Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy and we so
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing our History of Vaudeville podcast that we decided
Speaker 1: we'd like to talk about some notable performers. So we
Speaker 1: put out a call on our Twitter Missed in History
Speaker 1: and on our Facebook fan page to see what you
Speaker 1: guys would like to hear. So these are all listener suggestions,
Speaker 1: and the first one comes from a Twitter follower who
Speaker 1: said that if we didn't do this, he would spite
Speaker 1: our adorable voices. And I don't know what that means,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't willing to risk it. So we're going
Speaker 1: to start with the Marx Brothers. Welcome to the Sarah
Speaker 1: and Katie Vaudeville Show. Sketch one, the Marx is Grout Show, Harpo,
Speaker 1: chick O, Gummo, and Zeppo also known as Julius, Arthur, Leonard,
Speaker 1: Milton and Herbert. And I think you have to it
Speaker 1: that Zeppo is an improvement on Herbert. Herbert Mars does
Speaker 1: not sound particularly exciting. It's not very stagy. Gummo and Zeppo.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're out of the act by nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: but the others became quite famous. I'm sure you've heard
Speaker 1: of them. And the Marks brothers were the sons of
Speaker 1: Jewish German immigrants, and they grew up in Manhattan's East Side,
Speaker 1: and they began in vaudeville as singers, but soon switched
Speaker 1: to a comedy act. A lot of it was based
Speaker 1: on immigrants stereotypes and accents, like an Italian accent for one,
Speaker 1: and a German accent, and they became stars at the Palace.
Speaker 1: But even though they were playing up this immigrant based comedy,
Speaker 1: they surprisingly didn't fall back on a lot of quote
Speaker 1: unquote Jewish humor like some of the other vaudeville acts.
Speaker 1: Will talk about later. Most of their sketches were actually
Speaker 1: sort of waspy type settings, but there are subtle allusions
Speaker 1: to relevant issues. An article in American Scholar that I
Speaker 1: was reading a recounts a scene from their movie Monkey Business.
Speaker 1: I'm quoting from the article. Groucho snidely informs an Indian chief,
Speaker 1: if you don't like our country, you can go back
Speaker 1: to where you came from. Earlier in the film, after
Speaker 1: horrendous pun by Chicko. Groucho turns to face the camera
Speaker 1: and declares, there's my argument restrict immigration. This at a
Speaker 1: time when the Patrician Immigration Restriction League had warned against
Speaker 1: the corrupting influence of physically, morally and politically in quotes,
Speaker 1: degenerate Jews. But well, this is, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: this politically outrageous sketch. They also did a lot of
Speaker 1: um outrageous physical comedy and outrageous costumes, blonde wigs, the
Speaker 1: Italian accents we talked about, painted on mustaches, anarchy and slapstick.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the name of the game. I
Speaker 1: was watching a scene before this from A Night at
Speaker 1: the Opera, which is possibly the most popular film on YouTube.
Speaker 1: And you've got Groucho with his cigar and his glasses
Speaker 1: and a bushy mustache and eyebrows, and he keeps inviting
Speaker 1: more and more people into this tiny little room with
Speaker 1: quips about how crowded it is. It's like a clown car,
Speaker 1: you know. He keeps saying stuff like tell them to
Speaker 1: send up a bigger room to William and then another
Speaker 1: woman opens the door and everyone comes flying out, and
Speaker 1: that's one of their most famous scenes. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the folks we're going to talk about later have
Speaker 1: really successful careers beyond Vaudeville, and that's really more why
Speaker 1: we know them today. And if you're going to think
Speaker 1: of one of the Marks Brothers going on like that,
Speaker 1: it's definitely got to be Groucho. He's the guy who
Speaker 1: most people consider to be the real star of the operation,
Speaker 1: and he ended up on Long Island hanging out with
Speaker 1: all the rich people and feeling terribly out of place.
Speaker 1: By his own accounts. A lot of their work before this, too,
Speaker 1: had to ended up playing on the idea of exclusion
Speaker 1: and of people feeling out of place. And we're just
Speaker 1: continuing the theme of it. Okay, our second act is
Speaker 1: going to be evelyn Nesbitt. And obviously vaudeville wasn't all
Speaker 1: about comedy routines. Like the Marx Brothers, We've got chorus
Speaker 1: girls too, and evelyn Nesbitt is kind of the epitome
Speaker 1: of a chorus girl. She's the first major it girl
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, and for a time she might
Speaker 1: have been one of the most famous people in the
Speaker 1: United States. She was born in eighteen eighty four, and
Speaker 1: her father's early death forced the teenage, Nez bit to
Speaker 1: get into modeling and acting. She ended up being drawn
Speaker 1: by Charles Dana Gibson. She's a GiB priddy girl, and
Speaker 1: she gets into entertainment and performance. She enters Broadway as
Speaker 1: one of the florid Ora Girls, who are pretty prim
Speaker 1: young women being serenaded by men in frock coats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we actually have a line from from that act. The
Speaker 1: gentleman would say, pretty, tell me, pretty maiden, are there
Speaker 1: any more at home like you, to which the maidens
Speaker 1: would reply, there are a few kinds, sir, but simple
Speaker 1: girls and proper too. So you remember from our earlier
Speaker 1: podcast on vaudeville that was a big The family friendliness
Speaker 1: of the acts was a big thing. They had to be,
Speaker 1: you know, not too risk ay, even if it comes
Speaker 1: across as slightly creepy. So it's sixteen. She took up
Speaker 1: with a man named Stanford White, who was forty six
Speaker 1: and had designed things like the Washington Square Arch. So
Speaker 1: he's he's a notable figure, and he supported her and
Speaker 1: her family, wined and dined her and had her sit
Speaker 1: on his red velvet swing and kick at a wall
Speaker 1: of paper parasols. His own particular fetish it's very creepy fetish,
Speaker 1: so eventually their relationship turns abusive when he rapes her
Speaker 1: after she's passed out and she calls him a benevolent vampire.
Speaker 1: She feels like she can't leave him after this, and um,
Speaker 1: she's she's got kind of a mixed idea about it
Speaker 1: though her whole life there. She says that he's the
Speaker 1: only man who she ever loved, but by the time
Speaker 1: she's seventeen, he's mostly interested in really young girls and
Speaker 1: she's sort of starting to look for new bows. John
Speaker 1: Barrymore is one of the men who's available, and as
Speaker 1: is a man named Harry k Thaw and Saul was
Speaker 1: a millionaire son of a railroad slash coal baron. He
Speaker 1: lived in a castle over his mills and begged Mss
Speaker 1: Nesbit to marry him and his millions, even though the
Speaker 1: other show girls gossiped about how he whipped girls. So again,
Speaker 1: clearly we're not getting into a good relationship now, and
Speaker 1: she manages to hold him off for a while. She's
Speaker 1: still somewhat involved with Stanford White. White actually gets her
Speaker 1: into a New Jersey boarding school for a time to
Speaker 1: study music and literature. Um the school's run by Cecil b.
Speaker 1: DeMille's mother too. On a side note, Um, she eventually
Speaker 1: has an operation for what is officially disclosed as appendicitis,
Speaker 1: and after she's recuperated enough, Thaw takes Evelyn and her
Speaker 1: mother abroad, and this is where things get really bad.
Speaker 1: Her mother is very disturbed by thaws mood swings. He's sadistic,
Speaker 1: and Um goes from being just you know, worshiping the
Speaker 1: two of them too freaking out at waiters yanking off
Speaker 1: table clause. She's really bothered by this, so she leaves
Speaker 1: her daughter alone with him, and their relationship to gets violent.
Speaker 1: He whips her and beats her and finally gets her
Speaker 1: to confess the details about her relationship with Stanford White,
Speaker 1: and he's just driven mad by jealousy. At this point,
Speaker 1: he's always wanted to save her from Stanford White, but
Speaker 1: he hates that their relationship with sexual. After a second
Speaker 1: trip to Europe, of Alyn gets appendicitis again, at which
Speaker 1: point you have to make the conclusion that perhaps it
Speaker 1: wasn't appendicitis. That's the issue we're talking about abortion. And
Speaker 1: this is when she finally agrees to marry Thaw, who
Speaker 1: is still completely obsessed with White, and at a nineteen
Speaker 1: o six performance, Thaw finally runs into Stanford White and
Speaker 1: shoots him, and this becomes just the most sensational trial
Speaker 1: you can imagine. It's called the Crime of the Century,
Speaker 1: even though I think we're kind of jumping the gun.
Speaker 1: But the first trial is a hung jury, the second
Speaker 1: a quits thought by reason of insanity. Nesbit actually testifies
Speaker 1: after this huge monetary promise from Thaw's mother, which she
Speaker 1: never ends up receiving, but um her her testimony, she
Speaker 1: actually holds her own during it. The story of her
Speaker 1: life was made into a film, The Girl in the
Speaker 1: Red Velvet Swing, which clearly is not as innocuous as
Speaker 1: it might sound, and she died in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: But one of the favorite tidbits we came across researching
Speaker 1: her was a headline from the New York Times from
Speaker 1: nineteen oh seven. That headline is baby named Evelyn Nesbit.
Speaker 1: Father and Kalamazoo objected, but mother had her way, which
Speaker 1: I mean, the news doesn't get any better than that,
Speaker 1: I think. Next, on the stage, we have one W. C. Fields,
Speaker 1: whose comedy Stick was about being misanthropic, hating women and children,
Speaker 1: um anti establishment and quite fond of the bottle. You
Speaker 1: might kind of remind you of Larry David actually herb
Speaker 1: your and phusiasm, but but better. I think my first
Speaker 1: experience with W. C. Fields was when I was a
Speaker 1: small child and it was scarring. I was at MGM
Speaker 1: Studios and went up to the W. C. Character and
Speaker 1: asked for his autograph in my little book, and he
Speaker 1: told me how awful children were, and I cried, and
Speaker 1: my mom tried to explain to me that he was
Speaker 1: a comedian and that's what he did. But I think
Speaker 1: she was angry on my behalf only maybe not a
Speaker 1: good character to have at MGM walking around talking to
Speaker 1: the kids. But if you've never seen him, he's he's
Speaker 1: very recognizable. He's this round man in a top hat
Speaker 1: with a big red, bulbous news. He was born William
Speaker 1: Claude Dukinfield in eighty and he was of a British background.
Speaker 1: He had a pretty complicated home life, as almost all
Speaker 1: of our vaudevillians do, and um, you know, some describe
Speaker 1: it as happy, others as miserable. It was probably sort
Speaker 1: of a mixture of the two. He described himself as
Speaker 1: a brady, repulsive child, and he started his career as
Speaker 1: a juggler in his teens. His act on the vaudeville
Speaker 1: stage was a juggling tramp. He also went on to
Speaker 1: the zig filled Follies before becoming a movie star, and
Speaker 1: he wrote a lot of his own stuff for the movies,
Speaker 1: but under really awesome synonyms like Mohot, Mactaine, Jeeves, and
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard May West's famous movie line, come
Speaker 1: up and see me sometime. The other half of that
Speaker 1: was Fields, who responded, my will, my little chickadee. But
Speaker 1: Fields also fit the stereotype of the comedian as a
Speaker 1: haunted man. His marriage to his wife Hattie was pretty rough.
Speaker 1: Um he met her on stage and he wouldn't give
Speaker 1: up his life as a traveling performer. We've learned already
Speaker 1: about these vaudevillians traveling on huge circuits all the time,
Speaker 1: different city every night practically, and she wouldn't divorce him
Speaker 1: because she was Catholic, and so they just had this long,
Speaker 1: drawn out, very unhappy relationship. He was estranged from his
Speaker 1: son Claude, and had a tense relationship even with his mistress,
Speaker 1: and a non existent one with their illegitimate son. But
Speaker 1: he put this all into his work. Some of the
Speaker 1: kid and wife characters, which are never ever flattering, are
Speaker 1: very obviously based on his own family. Sometimes they're even
Speaker 1: named by their names, possibly in part because of his
Speaker 1: loneliness and the hardness of his life. He's driven to alcoholism,
Speaker 1: and he spends his later years in pretty bad health,
Speaker 1: and also got the reputation of being pretty difficult to
Speaker 1: work with, and that's what made his career flounder later on,
Speaker 1: not that Hollywood was treating him the way he'd like.
Speaker 1: He was being offered complete direct to be honest, and
Speaker 1: he later switched to radio, finding that it served him
Speaker 1: a bit better. But again, he was in ill health
Speaker 1: and he had cirrhosis from his drinking. Supposedly he was
Speaker 1: drinking a case of gin a week by the time
Speaker 1: he ended up in the hospital, and any weeks before
Speaker 1: he died, he was said to have been found reading
Speaker 1: the Bible. And when his friends saw him, you know,
Speaker 1: he was known for hating religion, among many many other things,
Speaker 1: they asked him why, and he said he was looking
Speaker 1: for loopholes. W. C. Fields didn't just like jin though, apparently,
Speaker 1: because one of his most famous quotes is I like
Speaker 1: children fried. Perhaps with a little bit of ranches some
Speaker 1: blue cheese on the side, and that brings us to
Speaker 1: our next act. And our next act is bo Jangles,
Speaker 1: who was one of the most famous soft shoe and
Speaker 1: tap dancers of his age. And he was born Luther
Speaker 1: Robinson on May seventy eight in Richmond, Virginia, and his
Speaker 1: parents died when he was just an infant, so he
Speaker 1: was raised by his grandmother, didn't get a lot of education,
Speaker 1: and started dancing at age six for pennies at beer gardens,
Speaker 1: which was the saddest little story. Yeah, but he must
Speaker 1: be pretty good at it, because at age twelve he
Speaker 1: joins a traveling company the South before the war and
Speaker 1: eventually goes on a vaudeville circuit, and his agent, Marty Forkins,
Speaker 1: helps make him really famous, launch him into that lower
Speaker 1: level of vaudeville, to the headliner act um and he's
Speaker 1: eventually performing for white audiences, starring in Blackbirds of nine
Speaker 1: and putting on this dapper, genteel front. From then on
Speaker 1: he does soft shoe and tap and you can think
Speaker 1: of him as one of the great dance step originators.
Speaker 1: To he invents something called the stair dance, and a
Speaker 1: kind of strange thing about him. He's as good at
Speaker 1: running backwards as most people are running forwards. Eventually he
Speaker 1: became a film star too. He was in The Little
Speaker 1: Colonel in Old Kentucky, The Littlest Rebel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,
Speaker 1: and he was often partnered with a little Shirley Temple.
Speaker 1: And he makes a lot of money, up to six thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars in a week for a time, but
Speaker 1: he dies poor because he's very generous to his friends
Speaker 1: and two people in need. But he's a soo got
Speaker 1: a pretty bad gambling habit, especially gambling on the Yankees,
Speaker 1: which there was an article about why he might be
Speaker 1: the biggest Yankees fan of all time. Um. But he
Speaker 1: would even arrange his schedule around the games and own
Speaker 1: part of the New York Black Yankees as well. He
Speaker 1: was an honorary mayor of Harlem before he died in
Speaker 1: November ninety nine in New York. And now we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about someone we got a lot of requests for.
Speaker 1: Fanny Bryce. Fanny Bryce was one of the great comedians
Speaker 1: and singers of vaudeville. She was born Fania borach In
Speaker 1: to immigrant parents. Her mother was from Budapest, her father
Speaker 1: from Alsace, and she hailed from the Lower East Side.
Speaker 1: Her parents owned a saloon there, but her dad was
Speaker 1: kind of a deadbeat and a gambler, and Fanny herself
Speaker 1: wasn't very fond of school. She did like singing, though,
Speaker 1: and after she sang a song in an amateur contest
Speaker 1: called when You Oh, You're not Forgotten by the girl
Speaker 1: you Can't Forget, she won five bucks and she was
Speaker 1: just hooked on the stage at that point and dropped
Speaker 1: out of school after eighth grade, and her career shoots
Speaker 1: off right from there. It didn't exactly start off Shining Lee.
Speaker 1: She got hired and then quickly fired for a George
Speaker 1: m cohen show, and then ended up with a touring
Speaker 1: company that went broke, so her next option was burlesque,
Speaker 1: and this is when she changed her name, possibly to
Speaker 1: sound Less Jewish. Her big break was singing Sadie salom
Speaker 1: A go home, and to give you some sample lyrics
Speaker 1: from the song, don't do that dance, I tell you, Sadie,
Speaker 1: that's not a business for a lady. Most everybody knows
Speaker 1: that I'm your loving mos Oi oi oi oi, where
Speaker 1: is your clothes? And it's a funny take on what's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a sexy scene, the disrobing salom A.
Speaker 1: And the notable thing about this is that she sang
Speaker 1: it in a Yiddish accent, but she didn't know any Yiddish.
Speaker 1: They thought she, quote unquote looked Jewish, and so she
Speaker 1: was encouraged to fake the accent by Irving Berlin no less,
Speaker 1: and that's when she made her mark as a Jewish comedian.
Speaker 1: She goes on to become a big success in the
Speaker 1: zig Field Follies. But it wasn't all good times for
Speaker 1: Fanny Bryce. For one thing, at least part of her
Speaker 1: chafed being categorized as a comic actress. That's not all
Speaker 1: she wanted to do. She wanted to broaden her repertoire
Speaker 1: into drama and become a you know, serious actress in caps.
Speaker 1: But no one was interested in Fanny Bryce as a dramatist.
Speaker 1: They were interested in her as a comedian only. And
Speaker 1: she also married badly to a man named nicky Arnstein,
Speaker 1: who happened to be an adulterous and possibly big amous thief.
Speaker 1: It's just one step up from Evelyn Nust. But there
Speaker 1: he went to sing sing for wire tapping and later
Speaker 1: to leaven Worth after five million dollars in bonds mysteriously disappeared,
Speaker 1: but she wouldn't leave him. He left her and her
Speaker 1: kids first, and she finally decided to get a divorce.
Speaker 1: But he did inspire her famous torch song, my Man,
Speaker 1: which we have a few lyrics from it. It's cost
Speaker 1: me a lot, but there's one thing that I've got.
Speaker 1: It's my Man, and that's the one serious thing she
Speaker 1: did that people loved. It was an older song that
Speaker 1: had been translated, but her version of it was something
Speaker 1: that was difficult to forget. And when she sang it
Speaker 1: was clear she was singing about Ernstein, and since his
Speaker 1: rather criminal pursuits were fairly public, people knew what it meant.
Speaker 1: In the n she gets a nose job, and this
Speaker 1: is partly her own idea of how to escape this
Speaker 1: role that she's been type cast in. But she stars
Speaker 1: in some more films. They flop and she ends up
Speaker 1: marrying Bill Rose, and that doesn't really work out either.
Speaker 1: She found some real stardom in radio with a character
Speaker 1: called Baby Snooks, who was a brady little girl and
Speaker 1: who didn't have an accent because she didn't have an
Speaker 1: accent in that program. She felt like it gave her
Speaker 1: better mass appeal. And the movie Funny Girl with one
Speaker 1: Barbara Streisand is said to have been modeled after her life.
Speaker 1: And I have to give a research mentioned to the
Speaker 1: Jewish Women's Archive at jw A dot org, which was
Speaker 1: really helpful with this one. But that brings us to
Speaker 1: our next act, which is Gypsy rose Lee and June Havoc.
Speaker 1: And at the time we're recording this, June Havoc recently died,
Speaker 1: so this is fairly timely. If you've heard of or
Speaker 1: seen the musical Gypsy. The movie version has Rosalind Russell
Speaker 1: and Natalie Wood. It's based on Gypsy rose Lee's memoir
Speaker 1: and paints their mother, Mama Rose as the most insane
Speaker 1: stage mother you've ever heard of, And June hated the musical.
Speaker 1: She's quoted as saying mother was very prim and she
Speaker 1: was tiny and lovely with big blue eyes. She was
Speaker 1: endearing and alluring beyond belief. If she had drive an ambition,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with that? So that's the word from June Havoc.
Speaker 1: Louise rose Hovic was born in Seattle, and June Hovic
Speaker 1: in Vancouver. Supposedly Louise wade Awapa twelve pounds but one
Speaker 1: a healthy baby contest. Nevertheless, after their parents marriage ended,
Speaker 1: mom arose saw the stage is salvation for the family.
Speaker 1: Louise wasn't great at singing or dancing, but June was
Speaker 1: a natural. She was on the vaudeville stage at eighteen months,
Speaker 1: and Baby June, as her personage was known, was famous
Speaker 1: and making major money by age six. But she wanted
Speaker 1: to grow up and stop being dainty. June her name
Speaker 1: after she outgrew baby um. And at thirteen, she married
Speaker 1: a boy she'd met on the stage, and her mother
Speaker 1: promptly tried to shoot him. Um. But we do have
Speaker 1: to make a note the mom also had a bunch
Speaker 1: of forged birth certificates, so who knew how old she
Speaker 1: really was. After June got married and left show business,
Speaker 1: life was tough for her, you know, after all, it's
Speaker 1: the depression and times are hard for anyone. She and
Speaker 1: her husband entered marathon dance contest when you literally danced
Speaker 1: till you dropped, and if you want, you'd get fed.
Speaker 1: And if you didn't, well, you know you were the
Speaker 1: one who dropped on the floor and her marriage wasn't working,
Speaker 1: but they stayed together for professional reasons. She went on
Speaker 1: to be a success, though although not as famous as
Speaker 1: her sister. She wrote and directed plays, wrote a memoir,
Speaker 1: performed on Broadway, she acted in film. June did pretty
Speaker 1: well for herself, and she was quoted in the New
Speaker 1: York Times as saying, my sister was beautiful and clever
Speaker 1: and ruthless. My mother was endearing and adorable and lethal.
Speaker 1: They were the same person. I was the fool of
Speaker 1: the family, the one who thought I really was loved
Speaker 1: for me, for myself. So moving on to gypsy life
Speaker 1: wasn't easy for her. Either. She's not the cute or
Speaker 1: the charming one, and mom Arose makes them shoplift and
Speaker 1: lie about everything, so she has this very manipulated childhood
Speaker 1: and it's harder for the not blonde, not adorable sister.
Speaker 1: She plays a boy in their act most of the time,
Speaker 1: and um just a tough stage life. And when June left,
Speaker 1: Louise finally had a chance in the Dancing Daughters to
Speaker 1: her name, but this was during Vaudeville's dying breath, so
Speaker 1: instead she turned to stripping in seedy places, But soon
Speaker 1: she'd polished her acts. She made it funny and sexy
Speaker 1: instead of just bumping grind. She wasn't even fully naked,
Speaker 1: and she became a star and everyone came to see her.
Speaker 1: And supposedly her mother's dying words were about taking Louise
Speaker 1: to the grave with her. So that's the last word
Speaker 1: on Mama Rose. So our final act for the show
Speaker 1: is Windsor Mackay, who was a newspaper cartoonist and an
Speaker 1: animation pioneer. He's going to plan to vaudeville, though, I promise.
Speaker 1: He was born in eighteen sixty seven and in his
Speaker 1: early twenties he worked as a poster and a billboard artist,
Speaker 1: and he eventually gets a job as an illustrator and
Speaker 1: cartoonist in Cincinnati, moves to New York, develops two pretty
Speaker 1: popular strips there, and by nineteen o five he's made
Speaker 1: his most famous creation, which is Little Nemo in Slumberland.
Speaker 1: And I used to have a Little Nemo comic book,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty cool if you've never If you've never
Speaker 1: seen it, you should look it up. It's really surrealist.
Speaker 1: There's not much plot because after all their dreams and
Speaker 1: they're just these beautifully rendered drawings and really unconventional and
Speaker 1: how they're laid out on the page. In nineteen o
Speaker 1: nine he had a very popular vaudeville act where he
Speaker 1: did speed drawings of his cartoon characters as well as caricatures.
Speaker 1: And if you think watching a cartoonist draw sounds boring,
Speaker 1: Sarah can assure you that it is not. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really pretty cool to watch a cartoonist speed draw. I
Speaker 1: saw cal from the Economist at a Second City performance,
Speaker 1: and I mean just somebody with a transparency in a
Speaker 1: pen and there uh creating political figures or celebrities who
Speaker 1: you can recognize with just a few strokes. Pretty neat.
Speaker 1: McKay started to play around with animation sometime after this
Speaker 1: and did an animated version of Little Nemo that he
Speaker 1: added to the vaudeville shows, and he followed this with
Speaker 1: nineteen twelves How a Mosquito Operates and in nineteen fourteen
Speaker 1: Gertie the Dinosaur, which Gertie the Dinosaur was a pretty
Speaker 1: pioneering film. It was the first feature character created just
Speaker 1: for an animated film. Before that, the characters had been
Speaker 1: pulled from the comic strips, and it took ten thousand
Speaker 1: drawings to make up the film, and he had to
Speaker 1: draw each one by hand because they didn't know how
Speaker 1: to make a stationary background at this time. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like how you'd imagine the flint stones. There's action
Speaker 1: going on and then there's just the rubble behind them
Speaker 1: throughout the imagine drawing that for every cell. But even
Speaker 1: though the dino animation was really popular, William Randolph Hurst,
Speaker 1: a subject of a previous podcast, made McKay stick to
Speaker 1: print cartoons. His next film wasn't until nineteen eighteen, Sinking
Speaker 1: of the Lusitania, which used to sell animation, cutting down
Speaker 1: on the drawing time, and mackay died in nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: but a lot of his techniques influenced the work of
Speaker 1: animators later on. You know a lot of the great
Speaker 1: Disney movies you think of from thirties, forties and fifties
Speaker 1: are influenced by McKay's work. And uh, I guess that
Speaker 1: brings our vaudeville act to a close. The curtain has clue.
Speaker 1: We have one honorable mention, though, and that is Joseph Kugel,
Speaker 1: whose French stage name translates roughly as the Fartiste. And
Speaker 1: it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. He was
Speaker 1: able to break wind on demand, which obviously brought in
Speaker 1: some audience members, and that one was suggested to us
Speaker 1: by a Twitter follower, so thank you for that. And
Speaker 1: if you're interested in slightly more conventional pursuits, you could
Speaker 1: check out our article how juggling works if you search
Speaker 1: our homepage at www dot house stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
Speaker 1: out the stuff you missed in History Glass blog on
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