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Vaudeville Defined 319 to be treated as an intimate.’’ ‘‘They have learned, either by experience or instinct, so exactly the key in which to pitch their appeal, in order to evoke that answering vibration from their audience, that they can sound it at will, modulate it into what harmonies and expression they please, and ever be sure of the response.’’ The highest-paid star of the vaudeville circuit—$3,500 a week in 1910—was Eva Tanguay, ‘‘The Queen of Perpetual Motion,’’ ‘‘The Cyclonic One.’’ Caffin was puzzled by her exceptional popularity. Tanguay was an enigma. She was not beautiful; she danced without grace; she sang poorly in a loud, high-pitched voice. Yet the audiences loved her, and screamed and shouted throughout her twenty-minute act. It was an ‘‘electrifying experience .’’ Tanguay had ‘‘energy, not art,’’ Caffin decided. She was restless, ‘‘alive, nervous, vital,’’ with an ‘‘elemental dynamic buoyancy’’ and dashed across the stage in a ‘‘whirlwind of sound.’’ Even her unruly hair had ‘‘electric vigor.’’10 Her signature song, ‘‘I Don’t Care,’’ epitomized her untamed nature, her wild extravagant, physical gestures, and her off-stage reputation for tempestuous love affairs. Her other headline songs—‘‘I Want Someone to Go Wild with Me,’’ ‘‘It’s All Been Done Before But Not the Way I Do It,’’ and ‘‘Go As Far As You Like’’—openly defied convention. Tanguay was a media-made celebrity who courted publicity and press gossip. Her eccentricity made her the quintessential vaudeville star—the individual as the primary creative force, the performer as personality. Vaudeville Defined In its first issue of October 1905, the Midway, the monthly periodical serving amusement park professionals, commented on vaudeville’s ranking in the entertainment industry. It was ‘‘the acme of variegated theatrical entertainment ,’’ combining the best traditions of the popular theater with the latest technological innovations, and the model of good business sense for all showmen . ‘‘In Vaudeville: A Short History of This Popular Character of Amusement,’’ Midway 1 (October 1905): 27. ‘‘Vaudeville,’’ the word, is accepted generally as having been of Norman origin and dates back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when Oliver Basselin, a fuller, living in the valley of the River Vire, composed and sang certain sprightly songs, which, in time, came to achieve a reputation throughout the country and inspired others to try their ’prentice hands. . . . Vaudeville, the namesake of to-day, retains the spirit of these early troubadours, entertainers of the passing moment. Joyously, frankly absurd, it represents the almost universal longing for laughter, for melody, for color, for action and for wonder-provoking things. It strikes directly at the heart interests and the foibles of the day. Vaudeville is VAUDEVILLE 320 creative and progressive. The mind of the vaudeville creator runs, lightning-like, ahead of the public craving for the ever ‘‘new’’; and his voyage of discovery leads him into strange haunts. Science yields her necromancy; the jungles give up their royal beasts and human nature parades all her eccentricities and moods, at his beck, for the delectation of legions of pleasure seekers. Like all other forms of theatrical entertainment, it has had a bitter fight against hypocrisy and cant. The struggle would have been its undoing had it not possessed a vitality drawn from its relation to some of the strongest and most enduring instincts in our nature. It was called cheap by society; it was called vulgar by prudery; to-day it is triumphant in the affection of the people. The women and children of America spend the greater part of $900,000 every week in proclaiming it the cleanest and most wholesome form of modern entertainment . No other theatre bears the same relation to the family circle. Cater to the women and children and the men will follow—it is a motto that has made millionaires of the great vaudeville caterers of the United States. An investment of a little more than $26,000,000 in vaudeville is distributed among 300 theatres. More than 12,000 persons find their living in vaudeville and the public is sufficiently interested to expend nearly $1,000,000 a week in admission fees. The 12,000 employees may be divided as follows: Players or artists, 7,500; theatre attaches , 3,000; agents and assistants, 250; song writers, dramatists, etc., 350. The players have invested in wardrobe, scenery, music, plays and other necessary paraphernalia over $1,500,000 and pay the railroads of the country for their transportation over the various...

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