..".engaging, richly illustrated, and well-reserached.... Part anthology, cultural studies, history, journalism and political science, it... manages to consistently engage the reader..." - African Studies Review

"Lindfors's book shows how the 'edutainment' of the 19th century perpetuated an ignorance of Africa that makes it easy for whites to stay racist and difficult for blacks to gain an accurate and dignified understanding of their heritage.... an unusually strong, readable collection." Boston Book Review

Ethnological show business that is, the displaying of foreign peoples for commercial and/or educational purposes has a very long history. In the 19th and 20th centuries some of the most interesting individuals and groups exhibited in Europe and America came from Africa, or were said to come from Africa. African showpeople (real as well as counterfeit), managers and impresarios, and the audiences who came to gape are the featured attractions here how they individually and in concert helped to shape Western perceptions of Africans."

Here is the first-ever collection of classic comic sketches from the bawdy, rowdy world of our slum music halls! Habitues of Burlesque (and sons of habitues) will revel in the boisterous stock scenes and blackouts of this uniquely American form of popular entertainment. Features a foreword by Dick Martin.

Before "Fred and Ginger," there was "Fred and Adele," a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other. In our celebrity-saturated era, it's hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theatrical career together, Kathleen Riley traces the Astaires' rise to fame from humble midwestern origins and early days as child performers on small-time vaudeville stages (where Fred, fatefully, first donned top hat and tails) to their 1917 debut on Broadway to star billings on both sides of the Atlantic. They became ambassadors of an art form they helped to revolutionize, adored by audiences, feted by royalty, and courted socially by elites everywhere they went. From the start, Adele was the more natural performer, spontaneous, funny, and self-possessed, while Fred had to hone his trademark timing and elegance through endless hours of rehearsal, a disciplined regimen that Adele loathed. Ultimately, Fred's dancing expertise surpassed his sister's, and their paths diverged: Adele married into British aristocracy, and Fred headed for Hollywood. The Astaires examines in depth the extraordinary story of this great brother-sister team, with full attention to its historical and theatrical context. It is not merely an account of the first part of Fred's long and illustrious career but one with its own significance. Born at the close of the 1800s, Fred and Adele grew up together with the new century, and when they reached superstardom during the interwar years, they shone as an affirmation of life and hope amid a prevailing crisis of faith and identity.

It's Saturday night in Key West and the Girlie Show is about to begin at the 801 Cabaret. The girls have been outside on the sidewalk all evening, seducing passersby into coming in for the show. The club itself is packed tonight and smoke has filled the room. When the lights finally go down, statuesque blonds and stunning brunettes sporting black leather miniskirts, stiletto heels, and see-through lingerie take the stage. En Vogue's "Free Your Mind" blares on the house stereo. The crowd roars in approval. In this lively book, Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor take us on an entertaining tour through one of America's most overlooked subcultures: the world of the drag queen. They offer a penetrating glimpse into the lives of the 801 Girls, the troupe of queens who perform nightly at the 801 Cabaret for tourists and locals. Weaving together their fascinating life stories, their lavish costumes and eclectic music, their flamboyance and bitchiness, and their bawdy exchanges with one another and their audiences, the authors explore how drag queens smash the boundaries between gay and straight, man and woman, to make people think more deeply and realistically about sex and gender in America today. They also consider how the queens create a space that encourages camaraderie and acceptance among everyday people, no matter what their sexual preferences might be. Based on countless interviews with more than a dozen drag queens, more than three years of attendance at their outrageous performances, and even the authors' participation in the shows themselves, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret is a witty and poignant portrait of gay life and culture. When they said life is a cabaret, they clearly meant the 801.

Every year in downtown Las Vegas, often called "Old Vegas", The Burlesque Hall of Fame reunion brings together members of the former League of Exotic Dancers, one of the earliest unions for women in exotic entertainment, to perform their half-century-year- old routines. In this annual tradition, performers from the golden age of Las Vegas burlesque rally counter-culture neo-burlesque fans who both keep the tradition alive and add new meaning to it. Over the past five years, documentarian Kaitlyn Regehr and photographer Matilda Temperley have embedded themselves within this communitya group, which like Old Vegas itself, continues to survive and thrive sixty years past its supposed prime. Here, in a smoky, off-strip casino, they found women, at times well into their 80s, subversively bumping and grinding away preconceptions about appropriate behavior for a pensioner. This collection of interviews and photographs is drawn from the backstage dressing rooms, homes, and lives of this aging burlesque community, as well as the young neo-burlesque community who adore them. Through a range of experiencesfrom discussing struggles for wage equality, to helping stabilize an 85 year old as she steps into a sequined g-stringthe authors describe the complexity of the lives of these performers and the burlesque history from which they come. Regehr and Temperley present multidimensional portraits of this relatively untold womens history and conclude that they are at their most vital when read with all the nuances, troubles, trials, and triumphs that they formerly and currently experience.

This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral and written narratives, literature, comic strips, photography, theatre, and cinematic images. The central argument is that traumatic memories are frequently beyond the sphere of medical, legal, or state intervention. To address these different, often intertwined modes of language, the contributors provide a variety of disciplinary approaches to foster innovative debates and provoke new insights. Prevailing definitions of trauma can best be understood according to the cultural and historical conditions within which they exist. Languages of Trauma explores what this means in practice by scrutinizing varied historical moments from the First World War onwards and particular cultural contexts from across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa - striving to help decolonize the traditional Western-centred history of trauma, dissolving it into multifaceted transnational histories of trauma cultures.

Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood Canteen was the most famous of the patriotic home-front nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening night, when the crowds were so thick that Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom window to give her welcome speech, the storied dance floor where movie stars danced with soldiers has been the subject of much U.S. nostalgia about the "Greatest Generation." Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the wartime nightclub, Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees' varied experiences and recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub's dance floor and in Los Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the "Good War" in popular culture narratives. For Tucker, swing dancing's torque--bodies sharing weight, velocity, and turning power without guaranteed outcomes--is an apt metaphor for the jostling narratives, different perspectives, unsteady memories, and quotidian acts that comprise social history.

Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood Canteen was the most famous of the patriotic home-front nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening night, when the crowds were so thick that Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom window to give her welcome speech, the storied dance floor where movie stars danced with soldiers has been the subject of much U.S. nostalgia about the "Greatest Generation." Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the wartime nightclub, Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees' varied experiences and recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub's dance floor and in Los Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the "Good War" in popular culture narratives. For Tucker, swing dancing's torque--bodies sharing weight, velocity, and turning power without guaranteed outcomes--is an apt metaphor for the jostling narratives, different perspectives, unsteady memories, and quotidian acts that comprise social history.

The late-Victorian discovery of the music hall by English intellectuals marks a crucial moment in the history of popular culture. Music Hall and Modernity demonstrates how such pioneering cultural critics as Arthur Symons and Elizabeth Robins Pennell used the music hall to secure and promote their professional identity as guardians of taste and national welfare. These social arbiters were, at the same time, devotees of the spontaneous culture of \u201cthe people.\u201d In examining fiction from Walter Besant, Hall Caine, and Henry Nevinson, performance criticism from William Archer and Max Beerbohm, and late-Victorian controversies over philanthropy and moral reform, scholar Barry Faulk argues that discourse on music-hall entertainment helped consolidate the identity and tastes of an emergent professional class. Critics and writers legitimized and cleaned up the music hall, at the same time allowing issues of class, respect, and empowerment to be negotiated. Music Hall and Modernity offers a complex view of the new middle-class, middle-brow, mass culture of late-Victorian London and contributes to a body of scholarship on nineteenth-century urbanism. The book will also interest scholars concerned with the emergence of a professional managerial class and the genealogy of cultural studies.

Traces the history of the European cabaret, discusses the types of entertainment that developed in cabarets, and explains their connection with avant-garde movements.

An engaging history of Ghana s enormously popular concert party theatre.

..". succeeds in conveying the exciting and fascinating character of the concert party genre, as well as showing clearly how this material can be used to rethink a number of contemporary theoretical themes and issues." Karin Barber

Under colonial rule, the first concert party practitioners brought their comic variety shows to audiences throughout what was then the British Gold Coast colony. As social and political circumstances shifted through the colonial period and early years of Ghanaian independence, concert party actors demonstrated a remarkable responsiveness to changing social roles and volatile political situations as they continued to stage this extremely popular form of entertainment. Drawing on her participation as an actress in concert party performances, oral histories of performers, and archival research, Catherine M. Cole traces the history and development of Ghana s concert party tradition. She shows how concert parties combined an eclectic array of cultural influences, adapting characters and songs from American movies, popular British ballads, and local story-telling traditions into a spirited blend of comedy and social commentary. Actors in blackface, inspired by Al Jolson, and female impersonators dramatized the aspirations, experiences, and frustrations of their audiences. Cole s extensive and lively look into Ghana s concert party provides a unique perspective on the complex experience of British colonial domination, the postcolonial quest for national identity, and the dynamic processes of cultural appropriation and social change. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of African performance, theatre, and popular culture.

Catherine M. Cole is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published numerous articles on African theatre and has collaborated with filmmaker Kwame Braun on "passing girl; riverside," a video essay on the ethical dilemmas of visual anthropology.

June 2001
256 pages, 26 b&w photos, 3 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, notes, bibl., index
cloth 0-253-33845-X $49.95 L / 38.00
paper 0-253-21436-X $19.95 s / 15.50"

The early years of the twenty-first century have witnessed a proliferation of non-fiction, reality-based performance genres, including documentary and verbatim theatre, site-specific theatre, autobiographical theatre, and immersive theatre. Insecurity: Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real begins with the premise that although the inclusion of real objects and real words on the stage would ostensibly seem to increase the epistemological security and documentary truth-value of the presentation, in fact the opposite is the case. Contemporary audiences are caught between a desire for authenticity and immediacy of connection to a person, place, or experience, and the conditions of our postmodern world that render our lives insecure. The same conditions that underpin our yearning for authenticity thwart access to an impossible real. As a result of the instability of social reality, the audience, Jenn Stephenson explains, is unable to trust the mechanisms of theatricality. The by-product of theatres of the real in the age of post-reality is insecurity.

For over a decade, Magnus Hastings has been photographing the world's greatest drag superstars and asking each of them a simple question: Why drag? The result is this mesmerising volume in which the queens strut their stuff and reflect on their shared passion through a mixture of quips and philosophising. Subjects include icons of reality TV and underground drag royalty, and photographs range from the divine to the trashy. Featuring the likes of Bianca Del Rio and Courtney Act, this collection is a beautiful celebration of drag as an art form and an exhilarating exploration of what drag means to its greatest artists.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Edwyna ""Salt"" Evelyn and Jewel ""Pepper"" Welch learned to tap dance on street corners in New York and Philadelphia. By the 1940s, they were black show business headliners, playing Harlem's Apollo Theater with the likes of Count Basie, Fats Waller and Earl ""Fatha"" Hines. Their exuberant men's-style tap performed in men's attire earned the respect of their male peers and the acclaim of audiences, though they were paid less than black male dancers. Based on extensive interviews with Salt and Pepper, this book chronicles for the first time the lives and careers of two overlooked performers who succeeded despite the racism, sexism and homophobia of the Big Band era.

In the first major academic work to examine British variety theatre, Double provides a detailed history of this art form and analyzes its performance dynamics and techniques. Encompassing singers, comedians, dancers, magicians, ventriloquists and diverse specialty acts, this vibrant book draws on a series of new interviews with variety veterans.

Mae West, Sarah Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore and Helen Keller are perhaps among the best known women to appear on vaudeville stages. Each came to vaudeville by a different path and with a different offering: Mae West entered vaudeville with a song and dance routine when she was 13 years old. Ethel Barrymore dropped in on the Palace Theater to present one-act plays. Sarah Bernhardt was being celebrated by the British for her fifty years on the dramatic stage when she agreed to appear in the U.S. Helen Keller appeared on the stages of first-class vaudeville houses with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, telling about how she overcame the handicaps of blindness and deafness. Many other women followed their own paths to become vaudeville headliners. This book tells the stories of 80 who were among the top vaudeville acts in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when entertainment was often live variety shows in theaters across the country. Singers, singer-comediennes, comediennes, dancers, sister acts, actresses, male impersonators and novelty acts are covered as separate categories. Biographies of the performers in each category appear in order of the date they entered vaudeville, an arrangement that allows the reader to trace the history of vaudeville itself. A final section concentrates on the headliners' heritage, taking a broad look at the group according to ethnic background, socioeconomic background, family life, and other factors, including what happened to them after vaudeville died.

From the early days of minstrelsy to Black Broadway, this book is the story of African American entertainment as seen through the eyes of its most famous as well as some of its most obscure practitioners. The book forms a chronological arc that moves from the beginning of African American participation in show business up through the present age. Will Marion Cook and Billy McClain are discovered in action at the very dawn of black parity in the entertainment field; six chapters later, the young Sammy Davis Jr. breaks through the invisible ceiling that has kept those before him "in their place." In between, the likes of Valaida Snow, Nora Holt, Billy Strayhorn, Hazel Scott, Dinah Washington, and others are found making contributions to the fight against racism both in and out of "the business."

A revealing portrait of Gypsy Rose Lee, the "Striptease Intellectual" of 1930s burlesque A true icon of America at a turning point in its history, Gypsy Rose Lee was the first-and the only-stripper to become a household name, write novels, and win the adulation of intellectuals, bankers, socialites, and ordinary Americans. Her outrageous blend of funny-smart sex symbol with the aura of high culture-she boasted that she liked to read Great Books and listen to classical music while taking off her clothes on-stage-inspired a musical, memoirs, a portrait by Max Ernst, and a species of rose. Gypsy is the first book about Gypsy Rose Lee's life, fame, and place in America not written by a family member, and it reveals her deep impact on the social and cultural transformations taking shape during her life. Rachel Shteir, author of the prize-winning Striptease, gives us Gypsy's story from her arrival in New York in 1931 to her sojourns in Hollywood, her friendships and rivalries with writers and artists, the Sondheim musical, family memoirs that retold her history in divergent ways, and a television biopic currently in the making. With verve, audacity, and native guile, Gypsy Rose Lee moved striptease from the margins of American life to Broadway, Hollywood, and Main Street. Gypsy tells how she did it, and why.

Just a century ago Eddie Foy was the consummate stage comedian. A versatile performer, Foy contributed to the development of popular theater from the Civil War to the Roaring Twenties, from poverty-inspired Irish two-acts to lavish musical comedies. This first-ever biography of Foy tells the story of his indigent childhood in New York's Bowery and in Chicago, his tough uphill climb as a 'variety artist' at Western outposts, his success in vaudeville and Broadway, and his arrival as a national icon with the Seven Little Foys. Foy's career mirrored the growth of popular theater entertainment in America. Exhaustively researched, this work contains many rare personal photographs from the Foy family archives.

Charlotte Greenwood never intended to become a comedienne, but she was unfashionably tall at 5'10"" and her early aspirations to become a great dramatic actress eventually led her to the field of comedy. Greenwood, whose early life had taught her nothing if not how to be optimistic, stifled her disappointment and used her considerable skill to become one of the greatest comedic actresses of the early twentieth century. Based on Greenwood's unpublished memoirs; this biography presents a personal, detailed look at her colorful life. Beginning with her early years in Philadelphia, Boston and Norfolk, it relates her struggles with ill health, her social difficulties caused by her then unusual height and her realization of her ambition to become an actress. The main focus of the work is her career, which spanned more than 50 years and ranged from vaudeville to the stage and, finally, to films (during the World War II years she starred in Twentieth Century Fox musicals with Cesar Romero, Betty Grable, Edward Everett Horton, Jack Haley, Don Ameche, and Carmen Miranda). Her roles in a variety of works including ""The Passing Show of 1912"", ""So Long Letty"" (both stage and film), and ""I Remember Mama"" are also discussed. Special emphasis is placed on her career-defining (and best-known) role as Aunt Eller Murphy in the 1955 film adaptation of ""Oklahoma!"" Charlotte Greenwood's performance history, a list of her known recordings, and a filmography for her husband Martin Broones are also included.

Music and performance provide a unique window into the ways that cultural information is circulated and perceptions are constructed. Because they both require listening, are inherently ephemeral, and most often involve collaboration between disparate groups, they inform cultural perceptions differently from literary or visual art forms, which tend to be more tangible and stable. In Yellowface, Krystyn R. Moon explores the contributions of writers, performers, producers, and consumers in order to demonstrate how popular music and performance has played an important role in constructing Chinese and Chinese American stereotypes. The book brings to life the rich musical period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time, Chinese and Chinese American musicians and performers appeared in a variety of venues, including museums, community theaters, and world's fairs, where they displayed their cultural heritage and contested anti-Chinese attitudes. A smaller number crossed over into vaudeville and performed non-Chinese materials. Moon shows how these performers carefully navigated between racist attitudes and their own artistic desires. While many scholars have studied both African American music and blackface minstrelsy, little attention has been given to Chinese and Chinese American music. This book provides a rare look at the way that immigrants actively participated in the creation, circulation, and, at times, subversion of Chinese stereotypes through their musical and performance work.

Martini Man goes beyond the simple caricature of the boozy lounge singer with a penchant for racy humor to reveal the substantive man behind that mask. Although Martin's movie roles receive in-depth attention in this incisive biography, as does his career-defining partnership with Jerry Lewis, details of Dino's personal life also abound, such as how Shierly MacLaine dropped by his house "to tell Dean she was in love with him-even though his wife was in the other room." William Schoell's chronicle is a sympathetic portrait that recreates the life and times of one of America's favorite entertainers.

This entertaining and enlightening book depicts the rise of popular culture in America by brilliantly recapturing the essence and commercial trappings of one of its most vital forms of entertainment-the vaudeville show. Vaudeville was a meeting place, an inclusive form of theatre that flourished especially in New York, where it fostered cultural exchange among the city's ethnic groups. In The Voice of the City, Mr. Snyder reconstructs the famous acts, describes the different theatres, and shows how entrepreneurs created a near monopoly over bookings, theatres, and performers. He also gives us vaudeville's decline, its audiences usurped by musical comedy, radio, and the movies. "A fascinating and highly readable social history....By exploring the place of vaudeville in the neighborhoods and in the city central theatre district, Robert Snyder brilliantly illuminates the way city culture was made and worked in the lives of people at the turn of the century."-Thomas Bender. "The most authoritative book on American vaudeville...also a remarkably good read, filled with colorful details and incisive commentary on American popular culture in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century."-David Nasaw.

Tony Pastor, a vaudeville performer and manager, was known as the Dean of Vaudeville. He is credited with cleaning up the bawdy variety shows of the mid 1800s, resulting in their appeal to women and the middle classes. He opened his first vaudeville house in 1865 and continued to present shows at a series of New York houses until shortly before his death in 1908. He achieved his greatest hits with parodies of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, but he also presented parodies, or burlesques, of Shakespearean productions and those of contemporary authors, as well as melodramatic works in the popular style of the day. The plays, or afterpieces, and the function they served for both the audience and the theatre, are examined within the context of the culture and conditions under which the plays were written. Thirteen plays are included, each preceded by a production history. Issues addressed in each play are analyzed, such as prevailing societal attitudes, including those toward class and gender. Discourse on the parodies includes an examination of the original play, detailing the reasons why particular sections were chosen to parody.

This examination of Tony Pastor's scripts will appeal to theatre scholars, especially those interested in vaudeville, since until recently the plays were mostly kept in private collections. Students of American culture, particularly culture at the turn of the century, will find valuable material in the plays as they shed light on the daily life of the lower and middle classes, and subsequently on the issues that concerned them. Since the plays were formerly not widely available, this study, including the texts of the original scripts, provides a valuable resource to scholars as well as to those with a general interest in the theatre and vaudeville.

Will Rogers played a prominent role in American culture and society in the 1920s and 1930s. Star of Broadway, radio, and film; political pundit and newpaper columnist - Rogers was one of the most successful and best loved figures in entertainment in this period.