Champagne Charlie and pretty Jemima : variety theater in the nineteenth century /
Rodger, Gillian M.
Urbana, Ill. : University of Illinois Press,
c2010.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction -- The first decade. The singing saloonkeeper -- Girls! girls! girls! the entrepreneurial manager -- Performers take charge -- Novelty acts in concert saloons: equestrians, trapeze artists, and acrobats -- Tripping the light fantastic: dancers -- Entertainment comes to the fore. Legal intervention: the anti-concert saloon bill and its aftermath -- Variety in times of national conflict and economic turmoil -- Just to please the boys: seriocomic singers -- Dutch, Irish, minstrels, and other characters: male comic singers -- Just ordinary workingmen: seriocomic songs for men -- Champagne Charlie: the fantasy of leisure for the workingman -- Sustaining business in difficult times. What's in a name? Vaudeville vs. variety in New York and in regional theater -- Sex rears its ugly head--again: female minstrelsy -- Moral reform in regional variety: the fight to preserve community standards -- Frontier revelry vs. respectable variety: industry, audiences, and sustainable leisure in economically difficult times -- Conclusion: entertainment as industry.
Vaudeville