Lost Vaudeville
By
Diana Grove
“Unfortunately, as a popular art form, vaudeville got its throat cut by the movie industry. Most of the old vaudevillians were unable to make the transition from stage to screen and just plain faded away. Not all the acts were that great, but hey…where else could you see a fire-breathing Gypsy playing the spoons?”
-Veteran vaudevillian, Charlie “The Backbone” Chimmery
Here’s a brief look at some of the great old vaudeville acts that have faded into history:
Zip Zaruski and His Magic Pants
This was a magic show like none other. Zaruski kept a complete dinner service for 6 in the underpinnings of his enormous, gabardine pants. He would start the act by pulling a salad fork from his left cuff, then a dinner plate would emerge from a back pocket, this was followed by a turkey wing, some mashed potatoes and a side of peas. Before you knew it, a three-legged table would unfold from his hip and dessert would be served, complete with coffee and petit fours. Zip performed this act three times a day, everyday for 14 years. This may explain why Dame Mirabelle’s monkeys were always throwing peas at the first oboist.
The McGurty Sisters
This sister duo was not only conjoined at the waist, but at the base of the neck as well. On a camping trip in 1893, P.T. Barnum discovered the girls in rural Arkansas living in a tool shed behind their father’s log cabin. Because the twins were so extraordinarily beautiful and so exquisitely joined, Barnum immediately plucked them from the family farm (after giving their father $25 and a laying hen) and hired them for his traveling circus and sideshow. However, the girls soon grew listless and took up a casual affair with the Human Salamander (a man who could move each eyeball independently). With this newfound confidence they were soon bedding every novelty act in the show, from Sword Swallower Sven to the Serengeti Pinhead. Eventually, jealousy and infighting drove the girls out of the circus and into their very own tap routine on the vaudeville stage. They were a sensation! They alone took higher billing than both the Juggling Weisensteins and Peg Leg Bates. Unfortunately, after just three short years, one of the girls went mad from syphilis and strangled her sister with an ascot while she lay sleeping. But, as fate would have it, she soon passed on too, as they both shared not just talent, but many vital organs.
Jimmy Themopolis and His Orchestra of Noses
Jimmy Themopolis (AKA James Constantine Themopolisolissisoso III) was a Greek immigrant who came from a long line of smelt fisherman. Which may explain his desire to immediately throw his fishing pole into the ocean and take up music. After many failed attempts at both the ukulele and the mouth harp, Jimmy decided to turn to his true God given talent – playing his own nose. He practiced feverishly for weeks, perfecting the high C’s with his left nostril, and the low G’s with his right. He once played Summer Night Serenade so intensely he suffered a severe nosebleed which completely immobilized him for a week. However, Jimmy’s enthusiasm was contagious and he soon had a small band of followers who called themselves Jimmy’s Shnoozolas. They played every street corner from Tea Neck to Garden City until talent agent Max “Goldy” Goldstein signed them to a 20/80 split (with Goldstein getting 80) at the Palace Theater in New York City. Under Goldy’s supervision, Jimmy’s new orchestra was a real class act. They wore rhinestone bow ties, bat wing collars and velour pants. Veteran vaudevillian Trixie Wainwright said, “They were the greatest Goddamned nose orchestra since…uh, now wait a minute, I guess they were the only nose orchestra come to think of it. Anyway, they could really play the crap out of Springtime Soliloquy. No foolin’, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house!” Jimmy’s popularity waned when Brushcap Billie came on to the scene with his quartet of musical kneecaps.
Blackass Willie and Cornpone
This comedic duo started off as a pair of Swedish cross-dressing jugglers, but when that trend waned, they jumped right on the bandwagon and donned the burnt cork and red lips of vaudeville’s latest sensation – the minstrel show. How two white men from Boise ever thought they could make a go of it lampooning the black man is anyone’s guess. But they did it every night to a packed house – 10 cents a seat. They had all the right props too: sliced watermelon, bales o’ cotton, adorable pickaninnies in gingham and a really tripped-out lynching tree that doubled as Dame Mirabelle’s monkey perch when it wasn’t in use. Their schtick often included the hilarious use of the words “yessa’”, “massa’” and “das fo’ dang sho.” Eventually, a bunch of soreheads who couldn’t see the humor in humiliating an oppressed people shut down the minstrel show. Blackass Willie and Cornpone were then forced to retire their blackface, tattered clothes and whimsically illegible English and settle down to sell real estate in Pasadena. (Where they apparently sold a rather sizeable bungalow to Peaches Browning).
Dame Mirabelle and Her Amazing Monkeys
There’s no doubt about it; Dame Mirabelle was one of the finest, most talented performers in all of vaudeville, and that’s not even mentioning her monkeys. They were a truly professional troupe, complete with juggling, tumbling and the notorious bilateral kitten toss. It was common knowledge that she had the best-trained primates in the business. In fact, Mr. Bananas, her lead chimp, could not only balance a parasol on his head, but he could also balance her checkbook, invest her earnings and negotiate her contracts. Her performance was a typical animal act in many ways. In fact, it wasn’t much different than Dame Helga and Her Hungarian Rat Revue, except, of course, for Dominic the Flaming Orangutan. This ape had a tremendous act, which really propelled Mirabelle into the limelight. Before the show, she would douse his flowing red fur in brandy. Then, at the apex of an immense 16-monkey pyramid, she would light him on fire. With arms waving wildly and flames leaping into the air, Dominic would run down the aisle in a dramatic flurry, only to be extinguished, just in time, by a well-rehearsed usher. This show was such a hit, fans would wait in line for hours just to see the famous flaming monkey act. Well, you can imagine, after 3 shows a day for so many years this could really take a toll on an orangutan. He eventually developed a crippling limp and reoccurring bouts of patchy hair loss, not to mention a tremendous amount of oozing blisters. It all came to a rather tragic end one night when Dominic, instead of running dramatically down the aisle, just plain fell over and burned to death. Dame Mirabelle tried to replace him with an African mandrill, but the audience wouldn’t have it. Drunk and penniless, she sold the remaining monkeys to the pet trade and took up residence in a halfway house in Jersey City, where she apparently died from an overdose of cooking sherry.
Little Baby Brenda
Little Baby Brenda was put on the stage at age 3 by her manager/father, a failed opera tenor. He dressed her in a pink tu tu, corkscrew curls and tap shoes, in hopes she’d become as popular as Baby Alice the Midget Wonder (who earned so much she bought a Model-T at the age of 8). Brenda’s performance was a typical kid act, which in the business was generally considered a step up for dancing poodles or squirrel gymnastics. She tapped and sang Stardust Melody well enough, but her real talent was in getting her father arrested. Every night it was the same gimmick, a little song and dance, then right in the middle of the act, Brenda would fake a temper tantrum, complete with tears, clenched fists and flying shoes. Her father would then walk out on stage and try to console her, only to be carried off by a couple of policemen who were waiting in the wings. In those days, child labor laws didn’t allow kids under the age of 9 to work (unless, of course, they were Mexican, or blind and selling pencils). So, every night Brenda and her father would collect their $20 earnings, get hauled off to the local precinct, and then pay a $10 labor violation fine. This went on for years until Brenda came of legal age, by which time the act had lost its charm. Washed up at the age of 10, Brenda briefly got work selling soap at Van Nuys department store. However, an unfortunate weight-gain in her ankles soon rendered her unemployable. Recently, when asked about her child stardom she claimed, “It wasn’t a bad living, if you didn’t mind wearing handcuffs every night.”
The Flying Santorini Family
The Flying Santorini Family grew in popularity after the untimely demise of the Irish comedy duo, Sheepish and Coy (who were apparently arrested for transporting an illegally sized sheperd’s pie into Canada). The family consisted of 12 sons, 2 daughters and one grandmother, all of whom were proficient in the art of gymnastics and trapezery. They created elaborate pyramids, hexagons and quadrilaterals with their nimble and very stackable bodies. As six or more brothers formed a tower of sinewy flesh, another three would swing their sisters from ropes that were secured to their waists. At the very top was Grandmother Santorini perched in a rocking chair. The act would end in a cacophonous toppling of limbs and muscle, at which point Grandma would get up out of her chair, gingerly step over the fallen, twisted bodies of her progeny and throw handfuls of confetti at the audience. It was absolute magic!
