Vaudeville Wars How Keith-Albee and Orpheum Circuits Controlled the Big-Time and Its Performers
by Wertheim, Arthur FrankFormat: Paperback
Pub. Date: 2009-01-15
Publisher(s): Palgrave Macmillan
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Summary
Vaudeville Wars illuminates the exciting and intriguing story about how the tycoons of the two most powerful circuits, Keith-Albee in the East and the Orpheum in the West, conspired to control the big time. To create their national network of hundreds of vaudeville theaters, B. F. Keith and Edward Albee and the Orpheum's Morris Meyerfeld and Martin Beck, used cutthroat tactics to suppress rival owners and to squash performers' rights and the White Rats union through strikebreaking and blacklisting. After the two circuits merged, Joseph P. Kennedy masterminded its takover through clever stock transactions and then linked the company to RCA to form Radio Keith Orpheum. When the big-time venues, including the famous Palace, became RKO sound movie theaters, the curtain descended on the vaudeville wars. Overall, the big time's heyday from 1890 to 1920 was a trade off--a legacy mixed with delights and duplicity, high points of artistic creation and low points of unending strife. Daring, ingenious impresarios left their mark on the history of show business by developing a coast-to-coast chain of luxurious theaters that presented an exhilarating popular amusement that appealed to a broad range of Americans. At their theaters thousands of talented vaudevillians were given the opportunity to appear on stage before crowds of adoring fans. Despite the battles between the performers and the circuit moguls, the vaudeville wars forged an electrifying entertainment that at its zenith brought joy to millions. For more information visit http://www.vaudevillewars.com
Author Biography
Arthur Frank Wertheim has written several books on 20th Century American culture, including The New York Little Renaissance and Radio Comedy. He has also edited three volumes of The Papers of Will Rogers, Will Rogers at the Ziegfeld Follies, and American Popular Culture. A former American history professor at the University of Southern California and other universities, as well as an administrator at the University of California, Los Angeles, his awards include a Fulbright grant to teach at the University of Indonesia.
Table of Contents
| Origins | |
| From Farm Boy to Museum Owner | |
| Keith's Right-Hand Man | |
| San Francisco's Orpheum | |
| Evolution | |
| The Great Orpheum Circuit | |
| Upstaging Tony Pastor | |
| Gentrifying Keith's Quadruple Circuit | |
| Consolidation and Revolt | |
| Streamlining the Booking Process | |
| The White Rats Strike | |
| Vaudeville Battles | |
| The Combine and the UBO | |
| Morris Challenges the Combine | |
| Vaudevillians vs. The Combine | |
| The Vaudeville Machine | |
| A Host of Grievances | |
| Broadway Sime and the British Lion | |
| Albee Takes Control | |
| How Albee Stole the Palace | |
| Growing Discord | |
| Mountford Strikes Back | |
| The Demise of the Big Time | |
| The Threat of the Big Small Time | |
| "The Toboggan Slide" | |
| Kennedy's Takeover | |
| Epilogue | |
| Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved. |
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