Researching Vaudeville Performers
by John Kenrick
(Copyright 2004)
Musicals101 has received countless e-mails from scholars and amateur genealogists
trying to track down information on vaudeville performers. If you have
entered their ranks, three cheers! Vaudeville research is still in its
infancy, and you are one of the pioneers. Exciting as that may sound, it
also means you are going to be laboring in an academic wilderness --
which can be frustrating.
No one (and I mean NO ONE) who worked in
vaudeville was concerned with making history. They were out to
make a living -- period. Few performers kept extensive records, and the
various theatre managers and circuit owners only kept files as long as
their day to day business required. The overwhelming majority of this
documentation was either lost or destroyed decades ago. As vaudeville
was dying in the 1920s and 30s, few if any American libraries were
looking to preserve materials related to popular entertainment.
As of
this writing, there is no central source for vaudeville-related research
-- no single library or archive has anything like a comprehensive
vaudeville collection to dig into. However, with academic interest in
vaudeville growing, the picture is beginning to improve. While there may not
be much to fall back on, there is far more than the near-nothing of a
decade or so ago.
Internet Research
The Library of Congress site offers an extensive online collection of
theatre and vaudeville programs, scripts, recordings, and film clips at
American
Variety Stage: 1870-1920 -- a great place to start a serious
vaudeville research project.
Also, read through two related features here on Musicals101 --
The Keith-Albee Archive
There is one major vaudeville business file that has partially survived. The University
of Iowa Library preserves some management files from the Keith-Albee Circuit.
If you can't get to Iowa to access their files, student researchers
can be hired to assist you at reasonable hourly rates. But be advised
that these files are far from comprehensive. A visit to their website may
give you some idea if the years and locations covered by their files relate to
your research.
Variety & Billboard
Your most promising source for learning about specific
vaudevillians is through newspaper archives. If there is a major
performing arts library near you, it may have the show business
newspaper Variety on microfilm. This is a rich source of
vaudeville information -- so are early editions of Billboard,
which concentrated on vaudeville in the years before it became a pop
music publication.
Local Research
Another rich source of vaudeville info -- local newspapers in cities and
towns that once had vaudeville theatres. For
example, lets say you are trying to research an act that you know played
the major East Coast vaudeville circuits between 1914 and 1922. Select a
city or town with a reliable public library -- New York, Philadelphia
and Boston are obvious examples, but any municipality that had one or more
vaudeville houses will do. See which (if any) newspapers are archived in
that town's library files, and determine which of those newspapers reviewed local vaudeville. Then start digging.
(Hey, no one said historical research was easy!) In most cases, new
vaudeville bills premiered on Mondays, so reviews usually appeared on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Hint -- When a performer
played her or his hometown, it was a frequent opportunity for interviews and other special coverage in local papers. If you
can identify your
subject's place of birth, make that locale a focus of your archival
research.
Vaudeville research may not be easy, but stick to it -- patience pays
off . . . well, most of the time. The information you are looking for may still be
out there. The trick is digging away deeply enough to uncover it.
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