“Contrary to popular belief, Vaudeville was not wiped out by silent films. Many managers featured “flickers” at the end of their bills, finding them cheaper than the live closing acts that audiences walked out on anyway. Top screen stars made lucrative personal appearance tours on the big time circuits. So what killed vaudeville? The most truthful answer is that the public’s tastes changed and vaudeville’s managers (and most of its performers) failed to adjust to those changes.”
Read the rest of John Kenrick’s essay.
Alice Cooper shows could be Vaudeville
Yes: definitely. Too bad film technology didn’t come along when vaudeville was first popular. Then my family might have been able to see my great-grandparents perform on state, decades later. Thanks for the comment.
I snuck into a theatre in Minneapolis in 1953 at age 8 and watched vaudeville. How could it be dead in the 1930’s?