We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
year to form the United Booking Company, which emerged as more or less the clearing house for all bookings. Owners and managers everywhere joined this organization, to standardize the business, and in 19 16 the performers, protecting their interests, organized "The Vaudeville Artists Association." By 1928 it had more than 15,000 members.
Working conditions improved, salaries increased, and further stars of the opera, the circus, and the dramatic stage ventured into the entertainment. Some of these were Sarah Bernhardt; Maurice Barrymore and his children, Ethel, Jack and Lionel; the Four Cohans, of which George M. Cohan became the bestknown member; David Warfield; Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew; Nazimova ; William Faversham ; and Lenore Ulric. As performers continued to be converted, talented comedians began to grace the vaudeville stage, among them the Ritz Brothers, Sliding Billy Watson, Joe Jackson; Willie West and McGinty, the Marx Brothers, Ted Healy and his Stooges; Sweeney and Duffy; Lou Holtz; Wheeler and Woolsey; Clark and McCullough; Joe Cook; Robert Emmett Keane ; Nat Wills ; and Ben Welch.
For the most part, vaudeville rested on songs, dances, short dramatic sketches and acrobatic turns. The acts followed one another in quick succession, with no continuity and only a token effort at arrangements. It was the custom to open a bill with "a dumb act," one which involved no spoken lines, such as tumblers or teeterboard specialists, so that the noisy, late entrance of patrons would have a minimum disturbing effect. In general, similar acts were spaced apart, and some attempt was made to build the show toward a climax by weighting the latter part of it with the most effective performers. The large theaters had a bristling complement of sets and properties which were available to all the visiting artists, but most acts carried the bulk of their own mechanical devices, special scenic effects and additional decorations.
67