A funny thing happened on my way to work this morning. A man came up and said he hadn't had a bite for some time, so I bit him. This joke, along with Henny Youngman's "take my wife, please take my wife", were the password phrases in my youth, to the times of Vaudeville. The stars of its golden era became the Marx Brother's, Jack Benny, the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, WC Field's and Mae West to name but a few. Other's woulds take to the silent screen in more dramatic fashion, and still other's would add to the American music traditions,
Vaudeville and Burlesque bridged the 19th and 20th centuries with a true expression of American Theater. Plays had existed in dramatic, comedic, tragic, mythic, and rhetorical themes throughout the ages. Classical music was a standard of European culture, and had its halls in America as well. Regional expressions of folk, gospel, blues and patriotic folk rounded out the American music culture of the times leading up to Vaudeville. Vaudeville would absorb all of these forms of expression, as well as dance, slap-stick, and a broad spectrum of entertainment acts; anything to please the American public.
The circus, rodeo's, traveling side-show's and traveling theater were the forms of entertainment that existed anywhere but in the largest cities of America. In many ways, Vaudeville was the "melting pot" equalizer in our early multi-cultural experiment. The one-armed juggler could dazzle anyone, but the standup comic had such a diverse audience throughout their travels, that deeper comedy and satire was nearly impossible. This, I think, is the source of the "slapstick" humor of the early 20th century cinema. Mark Twain was able to mix satire into his writings, but only by making his story's entertaining in and of themselves. Probably during the times of Will Roger's was American humor to return to the political satire that gave rise to Jonny Carson and the standup's of today.
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