Vaudeville Wars - (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History) by A Wertheim (Hardcover)

About the Book

An exciting account of how the two largest big-time circuits conspired to create America's first nationwide mass entertainment system

Book Synopsis

Vaudeville Wars illuminates the exciting and intriguing story about how the tycoons of the two most powerful circuits, Keith-Albee in the East and the Orpheum in the West, conspired to control the big time. To create their national network of hundreds of vaudeville theaters, B. F. Keith and Edward Albee and the Orpheum's Morris Meyerfeld and Martin Beck, used cutthroat tactics to suppress rival owners and to squash performers' rights and the White Rats union through strikebreaking and blacklisting. After the two circuits merged, Joseph P. Kennedy masterminded its takover through clever stock transactions and then linked the company to RCA to form Radio Keith Orpheum. When the big-time venues, including the famous Palace, became RKO sound movie theaters, the curtain descended on the vaudeville wars. Overall, the big time's heyday from 1890 to 1920 was a trade off--a legacy mixed with delights and duplicity, high points of artistic creation and low points of unending strife. Daring, ingenious impresarios left their mark on the history of show business by developing a coast-to-coast chain of luxurious theaters that presented an exhilarating popular amusement that appealed to a broad range of Americans. At their theaters thousands of talented vaudevillians were given the opportunity to appear on stage before crowds of adoring fans. Despite the battles between the performers and the circuit moguls, the vaudeville wars forged an electrifying entertainment that at its zenith brought joy to millions. For more information visit http: //www.vaudevillewars.com

Review Quotes

'Vaudeville Wars offers the only thorough account of the vaudeville business from the ground up, centering on the roistering entrepreneurs who, within a generation, lifted their enterprise into America's leading diversion. Wertheim shows both the human side and the voraciousness of the moguls. Unravelling the business-end of show business from the motley fabric that was vaudeville, he demonstrates that when the enterprise faded, only a few of the founders were left to witness their lofty estimate of vaudeville's manic display ensconce itself in the national lore.' - Leigh Woods, author Transatlantic Stage Stars in Vaudeville and Variety (forthcoming, Palgrave

Macmillan)

'Until Wertheim's Vaudeville Wars, the men who created the institution of vaudeville had remained as inscrutable as official portraits. Wertheim drags away from their ledgers, telephones and mahogany desks the derby-hatted, cigar-smoking barons of vaudeville and places them downstage centre under the spotlight. They emerge as human beings - some venomous, all ambitious and a few nearly decent. Wertheim has provided the most clear, entertaining and reliable history of the business end of vaudeville. Besides being an engrossing read, Vaudeville Wars makes a fine case study fit for any MBA programme.' - Frank Cullen, founder, American Vaudeville Museum, Vaudeville Times Quarterly

'Wertheim gives us what is likely to be the definitive work on the business side of vaudeville for a long time to come, offering countless details available nowhere else, well organized and completely comprehensive... A valuable resource, one long needed.' - American Theatre

About the Author

ARTHUR FRANK WERTHEIM served as the Director of Development Communications at UCLA, USA, from 1984 to 1997 and also as a Visiting Scholar in that University's Department of Film and Television from 1992 to 1995. He has published articles and book reviews in the Journal of American History, The American Historical Review and the Journal of Popular Culture.