Trav S.D.

No Applause—Just Throw Money blends the best of compelling storytelling with thorough, rigorous research. Author Trav S.D. (Donald Travis Stewart) traces the ancestry of Vaudeville-style entertainment from Antiquity, touching on the Middle Ages, the 17th and 18th centuries; and quickly into 19th-century America leading up to the official beginning of Vaudeville around 1880 (lasting from roughly the early 1880s to late 1920s). But it’s not a dry history text by any means. Quite the opposite, this story is a blaze of glory in American history that too few people know about.

The book nicely balances two fascinating areas of Vaudeville’s originality: 1. the massive escalation of talent that came from performers perfecting their act, and then after perfecting it, performing it for 10,000 or 20,000 times in hundreds of theaters across the country; 2. the unprecedented Business side (coining the term “Show Business”), the first time “Show Folk” were commoditized into a business, and worked a circuit, like a modern-day Chain store for acts. These two features were new and unique to Vaudeville, which differentiates it from the centuries of precursors, as well as from the types of show business since then.

The millionaire owners of the “Chain Stores,” or circuits as they were called, themselves were a colorful cast of characters. Several of them ran away with the circus as boys, and seized opportunities to advance into the business side. Those circus runaways invented the cash cow that became Vaudeville.

A salient feature of Vaudevillians, which Trav S.D. highlights very well, is that successful performers rarely banked on one ability, no matter how proficient and impressive. One-trick entertainers generally failed. A comedian would need top-notch material to keep the live audience in stitches, but also to be proficient in juggling, tap dancing, and piano, for example. It is hard to imagine this extreme of human development happening today, or ever again for that matter. There is simply no need for it anymore. TV and film do not require anything remotely close from its actors and performers. And for this level of relentless discipline and excruciating pain, no one is going to put themselves through it for no reason.

There has never been a time with more diverse and colorful characters erupting so rapidly onto one huge nationwide entertainment scene. Trav S.D. brilliantly portrays that veritable zoo of misfits and geniuses: they seem to have exerted more energy and demonstrated greater skill than in any great past movement, or any other era of human achievement. Nothing before or since approximates the upheavals of talent and drama that this brief generation witnessed.

The business side and the performance side equally climbed to the heights of madness and method, like a self-contained universe where anything can happen and the laws of physics were optional. The unbelievable diversity of crazy personalities all working together in this national factory of creativity make this labyrinthine spectacle pure, original, and unrepeatable. Trav S.D. generously shares the whole chaotic mess in crystalline organic structure that perfectly mirrors the subject.

Having thoroughly fleshed out the historical antecedents, and having traveled the actual heydays of Vaudeville, the author nicely tracks Vaudeville’s influences on what followed. The list of the famous mid- and late-20th-century stars who started in Vaudeville was often very surprising. For example, Burt Lancaster, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, and Barbara Stanwyck all started in Vaudeville. Not so surprisingly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, and George Burns started in Vaud. Then there’s Oscar Hammerstein, the Marx Brothers, Judy Garland, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Mae West, James Cagney, the Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello, and the list goes on.

This is a true scholarly work, drawing from about 200 sources deeply informed by those who knew the performers and experienced Vaudeville first hand, or in many cases by the performers themselves; and by extensive research into related channels that flow into Vaudeville. The result is a very full and clear picture of the 45-year phenomenon. Trav S.D.’s amazing accomplishment is how coherently he weaves together all the disparate threads into a beautifully unified expression of the era.

Reading experiences just don’t get any better than this (and I have a Master of Arts in literature and have read thousands of books including the classics). While reading the book, I felt like I was living in the time. Having read the book, I feel like I literally went back in time, not just figuratively, and now I’m remembering actual experiences at the Palace Theater.… (més)

One of the most unexpected books I've ever read - and one of the funnest, too.

This is the history of vaudeville, told from the perspective of a current vaudevillian. It's a loving look at the development of American entertainment in the hundreds of theaters across the country.

Vaudeville is one of two ways American entertainment developed at the turn of the 19th century - the other being burlesque. Vaudeville is the (barely) more acceptable version. From these roots come hundreds of comedians we know today - W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and even Bob Hope started his career in vaudeville.

Variety shows also are born from those times, from the juggler to the Irish singer to the sketch comedian. In other words, everyone from Johnny Carson to Ed Sullivan to Saturday Night Live owes something to vaudeville.

Circuses? Also a bit of vaudeville involved - P.T. Barnum operated a theater that was linked to the entertainment ideal of vaudeville, too.

There are unfortunate episodes - the unthinking "blackface" and "Dutch" characterizations, the anti-Semitic jokes (told by primarily Jewish comics), etc. But this is of another time, and worth knowing about if only to be sure not to do this again.

By and large, this is a loving tribute full of fun stories and enlightening history.

More reviews at my WordPress site, Ralphsbooks.… (més)