When vaudeville was written down as "spice", however, I had in mind not so much its offences against propriety as its appeal to palates that would reject solid food. Vaudeville addresses itself to amusement seekers incapable of giving, or unwilling to give, concentrated and continuous attention. This kind of entertainment calls for orderliness of mind no more than does the newspaper headline. There is no sequence of thought to be preserved, no logical procession of ideas to be kept in line; the impression of the moment is sufficient and supreme. Naturally, such a performance is attractive to undisciplined brains, to empty brains, and to lazy brains. You need bring to a vaudeville theater nothing but the price of admission.... It is this same asking little that has made the popularity of moving pictures.
Vaudeville has about the same relation to the "theatrical business" that insurance bears to other business. When a business man has failed at everything else he tries selling insurance; when a prominent actor has "closed" twice or three times in rapid succession he "goes into vaudeville." The better element is infused without fusing. The regulars are inclined to look askance at these volunteers, resenting the fact that the latter use as a make-shift what they have adopted as a profession, and insisting, often not without justice, that, "while big names may draw the crowds, it is our work that holds 'em." I'm afraid the attitude of many recruits does not tend to lessen this friction. "Is there a 'star dressing room?'" a well-known prima donna inquired loftily as she entered the theater where she was to make her debut in "the two a day."
The juggler to whom the question was put, replied: "Yes ... for falling stars!"
However, many of these "falling stars" perform the strange astronomical feat of climbing back into the heavens. A very large number of the men and women at present heading their own companies have descended into vaudeville, as Antaeus occasionally descended to earth, to renew their strength. One attractive play and Mr. V. Headliner becomes Mr. Broadway Star. Robert Hilliard had been in the varieties for years when he was restored to "the legitimate" by Porter Emerson Browne's "A Fool There Was." Sarah Bernhardt, as everybody knows, appeared at a music hall in London en route to fill her latest engagement in America. Here we have no "Divine Sarah", but vaudeville has sung its siren-song successfully to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Lily Langtry, Charles Hawtrey, Henrietta Crosman, Henry Miller, Arnold Daly, Lillian Russell, and numberless other mimes of great reputation. This song is most aggravating to producers of musical comedy, whose performers, when the librettist insists upon the preservation of some of his text or when their names do not appear in sufficiently large type on the program, always are ready to "go into vaudeville."
"You need bring to a vaudeville theatre nothing but the price of admission"
A list of people at present offering one-act plays discloses no fewer than twenty actors and actresses of recognized ability. There is Marietta Olly, who did capital work in "The Whirlwind" at Daly's, and Nat C. Goodwin, who, truth to tell, draws a big salary less because of his histrionic than because of his matrimonial versatility. Frank Keenan, Edward Ables, and Maclyn Arbuckle, who has made a hit in Robert Davis' clever comedietta, "The Welcher", have been stars within the twelvemonth and are now in vaudeville, as are also Amelia Bingham, W. H. Thompson, Charles Richman, William Courtleigh, George Beban, Lionel Barrymore, McKee Rankin, Edwin Arden, Sam Chip and Mary Marble. Vaudeville produces its own luminaries, too—Cissie Loftus, for example, and Elsie Janis, who "did a specialty" for years before she was taken up by Charles Dillingham.
Many of the cleverest entertainers in the world are identified exclusively with the varieties. There are Yvette Guilbert, Albert Chevalier, Harry Lauder, and Alice Lloyd, each of whom has a following as large and appreciative as that of Maude Adams or John Drew. Other players, less widely known, go round the circuits year after year, making themselves solid with a class of theater-goers that has come to depend upon them for half an hour of amusement. Cressy and Dayne are among these, as are Mr. and Mrs. Perkins D. Fisher, Clayton White, Carrie de Mar, Irene Franklin and Tom Nawn. George Cohan's career began in vaudeville, and no one who has owed twenty minutes of laughter to his ability as a racounteur will ever forget the late Ezra Kendal. Such men as Jesse Lasky and Joseph Hart, recognizing the opportunities of "the two a day", have made elaborate productions of what really are little musical comedies, and have presented them as part of regular variety bills. Mr. Lasky's "The Love Waltz" and "At the Country Club" were as pretentiously staged as any single act in a comic opera.
It is not my desire or disposition to deny the cleverness of these people or the attractiveness of their "turns." I doubt that today the most wearied theater-goer could find a vaudeville bill without one or two numbers that would entertain him. The point is that this amusement-seeker would be obliged to take a vast quantity of chaff with his wheat, to review an endless procession of clog dancers, trick bicyclists, wire walkers, trained animals, tramp comedians, acrobats and equilibrists before coming to that part of the program which might interest him. Most of these fillers-in are notable chiefly for the awe-inspiring quality of their English, and for their persistence in performing dangerous feats that, when performed, add nothing to the sum total of human happiness, knowledge or pleasure. I haven't been able to discover why anybody should want to see a lion stand on its head, or a gentleman tie his legs in a true lovers' knot, and I shall never understand the public penchant for hearing "The Anvil Chorus" played on tin cans, since it can be played so much better on a piano. One always thinks of the wit who, being informed enthusiastically that some stunt or other was "very difficult", replied: "I wish it were impossible."