Live Entertainment in the Jazz Age

Segregation Jim - Live Entertainment in the Jazz Age

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The phenomenal decade which we now know as the Roaring Twenties was so pivotal in so many ways. The biggest group changes in the United States between the World War One era (1914-1918) and the start of the Jazz Age (1920) were the amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Namely, women could now vote, called "women's suffrage," per the 19th Amendment, and the manufacture, sale and communication of intoxicating liquors were outlawed, per the 18th Amendment, called "Prohibition."

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Segregation Jim

But what about the fun stuff? What did a flapper or a bootlegger do for fun, above and beyond drinking alcohol? And "making whoopee"?

If we were to take a look at the year 1921 for our example, then there are some things not yet ready which we take for granted today.

First, here is what is missing:

(a.) There is no radio as a buyer good. There are people, hobbyists, transmitting and listening on home-made crystal sets. But in 1921, there is no minute Orphan Annie or Inner Sanctum yet on radio.

(b.) The description industry is so young that there are no electric phonographs. Your tasteless Victrola is a hand-cranked device, spring-loaded, with no amplification except for a natural acoustic bell-shaped horn. Ten-inch vinyl records, with rather low fidelity, could play for 3 minutes at 78 revolutions per minute.

Without radio, and without records, then logically there isn't much to listen to at home. Therefore, if you want to sit down and be entertained, then you must leave your home and go out to the city. Your choices are minute to what your city happens to be big adequate to reserve commercially: (a.) vaudeville; (b.) legitimate theater, i.e., a Broadway show; (c.) burlesque; (d.) night club; (e.) Nickelodeon; i.e., movie theater.

Since the focus of this description is on live entertainment, let's leave out the world of cinema and film, and focus on living entertainers on a bodily stage.

"Vaudeville" is the generic term for live variety shows which along with traveling shows and touring acts of one to five people, and which featured original material or original talent. The "headliners" or "top bananas" (what we would call "stars") earn their living working the Orpheus circuit, doing their act live on stage, six days a week, in what performers called "two-a-days." The most respected theater in the whole vaudeville circuit was The Palace in New York City, new as of 1913 (making it nine years old, as of 1921).

"Legitimate theater" refers to full Broadway-style stage productions: musicals, operettas, dramas, comedies, revues, follies. The word "legitimate" is needful because, when using the word "theater" or the word "stage" generically, it is potential that the reference is to the vaudeville stage or the Chautauqua stage, not needful the Broadway stage.

"Burlesque" refers to a baser, low-brow form of entertainment, dedicated to parodies, farces, and satire of familiar stage plays or celebrities or songs. Burlesque includes raunchy and suggestive humor, plus bodily humor such as ladies (or men) losing parts of their clothing, but not yet "girlie shows," which would later become the dominant theme of burlesque in the mid-1920s. Yes, there was flaunting of "tits and ass" to titillate the male audience, but no, there were no strippers, technically. The local laws, the so-called "blue laws," prevented greatest displays. Burlesque was its own niche of show business, with its own theater circuit. Do not confuse the late 1920s with the early 1920s. - The infamous Night They Raided Minsky's is still years away.

The unlikeness between vaudeville and burlesque is subtle but distinct. The unlikeness lies in their targeted audiences and their source of material. Vaudeville is family-based entertainment presenting "varieties" (the original, technical term of the 19th century) which is a mix of entertainments based on original skill or original humor, while burlesque is adult-based, and satiric in nature, and derives its entertainment value from the mocking of favorite values or of familiar persons or things. Thus, it is potential that a burlesque (satirical) act would tour the vaudeville circuit, but most vaudeville acts (singers, jugglers, right comedy) would be quite out of place in the burlesque circuit. The audience in a burlesque theater would not be interested in jugglers or acrobats or popular-song singers or ballroom dancers.

A given theater was whether a vaudeville theater or a legitimate theater or burlesque theater. A given theater never mixed its style of entertainment, since its targeted audience is demographically unique and non-overlapping with the other two, just as a magazine would fix its style and themes for the same reason. There are three detach theater circuits for each of the three styles of theater-based entertainment.

Minstrel shows still existed, but were thought about old-fashioned, even in 1921. For sociological reasons that are too involved to summarize here (beyond Jim Crow laws, beyond segregation), a "person of color" was not allowed to perform in most theaters. Instead, a minstrel show is composed of a chorus of men of the Caucasian race who would dress up in spangled top hats and tails, plus the obligatory burnt-cork makeup and white gloves, who would sing, dance, and joke in the stereotypical dialect of the American Negro. A token white man would play the role of emcee or right man, "Mr. Interlocutor," who would put questions to the "end men," who were the comedians. Despite today's viewpoint that a minstrel show is degrading or mocking to an ethnic people, technically, a minstrel show would be classified as vaudeville, not burlesque, because minstrel shows were not thought about a travesty or an insult. favorite singer Al Jolson (known for "Mammy," "Swannee," "Toot-Toot-Tootsie," "April Showers") got his start in minstrel blackface.

Those were your choices for live entertainment as a Jazz Baby if you wanted to have a good time in 1921, and if you weren't interested in books or films.

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