Vaudeville

My father, Honest Sid, was a booker in smalltime vaudeville for a short while during its heyday before the First World War. As a boy I had gotten the idea that vaudeville was off-color but when I asked him about it on pages 22-23 of Honest Sid, he replied:

"Dirty? Don't be nuts. It was cleaner than a baby's behind." His descriptions of vaudeville generally left me speechless. In the big-time there might be Gillette's Monkeys, an act that included Adam and Eve, the twin bowling monkeys. Adam would make a strike or a spare and Eve acted as the pin boy, setting up the pins and returning the ball. After each play Adam ordered a drink and got progressively more drunk as the game went on until finally he tore up the alley. "Kid, you wouldn't believe the acts I saw. Those animal ones were the craziest. Dogs that did tricks, pigs that played games, and monkeys I swear could have beat me at gin."

Booking acts for a show required skill, although the smalltime format was patterned after the bills at the Palace. As the booker, my father set the number and kinds of acts, their balance and sequence following the Palace blueprint.  It was like a fence operation, since the performers had stolen most of the acts and gags from the big time. Generally there were nine acts with one intermission. "Closing intermission" was a big act with a name star perhaps featuring the Jewish comedienne, Fanny Brice. The Marx Brothers or Will Rogers might star in the top bill following the second act after intermission. 

The finale was called the "chaser", also known as "playing to the haircuts," reflecting the last performer's view as patrons headed up the aisle. Such line-ups would have been big-time dream shows, my father dealt with pale copies."