Voraxical Theatre

The Wettest Beak

2011-04-16T23:53:00.000-04:00

Catclaw associate Sherry Deatrick has a new play, The Wettest Beak, currently running at the Rudyard Kipling on Oak Street in Louisville, as part of the Finnigan Festival. The play is the third installment (and we hear there will be a fourth!) in her series that began with Beak Wet, Everybody! and followed by Beak Wetter.

As per our own Voraxical values, Deatrick's idiosyncratic style puts texture ahead of content and character development over story arc. To attempt description of the dadaistic goings-on would do the works an injustice; suffice it to say there's a mutant half-human-half-chicken and a swingin' UPS man who rock the boat for a family of eBay-obsessed apocalypse-minded hillbillies. Our pal George Bailey, who worked with us on A Day in the Life of Eddie Jester, Toulouse-inations and Patrick Amsterdam, did an outstanding job here, both as director and as actor, reprising his role as "Teensy".

The actors rarely stand still in a Deatrick play, tending to leap, swish, and gyrate endlessly like Charles Ludlam characters would be if they were spazzed out on crystal meth in a trailer in Floyd's Knobs. That being the case, almost all the photographs taken ended up in blur-o-vision. (But the actual play was blurry too.)

Bits Of Beauty

2011-04-07T19:28:00.008-04:00

From the JSH collection: Bits of Beauty magazine, November 1947. A delicious mix of Broadway showgirls, actresses, models and pin-up girls of the day.

Frances Vorne

Toni Seven

Mar-Shan

Dorothy Jordan

Earl Carroll's Charmers

Josetta Dore

Chop Chop

2011-04-01T23:36:00.003-04:00

This half hour snippet of Grand Guignol grisly silliness comes from something called the Tragedies Theatre, and it's called Chop Chop. It seems to take place in Victorian times, and though several delightfully hammy thespians are here chewing up the scenery, the real star of the play is a gullotine.

View: The Tragedies Theatre du Grand Guignol - Chop Chop (YouTube)

The Guiding Light on Radio

2011-02-18T22:07:00.002-05:00

There's plenty of old Guiding Light radio shows on YouTube, from the days before it was a television show. The soap operas have their origin in radio, and this example from 1941 is a classic of the genre, complete with commercials and a mail-in contest.

Listen: The Guiding Light, June 10 1941

The Call of Cthulhu

2011-02-13T00:02:00.002-05:00

I like audiobooks for the same reason I like radio dramas and staged readings of plays - one's imagination is forced to fill in the blanks and nothing is spoonfed to the mind. This audiobook version of H.P. Lovecraft's 1928 novella The Call of Cthulhu is read by Garrick Hagon, the guy who played Biggs Darklighter in Star Wars.

Read along with Biggs, using Project Gutenberg's text copy or you can download it as a free e-book at ManyBooks.

Listen: The Call of Cthulhu read by Garrick Hagon

A Study in Scarlet

2011-02-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

One can find online the entire 1933 movie of A Study in Scarlet starring Reginald Owen, but I'm strangely drawn to this 32-part YouTube posting of an audiobook version instead. It features John Tefler reading the original Arthur Conan Doyle story - the very first of the Sherlock Holmes tales - originally published in the 1887 edition of Beeton's Christmas Annual.

If you like to read along with an audiobook, as I do, then check out the full text of the book at Project Gutenberg. Dashed clever device, this internet, eh what? A click here and clack there and Bob's yer Uncle.

Listen: A Study in Scarlet audiobook

Puppet Cabaret!

2011-02-11T21:31:00.000-05:00

Now that's entertainment.

View: Puppets in Cabaret

The Green Hornet on Radio

2011-02-10T19:29:00.003-05:00

This new Seth Rogen Green Hornet movie turned out to be pretty loathsome, although we here at Catclaw HQ are certainly big Cameron Diaz fans (she was great in last year's Knight and Day). Choosing to frame it in a slapstick camp style, they've totally missed the flavor of the 1966-1967 TV show and the 1940-1941 film serials.

But most of you young whippersnappers probably don't even know that the Green Hornet was originally a radio drama, having debuted on January 31, 1936, on Detroit's WXYZ, and running sporadically until 1952.

Five episodes of the radio show are downloadable in mp3 format from the great Old Time Radio Fans website: "Black Market for Profit", "The Return of Oliver Perry", "Murder and the Dope Racket", "Hot Money and Death", and "The Stuffed Panda".

Download: Five episodes of The Green Hornet

Aliens in the Mind

2011-02-09T00:46:00.004-05:00

From the Internet Archive:

"This six-part radio drama stars none other than Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, who between them became two of the most famous horror film stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

Aliens in the Mind is based on a story by the then-foremost Doctor Who script editor Robert Holmes. It centers around the discovery, on a remote Scottish island, of a community of 'human mutants' capable of telepathy. A plan is in place to use them to control the British Government, and friends Curtis Lark (Vincent Price) and Hugh Baxter (Peter Cushing) join forces to combat them."

Listen: Aliens in the Mind

Pantomime's Progress

2010-12-12T11:42:00.002-05:00

One from our Catclaw Theatre Company official blog:

It's beginning to look a lot like Catclaw. As snow piles up outside my window, I've been encamped at home putting together the first draft of Son of Grimaldi, which is finally taking shape through the misty muse of Duvel.

As I predicted earlier, the story bears about as much resemblance to historical fact as Toulouse-inations did to the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. Using as its starting point the tension between the elder Grimaldi and his son (who is expected to carry on his father's craft), we veer into such tangential matters as British secret societies, clairvoyance, guardian angels, nudity, quantum physics (no, really!) and Santa Claus.

- Jeffrey Scott Holland, Catclaw Theatre Company artistic director, 12/11/2010.

Transylvania Colony

2010-09-04T19:28:00.003-04:00

For better or for worse, YouTube seems to be taking over the universe. Both this blog and the Creeps Records blog have relied heavily on its treasure trove of obscure goodness, while the Catclaw Theatre Company has had its own channel for quite awhile now (though it's sorely neglected). And now, our pals at the uber-stupid Moist Doorknob Comics have their own channel, and the Old Order of Transylvania Gentlemen now have their very YouTube channel entitled Transylvania Colony, chock full of that good pre-war public-domain grist that stays crunchy even in milk.

Bettie Page's Harem Dance

2010-08-31T23:54:00.003-04:00

Dancer/stripper/model Bettie Page dons a belly-dancer's outfit for this "harem dance" set against a musical backdrop of faux-Arabian music pillaged from somewhere between "Streets of Cairo" and Juan Tizol's "Caravan".

View: Bettie Page's Harem Dance

Kipling's "Mark of the Beast"

2010-07-21T08:21:00.007-04:00

Live from the Blue Room in Chico, CA, it's Dylan Hillerman's deliciously Grand Guignol-inspired production of Rudyard Kipling's "Mark of the Beast", which is an oft-overlooked classic in the genre of werewolf fiction.

View: Le Grand Guignol: Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling (1997)

The Kentucky Singers

2010-06-07T13:13:00.004-04:00

Here's an oddball clip found on YouTube, of Russian bandleader Lud Gluskin performing "Dinah" with the Kentucky Singers. Of these Kentucky Singers we know precious little, but they may be a spin-off of the original Kentucky Jubilee Singers and/or Forbes Randolph's Kentucky Jubilee Choir.

And then there's this from the British Pathe archives.

We don't even know if the Kentucky Singers were really Kentuckians, and the odds are actually against it, since it was apparently the fashion at the time to adopt a faux-Kentuckian image - witness Henny Hendrickson's Louisville Serenaders, a bunch of Jersey guys who probably never set foot in Louisville in their lives. And Johnny Hamp's Kentucky Serenaders, based out of Pennsylvania.

Listen: Lud Gluskin and the Kentucky Singers

Whirl, Twirl and a Girl

2010-05-31T22:17:00.006-04:00

In this rare television clip filmed in 1950, we see the rollerskating Vaudeville act "Whirl, Twirl and a Girl" (aka Jerry Berke, Art Wall and Eva Hasty) skating in circles while performing stunts and tricks.

View: Whirl, Twirl and a Girl (1950)

The Cherry Sisters Revisited

2010-03-22T15:45:00.005-04:00

The Cherry Sisters, a favorite vaudeville act of ours, have been immortalized in a play by Dan O'Brien, The Cherry Sisters Revisited, now playing at Actors Theatre Louisville as part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Read Jeffrey Scott Holland's review of it on Louisville Mojo by clicking here.

Oscar Hammerstein, desperate for something new to rile the rubes in his jaded Broadway audiences, deliberately booked the Cherry Sisters - who were already infamous for their inept lack of (consensus) talent. He knew the spectacle of their failure would make for some good - if cruel - entertainment at the expense of the women's dignity. In other words, Hammerstein was doing a sort of Cabaret of the Nameless routine even before the Germans.

The Actors

2010-03-11T09:05:00.001-05:00

Max Beckmann, The Actors, 1941.

The Rialto

2010-02-12T21:31:00.002-05:00

At one time, there were a great many theaters in Louisville, and of course, entropy being what it is, most of these beautiful places have been destroyed by some not-so-beautiful humans.

Case in point: the Rialto, which did a splendid business at 616 S. Fourth Street from 1921 to 1968. It was demolished in 1969 and turned into a parking lot, just like in the song. With its imported European crystal chandeliers, dazzling white marble staircase, walls covered in Rookwood tiles, enormous Pilcher organ, and breathtaking facade in the Italian Renaissance style, it was something truly marvelous to behold.

Reportedly, the last film to play the Rialto was Doctor Dolittle.

Madam Satan

2010-02-05T22:49:00.006-05:00

According to Wikipedia, Madam Satan (1930) "has been called one of the oddest films DeMille made and certainly one of the oddest MGM made during its golden age." When Angela (Kay Johnson) discovers that her cheating husband Bob (Reginald Denny) is secretly planning to attend a costume ball on board a zeppelin with his lover Trixie (Lillian Roth), Angela joins the party in disguise in order to spy on the pair. Lots of exotic dances, outlandish costumes, and surreal musical numbers ensue, until a thunderstorm causes the dirigible to break apart.

View: Clip #1 from Madam Satan

View: Clip #2 from Madam Satan

Unwoman

2010-01-14T23:18:00.003-05:00

Here's a video clip of one of our favorite cellists, Erica "Unwoman" Mulkey, doing a idiosyncratic little number called "Haunted", live at the Red Vic, June 13, 2009. In addition to a dazzling solo career, Unwoman has also performed with Rasputina and the super-spooky Steamwave outfit Vernian Process.

View: Unwoman - "Haunted"

The Birth of the Birth of Merlin

2009-12-24T14:40:00.003-05:00

Tonight's the night! Jeffrey Scott Holland's adaptation of William Shakespeare's apocryphal Birth of Merlin is finally making its stage debut in NYC! Although flash photography is not permitted, flashless photography *is* allowed - so if you attend and take pics, we'd love to see them!

Безымянная звезда

2009-12-11T10:13:00.002-05:00

Can-Can dancers, Soviet style. This clip is supposedly from the Russian film A Nameless Star (starring Anastasiya Vertinskaya) but looks much older. It's only nineteen seconds long but it's a real Georgiyevsk gem, and it's got that indefinable Voraxica quality.

View: Tabarin Can-Can clip from A Nameless Star

Drive-in Intermission Films

2009-11-30T01:56:00.002-05:00

I'm perpetually obsessed with intermission snack-bar advertisements from theaters and drive-in theaters.

View: Intermission Films #1

View: Intermission films #2

Helga Sommerfeld

2009-11-08T01:27:00.002-05:00

German theatre and film star Helga Sommerfeld, perhaps best remembered today for the horror film The Phantom of Soho.

Merlin, JSH Style

2009-11-05T15:08:00.003-05:00

Jeffrey Scott Holland's stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Birth of Merlin, long promised since Catclaw's inception almost two years ago, is finally here! It opens December 24 in Brooklyn, NY for four shows only - don't miss it!

What can you expect from this production? Here's some clues (Note: Spoilers!):

The play concerns a clown named simply Clown, who is escorting his pregnant sister Joan through the wilderness searching for the child's mysterious father, who turns out to be Satan. As Joan gives birth to Merlin, Satan summons Lucina (the Roman goddess of childbirth) and the Greek Moirae (The Fates) to witness.

Meanwhile, King Vortigern is attempting to build a new castle but it keeps collapsing. The King is told by his spiritual advisor that a "fiend-begotten child" must be blood-sacrificed to purify the construction site. At just that moment, the kooky entourage with baby Merlin shows up and, well, hilarity or something like it ensues.

The play was credited to William Shakespeare and William Rowley in a 1662 quarto, and the play has many fervent supporters of the Bard's hand in it. It also has many ardent detractors - like a certain Louisville professor who actually became visibly angry when I mentioned my intent to stage this play one day!

(It's important to remember that some plays we regard as in canon today once were considered heretically apocryphal. Pericles was once considered to be total Fakespeare before it finally became accepted. The Two Noble Kinsmen and King Edward III are relatively recent newcomers to mainstream acceptance, and Sir Thomas More is making great inroads towards it.)

Assorted warnings, cautions and caveats:

Do not attend if you are offended by a play featuring Satan being staged at Christmastime. Do not attend if you suffer from Coulrophobia (fear of clowns). Do not attend if you are offended by puppet nudity. Do not attend if you're scared of East Flatbush after dark.

There are no strobe lights in any Catclaw shows (we hates 'em!), but there is smoke, and there is splattering fake blood.

Le Cochon Danseur

2009-11-01T00:22:00.001-04:00

I have no Earthly clue what is up with this French film from 1907. But who can say it isn't beautiful?

View: Le Cochon Danseur, 1907

Sayonara, Soupy

2009-10-23T21:58:00.008-04:00

Milton Supman, aka Soupy Sales (January 8, 1926 – October 22, 2009), has moved on to better planets in search of a good egg cream.

Soupy was born in Franklinton, North Carolina, the son of a Hungarian dry goods merchant. The family later moved to Huntington, WV, just across the Kentucky border from Ashland. He graduated in 1944 from Huntington High School.

Soupy's dad nicknamed his three children "Hambone", "Chickenbone" and "Soupbone". Young Milton kept the Soupbone sobriquet into adulthood, by which time it generally became shortened to Soupy.

The Soupster moved to Cincinnati in 1949, where he worked in radio and as a performer in some of the area's seedy nightclubs. He began his television career on WKRC-TV with Soupy's Soda Shop (which is said by some to be the very first "Corny Collins"-style teenage dance television program) and Club Nothing!, a late-night variety show. Another variety TV show, Soupy's On!, followed in Cleveland a couple years later.

By 1953 Soupy was in Detroit, doing a puppet-filled kid's show called Lunch with Soupy Sales that ended up making him a nationwide success. The show, which changed its name to simply The Soupy Sales Show somewhere along the way, ran from 1953 to 1966, featuring many interesting guests for a kid's show, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and T-Bone Walker. This was probably the most awesome aspect of Soupiness, although playing Mrs. Drysdale's nephew on The Beverly Hillbillies and being parodied in a 1963 episode of The Jetsons as "Soapy Sam" is pretty damn cool too.

From 1968 to 1975, Sales was a regular panelist on What's My Line? and then was the host of a children's stunt show called Junior Almost Anything Goes. This ran on Saturday mornings for exactly one years, from September 1976 to September 1977. Next came The New Soupy Sales Show in 1978-1979, an attempt to recapture the glory of his 1960s show. It only aired 65 episodes, despite interesting guests like Alice Cooper.

Soupy's last TV starring role was 1983-1985, as the voice of Donkey Kong in the animated Saturday Morning Cartoon show Saturday Supercade.

Uncle Soupy spent the rest of the 1980s doing a radio show in NYC. His competitors in the market, Howard Stern and Don Imus, insulted and ridiculed him mercilessly on-air on their own shows. At least Soupy lived to see Imus' career hit rock bottom when Imus made racist remarks live on the radio. Soupy Sales, thou art avenged!

In addition to his bold TV surrealism, his promotion of puppetry, his biggest contribution to what we call Voraxical Theatre would be his show-within-the-show The Adventures of Philo Kvetch, wherein Soupy plays a noir-ish private detective (and actually smokes cigarettes on a children's show, which would be unthinkable in this politically correct era).

View: The Adventures of Philo Kvetch, Episode 8, Part 1

I'm Sailing On a Sunbeam

2009-10-12T00:17:00.004-04:00

Lawrence Gray and the Duncan Sisters, with "I'm Sailing On a Sunbeam".

View: I'm Sailing On a Sunbeam (1929)

Water Nymph Ballet

2009-10-01T01:58:00.003-04:00

Vera Zorina in the "Water Nymph Ballet", from the 1938 film The Goldwyn Follies.

View: Water Nymph Ballet from The Goldwyn Follies

The Living Gasometer

2009-09-26T23:52:00.002-04:00

Erik Jan Hanussen, in an article in Die Andere Welt (October-November 1931 issue), discussed various magical hoaxes, fakes, and tricks he had encountered in his career as a stage magician. Of them, the most baffling to me is the "Living Gasometer" stunt:

One day a young man came to me and showed me an amazing experiment. He placed a big steel siphon supposedly filled with acetylene gas in front of me, attached a tube to it, opened the valves, and apparently pumped his stomach full of flammable gas. He took an ordinary gas hose, which was attached to a bunsen burner, and then he ignited it. The gas - that was supposedly coming out of his stomach - flared up with bright, brilliant flames. The same stunt allowed the young man to cook two fried eggs on a gas stove from the gas, issued from a hose in his mouth; the Wonder-man also ignited a lamp, using ribbed tubing that was several meters long.

I was enraptured and awed by the feat until I was let in on the trick. Before the experiment, the Gas-Man places a sponge that is generously soaked in gasoline in his mouth. The fumes that are produced in the mouth feed the various combustibles. The whole time I wondered why my Living Gasometer was always so silent before his production started; today I don't wonder any more.

Mina

2009-09-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

The Italian pop star Mina started as a rock and roller in 1959 and has recorded virtually every kind of music you can think of in the years since. Virtually unknown in America, she's immensely popular throughout Europe to this day.

According to Wikipedia:

Mina's TV appearances in 1959 presented the first female rocker in Italy. Her loud syncopated singing earned her the nickname "Queen of Screamers". For her wild gestures and body shakes, the publicity labeled her the "Tiger of Cremona". Having turned to light pop tunes, Mina's chart-toppers in West Germany and Japan in 1962–1964 earned her the title of best international artist in those countries. Originally in a surf rock style, her song "Renato" is now a pop standard in Estonia. Mina's more refined sensual manner was introduced in 1960 with Gino Paoli's ballad "Il cielo in una stanza", which charted in the Billboard Hot 100.

Mina's pregnancy and relationship with a married actor caused her to be banned from the public Italian channels in 1963 as her lifestyle did not accord with the dominant catholic and bourgeois morals. After the ban, the Italian broadcasting service RAI continued trying to prohibit her songs which were forthright in dealing with subjects such as religion, smoking, or sex (e.g. the songs "Ta-ra-ta-ta" and "Sacumdì Sacumdà"). To her "bad girl" image, Mina added a sexy appeal and a cool act featuring public smoking, dyed blond hair, and shaved eyebrows.

View: Gorni Kramer medley (1966)

View: "L'Orchestra" with Caterina Valente (1966)

View: "Spinning Wheel" (1972)

Lid Lifters, Leisure, and Lopez

2009-09-05T04:29:00.002-04:00

We need more Art Theatres, Fun Centers, and Smart Ballrooms.

Amalia Aguilar

2009-09-04T00:42:00.003-04:00

Burlesque dancer/actress Amalia Aguilar, circa 1940s. Saith Wikipedia: "remembered for her films of the golden age of Mexican cinema, and called "The Tropical Whirlwind" in some reviews of the time due to her frantic form of dance."

View: Amalia Aguilar in Afro Mood, 1940s

Let Dracula Die

2009-08-30T12:44:00.002-04:00

From our Catclaw Theatre Diaries blog:

There's a whole universe of horror out there, so why must Actors Theatre of Louisville keep trotting out Dracula again and again, year after year? That's the question JSH asks in this week's Suspension of Disbelief, and provides a list of suggestions for spooky shows that might be a lot more interesting than the played-out old Bram Stoker bloodsucker. Read it here.

Appalachian Voodoo "Plankton" batt

2009-08-27T00:16:00.002-04:00

New from Appalachian Voodoo Fibers!

Weight: 2.8 ounces. Contents: Merino, Alpaca, Firestar, Icicle, Angelina, Punta. Buy it here!

The Magic Cloak of Oz

2009-08-22T16:09:00.003-04:00

The Magic Cloak of Oz is a 1914 film directed by J. Farrell MacDonald, written and produced by L. Frank Baum, and co-produced by Louis F. Gottschalk. It's an adaptation of Baum's novel, Queen Zixi of Ix. The events of the film and the book take place in No-Land and Ix, two neighboring regions to the Land of Oz.

The music heard on this print is not the original score for the silent film, but rather is a hodgepodge of tunes taken from the 1902 Stage Musical of The Wizard of Oz. Those songs include "Just a Simple Girl From the Prairie", "The Traveler and the Pie", "My Little Maid of Oz", and "Phantom Patrol".

View: The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914)

Louis Armstrong - "Cabaret"

2009-08-20T20:14:00.003-04:00

Life is a cabaret, old chum.

View: Louis Armstrong - "Cabaret" (1967)

Cornelia Froboess

2009-08-17T00:03:00.002-04:00

Cornelia "Conny" Froboess is a German actress and singer, perhaps best known for her schlager-pop teen idol years. Her first hit record was in 1951, at the age of 8, with the song "Pack Die Badehose Ein" (Pack Your Swimsuit).

Her film acting career spans from the 1962 Jean Renoir film The Elusive Corporal to 1973's Crazy, Total Verrückt to Werner Fassbinder's Veronika Voss in 1982. On the stage, she played Ellida in Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea in 1990. In 2004 she played Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and the title role in Bertolt Brecht and Margarete Steffin's Mother Courage and Her Children.

Here, we see two decidedly different sides of her, both taken from the 1959 German film Hula-Hopp, Conny.

View: Cornelia Froboess, "Diana" (1959)

View: Cornelia Froboess, "Mein Daddy" (1959)

More Radio Theatre Gems

2009-08-15T12:28:00.009-04:00

Since this week's installment of Suspension of Disbelief is revisiting this blog's posts on two 1960s attempts to revive the dying art of radio theatre - Theater Five and Black Mass - let's examine here some more dusty delights to download:

From 1970 to 1973, a syndicated radio show called The Devil and Mr. O repackaged old episodes of the 1930s/40s radio horror drama Lights Out, which can be heard here. From the archive-org entry's accompanying text:

Wyllis Cooper, who created, wrote, and produced it, was then a 36-year-old staffer in Chicago's NBC Studios. Cooper created his horror "by raiding the larder." For the purpose of Lights Out sound effects, people were what they ate. The sound of a butcher knife rending a piece of uncooked pork was, when accompanied by shrieks and screams, the essence of murder to a listener alone at midnight. Real bones were broken - spareribs snapped with a pipe wrench. Bacon in a frypan gave a vivid impression of a body just electrocuted. And the cannibalism effect was actually a zealous actor. Gurgling and smacking his lips as he slurped up a bowl of spaghetti. Cabbages sounded like human heads when chopped open with a cleaver, and carrots had the pleasant resonance of fingers being lopped off. Arch Oboler's celebrated tale of a man turned inside-out by a demonic fog was accomplished by soaking a rubber glove in water and stripping it off at the microphone while a berry basket was curshed at the same instant. The listener saw none of this. The listener saw carnage and death.

Dimension X was a short-lived but highly influential NBC radio program broadcast from April 8, 1950 to September 29, 1951. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, which turned out to be a logistical nightmare, so the rest were pre-recorded. Later the television programs The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits would directly mimic this program.

An attempt was made to bring Dimension X back under the new name X Minus One, which ran from 1955 to 1958. Stories featured adaptations of cutting-edge Science Fiction writers like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl and Theodore Sturgeon.

Meanwhile, The Hall of Fantasy ran in 1953 on the Mutual Radio Network, mixing inventive new scripts with older tales from the likes of Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allan Poe.

Theatre Magazine, January 1909

2009-08-14T12:27:00.000-04:00

Mr. and Mrs. Bluebeard

2009-08-11T20:05:00.002-04:00

Greta Nissen and Joseph Marievesky as Mr. and Mrs. Bluebeard in No Foolin' (Ziegfeld American Revue of 1926)

Rich Hayes

2009-08-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

Still trying to find out more about the frightening-looking Mr.Hayes, since this old postcard piqued our interest. The book Vaudeville From The Honky Tonks To The Palace makes a passing mention:

There was a guy called Rebla who had a jerky style of juggling three balls (before W. C. Fields). Rich Hayes, who worked for Rebla at one time, was a very funny man in his own right and a fine juggler.

Kay Laurell

2009-08-08T00:00:00.001-04:00

Kay Laurell, born in 1890. Appeared 96% nude in the Ziegfeld Follies as "September Morn" (photo above). Made a handful of films such as 1919's Valley of the Giants and 1921's Lonely Heart.

H.L. Mencken said she possessed "all the arts of the really first-rate harlot" and was "the most successful practitioner of her trade of her generation in New York." He stated, "Much of what I got from her, in fact, went into In Defense of Women".

(Photo below: Kay Laurell on the beach in Washington, D.C. circa 1922, accurately retro-colorized by Fredric Falcon on the wonderful photo site Shorpy.)

And:

But:

Despite the denial, apparently the incident was real, and it's unknown why she attempted the cover it up. She retired from showbiz in 1925, and died in 1927 of pneumonia.

Clean as a Whistle

2009-08-07T13:28:00.004-04:00

A great striptease production number from the 1933 film Meet the Baron, which starred Jack Pearl, Jimmy Durante, Zasu Pitts, and the early Three Stooges when they still had the "Fourth Stooge" Ted Healy.

View: "Clean as a Whistle" from Meet the Baron (1933)

Prunella

2009-08-06T10:21:00.002-04:00

Louise Meyers as Prunella in Ziegfeld Follies of 1914.

Cast of the 1924 Ziegfeld Follies

2009-08-04T13:06:00.003-04:00

That's Will Rogers in the center.

Fairy On The Clock

2009-08-03T02:19:00.002-04:00

Simply one of our very favorite foxtrots.

View: Teddy Brown & His Orchestra - "Fairy on the Clock"

Listen: Harry Hudson's Melody Men - "Fairy on the Clock"

Listen: Debroy Somers Band - "Fairy on the Clock"

Listen: New Mayfair Dance Orchestra - "Fairy on the Clock"

Listen: Sam Baskini und seine Jazz Symphoniker Clangor - "Fairy on the Clock"

Lotta Faust

2009-08-02T11:58:00.008-04:00

Lotta Faust - surely that's not her real name! - was born in 1880 in Brooklyn, New York. She entered theatre at the age of 16, joining Denman Thompson's production of The Sunshine of Paradise Alley in 1896.

Her greatest fame came in 1904, in the role of Trixie Tryfle in the Broadway musical version of The Wizard of Oz. Her song "Sammy" was the biggest hit of the show, and like most of that production's libretto, it had little or not connection to the plot. Faust would break the Fourth Wall for the song, and pitch the love song directly to some (usually married) man in the audience each night, which was always good for laughs at the man's expense.

Her second biggest claim to fame was her scandalous scantily-clad Salome dance routine. According to Wikipedia:

During an interview she admitted to being unaware of the Biblical story of Salome. Her rendition of the Salome dance came from what she was told regarding the Wilde play. She said she felt as if she really were the 14-year-old Salome while she was dancing on stage. She experienced both the horror and fascination during her performances. For each appearance Faust danced as if she would never be able to repeat what she was doing. There were a number of other women who presented their versions of the Salome dance in the same era as Faust. Among these were Eva Tanguay, Vera Olcott, and Gertrude Hoffman.

Lotta died of pneumonia and complications following a surgery in January 1910, at a sanitarium on 33 East 33rd Street in New York City.

Theatre magazine, January 1925

2009-07-31T23:51:00.002-04:00

Aphra Behn

2009-07-25T10:06:00.004-04:00

And then there's Aphra Behn, one of the greatest female playwrights of all time, and it's an unfortunate commentary on today's crop of scribblers that one has to go all the way back to the 1600s to find greatness such as hers.

In 1664, Aphra Johnson married a dutch fellow named Behn and settled down in England. According to Wikipedia, "Some scholars believe that the marriage never existed and Behn made it up purely to gain the status of a widow, which would have been much more beneficial for what she was trying to achieve. She was reportedly bisexual, and held a larger attraction to women than to men, a trait that, coupled with her writings and references of this nature, would eventually make her popular in the writing and artistic communities of the 20th century and present day".

In 1666 Aphra was recruited by the Royal Court as a secret agent to spy on Antwerp by Charles II. Her code name for her espionage was Astrea, a name she also used as a thinly-veiled pseudonym for her later writings. Aphra became the lover to a prominent and powerful member of royalty in the Netherlands, and from him she obtained important political secrets for use to the English monarchy's advantage during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. A spy in the house of love, indeed.

Somehow, despite her service for her country, she found herself penniless and sent to "debtor's prison". Wikipedia again: "By 1669 an undisclosed source had paid Behn's debts, and she was released from prison, starting from this point to become one of the first women who wrote for a living. She cultivated the friendship of various playwrights, and starting in 1670 she produced many plays and novels, as well as poems and pamphlets. Her most popular works included The Rover, Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, and Oroonoko. Amongst her notable critics was Alexander Pope, against whom she has been defended."

What makes Behn so special is partially the startling openness of sexual topics for her time: incest, homoerotica, prostitution, crossdressing, lesbianism, and libertinism. The prostitute character Angellica Bianca in The Rover is widely regarded as being based on herself.

Of Behn's achievements, Virginia Woolf had this to say:

"All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds".

Other plays by Behn include: The Forced Marriage (1670), The Amorous Prince (1671), The Town Fop (1676), The Feigned Courtesans (1679), The City Heiress (1682), and The Emperor of the Moon (1687).

Quoting Wikipedia one more time: "Aphra Behn’s writing is unique for its time because of her use of the narrator’s voice and her innovative use of visual deceptions in her plays... Behn’s plays were also novel because she used visual cues in a way that they had never before been used. Dawn Lewcock comments on this ingenuity, saying "What is unique to Behn is not only her appreciation of the visual effects of a performance but also the way that she uses this to affect the perceptions of the audience and change their conception and comprehension of her plots and/or her underlying theme as she wishes by integrating the theatrical possibilities into her dramatic structure". Lewcock goes on to explain this with the mistaken identities present in The Amorous Prince where disguises play a crucial role in the plot of the play.

Behn's minor poetry, as collected in her Poems Upon Several Occasions (1684), is a veritable treasure-trove of her unabashed ideas about sexuality. These poems were written in the pastoral tradition, which she characterizes as specifically sexual. The world of the pastoral, which she fills with amorous shepherds and shepherdesses, creates for her a space in which to explore the nature and virtues of free love."

Wende Wagner

2009-07-24T10:55:00.003-04:00

Another performer who led a more exciting life than most of us ever will, yet remains forgotten today.

Billy Wilder saw her in a swimming pool in a Florida hotel and invited her to a screen test, just like that. Mind-bogglingly, she turned down a chance to be in Wilder's film The Apartment, instead doing bit parts and underwater stunt-double work on shows like Wagon Train, Flipper, Sea Hunt, Perry Mason, Aquanauts, etc. Traveled the world as a fashion model. Became best friends with Sharon Tate and was her roommate for awhile. Married Robert Mitchum's son. Got plum roles as a starring regular in the Green Hornet TV series, and in Rosemary's Baby. Gave up acting after appearing in early 70s TV shows like Mannix and The Rookies. Became active in the Malibu Historical Society. Lost her home and belongings in a fire, then died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 55.

View: Wende Wagner on the What's My Line? game show (1960).

"Check Your Husband"

2009-07-20T18:57:00.004-04:00

Love, love, love this routine from 1932's Over The Counter, starring Sidney Toler, Franklin Pangborn, and the perpetually amazing Eleanor Thatcher.

View: Check Your Husband (1932)

Patricia Neal

2009-07-19T17:29:00.014-04:00

Film star Patricia Neal was born in a little spot in the road in Kentucky called Packard, in Whitley County.

She went on to study drama at Northwestern University in Illinois, then found fame virtually right out of the gate. Her first film, 1949's John Loves Mary, she had a small part playing opposite Ronald Reagan, and by only her second film, 1949's The Fountainhead, she was already headlining as a star with Gary Cooper. The Fountainhead was based on the novel by the always controversial Ayn Rand, who also wrote the screenplay for this adaptation herself.

During the shooting of The Fountainhead, Neal began having an affair with the then-married Cooper. She was 23, he was 48. Neal became pregnant by Cooper and had an abortion. Their secret relationship went on until 1950, when Cooper's family got wind of it somehow. His wife sent Neal a threatening telegram, and his daughter berated and spat on Neal in a public event.

In 1951, playwright Lillian Hellman introduced Neal to Roald Dahl, the British author who would go on to write Man from the South in 1959, James and the Giant Peach in 1961 and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory in 1964.

Neal and Dahl married in 1953, and their marriage produces five children. Unfortunately, their household was an ill-fated one. In 1961 their infant son Theo was badly injured when a taxicab slammed into his carriage Neal was pushing. They lost a daughter to measles in 1962. In 1965 Neal herself suffered a series of brain aneurysms and was in a coma for weeks. It took her three years to recover, with Dahl patiently helping her rebuild herself.

In 1983 Neal divorced Dahl when she discovered he had been having an affair with Felicity Crosland, a mutual friend. Whether or not Dahl reminded her that she herself had been on the rebound from a very ugly extramarital affair with Gary Cooper when she met him, we can only wonder.

After that, Neal became extremely religious. She converted to Catholicism shortly after her split from Dahl, and later become a "born again" Christian. Today she is still very active in showbiz, at the age of 83.

Though she's best known for her appearances in the films Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Hud, for my money, her crowning glory is A Face in the Crowd. Here, she found herself at the center of one of the most important pieces of 20th century film history, in the Elia Kazan story of an evil and manipulative drifter (Andy Griffith) who - shock, shock, duh - becomes even more evil and manipulative after they mold him into a successful radio/television star with a cornpone Tennessee Ernie Ford-type program called "Cracker Barrel". Throw Walter Matthau, Tony Franciosa, Lee Remick, and Grand Ole Opry ventriloquist Rod Brasfield (pictured below) into the mix, and what a pip it was.

The film Psyche 59 is another especially noteworthy notch in the Neal oeuvre. It's a peculiar noir-ish psychological drama that was way ahead of its time, way too dark and way too weird for audiences of that era. Neal's character suffers psychosomatic blindness due to emotional/sexual trauma (I betcha Pete Townshend saw this movie before he wrote Tommy), and makes a nearly-naked appearance in a scene that somehow amazingly got past the censors of the day.

It also starred Samantha Eggar (The Collector, Walk Don't Run, Doctor Dolittle) and Nazi concentration camp survivor Curd Jürgens (The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The Spy Who Loved Me, and the Wernher Von Braun bio-pic I Aim At The Stars).

In one eerily prophetic scene in Psyche 59, Neal's character is asked what's wrong with her vision. She replies, "There's nothing wrong with my eyes. It's in my head. Pressure on the brain center from a brain hemorrhage."

The Grand Guignol

2009-07-17T07:10:00.015-04:00

In 1897, an entirely new form of entertainment came into being at Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in the Pigalle district of Paris.

The Grand Guignol pioneered horror as a theatrical genre, inspired partly by the Penny Dreadfuls (the original tawdry pulp fiction) and no doubt colored by the horrors of the relatively recent Jack the Ripper murder spree.

“One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century.” - Jack the Ripper

1897 was also the year that Philip Burne-Jones painted The Vampire (see image below), and Bram Stoker published Dracula, clearly indicating that a general sense of erotic bloodletting was in the air, quickly becoming the prevailing planetary Zeitgeist and not just a fad. In France especially, there was a palpable and ominous feeling that the end of civilization had come, and they called this the fin de siecle. And then they nursed it, they rehearsed it, and then gave out the news.

The Grand Guignol's name was a sarcastic and irreverent in-joke whose meaning is lost on most today - Guignol was the name of a puppet in an overwhelmingly popular and beloved puppet show in the 1800s. A modern equivalent would be if, say, a snuff-porn-film company were to call itself "Ultra Mickey Mouse". Because of the common association of the name "Guignol" with puppetry, there was also an implied dehumanizing element, suggesting that the live actors onstage were merely puppets.

The original mission of the Grand Guignol was to present plays about disenfranchised sorts who were not usually considered appropriate subject matter: prostitutes, criminals, con-artists, drifters, grifters, drunks, bums, perverts, lowlifes, etc. This quickly drifted into deeper and deeper waters of sex, insanity and violence until it became the tail that wagged the dog. Playwright Andre de Lorde authored over 150 plays for the Grand Guignol, all of which dealt with gory, shocking and anti-social themes. Actress Paula Maxa become famous for her work in the Grand Guignol's horror plays - saith the Wikipedia:

"From 1917 to the 1930s, she performed most frequently as a victim and was known as "the most assassinated woman in the world." During her career at the Grand Guignol, Maxa was murdered more than 10,000 times in at least 60 different ways and was raped at least 3,000 times."

Among the plays staged by the Grand Guignol during its glory days:

L'Homme de la Nuit - A sympathetic story of an unrepetant necrophiliac, based on the true story of Sergeant Francoise Bertrand, a man sentenced in 1849 for violating tombs and mutilating corpses.

Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations - When a doctor finds his wife's lover in his operating room, he performs a graphic brain surgery rendering the adulterer a hallucinating semi-zombie. Now insane, the lover/patient hammers a chisel into the doctor's brain.

Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous - Two hags in an insane asylum use scissors to blind a young, pretty fellow inmate out of jealousy.

L'Horrible Passion - A nanny strangles the children in her care.

La Fosse aux filles - A man addicted to prostitutes discovers the horrors of syphilis.

The Grand Guignol cleverly heightened the impact of their shock plays by alternating them with comedy skits, thus "cleansing the palate" for the next round of travesties.

The mind-numbing horrors of the Nazis and World War II made the Grand Guignol irrelevant, and the place was on its last legs by the 1950s. Anais Nin bemoaned the theatre's decline in her diary in 1958:

"I surrendered myself to the Grand-Guignol, to its venerable filth which used to cause such shivers of horror, which used to petrify us with terror. All our nightmares of sadism and perversion were played out on that stage. . . . The theater was empty."

The Grand Guignol closed in 1962. Its spirit lives on today, however, in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, in the Molotov Theatre company, and of course, Catclaw.

Fern Andra

2009-07-09T08:17:00.010-04:00

The fact that you've never heard of Fern Andra is proof positive of a concerted conspiracy to suppress all that vital and vibrant in this world.

Fern's real name was Vernal Andrews and she was born in Watseka, Illinois, on November 24, 1893. She got into showbiz as a toddler via her stepfather Frank St. Clair, who did a slackwire/tightrope act in circuses and outdoor vaudeville shows. Fern did tightrope performing, plays, musicals, and operettas, including a prestigious performance at the Globe Theatre in Chicago, all before reaching puberty.

At the age of 16, Fern joined Bird Millman's Trio, another tightrope/vaudeville troupe, and went on to even greater heights including performing for President Theodore Roosevelt. Fern moved to Europe in 1911 and became a full-time actress on stage and in film. She was beloved in England and especially in Germany, where she made many films, such as Das Ave Maria and Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire. In the latter, she appeared nearly nude in a body-painted outfit. In Vienna she became a student of the great Max Reinhardt and appeared in many of his plays and films.

Fern's personal life was one of complications and intrigue. She was accused by the German government of being a spy for the USA, but she was cleared of all charges thanks to a defense by the esteemed Baron Friedrich von Weichs, who she went on to marry. She miraculously survived a plane crash in 1924, one which killed The Red Baron's brother.

During the 1930s, further scandal occurred when Joseph Goebbels came to power in the Nazi party, and it was learned by the public that he and Fern had been close. Prior to his Nazi career, Goebbels was a theatre tutor and a playwright. (According to Wikipedia, "Goebbels was embittered by the frustration of his literary career; his novel did not find a publisher until 1929 and his plays were never staged.") According to Erin Taylor's tribute to Fern:

Fern closed her studios and production company in Germany and, to show her allegiance to the United States, broadcasted anti-Nazi messages in German to Europe. By this time, Fern's career was over, but she recovered her reputation in Hollywood's social circles.

Fern fled Nazi Germany and returned to America in 1938, settling down with a producer/playwright named Samuel Edge Dockrell, and led a quiet life until her death in Aiken, South Carolina on February 8, 1974.

Unfortunately, very little of Fern's film work survived World War II, and we mostly have only fragments and pieces of her appearances. It's tragic, because Fern was a pioneer not only in acting, but in writing, directing, and production. The IMDB lists 52 films in which she acted, but also 18 that she wrote the script for, 14 that she produced, and 11 that she directed. It's likely that still more existed, records of which are now forever missing.

Among the lost jewels of her directorial oeuvre: 1915's Gesprengte Ketten ("Exploded Chains"), 1918's Drohende Wolken am Firmament ("Threatening Clouds at the Firmament"), and 1919's Der Todessprung ("The Leap Into Death").

German Zodiac Production Number

2009-07-08T00:06:00.001-04:00

This peculiar and enchanting German film clip, with a zodiacal motif, turned up on YouTube with little or no explanation of its source or context. According to someone who posted a comment, the first singer is Vera Bergmann, the second is Rose Rauch and the "Sun" is La Jana.

View: Zodiac-themed German production number (1938)

Chinese Fantasy

2009-06-13T22:37:00.003-04:00

From the 1929 film The Show of Shows. Nick Lucas, Myrna Loy, and a barked introduction from Rin Tin Tin.

View: "Chinese Fantasy" (1930)

Kid Millions

2009-06-12T18:07:00.008-04:00

Forget Willy Wonka. THIS is the real deal, circa 1934!

The actual film Kid Millions, starring Eddie Cantor, Ann Sothern, Ethel Merman and George Murphy, was really not all that interesting. As Wikipedia describes it:

"The story features Eddie, a kid from Brooklyn, New York City, United States who suddenly inherits $77 million dollars from his lost father, an archeologist that had looted Egypt of its treaures. In order to reclaim the inheritance, Eddie begins his boat ride to Egypt. However, on the boat he meets various characters who claim also to receive a part of the inheritance, though their stories are doubtful. Later on, Eddie learns that the Sheik Mulhulla has threatened to kill anyone who tries to claim the treasure, and that Princess Fanya has fallen deeply in love with Eddie and wants Eddie's hand in marriage."

But it's the film's surrealist "Ice Cream Factory Fantasy" sequence at the end that makes Kid Millions a classic piece of cinema. It was the first United Artists film to utitize the three-strip Technicolor process. The cast of Our Gang are also reportedly among the throngs and hordes of screaming-for-ice-cream children. Can you imagine being the stage manager and cast wrangler for this shoot?

View: Technicolor finale from Kid Millions (1934)

Blue Daughter of Heaven

2009-06-09T17:53:00.003-04:00

From the film Lord Byron Of Broadway, this amazing dance routine entitled "Blue Daughter of Heaven", with someone named James Burroughs singing and the Albertina Rasch Ballet Troupe dancing.

Just watch it.

View: "Blue Daughter Of Heaven" from Lord Byron Of Broadway (1930)

The Hades Ballet

2009-06-07T22:51:00.005-04:00

The Devil's Cabaret, a 1930 low-budget musical, was built around a scrap of "lost" footage called "The Hades Ballet".

"The Hades Ballet" was an abandoned musical number from The March of Time, which was a 1929 production whose musical/dance numbers were filmed, but not the rest of the story. After the uncompleted film was scrapped, the footage was portioned out piecemeal to other films.

Definitely our kind of ballet.

View: The Hades Ballet (1930)

"Treasure Chest" West

2009-05-27T01:27:00.005-04:00

Burlesque stripper Evelyn "Treasure Chest" West was born in Elroy, KY (Adair County) as Amy Mae Coomer. Although she worked small jobs like circus sideshows and did some performing in bit parts for films like Rhythm on the River (1940) and Birth of the Blues (1941), it wasn't until after World War II that her career really took off as a stripper, working San Francisco clubs and posing for Bunny Yeager.

According to Wikipedia:

Evelyn West was also an ardent publicity seeker. She tried to legally change her name to Evelyn "$50,000 Treasure Chest" West at the Menard County Circuit Court, threw a tomato at rival Anita Ekberg, appeared at nudist weddings, charged with indecent exposure, threatened legal action against contemporaries Tempest Storm and Jane Russell, and openly criticized Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.

Evelyn also occasionally returned to her home state to perform in the delightfully sleazy drink-dens of Newport, KY during its "Sin City" days.

According to an article in the February 1956 issue of the men's magazine Sir!, West invested $5,000 in a plan her boyfriend Steven Vitko had for building an experimental flying saucer for the U.S. Government. He never built the flying saucer, nor repaid the investment, so she sued in 1952 to recover the money. Sir! Magazine doesn't say whether she won or lost the suit.

She lived a tranquil live in her final years in a modest home in Florida, and was reportedly an avid eBay seller.

View: Evelyn West film footage

Alessandro Moreschi

2009-05-06T12:52:00.003-04:00

Alessandro Moreschi (November 11, 1858 - April 21, 1922) was the most famous castrato singer of the late 19th century, and the only castrato of the classic bel canto tradition to make solo sound recordings.

Wikipedia says:

A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity. Castrati should not be confused with eunuchs, who are castrated after puberty and do not share the physical characteristics of someone castrated before puberty.

Castration before puberty (or in its early stages) prevents a boy's larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence (shared by both sexes) is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. As the castrato's body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his epiphyses (bone-joints) did not harden in the normal manner. Thus the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did the bones of their ribs. This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity. Operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible, and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice, as well as higher vocal ranges of the uncastrated adult male (see soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, sopranist, countertenor and contralto). Listening to the only surviving recordings of a castrato (see below), one can hear that the lower part of the voice sounds like a "super-high" tenor, with a more falsetto-like upper register above that.

In the 1720s and 1730s, at the height of the craze for these artificially-preserved voices, it has been estimated that upwards of 4000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art.

The Catholic Church's involvement in the castrato phenomenon has long been controversial, and there have recently been calls for it to issue an official apology for its role. As early as 1748, Pope Benedict XIV tried to ban castrati from churches, but such was their popularity at the time that he realised that doing so might result in a drastic decline in church attendance.

Listen: Alessandro Moreschi - Oremus Pro Pontefice (1904)

The Julians Acrobats Troupe

2009-05-03T22:48:00.002-04:00

Circa-1903 film footage of this obscure acrobatic performance group has been making the rounds on YouTube lately, thanks to the efforts of Palace of Variety.

The Edison catalog describes the short film like this:

These famous European acrobats are shown in their wonderful feats of balancing and high-class acrobatic work. This troupe commands the highest salary ever paid to a company of gymnasts, and the sensational work they perform gives proof that theirs is justly the most celebrated in the world. The photography is beautifully sharp and distinct, and the subject most entertaining.

What little we know about these amazing performers is assembled here for your perusal.

View: Julians Troupe Acrobats (film one)

"Easter Sunday" fiber batt

2009-03-26T07:52:00.004-04:00

New from Appalachian Voodoo Fibers!

Weight: 2.4 ounces. Contents: Alpaca, Merino, Bamboo, Soy Silk, Punta, Viscose, Firestar, Icicle. Buy it here!

Whispering Jack Smith

2009-03-25T00:01:00.001-04:00

Jack Schmidt, better known by his stage name of "Whispering" Jack Smith, was an especially interesting vocalist who virtually invented "crooning" in the early 1920s, with his laidback and quiet delivery that often really did devolve into just a whisper. This mellow style of singing inspired countless crooners that followed in his footsteps, like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Country singers like Tex Williams and "Whispering" Bill Anderson were also surely inspired by the trail Smith blazed.

Smith's vocal technique that revolutionized pop-jazz singing was not entirely deliberate. His style of singing was a result of inhaling poison gas while fighting in World War I. It damaged his vocal cords and lungs, and kept him from belting out songs with any power.

Listen: Whispering Jack Smith - Leven Thirty Saturday Night

"Exotica Burlesque Dance" film

2009-03-24T21:20:00.003-04:00

Interesting old film clip. Who is she? What's it from?

View: Exotica Burlesque Dance

Cleveland Burlesque Memories

2009-03-23T19:47:00.000-04:00

Just found this on flickr: a wonderful collection of scanned burlesque newspaper ads from Cleveland circa 30s-80s.

Anita Berber: A Timeline

2009-03-21T21:57:00.005-04:00

Born June 10, 1899, to musician Felix Berber and cabaret singer Lucie Thiem.

1916: First stage appearance as a dancer at Bluethner Hall.

1918: First film appearance, in Das Dreimäderlhaus.

1920: Begins descent into various addictions - alcohol, morphine, cocaine, sex. Becomes well known as the "Dancer of Vice", bringing a new sophistication to illicit cabaret choreography and nude dancing.

1922: Open polyamorous relationships including lesbian club owner Susi Wanowsky and dancer Sebastian Droste. Marries Droste, then divorces him.

1924: Nonstop touring, causing scandal in every town she visits, with hotel orgies and drug arrests.

1925: Her portrait is painted by Otto Dix. For most of the remaining 20th century, this painting is almost all the public has to remember her by until Mel Gordon publishes her biography.

1928: Went on European tour despite being near death with tuberculosis. She collapsed onstage during a performance in Damascus, returned to Berlin, and died within four months. Buried in St. Thomas cemetery in Neukölln, Germany.

View: Anita Berber montage

Anna Moffo

2009-03-15T11:31:00.003-04:00

Don't you love Anna Moffo? Who wouldn't?

One of the most affectingly beautiful opera singers of the 20th century, Moffo turned down a chance at a Hollywood career in order to focus on serious Opera. She was an Italian-American born and raised in Pennsylvania, and became an overnight success in Italy after a television broadcast of Madama Butterfly with Moffo in the role of Cio-Cio-San.

According to Wikipedia:

She hosted a weekly program on Italian television "The Anna Moffo Show" from 1960 until 1973 and was voted one of the ten most beautiful women in Italy. She appeared in film versions of La traviata (1968) and Lucia di Lammermoor (1971), both directed by her husband Mario Lanfranchi, as well as a few non-operatic films.

In the early 1970s, she began appearing on German television and in operetta films such as Die Csárdásfürstin and Die schöne Galathee. She also recorded with Eurodisc the title roles in Carmen and Iphigenie in Aulis, as well as the role of Hansel in Hansel und Gretel.

Such a heavy workload, however, led to physical exhaustion and a serious vocal-breakdown in 1974, from which she never fully recovered.

View: Anna Moffo - "Sul fil d'un soffio etesio" (from Verdi's Falstaff)

Rosita Serrano, the Chilean Nightingale

2009-03-14T02:29:00.003-04:00

Rosita Serrano, billed as "the Chilean Nightingale", was one of Germany's most popular and exotic performers in the 1930s and 40s.

Unfortunately, like so many great entertainers, her career was caught up in the imperial entanglements of the Third Reich. While touring in Sweden, she gave a series of concerts specifically for the benefit of Jewish refugees who had fled the Nazis. When Goebbels heard about this, he ordered a warrant for Rosita's arrest on "espionage" charges.

Serrano got wind of the bounty on her head, and, unable to return to her apartment in Berlin and recover her possessions and her pet dachshunds, immediately left Sweden for her homeland of Chile. Meanwhile, her songs and movies were added to the ever-growing blacklist of entertainment banned by the Nazi regime.

In 1951 she tried to resume her career but hit speedbumps at every turn. Her repertoire was mostly in German, and in the United States, no one wanted to hear German songs so soon after the war. Back in Germany, she was unable to reignite the flame of her old career. And in Chile, she was reportedly looked down upon by locals because she had once sung for Nazis - despite the fact that she was a victim of Nazism herself. But she remained in Chile nonetheless, and led a quite impoverished life until her death in 1997.

Listen: Rosita Serrano - "Roter Mohn"

Is Louisville ready for "Cheeseburger & Fries: the Musical"?

2009-03-11T18:02:00.004-04:00

Everyone at The Voraxium, Creeps Productions, and Catclaw Theatre Company are abuzz about the news that the long-awaited Cheeseburger & Fries: the Musical will make its world debut on September 3, 2009.

It's based on the true story of Jeffrey Scott 'Cheeseburger' Holland and J.T. 'Fries' Dockery, who spent the second half of the 1990s as street-corner troubadors, busking for coins and frightening tourists. It's an underground garage country-punk rocka rolla hillbilly wing dang doo.

But it's also a thriller, as there's much supernatural intrigue in the deep dark mysterious wilderness of Kentucky, and Cheeseburger & Fries are there, on its dull serrated slaughterhouse edge. Like Robert Johnson before them, the boys find their own dark night of the soul at the crossroads.

And it's a love story as well. Cheeseburger & Fries are lovers, not fighters, and like Jerry Lee Lewis, they're lovin' up a storm, charming the birds from the trees everywhere from Manchester to Paris. (Manchester, Kentucky and Paris, Kentucky, that is.) It's because of these torrid love scenes straight outta Berea that this will be Catclaw's first play with an audience advisory: the show will feature full frontal nudity.

Catclaw Open House Party!

2009-02-23T22:56:00.001-05:00

Please attend one - or both - of these Open House events at the
Mellwood, dear friends!

Friday, February 27, 5:00pm to 11:00pm:

For the F.A.T. Friday Hop, Catclaw Theatre Company invites the public
to come up and visit our costume/props workshop! There will be free
refreshments and interesting items for sale, so please come out, bring
a friend, and help support the cause to which we are all so devoted!
There will also be clearly marked signs and indicators to get you to
our space (Unit #250) in the Mellwood Arts and Entertainment Center,
1860 Mellwood Avenue.

Saturday, February 28, 2:00pm to 11:00pm:

A more informal Open House than the Friday night party. All afternoon
and evening long, we'll be keeping the place open for visitors,
providing snacks and drinks, and hawking all sorts of collectible
items that we're letting go super cheap - all to set us towards our
goal of having our own brick-and-mortar theatre by this time next
year!

Jeffrey Scott Holland,
Artistic Director
Catclaw Theatre Company
Mellwood Arts & Entertainment Center
1860 Mellwood Avenue
Louisville, KY 40206

catclawtheatre@gmail.com
502.649.3378

http://www.catclawtheatre.com/
http://catclawtheatre.blogspot.com/
http://voraxica.blogspot.com/

Voraxica Fiber!

2009-02-15T23:35:00.002-05:00

Jeffrey Scott Holland's Appalachian Voodoo Fibers has a new fiber batt (that's a big loaf of specially drum-carded fibers for craftsters to spin their own yarn from) named in honor of our chosen genre, theatre au service de la revolution, Voraxica.

Support Catclaw and The Voraxium and buy some fluff!

The Birth of Merlin

2009-02-14T23:51:00.002-05:00

After Toulouse-inations finished its run in August 2008, the Catclaw Theatre Company was immediately supposed to go right into production of The Birth of Merlin, an "apocryphal" Shakespeare play whose authorship has been contested by various scholars and know-it-alls. Delays and setbacks have kept pushing the date back, but things are all-systems-go again - just with one major change.

It's now going to be a live puppet show. With puppets so large that the show may be forced to be held outdoors to accomodate them. More details about that in weeks to come.

Here's what that sporadically truthy "encyclopedia" called Wikipedia has to say about The Birth of Merlin:

"The Birth of Merlin" possesses a three-level plot, a structure common in plays of its era. On the first level, the main plot, the characters are royal and their concerns are those of statecraft and national welfare; in the second-level plot, the characters are aristocratic and genteel and their concerns are those of personal values and personal fulfillment; and on the level of the comic subplot, the characters are common and their concerns are largely sensual.

Unusually, the play begins on its second level: the opening scene introduces the nobleman Donobert, his daughters Constantia and Modestia, and their suitors Cador and Edwin, and begins the story of Modestia's conflict between her desire for a religious vocation versus social pressures to marry. The famous characters of Arthurian romance do not appear until the second scene, which introduces King Aurelius and his royal court.

The first scene in Act II introduces the otherwise-unnamed Clown and his very pregnant sister, Joan Go-to't. References through the play identify the Clown a typical Rowleian fat clown, the type of role that Rowley repeatedly wrote for himself to play. The Clown's sister has gotten herself pregnant by yielding to the advances of a mysterious stranger; she and the Clown are now wandering through the forest, searching for the father of the child, or at least a father for the child.

In a cave in a forest, the Devil summons Lucina and the Fates to attend Joan as she gives birth to Merlin. The Clown catches up, to meet his sister and his new-born nephew, a fully-grown Merlin the Magician. Merlin introduces his Clown-uncle to his Devil-father; the Devil predicts a dramatic future for his newborn son.

The play is rich with visual effects of varying types, including devils and magic and masque-like spectacles. It was clearly designed to provide broad, colorful, fast-paced entertainment.

Margot Eskens

2009-02-13T23:45:00.003-05:00

Margot Eskens is a Schlager-pop singer who, as a dental assistant, gained a record contract with Polydor Records in 1954 after performing the song "Moulin Rouge" at a talent show. She had many hit records in the 50s, 60s and 70s including "Ich möchte heut ausgehn", "Mamatschi", "Cindy Oh Cindy", "Das Leben ist schön", "Himmelblaue Serenade", and "Tiritomba".

View: Margot Eskens - "Die Zeiger der Uhr" (1966)

Pagan Love Song

2009-02-12T23:12:00.002-05:00

View: "Pagan Love Song", Jack Imel

View: "Pagan Love Song", Felix Mendelssohn

Magda Schneider

2009-02-11T23:50:00.003-05:00

Magda may be best known in some circles as the mother of actress Romy Schneider, but to us it's her own career that's more interesting. She did theatre in Munich and Augsburg in the 1920s, then went on to a successful film career making over 40 movies during the 30s, 40s and 50s.

According to her daughter, from their house they could see Hitler's holiday domicile, Obersalzberg, where the Fuhrer often received them, later declaring Magda to be his favourite actress. Romy would later claim her mother and Hitler had had an affair. After her death in 1996, she was buried in Berchtesgaden.

View: Scene from Liebelei (1933)

The Incoherents

2009-02-09T00:08:00.003-05:00

In 1882, a group of actors, artists, writers, and performers calling themselves Les Incohérents began invading cabarets and bars like Le Chat Noir and Quat'z'Arts in Montmartre, Paris. They brought an extremely anarchic and iconoclastic approach to entertainment with their philosophy of fumisme.

Fumisme was an attitude of mockery toward the norms, values and morals of conventional society. It was a barrage of satire and mischief, which attacked social mores but also was very self-deprecating. Although the French word "fumisme" literally means "chimney sweep", it can also mean crackpot or fraud.

The Incoherents were forerunners of Dadaism and Surrealism, and it is impossible that Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp could have been unaware of them. The Dadaists and Surrealists completely stole their routine from the Incoherents, and merely dressed it up with pseudo-intellectual pomp.

From this same Fumisme scene came Alfred Jarry (author of Ubu Roi and founder of ’Pataphysics) and the great animation pioneer Emile Cohl.

View: Emile Cohl - The Hasher's Delirium (1910)

Le Chat Noir

2009-02-08T19:06:00.006-05:00

Most people, even those dwelling in trailers in Tennessee or living under a rock in Utah, are at least peripherally aware of Le Chat Noir, thanks to the ubiquitousness of the poster designed for it by Art Nouveau printmaker Théophile Steinlen. The image appears on t-shirts, postcards, calendars, mugs, and posters at even the most unsophisticated shopping malls.

But what was it exactly?

Le Chat Noir was the ultimate French cabaret experience. Though not as depraved and decadent as the horrific events that took place on stages in Berlin, the acts at Le Chat Noir were reportedly wide-ranging in their variety. The list of names of those who frequented the joint make it sound like a hotbed of creativity: Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Jane Avril, Aristide Bruant, Yvette Guilbert, August Strindberg, and many many more.

Located in the Montmartre district of Paris, Le Chat Noir had a relatively short but sweet existence: it opened its doors in 1881 and closed for good in 1897. In that time, all manner of entertainment graced its stage, some of which revolutionized Owner and master of ceremonies Rodolph Salis said of his establishment:

"The Chat Noir is the most extraordinary cabaret in the world. You rub shoulders with the most famous men of Paris, meeting there with foreigners from every corner of the world."

Many have borrowed the Le Chat Noir concept and tried to duplicate it today, but they're seemingly missing the point, and have taken on little more than the name. There's a Le Chat Noir in Augusta, GA, for instance, and in Washington, DC and in New Orleans. While we're sure they're all fine places to drink and see a show, they lack the prerequisite timelessness and taste-transcending "no limits" attitude that Catclaw and The Voraxium exude in spades.

Lux Interior: Aloha From Hell

2009-02-05T16:27:00.006-05:00

Lux Interior of The Cramps has moved on to a planet a galaxy away.

At the age of 62, Lux passed away due to what the papers are calling only "a pre-existing heart condition". For those of you who are only peripherally aware of His Luxitude, he and his lovely wife Poison Ivy fronted one of the greatest rock and roll bands in history, one whose self-determinism knew no boundaries.

Some quotations from Chairman Lux:

"I can teach you how to read the book of life,
you can just look at the pictures if you like."
- "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love"

"They say that virtue is its own reward
But when that sun comes in I'm gonna get my board
I got my own ideas about the righteous kick
You can keep the rewards, I'd just as soon stay sick."
- "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"

Black Mass Radio Drama

2009-02-04T01:35:00.003-05:00

Although Theater Five was one of the last radio programs to carry the tattered flag of radio plays into the post-Television era, it wasn't the only. From 1963 to 1967, a show called Black Mass aired sporadically on radio station KPFA in Berkeley and KPFK in Los Angeles.

Black Mass offered radio dramatizations of dark stories from the likes of Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Saki, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Bram Stoker, and even Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Thankfully, their productions are not completely lost: 31 installments of the show are preserved online.

Listen: 31 Episodes of Black Mass

Theater Five

2009-02-03T21:00:00.005-05:00

Almost immediately after the invention of radio, one of the first things people started doing with it was staging radio plays. The genre of radio theatre enjoyed its heyday during the 20s, 30s and 40s.

By 1964 however, radio dramas were all but unheard of. That's what made the ABC radio network's Theater Five so interesting, as it tried creatively (but unsuccessfully) to keep the theatre of the airwaves alive.

In so doing, they painted a rather odd and idiosyncratic view of the world which comes into focus as you step back and look at the totality of subjects they chose to portray. Science fiction and outer space themes were common, and coexisted alongside detective stories, psychological dramas, and just plain uncategorizable tales. In order to cram a lot of plot into their short time slot (half hour programs, including commercials), they used a lot of extreme storytelling shorthand, giving some of the episodes a fascinatingly incongruous feel.

Listen: 256 complete episodes of Theater Five

Hopper

2009-02-01T22:48:00.004-05:00

Morning in a City by Edward Hopper, 1944, oil on canvas.

Chop Suey by Edward Hopper, 1929, oil on canvas.

"What is Truth?"

2009-01-31T00:00:00.004-05:00

One of the the greatest poetic litanies of the Beat Generation came not from Kerouac, Burroughs nor Ginsberg, but from the mind of Hollywood hack writer Mel Welles:

Now there's a race for space,
We can cough blood on the moon soon;
Tomorrow is dragsville, cats,
Tomorrow is a king-size drag.

Check out this quasi-bohemian para-Voraxical clip from the 1958 teenybopper exploitation flick "High School Confidential". That's Phillipa Fallon as the beatnik chick, and Jackie "Uncle Fester" Coogan poundin' the eighty-eights and staring at her rear end.

View: Phillipa Fallon - High School Drag

Above: The audience at a Voraxium show, bummed by the utter lack of commercial entertainment potential.

Wacky Dust

2009-01-30T14:48:00.009-05:00

According to Wikipedia:

When the Spaniards conquered South America, they at first ignored aboriginal claims that the coca leaf gave them strength and energy, and declared the practice of chewing it the work of The Devil. But after discovering that these claims were true, they legalized and taxed the leaf, taking 10% off the value of each crop. In 1569, Nicolás Monardes described the practice of the natives of chewing a mixture of tobacco and coca leaves to induce "great contentment".

The opium poppy was cultivated in lower Mesopotamia as long ago as 3400 BC.[4] The chemical analysis of opium in the 19th century revealed that most of its activity could be ascribed to two ingredients, codeine and morphine. The Bayer pharmaceutical company would name the substance "heroin", probably from the word heroisch, German for heroic, because in field studies people using the medicine felt "heroic". From 1898 through to 1910 heroin was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. As with aspirin, Bayer lost some of its trademark rights to heroin under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles following the German defeat in World War I.

But Heavens to Betsy, Birdy, why on Earth would anyone mess with dangerous illicit drugs when Dry Tobacco Snuff is perfectly legal, healthier for you, and supports the hard-workin' farmin' man?

Listen: Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald - Wacky Dust (1938)

The Morey Amsterdam Show

2009-01-29T20:52:00.004-05:00

One of the great lost programs of early Television is The Morey Amsterdam Show, which ran from from 1948 to 1950 on the CBS and Dumont networks. Only a few fragments of these shows are known to exist today, because most of the kinescopes were destroyed.

The program was a showcase for Vaudeville/Burlesque veteran Morey Amsterdam to host a variety show as the emcee at a fictional New York City nightclub, the "Golden Goose Cafe" ("Silver Swan Cafe" in later episodes). Art Carney, Vic Damone and Jacqueline Susann made regular appearances.

Although probably best known as Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s and a frequent panelist on Match Game in the 1970s, Morey's real glory came in the 1920s and 1930s, where he worked as am actor, comedian and cellist in many theatres and venues, including a speakeasy run by Al Capone. He was sometimes billed as "The Human Joke Machine" because of his inexhaustible repertoire and ability to improvise.

View: Partial episode of The Morey Amsterdam Show, circa 1949

Nightclubs of Northern Kentucky

2009-01-28T01:55:00.009-05:00

In the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, Northern Kentucky (the Newport area) was the nation's mecca for casinos, strip clubs, porno theatres, illicit gambling, liquor stores, taverns, burlesque halls, pervy private clubs, disreputable cabarets and piano bars, sleazy country clubs, speakeasies, opium dens, brothels, mobster hangouts, seedy bookstores and no-tell motels.

Though not quite as transcendentally amoral as the Weimar Republic, the glory days of Northern Kentucky were a heady and dizzying hell-ride through the underbelly of America's underbelly. Even celebs like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Joey Bishop came to Kentucky to party during Newport's heyday.

Unfortunately, the forces of purity, piousness and clean living began to put the pressure on, and eventually the party was over. The mob packed up their tommy guns, the showgirls packed up their feather boas, and the action all moved out West to a little nothing spot in the desert called Las Vegas. By the 1970s, Newport was no longer known as "Sin City" and Kentucky's reputation for decadent libertinism was dead.

But as Bruce Springsteen once said, "Everything that dies, one day comes back". We're absolutely certain of it.

Postcards shown, top to bottom:

Glenn Schmidt's, 18 E. 5th St., Newport, KY

Club Alexandria, 2124 Alexandria Pike, Newport, KY

The Silver Slipper, 613 Monmouth Street, Newport, KY

Jai Alai, 804 York St., Newport, KY (back of card reads "Delightful Piano cocktail Lounge. Our delicious drinks are made for the Connoisseur, priced for the average person. Your favorite music at Cocktail Hour and nightly from 7 P.M. 'til 5 A.M.")

Mary Wigman

2009-01-27T03:07:00.004-05:00

Mary Wigman (1886 – 1973) was a pioneer of modern and expressionist dance in Germany.

She studied under the noted occultist dancer Rudolf Laban and Professor Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, inventor of Eurhythmics, the music-and-movement educational technique (which Annie Lennox named her new wave band after in the early 1980s).

According to Wikipedia:

Mary Wigman's choreographies often employed non-Western instrumentation: fifes, bells, gongs, and drums from India, Thailand, Africa, and China. However, the primary musical accompaniment for her most well known dances was percussion, which contrasted greatly with her use of silence. Mary would often employ masks in her pieces, influenced again by non-western/tribal motifs, as well as ecstatic spinning. Her choreography was also inspirational to communist dance troupes in the 1930s in New York City.

What interests us most about Wigman, however, is the film clip of her "Witch Dance" routine, which must be seen to be believed:

View: Mary Wigman's Witch Dance

Tangerine

2009-01-26T21:22:00.007-05:00

The song "Tangerine" originally began as a 1941 show tune by Victor Schertzinger and Johnny Mercer, for the film The Fleet's In. Although sharing the title of the 1928 Paramount film starring Clara Bow and Jack Oakie, this The Fleet's In was not a remake; it was a film version of the 1933 stage play Sailor, Beware.

I haven't seen the film in question, so I don't know how in-context the song is with its lyrics that are clearly and plainly about a promiscuous woman whose reknown is global:

Tangerine, she is all they claim
With her eyes of night and lips as bright as flame
Tangerine, when she dances by,
Senoritas stare and caballeros sigh
And I've seen toasts to Tangerine
Raised in every bar across the Argentine!

There have been a number of strippers and burlesque performers who have taken on the Tangerine persona over the years, some overtly referencing the song. There was also, if memory serves me correctly, a comedienne using the Tangerine name who worked with Rudy Ray Moore in the 60s and 70s.

(Image from the Los Angeles Times, 1957.)

View: The Squadronaires - Tangerine (1942)

View: Lennie Tristano - Tangerine (1965)

View: Beegie Adair - Tangerine (2008)

Irene Dunne

2009-01-25T01:27:00.006-05:00

Most know Irene Dunne for her long string of successful films in the 1930s and 1940s such as I Remember Mama, Magnificent Obsession, Life With Father and Love Affair (in which you can see her singing "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" - see the link below).

Our concern here, however, is Irene's true glory years before selling out to Hollywood. After graduating from Loretta Academy in Kentucky, she went to Chicago and studied at Florenz Ziegfeld's Musical College, earning a diploma there in 1919. She'd originally set out to be a teacher but ended up being lured by an offer to play the lead in a 1920 road show of Irene.

She spent the 1920s working onstage nonstop, in productions like The Clinging Vine, Yours Truly and our personal favorite, Luckee Girl. It was a risque story about life in Paris and Irene got to sing lead on many numbers, such as "I Hate You", "Chiffon", and "A Flat in Montmartre". Unfortunately, the show closed on Broadway after only 81 performances.

In 1929 she was with Ziegfeld's production of Show Boat, and that's when a Hollywood talent scout spotted her talent and brought the o the West Coast. Though she went on to do many impressive films, it's a shame there isn't more to document her raw early years with Ziegfeld.

View: Irene Dunne sings "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

Vesta Tilley

2009-01-24T09:15:00.004-05:00

Lest anyone think that Drag Kings are a contemporary phenomenon, consider the case of Vesta Tilley, real name Matilda Powles.

Born in 1864 into a showbiz family, she began appearing onstage at the age of three. At the age of six, she played her first male character, "Pocket Sims Reeves", which was a parody of operatic vocalist Sims Reeves. By the age of eleven she was performing under the pseudonym Vesta Tilley.

The humor of her name is lost in modern times, as Vesta was the brand name of a very popular kind of matches, to the extent that many people in the 19th century referred to matches simply as "Vestas".

As Vesta grew up, she began to prefer playing male parts, saying that "I felt that I could express myself better if I were dressed as a boy", and eventually came to portray them exclusively. Although ostensibly her crossdressing was a theatrical device, she also made publicity appearances in public in full male drag and never breaking character. She was especially popular with women who saw her as a symbol of emancipation, and enjoyed her musical repertoire which almost always deconstructed gender roles in a playful way.

During World War I, Vesta and her husband contributed aggressively to the war effort, performing constantly for soldiers in hospitals and selling war bonds. Unfortunately, this led in turn to Vesta's showbiz demise: after the war, they were both commended for their charitable and humanitarian efforts, and her husband was knighted in 1919. Shortly thereafter he became a successful politician, and Matilda retired from Vaudeville at the age of 56.

Listen: Vesta Tilley - Following in Father's Footsteps

The Lupino Family

2009-01-23T13:18:00.014-05:00

Henry William George Lupino, better known to audiences as Lupino Lane, was born in London in 1892. He entered showbiz practically right out of the gate: at the age of four he appeared in a benefit variety show with Vesta Tilley, and soon thereafter performed as "Nipper" at the London Pavilion.

By 1924 he was in the Ziegfeld Follies, and in 1925 played in The Mikado on Broadway. His biggest claim to fame, however, was playing the character of Bill Snibson in the musical Twenty to One and its sequel Me and my Girl, the latter of which spawned the massive hit song "Lambeth Walk". Lupino Lane directed Me and my Girl as well as starring in it, for 1550 performances until 1940.

Lane invested his fortune he'd made from Me and my Girl and put it into restoring London's abandoned Gaiety Theatre, which had become a crumbling shell because of World War II bombings and years of neglect. Unfortunately, the task of renovating the enormous building exhausted his funds, and he failed to secure sufficient financial backing to finish it. He was forced to sell the unfinished building in 1950, and it was subsequently demolished in 1956.

Defeated and depressed, Lupino Lane died at the age of 67 in 1959.

Prior to Lane, there were centuries of showbiz performers in his family tree, most of them named George: Georgius Lupino was born in the 1500s and was an Italian puppeteer. George William Luppino, born 1632, was a singer, poet and puppeteer. George Charles Luppino, born 1661, was also a puppeteer. George Charles Luppino II, born 1683, was a dancer billed as "The Motion Master of Long Acre". George Richard Eastcourt Luppino was a dancer and apprentice to John Rich, founder of English Pantomime. Samuel George Lupino, born 1766, was a dancer and acrobat. George Hook Lupino was adopted into the Lupino family and became a dancer. He had 16 children, at least 10 of whom went on to careers in theatre, dance and vaudeville. George Lupino, born in 1853, performed in Drury Lane pantomimes of the 1890s.

This last George Lupino had a son named Stanley Lupino (1893–1942) who had quite a successful career in showbiz. His stage career included Phi-Phi (1922) and From Dover Street to Dixie (1923) at the London Pavilion, and at the Gaiety Theatre he did Love Lies (1929), Hold my Hand (1932), and Sporting Love (1934). His film career included a remake of Love Lies for the screen (1933), Happy (1933), You Made Me Love You (1933), Honeymoon for Three (1935) and Lucky to Me (1939).

Stanley's daughter, Ida Lupino, born in 1918, went on to a career of her own in film. She worked on film noir, quasi-noir, and proto-noir films such as The Light That Failed (1938), They Drive by Night (1940), Road House (1948), Not Wanted (1949), Outrage (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1952), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), The Big Knife (1955) and While the City Sleeps (1956). Some of these she also directed, making history as an early female film director and certainly the first female director of noir film.

For the next twenty years, Ida descended into mainstream television, working on shows such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Have Gun Will Travel, The Donna Reed Show, Columbo, Gilligan's Island, 77 Sunset Strip, The Streets of San Francisco, The Investigators, Switch, Ellery Queen, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Barnaby Jones, Medical Center, Family Affair, Mod Squad, Wild Wild West, The Rifleman, Bracken's World, Batman, Sam Benedict, Police Woman, Bonanza, The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Charlie's Angels, and Bewitched.

In 1975 she had a small part as Mrs. Emma Preston in the gloriously horrendous cult film The Devil's Rain with William Shatner, Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, John Travolta and Anton LaVey.

She retired in 1978 and died in 1995.

Berlin Operetta

2009-01-22T00:24:00.005-05:00

I found this passage in Peter Jelavich's book Berlin Cabaret to be particularly illuminating, especially as regards our own mission statement:

Although the old tradition of popular musical farces had died in the 1870s, the turn of the century saw the emergence of Berlin operetta. This new genre was quite literally an offspring of the variety show. The first Berlin operettas, composed by Paul Lincke (1866-1946), were one-act works that provided part of an evening's entertainment at the Apollotheater, a Vaudeville hall. His first hit was Frau Luna, which premiered on May 1, 1899. The audience was attracted not only by the liveliness of Lincke's music but also by the humor and the plot. The script, written by Heinrich Bolton-Baeckers, called for a group of Berliners to fly to the moon.

This not only allowed a revival of some of the Berlin character-types that had died along with the musical farces, but it also gave the set designers opportunity to create eye-catching decors. Moreover, the work adopted Vaudeville's propensity to feature production numbers with women in tights and outlandish costumes. The success of this combination induced Linke to compose a string of popular works (most notably Berliner Luft, 1904). Other composers and scriptwriters followed suit, as they cranked out a number of spectacular, evening-length "production number operettas".

Dolores Vallecita

2009-01-21T01:37:00.005-05:00

Who was Dolores Vallecita? That's what I'd like to know. Here's what I do know:

The Library of Congress photo archives includes the above photo of her in 1906, and the University of Washington library collection includes the below photo of her captioned "Dolores Vallecita, Vaudeville Entertainer".

There are references that mention her trained-leopard circus act being performed in a number of venues, including Coney Island's Luna Park.

Apparently she sometimes did her act as simply "Vallecita", and other times "Mademoiselle Vallecita". (Mademoiselle? According to an article index for Bandwagon magazine, Vallecita was from Spain.)

A book by Joe Laurie, Jr. called Vaudeville From The Honky Tonks To The Palace mentions her in passing:

But there were really some swell cat acts, like Adgie & Her Lions. She once put mirrors around the big cage to make the setting prettier, and it did, but she didn't rehearse the lions with the mirrors, so when they got into the cage and got a gander at themselves in the glass, they went wild. They had to remove the mirrors before the act could go on. There were Marck's Lions, Bert Nelson and His Lioness, Princess Pat, a very fierce animal (if she had been at that door in Germantown instead of the other one, I wouldn't be writing you now), Arnaldo's Leopard and Panthers, Furtell's Jungle Lions, Richard Herman's Jungle Kings, Dolores Vallecita's Leopards, and Captain Proske's Tigers. When me and Aggie worked on a bill with anything bigger than white mice, we called it "nervous weeks."

I'm intrigued by Dolores, and must know more....

Olga Desmond

2009-01-20T03:12:00.007-05:00

Olga Desmond was a Prussian dancer and actress born in 1891, infamous in her day for being one of the first to promote nudity onstage in theatre and dance.

In 1908 she caused a scandal in St. Petersburg, Russia with her fully nude performances entitled Olga Desmond’s Evenings of Beauty. In the Russian press, Desmond defended her right to appear naked:

"Call it daring or bold, or however you want to describe my appearance on the stage, but this requires art, and it (art) is my only deity, before whom I bow and for which I am prepared to make all possible sacrifices. I decided to break the centuries-old heavy chains, created by people themselves. When I go out on stage completely naked, I am not ashamed, I am not embarrassed, because I come out before the public just as I am, loving all that is beautiful and graceful. There was never a case when my appearance before the public evoked any cynical observations or dirty ideas."

When asked by a St. Petersburg reporter whether a dance costume would interfere with her expressions of her art onstage, Olga replied: "To be completely graceful in a costume or even in a tricot is unthinkable. And I decided to throw off this needless yoke."

Male nudity was even rarer in nude dance routines in those days, but early in her career she would often perform nude with a man named Adolf Salge, one of many men in her life over the years.

She appeared in a handful of German motion pictures, including 1915's Seifenblasen(Soap Bubbles), 1918's Der Mut zur Sünde (The Courage for sin), and 1919's Maria's Sonntagsgewand (Maria’s Sunday clothes).

By 1922 she was a successful and respected University ballet teacher in Berlin, who pushed the envelope of the school's rules by conducting classes with her students in the tiniest bikinis possible. Her most prodigious student was Hertha Feist, who went on to become a member of Rudolf von Laban's dance ensemble.

In 1937, for reasons not clear, Olga attempted suicide. She survived, however, and lived on until 1964. Although her illustrious and brave stage career is all but forgotten, her book Rhythmographik is still studied by many European dance enthusiasts even today.

Venom and Eternity

2009-01-19T00:47:00.003-05:00

Venom and Eternity is an avant-garde film by Isadore Isou, the crazed genius behind the Letterist movement in France. Although the Letterists had their theoretical roots in Dada and Surrealism and adored Tristan Tzara, they also sought to distance themselves from those previous art movements for some more daring and edgy, and yet also more all-encompassing. Isou and the Lettrists applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, novels, photography, architecture, painting and sociopolitics.

As Isou himself says in the film:

I believe firstly that the cinema is too rich. It is obese. It has reached its limits, its maximum. With the first movement of widening which it will outline, the cinema will burst! Under the blow of a congestion, this greased pig will tear into a thousand pieces. I announce the destruction of the cinema, the first apocalyptic sign of disjunction, of rupture, of this corpulent and bloated organization which calls itself film.

It's generally known by the name "Venom and Eternity" but the film's true title is Traité de bave et d’éternité, which translates literally as "Treatise of Saliva and Eternity".

View: Venom and Eternity

Lale Andersen

2009-01-18T12:58:00.011-05:00

Lale Andersen (real name Liese-Lotte Helene Berta Bunnenberg) was born in 1905 and produced a rich oeuvre of recordings that span from 1930s cabaret-chanteuse-torch songs to 1960s schlager-pop-balladry.

In 1929 she acted in productions at the Deutsches Theatre and studied acting at their Schauspielschule. She also performed onstage at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, Kabarett Simpl, and Kabarett der Komiker.

In 1939 she recorded the song "Lili Marleen", based on a 1915 poem by Hans Leip, and achieved superstardom on the song's success. Unfortunately, it also put her within the radar of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who ordered the record to be banned because it was too sad and demoralizing to Nazi troops. In truth, the Nazi soldiers adored the song along with Allied soldiers alike, and ultimately the song was too popular for Goebbels to supress - even Erwin Rommel of the Nazi Afrika Corps came out in favor of it. Nevertheless, Andersen was watched very closely by the Nazis during this time, and her cabaret appearances were tightly controlled and monitored.

After the war, Andersen found a new generation of fans in a new synthesis of American and German pop styles, known as "Schlager", with hits like "Jonny". But it's her early recordings we admire most, such as this tasty rendition of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's "Moritat von Macki Messer" (a song which gradually, over the course of decades, morphed into the song you may know as "Mack the Knife").

Listen: Lale Andersen - Moritat von Macki Messer

Above: a statue in honor of Andersen, on the island of Langeoog, where she is buried.

Weg Zum Nachbarn

2009-01-17T23:45:00.002-05:00

Weg Zum Nachbarn is a short film by Lutz Mommartz, 1968.

View it here.

Cabaret of the Nameless

2009-01-16T01:45:00.009-05:00

Kabarett der Namenlosen, or Cabaret of the Nameless, was one of the wildest and most taste-defying venues of the great Weimar Republic circa 1926 to 1932. And they also just happen to be a key part of understanding our own metachronistic aesthetic in Catclaw and especially The Voraxium.

The Cabaret's artistic director and emcee, Erwin Lowinsky (under the pseudonym "Elow") sought out some of the worst and weirdest aspiring entertainers in Europe, and booked at them at his show, telling them that this was their "big break" and that many a performer at Kabarett der Namenlosen went on to great showbiz success. He told them that the audience was filled with talent scouts, Broadway executives, record label reps, etc.

It was all a lie.

The truth was, the entire cabaret was designed to deliberately showcase these raw talents in a freak-show context, totally unbeknownst to the hapless performers. Think of it as if American Idol contestants ended up being submitted to a tacky and jeering Gong Show treatment.

As Mel Gordon's Voluptuous Panic puts it:

Typically, the clueless entertainers try to imitate the work of established Cabaret personalities, and proceed to humiliate themselves completely in their numbing attempts. While audience members drunkenly interrupt and boo the wretched losers, Elow unctuously takes the part of a kindly uncle or philanthropist and encourages the amateurs to ignore the vicious Philistines and continue their rotten singing, juggling, storytelling, impersonations, or poetry recitals.

And as Erich Kästner wrote in 1929:

The more incompentent and ignorant the poor artist-to-be is, the more welcome he is to the producer. And the more hospitably Elow's public accepts him. For the whole point here in the Cabaret of the Nameless is to laugh oneself silly at stupid and pathological human beings.... the ancient Romans turned their thumbs down when the vanquished was to be dealt the death blow. Here, they scream: "Keep him up there, Elow! He's soooo good!! Let him start over from the beginning!"

So does this mean we look upon our own performers with equal derision? Absolutely not; just the opposite. We take an all-inclusive view of the concept of "entertainment"; one that steps back and takes into account the whole of existence, and with this comes a greater willingness to embrace so-called "difficult" music and theatre.

To put it more plainly and also more arrogantly, we transcended long ago the average citizen's limited views on what is "good" and "bad", because we're looking at a bigger picture - the big picture.

If were we able to go back in time and visit Kabarett der Namenlosen, we would be thrilled to have the chance to rescue these performers from their situation and bring them back to here and now, where we would give them the star treatment they truly deserved, utterly devoid of condescention and irony.

The Comedian Harmonists

2009-01-15T00:36:00.000-05:00

In 1927, an out-of-work actor in Berlin named Harry Frommermann created a vocal harmony group called the Comedian Harmonists that produced some of the strangest and most idiosyncratically alluring music ever recorded. These six men (five vocalists and one pianist) took Europe by storm and were the most popular pre-war European act, releasing scores of recordings and at least a dozen films during their short but bright comet of a career.

The rise of Hitler and the Nazis spelled the end of the group, as half of them were Jewish. They were forced to flee to other countries, soon disbanding.

Although their music sounds bizarre today to some modern ears to the point of eliciting laughter, the Comedian Harmonists weren't necessarily "comedy" as we understand the term in America today. German humor is, for linguistic reasons, constructed differently to English-language humor, although the fact they chose an English-language indicates a predisposition towards more "modern" and British influences, as opposed to if they'd used the actual German word "Komödie".

Listen: Comedian Harmonists - Perpetuum Mobile

Listen: Comedian Harmonists - Schnappi

Listen: Comedian Harmonists - Mein Kleiner Gruner Kaktus