When did vaudeville end?

The Palace in 1920

Of course, there’s so simple answer here, since vaudeville faded away in the 1930s, but I’ve found some guideposts that helped me get a handle on the timeframe. (Some argue that Ed Sullivan’s television show was nothing more than televised vaudeville, but no old-time vaudevillians would have agreed.) 

New York’s famous Palace theater on Broadway had its last two-a-day show during the week of May 7, 1932. “Playing at the Palace” was slang for playing BigTime. If you played the Palace, you had reached the pinnacle of success. It was the flagship of the Keith-Albee circuit theaters. The Palace continued to operated after that, with movies and a series of second-rate acts, but the vaudeville heyday was over. W.C. Fields spoke for the industry when he said, “For many, vaudeville passed into the limbo when the old New York Palace closed as a two-a-day in 1932.” 

Remember Jack Haley, the Tin Man in the 1939 Wizard of Oz and a vaudeville star? He wrote: “Only a vaudevillian who has trod its stage can really tell you about it… only a performer can describe the anxieties, the joys, the anticipation, and the exultation of a week’s engagement at the Palace. The walk through the iron gate on 47th Street through the courtyard to the stage door, was the cum laude walk to a show business diploma. A feeling of ecstasy came with the knowledge that this was the Palace, the epitome of the more than 15,000 vaudeville theaters in America, and the realization that you have been selected to play it. Of all the thousands upon thousands of vaudeville performers in the business, you are there. This was a dream fulfilled; this was the pinnacle of Variety success.”