A vaudeville sister act, the Brox Sisters

A Vaudeville Glossary • Music in The Little Shadows • Vaudeville circuit map • Playbills • Behind the curtain

 

All these artistes, these theatres and managers, are amalgams of hundreds of vaudeville performers, both well-known and forgotten. To read more about vaudeville, start with Trav S.D.’s No Applause, Just Throw Money. If you’re hooked, find Frank Cullen’s massive encyclopedia, Vaudeville Old & New.

Some of the most useful vaudeville accounts and references:

Choice Vocal Duets with Piano Accompaniment by the Best Composers, Anonymous, Oliver Ditson & Co, 1885

Continuous Vaudeville, Will M. Cressy, Gutenberg, 2009

Curtain Time, Ruth Walker Harvey, Houghton Mifflin, 1949

Diary Kid, John Patrick Teahan, Oberon Press, 1999

The Face of Battle, John Keegan, Pimlico, 2004

Fallen Empires: lost theatres of Edmonton, 1881-1914, John Orrell, ed. Diane Bessai & W. Orrell, Newest Press, 2007

The Fourth Way : a record of talks and answers to questions based on the teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, Knopf, 1959

From Traveling Show to Vaudeville : Theatrical spectacle in America, 1830-1910, Robert Lewis, Johns Hopkins, 2003

Gurdjieff, the Key Concepts, Sophia Wellbeloved, Routledge, 2002

A History of the Great War, Vols. 1-4, John Buchan, Lochar Publishing, 1991 (reprint)

I Married Adventure, Osa Johnson, Kodansha USA, 1997

Making American Culture : a social history, 1900-1920, Patricia Bradley, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Man on the Flying Trapeze: the Life and Times of W.C. Fields, Simon Louvish, W W Norton, 1999

The Modern Singing Master : essays in honor of Cornelius L. Reid, Ariel Bybee & James Ford, editors, Scarecrow Press, 2005

No Applause, Just Throw Money, Trav S.D., Faber & Faber, 2005

Particular pleasures; being a personal record of some varied arts and many different artists, J.B. Priestley, Stein and Day, 1975

Personal Pleasures, Rose Macaulay, Ecco, 1991

The Queerness of Celia, Amélie Rives, Frederick Stokes, 1926

Routledge’s XXth Century Humorous Reciter, Ernest Pertwee, ed., Routledge & Sons, 1911

The Singer’s Ego : finding balance between music and life, Lynn Eustis, GIA Publications, 2005

Some Vaudeville Monologues, Harry L. Newton, T.S. Denison, 1917

Towards a Poor Theatre, Jerzy Grotowski, Routledge, 2002

Trouping in the Oregon Country; a history of fronier theatre, Alice Henson Ernst, Oregon Historical Society, 1961

Vaudeville Humor, Ed Lowry, Southern Illinois University, 2002

Vaudeville, Old and New: an Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America, Frank Cullen, Routledge, 2006

Vaudeville Wars, Arthur Wertheim, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett, Grove, 1994

Who Are You, Monsieur Gurdjieff?, René Zuber, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980

Writing for Vaudeville, Brett Page, Echo Books, 2005 (reprint)

A Vaudeville Glossary • Music in The Little Shadows • Vaudeville circuit map • Playbills • Behind the curtain