Judy and Vaudeville

 We cannot begin to understand who Judy was until we realize how important were her parents and their vaudeville background.  Vaudeville (or Variety as it was known in the UK) had been the family entertainment since the 19th century.  It really became popular at the turn of the twentieth century and remained so until about the 1930s.  The shows would include Irish tenors, bold flirtatious female singers with loud voices, such as Sophie Tucker, dancers, comedians, acrobats and jugglers.  Every town had a theater and the entrance fee a modest five cents. Vaudeville singers always needed new material and songwriters kept turning out new songs.  The audience could buy a sheet of their favorite music and play and sing in their own home.  Frank and Ethel (Judy's parents) grew up in this atmosphere and they were both enamored with show business.  

            The silent movies came along and would eventually bring about the demise of vaudeville but for several years the two media worked along side by side with one another and this is where Judy’s parents thrived.  Many of the new movies were just short and simple ten or fifteen-minutes in length and vaudeville entertainment included to fill out the program.  They needed a person to play the piano and this ideal for Ethel because of her experience at home.   While the reels were being changed another person entertained the audience hence the position of song illustrator was introduced.  This was a perfect job for Frank, who had a tenor fine voice.  The song illustrator would lead the audience into song and then, hopefully, sell them the sheet music.  Jack Warner had done this in his father’s movie house and also Eddie Canter and Al Jolson had also started out as song illustrators.  In addition, there were still photographs projected onto the screen by the Edison’s Vita scope.    

In many of Judy’s movies are examples of vaudeville performances.  In “The Zeigfeld Girl” Judy and father are a vaudeville act and when Judy is auditioning for the Ziegfeld Show, he tries to show her how to punch out a number in the old style.  Judy managed to get the orchestra to play slower tempo and we see and hear the beautiful, “I’m always Chasing Rainbows.”   There were many more examples in the movies Little Nellie Kelly, and For Me and My Gal as well as her movies with Mickey Rooney.  .

Julie Andrews came out of Variety background in England and toured for many years as a child with her parents.  I remember hearing her on the radio in the 40s, and 50s.  In the United States, many of the well-known entertainers came from a Vaudeville background, such as Bob Hope, Burns and Allen, Mickey Rooney, Donald O’Connor and more.  George Burns wrote in his book, Gracie: a love story about life on the vaudeville stage, and being on the road performing three or four shows day. (Burns, 1988, p.60)   Although they were earning $125 - $250 a week, by the time they paid their agent, transportation, food and hotels there was little money over.  Of course they were doing the work they loved.   Burns and Allen did not really begin to be financial solvent until they found their opportunities in radio, movies and eventually television.   Ed Sullivan’s television shows in the 1950s and 1960s were examples of vaudeville, except we were watching the shows on television.  Eventually folk and rock music came into being in the late 1950s and 1960 and influenced the music of that era.  

            This vaudeville background gave Judy the edge, poise and ability to be comfortable and handle an audience.  Although she might be nervous before walking on stage, the second she was there she was AT HOME.  This was when she was most alive and happy interacting with her people; she loved them giving them pleasure.  She felt of herself as an entertainer, this was her role in life, to make people happy.  I was lucky enough to be present at many of her performances in London in 1951, 1957 and 1960 and was honored to witness her recording four songs at EMI in 1960.  I remember once being at CBS when Count Basie was a guest on one of her television show.  Some of the numbers had been pre-recorded and so the audience was watching monitors.  Judy obviously felt they were being short changed not to see a live performance and so she dragged Mel Torme out with her and they did their songs alongside the monitors.  So we had two Judy Garlands and two Mel Tormes, we certainly were not short changed!   

Judy had seen and witnessed so many acts (as she was to amuse audiences in her later television appearances) and was able to incorporate these aspects into her performance.  Many of the musicals of the 1940s and 1950s made in Hollywood, not only from MGM, had a vaudeville background because this was the business which most entertainers came from.  Judy incorporated vaudeville into her movies, think of  “Be a Clown” from the movie, The Pirate, “We’re a Couple of Swells” from Easter Parade and the beautiful and haunting “Clown” number and “Here’s to Us” from the last CBS television show of her 1963/64 series and one cannot forget “Swanee” from The Star is Born.

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