stimulating atmosphere of Ger- 
 many. A little later came the two com- 
 panies of Russian dancers with their finished 
 technique of expressional interpretation, and 
 by this time the claims of the dance had 
 awakened enthusiastic response on all hands, 
 and from being the Cinderella of the arts 
 it has become the admired and feted pride 
 of popular approval. 
 
 Ruth St. Denis, however, remains in a 
 class by herself. No other dancer is at- 
 tempting to do just the same thing that 
 she does so well. Some of her presenta- 
 tions are less dances than a series of poses 
 of wonderful expressiveness. But the sen- 
 sitive beauty of her pictorial effects, the ex- 
 quisite refinements of suggestion which she 
 imparts to the detail and the atmosphere 
 that she thus creates, the result of minute 
 and sympathetic study, have not been ri- 
 valled by any other artist on our stage. The 
 great Russian ballets are the refinement by 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 99 
 
 one artist on the work of another and great 
 masters are proud to associate in the work- 
 ing 1 out of their elaborate creation. And 
 back of them all is a tradition to guide not 
 only the performers but also the audience. 
 But Ruth St. Denis had to create her own 
 traditions, to find and train all her assist- 
 ants, to amalgamate the work of her musi- 
 cians and scene painters and incorporate 
 their work with hers into a whole. 
 
 When first I heard that the subject of 
 her latest series of dances was to be Japa- 
 nese I was a little dubious. Had not the 
 Japanese motive been somewhat overdone? 
 But when I saw their presentation I re- 
 alized that as yet we have but touched the 
 border of poetic suggestion to be gathered 
 from that land of poetry and flowers. 
 
 Her appearance in the street scene was 
 not at all that of the conventional "lady on 
 the fan," but had the boldly patterned re- 
 finement of the old Japanese prints, with 
 their flowing lines and richly sombre color- 
 ing. 
 
100 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 How dashing and vigorous, with its free, 
 lithe strides and well poised arms was the 
 spear exercise of the Samurai maiden, and 
 how widely different to the usual concep- 
 tion of the Japanese woman. Here was no 
 timidity or restraint but breezy, joyous ex- 
 ercise of boldness and muscle — woman's 
 deftness and agility were matched with 
 man's strength and skill, and that without 
 fear or favor. Did we think of the Japa- 
 nese woman as a pretty, submissive toy? 
 Here is a refutation of our theories, for this 
 maiden will be able to take her own part, if 
 physical bravery is ever demanded of her. 
 
 And the picture of the Poetess of the 
 Fifteenth Century, — what a true translation 
 of the spirit of poetry and what a vision of 
 other-worldliness it was. 
 
 The increasing interest taken in the dance 
 as a medium of expression has encouraged 
 quite a number of dances of symbolic or 
 story-telling intent. There is the "Dance of 
 the Siren," by Joseph Herbert and Lillian 
 Doldsmith, the name of which gives a clue 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 101 
 
 to its rather obvious story. And there is 
 an allegorical series enacted by Alice Eis 
 and Bert French, entitled "Rouge et Noir," 
 which, also, in spite of a sumptuous setting, 
 is not very imaginative. It represents the 
 worship of the Goddess of Chance by the 
 infatuated gambler. We see her half -crazed 
 victims pelting her with gold, trying to win 
 her smile. One of these she singles out to 
 dazzle with her false caresses, which are but 
 the restless caprice of a heartless, unfeeling 
 coquette. And, of course, when he is drained 
 of gold, energy and courage, the fickle dame 
 turns her back on him and lavishes her 
 smiles elsewhere. 
 
 It is all quite literal, easy of comprehen- 
 sion, and makes no demand on its audience 
 beyond that of the most ordinary intelli- 
 gence. Of course, this is what many people 
 prefer and they have a perfect right to their 
 preference. But that does not forbid an 
 equal right to those who prefer that even 
 their amusement shall call into play their 
 
102 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 powers of imagination and stimulate their 
 sense of understanding and beauty. 
 
 Sometimes we have a name but no very- 
 coherent story or idea given to these dance- 
 offerings, as is the case with Valeska Su- 
 ratt's "Black Crepe and Diamonds." The 
 name implied little else but the contrast of 
 a first scene in black and silver and a second 
 in white and spangles, with a loosely thread- 
 ed series of dances of the vigorous order 
 made popular by the Texas Tommies, with 
 a flavoring of the sensuousness of the Rus- 
 sians. There was, however, some very clever 
 dancing by a tall, slight girl whose individu- 
 ality of style suggested that some time she 
 might find a medium more suited to her than 
 that particular style of dance. 
 
 To Gertrude Hoffmann lovers of the 
 dance owe a debt of gratitude for her en- 
 terprise in importing to this country the 
 Russian dance dramas. Her own flexibility 
 of style, which has impelled her to give 
 admirable imitations of the great dancers, 
 also enabled her to imbue herself with their 
 
RUTH ST. DENIS 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 103 
 
 spirit and hold her own very creditably 
 among this array of highly trained artists. 
 Her plastic mobility is always picturesque, 
 suggesting ideas, which, however, are never 
 quite expressed or grasped. 
 
 Irene and Vernon Castle give a character 
 to their dancing in many ways unique. A 
 languid energy, a drooping strenuousness, 
 contradict themselves in a sort of whimsi- 
 cal seriousness. The long, flexible limbs of 
 the man, so agile and yet so listless, his face 
 of impenetrable indifference and abstrac- 
 tion, and the floating gracefulness of the 
 lady give an effect of the movements being 
 made entirely without effort. Somehow it 
 would not surprise you if they left the solid 
 ground and floated off, still dancing, into 
 space. 
 
 Among the foremost of our dancing 
 favorites is Bessie Clayton, the sportive, 
 laughing, elfin creature, whose dazzling 
 whirl of energy seems to come from an in- 
 exhaustible dynamo of youth and merri- 
 ment. Her recent dance with a pierrot-like 
 
104 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 company was a revel of dainty mischief and 
 frolic, wooing all to join her in a spirit of 
 infectious joy. 
 
 The traditions of the Ballet- School have 
 not been allowed entirely to languish. Its 
 graceful pirouettes, entrechats and toe- 
 dancing have been made by La Petite Ade- 
 laide a means of imparting charm and fas- 
 cination to her dances. Mile. Dazie, also, 
 is one of the few who have preserved vital- 
 ity in this older form of dancing. She has 
 all the accomplishments of the toe-dancer, 
 the pirouettes and airy flights of the clas- 
 sic ballet ; but with them the elusive spright- 
 liness, piquant and varying, which saves 
 them from becoming mechanical or stilted. 
 She uses these devices, not for their own 
 sake, but as graceful phrases of expression. 
 
 To Bessie McCoy there clings something 
 of the old charm of the English dancers of 
 Kate Vaughan's school, whose graceful, 
 gliding motions alternate with a careless 
 fling of limbs, head, arms, even eyes and 
 fingers being rhythmically expressive and in 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 105 
 
 harmony with the dancing motions. There 
 is no very deep appeal in the expressional 
 motive but plenty of simple, naive charm, 
 used with unabashed consciousness, frankly 
 alluring and not a little saucy. 
 
 While this expressional power in dancing 
 is always its most fascinating element, there 
 are occasions when its spell is almost hyp- 
 notic in its intensity. There is, for instance, 
 a Hawaiian who dances with a company 
 called Toots Paka Company. He plays 
 some sort of guitar, and he dances. And 
 the wild, furtive, yearning of that dance! 
 You can feel it vibrating, but suppressed 
 and held in check, through every fibre of his 
 body. It is like the creeping motion of a 
 cat, slow, soft, poised, but relentless. A few 
 such creeping steps, and then a stealthy 
 spring. Then still for a moment, but tense 
 and eager. Then creeping again, but faster. 
 Then crouched, expectant, alert and again 
 a leap. And all the while the man laughs, 
 exultant, defiant, with some of the fierce- 
 ness, if not the cruelty, that belongs to the 
 
106 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 cat, while the rippling quiver of anticipa- 
 tion quivers through his supple frame. 
 
 A sensuous voluptuousness and wild 
 grace throb through the Dances of the Hun- 
 garian sisters whose name has been made 
 pronounceable by the simple expedient of 
 shortening it to "Dolly." They no longer 
 appear together but the offering of Rosz- 
 cika Dolly and Martin Brown was a strange 
 example of exotic temperament, working on 
 home-made material. For in the dances 
 themselves was nothing very different from 
 the offerings of many other Vaudeville 
 teams and even of some of our ambitious 
 amateurs. But into them the dancer in- 
 fused a diablerie, a fire and passion, some- 
 thing perf ervid for our cooler natures. Un- 
 like most dancers, her expression is rendered 
 less in her feet than in the rest of her body. 
 Head, eyes especially, arms, bust, and hips 
 are used with sensitive expressiveness, but 
 the feet seem wooden and unresponsive. 
 
 A study in temperaments, widely diverg- 
 ing, might be made by comparing this ex- 
 
ROSZCIKA DOLLY 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 107 
 
 otic, over-fragrant blossom with the breezy, 
 friendly insouciance of the original Texas 
 Tommies. With the latter were all the cool 
 daring and gay fearlessness and hearty cam- 
 araderie which we love to think is charac- 
 teristic of the West. Partners are flung or 
 whirled or swung at the most daring of tan- 
 gents with a good-humored laugh, frank 
 and free from the slightest suggestion of 
 sensuousness. Comrades and friends, 
 though man and woman, they regard each 
 other with trust and candor, and dance and 
 play with the youthful exuberance of chil- 
 dren. 
 
 And, as their whirlings and swingings 
 have set a pace which it is not easy to follow, 
 we find ingenuity being taxed to find some 
 new manner in which they may be presented, 
 dancing couples taking all the risks of acro- 
 bats to accomplish something which will go 
 a little farther than the others. There are 
 two couples — Novita and Billy Lyn, and 
 Hattie Burks and Fred Lorraine, who have 
 come near to exhausting the possibilities in 
 
108 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 this direction. In the performances of the 
 latter the lady floats with her feet in space 
 and her arms clasping the neck of her part- 
 ner or, for a change, her feet clasp his waist 
 while her head is floating at an angle from 
 his whirling body. He flings her across his 
 shoulder or she falls across his arm in an 
 arch to the floor. Or, again, he swings her 
 up over his head as though gravitation had 
 suspended its laws for their benefit. And 
 all this without a loss of the rhythm of the 
 dance, but a suggestion of frolicsome aban- 
 don and joyousness which unite the spirit of 
 the dance to that of a gay romp. 
 
 Melissa Ten Eyck and Wiley Max have 
 combined these whirlings with pictorial 
 poses, while Arthur Borani and Annie Ne- 
 varo, in carrying out their dance, give bur- 
 lesque imitations of animals, full of char- 
 acter and humorous reality. So variety is 
 introduced by one and another, until it is 
 hard to say where the dance ends and the 
 romp begins. 
 
 In pantomime humor we have the Scare- 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 109 
 
 crow dance of MacMahon, Diamond and 
 Clemence, which blends comedy and dance 
 very cleverly. The grotesque helplessness of 
 the scarecrow, as it suffers itself to be 
 dragged about in the wild capers of one of 
 the dancers, is so sincerely studied that it is 
 some time before you can fully assure your- 
 self that it is in truth anything more than 
 a bundle of rags. Except for the fact that 
 its contortions are always rhythmic, even 
 while most grotesque, there is little clue to 
 its vitality until it is finally revealed. 
 
 There is a large array of talent among 
 those who combine with their dancing songs 
 and comedy, as, for instance, Maud Fulton 
 and William Rock, or the Farber Girls. 
 Neither of these teams relies on dancing, 
 though in each case the accomplishment 
 would warrant their doing so. But then 
 one might say the same thing about their 
 comedy. The imitations and burlesques of 
 the former couple are very dashing and 
 laughable, while one of the Farber girls 
 flashes out daring caricatures of dance 
 
110 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 movements which have all the diablerie of a 
 grimace. 
 
 Comedy and dance combine in the well- 
 characterized stepping of Jo Smith of the 
 Avon Comedy Four. His style is the tradi- 
 tional step-dance, allied to the buck-and- 
 wing. When once he gets started there 
 seems to be no stopping him, and he jigs 
 along, back and forth across the stage, ex- 
 ecuting one after another of a variety of 
 steps, like a specimen of perpetual motion. 
 His arms hang loose in the traditional man- 
 ner of the step-dancer, but they are by no 
 means inexpressive. Some slight alteration 
 in the pose of them, and he has imparted a 
 new character to his dance; or a slight ges- 
 ture, and he has let you into the joke at 
 which he has been smiling all the time his 
 feet clicked out and shuffled their ever 
 changing tattoo. 
 
 It is a wide field, this of step and buck- 
 and-wing dancing. Though the genuine ne- 
 gro dances are not very often seen now in 
 their pristine vigor, a few there are, such as 
 
BESSIE CLAYTON 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 111 
 
 George Primrose and the team of Miller 
 and Lyle, who can give the real old-time 
 shuffle and sway and "shake a laig," with all 
 the nimbleness and loose- jointed gravity of 
 the genuine, old-time roustabout on the levee 
 down the river. 
 
 And there are genuine negroes who dance 
 and, once they get down to their real na- 
 tive methods and forget to imitate the tan- 
 gos and onesteps of the white folk, do good 
 work. George Cooper and William Robin- 
 son are two who have lost none of the "han- 
 diness with their feet" that belongs to their 
 race. And Phina and her Picks show some 
 mighty fine negro dancing. When those 
 youngsters get a-going with their droll, 
 impish frolics, crouched down, almost to the 
 floor, their legs flying this way and that, 
 their bodies bounding at every impossible 
 angle, and their teeth gleaming in broad, 
 mouth-stretching grins, they are no more to 
 be quelled than a field of grass-hoppers. 
 
 Just where dancing ends and romping be- 
 gins it would be hard to say. There is a 
 
112 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 troupe of girls — the Berlin Madcaps is the 
 one I have in mind, though doubtless there 
 are many others — whose gambols, without 
 losing a sort of dancing rhythm, are the es- 
 sence of romping gaiety, with a flavor of the 
 pony-ballet added. They indulge in the 
 maddest scampers, jumping rope, driving 
 each other like children playing horse, even 
 pushing each other "wheelbarrow" fashion. 
 It is not truly a dance, but a gay, laughing 
 mockery of what the dance may become if 
 agility and activity are untouched by art. 
 
 There is material enough for a whole book 
 to be written on the subject of the dance 
 on the Vaudeville stage. For it is so es- 
 sentially one of the elements of joy and 
 delight, that its mood of the moment must 
 inevitably reflect something of the temper 
 of the age itself. Fortunately, the popular 
 form of dancing in the present revival, in 
 spite of objectionable features, tends, on 
 the whole, away from the sensual or provo- 
 cative toward the vigorous, the joyous and 
 the stimulating. The frank display of leg 
 
THE LURE OF THE DANCE 113 
 
 is, as a rule, without coquetry or salacious- 
 ness; and, though the old-fashioned may 
 mourn the frankness as robbing femininity 
 of its mystery, it is much more wholesome 
 than the conscious effrontery, inevitable to 
 any such display, when legs are discreetly 
 named limbs and to show even an ankle is 
 considered immoral. 
 
 So necessary, however, has agility become 
 that there is a danger of our losing sight of 
 the necessity of beauty. That there should 
 be any great demand for poetic beauty in 
 our dancing entertainments is too much to 
 hope at present. But the dance in itself can 
 claim attention which would be denied to 
 other forms of poetic appeal. And if all 
 who appreciate the charm of the poetic 
 would register their appreciation when 
 dances of poetic beauty are given, we might 
 do more to nurture a truly artistic expres- 
 sion and encourage a taste for the beautiful 
 than by confining our appreciation to exhi- 
 bitions given for the select few. 
 
 At present our Vaudeville audience is in- 
 
114 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 clined to be shamefaced about accepting the 
 claim of poetic beauty. Sentiment and pret- 
 tiness it can readily understand and accept. 
 But there is a solemnity which accompanies 
 true beauty, however joyous its expression. 
 It touches something deep and sacred in us 
 and to find themselves unexpectedly in its 
 presence is, to some people, embarrassing. 
 It is as though we had strayed unintentional- 
 ly and in our working apparel into the 
 ceremonial court of some great festival. Yet 
 I believe that we all own a festal garment, 
 clad in which we may join unabashed once 
 in a while in some high festival. 
 
VALESKA SURATT 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Plays and Sketches 
 
 INTO the Vaudeville bill there has crept 
 of late years a new and increasingly im- 
 portant factor. Hardly any bill in the thea- 
 tre of importance is considered complete un- 
 less it includes one of these items. This 
 turn is the one-act play, presented usually 
 by actors from the legitimate stage and 
 often headed by a star of the first magni- 
 tude. Authors of the finest talent are de- 
 voting their energies to producing these 
 plays and there is no doubt that the influ- 
 ence of the latter will make itself felt on 
 the stage of legitimate drama. 
 
 The one-act play was introduced tenta- 
 tively some years ago. It was not infre- 
 quently said that "audiences did not want 
 them," and the taboo epithet of "highbrow" 
 115 
 
116 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 was muttered against them by some of their 
 opponents. However, they have triumphed 
 even over that and now, since Mme. Sarah 
 Bernhardt has made her successful tour, it 
 cannot be claimed that anything is "too 
 good" for Vaudeville. 
 
 Before the introduction of the one-act 
 play Vaudeville audiences were familiar with 
 the sketch, which still holds its place on the 
 boards and has its uses. The sketch differs 
 in motive and construction from the play, 
 being usually a vehicle for the display of 
 the specialty of some particular performer. 
 There is not necessarily any attempt to make 
 a completed story or episode so long as the 
 presentation of the specialty is invested with 
 some extra human interest which sets it 
 forth in a new and attractive manner. A 
 musical specialty, for example, must be in- 
 troduced, so we find the long lost child 
 brought to the home of her parents in the 
 guise of a strolling singer, and recognized 
 by the singing of some particular air. Hugh 
 McCormick and Grace Wallace, ventrilo- 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 117 
 
 quists, present a scene at a theatrical agent's 
 in which their dolls play important parts. 
 The humors of a negro impersonator are 
 set forth in a scene between a lazy negro 
 and a super-energetic white lady who would 
 engage him to work on her farm. Or the 
 comic absurdities of knockabout comedians 
 are exploited in a scene of workmen em- 
 ployed to fix a furnace. In all of these it 
 is the specialty which counts, the sketch 
 being simply the medium by which it is 
 presented. Often the sketch completely 
 evaporates when once the specialty is thor- 
 oughly under way, and it is not uncommon 
 to see the front drop fall halfway through 
 the act, irrespective of the milieu of the 
 sketch, the rest being finished off in front 
 of it so that the stage may be prepared for 
 the next turn. 
 
 In this way the "Avon Comedy Four" 
 play a sketch which starts in a village school 
 to which a new teacher has been appointed. 
 The scholars arrive, and finding the luck- 
 less stranger, whose authority has not yet 
 
118 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 been proved, they begin to amuse them- 
 selves. They sing and dance and play tricks 
 on one another. Soon the attention of the 
 audience is concentrated on the specialties of 
 the different members of the troupe and the 
 schoolhouse idea is forgotten. The front 
 cloth comes down casually. It is one of the 
 stock cloths belonging to the theatre in 
 which they are playing for the week and 
 in all probability represents some street in 
 the locality where the theatre is situated. 
 But that makes no difference. It is the sing- 
 ing and dancing which now claim the at- 
 tention of the audience, and schoolhouse and 
 teacher are not referred to again. 
 
 But the one-act play is a different thing 
 all together. The rules of dramatic con- 
 struction apply here as in any other drama. 
 Its motive must be set forth consistently 
 and completely. It relies on no stunts to 
 carry it through but must work up to a given 
 climax and present an acceptable denoue- 
 ment. Naturally, it is a play of a single mo- 
 tive. There is no time to build up an elabo- 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 119 
 
 rate structure of entangled circumstance 
 and then unweave the web. We must be 
 able to grasp the issue in a few moments. 
 The motive of every character must be sim- 
 ple, there is no opportunity to present a 
 complex study, such as Hedda Gabler, for 
 instance. If local color is needed it must 
 be introduced with a few sharply defined 
 strokes and no time must be wasted on un- 
 necessary dialogue, however epigrammatic 
 it may be in itself. 
 
 From this it can be seen that the tech- 
 nique required of both actor and author of 
 a one-act play differs from that demanded 
 in a play of three or more acts. I believe 
 that to accustom oneself, for a time, to get- 
 ting clear down to the bone of your matter 
 in one slice is not at all an unwholesome 
 discipline. It obliges one to be decisive. 
 The moods and motives of each character 
 must be penetrated with no shirking. One 
 must get the desired impression across the 
 footlights in one stroke. But for an ideal 
 training in dramatic technique this method 
 
120 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 must not be followed too long. For it is 
 only by a process of wholesale elimination 
 that such directness can be obtained, and the 
 truth of the study will always depend on 
 how far the author and actor have realized 
 all the intermediary processes which the ex- 
 igencies of time have not allowed to be 
 shown. So that it must be good for the au- 
 thor or actor to return from time to time 
 to the more elaborate and subtle working 
 out of the longer play, in which every step 
 in the development of his structure must 
 be tested before his audience. 
 
 It is only in recent years that the one-act 
 play has had any chance in this country. 
 And yet it seems not at all improbable that 
 it is just this form of drama which is most 
 adapted to the genius of the American peo- 
 ple. The qualities necessary to its success 
 are those in which we, as a people, excel. 
 The bold grasp of facts, the somewhat im- 
 petuous habit of "jumping right in" to 
 things are national characteristics. Even 
 the tendency to emphasize strongly, to ex- 
 
ARNOLD DALY 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 121 
 
 aggerate possibly, to go for the main point 
 without greatly troubling about subtleties, 
 have their place in the one-act play; and 
 these are much more native to American 
 ideals than are the finely weighed values and 
 elaborate structure-building of the longer 
 drama. It would, therefore, not greatly 
 surprise me if, when great American Drama 
 comes to be written, it should take the form 
 of the one-act play. 
 
 Let us look at some of the plays that have 
 recently appeared in Vaudeville. 
 
 A clever little farce by Owen Johnson, en- 
 titled A Comedy for Wives, is presented 
 by Arnold Daly. It depicts the varying 
 moods of a young husband who has just 
 discovered that his wife has eloped. No 
 sooner has his bachelor friend succeeded in 
 diverting him from suicidal rage to a joy- 
 ous elation at the prospect of freedom and 
 a trip to Paris, than the wife returns and 
 announces her repentance and resolve to de- 
 vote herself henceforth to him and to him 
 only. Although there is no attempt to make 
 
122 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 of this anything more than a farcical trifle, 
 still it is complete in its dramatic construc- 
 tion and the situations evolve quite logically. 
 Nor is the extravagance of the fun unrea- 
 sonable in view of the nervous, excitable 
 character depicted. 
 
 One of the most delightful little one-act 
 comedies ever written is J. M. Barrie's 
 Twelve Pound Look, in which Ethel Barry- 
 more recently appeared. It touches on 
 problems very vital and puzzling, but al- 
 ways with a humor so kindly, so wise and 
 so playful, that it is possible to forget the 
 depths beneath in admiration of the charm 
 of light and shade which plays upon the 
 surface. 
 
 There is the pompous, small-minded, self- 
 made man who is to be knighted — ennobled 
 above his fellows for the world's admiration. 
 He is privately practising deportment for 
 the ensuing ceremony of investiture. His 
 cowed and insignificant wife must also be 
 drilled to share the lustre he has conferred 
 on her by making her his partner. His 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 123 
 
 "impromptu" speech must be typewritten to 
 appear in the papers and a stenographer is 
 to be sent from an agency to do the work. 
 When the girl arrives, smart, buoyant, in- 
 dependent, happy, he recognizes, to his con- 
 sternation, his divorced wife. He is shocked 
 at her downfall, but puzzled and annoyed 
 at her evident happiness. To satisfy him 
 she agrees to tell why she left him. To his 
 surprise it was not to go to "another." It 
 was to escape his overbearing superiority 
 and win for herself an individuality of her 
 own. She had saved twelve pounds, the 
 price of a typewriter, learned to use it and 
 started out to earn her own way. And as 
 he, gasping and hardly credulous, gazes at 
 her she glances at the shrinking, subjugated 
 second wife and warns him to treat her kind- 
 ly and to beware of the twelve pound look 
 in her eyes — the sign that she longs for a 
 means of escape. 
 
 Ethel B anymore has never appeared to 
 greater advantage than she does as this in- 
 dependent, radiant, breezy woman, who has 
 
124 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 won out in her own battle and who looks 
 at the man who has never understood her 
 and who never will with just a little wist- 
 fulness mixed with her relief from his op- 
 pression. He is not a bad fellow and she 
 would have liked to make him see, but she 
 knows him to be incurably blind. 
 
 It is a play which makes plenty of de- 
 mand on the audience, for it holds more in 
 it than the mere facts related in actual 
 words. It is a piece of modern life in touch 
 with modern feeling. It hits hard at the 
 snobbishness and selfishness of this self-com- 
 placent benefactor, whose sole motive in life 
 is his own glory and its enhancement. But 
 at the same time the story is told with such 
 simple, humorous clearness that it amuses 
 even those who do not care to penetrate be- 
 low the surface. 
 
 Kathryn Kidder is another actress whose 
 talents put her in the very front rank of 
 artists of to-day. She has been admirably 
 fitted with a part written by her husband, 
 Louis Kaufman Anspacher, embodying the 
 
ETHEL BARRYMORE 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 125 
 
 character of Mme. Sans Gene, in which char- 
 acter she made one of her greatest hits on 
 the legitimate stage. The sparkling little 
 comedietta deals with the compelling per- 
 sonality of Napoleon and appeals strongly 
 to that element of romance and hero worship 
 ever to be found in audiences. The shrewd, 
 plain-spoken washerwoman-duchess outwits 
 the suspicions of the Little Corporal and 
 finally convinces him of the innocence of an 
 apparently intriguing adventure which has 
 been fastened on a young officer by enemies 
 of the Empress. 
 
 The story is so full of color and reality 
 that I find myself wondering whether part 
 of the lukewarmness to the drama about 
 which managers complain may not have its 
 root in the modern desire to condense. We 
 are asked to sit through four acts when the 
 fare provided is just about enough for one, 
 according to our present day rate of liv- 
 ing. At all events, here is a little comedy, 
 the material of which might easily have been 
 stretched out to a whole evening, but which 
 
126 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 is condensed into a short half-hour, during 
 which we are amused and interested every 
 moment. We should not have enjoyed it 
 any more if we had spent the whole evening 
 at it, and possibly physical weariness would 
 have robbed us of our zest. As it is we can 
 enjoy to the full this one little gem and as 
 much or little of the other turns as we please 
 without being required to pay for our men- 
 tal refreshment with physical weariness. 
 
 That comedy is not the only offering ac- 
 ceptable is proved by Nance O 'Neil's selec- 
 tion of The Worth of a Man. A grim lit- 
 tle tragedy, wrought out in narrow, toilsome 
 lives, it is acted with a sincerity that blinks 
 none of its gloom. A convict returns to 
 his home to realize that he has lost his place 
 among men and that even with his wife 
 another has supplanted him. The wife tries 
 to conceal her breach of faith and the sup- 
 planter sacrifices his life to make atonement 
 for the wrong he has done. But all is un- 
 availing; nothing can restore to the outcast 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 127 
 
 his sense of recognition as a man and the 
 tragedy ends in bitterness and doom. 
 
 Melodrama of the popular crook type 
 finds its exponents in Taylor Granville and 
 Laura Pierpont. Their play, The System, 
 calls for three scenes and a lengthy cast to 
 present its lurid happenings. Of its kind 
 it is a well concocted series of thrills, run- 
 ning smoothly and plausibly with not too 
 great a strain on the possibilities. The story 
 is admirably handled, so that the characters, 
 whether that of the persecuted crook or the 
 persecuting policemen, appear human and 
 convincing. And it is very evident that the 
 audience, as a whole, thoroughly enjoys it, 
 perhaps because it is sufficiently like a slice 
 of life to appeal to their curiosity. For 
 the craving to see how the other half lives 
 and thinks is undoubtedly a strong factor 
 in the present love of crook plays. 
 
 Drama, strong and poignant, is offered 
 by Blanche Walsh in The Countess Nadine. 
 The story, as the name suggests, deals with 
 Russia, and the plots and counterplots of 
 
128 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 spies of the police. There is little oppor- 
 tunity in it for the comedy in which Blanche 
 Walsh is so charming, but its gripping in- 
 tensity gives her ample scope for earnest, 
 vigorous emotion. 
 
 And how shall we speak of that bright- 
 est of all stars of the theatrical firmament 
 who has lately flashed across the Vaudeville 
 stage, Sarah Bernhardt? A tribute of hom- 
 age is the least that can be rendered and this 
 has already been paid throughout the length 
 and breadth of the land. For she has not 
 brought to Vaudeville the threadbare rem- 
 nants of her art, but has mastered a new 
 and wonderful technique, built on years of 
 experience and animated by an art which 
 age cannot touch. She has recognized the 
 limitations imposed on her by increasing 
 years and met them and obliterated them 
 by the force of her genius. 
 
 They tell a story of her, the truth of 
 which I cannot vouch for, which seems so 
 illustrative of her indomitable spirit that it 
 gives a clue to her triumph. While kneel- 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 129 
 
 ing before the Altar in the play Jeanne 
 d'Arc, her knee was pierced by a nail. She 
 gave no sign of her agony until the per- 
 formance was over nor was the severity of 
 the wound recognized until blood poisoning 
 had set in. For a while her condition was 
 so serious that it seemed that it would be 
 necessary to amputate the leg. Her atten- 
 dants tried to conceal from her their anx- 
 iety, but by accident she one day overheard 
 some words which revealed to her the ter- 
 rible possibility. She realized to the full 
 that it meant the end of her career as an 
 actress. But not for one moment did she 
 think of it as the end of her career as an 
 artist. She still had her wonderful expres- 
 sional gift which has ever belonged to her 
 public nor would she allow it to be wasted 
 on account of any infirmity of her own. She 
 immediately set herself to planning how best 
 she could use it in the event of becoming a 
 cripple. Before her attendants knew that 
 she was aware of her danger she had in her 
 mind designed a little carriage in which she 
 
130 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 might be drawn on to the stage and from 
 which she might recite and interpret those 
 plays in which she has thrilled the world. 
 Over her, as she lay, should be strewed roses, 
 which might fall around her path as she 
 was moved. 
 
 It is in just this spirit that she has faced 
 the limitations imposed by increasing age. 
 She acknowledges that she can no longer 
 pace with panther-like grace across the 
 stage. So she stands, hardly moving from 
 one place, or even sits through long acts. 
 But she does not allow this fact to decrease 
 the expression of restless, nervous energy 
 that she would convey. We are made to feel 
 it burning through her whole frame. It 
 flashes from her eyes and vibrates through 
 the tensely held body and beautiful, sensi- 
 tive hands. 
 
 It is undeniable that her voice shows signs 
 of wear. No longer can she flute continu- 
 ously on those notes of gold. But she re- 
 serves them for the one passage where they 
 will melt the very soul. And, for the rest, 
 
NANCE O NEIL 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 131 
 
 it is so informed with sincerity of feeling 
 that it arouses a response to every shade of 
 emotion expressed. 
 
 This is indeed a new and wonderful tech- 
 nique in which ardor of soul has taken the 
 place of physical energy. With this she 
 still sounds the richest and most varied 
 chords in the orchestra of emotion and paints 
 pictures glowing with vitality and color or 
 holds the senses in a still intensity of ela- 
 tion. 
 
 I think one part of her fancy has fulfilled 
 itself: for the roses dropping from her 
 abundant store make beautiful every place 
 over which the chariot of her art passes. 
 
 I saw her first in the heyday of her prime, 
 when expression pulsed through every mo- 
 tion of her lithe, perfectly trained body, and 
 I hailed her as a wonderful actress. I see 
 her now when the fire of her genius flames 
 through the frailties of a body not strong 
 enough to contain its lustre, and I hail her 
 as a wonderful artist. 
 
132 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 Meanwhile, although the recent appear- 
 ance of Sarah Bernhardt was undoubtedly 
 the event of that dramatic season, it may as 
 well be acknowledged that it was not to the 
 ordinary habitue of the Vaudeville that she 
 most strongly appealed. 
 
 Of the crowds who thronged the theatre 
 and were turned away from the door at 
 every performance a very large part were 
 people to whom Vaudeville was an unex- 
 plored field. This might be taken as a proof 
 that in it there is something for every one 
 if he will but look for it; and it is not im- 
 possible that one of the results of her visit 
 may be a strong inducement to provide at- 
 tractions for the hitherto unreached public. 
 To keep up the standard set by the engage- 
 ment of Sarah Bernhardt would, of course, 
 be impossible ; for her name stands alone and 
 is a household word throughout the civilized 
 world. Nor can it be denied that just on 
 that account many have come to see, not 
 the artist, but the celebrity; for there is, 
 unfortunately, a large public whose curi- 
 
PLAYS AND SKETCHES 133 
 
 osity is stronger than its appreciation of 
 art. But in spite of this let us hope that 
 the fact that lovers of the very best can be 
 brought to Vaudeville is now thoroughly im- 
 pressed on the minds of those who provide 
 our entertainment. If it is we shall un- 
 doubtedly reap the benefit. 
 
 But when all is said and done the ulti- 
 mate result rests with the public. If it will 
 continue to seek out the best and give it 
 support, not only when guided by a historic 
 name but wherever a worthy occasion occurs, 
 we know that there is ambition enough 
 among the managers to supply whatever de- 
 mand is made. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Versatile Mimics and Proteans 
 
 THE imitative faculty is so inherent in 
 the human race that the limits of its 
 influence are difficult to appreciate. The 
 child absorbs many of its attributes, physi- 
 cal, mental and moral, by force of imitation, 
 either conscious or unconscious. It imitates, 
 not only what it admires, but even what it 
 dreads; the doctor, the policeman, the bur- 
 glar, no less than the president, the cowboy, 
 the "grand lady" or the fairy queen. 
 
 Some of us grow out of our habit of imi- 
 tation, but many more do not. Some of us 
 continue to be unconscious of it, but retain 
 it just as strongly. We have all known peo- 
 ple whose imitation of those they admire is 
 laughably apparent; whose "best friend" of 
 the moment can be recognized in the poses, 
 
 134 
 
CECELIA LOFTUS 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 135 
 
 gestures, mannerisms, tones of voice, which 
 they themselves reproduce for the time 
 being. 
 
 Did you ever look into the faces of an au- 
 dience and catch sight of one in which the 
 expressions of the actors on the stage was 
 mirrored, one after another, with no con- 
 sciousness on the part of the face's owner? 
 It would seem as though such a face must 
 be a sort of sensitized plate, obliged to re- 
 produce whatever came within the angle of 
 its vision. 
 
 It is this quality of translating by his 
 own body, voice and actions, the impres- 
 sions received, just as the action of the light 
 on the sensitized plate translates the objects 
 before it, which is the medium of expression 
 of the imitator. With him, however, the ac- 
 tion is not unconscious, but studied as care- 
 fully as an artistic photographer studies his 
 subject in order to bring out the salient 
 points. And when every characteristic has 
 been absorbed, the imitator must be able to 
 add to the reproduction the feeling of the 
 
136 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 original. For the time being he must feel 
 like the subject that he is portraying and 
 he must be able to impress this f eeling on 
 his audience. 
 
 Just as the photographer, by focus and 
 arrangement of light and by careful han- 
 dling, can influence the result of his photo- 
 graph, so the imitator, by diversifying his 
 methods, may give us the result in differing 
 ways, each way being none the less a true 
 imitation. He may give us a straight por- 
 trait — a more or less exact imitation of the 
 subject with only such emphasis placed on 
 the individual peculiarities as shall help us 
 to recognize the original. Or he may pre- 
 sent a caricature in which the peculiarities 
 are exaggerated and minor details elimi- 
 nated and only the salient features selected. 
 Or it may be a burlesque that he shows us 
 in which only the peculiarities are shown, the 
 rest being grotesque additions. 
 
 When we speak of imitators, two or three 
 names stand out in every mind, notably those 
 of Cecilia Loftus and Elsie Janis. It is 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 137 
 
 some years since the latter appeared in Vau- 
 deville, but her work in this medium is still 
 distinctly on the order of Vaudeville, so we 
 make no apology for mentioning it in this 
 connection. 
 
 Cecilia Loftus, known wherever the Eng- 
 lish language is spoken as Cissy Loftus, is 
 a dainty Chelsea china-shepherdess, en- 
 dowed by some elfin sprite with a sense of 
 humor. The combination is irresistible. For 
 a Chelsea china-shepherdess might with per- 
 fect justification be content to be dainty 
 and pretty and coquettish and quite vapid. 
 But when her eyes can twinkle and her 
 cheeks dimple and with a quaint twist her 
 mouth can utter roguish little sarcasms with 
 perfect good humor, the effect is piquant 
 and surprising. And when before your very 
 eyes the Chelsea china-shepherdess trans- 
 forms herself into one after another differ- 
 ing personalities, all of whom you have met 
 before, you find yourself marvelling. And 
 the transformation is not only in broad out- 
 lines but in details of personality. Watch 
 
138 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 the nervous rigidity of her figure, the angle 
 of the knee, as she impersonates Mrs. Fiske. 
 Listen to the metallic tensity of the voice. 
 Then see her melt into the soft, diaphanous 
 personality of Maude Allen, all lissomness 
 and pliability. Hear the sobbing monotone 
 of her voice and note the nervous languor 
 of her movements, as she portrays Jane 
 Cowl, and contrast them with the clean-cut 
 rhythmic movement of her Sarah Bern- 
 hardt. How entirely she gives herself up 
 to each succeeding portrait! For the time 
 being there is nothing left of her own in- 
 dividuality. It is a portrait, presenting de- 
 tails of manner, pose and figure with every 
 feature and foible peculiar to them. 
 
 In some of her monologues, however, 
 Miss Loftus shows that she is no stranger 
 to the art of caricature. Her complacent 
 young mother, travelling in a motor-bus 
 with her small boy, emphasizes with just 
 the right touch of exaggeration the stoical 
 indifference, not devoid of self -conscious- 
 ness, with which she incommodes her fel- 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 139 
 
 low-passengers. Alternately she reproves 
 and encourages the child to "show off," lin- 
 gers over her final alighting and exhausts 
 the patience of everyone, yourself included. 
 And then the twinkle of the merry eyes 
 and the dimples of the Chelsea china-shep- 
 herdess flash out again and you realize how 
 completely you lost her in the caricature 
 of the other woman. 
 
 I do not speak of Cissy Loftus's imita- 
 tion of Nazimova, because it is a compara- 
 tively easy thing to do. The peculiarities of 
 the latter are so marked and her accentua- 
 tion of them so obvious, that at times she 
 seems to be caricaturing herself. She is 
 imitated by nearly every impersonator. I 
 have seen an amateur, and a man at that, 
 give an imitation of her so convincing, that 
 it conjured up the very image of her to one's 
 mind's eye. On the Vaudeville stage among 
 the best that I have seen is Violet Dare's 
 satire on "Bella Donna" — a creepy, spidery 
 creature, in a grey-silver, clinging garment, 
 with close-bound hair, with slithery furtive 
 
140 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 walk and sensuous writhing body and voice 
 purring and lisping in tones obviously arti- 
 ficial. It is a trifle over elaborated, but the 
 subject was a tempting one and not very 
 hard to present. 
 
 Elsie Janis is, again, the portrait-painter. 
 Ethel Barrymore she does to the life — the 
 matured Ethel Barrymore with her warmer, 
 more human characteristics. And Laurette 
 Taylor! It would surely be weird to have 
 the two of them together, for little Peg o' 
 my Heart would be thinkin' it was her own 
 double she saw and mightn't that be un- 
 lucky, now? 
 
 How delightfully mischievous Elsie Janis 
 is when she pushes back her hair, and with 
 the ingenuousness of a schoolgirl — and she 
 isn't much more, after all, — imitates Fred 
 Stone, with whom she is acting. Of course 
 this time it is a caricature, but it is done with 
 the effect of spontaneity, giving the impres- 
 sion that she has never even attempted it 
 before, which is very piquant. There are 
 other things which she can do besides imi- 
 
MARSHALL WILDER 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 141 
 
 tations, and I expect to see her succeed in 
 things which as yet she has not attempted. 
 For it is a great thing to be young and still 
 growing, and still greater to have made a 
 success but not lost the ambition to grow. 
 
 So far we have spoken only of imitators 
 who rely entirely upon their power to in- 
 fuse into their own persons the peculiari- 
 ties and individualities of their subjects. 
 But there is a large class of impersonators 
 who rely for their effects largely on elabo- 
 rate noses, wigs and even cheeks and chins. 
 These are wonders of skill in their composi- 
 tion and are manipulated before your very 
 eyes, so that in a minute, by carefully 
 planned movements, the performer and his 
 attendant have transformed the outward 
 semblance of the man from Napoleon to 
 Lincoln, or from Henry Irving to Theodore 
 Roosevelt. One of these, Lamberti, adds 
 to the imitations of several musicians a 
 skilful performance on the instrument most 
 affected by the original. 
 
 Caesar Rivoli, too, impersonates in this 
 
142 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 way ten famous musical composers, con- 
 ducting in the orchestra fragments of their 
 compositions and stooping down for one 
 moment behind the conductor's desk to ef- 
 fect his transformations. It is true that, in 
 the matter of make-up, the triumph be- 
 longs in great part to the wig-maker; but 
 no efficiency expert has ever excelled the 
 economy of movement that is employed by 
 these impersonators in their rapid changes. 
 
 In the gay little sketch which is Kivoli's 
 chief offering and in which he takes the 
 parts successively of seven different char- 
 acters, it is again more the rapid change of 
 make-up and costume which commands ad- 
 miration. For in every one we can but 
 recognize the voluble exuberance of Rivoli 
 himself. He is bubbling with an excitability 
 truly Latin, when he appears as his own 
 prologue, and he bubbles in varying keys in 
 each of the characters that he portrays with 
 the same vivacity and exuberance. 
 
 For impersonality and disassociation from 
 the characters he assumes, the work of Owen 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 143 
 
 McGiveney in his personifications of five 
 characters from Dickens's Oliver Twist is 
 quite remarkable. In his prologue he stands 
 before us, a quiet, self-contained young 
 man, rather retiring in manner, with no as- 
 sumption of forcefulness, giving one the 
 impression of a student rather than an en- 
 tertainer. Dressed in ordinary evening 
 clothes, he gives a resume of the play in 
 which he is about to appear, and as he re- 
 tires, almost before you realize that he is 
 off, there rushes on, in his costume of a man- 
 about-town of the period of 1860, Monks, 
 the nervous plotting, flushed-faced step- 
 brother of the hounded little Oliver. He 
 bursts into the wretched garret of Fagin to 
 warn his accomplice that one of his wretched 
 gang, Nancy, has betrayed them. 
 
 He fumes through the empty room with 
 hurried footsteps, and finding no one to 
 whom to tell his tale, departs. The door has 
 not closed behind him before the curtains 
 of the bunkbed part and the hob-nail boot 
 of Bill Sykes appears and that husky bully 
 
144 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 heaves himself lumberingly into sight, 
 burly, beetle-browed, slow of speech and 
 movement but dogged, fierce, persistent. 
 He burns for drink to slake the fever caused 
 by his last night's carouse, and finding none 
 in its accustomed place, with a curse at the 
 negligence of Nancy, lurches off to get it. 
 Then, while the clump of his boots dies away 
 down the stairs, Nancy slips into the room, 
 faltering, afraid, hesitating. Browbeaten 
 and cowed as she is, she still cares for the 
 comfort of her brutal lover, though disgust 
 at his cruelty and savageness has deter- 
 mined her to save Oliver from the clutches 
 of the wicked crew. She knows well enough 
 that death awaits her if they learn of her 
 design and knows too whose will be the hand 
 to deal it. But her instinct leads her still to 
 minister to this brute whom she has made 
 her master and serve him humbly as here- 
 tofore in spite of the fear and repulsion stir- 
 ring in her heart. She goes out and Fagin, 
 the master mind of this band of rogues, en- 
 ters; so instantaneously, that one almost 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 145 
 
 conceives of them being both on the stage 
 together. 
 
 There are many ingenious technical tricks 
 for holding our attention on the disappear- 
 ing actor for a moment or two before his 
 reappearance in the next character at an- 
 other entrance. The skirt of the dress is 
 caught in the doorway — a hand still holds 
 the door jam — the walking stick still pro- 
 trudes for a little while, or the voice is still 
 heard finishing the sentence — so that our im- 
 agination holds the presence of the character 
 which has disappeared and the reappearance 
 of the actor under another guise, with a voice 
 changed not only in key but in intonation, 
 quality and utterance, seems hardly less than 
 magical. 
 
 And so the grim little drama is played 
 out until the sickening blows and moans are 
 heard which tell of the murder of Nancy by 
 her brutal mate while Fagin listens, cower- 
 ing and yet exultant. One other character 
 is added to the list, that of the "artful Dod- 
 ger," pert, callous, depraved, but light- 
 
146 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 hearted and philosophical, a character dis- 
 tinct from the others and as forcibly ren- 
 dered. For each one is thought out in every 
 minute detail of movement, pose and utter- 
 ance, with a keen study of how best to stimu- 
 late the imagination of the audience so as 
 to invest each character with a permanence 
 and position with regard to the others and 
 the working out of the story of the drama. 
 It is a fascinating exhibition and Owen 
 McGiveney has brought to it no small 
 amount of intellectual and psychological in- 
 sight. It is a pity, however, that he has not 
 called to his aid a writer of dialogue with 
 the literary ability to give characteristic 
 form to the utterances of the various per- 
 sonalities. The turn of their sentences, the 
 choice of words and phrases, should have 
 quite as much character as the sound of the 
 voice or the action of the body, whereas at 
 present, except in such sentences as are taken 
 directly from the original book, the dialogue 
 is monotonous and flat, compared with the 
 variety and individuality of the action. 
 
KATHLEEN CLIFFORD 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 147 
 
 There are many more pictures being 
 shown in this great photographic gallery of 
 Vaudeville. Some are fanciful and humor- 
 ous, some are grave and actual, but all are 
 the records of sensitized minds, displayed 
 through the medium of a plastic and respon- 
 sive body. 
 
 Though he possesses many of the qualifi- 
 cations of the actor, there is enough dif- 
 ference in the requirements of an imitator 
 to make it by no means certain that the lat- 
 ter would necessarily be a great actor. For 
 one thing, this presentation of the instan- 
 taneous picture is different from the grad- 
 ual building up and unfolding of a 
 sustained character, and the very ability to 
 concentrate the qualities and characteristics 
 in a flashlight presentation will probably 
 counteract the slower and more gradual de- 
 velopment, needed in the structure of a com- 
 pleted character in a play. 
 
 We might go even further and say that 
 in some respects the technique of the actor 
 and that of the imitator are entirely oppo- 
 
148 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 site, the one to the other. The conscientious 
 actor, if he is allowed to approach his work 
 as an artist, will study the environment, ten- 
 dencies, temperament, motives and mood of 
 the character he is to represent, as well as 
 the circumstances leading to his action. 
 
 Then, having mastered all of these in such 
 a manner as to be able by the power of his 
 imagination to feel them emotionally, he 
 will discover by what means they would nat- 
 urally display themselves. He must then 
 go a step further and study how to heighten 
 their display, so that the audience shall be 
 able to interpret the emotions, prompting 
 these actions, without any appearance of 
 behavior beyond the normal and human. 
 Thus, his gestures and the character of 
 them, the tones of his voice, his movements 
 and carriage, are moulded from within. 
 
 The imitator, however, begins at the other 
 end. With him it is the gesture first and 
 the character of it, and from that back to 
 what prompted it. There is no need to probe 
 back very far into tendency, and motive, any 
 
VERSATILE MIMICS 149 
 
 more than the maker of the plaster cast of 
 the "Unknown Lady" need analyze the 
 meaning of her inscrutable smile. But the 
 Florentine artist who created it must have 
 lived with its mystery burning in his brain 
 and heart for many a long day before he 
 fixed its cold, sweet cruelty in the marble 
 to live through the ages. 
 
 This failure of the imitator to do crea- 
 tive work was shown very plainly in the 
 attempt of one of these impersonators to 
 fill out the scene of the death of Svengali, 
 the villain of Du Maurier's sensational suc- 
 cess, Trilby. 
 
 In the touch and go of his previous im- 
 personations he had given us character and 
 dramatic action. But when it came to the 
 full scene there was no power to give struc- 
 tural form to the conception. The interest 
 was not built up, step by step, to a climax. 
 The first stagger and clutch at his heart of 
 the dying man was as full of horror as his 
 final death. All his intermediate writhings 
 added nothing either of character exposition 
 
150 ^VAUDEVILLE 
 
 or dramatic intensity. The interest of the 
 audience, instead of increasing 1 , was allowed 
 to relax. The artist could give us an ad- 
 mirable snapshot, but could not elaborate 
 a finished picture. 
 
MARIE LLOYD 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Some English Visitors 
 
 THE theatre, like all the arts, cannot 
 help being more or less a reflection of 
 the manners and morals of its age and coun- 
 try. And this is no less true of the Vaude- 
 ville or variety entertainment, thought in a 
 different way. For we do not look there for 
 an exact representation of the way in which 
 people think or act, or even dress, but we 
 do see what are the things which they think 
 amusing, what it is which touches their sen- 
 timentality, the things which seem to them 
 enviable, and what they regard as "fun." 
 
 In a previous chapter I have spoken of 
 the change from the old English Music 
 Hall, catering only to the amusement of 
 men, to the present style of "Refined Vau- 
 deville." This development has necessarily 
 151 
 
152 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 brought corresponding changes in the brand 
 of entertainment offered for the delight of 
 this different audience. To trace this grad- 
 ual change let us look at the differences of 
 method and manner of a few English visi- 
 tors, the dates of whose visits cover the time 
 allotted to a generation, while their knowl- 
 edge of stage life extends even further back 
 than that. They are all still with us at the 
 present time of writing, and, in spite of 
 changes of taste there is so much that is 
 genuinely exhilarating in their turns that 
 they still minister to our delight. 
 
 Many of the present generation of vaude- 
 ville goers will not remember the first ap- 
 pearance of Marie Lloyd in this country. 
 She belongs in temper and time to a day 
 which in this country is quickly passing, but 
 she has her place firmly rooted in the hearts 
 of her countrymen. For Marie Lloyd is 
 the personification of the spirit of the old 
 English Music Hall. She has really no 
 place in "Refined Vaudeville." She belongs 
 to the era of beef and beer and loud laugh- 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 153 
 
 ter and broad winks. But beef and beer are 
 not unwholesome, and a roar of hearty 
 laughter is ever so much better than a snick- 
 er and a broad wink. Well, when the wink 
 is as cheerful and wholehearted and uncon- 
 cerned as Marie Lloyd's there is not much 
 harm in a wink. 
 
 It is quite impossible to acquit Marie 
 Lloyd of vulgarity; but it is a straightfor- 
 ward, hearty, spontaneous vulgarity, that 
 smacks more of the primitive frankness of 
 an untutored child of nature than the sophis- 
 ticated salaciousness of the cosmopolitan. 
 Yet there is no denying that the romping 
 fun of this boisterous coster-girl, her loud, 
 frank laugh, her jokes of more than dubi- 
 ous intent, and that impudent wink, may 
 prove disturbing to a generation whose man- 
 ners, if not their morals, are less robust than 
 hers. We do not openly encourage that 
 type. There are no coster-girls among us. 
 Our factory girls may be occasionally bold 
 and not too modest, but they will have you 
 know that they are "pufFeck ladies," even if 
 
154 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 they are a bit flirtatious and giggling in 
 their demeanor. Marie Lloyd never makes 
 any pretence of being a "puffeck lady." 
 She knows no harm in her frank utterances, 
 and sees no reason for anybody being 
 shocked. 
 
 So, when she sees anything which strikes 
 her as humorous, she mentions it with the in- 
 nocence of a child. But, in a polite assem- 
 blage such a child is an "enfant terrible," 
 and any attempt to assuage her plain speak- 
 ing would only result in confusion worse 
 confounded. But one does not greatly de- 
 plore the conduct of a naughty child, and 
 most of us can laugh at its betisses. 
 
 One of her songs — I do not know if she 
 has sung it here — is about a girl who by a 
 series of accidents found her way into the 
 harem of the Sultan. She sang it dressed 
 in a weird mixture of Turkish trousers and 
 coster-girl hat and feather, and accompanied 
 it with a parody of an Oriental dance, bois- 
 terously and irresistibly funny. With rol- 
 licking heartiness it described how she "left 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 155 
 
 the Sultan sitting on his throne and came 
 straight home to Bill." And this is just 
 what she has done. She has kept away from 
 the luscious, the sensual, the seductive, and 
 jests merrily with full-blooded human facts 
 of life in the spirit of good-humored sim- 
 plicity and raillery. 
 
 Nor must it be forgotten that she repre- 
 sents a type fast disappearing. But in their 
 heyday the real Cockney of Cockaigne, un- 
 trammelled by the era of "improvements," 
 recognized him or herself as being wholly 
 different from but by no means inferior to 
 the "toffs" — those lofty creatures of cul- 
 ture and decorum. The Cockney had his 
 own code of morals and manners, and a few 
 lurid phrases were not incompatible with 
 it. The responsibilities of life weighed 
 lightly on their shoulders. Care is not in- 
 duced by what we have to do without, but 
 by what we unavailingly crave. So poverty 
 is not humiliating when you are as well off as 
 your fellows, and ignorance is no matter for 
 shame if you know as much as they. So 
 
156 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 they lived, a law unto themselves in their 
 kingdom of Cockaigne. 
 
 Once accept these facts and Marie 
 Lloyd's broad comedy is as natural as the 
 frolicking of a young colt in springtime. 
 Just because the world is young and she is 
 full of gaiety and high spirits, up go her 
 heels into the air, no matter what conven- 
 tion they kick down. And the world is 
 young, and so is she, and so are all of us — 
 when we are happy. For youth is largely 
 a matter of feeling, and fortunately it is con- 
 tagious, and there is no one who can spread 
 the contagion faster than Marie Lloyd. 
 
 No less brilliant, and perhaps more in ac- 
 cord with modern ideals, is her sister, Alice 
 Lloyd. Here again we see the easy author- 
 ity of the artist who has thoroughly mas- 
 tered the technique of her craft. As such, 
 she feels instinctively the response of her 
 audience, and can play upon it and foster 
 it for its own more abundant delight, as 
 the laughing water mirrors back the sun- 
 shine. Vesta Tilley must have spent pretty 
 
VESTA VICTORIA 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 157 
 
 nearly half of her life dressed in masculine 
 garments, her actions parodying those of the 
 lords of creation, while her mind has been 
 quizzing and mocking them with a kindly, 
 humorous philosophy. 
 
 I believe she was about five years old 
 when she made her debut at Birmingham, 
 England, in a burlesque of the then famous 
 tenor, Sims Reeves. Adorned with a silky 
 black moustache and clad in a tiny dress suit, 
 the little tot sang with exaggerated fervor 
 the sentimental ballads about "My Pretty 
 Jane" and the "Pilgrim of Love" and all 
 the other objects of idolatry in vogue at that 
 time. 
 
 And since then she has continued to par- 
 ody the youth of the opposite sex. She is 
 the laughing critic of their foibles and weak- 
 nesses and remains always as young as they. 
 I should not like to count up how many 
 years it is since I first saw her the "principal 
 boy" at a pantomime, and a very dainty lit- 
 tle fairy prince she was, too. But it was not 
 long before she discarded the doublet and 
 
158 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 hose, and reappeared as the modern "chap- 
 pie" in evening dress, topper, walking stick 
 and monocle. Then, as usual, she told us 
 of her escapades and her sage reflections 
 thereon. And this she has been doing from 
 that time to the present, sketching for our 
 delight a gallery of characters, including 
 the happy youth of the day, in every variety 
 of type — soldier, sailor, schoolboy, clerk, 
 and, her favorite of all, the young fellow 
 about town. In every one she has studied 
 her subject and entered into his feelings and 
 shared his views and knows his world. 
 
 Her "Tommy Atkins" is a gay, careless 
 dog, very sure of his fatal effect on femi- 
 nine hearts. Very smart and conscious of 
 his well-set-up figure, he cocks his head and 
 swaggers saucily, his tiny feet strutting pre- 
 cisely to the music. He twirls his little cane, 
 or, using it as a sword, lunges desperately, 
 then sheathes it in his left hand as he stands 
 at "Attention." Or he marches stiffly, a 
 huge cigar tipped at a surprising angle be- 
 tween his lips, puffing like a steam engine, 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 159 
 
 chest protruding, but with a beam of satis- 
 faction spread over his face, and his eyes 
 turning to watch the stunning effect on all 
 beholders. 
 
 Then there is a captivating midshipman, 
 who dances such a hornpipe as sets the pulses 
 tripping to its measure. No leaf in the 
 wind ever floated across the ground more 
 lightly than this swaying, bending, flutter- 
 ing figure, with the precise tap-tapping feet 
 and eyes dancing as merrily as music. She 
 is an adorable sailor-boy, not, perhaps so 
 fully characterized as some of the other 
 types, but loveable and winning. 
 
 There is the cheap young clerk, enjoying 
 the splendor of his summer holiday, and 
 the gorgeous raiment he has provided for its 
 celebration. He has toiled and saved that 
 he may loll on the Brighton promenade in 
 the guise of a young aristocrat and impress 
 passers-by with the enviableness of his lot. 
 And here Vesta Tilley brings out just a lit- 
 tle hint of pathos in the poor fellow, not by 
 any direct statement, but by his heartfelt so- 
 
160 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 licitude that not an item of the apparel which 
 he has purchased at such sacrifice shall be 
 missed, and his grim determination to enjoy 
 every minute of his poor, short week. There 
 is an irony here, something more subtle than 
 mere impersonation, for it interprets as well 
 as satirizes. 
 
 But, after all, the character by which she 
 is best known is her London Chappie, light- 
 hearted, rollicking, insolent, complacent. 
 He is a little too apt to be tipsy, and then he 
 is not so pleasant; but, when he is just out 
 for a lark, he is irresistible. His shrewd wis- 
 dom, the result of his profound experience, 
 is delicious, and his gaiety delightfully in- 
 fectious. 
 
 There is no artist on the stage to-day who 
 is more closely in sympathy with the audi- 
 ence than Vesta Tilley. She can play with 
 it, mould it, keep it in suspense, until you 
 begin to fear that her action is too slow, then 
 suddenly she snaps out a climax with a rattle 
 and verve that sweep all before it. And it is 
 done with a conscious love of the artistry 
 
ALICE LLOYD 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 161 
 
 of it. In a curious way the very ground- 
 work of her success in depicting these mas- 
 culine types lies in the femininity of her per- 
 sonality. She is not mannish, and her point 
 of view is not that of the man, though she 
 has an understanding of it. She stands 
 apart and views her types with a detachment 
 that can appreciate the values in them bet- 
 ter than if she approached them from a more 
 personal standpoint. She is critic and apolo- 
 gist, interpreter and mocker, all in one. 
 Withal she remains eternally youthful, 
 cheerful and sincere. 
 
 Vesta Victoria is quite as old as her 
 mother, Vesta Tilley, and has no trace of 
 the saucy swagger that characterizes that 
 gentlemanly young fellow. She is one of 
 the blonde, soft, slow-moving English 
 women, and scores her points by seeming 
 not to see them. The extreme simplicity of 
 her poor, rag-bag-looking bride, in her song, 
 "Waiting at the Church," gives a keynote to 
 her whole method. She just does not un- 
 
162 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 derstand, and is looking to you to explain it 
 all to her. Even the peculiarly explicit note 
 from the bridegroom-expectant, giving as 
 his reason for not appearing "my wife won't 
 let me," doesn't seem to convince her of the 
 true state of things. Her pellucid, bell-like 
 voice, with just a suspicion of throatiness 
 in it, is as questioning as that of a child who 
 has not quite decided whether to laugh or 
 cry. There is no conscious use of any of 
 the technical tricks, of pauses, of glances at 
 the audience, or gestures or asides. The 
 whole story is poured out in very simple 
 words, in a manner naive and unstudied, at 
 times almost querulous and with absolutely 
 no hint at appreciation of any humor in it. 
 This same simplicity is the mark of another 
 song about a country woman, left wander- 
 ing in the streets with her baby while her 
 husband is hunting a lodging for her. The 
 story is told with almost stolid straightfor- 
 wardness, which is humorous in its complete- 
 ness. "Poor old me, I haven't any key and 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 163 
 
 I don't know where I live." Could anything 
 be simpler? 
 
 I don't know if Vesta Victoria is versa- 
 tile. I have only seen her in this one per- 
 formance, when her characteristics appeared 
 so definite and clear-cut that it hardly seemed 
 possible they should vary. True she had 
 one romping song, describing a disastrous 
 horseback ride in which the descriptions 
 were a little more energetic than in the oth- 
 ers. But there was the same direct uncon- 
 scious simplicity, with evidently no intention 
 to be funny. She is, in fact, quite sorry for 
 herself; but there is not a bit of tragedy 
 in her sorrow. You feel assured that it 
 would take very little to make her dry her 
 eyes and forget her troubles. I think that 
 is one of the reasons of her popularity. 
 Troubles seem such simple affairs as told 
 by her. She appeals to our sense of su- 
 periority. We know we could straighten 
 matters out for her and manage her busi- 
 ness to perfection, and she, poor little 
 thing, seems to know it too. She tells the 
 
164 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 tale of the sad muddle she makes of every- 
 thing and we see the humorous side of it, 
 which she seems to have missed and again 
 our sense of superiority is tickled. 
 
 Only afterward do we realize how com- 
 pletely she has convinced us by the force of 
 her appeal and then we recognize the art 
 of it. She has reckoned on a certain quality 
 in our mental makeup and results have 
 proved the wisdom of her calculation. 
 
 One of the latest of our English visitors 
 is Ada Reeve, and a contrast of her methods 
 with those of Marie Lloyd marks how far 
 Vaudeville has travelled from the old Mu- 
 sic Hall. 
 
 One of the first impressions one gets of 
 her is that of a well conducted young per- 
 son who, from her demure demeanor, might 
 be the governess in a nobleman's family. 
 Her blond hair is parted and brushed sim- 
 ply back from a face tanned by out-of-door 
 life. Her almost quakerish gray dress, with 
 its pretty lace collar, has nothing striking 
 or extravagant about it and is long enough 
 
KITTY GORDON 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 165 
 
 and wide enough to conceal her neat little 
 feet and ankles. Her manner is hesitating 
 and friendly and studiously ladylike. 
 
 Then she sings; and her songs show that 
 in spite of studied deportment this young 
 lady has leanings toward life that are not 
 included in the curriculum of the school- 
 room. For her songs are mostly concerned 
 with more or less clandestine love affairs 
 carried on under the nose of authority. And 
 they are sung with a relish instead of dis- 
 approbation. Sometimes she dances, neatly 
 and deftly, with an odd little mixture of 
 demureness and liveliness. 
 
 Then comes the singing of "Do, Sue, do," 
 which is accompanied by an extraordinary 
 wriggle of head and chest. It is a master- 
 piece of grotesqueness, wholly gratuitous, 
 for the contortions have absolutely no bear- 
 ing on the subject of the song. It takes 
 the audience by surprise, with its audacity 
 that is so entirely unlooked for. 
 
 It is the climax of the surprise which 
 commenced with the twinkle of the eyes 
 
166 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 when the first line of the first song revealed 
 its equivocal situation. It is worked up very 
 neatly and skilfully, at no time forced. 
 Even the grotesque wriggle is done with an 
 exuberance that makes it seem spontaneous 
 and natural. One feels that there is plenty 
 of reserve behind it. The limit has not been 
 attempted, even if frolic did become a little 
 daring. And at the close of the perform- 
 ance the little grey-clad figure drops back 
 into ladylike demeanor just as correctly as 
 if she had never shown the unconventional 
 humors which were concealed by the mask 
 of decorum. 
 
 This is in itself a little satire on human 
 nature. There is piquancy in the surprise 
 of finding the lurking little devil peeping 
 from an unexpected corner. But how wide- 
 ly it differs from the wild fling of spirits, 
 the rollicking jollity of Marie Lloyd. In 
 reality it is not a bit less of the earth earthy. 
 But it is not the sport of the untutored child 
 of nature. No! It is an "educated" little 
 devil. Its speech and manners have gone 
 
SOME ENGLISH VISITORS 167 
 
 through the "grammar grades" at least. It 
 knows there are solecisms unpermissible ; but 
 it hasn't paid much heed to its lessons and is 
 not very sure what they are. Yet it is care- 
 ful — so careful that we cannot fail to notice 
 every lapse. 
 
 One other impression — quite English, you 
 know — remains in my mind. A tiny, droll, 
 nondescript figure, clad in voluminous turk- 
 ish trousers of blue, and a scrimpy basque- 
 like jacket, with some foolish sort of dish- 
 plate hat crowning the whole effect. And 
 her laugh! How it bubbles and rings out 
 like a clarion call to merriment. Was there 
 ever a person living who could resist the 
 laugh of Katie Barry? It told you more 
 about laughter than all the treatises of Berg- 
 son and other Philosophers put together. 
 For it convinced you that there is no limit 
 to the potentialities of a happy, hearty 
 laugh. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Marvels of Strength and Skill 
 
 I BELIEVE there are people who say- 
 that they do not care for acrobatic per- 
 formances. Of course there are reasons for 
 this antipathy. One is that the element of 
 danger, which to many people is a source of 
 attraction, to others is distasteful if not 
 positively distressing. Another reason is 
 satiety. The feats performed have so ex- 
 ceeded the limit of what seems humanly pos- 
 sible that, after having witnessed a certain 
 number with astonishment, nothing more 
 can cause any surprise or stimulate the jaded 
 appetite. If one impossibility can be per- 
 formed, why not another? Astonishment 
 by itself is not a good wearing quality. It 
 needs to be reinforced by something else 
 if it is to last. 
 
 168 
 
ANNETTE KELLERMAN 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 169 
 
 With these cloyed appetites contrast the 
 rapture of a child who witnesses such per- 
 formances for the first time. The apparent 
 ease with which difficulties are overcome de- 
 ceives him. He feels assured that he too 
 can perform these wonders, and defy grav- 
 ity and space with daring leaps and unfail- 
 ing poise. I think there is a dismal gap in 
 the experience of anyone who cannot look 
 back on the time when, after the first visit 
 to a show of some kind, this new world of 
 hazard and daring opened up before him. 
 Then came the ambition to enter into this 
 new world. The tottering attempts to main- 
 tain one's balance for one moment on the 
 top rail of a fence; the ignominious tum- 
 bles ; the gradual awakening to the fact that 
 severe discipline lay between attempt and 
 achievement; the triumph of an infinitesi- 
 mal success and the growing control of mus- 
 cle and balance — all these should have their 
 place in the storehouse of memories belong- 
 ing to each of us. 
 
 I have in my mind a picture of a tiny, pet- 
 
170 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 ticoated creature, standing waveringly on 
 the garden roller, shuffling desperately with 
 sandaled feet, in emulation of the accom- 
 plishment of a wonderful ball-roller, who 
 with his feet had propelled his ball to the 
 top of a narrow spiral path that in retrospect 
 seemed to have soared to the height of a sky- 
 scraper but which, I suppose, in reality may 
 have reached some thirty feet. 
 
 The child's stunt was never mastered, but 
 the attempt at that and other achievements 
 had their share in implanting a conscious- 
 ness of the thrill that the conquest of some 
 daring or hazardous venture brings with it. 
 It taught, too, something of the require- 
 ments needful to accomplish successfully 
 even the simplest acrobatic acts: the poise, 
 the mastery of every movement, the timing, 
 the clearness of head and, above all, the 
 patient practice which achieved the mastery. 
 And I believe it is only this sympathetic 
 viewing of acrobatics which can afford last- 
 ing pleasure in these acts. If we sit back 
 inert and watch them merely as a perform- 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 171 
 
 ance of danger and difficulty we shall soon 
 tire of them. But given even just enough 
 knowledge of gymnasium work to realize 
 for one's self the sensation, say of jumping 
 for a trapeze bar, balancing one's self up- 
 right on a rail, climbing hand over hand 
 up a rope or any other quite elementary 
 exercises, and use the memory of these sen- 
 sations to help you to feel the movements 
 of acrobats with your own senses; then, so 
 far from complaining of boredom, you are 
 more likely to find their feats too thrilling. 
 
 What wonders they do accomplish, to be 
 sure! There may be a few trick perform- 
 ances that have more showiness than actual 
 skill ; but by far the most part of them are, 
 beyond suspicion, genuine marvels in their 
 control of muscle, poise and timing. Heads 
 must be incapable of dizziness, eyes sure 
 and keen, wits alert and responsive and the 
 whole body kept in a state of health and 
 sanity. Without faltering they must in- 
 trust their lives into the hands of their fel- 
 lows, literally as well as figuratively. And 
 
172 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 to make the act acceptable it must all be 
 done with a zest and joy which makes the 
 least of what is often the most difficult. Oc- 
 casionally, especially with some of the for- 
 eign troupes, we find them lashing them- 
 selves into an intoxication with the abandon 
 of their prowess. 
 
 See those whirling Arabs hurl themselves 
 in wild circling rings. Some heels over head, 
 some doing hand spans and some those curi- 
 ous wheeling twists in the air in which both 
 gravity and anatomy are defied. How they 
 vie with one another in endurance and agil- 
 ity and cry out with irrepressible exultation ! 
 We know that their skill is the result of 
 long toilsome training, of patient practice 
 and heart-breaking discipline. But to us 
 they give only the joy of it, the sense of 
 mastery, the achievements of which the 
 physical energies are capable. 
 
 There is a Japanese troupe calling them- 
 selves the Mori Brothers. What could be 
 more joyous than the zest with which they 
 seem to play with the barrel which, as they 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 173 
 
 lie on their backs, they hurl with their feet 
 from one to another! They are not afraid 
 to demonstrate the difficulty of their task 
 by occasionally missing a catch. In fact, 
 one almost suspects them of heightening 
 their effects thereby. But how comically 
 they express their derision of the unlucky 
 one in a pantomime of wagging toes, softly 
 rubbed feet and face grinning like a comic 
 mask. 
 
 They do some wonderful tumbling, too. 
 For, as one man lies on the couch, his feet 
 in the air, he supports on them his fellow, 
 by the shoulders, head downward. From 
 this position he tosses him in air and catches 
 him, standing upright, on his feet, the two 
 men being feet to feet. 
 
 There are two men who are called on the 
 bills Hanlon and Clifton, who present a 
 very clever act in a quite unusual way. 
 When the scene opens, it discloses a com- 
 fortably appointed parlor, in which the two 
 are discovered, dressed in ordinary business 
 clothes, the one in an armchair near the 
 
174 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 fire and the other playing on the piano. 
 They might be two ordinary young chaps, 
 sharing an apartment together, spending a 
 quiet evening. Presently they both arise 
 and strolling to the table each helps himself 
 to a cigarette; then sit down, one on either 
 side of the table. The larger of the two 
 lights his cigarette; then, holding out his 
 hand across the table, grasps those of the 
 smaller man, who, springing from his seat, 
 is immediately balanced, feet up in the air, 
 on the hand of his companion. In this po- 
 sition the larger one moves him, he himself 
 arching his body, until their two cigarettes 
 touch and the smaller obtains the needed 
 light. They continue to do amazing feats 
 on this order, all in the same easy, non- 
 chalant way, as if it were nothing out of the 
 usual. 
 
 I believe they do remove their coats for 
 some of the more energetic manoeuvres, but 
 otherwise they show no signs of exertion. 
 There is nothing of the attitudinizing to the 
 audience or the conscious demand for ap- 
 
WILL ROGERS 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 175 
 
 plause so often indulged in by acrobatic per- 
 formers. Finally, when the turn is over, they 
 stroll back, each to the position he occupied 
 at the rise of the curtain and appear to be 
 absorbed in the books and music of the quiet 
 evening at home. 
 
 It is rather a curious study of the psy- 
 chology of audiences that, although during 
 this performance one hears on all sides ex- 
 clamations of surprise and delight, the fall 
 of the curtain on the quiet, unspectacular 
 scene rather discounts the volume of the ap- 
 plause. 
 
 Not less wonderful are the pyramiding 
 and somersaulting of such experts as the 
 Brack Troupe, or the balancing of the Heyn 
 Brothers. They pile on to one another's 
 shoulders, three or four high; then from 
 the topmost pinnacle, the wiry, lightly built 
 youth jumps, turning a somersault in air, 
 and lands on the next highest human tier, 
 and so on to the ground. All of these look 
 so easy when done by experts. As you sit 
 back comfortably in your velvet-upholstered 
 
176 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 chair you may feel inclined to say with a 
 shrug (I have heard it myself) : "Oh, just 
 a little practice, that's all it needs!" But 
 the person who says this is usually of the 
 rotund proportions which suggest that his 
 muscles have never been put to a greater 
 strain than that required to step on or off a 
 street car, while if he devoted the rest of 
 his life (which under such circumstances 
 would probably not be long) to practice, he 
 would never achieve the simplest of the feats 
 performed. 
 
 Not content with pyramids and somer- 
 saults from the firm earth we have them 
 performed from motor-cycles, slack wires, 
 anything to add to their danger and diffi- 
 culty. I remember being told by a profes- 
 sional acrobat that there are not above a 
 dozen different feats essential for the acro- 
 bat and that the art of the performer com- 
 prises the combining and enhancing of these 
 in such a way as to construct a "novelty." 
 And so we find them thinking out new risks, 
 piling one difficulty on another, never satis- 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 177 
 
 fied to achieve less than what seems to be 
 impossible. 
 
 Nor is the skill any less when it is mixed 
 with grotesque humor, as when we see one 
 of a troupe whose business it is to make 
 a series of failures, as brilliant in their own 
 way as the successes of his fellows. Or 
 there is Bert Melrose, a single performer, 
 whose slippings and stumblings as he climbs 
 up onto the loosely piled up tables, makes 
 one's heart jump. When he finally reaches 
 the top and sits on a chair, rocking com- 
 placently, it is a positive relief that at last 
 he falls with perfect ease and safety, bounc- 
 ing up again in a triumph of boneless curves 
 and twists and eccentric grins. 
 
 The humors of these comedy acrobats are 
 surely inherited from the clowns and pan- 
 taloons of earlier days, with extra skill and 
 agility added to the foolery. There is in 
 most of us still enough of the child to laugh 
 at their drolleries as they tangle themselves 
 up in the furniture or fall, not only over, 
 but under and all around the table, or put 
 
178 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 their feet through the rung of a chair and 
 only extricate themselves by wriggling the 
 whole body after it. 
 
 There is a troupe of these clown-acrobats 
 called The Bogannys, which includes at 
 least two dwarfs. The gusto with which 
 they all throw themselves (literally as well 
 as figuratively) into the uproarious fun, the 
 whirlings and somersaultings and the vivid 
 pantomime with which they emphasize the 
 piquancy of their comedy give an air of 
 phantasy and unreality to their performance. 
 In their white bakers' dresses they are like 
 some strange creatures seen in a dream, flit- 
 ting and diving and rolling, now through 
 the air, now along the ground; now en- 
 twined together so that they seem like some 
 curious many-legged insect whirring across 
 the stage. Laughing carelessly, they fling 
 each other from place to place with expres- 
 sive gestures and lively caperings. 
 
 Apropos of their pantomime, I heard a 
 dispute once between two ladies as to the 
 nationality of this troupe. One was sure 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 179 
 
 they must be Italians. "Only Italians could 
 have those picture-making gestures," she de- 
 clared. "They might be Russians," her com- 
 panion suggested. "Look at the abandon, 
 the verve of their movements." 
 
 As I looked I felt sure that both of them 
 were right. There was certainly something 
 exotic and foreign about these examples of 
 perpetual motion. Just then the big, fat 
 man of the troupe, evidently the leader, best 
 in pantomime and very little behind in agil- 
 ity despite his girth, cried out: " 'Owld orn, 
 neow! Hup yer gew!" and then methought 
 I recognized the native tongue of the Land 
 of Cockaigne! Was it possible that, after 
 all, this vivacious, gesticulating foreigner 
 was a Britisher? 
 
 The pantomime idea has been expanded 
 into a connected story with much clever and 
 amusing acrobatics interwoven by the De 
 Witt, Burns and Torrance troupe in their 
 delightful wonder act, "The Awakening of 
 the Toys." It is conceived and carried out 
 in the true spirit of Toyland, where the im- 
 
180 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 possible becomes commonplace and the ac- 
 tual appears ridiculous. 
 
 Occasionally, but very rarely, our acrobats 
 meet with accidents on the stage. But they 
 take these risks very philosophically as part 
 of the day's work. I remember hearing an 
 acrobat tell with some pride that he had 
 broken seventeen bones at one time or an- 
 other but always while practising. He took 
 great credit to himself that he had never 
 had the bad manners to distress his audience 
 by an exhibition of such maladroitness. To 
 the public he owed only delight and it would 
 have humiliated him to think that he had 
 given them even this vicarious pain. 
 
 Not exactly acrobats but appealing to 
 something of the same motive are the prodi- 
 gies of strength and muscle who exhibit their 
 remarkable achievements. The earliest that 
 I can recall is the young Sandow, then a 
 blonde-haired youth able to lift a pony. 
 Since then the list of these Samsons has been 
 long and much ingenuity has been displayed 
 in diversifying their acts. Women as well 
 
DAINTY MARIE 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 181 
 
 as men are in the ranks. Among these mus- 
 cular heroines to-day we have Charmon, the 
 "Perfect Woman," whose muscles are not 
 only wonderfully developed but are also per- 
 fectly controlled, so that to her enormous 
 strength she adds grace and deftness. 
 
 The cowboy feats of skill and daring call 
 for many of the same qualities as those dis- 
 played by the acrobat, though their tech- 
 nical accomplishment is different. The cool 
 head, the precise well-timed movement, the 
 unflinching decision. One of the most fas- 
 cinating of these is the lassoing exhibition 
 of Will Rogers. In his hand the lariat be- 
 comes a thing of life, twirling, twisting and 
 winding in graceful spirals, now over his 
 head, now around his knees. As he throws 
 it one almost fancies it looking for its vic- 
 tim and poising itself, quivering, for the at- 
 tack. Then, having selected the exact spot, 
 darting at it with a lightning-like flick and 
 enfolding itself around it. 
 
 I wonder what is the exact process of 
 mind that guides the muscles in all exploits 
 
182 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 of this sort : those of the pitcher, the bowler, 
 the boomerang thrower or the wielder of 
 the oxwhip. It calls for something more 
 than the sure eye and steady hand needed 
 to aim with gun or arrow. It is a sense of 
 poise which in some way projects itself 
 through the course it has determined on and 
 controls the muscles accordingly. But what 
 a complicated process that is for the sub- 
 conscious mind to accomplish. 
 
 The picturesque side of the athlete is not 
 neglected in Vaudeville and we have many 
 different posing acts in which the fine forms 
 and graceful postures of wrestlers, run- 
 ners and hammer throwers are demonstrated. 
 Sometimes the jabs and punches of prize- 
 fighters are shown, or it may be ancient 
 statuary is duplicated by living figures cov- 
 ered with white or bronze powder. 
 
 Quite as pictorial as these and combining 
 no little agility and a touch of humor, we 
 have Adonis and his clever little dog. The 
 man balances himself on one hand upon a 
 pedestal in postures and at angles which 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 183 
 
 seem impossible and, finally, still on his 
 hands, feet in the air, descends from the 
 pedestal and walks down a short flight of 
 steps. Meanwhile, the dog, which has previ- 
 ously assisted by posing, now on his master's 
 shoulder, now on his head, now on his up- 
 raised foot, taking his position in each case 
 with a comical air of satisfaction, as if he 
 were sure that he was the chief attraction, 
 hoists himself on his forelegs hind-feet in 
 the air, and marches demurely downstairs 
 behind his master with all the impertinence 
 of a conscious mimic. 
 
 The pictorial appeal was also illustrated 
 in the popularity of the diving act of An- 
 nette Kellerman. For although her sing- 
 ing is above the average and she has con- 
 siderable charm as a dancer and her diving 
 feature is good, it was the perfect symmetry 
 and lithe vigor of her form which won for 
 her the admiration of the audience. There 
 was, too, an impersonality in her posing, an 
 absolute freedom from self-consciousness 
 which was a revelation to those unused to 
 
184 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 associating modesty with the frank display 
 of beauty of form. 
 
 In direct contradiction to the pictorial 
 posings are the tricks of the contortionists, 
 who bend and twist and tie themselves into 
 every conceivable grotesque knot. If the 
 athlete emphasizes the beauty and rhythmic 
 poise of the well developed body in action, 
 these enforce the grotesqueness of which it 
 is capable when thus distorted. Can any- 
 body, I wonder, enjoy both forms of enter- 
 tainment? For my part, I confess the con- 
 tortionist is not for me. 
 
 But once in a while comes along a little 
 elf of a creature, like one who calls her- 
 self "Dainty Marie," who puts into her con- 
 tortions a mischievous diablerie which gives 
 piquancy to their uncanniness. This odd lit- 
 tle sprite-like creature, slim and straight, 
 with a quaint triangle of a face, who began 
 her performance by singing some common- 
 place songs, climbed a slack rope, chatter- 
 ing and laughing and chirping out all sorts 
 of impertinences, meanwhile twisting her- 
 
CHARMON THE PERFECT WOMAN 
 
MARVELS OF STRENGTH 185 
 
 self and the ropes into every variety of com- 
 plicated knot. Then, suddenly, she would 
 fall, catching herself by a hitch of the foot 
 in the rope and, hanging head downward, 
 continue the chattering with the persistence 
 of a parrokeet, her queer little three cor- 
 nered face with its mop of tousled hair grin- 
 ning fantastically. Then she played impish 
 tricks on the weirdly dressed little parody of 
 a page, her partner, twisting and bumping 
 her as she clung to the rope she was sup- 
 posed to steady, all the time laughing ma- 
 liciously at the poor thing's discomfiture. It 
 was a sort of goblin revel, and even contor- 
 tions had their place in it. 
 
 But my preference as a rule is for the 
 exponents of skill and daring, muscles de- 
 veloped naturally and vigorously, joints 
 working with suppleness but unstrained, 
 the body developed in rhythmic balanced 
 proportions. I like to realize what wonder- 
 ful machines they are, these bodies of ours, 
 when managed by experts, and of what ef- 
 ficiency they are capable when every mus- 
 
186 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 cle is trained to its fullest use. But, I repeat, 
 I should like to feel sure that every mem- 
 ber of the audience had some personal 
 knowledge of the sense of controlled mus- 
 cular activity and harmony of movement. 
 That they should all, at least once in their 
 lives, have tested the need of accuracy of 
 eye, sureness of movement, clearness of 
 head, power of grasp, steadiness of nerve 
 and all the hundred and one other things 
 entailed in acrobatic feats. It would be 
 wholesome and invigorating for them to feel 
 that sympathetic thrill through their own 
 frames in response to the daring of the per- 
 formers, and insure them from the ener- 
 vating sensationalism that comes of watch- 
 ing the danger of others in which we our- 
 selves have no share. 
 
ADA REEVE 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Mysteries and Illusions 
 
 IN these days of materialism no illusion- 
 ist on the stage makes any pretence to 
 the employment of superhuman agencies. A 
 scientific phenomenon hitherto unknown is 
 the nearest to the insoluble that they will 
 allow themselves. But much more often, fol- 
 lowing the example of those famous Eng- 
 lish wonder-workers, Maskelyn and Cook, 
 they frankly own that they are tricking you 
 and put it up to you to solve the secret if 
 you can. 
 
 This in no way decreases the mystery of 
 their performances. In fact, with some of 
 them it would be almost easier to attribute 
 their seeming impossibilities to the work of 
 spirits than to attempt to believe them the 
 work of human agencies. So that our wiz- 
 
 187 
 
188 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 ards have not divested themselves of their 
 magic robes, but merely changed them to a 
 more modern cut. 
 
 This is the method adopted by Carl Her- 
 man in his "Window of the Haunted 
 House," an illusion on the order of the cabi- 
 net mysteries. Right before the audience 
 stands the "window," looking as though it 
 might be a dormer taken from the top story 
 of some house. It has two sides painted 
 to represent brick, while the front, made of 
 gauze stretched on a window frame, forms 
 the transparent window. The back is cov- 
 ered by curtains of black sateen hanging 
 loose, there is a canvas roof and a solid floor. 
 The whole structure is raised about three 
 feet from the stage and supported on lightly 
 built legs. 
 
 The audience is shown that this structure 
 is entirely empty and there is no trap in floor 
 or ceiling, but, for all that, the moment the 
 stage is darkened we see figures moving 
 about through the transparent window. A 
 young girl, an old woman, a sailor, a painter, 
 
MYSTERIES 189 
 
 then a man and woman together, strug- 
 gling in some violent quarrel. Then a pair 
 of lovers are seen clasped in fond embrace. 
 Then, a commotion, and the lights spring 
 up, and at the window appear two men, one 
 of them dressed as a fireman, supporting 
 the inert body of a young woman, whose 
 long hair, as her head droops from their 
 arms, hangs out of the now open window 
 and nearly touches the floor. The appari- 
 tions have followed each other in little more 
 time than it takes to tell of them but of their 
 absolute solidity (at least of the final group) 
 there can be no doubt. 
 
 At some time and in some way they have 
 conveyed themselves, unseen by the hundreds 
 of people supposedly watching for them, 
 into that box-like structure. At some time 
 the Professor has seen to it that the atten- 
 tion of the audience shall be attracted to 
 some point, sufficiently far from where their 
 entrance is made. And, most likely, the ac- 
 tion with which he riveted our attention was 
 a seemingly trivial one. For it is one of 
 
190 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 the great arts of these masters of mystery 
 to make the trivial seem important and the 
 important trivial. The normal human im- 
 pulse is their study, and they count upon it 
 to attract or divert attention by the simplest 
 methods. So that the very concentration 
 with which the audience watches must be 
 used, not as an obstacle but as an aid to 
 the success of the trick. 
 
 The Orientals have ever been masters of 
 this command of the attention of the audi- 
 ence, and they carry their illusions of shak- 
 ing from a cloth full pails of water, 
 chickens, or children to a wonderful perfec- 
 tion. So, in his gorgeous setting of em- 
 broidered Dragons on curtains of silk, vary- 
 ing in color and design for various acts, 
 Ching Ling Poo presents all these bewilder- 
 ing fantasies with nonchalant wizardry, smil- 
 ing his inscrutable smile. And the tiny Chi- 
 nese children who assist him are so quaint, 
 so unhuman and yet so childlike, that they 
 seem like very perfect toys and one feels 
 inclined to cry out with astonishment when 
 
MYSTERIES 191 
 
 they run about or smile like other children. 
 
 A number of years ago there appeared 
 at the Alhambra in London an American 
 lady named Annie Abbott. She had an act 
 which was quite new to the British public 
 and made a great sensation. Though slight 
 and almost fragile in appearance, she could 
 seemingly withstand the united strength of 
 twenty men. A chair, upheld by her with 
 no apparent effort, could not be forced to 
 the floor, try as they might. Nor could any 
 man lif t her unless she allowed it, though her 
 weight seemed nothing above the ordinary. 
 
 The name "Georgia Magnet" was sup- 
 posed to give a clue to the source of her 
 power, and tales were told of the feats of 
 the lady in her youth and in her native coun- 
 try. Doctors and scientific men were in- 
 vited to investigate her performance and she 
 succeeded in interesting no less a person 
 than King Edward VII, then Prince of 
 Wales. 
 
 No direct claim to supernatural power 
 was made, but theories about magnetism or 
 
192 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 the influencing of currents were offered. 
 The management, in fact, put itself into the 
 position of begging the public to help it to 
 find a solution of the mystery of this strange 
 power. 
 
 For some time the Georgia Magnet was 
 the talk of all England. Then she went 
 on to the Continent and was less favorably 
 received. There was talk about the mystery 
 being merely a matter of adjusted balances 
 and after a while nothing more was heard 
 or seen of her in Europe. 
 
 Lately she has reappeared in full vigor 
 with the same amazing act, confounding the 
 devices of strong-armed men. 
 
 Balance or no balance, or whatever is the 
 secret of her power, it is a remarkable ex- 
 hibition. For, if it is balance, it must be 
 most nicely adjusted; and though the little 
 lady may not be especially magnetized, she 
 at least has extraordinary vivacity and per- 
 sonality to hold the attention of the public 
 and especially of the committee whom she 
 calls on to assist her in her demonstrations. 
 

 
 nv 
 
 
 tf? 
 
 JJl® 
 
 HOUDINI 
 
MYSTERIES 193 
 
 For although we enjoy being mystified, 
 there is always a very large percentage of 
 people who would love to know "how it is 
 done." And these are not by any means 
 the ones most likely to volunteer to act on 
 the committee. They will scrutinize from 
 their place in the audience and suggest so- 
 lutions of the problem to their neighbors. 
 At any time, also, some member of the com- 
 mittee may hit on an idea, near enough to 
 the truth to prove embarrassing to the per- 
 former. So she must watch them constantly 
 and find occupation and diversion for those 
 who might prove troublesome, but without 
 allowing them to feel that they are in any 
 way regarded with suspicion. 
 
 In talking once to an old magician and 
 prestidigitator I remember him saying that 
 the most mystifying illusions are frequently 
 the result of the simplest tricks, and that 
 devices, thought out by him on the spur of 
 the minute, were often more successful than 
 those over which he labored for months. The 
 reason that the public do not find them out 
 
194 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 is that they are looking for some elaborate 
 device for what is the result of a very sim- 
 ple action. He instanced one of the old 
 cabinet tricks, in which a bound man was 
 put into the cabinet and in a minute, when 
 the curtains were withdrawn, he was dis- 
 covered still bound but stripped of his waist- 
 coat, his coat being still on. This was ex- 
 plained by the fact that the waistcoat he 
 wore before retiring into the cabinet was a 
 trick one, having no back, and he was able 
 to remove it without the aid of his hands. 
 Meanwhile he dropped on to the floor at his 
 feet an ordinary waistcoat which he had car- 
 ried concealed beneath his arm and when 
 this was shown to the public a great point 
 was made that it was still warm from his 
 body. As a matter of fact, he said, the 
 waistcoat was much warmer than it would 
 have been if it had been worn in the ordi- 
 nary way, but even the most scrutinizing in- 
 vestigator had never noticed the fact. 
 
 Another man who has succeeded in mys- 
 tifying the public is Houdini, to whose 
 
MYSTERIES 195 
 
 power as a wonder-creator must be added in- 
 genuity as an advertiser. No fetters will 
 hold him and he seems to be amphibious. He 
 has defied the drowning capacity of the com- 
 bined forces of the Hudson and the East 
 River at the Battery and the locks, bolts 
 and bars of the old prison-ship Success, be- 
 hind which so many prisoners have lan- 
 guished. 
 
 His performance on the stage is suffi- 
 ciently mystifying, if less sensational, than 
 those he has exhibited free, gratis to the 
 public. He makes his appearance on the 
 stage, on which before a canopy of yellow 
 curtaining are arranged a huge safe-like 
 tank, with a glass front, and the brass pails 
 and cisterns, filled with water which is to 
 be poured into it. He is his own showman 
 and is wearing the ordinary dress of a citi- 
 zen as he explains his paraphernalia. He 
 speaks good English, with just the suspicion 
 of a trill of the R and a carefulness of enun- 
 ciation to suggest that it is not his native 
 tongue. His manner is quiet and self -con- 
 
196 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 tained, his form small, and even when 
 stripped for his plunge shows no extraordi- 
 nary muscular development. Evidently his 
 power is that of dexterity, rather than force. 
 
 He exhibits the contrivance which forms 
 the lid of the tank into which he will pres- 
 ently be plunged, head downward. It is 
 constructed like the old-time stocks in which 
 the feet were held tight clipped at the ankles. 
 A committee is asked to examine this con- 
 trivance to make sure that the feet could 
 not be slipped out when once the lock is se- 
 curely fastened. While the tank is being 
 filled with water Houdini retires to prepare 
 for his plunge and reappears in a bathing 
 suit, his arms and legs bare. We see the 
 water splashing into the tank from a hose- 
 pipe as well as from the pails on the stage. 
 There is no doubt about its reality. 
 
 Houdini is then secured in the stocks and 
 hoisted by a pulley into the air, then low- 
 ered into the tank with a splash and a swish 
 which drenches his attendants. Then the 
 
CHING LING FOO 
 
MYSTERIES 197 
 
 canopy is drawn forward and round the 
 tank. 
 
 Two minutes elapse : then the curtains are 
 withdrawn, and behold the man of mystery 
 is standing beside his tank, unfettered, and 
 — wonder of wonders — hardly more than 
 splashed with wet. His wiry bush of hair, 
 the real showman's hair, is dry. One is as- 
 sured of this after one sees him emerge from 
 another plunge when his hair becomes slick 
 and smooth and dripping like ordinary hair. 
 Is there some clue here to "how it is done"? 
 I don't know, only it sets one thinking. 
 
 Of his sensational emersion, confined in 
 a box punched with holes, in the bay at the 
 Battery and the attempt of the police to 
 stop the exhibition, on account of its al- 
 leged danger, I own I can imagine no solu- 
 tion; or how he escapes from the cells of 
 the ship's dungeon which must have been 
 attempted by others before in more desperate 
 cases. He makes no claim to extraordi- 
 nary powers and is content that you shall 
 
198 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 discover his methods if you are clever 
 enough. 
 
 This is, after all, quite as it should be to 
 typify our age. For Science is our Magic 
 with germs and microbes as Imps of good 
 or evil. Chemistry is the witches' cauldron 
 and Mechanics the broomstick, while Serums 
 and Inoculations take the place of charms 
 against evil. Physics supply the magic 
 manifestations and Psychology the spells 
 which entrance the unlearned multitude and 
 gain its wondering credence. 
 
RAY COX 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Miscellaneous Fun-makers 
 
 WHEN all is said and done, it will, un- 
 doubtedly, be found that what the 
 Vaudeville audience most craves is a good, 
 hearty laugh. A turn which is certain to 
 provide this is pretty sure to be a success. 
 The comic sketch, the knock-about acrobat 
 and dancer are aiming at this great achieve- 
 ment. But the one above all whose mer- 
 chandise is laughter, first, last and all the 
 time, is the story-telling song-singing come- 
 dian. He is the direct descendant of the 
 Court Jester of early days. He must amuse 
 or lose his head. He is privileged to tilt 
 with his wit at objects usually considered 
 too venerable for attack. His personalities 
 are excused, his breaches of decorum over- 
 looked, if only he succeeds in his purpose 
 of compelling a laugh. 
 
 199 
 
200 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 The public may be fickle but as long as 
 these mirth-providers can afford it food for 
 merriment they cannot grow too old for a 
 welcome. There is, for example, Gus Wil- 
 liams. I don't know how far back he dates, 
 but he is an acknowledged old-timer. Yet 
 his stories and quaint turns of expression 
 are lively still. 
 
 And there is Lew Dockstader, whose 
 blackened face and red minstrel lips have 
 looked out from the hoardings of nearly 
 every city in the Union any time these 
 twenty years and more. His voice may be 
 growing a little thin and worn, but his unctu- 
 ous chuckle is just as infectious as ever it 
 was! 
 
 Whatever may be the name or setting of 
 their particular sketch, the true intent of 
 Maclntyre and Heath is to provide a 
 medium for amusing dialogue, anecdote and 
 repartee. Here again are the black-faces. 
 The contrast, however, in appearance be- 
 tween these two fun-makers — the small, 
 meagre, stumbling, fumbling manner of the 
 
FUN-MAKERS 201 
 
 one and the portly, pompous, imposing de- 
 portment of the other — makes a fine 
 groundwork on which to build varying in- 
 ventions of mirth-provoking incongruity. 
 
 And talking about blackened faces, could 
 anyone withstand the shambling, ingenuous 
 drollery of Frank Tinney? He comes as 
 near to the genuine, native darky humor as 
 any one of the black-face tribe. There is 
 just the "colored-gen'leman's" mixture of 
 childish bashfulness and self-satisfaction 
 about him as he shuffles on to the stage, ar- 
 rayed in his miscellaneous, misfit garments. 
 His self-satisfaction makes it necessary that 
 he shall talk, even if he has nothing in par- 
 ticular to say; and his bashfulness makes 
 him hesitate and shuffle and get his words 
 hopelessly mixed up. He is artlessly con- 
 fiding, and tells you all about his own affairs 
 in those queer, blurted sentences with their 
 bewildered pauses, helped out with "y° u 
 know what I mean," and an innocent, in- 
 gratiating smile. 
 
 He knows you are going to laugh at him, 
 
202 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 though he doesn't quite know why, but he 
 laughs with you so that you shall not dis- 
 cover that fact. Or if he thinks that you 
 have misunderstood him he enters into 
 elaborate explanations which begin with 
 "Listen! no, but listen!" and tangles him- 
 self up more hopelessly than ever. 
 
 Al Jolson is a fun-maker of quite a dif- 
 ferent type. He has a vigorous, swinging 
 energy that keeps things busy all around 
 him. His is not the negro comedy but a 
 more conscious humor, full of a vitality 
 which overflows and can diffuse itself into a 
 whole stage-full of people and make the 
 air full of the hum of fun and merriment. 
 
 Bert Williams, like many of the fun- 
 makers, varies his narratives with songs, 
 sung with odd, unexpected accents to the 
 words. For, of course, it is the words that 
 the audience wants from the comedian. The 
 orchestra can be trusted to supply the mu- 
 sic, the comedian need not trouble about 
 that. Indeed, I don't think it would ap- 
 prove if he did. It is laughter, and more 
 
BERT WILLIAMS 
 
FUN-MAKERS 203 
 
 laughter, and still laughter which is his con- 
 cern; and, if Caruso had started his career 
 as a professional funny-man, I doubt 
 whether he would have had much chance to 
 be heard in pure music. 
 
 So we have, too, Fred Duprez, who some- 
 times sings, and whose comicalities come 
 bubbling out so fast that he never has time 
 to finish one story before he is plunged into 
 the next. He has a way of working up the 
 point of his joke so that the train for the 
 laugh is all laid, and then, just as you ex- 
 pect him to explode it, he stops short and 
 leaves you to set the match yourself while 
 he is up and away, off to lay a new train. I 
 have seen an audience left so breathless by 
 his sudden change of base that it has almost 
 seemed as if the spark were going to miss 
 fire. But somehow the day was saved. A 
 droll pause of bewilderment, as he waited 
 for the audience to catch up with him, an 
 inquiring turn of the head with a slowly 
 widening smile, and the spark was guided 
 
204 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 to the charge and the salvo of laughter 
 boomed out. 
 
 Bert Fitzgibbon, the "daffydill," is an- 
 other comedian whose absurdities crowd 
 one upon another until laughter becomes al- 
 most a weariness. His drolleries are of the 
 order that depend entirely for their effect on 
 the manner in which they are given. I doubt 
 very much whether they would appear 
 funny in cold print. But, given with his 
 absurd mixture of whimsicality and silli- 
 ness, they keep his audience in a gale of 
 laughter. It is a conscious, crazy foolish- 
 ness, well pleased with itself and willing to 
 let you in on the joke, if you like; but not 
 caring greatly whether you do or not. May- 
 be, you will call him downright silly, 
 but he will only laugh the louder and play 
 wilder pranks than ever, not a bit impressed 
 by your solemnity. It is the crazy frolic of 
 youth, exhilarated by its own high spirits. 
 If you can let yourself go, and join in the 
 fun there may be no better sport. But it 
 could never compel a smile, if you are not in 
 
FRANK TINNEY 
 

FUN-MAKERS 205 
 
 the humor for it. Fortunately, the laughter 
 of the audience is generally there, glad to 
 be set at liberty and not too critical of the 
 means employed to release it. 
 
 Neither of the two last named performers 
 assume any particularly characteristic cos- 
 tume. They wish for no disguise, but as- 
 sociate themselves as closely as possible with 
 their own normal personality. You might 
 easily recognize them if you met them after- 
 ward on the street. 
 
 As a contrast we have the extravagant 
 "tramp" make-up of Nat Wills, or of Billy 
 McDermot, who calls himself "the last of 
 Coxey's army." It is a purely American 
 product, this comic tramp, and he has be- 
 come almost as much a tradition as is the 
 Pierrot of the French Pantomime. 
 
 He is a happy, tattered, slovenly, red- 
 nosed rogue ; glorying in his detestation of 
 work and water and gaily oblivious of the 
 rights of property. He lies for the pure 
 joy of lying and his hunger and thirst are 
 absolutely unappeasable. His costume has 
 
206 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 become traditional. A battered hat, through 
 which his hair sticks out; the remnants of 
 a once black coat; ragged pants, too large 
 for him, supported by a string round the 
 waist, from which is suspended his trusty- 
 tomato can; a gaping pair of shoes cover 
 sockless feet — the whole effect being sur- 
 mounted by a grin of inordinate propor- 
 tions which seems to stretch nearly round 
 his head. He is full of chuckling mirth and 
 has a vocabulary of slang large enough to 
 start a new language. He has a super-in- 
 genuous manner, which he especially as- 
 sumes when he most intends to deceive, while 
 the excuses that he can give for avoiding 
 anything which looks in the least like work 
 may be contradictory but are without end. 
 Such is the type, and there are many of 
 him besides the two above mentioned. The 
 details may differ but the essentials remain 
 the same. He is a brand of the "picaresque" 
 or Spanish rogue — comedian, mixed with 
 the clown of the harlequinade. His face 
 is painted almost as grotesquely as theirs 
 
NAT WILLS 
 
FUN-MAKERS 207 
 
 and, like them, he is a survival and already 
 a tradition. The tendency of the present 
 day audience is, I think, to tolerate rather 
 than to crave these grotesques; and I ques- 
 tion whether it is not rather amused by the 
 inherent humor of their stories and jokes, 
 which differ but little from those of other 
 tellers of stories, than by the tramp char- 
 acteristics they assume. 
 
 Further there are the political and topical 
 monologists. Such was the late Cliff Gor- 
 don and such is Rube Dickerman. These 
 talk about current events, criticizing freely 
 and often hitting very shrewdly. 
 
 Rube Dickerman assumes the disguise of 
 an Indiana farmer; small, gray, with chin 
 whiskers and a quiet, drawling speech in a 
 high-pitched voice which breaks at unex- 
 pected places, and at other times trails off 
 apologetically. He has a shambling, pre- 
 occupied walk, with bent knees and drag- 
 ging feet — the walk of a man who is on his 
 feet all day and every day but who never 
 
208 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 walks from choice. But he can dance; and, 
 when he does, he manages still to maintain 
 the characteristics of his type. His is the 
 gaiety of a man who seldom unbends and, 
 when he finds himself doing so, is uncertain 
 whether he or his friends are the more sur- 
 prised. 
 
 Cliff Gordon's was a wholly different 
 rendering of the same idea. He presented 
 it as a German- American politician, hard- 
 headed, shrewd-witted and not easily de- 
 ceived. There was no appearance of jollity 
 as he spoke of current events or the pres- 
 ent situation, but rather a kind of fiery im- 
 patience just turned from bitterness by the 
 humorous curl of the large lips and a soft- 
 ened twinkle of the keen blue eyes under 
 their shaggy brows. He spoke in a direct 
 translation from German idioms which gave 
 unexpected and very expressive turns to his 
 remarks and helped to take the sting from 
 their sharpness. His monologues provoked 
 loud and hearty laughter, while Rube Dick- 
 erman's call forth a continuous soft chuckle. 
 
FUN-MAKERS 209 
 
 There is all the difference between strok- 
 ing and striking; and, while Cliff Gordon 
 struck vigorously one's sense of the ridicu- 
 lous and called forth an equally vigorous 
 response, Rube Dickerman just strokes one's 
 sense of humor and evokes a chuckle that 
 continuously purrs. 
 
 The Hebrew comedian is another well 
 known Vaudeville type. I never saw Dave 
 Warfleld when he played these parts and 
 do not know whether he was funnier than 
 Joe Weber, whose work is always so full of 
 character that he does not seem to be acting 
 at all. Among the clever characterizations 
 in this line is that of Ben Welch. It is con- 
 ceived in the true comedy vein, by which I 
 mean that it is not grotesquely exaggerated. 
 The character is adhered to consistently 
 and you are made to feel that in spite of his 
 exuberant humor this is a real person. 
 
 Ben Welch has the true comedian's sense 
 of the value of movement and the necessity 
 of occasional repose. Every gesture or 
 twitch of the muscle gives some addition 
 
210 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 of character to the impersonation. No mat- 
 ter whether he is stumbling onto the stage 
 with his shiftless, slouching, casual gait, or 
 giving burlesque imitations of a Yiddishized 
 Napoleon or Abraham Lincoln; or darting 
 off the stage with bent knees and furtive 
 stride; or by pantomime describing the jab 
 of a hypodermic needle, the action is always 
 exactly adjusted to the idea. There is no 
 superfluous emphasis, no fidgetty, meaning- 
 less motion ; but every muscle of limbs, face, 
 and body is responsive and controlled. His 
 smile is slow-spreading and crafty, as he ex- 
 plains "Any man what's smarter than I am 
 I don't want to do no business with." Or it 
 is smugly self-satisfied as he explains how 
 as car-conductor he found business too slow 
 on the horse-car line, and so took his car 
 around to Fourteenth Street, where busi- 
 ness is rushing. 
 
 He sings unsentimental parodies on the 
 popular songs in a mixture of the slang of 
 the day with the speech of the ghetto and 
 we get some of those surprises of language 
 
KATE ELINOR THE HUMAN BILLIKEN 
 
FUN-MAKERS 211 
 
 which in time become current phrases. And, 
 withal, he is genial, content with himself and 
 everything around him. He finds nothing 
 to criticize in life, for he is confident that 
 if anything should happen to be wrong he 
 will be able to turn it to his own advantage. 
 And there we get the touch of cynicism 
 which completes the character. 
 
 The fun-makers are not all of the mascu- 
 line gender. One of the funniest of them 
 is Kate Elinor, whose spontaneous, rollick- 
 ing absurdities seem to gush from an unfail- 
 ing spring. Her cheery good humor and 
 inconsequent comicality have earned for her 
 the name of the "Human Billikin." Never 
 was woman less troubled with self-conscious- 
 ness. Her face is one broad, expansive smile 
 which seems to radiate from the top of her 
 little nob of hair, tightly screwed to the 
 size of a shoe-button, right down to the sole 
 of her formidable looking boots, and from 
 every angle of her square-built frame. She 
 is the most familiar of friends with her audi- 
 ence, not only as a whole but individually 
 
212 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 and separately. You could fancy that she 
 calls each one of them by his first name and 
 knows his wife and how old the baby is. 
 There is a gesture she uses, to mark when 
 she thinks her points have hit the mark. She 
 points her finger, as though it were a pistol, 
 at some individual in the audience, screws up 
 one eye as though to sight and clicks with 
 her mouth to make the sound of a shot. This 
 is done with an offhand carelessness just 
 to keep things lively. And then that gig- 
 gling, deprecating flap of the hand, with 
 the broad, good-natured smile accompany- 
 ing it — it is quite her own and is just the 
 gesture that a Billikin should make. Her 
 audience is speedily engulfed in laughter 
 like a rock at high tide. And how she re- 
 sponds to and gloats over their mirth, and 
 reabsorbs it to radiate it on them again. 
 
 Another lady to claim a place among the 
 fun-makers is Isabel d'Armond. Her tiny, 
 laughing, piquant personality with its air of 
 droll seriousness, has something of the in- 
 tentness of a child at play. Dressed in the 
 
FUN-MAKERS 213 
 
 most freakish of costumes and with lines 
 that are often more than a little risque, she 
 carries them all off with this air of absorbed 
 briskness, as unmindful of the laughter of 
 her audience as Kate Elinor is responsive to 
 it. I remember her in absurd pantalettes 
 and a very unmanageable hoop-skirt. Her 
 preoccupation with this unruly garment and 
 apparent annoyance with its uncouthness, 
 all the while seeming to try to carry off her 
 embarrassment without attracting attention, 
 was as cleverly depicted as it was laughable. 
 She can dance, too, very neatly and nimbly. 
 So can her partner, whose legs, describing 
 wild circles and arches far above her head 
 make him seem, in comparison with her tiny 
 figure, like some huge daddy-long-legs. 
 
 The songs of Kathleen Clifford are al- 
 ways sure to provoke an answering laugh, 
 while Ray Cox is a direct contradiction to 
 the assertion that women have no sense of 
 humor. Hear her describe a ball game or an 
 aeroplane ascent and you will be convinced 
 
214 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 that these are the most humorous happen- 
 ings imaginable. 
 
 Individuality of method is as much a char- 
 acteristic of these fun-makers as is similarity 
 of motive. Each, whether male or female, 
 has his own special brand of humor. What 
 could be more widely different than the dry 
 whimsicality which characterizes Marshall 
 Wilder and the smooth mellifluousness 
 which has gained for George Evans the 
 sobriquet of the "Honeyboy." 
 
 The measure of the success of each is al- 
 most purely a matter of personality. But 
 we can trace in the work of all of them 
 the same directness and clarity of appeal 
 and the feeling for proportion we have al- 
 ready alluded to in a former chapter. 
 
 They are very truly a factor of modern 
 life and supply much of the funny anec- 
 dote and epigram which subsequently en- 
 liven after-dinner speeches, political discus- 
 sions and various other occasions of pub- 
 lic speaking. And, by way of completing 
 
FUN-MAKERS 215 
 
 the circle, every story, or repartee, or other 
 laugh-making utterance which originates 
 elsewhere, is pretty certain, sooner or later, 
 to find its way into Vaudeville. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Some Other Turns 
 
 IN this brief glance at a few of the most 
 characteristic of Vaudeville turns there 
 can be no attempt to mention every variety 
 of form under which they may be presented. 
 For of necessity the most distinguishing 
 trait of Vaudeville is its variety and, unless 
 we recognize this, we ignore its most salient 
 feature. So that the deeper we go into 
 the subject the more varied and numerous 
 will be the aspects of the offerings which 
 claim our attention. Anything that will 
 amuse, interest, or satisfy the curiosity is 
 welcome. But the welcome is easily outworn 
 and, if the only claim to interest is that of 
 novelty, it cannot expect to have more than 
 a brief day. But novelty is one of the es- 
 sentials, so that even acts, having interest 
 216 
 
GERTRUDE BARNES 
 
SOME OTHER TURNS 217 
 
 beyond that of curiosity, must be constant- 
 ly refurbished to make them appear new. 
 What wonder, then, if turns are sometimes 
 incongruous or far-fetched? 
 
 Accordingly, we have every imaginable 
 thing, animate or inanimate, keenly scruti- 
 nized with a view to their use for enter- 
 tainment. The circus is freely borrowed 
 from and animals of all sorts are pressed 
 into service. We have bears on roller skates ; 
 ponies who ring out a tune on hand-bells; 
 and cats, dogs, rabbits, pigeons, presenting 
 episodes that imitate the doings of the domi- 
 nant race — sometimes in a manner far from 
 complimentary. We have monkeys who play 
 billiards, ride bicycles, smoke and drink and 
 behave generally in a manner so like an ex- 
 tremely ill-bred man that it is a wonder that 
 some of the audience do not feel affronted. 
 
 Until the acts are actually tried out it is 
 impossible for certain what will capture the 
 fancy of an audience, and there are some 
 which must rack the nerves of the local man- 
 ager every Monday matinee, so narrow is 
 
218 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 the line on which they waver between suc- 
 cess and failure. 
 
 There is a young man, called Van Hoven, 
 whose offering consists of incoherent chat- 
 ter, mostly about his own personal affairs, 
 delivered by way of an aside to the con- 
 ductor of the orchestra while he pretends 
 to be occupied with some childishly simple 
 tricks of palming, which he does so badly 
 that they could not pass muster at a coun- 
 try school entertainment. In carrying out 
 one of these tricks he leaves the stage and 
 rushes about among the audience to entreat 
 the assistance of two volunteers for one of 
 his tricks. From the gallery or some other 
 remote part of the house he finally emerges 
 with two boys evidently especially selected 
 on account of the impenetrable stupidity 
 of their appearance. He brings them to the 
 stage and proceeds to pour out breathlessly 
 a string of contradictory instructions to 
 them which they stolidly and conscientiously 
 try to follow. The unsmiling bewilderment 
 of their efforts invariably convulses the au- 
 
SOME OTHER TURNS 219 
 
 dience with merriment and brings the act 
 to a successful termination, but the senti- 
 ment throughout the act is very critical and 
 not a few disapproving remarks are made. 
 
 In the case of this act one can follow 
 the public sentiment in some such way as 
 this : the first stage is expectancy. "He will 
 surely do something soon." 
 
 The second stage is Exasperation: "Why 
 doesn't he begin to do something?" 
 
 The third stage is amazement: "The nerve 
 of him to keep us waiting and not do any- 
 thing." 
 
 The last stage is amusement: "He actual- 
 ly hasn't done anything but he has gotten 
 away with it just the same." 
 
 And the audience laughs heartily at the 
 young man's colossal nerve, its own credulity 
 and the bewildered confusion of the two 
 boys who are the young man's assistants. 
 
 What manager can feel sure that his au- 
 dience will take the joke good-naturedly? 
 
 The desire to see a celebrity, or, unfortu- 
 nately, a notoriety is the motive of certain 
 
220 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 turns. And for some reason it seems to 
 make these celebrities more real and tangi- 
 ble if they appear in other than their wonted 
 metier. To hear a prizefighter talk, or a peer 
 of England sing, or to see a baseball player 
 act or an actor play baseball would seem to 
 demonstrate that these people of whom we 
 have read in the papers are just ordinary 
 folks, not prodigies of tremendous achieve- 
 ment only, but capable of doing other things 
 than those which have made them famous or 
 with which their names have become associ- 
 ated. It is not a very elevated attitude of 
 mind, but it is very human and by no means 
 confined to the unintelligent. We find, for 
 instance, so brilliant a man as Samuel But- 
 ler in his Note Book chuckling unmercifully 
 over the idea that a bishop is seasick like any 
 ordinary mortal. 
 
 Very accomplished are some of the car- 
 toonists and sand artists who evolve in full 
 sight of their audience a spirited sketch from 
 quite unsuggestive beginnings. From two 
 foliations, which, when first presented, might 
 
AL JOLSON 
 
SOME OTHER TURNS 221 
 
 be taken for vegetables, may grow perhaps 
 the ear and necktie of a well-known poli- 
 tician or perhaps a cow's head and cottage 
 chimney in a landscape. The skill and in- 
 genuity of these artists keep the audience 
 expectant and eager all through the build- 
 ing up stroke by stroke of the subject and 
 calls for admiration when it is ultimately 
 achieved. 
 
 The latest inventions of science, if suf- 
 ficiently spectacular, find easy admittance 
 on to the Vaudeville stage and gramophones, 
 tel-electric and kinetophones are only some 
 of the wonders here displayed. And, apro- 
 pos of the kinetophone, it would seem as 
 though the time were about ripe for the ar- 
 tistic genius of the moving picture to arise. 
 For, in the case of the latter, we are, at 
 present, in the anomalous condition of hav- 
 ing an elaborate apparatus of wonderful 
 mechanical possibilities but as yet no dra- 
 matic or artistic technique with which to 
 develop their resources. Consequently, the 
 effect of the voice being added to the motion 
 
222 (VAUDEVILLE 
 
 picture, so far from rendering the presenta- 
 tions more interesting, has only given to 
 them a weapon which they are not able to 
 wield. For, to time voice and action in such 
 a way as shall become natural and easy when 
 represented on the screen has not yet become 
 part of the actor's equipment, any more 
 than to write dialogue which shall not im- 
 pede the movement of the pictures has be- 
 come part of the playwright's. We are, 
 therefore, conscious that the two are con- 
 stantly tripping over and impeding each 
 other, and the slight but lively plots of the 
 "movies" are being cumbered up with banal 
 dialogue which makes them ponderous and 
 tiresome. It is like having the joke ex- 
 plained to you, you don't enjoy it, neither 
 does the joker. 
 
 Another combination of scientific mechan- 
 ism with entertainment is found in those 
 living pictures, shown with the aid of a stere- 
 opticon. In these a living model, clad in a 
 full suit of white tights, poses before a 
 white cloth, and the stereopticon playing on 
 
SOME OTHER TURNS 223 
 
 her makes her appear in varying guises, 
 while the picture it throws on the screen af- 
 fords a suitable setting. Anything, from 
 a mermaid to a lady in a winter suit with 
 furs going to church, may be presented in 
 this way and from these materials. Very 
 ingenious and sometimes beautiful as they 
 are already, there is no doubt that this idea 
 is capable of being worked out to a higher 
 degree of artistic merit. 
 
 Another turn equally interesting from the 
 point of view of mechanical ingenuity and 
 pictorial effect is that of the Flying Bal- 
 let. The apparatus used is now so perfect 
 that the flyers can adjust their costumes to 
 its requirements so that it is hardly percep- 
 tible. The working of the mechanism, too, 
 is now so smooth and even that there is no 
 effect of artificiality about the motions. 
 Very charming and fairy-like are the effects 
 possible to achieve when to the cunning of 
 the mechanical genius is added the imagina- 
 tion of the artist. 
 
 In the water as well as in the air our en- 
 
224 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 tertainers perform for our delight. Be- 
 sides high dives we have endurance divers 
 who rival the amphibious seal in the length 
 of time they will remain under water. 
 
 Another water-act that holds its own in its 
 invigorating freshness and out-of-door 
 flavor is that of "The Girl from the Golden 
 West." She swims against a strong cur- 
 rent, forced through a tank by some me- 
 chanical process; motion pictures of her 
 dashing swim through the Golden Gate hav- 
 ing been previously shown. The girlish 
 joyousness with which she accomplishes her 
 undertaking, her freedom from affectation 
 or professional superiority, gives the genu- 
 ine tonic feeling of a breath of fresh air to 
 her performance. She seems to be just the 
 active sport-loving type of wholesome girl- 
 hood that we encourage in our college gym- 
 nasiums and high-school basketball teams. 
 
 Of the outdoor world, too, are the Wild 
 West acts, the Australian Wood Choppers, 
 the scenes of the darkies in the cotton fields 
 and the campflre acts which we see from 
 
LA PETITE ADELAIDE 
 
SOME OTHER TURNS 225 
 
 time to time. But the "Rubes" and "Siss" 
 country girl types are usually very sophisti- 
 cated, not to say stagy. 
 
 We might go on ceaselessly, for there is 
 no end to the variety of the offerings. But 
 it would be far beyond the compass of this 
 book to try to give account of all. We do 
 not even mention the various acts given in 
 the Revues, though they differ not at all 
 from those of Vaudeville. If we could by 
 any chance mention anything that would 
 prove amusing or interesting and has not 
 yet appeared, there is little reason to doubt 
 that, should it reach the eye of any enter- 
 prising manager, we should see it billed for 
 next Monday week. 
 
 For they work zealously for their master, 
 
 the public, do these managers and they have 
 
 a very potent argument with which they 
 
 can persuade those who have wares to sell 
 
 to bring them to their market. 
 
 ******* 
 
 And so the curtain falls and the Show is 
 over. 
 
226 VAUDEVILLE 
 
 Did you like it? Some of it, yes, some 
 of it, no. I suppose that would be the an- 
 swer of ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 of the dispersing audience. 
 
 Well! it is YOUR show. It is there be- 
 cause it is what is wanted by the average 
 of you. If you want it different you only 
 have to make the demand loud enough, large 
 enough, persistent enough. For these 
 figures you see on the stage are but a re- 
 flection of what YOU, their creators want. 
 They are the shadows cast on the screen by 
 the actors in the old-time gallanty-show. 
 The figures may be dwarfed to insignifi- 
 cance or enlarged to preposterous size. Yet 
 they are but the figures of you, yourselves, 
 and represent, if not your actual appear- 
 ance, some travesty of it made by the relation 
 your own form bears to the source of its 
 inspiration. More or less truly it throws 
 upon its screen the current sentiment of the 
 day. We cannot escape from its influence. 
 The echoes of its songs are in our streets, our 
 homes, our ballrooms, we hear them at our 
 
SOME OTHER TURNS 227 
 
 parades and public ceremonies and here, as 
 I write these words, far from the busy 
 streets, amid woods and hills, the sounds are 
 borne to me over the water of young voices 
 chanting in chorus, and the song is a song 
 of Vaudeville. 
 
 We have put our entertainers behind the 
 frame of a proscenium arch and let down a 
 curtain to mark the division between actor 
 and audience. But the actor is still the re- 
 flection of his audience. 
 
 "The best of this kind are but shadows; 
 and the worst are no worse, if imagination 
 amend them." 
 

 INDEX 
 
 
 Abbott, Annie 
 
 191 
 
 Collins, Jose 
 
 79 
 
 Adelaide, La Petite 
 
 104 
 
 Cooper, George 
 
 111 
 
 Allen, Maude 
 
 138 
 
 Cowle, Jane 
 
 138 
 
 Anger, Lou 
 
 80 
 
 Cox, Ray 
 
 213 
 
 Barnard, Sophye 
 
 80 
 
 d'Angelis, Jefferson 
 
 78 
 
 Barnes, Gertrude 
 
 74 
 
 d'Armond, Isabel 
 
 212 
 
 Barry, Katie 
 
 16T 
 
 Daly, Arnold 
 
 121 
 
 Barrymore, Ethel 
 
 122 
 
 Dare, Violet 
 
 139 
 
 Bayes, Nora 
 
 27 
 
 Dazie, Mile. 
 
 104 
 
 Bernhardt, Sarah 
 
 25 
 
 Dewitt, Burns and 
 
 
 Bogannys, The 
 
 178 
 
 Torrance 
 
 179 
 
 Brack Troupe 
 
 175 
 
 Dickerman, Rube 
 
 207 
 
 Brown, Martin 
 
 106 
 
 Dockstader, Lew 
 
 200 
 
 Burks, Hattie 
 
 107 
 
 Doldsmith, Lillian 
 
 100 
 
 
 
 Dolly, Roszcika 
 
 106 
 
 Carus, Emma 
 
 85 
 
 Duncan, Isadora 
 
 98 
 
 Castle, Irene and 
 
 
 Duprez, Fred 
 
 203 
 
 Vernon 
 
 103 
 
 
 
 Caruso 
 
 203 
 
 Eis, Alice 
 
 101 
 
 Charmon, The "Perfect 
 
 Elinor, Kate 
 
 211 
 
 Woman" 
 
 181 
 
 "Dainty Marie" 
 
 184 
 
 Chevalier, Albert 
 
 45 
 
 Evans, George 
 
 214 
 
 Ching Ling Foo 
 
 190 
 
 
 
 Claire, Ina 
 
 78 
 
 Farber Girls 
 
 109 
 
 Clayton, Bessie 
 
 103 
 
 Fiske, Mrs. 
 
 138 
 
 Cliff, Laddie 
 
 33 
 
 Fitzgibbon, Bert 
 
 204 
 
 Clifford, Kathleen 
 
 213 
 
 French, Bert 
 
 101 
 
 Cline, Maggie 
 
 62 
 
 Fulton, Maud 
 
 109 
 
 229 
 
230 
 
 INDEX 
 
 
 Gabler, Hedda 
 
 119 
 
 McMahon, Diamond and 
 
 Glaser, Lulu 
 
 78 
 
 Clemence 
 
 109 
 
 Gordon, Cliff 
 
 207 
 
 Maclntyre and Heath 
 
 200 
 
 Gordon, Kitty 
 
 78 
 
 Maskelyn and Cook 
 
 187 
 
 Granville, Taylor 
 
 127 
 
 Max, Wiley 
 
 108 
 
 Green, Ethel 
 
 74 
 
 Melrose, Bert 
 
 177 
 
 Grey, Silvia 
 
 97 
 
 Miller and Lyle 
 
 111 
 
 Guerita, Laura 
 
 78 
 
 Montgomery, Marshall 
 
 71 
 
 Guilbert, Yvette 
 
 57 
 
 Moore, George 
 
 31 
 
 
 
 Mori Brothers 
 
 172 
 
 Hanlon & Clifford 
 
 173 
 
 
 
 Herbert, Joseph 
 
 100 
 
 O'Neil, Nance 
 
 126 
 
 Herman, Carl 
 Hoffman, Gertrude 
 Houdini 
 
 188 
 102 
 194 
 
 Pierpont, Laura 
 Primrose, George 
 
 127 
 111 
 
 Janis, Elsie 
 Jolson, Al 
 
 140 
 
 202 
 
 Reeve, Ada 
 Reeves, Sims 
 Rivoli, Caesar 
 
 164 
 157 
 141 
 
 Kellerman, Annette 
 Kidder, Kathryn 
 
 183 
 124 
 
 Robinson, William 
 Rock, William 
 Rogers, Will 
 
 111 
 109 
 181 
 
 LaRue, Grace 
 
 78 
 
 Russell, Lillian 
 
 78 
 
 Lamberti 
 
 141 
 
 St. Denis, Ruth 
 
 25 
 
 Lauder, Harry 
 
 50 
 
 Sandow 
 
 180 
 
 Lind, Letty 
 
 97 
 
 Seamon, Charles F. 
 
 81 
 
 Lloyd, Alice 
 
 156 
 
 Shaw, Lilian 
 
 55 
 
 Lloyd, Marie 
 
 152 
 
 Smith, Jo 
 
 110 
 
 Loftus, Cecelia 
 
 137 
 
 Suratt, Valeska 
 
 102 
 
 Lorraine, Fred 
 
 107 
 
 
 
 Lyn, Novita and Billy 107 
 
 Tanguay, Eva 
 
 36 
 
 
 
 Taylor, Laurette 
 
 140 
 
 McCormick, Hugh 
 
 116 
 
 Templeton, Fay 
 
 66 
 
 McCoy, Bessie 
 
 104 
 
 Ten Eyck, Melissa 
 
 108 
 
 McDermott, Bill 
 
 205 
 
 Tilley, Vesta 
 
 156 
 
 McGiveney 
 
 142 
 
 Tinney, Frank 
 
 201 
 

 INDEX 
 
 231 
 
 Vance, Eunice 
 
 79 
 
 Warfield, David 
 
 209 
 
 Vanderbilt, Gertrude 
 
 29 
 
 Weber, Joe 
 
 209 
 
 Van Hoven 
 
 218 
 
 Welch, Ben 
 
 209 
 
 Victoria, Vesta 
 
 161 
 
 Wilder, Marshall P. 
 
 214 
 
 
 
 Wills, Nat 
 
 205 
 
 Wallace, Grace 
 
 116 
 
 Williams, Bert 
 
 202 
 
 Walsh, Blanche 
 
 127 
 
 Williams, Gus 
 
 200