Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment 1890-1925

Today vaudeville is imagined as a parade of slapstick comedians blackface shouters coyly revealed knees and second-rate acrobats. But vaudeville was also America’s most popular commercial amusement from the mid-1890s to the First World War; at its peak 5 million Americans attended vaudeville shows every week. Telling the story of this pioneering art form’s rise and decline David Monod looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Although he acknowledges its quirkiness Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle.<br/><br/>Vaudeville acts celebrated sharp city styles and denigrated old-fashioned habits showcased new music and dance moves and promulgated a deeply influential vernacular modernism. The variety show’s off-the-rack trendiness perfectly suited an era when goods and services were becoming more affordable and the mass market promised to democratize style offering a clear vision of how the quintessential twentieth-century citizen should look talk move feel and act.