"An America Not Quite Mechanized": Fanchon and Marco, Inc. Perform Modernity

This article seeks a fresh understanding of live motion picture theater prologues through an aesthetic and industrial case history of the Fanchon and Marco "Ideas", baroque stage revues that assumed no logical relationship to the films with which they billed. Fanchon and Marco's prologues, which traveled the West Coast Theatre chain throughout the 1920s, deliberately eschewed east coast variety's reverent borrowing from European high culture. The Ideas playfully spectacularized the absurdity and distraction that characterized modern experience and made Fanchon and Marco's prologue brand a national sensation, even as synchronized sound shorts competed for billing on theater programs.