Philadelphia Vaudeville!

Copyright 2023 Peter Schmitz - All Rights Reserved

 [AITH OPENING MUSIC]

Welcome back to Adventures in Theater History!  Here on this show we bring you the best stories from the deep and fascinating history of theater in the city of Philadelphia. I’m your host Peter Schmitz. Our sound engineering for this episode, as well as our original theme music, is by Christopher Mark Colucci. This is our long-awaited and oft-promised Vaudeville Episode! Since we are just starting our season about “Philadelphia, the Tryout Town” we could not possibly ignore vaudeville, a mode of theatrical entertainment that brought a continual rotation of new performers into the city’s theaters, many of them trying out new material and acts every week. So . . .  the Philadelphia Vaudeville Show, here we go!

[“THE TRYOUT TOWN” Season THEME , segue to MUSIC, UNDER]

 In the year 1909, vaudeville was maybe at its peak in America. There were thousands of vaudeville theaters across the USA, both Big Time and Small Time. And we’re not even counting the burlesque theaters, the minstrel halls, the summertime resorts, the seaside boardwalk theaters, beer halls and cheap dime museums. All of these featured entertainment that fell under what was broadly called “Variety” - as opposed to what was termed “legitimate” or “legit” theater - scripted plays that were produced as one long unified story. There was a national publication that was founded to serve the variety business and cover all its goings-on, called, of course, Variety. (It still exists today, although mainly it covers movies and television.) Vaudeville was a type of show that would appeal to a mass audience, serially, as the various organized vaudeville circuits shuttled performers from city to city. It alway promised ‘respectable’ entertainment, safe for women and children to enjoy, not just the louche entertainment formerly found at beer halls and saloons. For the most part bawdy material was prohibited by management - although often the subtext was clearly there, in many acts. But the French word “vaudeville” had been slapped on the variety business in America to show that it was, you know, classy. Sometimes promoters would call it “advanced vaudeville”, to make it sound even MORE classy. [02:52 - MUSIC OUT]

Vaudeville flourished from about 1880 when Tony Pastor - a former minstrel and circus man in New York, first used the term at his 14th Street theater. In this show business model individual acts would be presented on bills of about eight to fifteen acts each. And these bills would be repeated throughout each day, for runs that usually last for a week, and then another bill of performers would be brought in to take their place - or, if they were good, they were “held over.” Admission at vaudeville theaters was cheap, 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents - maybe a dollar in the big houses, if you sat in the fancy seats - but on the whole it was eminently affordable.

The constantly changing bills at vaudeville houses offered the complete gamut of entertainment - from melodrama one-acts, to jugglers, wire walkers, ballroom dancers . .  to eccentric singers to animal acts to magicians. Knife throwers, tap dancers, rope tricks, elocutionists, monologuists, all-girl bands, all-animal bands, female impersonators, male impersonators . .  Anything, anything at all really that could grab an audience's attention for 10 to 18 minutes. It was fast, it was fashionable. It was widespread. It was the TikTok of its day. In a way, it was the great democratic machine of showbiz - everybody could be a star. If you could get an act together, and perfect it and market it, maybe you could be a big star in vaudeville, too, like the escape artists Harry Houdini or the wildly energetic singer Eva Tanguay or the duo of Weber and Fields, with their sure-fire routines of round-bellied “Dutch” - or German - character comedy. In fact, this being early 20th Century America there were plenty of ethnic comedians, doing routines and skits that poked fun at Irish people, at Jewish people, at Germans, at Brits, at the Chinese and the Japanese - and of course, there were lots and lots of blackface comedians - both white and black. 

Now, not everybody appreciated these caricatures. We’ve heard about how the NAACP was founded to protest the movie “Birth of a Nation”, well you know the Anti-Defamation League was first founded to protest the portrayal of Jewish people in vaudeville shows. As were Hibernian Leagues set up to protest the portrayal of Irish characters. It was a great time for Reform and Social Activism, of course, the ASPCA didn’t like all performing animals onstage, and the Anti- Child Labor leagues were looking for kids who weren’t in school, but instead were performing in their parents’ acts. 

But in spite of that there were lots of kids onstage - there were also performing dogs and diving ladies and quick-drawing cartoonists. Anything you could put into that eight to fifteen-minute routine, grab all the applause and adulation - or boos - that you could get - and then pass on the stage to the next act. 

Vaudeville attained a real top period - real money began coming in - during the first 25 years of the Twentieth century, and then kept going up into the 1930s when - facing competition from more powerful mass media like films and radio - and eventually TV - most vaudeville houses began to close and those that weren’t were converted into movie theaters.. But wait wait wait, we don’t want to talk about the end yet - not before we even begin!

So, I’m not going to do a comprehensive history of vaudeville - that would carry us far away from Philadelphia, and take dozens of shows. Let’s just define Vaudeville as professional American variety theater, that was organized and commodified on a national level - and the performers tended to gravel a lot, in circuits, and remember this was a time when everything from oil to steel to railroads to crime syndicates were organized on a national level. 

In the year we’re starting the story today, 1909, there were several new and major vaudeville theaters in the city of Philadelphia. There was the Liberty Theatre, up on North Broad and Columbia (now called Cecil B. Moore) in North Philadelphia. There was the William Penn, on Lancaster Avenue and 40th Street out in West Philadelphia. The People’s Theatre (formerly a legitimate house) was up in the northeastern industrial area of Kensington. In the Central business district of Philadelphia, there was the Casino Theatre - a sturdy-looking castle of a structure, which was mostly known for racy burlesque acts, really. It was on the same block as the Walnut Street Theatre, near Washington Square - indeed the old Walnut itself was known to host vaudeville acts at times, as did the reliable Chestnut Street Opera House, which had been a ‘family resort’ since the 1870s. The Standard Theatre on South Street in 1909 had recently switched to vaudeville - although amazingly its management still did not directly cater to its neighborhood’s largely African American population or hire primarily black entertainers.

What were other vaudeville theaters of the time? Well, there was a short-lived venue called “The Unique” on the north side of East Market Street, west of 12th - that combined movies along with live acts, that was a very common thing as the century went on. Also recently opening on East Market was the Victoria Theatre, with a long narrow building that - along with the live acts - also featured movie shows produced by Philadelphia’s Seigmund Lubin. Many of these houses offered four shows a day, some were what was called “two-a-days,” with a full slate of acts every afternoon and evening, Monday through Saturday. But Forepaugh’s Theatre, in the seedy Tenderloin Neighborhood on 8th Street near Franklin Square, only offered small-time vaudeville acts from noon to midnight, in what was called “continuous vaudeville.” (So there’d be a full bill of performers, and then they’d start again right where they began! And of course you’d want to turn over the house, so the final act was what they’d call A Chaser or someone who would Play to the Haircuts - an act that was so boring and predictable and dull that people would rather leave the theater rather than sit through the whole act again.)  Nearby Forepaugh’s Theatre was the Bijou, which had recently stopped offering vaudeville and was now a burlesque house. And of course there was the old Dime Museum on 9th and Arch, which offered low-end acts. Their performers (anything from dancing chickens to snake charmers to ventriloquists) might have to do over a dozen shows a day. But hey, the work was regular.

[MUSIC  UNDER]

But let's stick with the Big Time - major vaudeville circuits employing the popular and highly-compensated acts. In 1902, the Keith-Albee chain, which was run by two famously mean and greedy New Englanders who had originally started with dime museums themselves, but  who now had big theaters in Boston, Providence, and Hartford. Not satisfied with the return on the Bijou on Arch (which they had built), they ordered the construction of a new high status venue, the grand Keith Theatre on the south side of Chestnut Street, near all the big department stores, between 11th and 12th. It also offered “continuous vaudeville” from 1:30 to 10:30 pm, every day but Sunday. 

Though the impressive and striking high-arched main entrance of the Keith was on Chestnut, with illuminated signs touting the main acts that were appearing that week, the lobby stretched all the way to Sansom Street where the main auditorium was. Like other Keith-Albee Theaters elsewhere, its lounges and lobbies were all expensively appointed and decorated with marble and crystal chandeliers. It was meant to make every patron feel pampered and appreciated like royalty, no matter how far up in the gallery they sat. In all, over 2200 people could be accommodated. And in return, good audience behavior was expected, too. The ushers would throw you out if you acted in a rude way. And everyone depended upon that order and feeling Normalcy throughout the house. [FADE MUSIC OUT]

On its opening day, November 2, 1902, perhaps because it was a Monday afternoon, the entertainment was intended to appeal to middle class female audiences who would have the time and resources to stop by - perhaps they’d finished shopping in the nearby Wanamaker's Department Store. The headline opening act was the Fadette Boston All-Woman Orchestra directed by Carrie Nichols ("The Female Sousa''). Also on the bill was Milly Capell the female equestrienne riding her trained Arabian horse - right on the stage - along with a number of her “clever dogs.” The principal comedians were Eddie Girard and Jessie Gardner, who brought their amusing sketch "The Soubrette and the Cop." Appearing farther down the list was R.J. Jose "the sweetest voiced ballad singer in America," and the Martinelli Troupe ("One of the Best High Acrobatic Organizations in the Country").

Reported the Philadelphia Inquirer "The balance of the show includes the usual types of variety, such as German comedians, song and dance artists, banjo players, jugglers and the like". There were also two blackface minstrel acts: Crane Brothers & Belmont, and Lew Simmons & Frank White (with their number "Get in the de Band Wagon'). And although vaudeville performers could be famously status conscious about Where Exactly They Appeared on the bill - the headlining act came second to last - backstage, there were apparently no arguments allowed over who got the “Star” dressing room. Keith had eliminated such distinctions, and all backstage accommodations for the talent were completely the same.

Even though the payroll of all these acts might run to ten thousand dollars a week, the house always made a profit for its owners and it was almost always packed. Everyone who came to see it marveled at it. The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, in that first week, said the new theater could be “pointed at with pride to all strangers as Philadelphia's grandest public edifice” - in fact one of the grandest in the world - which was stretching it a bit, but still, that’s how people felt. Wrote the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, it was “a monument raised by the public to clean attractive, wholesome theatrical performances - a public tribute to decency and morality.” (I don’t know why they thought the public had built this theater, because it certainly was built by private business interests - it wasn’t meant to benefit the public, it was meant to benefit Mr. Keith and Mr. Albee.)

So, a venture, well started But now we jump ahead to November 15, 1909. By this point, Keith’s management had shifted the policy to afternoon matinee bills, as well as an evening “star” bill for select performers. And they had quite a headliner that particular evening, because the featured act on the bill that Monday was a charming comedienne - the French singer Yvette Guilbert!

[MUSIC UNDER]

Her appearance had been highly touted in the Sunday newspapers only the day before. "One of the chief features on the bill!" said the Inquirer. "The Parisian comedienne and character artiste . . . will, on this occasion, sing selections from both English and French songs, having . . brought an entirely new repertory."  But despite the buildup for her act I’m sorry to report Guilbert flopped at Keith's. The rules of vaudeville were pretty brutal - either the audience liked you or they didn’t, and as much as performers strove mightily to connect directly with the audience, to curry favor with them, to win their hearts and open admiration. When you ‘got over’, it was the greatest feeling in the world, but if you didn’t make that connection, well there was no hiding it. And next week you might be dropped from the bill, or dropped from the circuit entirely.

So it was disappointing, because Guilbert was already well-known in America, or even in Philadelphia - the toast of Parisian variety theaters, her success had been reported about in every newspaper for years. She was one of the highest-paid entertainers in all of France. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, in his artistic renderings of fin-de-siecle Paris, had painted her portrait many times. In 1895 our old friend Oscar Hammerstein - who remember was a vaudeville tycoon as well as an opera impresario - had recruited her to come to America and perform at his Olympia Theatre in New York. That engagement had gone so sensationally, that the Philadelphia theater kingpins Nixon and Zimmerman had brought Guildbert down for a special one night engagement at the Chestnut Street Opera House in January 1896. There, with a full orchestra, standing almost stock-still, the tall and gangly redheaded chanteuse performed her witty and charming half-sung/half spoken repertoire - and the audience, that time, loved it.  [MUSIC OUT] 

 Ten years later, in 1906, now under the management of her American husband, Dr. Liebler, Guilbert had returned to Philadelphia, this time performing at the Academy of Music, along with other famous French singers, like Albert Chevalier. She was a very well-known celebrity - in fact, other vaudeville artists often impersonated her as part of their own acts.

Now, in 1909 she was back again at Keith’s, as usual she appeared onstage in a comically old-fashioned gown in the fashion of fifty years ago, with her hair piled up on her head. Guilbert, having been tutored by her husband in English, sang the numbers "Keys of Heaven'' and "Mary the Maid Servant," and then she followed up with her other sure-fire repertoire in French. Class and subtle humor was her forte. Charles Barnes, the manager of Keith's , had booked her because he believed her artistic reputation made her the perfect symbol of respectability, and that she was likely to draw "Society people" to his huge new theater on Chestnut Street.

However, as far as that Philadelphia crowd on that Monday night was concerned, these songs just did not "go over," as the saying went in Vaudeville. So What Had Gone Wrong?

[MUSIC UNDER]

Well, fatally, Guilbert had been preceded on the stage by the American singing duo of Dolly Connolly and Percy Wenrich, whose lively songs (including "The Red Rose Rag" and “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee”) had gone over like gangbusters, and the audience clearly had preferred these high-energy rhythmic numbers.

Now, even worse for the classy French lady, Guilbert was immediately followed in order of performance by the slapstick blackface comedian Jack Wilson, who headed a group called "The Jack Wilson Trio." Wilson had been playing at Keith's the previous week, too, and had been such a hit that he was "held over" for another one. This evening he pulled the stunt of doing a burlesque of an earlier act's skit, which the crowd found hilarious. In fact the Philly audience (who had dismissed Guilbert with polite but brief applause), would not let Wilson leave the stage. His usual twelve minute act was stretched to a full half hour as he did encore after encore.  Wilson finally had to make a speech to quiet the audience, just so he could leave the stage at last. [MUSIC UP for eight seconds, then FADE OUT at about 1:55 in video]

In his nightly backstage report to his employers, Charles Barnes wrote: "It is unfortunate, perhaps, but still true that this comedian following the mild success of Guilbert was a positive riot." 

The review in next week’s edition of Variety, was even more blunt about the Frenchwoman's Philadelphia Failure. "Guilbert is the type not entertaining to the ordinary vaudeville audience," ruled Variety. Perhaps she would play better farther up Broad Street, at Oscar Hammerstein's new Opera House. Maybe that's where the Philadelphia "Society people" could be found.

TRANSITION MUSIC, UNDER]

 Now Philadelphia was never a leader in the vaudeville business, I don’t want to pretend that it was -  that’s not what this show is about - most of the energy of the vaudeville came from other places. New York, overwhelmingly, was where all the cultural energy was those days. But you know, for a place that was a leader in so many other industries, for some reason, Philadelphia theater owners just never made a real go of it in vaudeville. Instead it was Keith and Albee in Boston, Poli in New Haven, Hammerstein and Proctor in New York, Percy Williams in Brooklyn, Martin Beck in San Francisco . . [21:00 - FADE OUT MUSIC] Well there was one exception: in 1907, Nixon and Zimmerman, Philadelphia’s local members of the Theatrical Syndicate, teamed up with their rivals, the up-and-coming Shubert Brothers, in order to create a joint venture that they thought could challenge the other big Vaudeville movers and shakers. That’s why they built the Forrest Theatre in 1907  - it was intended as a place for high-class vaudeville! But this combination of the Syndicate and the Shuberts quickly got their hats handed to them by the more wily and experienced operators of the vaudeville biz, like Albee and Keith,  and the Syndicate quickly surrendered, pledged to stick to only the legitimate theater business.   And converted the Forrest into a legit house for musicals, plays and reviews.

Philadelphia just can’t claim any special prominence here. I mean, it had its theaters, and its famously loyal and attentive audiences, but, I gotta say, the most famous function that Philly served in the world of vaudeville was as the butt of jokes. It was a sleepy town, it was provincial, and because of its well-enforced Blue Laws, everything was shut on Sundays, from bars to baseball parks. “I went to Philadelphia last Sunday, but it was closed,” was a classic vaudeville gag. New Jersey audiences, among vaudeville folk, were known for being rough and obstreperous in the theater, but Philadelphia was usually called “Sleepyville.” Fred Allen, who was a vaudeville comedian long before he became famous for his radio show, used to tell a joke in his act about what life on the planet Earth would be like if human beings became extinct. “It would be like Philadelphia on a Sunday.” That joke always got a big laugh for Fed Allen - even in Philadelphia.

[MUSIC UNDER]

September 23rd, 1911: The Folies Bergere Revue had set up a branch in New York City, but some of the skits and dance numbers there lacked the 'oomph' and savoir-faire of its Parisian namesake. So, a new section was inserted, titled "A la Broadway" and contained a comic number called the "The Philadelphia Drag." The number played upon the widespread impression that Philly was a dozing and quiet sort of city. You could still dance there, but, as the tempo on the sheet music said, "not too fast". [FADE MUSIC OUT]

But did this section, as they say, Go Over? Well, no. Sniffed the New York Times:  "It is called 'A la Broadway' and it aims to be satire, but it is very poor stuff. . . In 'The Philadelphia Drag' Mr. Wayburn hit upon a funny satirical dance idea, but the number reversing the ginger and go of the familiar Rag, with with its zip and rush, and ending with the chorus prettily garbed in Quaker costume, drowsily sinking down on the stage, to be awakened presently by the crowing of a rooster."

But one performer in the otherwise dreary Philadelphia-themed number stuck out to the New York Times. "a girl named Mae West, hitherto unknown, pleased by her grotesquerie and a snappy way of singing and dancing." So “The Philadelphia Drag” didn’t go over , but Mae West sure did. And thus a great showbiz career began to take off. Mae West, of Brooklyn, was just 18 years old.

Mae West sure didn't make it big overnight. Despite all the efforts of the anti-child labor leagues, she had been on stage since the age of six. Even as a kid she learned how to imitate others - and like most other performers of her day, she even worked in blackface. Later she realized that like her idol Sophie Tucker, she could work in the bawdy and suggestive line of double entendres - always walking right up to the very edge of the sort of material and movement that might bring the suddenly delivery of a little blue envelope from the theaters management, warning her that she was working what was called Too Blue. 

[MUSIC, UNDER]

Mae worked everywhere in America, at some point or another. She once estimated that it would take her six years to play every vaudeville theater in the country, and sometimes it seemed like she had. But let’s just concentrate on the occasions when she came through sleepy old Philadelphia. By early 1912 Mae was billed second of six acts at the Liberty Theatre at the corner of Columbia and Broad Street, billed as "Mae West & Girard Bros. Parisian Dancing and Singing Novelty. Lately a Sensation at the Folies Bergere, New York."

But slowly, she kept rising. Although the clear sexuality of her act always held her back a little in Vaudeville. But by 1915, when she arrived back in Philadelphia, she was at the top of the bill, doing "Advanced Vaudeville" at the Broadway Theatre in South Philly - this time with a new act. The ads read: "Return by Popular Request. Philadelphia's Favorite Comedienne, Mae West, the Original Brinkley Girl." (Now I’m unclear what The Original Brinkley Girl was but you can bet it was pretty hot-cha-cha.)

In 1918 she got noticed again in New York, doing a solo number "Everybody Shimmies Now!" in the Shubert Brothers musical revue Sometime. The shimmy - that suggestive shaking of the shoulders, became her signature move. But still in 1920, when she again came back to the drowsy Quaker City, she was only playing the William Penn in West Philadelphia - a very large theater, but not the Big Time.

It wasn't until 1921 that she played Center City, in the Chestnut Street Opera House, in the show - this time - "The Whirl of the Town" - a combination of burlesque, musical comedy, and circus acts. Mae West wowed the younger set in the crowd, and only "disappointed the house when she told how she 'killed the shimmy'," reported the Evening Ledger. "The audience wanted her to do it all over again, but there wasn't time." The Sleepy City on the Delaware was certainly awake and not dragging at all - that night, anyway.

June 10th, 1910, a photographer named Lewis Hine took a picture in the alleyway behind the Victoria Theatre at 913 Market Street. In the photograph, which I’ve used as the featured image accompanying this episode, the man and one of the boys are dressed in rags, and both appear to be bruised and battered. But on closer inspection one can easily see that the “bruises” are just stage makeup, and the ragged clothes are just costumes. The smallest boy, in fact, is not wearing rags but a tiny version of a pajama-like outfit that once was typically associated with Chinese immigrants to America. A long thin braid comes from under his cap and hangs down over his shoulder. All three of them, in fact, were not tramps or immigrants, but part of a professional vaudeville act, “The Four Novelty Grahams.” 

As Lewis Hine, was an investigator for Anti-Child Labor agencies, and he wrote in his report to his employers: "The father is 23 years of age. Willie Graham is 5 years of age, and Herbert Graham is 3 years of age. At 9 P.M. on June 10th, 1910, these children were performing on the stage. Four times daily they do a turn which lasts from 12 to 14 minutes. Herbert Graham, the youngest, was said by the father to have commenced performing on the stage as a[n] acrobat when he was 10 months of age. Willie, now 5, is said to be the youngest acrobat in the world.  . .  The mother of these boys was formerly a school teacher, and is now performing with this trio on the stage. The children are bright and strong, but have a [lack of] playfulness about them which shows them to have forgotten the best years of [their] childhood."

Vaudeville troupes, in fact, in the early Twentieth centuries were often family members. Dissatisfied with the limited opportunities in their hometowns, they got an act together and they took it on the road. The children of such families seldom got much formal schooling but got quite an exciting education in Life. "The Four Novelty Grahams" as it turned out, were not from Philadelphia, but were from Bainbridge, Georgia. Their real name was Stribling - 'Ma' and 'Pa' Stribling and their two boys, William and Herbert. 

"Ma'' is nowhere in sight in the image, but if she was around at that moment she might have warned her husband to stay away from the photographer. Because investigators from Child Labor agencies were the bane of vaudeville families - always trying to take the kids off the stage and put them into school, or something. This could be a real professional and economic peril for them. [30:37 - FADE OUT MUSIC]

[30:38} Little Willie, the boy in the middle of the photo, was the real attraction of the act. He would pretend to 'fight' his little brother in the Chinese costume on stage, and then would challenge any other boy in the audience to come up and box with him for two minutes. If the challenger beat Willie, "Pa" offered to pay him ten dollars - but he never had to, because Willie always won. The act kept the family well employed and on the move. Later that same week they were appearing at the People's Theatre in Kensington.

Now, soon after this, the management of the Victoria Theatre would start showing longer motion pictures. In fact, more and more, many theaters switched to movies-only policy. The Four Novelty Grahams gave up their act by 1917, and settled back in their hometown of Macon, Georgia. World War One may have been part of the problem, and certainly the Lubin Studio went bankrupt in 1916, after losing its lucrative European markets.

But Willie Graham would continue to use the fighting skills that he had honed on the stage to find a new career - as a professional boxer. As "Young Stribling", he was known to fans of the ring as a smooth counterpuncher. Young Stribling was highly successful in his early career, winning 275 bouts and losing only eleven. Indeed he was briefly the Light-Heavyweight Champion in 1923, before a crooked referee took away his title (the Fix Was In, evidently). In January of 1924 we find him again in Philadelphia in the Sports Section this time though - in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on the eve of another bout in the ring.  He's planning on attending the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall, claimed the sportswriter. The Stribling family were still a tight unit, according to the article, with Ma and Pa managing their oldest boy's career, and younger brother Herbie as his corner man. 

But it doesn't seem as if Young Stribling ever did become a college student, nor did he get another shot at the title - he died at the age of 28 in a motorcycle accident down in Macon. Eventually younger brother Herbert became a boxer too, and also worked as a fight referee. 

The Victoria Theatre in Philadelphia, with its huge triumphal arch, well, like many other theaters in the city, was demolished in 1950. Where it stood is now the site of the huge Gallery retail complex, which despite considerable hoopla and reopenings and reconstructions and much investment of public funds also has never quite lived up to its initial promise - just like Young Stribling, the Lubin Studio, and many acts that played in Philly's long-gone multitude of vaudeville theaters. But, hey, you know, sometimes . . .  that's show biz.

 So that’s our show for today. I realize there at the end we concluded on a bit of a somber note, but we’re going to come back again, in just a few weeks, to complete our exploration of vaudeville in Philadelphia. And we’re going to tell the stories of three of the most successful Philadelphians ever to make it big in vaudeville: W.C. Fields, Ethel Barrymore, and Ethel Waters.

If you’ve been enjoying this series, or have any thoughts or suggestions, drop us an email at AITHpodcast@gmail dot com. To support our show and get access to bonus material and special insider info about Philly theater history, our Patreon page is Patreon dot com/AITHpodcast. Or, another way to thank us, is to leave a review about the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or you can do that right on our website, AITHpodcast.com that helps us out so much. And while you’re there check out the blog post - we'll share some images of Philadelphia vaudeville theaters and performers that we talked about today.

Thank you for listening, and for coming along on another adventure in Theatre History, Philadelphia.

[AITH END THEME]