Family Archive

Searching Vaudeville

Discovered a Program/Playbill circa 1921 in my archive from another stop on the Orpheum Circuit, the Hennepin Theater in Minneapolis. On this bill, Harry Delf not only performed his notable comedy and dance routines but also wrote the headlining number, a "Dramatic Incident in Five Parts" titled "The Joker" featuring Silent Film star Ethel Clayton.

At the suggestion of a "Family Archive" reader in a comment to my post Continuous Vaudeville http://cityvoice.typepad.com/family_archive/2009/11/continuous-vaudeville.html I've made it my standard practice to search (Google, IMDB, IBDB and Wikipedia) the performers listed on these Program/Playbills that shared the stage with my Vaudeville relatives. As well as yielding many fascinating and unique stories, what I've learned from these searches has helped me put the Era into a broader historical context. While some of these performers haven't been household names for close to a Century, I would argue, they were the first generation pioneers and the origin of what we think of today as the Modern Entertainment Industry. Take Ethel Clayton for example from a quick search I learned: she was born in 1882 in Champaign Illinois. She started out as a stage actress eventually landing starring roles. She made her first film "Justified" a silent short in early 1909 and had 3 other credited roles that year. She was in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911. The IMDB mentions her as having 189 credited and uncredited film appearances roughly 2/3 were in Silents. She made her last film appearance in 1947 in "The Perils of Pauline".

When you consider that Edison's "The Great Train Robbery", generally recognized as the first narrative film, came out in 1903 and Clayton's film career started in 1909 and lasted 38 years and that during this period she was performing on a stage with Fanny Brice and Bert Williams in the Ziegfeld Follies a few years after it was founded; for my money these seem like ample credentials to justify the status Pioneer of the Modern Entertainment Industry. 

 

Continuous Vaudeville

The Vaudeville Era was a quirky period of America's history. For many it was their big chance to break into the new and rapidly emerging entertainment industry. Several of the great performers from  Hollywood's Golden Age cut their teeth on the Vaudeville stage. Shortly before the turn of the century, Vaudeville Theaters started popping up all over the United States. Circuits or chains of inter-state Theaters owned by an individual or group were formed to insure both the maximum exposure of the entertainers and that they played only the venues that were owned by the individual/group they were under contract with. The performers traveled the Circuits by train, sometimes playing a venue for only a single day then moving on to the next Theater in the chain. The managers of these Theaters were a shifty but resourceful bunch. They answered directly to the owners and were under constant pressure to keep revenues increasing. Sometimes to realize these financial expectations they were forced to develop new marketing schemes designed to increase profitability. Out of this came ideas like starting the shows in the morning and running them consecutively deep into the night, a practice that became known as "Continuous Vaudeville." The managers designed the shows to bring an audience in, keep them entertained for a couple of hours and then move them out of there. What emerged from this plan looked somewhat like a baseball lineup. Each act was given a position on the bill with a particular purpose to it. The first acts got the audience warmed up while the crowd came in and found their seats. Then came the headlining acts, which were the heart of the lineup. These were followed by the finishing acts which were arranged to help facilitate the crowd's exit from the Theater. These last acts were often so distasteful or just plain bad they would efferctively clear the hall enabling the managers to refill the vacated seats with a whole new crop of paying customers for the next show.

My Grandfather Harry and Great Aunt Juliet were both headliners and "top billers" on the Orpheum Circuit. They spent part of the year performing from Theater to Theater in the Midwestern United States eventually winding up at the end of the circuit in California.

PS 68

So far I've focused on still photography as a cornerstone of the family archive but other artifacts can be equally or more enlightening depending on the resources you have available to you, what you're trying to figure out and how deep you're willing to dig. Here is a piece from the turn of the century which taught me something interesting by leading me to a new stream of questioning to follow.

This is a certificate a child received from the city school system after finishing third grade. Harry Rosenfeld had received this certificate after finishing third grade at PS 68. Who was Harry Rosenfeld? I googled PS 68 and found out it was on Monticello Ave in the Bronx. I figured it had to be my Grandfather. I found it in a box of his stuff. I remembered that my father had told me that his grandfather, my great grandfather had been born in New York so that would mean that if I was right and Harry Rosenfeld was my grandfather then it would have to have been either my father or him that changed our family name to Delf after already having been here in NYC for at least 2 generations and that didn't make sense to me. I called my dad at work and started firing questions at him.

What I eventually learned was that Harry Rosenfeld was my Grandfather and that it was he who had changed the name. He had dropped the Rosen and reconfigured the letters of Feld to come up with Delf to use as his stage name on the Vaudeville circuits. At the time his sister, my great aunt Juliet went by the name Juliet? which transitioned to Miss Juliet and eventually into Juliet Delf and the  family name wound up sticking.

Its amazing what you can learn with a little deduction and taking the time ask.

Old Things

I've always been attracted to old things. There's something innately valuable about them.  They trigger a pleasure center by disrupting the context of the present world while providing insights into the future. Some people refer to this as history others might think its a form of escapism, still others call it nostalgia,  however you want to tag it, I'm drawn to it. Other than as decorations  what can you do with old things? How do you use them? learn from them? What are the factors that make  material  items evolve into new forms and make their predecessor old? Better technology. Is technology always better?  How is a passion for old things compatible with the current technological revolution and 2.0 world?  

I'm also intrigued and always pulled in by family stories and dynamics. People preserve their histories and legacies differently; heirlooms, lore, photographs, etc. But they're almost always handed down by way of the family. Sometimes they're simply given over by a parent or relative other times they can be discovered through  less traditional or expected paths.

These are my first thoughts and queries as I enter the blogging arena. A few years ago, I stumbled on a remarkable collection of personal family history  at the top of a closet in my parent's apartment. Some of my findings are over a century old and covered several different types of media. Since then I've immersed myself in this discovery and  figuring out how to "handle it"; to use the resources available to me to learn about, catalog, preserve, write about and ultimately pass it on to my kids and their families. 

In this space I hope to share the knowledge and insights I gained through this experience and hopefully get others to share their interesting family stories, discoveries and archives with me.