Writing for Vaudeville Part 1

Writing for Vaudeville.

by Brett Page.

FOREWORD

Can you be taught how to write for vaudeville? If you have the native gift, what experienced writers say about its problems, what they themselves have accomplished, and the means by which it has been wrought, will be of help to you. So much this book offers, and more I would not claim for it.

Although this volume is the first treatise on the subject of which I know, it is less an original offering than a compilation. Growing out of a series of articles written in collaboration with Mr.

William C. Lengel for The Green Book Magazine, the subject a.s.sumed such bigness in my eyes that when I began the writing of this book, I spent months harvesting the knowledge of others to add to my own experience. With the warm-heartedness for which vaudevillians are famous, nearly everyone whose aid I asked lent a.s.sistance gladly.

"It is vaudeville's first book," said more than one, deprecating the value of his own suggestions, "and we want it right in each slightest particular."

To the following kindly gentlemen I wish to express my especial thanks: Aaron Hoffman, Edwin Hopkins, James Madison, Edgar Allan Woolf, Richard Harding Davis--the foremost example of a writer who made a famous name first in literature and afterward in vaudeville--Arthur Hopkins, Taylor Granville, Junie McCree, Arthur Denvir, Frank Fogarty, Irving Berlin, Charles K. Harris, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Ballard MacDonald, Louis Bernstein, Joe McCarthy, Joseph Hart, Joseph Maxwell, George A. Gottlieb, Daniel F. Hennessy, Sime Silverman, Thomas J. Gray, William C. Lengel, Miss Nellie Revell, the "big sister of vaudeville," and a host of others whose names s.p.a.ce does not permit my naming again here, but whose work is evidenced in the following pages. To Alexander Black, the man who made the first picture play twenty-one years ago, I owe thanks for points in the discussion of dramatic values. And for many helpful suggestions, and his kindly editing, I wish to express my grat.i.tude to Dr. J. Berg Esenwein. To these "friends indeed"

belongs whatever merit this book possesses.

BRETT PAGE BROOKLYN, NEW YORK August 25, 1915

INTRODUCTION

It falls to the lot of few men in these days to blaze a new trail in Bookland. This Mr. Brett Page has done, with firmness and precision, and with a joy in every stroke that will beget in countless readers that answering joy which is the reward of both him who guides and him who follows. There is but one word for a work so penetrating, so eductive, so clear--and that word is _masterly_. Let no one believe the modest a.s.sertion that "Writing for Vaudeville" is "less an original offering than a compilation."

I have seen it grow and re-grow, section by section, and never have I known an author give more care to the development of his theme in an original way. Mr. Page has worked with fidelity to the convictions gained while himself writing professionally, yet with deference for the opinions of past masters in this field.

The result is a book quite unexcelled among manuals of instruction, for authority, full statement, a.n.a.lysis of the sort that leads the reader to see what essentials he must build into his own structures, and sympathetic helpfulness throughout. I count it an honor to have been the editorial sponsor for a pioneer book which will be soon known everywhere.

J. BERG ESENWEIN

WRITING FOR VAUDEVILLE

CHAPTER I

THE WHY OF THE VAUDEVILLE ACT

1. The Rise of Vaudeville

A French workman who lived in the Valley of the Vire in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, is said to be vaudeville's grandparent. Of course, the child of his brain bears not even a remote resemblance to its descendant of to-day, yet the line is unbroken and the relations.h.i.+p clearer than many of the family trees of the royal houses. The French workman's name was Oliver Ba.s.sel, or Olivier Ba.s.selin, and in his way he was a poet. He composed and sang certain sprightly songs which struck the popular fancy and achieved a reputation not only in his own town but throughout the country.

Ba.s.sel's success raised the usual crop of imitators and soon a whole family of songs like his were being whistled in France. In the course of time these came to be cla.s.sed as a new and distinct form of musical entertainment. They were given the name of "Val-de-Vire" from the valley in which Ba.s.sel was born. This name became corrupted, into "vaux-de-vire" in the time of Louis XVI, and was applied to all the popular or topical songs sung on the streets of Paris. Then the aristocrats took up these songs and gave entertainments at their country seats. To these entertainments they gave the name of "vaux-de-ville," the last syllable being changed to honor Ba.s.sel's native town [1] And gradually the x was dropped and the word has remained through the years as it is to-day.

[1] Another version relates that these songs were sung on the Pont Neuf in Paris, where stands the Hotel de Ville, or City Hall, and thus the generic name acquired the different termination.

As the form of entertainment advanced, the word vaudeville expanded in meaning. It came to comprise not only a collection of songs, but also acrobatic feats and other exhibitions. Having no dramatic sequence whatever, these unrelated acts when shown together achieved recognition as a distinct form of theatrical entertainment. As "vaudeville"--or "variety"--this form of entertainment became known and loved in every country of the world.

Vaudeville was introduced into this country before 1820, but it did not become a common form of entertainment until shortly before the Civil War when the word 'variety' was at once adopted and became familiar as something peculiarly applicable to the troubled times. The new and always cheerful entertainment found the reward of its optimism in a wide popularity. But as those days of war were the days of men, vaudeville made its appeal to men only. And then the war-clouds pa.s.sed away and the show business had to reestablish itself, precisely as every other commercial pursuit had to readjust itself to changed conditions.

Tony Pastor saw his opportunity. On July 31, 1865, he opened "Tony Pastor's Opera House" at 199-201 Bowery, New York. He had a theory that a vaudeville entertainment from which every objectionable word and action were taken away, and from which the drinking bar was excluded, would appeal to women and children as well as men.

He knew that no entertainment that excluded women could long hold a profitable place in a man's affections. So to draw the whole family to his new Opera House, Tony Pastor inaugurated clean vaudeville [1]. Pastor's success was almost instantaneous. It became the fas.h.i.+on to go to Pastor's Opera House and later when he moved to Broadway, and then up to Fourteenth Street, next to Tammany Hall, he carried his clientele with him. And vaudeville, as a form of entertainment that appealed to every member of the home circle, was firmly established--for a while.

[1] In the New York Clipper for December 19, 1914, there is an interesting article: "The Days of Tony Pastor," by Al. Fostelle, an old-time vaudeville performer, recounting the names of the famous performers who played for Tony Pastor in the early days.

It reads like a "who's who" of vaudeville history. Mr. Fostelle, has in his collection a bill of an entertainment given in England in 1723, consisting of singing, dancing, character impersonations, with musical accompaniment, tight-rope walking, acrobatic feats, etc.

For Pastor's success in New York did not at first seem to the average vaudeville manager something that could be duplicated everywhere. A large part of the profits of the usual place came from the sale of drinks and to forego this source of revenue seemed suicidal. Therefore, vaudeville as a whole continued for years on the old plane. "Variety" was the name--in England vaudeville is still called "variety"--that it held even more widely then.

And in the later seventies and the early eighties "variety" was on the ebb-tide. It was cla.s.sed even lower than the circus, from which many of its recruits were drawn.

Among the men who came to vaudeville's rescue, because they saw that to appear to the ma.s.ses profitably, vaudeville must be clean, were F. F. Proctor in Philadelphia, and B. F. Keith in Boston.

On Was.h.i.+ngton Street in Boston, B. F. Keith had opened a "store show." The room was very small and he had but a tiny stage; still he showed a collection of curiosities, among which were a two-headed calf and a fat woman. Later on he added a singer and a serio-comic comedian and insisted that they eliminate from their acts everything that might offend the most fastidious. The result was that he moved to larger quarters and ten months later to still more commodious premised.

Continuous vaudeville--"eleven o'clock in the morning until eleven at night"--had its birth on July 6, 1885. It struck the popular fancy immediately and soon there was hardly a city of any importance that did not possess its "continuous" house. From the "continuous"

vaudeville has developed the two-performances-a-day policy, for which vaudeville is now so well known.

The vaudeville entertainment of this generation is, however, a vastly different entertainment from that of even the nineties.

What it has become in popular affection it owes not only to Tony Pastor, F. F. Proctor, or even to B. F. Keith--great as was his influence--but to a host of showmen whose names and activities would fill more s.p.a.ce than is possible here. E. F. Albee, Oscar Hammerstein, S. Z. Poli, William Morris, Mike Shea, James E. Moore, Percy G. Williams, Harry Davis, Morris Meyerfeld, Martin Beck, John J. Murdock, Daniel F. Hennessy, Sullivan and Considine, Alexander Pantages, Marcus Loew, Charles E. Kohl, Max Anderson, Henry Zeigler, and George Castle, are but a few of the many men living and dead who have helped to make vaudeville what it is.

From the old variety show, made up of a singer of topical songs, an acrobatic couple, a tight-rope walker, a sidewalk "patter" pair, and perhaps a very rough comedy sketch, there has developed a performance that sometimes includes as many as ten or twelve acts, each one presented by an artist whose name is known around the world. One of the laments of the old vaudeville performers is that they have a place in vaudeville no more. The most famous grand opera singers and the greatest actors and actresses appear in their room. The most renowned dramatists write some of its playlets. The finest composers cut down their best-known works to fit its stage, and little operas requiring forty people and three or four sets of scenery are the result. To the legitimate [1] stage vaudeville has given some of its successful plays and at least one grand opera has been expanded from a playlet. To-day a vaudeville performance is the best thought of the world condensed to fit the flying hour.

[1] _Legitimate_ is a word used in the theatrical business to distinguish the full-evening drama, its actors, producers, and its mechanical stage from those of burlesque and vaudeville. Originally coined as a word of reproach against vaudeville, it has lost its sting and is used by vaudevillians as well as legitimate actors and managers.

2. Of What a Vaudeville Show is Made

There is no keener psychologist than a vaudeville manager. Not only does he present the best of everything that can be shown upon a stage, but he so arranges the heterogeneous elements that they combine to form a unified whole. He brings his audiences together by advertising variety and reputations, and he sends them away aglow with the feeling that they have been entertained every minute.

His raw material is the best he can buy. His finished product is usually the finest his brain can form. He engages Sarah Bernhardt, Calve, a Sir James M. Barrie playlet, Ethel Barrymore, and Henry Miller. He takes one of them as the nucleus of a week's bill.

Then he runs over the names of such regular vaudevillians as Grace La Rue, Nat Wills, Trixie Friganza, Harry Fox and Yansci Dollie, Emma Carus, Sam and Kitty Morton, Walter C. Kelly, Conroy and LeMaire, Jack Wilson, Hyams and McIntyre, and Frank Fogarty. He selects two or maybe three of them. Suddenly it occurs to him that he hasn't a big musical "flash" for his bill, so he telephones a producer like Jesse L. Lasky, Arthur Hopkins or Joe Hart and asks him for one of his fifteen- or twenty-people acts. This he adds to his bill. Then he picks a song-and-dance act and an acrobatic turn. Suddenly he remembers that he wants--not for this show, but for some future week--Gertrude Hoffman with her big company, or Eva Tanguay all by herself. This off his mind, the manager lays out his show--if it is the standard nine-act bill--somewhat after the following plan, as George A. Gottlieb, who books Keith's Palace Theatre, New York, shows--probably the best and certainly the "biggest" vaudeville entertainments seen in this country--has been good enough to explain.

"We usually select a 'dumb act' for the first act on the bill.

It may be a dancing act, some good animal act, or any act that makes a good impression and will not be spoiled by the late arrivals seeking their seats. Therefore it sometimes happens that we make use of a song-and-dance turn, or any other little act that does not depend on its words being heard.

"For number two position we select an interesting act of the sort recognized as a typical 'vaudeville act.' It may be almost anything at all, though it should be more entertaining than the first act.

For this reason it often happens that a good man-and-woman singing act is placed here. This position on the bill is to 'settle' the audience and to prepare it for the show.

"With number three position we count on waking up the audience.

The show has been properly started and from now on it must build right up to the finish. So we offer a comedy dramatic sketch--a playlet that wakens the interest and holds the audience every minute with a culminative effect that comes to its laughter-climax at the 'curtain,' or any other kind of act that is not of the same order as the preceding turn, so that, having laid the foundations, we may have the audience wondering what is to come next.

"For number four position we must have a 'corker' of an act--and a 'name.' It must be the sort of act that will rouse the audience to expect still better things, based on the fine performance of the past numbers. Maybe this act is the first big punch of the show; anyway, it must strike home and build up the interest for the act that follows.

"And here for number five position, a big act, and at the same time another big name, must be presented. Or it might be a big dancing act--one of those delightful novelties vaudeville likes so well. In any event this act must be as big a 'hit' as any on the bill. It is next to intermission and the audience must have something really worth while to talk over. And so we select one of the best acts on the bill to crown the first half of the show.

"The first act after intermission, number six on the bill, is a difficult position to fill, because the act must not let down the carefully built-up tension of interest and yet it must not be stronger than the acts that are to follow. Very likely there is chosen a strong vaudeville specialty, with comedy well to the fore.

Perhaps a famous comedy dumb act is selected, with the intention of getting the audience back in its seats without too many conspicuous interruptions of what is going on on the stage. Any sort of act that makes a splendid start-off is chosen, for there has been a fine first half and the second half must be built up again--of course the process is infinitely swifter in the second half of the show--and the audience brought once more into a delighted-expectant att.i.tude.

"Therefore the second act after intermission--number seven--must be stronger than the first. It is usually a full-stage act and again must be another big name. Very likely it is a big playlet, if another sketch has not been presented earlier on the bill. It may be a comedy playlet or even a serious dramatic playlet, if the star is a fine actor or actress and the name is well known. Or it may be anything at all that builds up the interest and appreciation of the audience to welcome the 'big' act that follows. "For here in number eight position--next to closing, on a nine-act bill--the comedy hit of the show is usually placed. It is one of the acts for which the audience has been waiting. Usually it is one of the famous 'single' man or 'single' women acts that vaudeville has made such favorites.

"And now we have come to the act that closes the show. We count on the fact that some of the audience will be going out. Many have only waited to see the chief attraction of the evening, before hurrying off to their after-theatre supper and dance. So we spring a big 'flash.' It must be an act that does not depend for its success upon being heard perfectly. Therefore a 'sight' act is chosen, an animal act maybe, to please the children, or a j.a.panese troupe with their gorgeous kimonos and vividly harmonizing stage draperies, or a troupe of white-clad trapeze artists flying against a background of black. Whatever the act is, it must be a showy act, for it closes the performance and sends the audience home pleased with the program to the very last minute.