"Vaudeville" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was sixteen, my mother died, and I went on the stage. I didn't inherit her talent as an actress, having only mediocre ability, but I had a carrying voice, personality, and could dance, so I soon left the legitimate stage for vaudeville where I made something ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... bunched lights. There was much elaborate scroll-work and ornate decoration. Down each side, raised about ten feet from the floor, and supported on gilt pillars, were little private boxes hung with curtains of heliotrope silk. At the further end of the hall was a stage, and here a vaudeville performance ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... these performances a single dancer, by movements and gestures, represented mythological scenes and love stories. The actor took several characters in succession and a chorus accompanied him with songs. There were also "vaudeville" entertainments, with all manner of jugglers, ropedancers, acrobats, and clowns, to amuse a people who found no pleasure in the refined productions of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Protean artists! Vaudeville clamor for me some day—you'll see! I'll be five characters in twenty-five minutes, and no one ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... irony of fate which almost always exchanges the proper labels of things and persons, Ariston was a supernumerary in one of the vaudeville theatres, through the influence of his father, who was a scene-shifter, and the job disgusted him, for in such a playhouse nobody ever died upon the stage, nobody ever came out in mourning and there was no weeping. And while Ariston kept thinking of nothing but funereal scenes, his brother dreamed ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... All this vaudeville team business, mind you, as if we were bellowing at each other across the street. All round the room you could see old gentlemen shooting out of their chairs like rockets and dashing off at a gallop to write to the governing board about it. Thousands of waiters had appeared from nowhere, and ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Bible. This deprives conversation of much of its colour and renders it rather commonplace and meagre. Unfortunately, among many of our young people, the Bible seems to be a book to be avoided or to be treated in a rather "jocose" manner. To raise a laugh on the vaudeville stage, a Biblical quotation has only to be produced, and the weary comedian, when he is at a loss to get a witty speech across the footlights, is almost sure to speak of Jonah and ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... I've been hunting a job until I wore out two pair of these Sorosis things and not a bush shakes. Can't even sign a contract for a Friday night amateur contest. By gum, I'd take a job barking for a snake race. I had an offer to go into vaudeville. What do you know about that? The act hasn't any time yet, but it will get time as soon as it makes good, and to make good all its needs is a trial performance, and the backer thinks he knows where he can get a trial performance, and to get ready for the trial performance will require ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... have an astonishing tact at making discoveries—original ones, I mean." And here we separated, while one of the trio began humming a gay vaudeville, of which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... think fit. Thus Mr. Bull, from Aldgate, with Mrs. Bull, and only four of the younger Bulls and Cows, numbering six in all, make good their entry at the cost of 1l. 4s.—Books to tell them what they are to see and hear, the when and the how are 3s. Seats for the vaudeville (average of modest places) 9s. Ditto for the ballet 6s. Ditto for the battle 6s. Ditto for the fire-works 6s.—Total 2l. 14s.—But then they are not charged for seeing the lamps; there is no charge for walking round ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... spent my evenings in my hotel room, or watching the Maude Byrnes Stock Company playing "Lena Rivers," with the ingenue coming out between the acts in a calico apron and a pink sunbonnet and doing a thing they bill as vaudeville. I'm dying to see a real show—a smart one that hasn't run two hundred nights on Broadway—one with pretty girls, and pink tights, and a lot of moonrises, and sunsets and things, and a prima donna in a dress so stunning that all the women in the audience are busy copying it so they can describe ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... storm is coming up. . . . There is a theatre here; and whenever a troop of players pass through the town, they halt for a night and act. On the day of our tremendous dinner party of eight, there was an infant phenomenon; whom I should otherwise have seen. Last night there was a Vaudeville company; and Charley, Roche, and Anne went. The Brave reports the performances to have resembled Greenwich Fair. . . . There are some Promenade Concerts in the open air in progress now: but as they are just ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... lived on the Heights, Brooklyn. Persons from New York and other parts of the Middlewest have been known to believe that Brooklyn is somehow humorous. In newspaper jokes and vaudeville it is so presented that people who are willing to take their philosophy from those sources believe that the leading citizens of Brooklyn are all deacons, undertakers, and obstetricians. The fact is that North Washington Square, at its reddest and whitest and fanlightedest, Gramercy ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... a transmitter that worked under water like a ball-point pen, broadcasting weary vaudeville routines. He scratched his head and looked wistfully at the New England shoreline—or was that Long Island? He ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... forth upon the streets to find association with the other sex, and together they give themselves up to a few hours' entertainment. A few are contented to promenade the streets, but amusement houses are cheap, and the "movies" and vaudeville shows attract the crowd. For a few dimes a couple can have a wide range of choice. If the tonic of the playhouse is not sufficient, a small fee admits to the public dance-hall, where it is easy to meet ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... blades of fire ripping up the black bellies of the clouds, I know all about the heart of Attila and the Vikings and tigers and Alexander the Great! So I think I grew a bit out there talking to that water-giant who does nothing at all—not even a vaudeville stunt—and does it ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... now familiar exclamation might be appropriately adopted as the motto of the Vaudeville Theatre during the run of Clarissa. She does run, too, poor dear—first from home, then from Lovelace's, and then "anywhere, anywhere, out of the world!" By the way, is it quite fair of Mr. THOMAS THORNE, in the absence of a friend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... fascinating fervour is more interesting than the spectacled Scotchman. Both began with volumes of excellent but characterless verse, and loud outcries about the dignity of art, and both have—well...Mr Robert Buchanan has collaborated with Gus Harris, and written the programme poetry for the Vaudeville Theatre; he has written a novel, the less said about which the better—he has attacked men whose shoe-strings he is unworthy to tie, and having failed to injure them, he retracted all he said, and launched forth into slimy benedictions. He took Fielding's masterpiece, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... said Dan, with his ready, cheerful smile, "let me make a proposition. As I can't take both of you up to Tiffany's and do the right thing, what do you say to a little vaudeville? I've got the rickets. How about looking at stage diamonds since we can't shake hands with ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... and players of the day will be found far more closely representative of the social tone, the political creed, the artistic tastes of the hour, than elsewhere. The drama, for instance, in vogue not long since at the Vaudeville Theatre in the Place de la Bourse, is one we can scarcely imagine successful in another city, at least to such a degree. It was Les Filles de Marbre; and this is the plot. The opening scene is at Athens, in the studio of Phidias. It ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that he was on the point of departure; the hope of finding him still in Paris sent the lover flying into the Rue des Deux-Ecus, where he learned that the traveller had engaged his place at the Messageries-Royales. To bid adieu to his beloved capital, Gaudissart had gone to see a new piece at the Vaudeville; Popinot resolved to wait for him. Was it not drawing a cheque on fortune to entrust the launching of the oil of nuts to this incomparable steersman of mercantile inventions, already petted and courted by the richest firms? Popinot had reason to feel sure of Gaudissart. The ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... an American Bishop consented to share a Sunday night program with Elsie Janis, the famous vaudeville actress, the great Bishop became suddenly greater in the estimation of Christian and non-Christian alike, and the passionately expressive "Elsie" had a new and wholesome interpretation put upon her fun and her jokes by the magic which ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... had been entirely cut out, and several others suppressed, "Quinola" ran for nineteen nights. Many years afterwards, in 1863, it was acted at the Vaudeville, and was a great success. During his lifetime Balzac's plays received little applause —in fact, were generally greeted with obloquy; but when it was too late for praise or blame to matter, his apotheosis as a dramatist took ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... to be saying: "This water is much too cold for me." The mamma bear was dressed in a poke bonnet and white apron, and resembled the wolf who frightened Little Red Riding-Hood, and Ikey, the baby bear, wore rakishly over one eye the pointed cap of a clown. To those who knew their vaudeville, this was indisputable evidence that Ikey would furnish the comic relief. Nor did Ikey disappoint them. He was a wayward son. When his parents were laboriously engaged in a boxing-match, or dancing to the "Merry Widow Waltz," or balancing on step-ladders, ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... to-day, as often in the past, where psychical phenomena are involved, results in converting the normal mental realm, the realm of normal self-consciousness, into a vaudeville performance; a mere "Variety Show," where all due sense of proportion and ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... usin' the steam siren effect. And, as it's right on the corner of Forty-second and Broadway, he comes near collectin' a crowd. Four or five people turn around to see what the merriment is all about, and a couple of 'em stops short in their tracks. One guy I spotted for a vaudeville artist lookin' for stuff that might fat up ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... as Ste. Marie's ears came once more within range—"mind you, I'm not saying that Paris hasn't got its points. It has. Oh yes! And so has London, and so has Ostend, and so has Monte Carlo. Verree much so! I like Paris. I like the theatres and the vaudeville shows in the Champs-Elysees, and I like Longchamps. I like the boys who hang around Henry's Bar. They're good sports all right, all right! But, by golly, I want to go home! Put me off at the corner of Forty-second Street and Broadway, and I'll ask ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... consciously adopt an attitude of respect toward love, and consciously abandon as far as possible the attitude of jocular cynicism with which they too often treat it,—an attitude which is reflected so disgustingly in current vaudeville and ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... cannon. Lieutenant Mayne could not take his cruiser the Plumper higher than Langley; and there the forces were transferred to Tom Wright's stern-wheeler, the Enterprise. But, when they arrived at Hope, the whole affair looked like semi-comic vaudeville. Yale, too, was as quiet as a church prayer-meeting; and Colonel Moody preached a sermon on Sunday to a congregation of forty in the court-house—the first church service ever held on the mainland ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... forming of habits and the choosing of ideals—many of these future men and women are finding their entertainment and their relaxation (and mind you, at the close of a day in school or in the evening after a day spent in the poorly ventilated office or store) in the moving-picture show or at the vaudeville. And in these places the air is apt to be both hot and impure, and all the physical conditions enervating. The emotional atmosphere, too, is sure to be abnormal, unnatural, and spiritually deadening. We find here, and in too large quantity to be a negligible factor, the atmosphere, the ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... situation which compelled him to bring up the rear of the procession like the piano-tuner or the gas-man, Edestone marched along at the side of an attendant in livery, who evidently looked upon him as a clever vaudeville artist that had been brought in to entertain the company. He told the visitor, with a broad grin, that he had frightened the other flunkey almost out of his wits with his magic tricks. Edestone, his sense of humour aroused, thereupon gravely offered to give a show ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... and whiskers. And the waistcoat and whiskers, by way of intimating the slight degree in which they were affected by the looks aforesaid, bestowed glances of increased admiration upon Miss J'mima Ivins and friend. The concert and vaudeville concluded, they promenaded the gardens. The waistcoat and whiskers did the same; and made divers remarks complimentary to the ankles of Miss J'mima Ivins and friend, in an audible tone. At length, not satisfied ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... country. He was never anything but tired in speaking of it, and told me a great amount. He said many times that in the hotels there was never a concierge or portier to give you information where to discover the best vaudeville; there was no concierge at all! In New York itself, my friend told me, a facchino, or species of porter, or some such good-for-nothing, had said to him, including a slap on the shoulder, "Well, brother, did you receive your delayed luggage correctly?" (In this instance my studies of the North-American ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... instructed (I mean instructed in the language). Every one knows a Frenchman can infuse airy elegance into a button, bestow a marketable value upon a straw, breathe esprit into a feather, and make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. So the poet can transform any incident into an attractive vaudeville. The tender situation dramatique, the humorous coup de theatre, the jeu d'esprit sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the merciless exposure of vice and folly, the purest and noblest morality, largely mixed with an ostentatious ridicule of every sacred truth, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... The World's Unparalleled Upside-Down Man! He Doesn't Know Whether He's On His Head Or His Heels. He's Always Up In The Air About Something, But You Can't Upset Him! Vaudeville To-night—The Bodongo Brothers, Brilliant Burmese Balancers—Arctic Annie, the Prima Donna of Sealdom, and Tristan LeHuber, The Balloon Man—He Uses An Anchor For A Parachute!" At last indeed the LeHuber family will have arrived sensationally ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... Royal Academy were engaged to execute new dances; a full and effective band performed the most fashionable airs, and new figures were at length introduced and announced as a source of attraction; but this place was soon pulled down, and re-built on the ground now occupied by the Theatre du Vaudeville. The establishment failed, and the proprietor became a bankrupt. A short time after, it was re-opened by another speculator; but on such a scale, as merely to attract the working classes of the community. The band was now composed of a set of miserable scrapers, who played ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... made this confession to me in the entr'acte of a silly vaudeville, to witness which we had been carried by an elevator some sixteen storeys and landed on a roof crowded with palms and funny people behaving like millionaires. In the entr'acte the band sank its blare suddenly to a sort of 'Home, Sweet Home' adagio, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mean, reluctantly gave his consent. A general pandemonium at once ensued, one of the men producing a mouth accordion and another a concertina, whilst the rest, selecting partners with much mock gallantry, danced to the air of a popular Vaudeville song till ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... fair contest," put in another student. "Flapp took lessons from a man who used to do bag-punching on the vaudeville stage." ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... told him that the deacon had hung up the receiver in something of a temper. Donaldson came out of the booth, hesitated, and then put in another call. He found relaxation in the vaudeville picture he had of the spindle-shanked hypocrite fretting in the cold so many miles distant. He was morally certain that the old fellow had robbed the dying Burnham of half his scant property. If he had ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and the time nine o'clock in the evening. The two friends were seated well back in one of the several Spanish vaudeville theatres that flourish more or less in the city on the Great Rock, even in such times as this period of the great ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... and a scraping noise at the lock. It was only a vaudeville youth, slender as a girl, who lived on the floor above, feeling unsteadily, and a bit the worse for wear, for the lock that must eventually ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... establish the correct vocal action. Some even go so far as to say that a clear delivery of the words will of itself insure a correct tone-production. But this theory calls for only passing comment. One has but to turn to the vaudeville stage to see its falsity. For singers of that class, the words are of the utmost importance, while the tone-production is usually of the ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... he looks bright," Abe commented. "He looks so bright in them vaudeville clothes that it almost gives me eye-strain. I suppose he says he ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... of any virtuoso. I am disgusted. Here am I, an old kettle-drummer—as you say in your barbarous English—poor, unknown, forced to earn a beggarly living by strumming dance tunes in a variety hall on a hated piano, and often accompanying singers, acrobats, and all the riffraff of a vaudeville, where a mist of vulgarity hangs like a dirty pearl cloud over all. I don't look at my music any more. I know what is wanted. I have rhythmic talent. I conduct myself, although there is a butter-faced leader waving a silly stick at us ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... The Vaudeville Theatre is facing the Exchange in the Place de la Bourse, and retains a very good share of the patronage of the public; their performances are, for the most part, very good, and the pieces which are mostly played, are such as the name of the theatre indicates. Felix and ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... but of three. Besides the velvety baritone laugh and the giggle like the gasp of a concertina, the maid who waits upon us hears an unpleasant cracked "He, he!" like the chuckle of a general in a vaudeville. ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... accounted but little in the balance when the honour of La Belle France, and the triumphs of the grand "armee," are weighted against them. The infatuated and enthusiastic followers of this great man would seem, in some respects, to resemble the drunkard in the "Vaudeville," who alleged as his excuse for drinking, that whenever he was sober his poverty disgusted him. "My cabin," said he, "is a cell, my wife a mass of old rags, my child a wretched object of misery and malady. But give me brandy; ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... have done to induce us to come back as soon as possible. They give us all kinds of entertainment, free of charge. Three times a week we have some sort of a show, generally a band concert, a movin' picture show and a vaudeville show. Then, once a month they bring up some crackin' good show right out of a Broadway theater to make us forget that it's Sunday and we'll have to go to work the next morning. Scenery and costumes and everything and—and—" Here Mr. Smilk showed ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... painted with a most harrowing fidelity of detail. Occasionally we encountered groups of peasants wearing the picturesque velvet jackets, tight knee-breeches, heavy woolen stockings and beribboned hats which one usually associates with the Tyrolean yodelers who still inflict themselves on vaudeville audiences in the United States. As we sped northward the landscape changed with the inhabitants, the sunny Italian countryside, ablaze with flowers and green with vineyards, giving way to solemn forests, gloomy defiles, and ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... 'Harry the Actor' successfully looted the office safe of M'Kenkie, J.F. Higgs & Co., of Cleveland, Ohio. He had just married a smart but very facile third-rate vaudeville actress—English by origin—and wanted money for the honeymoon. He got about five hundred pounds, and with that they came to Europe and stayed in London for some months. That period is marked by the Congreave Square post office burglary, you may remember. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... budget of circulars, sending out monthly bills, and telling pained-looking callers that the doctor was out just then. Her salary just about paid her board, with a dollar or two left over for headache tablets and a vaudeville show now and then. She did not need much spending money, for her evenings were spent mostly in crying over certain small garments and a ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... answered. "But the natives are like punk imitations of a vaudeville poster; they're the extension of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... or any great American city in that. There is a central district in which maist of the first class theatres are to be found, just like what is called Broadway in New York. But the music halls—they're vaudeville theatres in New York, ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... to us direct from the vaudeville stage performed every summer in her open-air "arena cage," until she entered motherhood, which put an end to her stage work. She was a brilliant "trick" bicycle rider. She could stand upright on a huge ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... by the dawn of a new day, the Triton sent his bass voice booming across the maritime silence, several times intoning sentimental melodies that in his youth he had heard sung by a vaudeville prima donna dressed as a ship's boy, at other times caroling in Valencian the chanteys of the coast—fishermen's songs invented as they drew in their nets, in which most shameless words were flung together on the chance of making them rhyme. In certain windings of the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... accustomed to the bombardment. "You naughty child," I heard a woman who was walking before me say to her daughter, "if you do not behave better I will not take you to see the bombardment." "It is better than a vaudeville," said a girl near me on the Trocadero, and she clapped her hands. A man at Point-du-Jour showed me two great holes which had been made in his garden the night before by two bombs close by his front door. He, his wife, and his children seemed to be rather proud ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Vaudeville Education and a small Tenor Voice, with the result that many a fluttering Birdie regarded him as the ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... the most care to hide from him. For there were some things—when they were laughed at I could not bear it: the world seemed like a hell to me. Is this world and all the life upon it only like a farce or a vaudeville, where you find no great meanings? Why then are there tragedies and grand operas, where men do difficult things and choose to suffer? I think it is silly to speak of all things as a joke. And I saw ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... scientist, or a surveyor, or — a diplomat. From about 1824 he studied and adopted the Hegelian philosophy, on which based his esthetics, and for which he was the first spokesman in Denmark. In the years 1825 to 1836 he founded the Danish vaudeville, in which his aim was to recreate the national drama. His vaudeville was a lighter musical-dramatic genre, a situation-play with loosely-sketched characters and the addition of music to concentrate the mood. In it he sought a union with the national comedy, and like Holberg to treat subjects from ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... quality and variety of the food given to the new troops reached a higher degree than was reasonably to have been expected. The average soldier gained from ten to twelve pounds after entering the service. Provision was also made for his entertainment. Vaudeville, concerts, moving pictures formed an element of camp life, much to the surprise of the visiting French ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... requisition only to gratify the latter, so completely did musical composition control him. Beethoven's Pastoral symphony prompted him at one time to write a shepherd play, which owed its dramatic construction on the other hand to Goethe's vaudeville, "A Lover's Humor," to which he wrote the music and the verses at the same time, so that the action and movement of the play grew out of the making of the verses and the music. He was likewise prompted to compose in the prevailing forms of music, and produced a ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... dinner both, according to the length of stay, could be served, and the menu should embrace a few courses of country fare. Dancing in the barn during the afternoon will be another form of entertainment, or if you wish to give an elaborate entertainment, vaudeville performers might be hired ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... from his Apartment to the Galleys or chasing homeward to grab off a few wasteful hours of Slumber, he would see People of the Lower Classes going out to the Parks with Picnic Baskets, or lined up at the Vaudeville Palaces, or watching a hard-faced Soubrette demonstrate ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... even an ardent disciple of the craze who has had sufficient effrontery to argue that it is a good play. Take his last play but one, "Suzette"—or "Suzanne," or whatever its girl's name was—produced at the Paris Vaudeville last autumn. The first act is very taking indeed. You can see the situation of the ostracized wife coming along beautifully. The preparation is charming, in the best boulevard manner. But when the situation arrives ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Tess was reveling in vaudeville In the first place, Yasmini had no Western views on modesty. Whatever her mother may have taught her in that respect had gone the way of all the other handicaps she saw fit to throw into the discard, or to retain for use solely when she saw there was advantage. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... silly story of Pierrot married to one woman and wishing to marry another; a farce mingled with passion, which had been discovered by a vaudeville-writer, aided by a poet, among the stock-pieces of the old Italian theatre. Renee took the part of the deserted wife, this time, appearing in various disguises when her husband was love-making elsewhere. Noemi was the woman with whom he ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Orsino almost impatiently. "I know what you are going to say. It will be flattering to me of course. The unattached young man is dangerous to the reputation. The foreign lady is travelling alone. There is the foundation of a vaudeville in that!" ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... be called a Vaudeville with musical accompaniment, than an opera. The music is not above mediocrity, though we find many pleasing and even exquisite melodies in it. That it has held its present place on the stage for the past forty years is due principally to its excellent libretto, which ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... pictures had not attained their present virulence. Vaudeville, polite or otherwise, had not yet been crowded out by the ubiquitous film. The Bijou offered entertainment of the cigar-box tramp variety, interspersed with trick bicyclists, soubrettes in slightly soiled pink, trained seals, and Family ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... sarcastic, ironical, scandal-mongering, dealing in satire, abuse, hitting right and left at social and personal vices—a cheese of rank flavor that is not to be partaken of too freely. It might be compared to the vaudeville in opera or to the genre ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... season, Pete had pursued his profession at a vaudeville theatre, and one day, not long after his literary representation, he came to ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... and rank him on a very different basis than if his main, and often his sole, object was to amuse the groundlings. If he often took himself and his art with hardly more seriousness than does the writer of the vaudeville skit or musical comedy of to-day, if he often wished primarily to gain the immediate laugh, then much of Langen's long list of the playwright's dramatic delinquencies is ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... theater, the play; film the film, movies, motion pictures, cinema, cinematography; theatricals, dramaturgy, histrionic art, buskin, sock, cothurnus[obs3], Melpomene and Thalia, Thespis. play, drama, stage play, piece[Fr], five-act play, tragedy, comedy, opera, vaudeville, comedietta[obs3], lever de rideau[Fr], interlude, afterpiece[obs3], exode[obs3], farce, divertissement, extravaganza, burletta[obs3], harlequinade[obs3], pantomime, burlesque, opera bouffe[Fr], ballet, spectacle, masque, drame comedie drame[Fr]; melodrama, melodrame[obs3]; comidie larmoyante[Fr], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fulfilled. The Theatre de la Renaissance accepted his "Novice of Palermo;" but at the last moment there was the usual bankruptcy of the management,—the fourth that affected him! Then he wrote a Parisian Vaudeville, but it had to be given up because the actors declared it could not be executed. The Grand Opera, on which he had fixed his eye, was absolutely out of the question. He was brought to such straits that he offered to sing in the chorus of a small Boulevard theatre, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... seen 'at my best,'" protested Anne. "I want the other girls to have a chance, too. Why not give a vaudeville show? Grace and Miriam can dance. Elfreda can give imitations. There are plenty of things we can do. We will advertise the show in all the campus houses, and each one of us must pledge ourselves to sell ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... less artistically every day upon the vaudeville stage. We love to recognize types; and ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... anything else. Any man can see with half an eye how drinking, for example, is hurting Jones; but he always argues that his own personal drinking is of a different variety and is doing him no harm. The best illustration of it is in the old vaudeville story, where the man came on the stage and said: "Smith is drinking too much! I never go into a saloon without ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... on before she could speak. "Last night I had two vaudeville queens, and three the night before. Only there was more bedding then. It's unfortunate, isn't it, the aptitude they display in getting lost from their outfits? Yet somehow I have failed to find any lost outfits so far. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... woo me to this country: your wide open spaces, where seeing a human being is reduced to the very lowest limit; and second, I find that in playing vaudeville houses in the winter time, I develop a sinus trouble that sticks with me until I get back here to the mountains where it disappears entirely. Yes sir! When I hit the table lands of Denver, Pocatello, Casper, Rawling, Laramie, or this town, old Sinus passes ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... that was followed by a pantomimic ballet, a musical piece called The Children in the Wood, a recitation of Goldsmith's Epilogue in the character of Harlequin, and a "grand finale" by some adventuresome actor who made a leap through a barrel of fire! Truly vaudeville began ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... mentioned only samples of the articles on trained anthropoids. All are necessarily descriptions of the behavior of individuals who had been trained not for psychological purposes but for the vaudeville stage, and although such observations unquestionably have certain value for comparative psychology, it is well known that unless an observer knows the history of an act, he is not able to evaluate it in terms of intelligence ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... his North Valley friends. There were individuals who had qualities in common, and would surely hit it off! Bob Creston, for example, who was good at a "song and dance"—he would surely be interested in "Blinky," the vaudeville specialist of the camp! Mrs. Curtis, who liked cats, would find a bond of sisterhood with old Mrs. Nagle, who lived next door to the Minettis, and kept five! And even Vivie Cass, who hated men who ate with their knives—she would be driven to murder by the table-manners of Reminitsky's boarders, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... the idea of the dignity of theatrical art was pedantic nonsense, and he thought light serio-comic vaudeville the only class of performance worth considering. Serious opera, rich musical ensemble, was his particular aversion, and my demands for this irritated him so that he met them only with scorn and indignant refusals. Of the strange connection between this artistic bias and his taste in the domain ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... in a vaudeville sketch that was booked for a few weeks on one of the smaller circuits about New York, she had some difficulty in making him attend rehearsals, and take his part seriously. His friends were generally of the opinion that it was beneath his art. His wife urged that ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the Parisian correspondence for the Adelphi Theatre, has supplied it with a vaudeville bearing the above title; the fable, of which, like some of AEsop's, principally concerns a hen, that, however, does not speak, and a smart cockscomb who does—an innocent little fair who has charge of the fowl—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... here almost three years ago. He was engaged in one of the vaudeville theaters near here—in the orchestra—and he rented my second story front at six dollars a week. Except for the fact that he would play awfully shivery music at all hours of the night, I was glad to have him. He was quiet ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... distinguished him during the two seasons in which he has conducted a rival establishment to the Metropolitan Opera House. After two weeks, within which he produced "Boabdil," "Fidelio," and some light-waisted spectacular things, he turned his theater over to Koster & Bial, who ran it as a vaudeville house until the end of its short career. There were English performances of the customary loose-jointed kind in the summer at the Grand Opera House, the first series of which, beginning in May, 1893, derived some dignity from the fact that it was under the management ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... His Excellency was curt and caustic. "After the vaudeville show of last night there won't be much to-day at the State House to suit anybody who is ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... sensation has been caused by the announcement that Miss Teddie Gerard is leaving 'Bubbly' to play the leading part in 'Cheep' at the Vaudeville Theatre."—Daily Mirror. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... there. Once I answered an ad. to join a county fair. I even sent money to a vaudeville ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... of us, and in order to shake him we entered a variety theatre, where my maudlin friend soon fell asleep in his seat. The rest of us left the theatre, and after seeing the sights I wandered back to the vaudeville, finding the performance over and my friend still sound asleep. I awoke him, never letting him know that I had been absent for hours, and after rubbing his eyes open, he said: "Reed, is it all over? No dance or concert? They give a good show ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... get busy," rejoined Mr. Walsh. "We didn't come down here for a vaudeville show or to be entertained by some boob, because we've got boobs ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... Dear who came over with the Conqueror—and her mother's first cousin went to the Philadelphia Assembly—how could she help it? Noblesse Oblige! All the girls were jealous—the cats! Anyhow, she had quit the scene of her early triumphs, lured by the attractive offer of a vaudeville manager. In this new field she appeared for a short time; but when on the roof they put her on the programme sandwiched between a troup of performing dogs and a bunch of bum acrobats—she kicked! Any self-respecting artiste ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... the difference in the handwriting may be attributed to an amanuensis. When the great man writes his next notice, I shall make it my business to be taking a bock in the Cafe de l'Europe, in order that I may observe closely what happens. There is to be a repetition generale at the Vaudeville on Monday night—on Monday night, therefore, I hope to advise you of our plan of campaign. Now do not speak to me any more—I am about to compose a eulogy on Claudine, for which Labaregue will, in due course, receive ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... lively young lady, who had been abroad, gave a very happy imitation of the almost inimitable Jenny Vertpre, in the French vaudeville of the "Cat metamorphosed to a Woman," in that scene where she betrays her original nature. She purred, she frolicked, she pounced on an imaginary mouse, caught it, tossed it up in the air, and went through all the manoeuvres of ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... a panicky year. Many theaters were closed, and more actors "walked the Rialto" looking for engagements than ever before. Mr. DeVere was among them, and he even accepted a part in a vaudeville sketch to eke out a ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... entertainment to while away the winter hours. The auditorium possessed a stage and a good dance floor. The moving picture machine and the band were there. Seated on the backless wooden benches soldiers looked at the pictures or listened to the orchestra or to their own doughboy talent showing his art at vaudeville ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... dollars a week next season. And if you wish a vaudeville engagement for the winter I think I shall be able to ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... fact that magnetism is by no means confined to those who have finely trained intellects or who have achieved great reputations. Some vaudeville buffoon or some gypsy fiddler may have more attractive power than the virtuoso who had spent years in developing his mind and his technic. The average virtuoso thinks far more of his "geist," his "talent" (or as Emerson would have it, "the shadow of the soul—the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... upon the stage, and their increased attendance at theatres has somewhat modified the nature of the performance; even the "refined vaudeville" now begins to show the influence of women. It would be no great advantage to have this department of human life feminized; the improvement desired is to have it less masculized; to reduce the excessive influence of one, and to bring out those broad human interests and pleasures which men and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... incredulous. She is so deliciously lacking in a sense of humour that in the frivolous society of Jimmie and me she is as much out of place as the Venus de Milo would be in vaudeville. ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... and down once or twice from the Rue Druot to the Vaudeville Theater, just as we were taking leave of each other—for he already seemed quite done up with walking—I said ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... added, when the rope was well in hand, "we've wasted all the time we can spare on a second-rate vaudeville performance. Come along." ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... had an indescribable roof garden cadence, and I found myself humming it delightedly. At the end of the second verse I was so carried away by its possibilities that, turning to a group of people talking near the rail, I remarked that with rag-time words, it would be vastly popular in American vaudeville. At which everyone stared incredulously for a moment, until one of the number, realizing the situation, managed to explain, between gasps of laughter, that "Hello, my Baby, Hello, my Honey" was in its dotage in the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... Many clerks are married to milliners, licensed tobacco dealers, women who have charge of the public lotteries or reading-rooms. Some, like the husband of Madame Colleville, Celestine's rival, play in the orchestra of a theatre; others like du Bruel, write vaudeville, comic operas, melodramas, or act as prompters behind the scenes. We may mention among them Messrs. Planard, Sewrin, etc. Pigault-Lebrun, Piis, Duvicquet, in their day, were in government employ. Monsieur Scribe's head-librarian was a ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... reason that there was no other place to go. We hadn't any Clubs to begin with, so that on his way home from business there was no temptation for him to stop off anywhere and frivol away his time playing billiards, or squandering his limited means on rubbers of bridge or other ruinous games. The only Vaudeville shows we had at the time consisted of the somewhat too continuous performances of the monkeys and the poll-parrots right there in our own back-yard, so that that menace to the happy home was entirely unknown to us, and inasmuch ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... to be a Hedonist, a Marcus Aurelius; a glutton, an ascetic; a satyr, a pattern of domestic virtue; an illiterate Philistine, a collector of book plates and first editions. A legend, widely current, ran that he played chief bacchanalian at dinners whose vaudeville accompaniments were too gross for a bill of particulars; while another, equally plausible, had it that he lunched daily on a red-cheeked apple raised on the farm which had cradled his undistinguished infancy. He was popularly known as ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... laborer's breakfast,—I'm afraid I haven't any temperament in my appetite, you know—and sped off for atmosphere and ozone, far below the Square, on a two-mile tramp, and now I'm about to write. Rodney Harrison, who knows everybody who is anybody, has introduced me to some vaudeville-powers-that-be and I am encouraged to try my hand at what they call a sketch—a one-act play. It seems that they are in need of something a little less thin than the usual article they've been serving up to ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... make no technical distinctions between tragedy and comedy in their stage pieces;—the dialogue of which is composed in ordinary prose, while the principal performer now and then chants forth, in unison with music, a species of song or vaudeville, and the name of the tune or air is always inserted at the top of the passage to be sung.— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... unrelated sounds presently emerged a gay and sparkling melody; and then a gayer one; and after that a rollicking song from one of the latest musical comedies. There followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible tunes that ever made a vaudeville success. She played with abandon, a kind of reckless fury, sitting erect, with her head flung back, an insouciant smile flickering about her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then suddenly, in the midst of a ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... hoped you'd follow instructions and go to the restaurant. Once there, I was sure the head-waiter'd persuade you to sit down at a table; and the rest went exactly as I planned. The two men we called the 'watchers' used to be vaudeville actors—did a turn together, and their specialty was lightning changes. Their make-ups, even at short notice, could fool Sherlock Holmes. Even though you despise me for it, Anita, you must admit it was a smart way to make you ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Dion Boucicault has since deftly adapted the same delightful little piece under the name of Kerry, or Night and Morning. The Cinderella-like plot of School is taken from the Aschenbroedel of Roderick Benedix: the school examination was suggested by a French vaudeville, En classe, mesdemoiselles! The part of Beau Farintosh is a weak revival of Garrick's Lord Chalkstone and Colman and Garrick's Lord Ogleby; and the strong situation in the fourth act is imitated from Les Beaux Messieurs de ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... you could have seen the old Commodore work up games to throw Babbitt off the track. I put in most of the day watchin' 'em at it, and it was as good as a vaudeville act. About a quarter of an hour before it was time for the dose the valet would come out and begin to look around the grounds. Soon as he'd located the Commodore he'd slide off after his tea wagon. That was just where the old boy got in his fine ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... mouth in an affected smirk, he quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was crossing her eyes. As she had pronounced the word perfect "parfect," he presumed that she was making herself look, for the remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating Antonia. He was careful not to look again in her direction until she had stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. He could not hope to make her understand to what point the debasing of beauty to ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... you were the prize beef chawer," he remarked. "I never could see why you didn't go into vaudeville, in a Houdini act. I used to soak the knots in your shirt and dry 'em, and soak 'em again; but you always untied 'em, often ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... convincing them that the peril was actual and near. They begin to see how unwise, if nothing worse, has been the weak policy of the Executive in allowing men to play at Revolution till they learn to think the coarse reality as easy and pretty as the vaudeville they have been acting. They are fast coming to the conclusion that the list of grievances put forward by the secessionists is a sham and a pretence, the veil of a long-matured plot against republican institutions. And it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Et joue un ancien vaudeville Qu'il fausse imperturbablement; Son chien le conduit par la ville, Spectre diurne ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... with one of the most lovely of foreign Ambassadresses, and was to go with her afterward to the Vaudeville, at the pretty golden theater, where a troupe from the Bouffes were playing; but he felt anything but in the mood for even her bewitching and—in an marriageable sense—safe society, as he stopped his horse at his own ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... gold medal, a large cash sum, any amount of newspaper space, and an excellent opportunity to go on a vaudeville circuit. ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... a palette that you could toss in the air, put in the bank, secrete or squander, a palette with which you could paint the hours and make them twist to jewelled harps. No more walk-up! Good-bye, kitchy! Harlem, addio! The gentleman with the fabulous nose could whistle. Vaudeville, indeed! She could buy the shop, buy a dozen of them, tear them down, build them up, throw them into one and sing there, sing what she liked, when she liked, as she liked. Yes, but for whom? ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... nothing compared to the emotion occasionally produced by an error in the time that was to elapse between my two performances. I remember that, one night, having to wind up the performances at the Vaudeville, the stage manager miscalculated the time the pieces would take in performing, and found himself much in advance. He sent off an express to warn me that the curtain had fallen, and I was anxiously expected. Can my readers comprehend ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... above fields of usefulness in which it was expected that the phonograph might be applied, only three have been commercially realized—namely, the reproduction of musical, including vaudeville or talking selections, for which purpose a very large proportion of the phonographs now made is used; the employment of the machine as a mechanical stenographer, which field has been taken up actively only within the past few years; and the utilization ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... virtue, so unblemished of fault, that he could not be overlooked by the managers of the quadrennial national performance, searching with Demosthenes' lantern for a man against whom nothing could be said. They called Eric from private life to be headliner in their vaudeville. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Magazine." After observing that "his memory was, indeed, astonishing, and the feats which he performed with it were incredible; that the writer had heard him repeat, successively, scene after scene from a French vaudeville,—the Record in an Action filling up the "&c.'s," and a passage from a Greek orator, without the least apparent difficulty or hesitation," Mr. Phillimore proceeds to say, that the passage in question "was one of the finest in the Greek language, being in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... audience drawn by curiosity,—I should say that were it not for the excellent acting of all concerned in the piece, and especially of Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS as the Hanwellian heroine, IBSEN's Hedda Gabler would scarcely have been allowed a second night's existence at the Vaudeville. Miss ROBINS is so much in earnest—as a true artist should be—that she excites your curiosity to discover what on earth she is taking all this trouble about; and thus she compels your attention. That the result is eminently unsatisfactory is no fault of hers. The piece itself ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... vaudeville, Follies, revues, etc., because they are full of quick changes of program. He enjoys, as does every type, certain kinds of movies, but he constitutes no such percentage of the movie-going audience ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... not raised for vaudeville. Father and mother were veteran legits; They loved the Bard and the "Lady of Lyons." I was born on a show boat on the Cumberland; I was carried on as a child When the farm girl revealed her shame On the night of the snowstorm. The old folks died with grease paint on their ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton |
