Vaudeville’s Transfigurators

Transfig-huh?

I’m learning about transfigurators as a possible plot twist for my fourth book. Since I haven’t finished the third one yet, it’s not foremost in my mind, but I ran across some interesting information recently that I’d like to share. 

Transfigurators were vaudeville performers who changed their appearance during the act. There were two types: proteans and quick-change artists. Quick-change artists just made quick changes with maybe a little patter in between. Proteans, however, worked an entire sketch themselves, playing all the parts by rapidly changing costumes very, very fast. The speed was the gimmick.

Robert Fulgora at left, 1911

These were one-man or one-woman shows where the actor played eight or ten different characters. Some changed very, very fast–like Robert Fulgora, who left the stage wearing a woman’s outfit and reappeared five seconds later in full male evening attire. Fulgora was one of Houdini’s early partners. Another well-known protean made changes so fast that audiences believed he had a twin brother. (Maybe he did!)

Can you see some interesting plot ideas here? 

 

Bob Hope in a Murder Mystery

Yep, I put Bob Hope in the third of my Roaring Twenties murder mysteries, one I call Renting Silence. (Don’t ask me when it’s going to be published–the first is scheduled for September and St. Martin’s/Minotaur likes to space them a year apart, so I’m guessing fall of 2015.) I like sprinkling in real people in minor roles, making certain I get the details correct. With Bob Hope, it was a little harder than usual because he wasn’t called Bob Hope until several years after my story takes place. 

In 1925, he was still Leslie Hope from Cleveland, Ohio, a Small-Time performer on the Gus Sun Circuit in the Midwest. He would soon change his name to Lester in an attempt to sound more masculine and tough, but, as he admits in his autobiography, he was still Les Hope, or Hope-less. So I was unable to use the name Bob Hope. How to let the reader know who this character is? I described his famous ski-slope nose, and then had him speculating about a tougher name. He asks Jessie, my main character, if Lester sounds better than Leslie. Then he says he’s thinking about something more American, like Joe, Bill, or Bob. (This comes out of his autobiography too.) So I have Jessie test the sound of each: “Joe Hope, Bill Hope, Bob Hope. I think I like Bill best.” I’m hoping that is enough to clue in the reader. What do you think? Is there any other way to make it obvious without sounding phony?

Here’s an early picture of Les Hope in the 1920s, at about the time he appears in my novel. 

 

Valentine’s Day is Jack Benny’s Birthday

Benny Kubelsky in 1909

On Valentine’s Day in 1894, Benjamin Kubelsky was born in Chicago. He started in vaudeville at 17, playing the violin (something he did rather well, by the way), but gradually began to add quips and jokes to his performance. Soon he was known as a violin-and-patter man. In these years, he met the Marx Brothers, a similarly unknown act, and became lifelong friends with Zeppo Marx.

As he became better known, his name became a problem. A famous violinist named Kubelik sued him, saying that he was damaging his (Kubelik’s) reputation and needed to change his name. Kubelsky changed it to Ben K. Benny. This provoked a reaction from another, better known violin and patter man named Ben Bernie, so he changed again, to Jack Benny. The third time’s a charm–it stuck.

These name changes are important to me because Jack Benny figures in my book, THE IMPERSONATOR. My research showed that in 1924, when the action takes place, he was a Small Time performer who did not yet use the name Jack Benny. But to make him recognizable to readers, I cheated and bumped the date forward a little. I refer to him as Benny Kubelsky and have the main character, Jessie, mention that his name had just changed to Jack Benny.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to both Benny Kubelsky and Jack Benny!!

A Typical Year in Vaudeville’s Big Time

Vaudeville performers were travelers. They seldom spent longer than one week in any one place. They usually moved on Sunday, the one day of the week that theaters were closed, and almost always traveled by train. Few performers owned cars. 

This map gives you an idea of a typical year on a Big Time circuit. This was Bob Hope’s schedule for 1929, when he was a successful vaudeville performer, but before he had become famous. 

Information like this is useful for my vaudeville characters. I can give them a schedule that was realistic rather than make up a bunch of cities. And I use Bob Hope as a minor character in my third book in the series, which is set in 1925. 

Sun Time

The third in my Roaring Twenties series takes place in vaudeville’s Sun Time Circuit, so I’ve been eager to learn as much as possible about this little-known business. It hasn’t been easy–there is practically nothing available about Sun Time. It was a lesser circuit, below Keith or Orpheum which were known as Big Time. Sun Time was a Small Time circuit, the low end of vaudeville. The acts that played Sun Time moved from theater to theater in small towns or in low-end theaters in larger cities, always second-rate properties. The best you could say about Sun Time, according to one experienced vaudeville player, was that it was a proving ground for many acts. The good ones left as soon as they could, moving up to Big Time. The bad ones, well, they played for a few weeks or a few months and gave up.  

Joe Laurie, Jr., a vaudeville performer who wrote his memoirs in the 1950s, said that, oddly enough, many Sun Time players saved more money than Big Time players. Many worked for a while and saved enough to buy a farm or a store or business. Gus Sun, the owner of the Sun Time circuit of low-end theaters, didn’t pay well, but the “jumps” were small–a short train ride to the next town rather than riding from, say, Chicago to Detroit. Many were “just ten cent electric car rides to the next town,” he recalled. And the “living was cheap (usually with some private family)” instead of at a boarding house or hotel. Costumes didn’t need to be expensive because small-town audiences were unsophisticated and didn’t have the high expectations that big city audiences had. Home-made costumes, made by the wife, would do. “And there were few places to spend any money” in small towns. So, he says, many on Sun Time “grew fat by the end of the season.” 

 

Three Stooges

The Three Stooges are back in the limelight again with a new movie that tries to re-create their zany antics for today’s audiences. I’m not sure it’s necessary, since there are so many Stooges movies around on television, but it’s a free country.

I noticed that the Stooges began their stage career in vaudeville in 1925, just at the time of my second vaudeville mystery. I didn’t include Moe, Larry, and Curly in that book, but might keep them in mind for a later one. 

Interestingly, the Three Stooges didn’t start out under that name. The act was called Ted Healy and his Stooges. I couldn’t find any remnant of it on youtube, but supposedly it was about an entertainer, Ted Healy, who tried to perform while these oddball stooges kept goofing up the act. Lots of farce and slapstick. Evidently Ted Healy was a prickly sort and an alcoholic to boot, and he and the Stooges had parted ways by 1930 when they made their first film. Not a great success. But by 1933 they had a contract with MGM and were on their way. 

So if I use them in my mysteries, I’ll have to make them unimportant and relatively unknown, which was their status in 1925. 

Vaudeville Performers: Love ‘em and Hate ‘em

Vaudeville performers, like those in touring theatricals, were adored on stage and snubbed off it. Lumped together with other itinerants like gypsies, hobos, and vagabonds, they were met with suspicion and distrust wherever they went. They were assumed to be criminals–pickpockets, fakers, shoplifters, grifters. Many hotels refused to take in vaudeville players or actors. Those that did were the lowest quality, usually with one shared toilet per hall and located near the train station. These would cost around a dollar a night. Performers usually tried to save the dollar by taking a night train, traveling on Saturday night after the last performance of the week and arriving in the next town on Sunday. Boarding houses often took up the slack. Most vaudeville performers stayed in boarding houses for a week at a time, eating breakfast and sometimes dinner there, if their schedules allowed. 

Circus and carnival workers, called carnies, were even more distrusted, but they had an advantage: they didn’t have to search for lodging at every stop. They lived in wagons that traveled with the show. 

Cats and Rats

One of vaudeville’s best-known animal acts was Swain’s Cats and Rats. Here’s a copy of a vaudeville program where this act is featured. For some reason–probably carelessness–the name is wrong. It was Cats and Rats, not Rats and Cats. But then, look how they misspelled vaudeville–twice! 

Swain’s Cats and Rats was famous. George Burns joked about it in 1976, recalling his own days in vaudeville by saying “I was so bad, once I was on the bill, and the headliner was Swain’s Cats and Rats.” A newspaper review describes the show: “One of the best animal acts in vaudeville and misses greatness by the man’s mild showmanship. The rats and cats fraternize like lodge brothers and execute a difficult routine of wire walking and jumping and balancing stunts. One of the feature tricks is a cat stepping over seven hurdles on top of each one a rat is reclining.” Vaudeville player Joe Laurie, Jr., noted in his memoirs that the cats were fed right before each show. The rats were kept semi-starved and docile. 

Before he developed Cats and Rats, Mr. Swain (I couldn’t find a first name) has at least two other animal acts, Swain’s Alligators and Swain’s Cockatoos. Evidence for the bird act exists from as early as 1907 to at least 1918. It played all over the country: Denver, Brooklyn, Cincinnati. “A novelty from birdland,” one reviewer said, and he rated them “very good.” I found no information at all about the alligators–perhaps it was a short-lived act. 

I was so taken with Cats and Rats that I worked the act into my (as yet unpublished) mystery, set in 1925. Just a quick mention as part of a description of a vaudeville act–here it is.

The next-to-last act was Jack Benny, whose straight face and knack for timing brought laughter to the simplest lines. He screeched when he played his violin, not from lack of skill but on purpose to add humor to his act. Many’s the time I’d heard him play his old instrument better than any pro in the pit. His gags flopped, but I whistled and applauded like a madwoman. Never mind, I’m sure he could tell from the tepid audience response that tonight his schtick was off. Cats and Rats ended the show, astonishing the audience as rats rode peacefully on cats’ backs around a track, crossed tightropes, and for the finale, walked across a raised platform carrying miniature American flags.

“However do they teach them to do that!” exclaimed Valerie as we worked our way out of the box and down the side steps.

“They stuff the cats and starve the rats,” I said bluntly. “Come on.”

I could find my way backstage at any theater in the world blindfolded, with nothing but my sense of smell to guide me. The wings teemed with performers dodging in and out of dressing rooms, musicians packing up their instruments, and stage crew hauling down lights, sweeping floors, and repairing scenery for Monday’s new line-up. Shouts, scrapes, crashes, arguments, and warning calls—“Watch out! Heads up! Coming through!—surrounded us. Boys who worked for free to see the show trotted alongside electricians, scene shifters, and carpenters like young apprentices eager to help. Everything was confusion and noise. It sounded like home.

Traveling with Vaudeville Performers

For vaudeville players, traveling was a constant struggle. These performers rarely stayed more than a week in one place, so they were forever on the move, catching a train to the next town on the circuit. But it wasn’t as easy as packing a suitcase and hopping the train. Performers had a lot of baggage to schlep around–trunks full of costumes (which they usually made themselves), makeup (which they also make themselves, since this was before the days of commercial makeup), wigs, and essential stage props. Those who were unable to bring scenic backdrops and stage props with them had to rely on whatever the theater had for backdrops and scrounge for whatever furniture or props their play required. 

They stayed at hotels near the station and boarding houses because they were cheap and because reputable hotels wouldn’t allow actors as guests. They were adept at sleeping on the train–most planned their travels to include an overnight train ride to save the dollar for the hotel. Vaudeville players would try to leave the theater late Saturday night after the last performance and arrive in the next city on Sunday morning, ready to start a new week at a new theater.  Theater actors had it worse–they might stay just one or two nights in a town before moving.

Obviously, children of these families didn’t attend school. Some were functionally illiterate; others, like Mary Pickford, taught themselves to read from the billboards alongside the train tracks.  Constantly on the move, they were out of reach of truant officers, who were ineffectual anyway.  

Vaudeville actors, like all actors, were applauded on stage and despised off stage. They faced overt discrimination everywhere, from hotels that would not rent them rooms to restaurants who turned them away at the door. Church congregations scorned them and often refused to perform marriages or funerals. They were assumed to be petty criminals, prostitutes, shoplifters, con artists, thieves, and beggars, and in fact, some were. 

Touring Theater vs. Vaudeville

Touring theater is not vaudeville. I originally thought they were the same thing, but as I’ve learned more about the two, I realize they are very different forms of entertainment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vaudeville performances were variety shows consisting of about nine acts, almost always including music, singing, dancing, comedy, animal acts, and juggling or acrobatic acts. Vaudeville shows generally lasted one week, then the performers moved on to the next town to a different lineup.

Touring theater consisted of full-length plays, sometimes musicals, but they were often one-night stands. During the first part of the twentieth century, there were hundreds of touring theater companies working in the United States, most pretty poor quality. The height of success for an actor was to get a role in a Broadway play. That provided some stability and a stationary lifestyle, at least for a few months or as long as the play lasted.  

Silent film producers got their actors and actresses from vaudeville and the theater. Making films was originally considered a big step down from the theater stage, even for those touring in second-rate companies, like Mary Pickford. Little Mary, a teenager, was so mortified that her mother made her work for a New York film studio that she would sneak in and out of the studio so no one would see her. But the family needed money desperately and Little Mary, or Our Mary, as she would later be known, was the breadwinner. So she went slumming in the silent pictures, never imagining that they would bring her international fame and immense fortune.