Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago · 4 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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MUSICAL DECADES - 1940s - Post Vaudeville

MUSICAL DECADES - 1940s - Post Vaudeville


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With the end of Vaudeville by the 1930s, some of the most prominent vaudevillians migrated to cinema and some continued their careers out of combining live performance, radio and film roles. 

Today I'd like to look at a few performers who had their start in Vaudeville.

(Photo: The Marx Brothers, Chico, Zeppo, Groucho, and Harpo.)



Julius Henry Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), known professionally as Groucho Marx, was an American comedian and film and television star. He was known as a master of quick wit and is widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era. His rapid-fire, often impromptu delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers and imitators.

He made 13 feature films with his brothers, of whom he was the third-born. He also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of the radio and television game show You Bet Your Life.

His distinctive appearance, carried over from his days in vaudeville, included quirks such as an exaggerated stooped posture, glasses, cigar, and a thick greasepaint mustache and eyebrows. These exaggerated features resulted in the creation of one of the world's most recognizable novelty disguises, known as "Groucho glasses": a one-piece mask consisting of horn-rimmed glasses, large plastic nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.

"Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" is a song written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. It first appeared in the Marx Brothers movie At the Circus and became one of Groucho's signature tunes. The line in the song “Captain Spalding crossing the Amazon” refers, of course, to a Marx Brothers movie in which Groucho played the noted explorer, Captain Spalding. Whenever you heard the opening notes of the theme song, "Hurray for Captain Spalding", from the movie on a radio or TV show, you knew Groucho was about to be introduced. Here he is with brothers Chico and Harpo.



Gracie Fields, (born Grace Stansfield, 9 January 1898 – 27 September 1979), was an English actress, singer and comedian and star of both cinema and music hall (Vaudeville in the UK).

Fields' most famous song, which became her theme, "Sally", was worked into the title of her first film, Sally in Our Alley (1931), which was a major box office hit. She went on to make several films initially in Britain and later in the United States (for which she was paid a record fee of £200,000 for four films). Regardless, she never enjoyed the process of performing without a live audience, and found the process of film-making boring.

Her other notable songs were: "We're All living at the Cloisters", "Sing As We Go", "Thing-Ummy-Bob (That's Gonna Win The War)", "The Biggest Aspidistra in the World", "I Took my Harp to a Party", and "Only a Glass of Champagne".



Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson; May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Jewish-American singer, film actor, and comedian. At the peak of his career, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer."

According to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, "Jolson was to jazz, blues, and ragtime what Elvis Presley was to rock 'n' roll." Being the first popular singer to make a spectacular "event" out of singing a song, he became a "rock star" before the dawn of rock music. His specialty was performing on stage runways extending out into the audience. He would run up and down the runway and across the stage, "teasing, cajoling, and thrilling the audience," often stopping to sing to individual members; all the while the "perspiration would be pouring from his face, and the entire audience would get caught up in the ecstasy of his performance.”

"Alabamy Bound" is a Tin Pan Alley tune written in 1924, with music by Ray Henderson and words by Buddy DeSylva and Bud Green. Written for the vaudeville stage, it was made famous by Al Jolson.



Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American blues, jazz and gospel singer and actress. Waters toured on the black vaudeville circuit. As she described it later, "I used to work from nine until unconscious."

Her best-known recordings include "Dinah," "Stormy Weather," "Taking a Chance on Love," "Heat Wave," "Supper Time," "Am I Blue?" and "Cabin in the Sky," as well as her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was also the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award, in 1962.



George Formby (born George Hoy Booth; 26 May 1904 – 6 March 1961), was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian who was the son of George Formby Sr, from whom he later took his stage name. After an early career as a stable boy and jockey, Formby took to the music hall stage (Vaudeville in the UK) after the early death of his father in 1921. His early performances were taken exclusively from his father's act, including the same songs, jokes and characters. In 1923 he made two career-changing decisions—he purchased a ukulele, and married Beryl Ingham, a fellow performer who became his manager and transformed his act. She insisted that he appear on stage formally dressed, and introduced the ukulele to his performance.

Formby became known to a worldwide audience through his films of the 1930s and 1940s. On stage, screen and record he sang light, comical songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele, and became the UK's highest-paid entertainer.



James Francis "Jimmy" Durante (February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American singer, pianist, comedian, and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, New York accent, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as the Schnozzola (from the Yiddish schnoz [nose]), and the word became his nickname.

Durante started in show business when he dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also Jimmy Durante. It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname "Ragtime Jimmy", before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark.

Durante recorded a humorous song called "I'm the Guy Who Found the Lost Chord", which he also sings in the 1947 film This Time for Keeps. Here he is with The Lost Chord from his 1950s television series, a definite Vaudeville routine.


This ends Musical Decades for this week. Thanks for listening and I hope to see you here next time.

(The information used in this post is from Wikipedia.)

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Dominique "Nik" Petersen is an aficionado of old music and the author of Dr. Hook and Me: A Fan's Journal/Scrapbook. Read about it and her other books at the website: 

NikDesignsGraphics.com


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Comments

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #6

Thanks, Martin! ;o) Martin Wright

Martin Wright

6 years ago #5

I thoroughly enjoyed this post. And still one star from this period is still with us - Vera Lynn. I look forward to more like this

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #4

#5
Me too, Lance \ud83d\udc1d Scoular. ;o) And thanks for the shares!

Lance 🐝 Scoular

6 years ago #3

Being a 49er myself, most of the names above, I got to know through TV in Australia from it's introduction in 1956. I was a particular fan of The Three Stooges and their wacky humor.

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #2

#1
Thanks, Deborah Levine ! So glad you enjoyed it. ;o)

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #1

Thanks for the share, Don Philpott\u2618\ufe0f ;o)

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