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Archival audio and video recordings, rare photographs, playbills, stage props and sheet music - all drawn from USC's Special Collections - showcase the rich history of theatrical entertainment in America.
From the early colonial stage productions through the advent of antebellum minstrelsy, circuses, turn-of-the-century vaudeville, burlesque variety shows, silent film and the first "talkies" on the silver screen, popular theater forever changed the nature of entertainment.
Of course, at the beginning of the 20th century, nothing was bigger than vaudeville.
Vaudeville was America’s outlet for escape and a welcome pause from its battles with social and cultural unknowns. More than anything else, vaudeville was the theater of the general public.
Lasting more than 50 years, this particular entertainment form eventually died out as a result of increased competition and poor business choices, but the legacy of vaudeville still echoes today through film, television and the recorded arts.
Comedians, singers, plate-spinners, clowns, escape artists, high divers, contortionists, ventriloquists, dancers, musicians, acrobats and animal trainers all shared a single stage and delighted audiences from coast to coast.
Noted artists to emerge from the era of vaudeville include George Burns and Gracie Allen, Buster Keaton, Kitty Doner, Charlie Chaplin, Sophie Tucker, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, Marie Dressler, Eubie Blake, Fanny Brice, Ethel Waters (a.k.a. “Sweet Mama Stringbean”) and tap dance legend Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
With the advent of the radio, however, America found a cheaper and more convenient way to tap into the variety of entertainment they had enjoyed in vaudeville. This, coupled with the proliferation of silent films, the economic woes of the Great Depression and a shift in public taste - a shift that many vaudeville managers and performers failed to acknowledge - contributed to the demise of the once-great bastion of American entertainment.
The more than 25,000 individuals who performed on the vaudeville circuit possessed an indelible spirit and motivation to make audiences happy. Even though vaudeville died out in the late 1920s, the legacy of talent and rich cultural history remains.
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