Transatlantic Stage Stars in Vaudeville and Variety: Celebrity Turns [Hardcover]

This book shows eminent actors performing under stringent conditions in vaudeville. It was a strange notion in 1900 that leading lights of the legitimate stage would ever join a bill of 'turns', with everything from song-and-dance to criminals regaling crowds with their exploits. It chronicles renowned actors showing rough fare in rough times.Acknowledgements Introduction Patronizing, 1890-1901 Precious Brits, 1904-1912 Growing Pains, 1910-1913 Suffer the Women, 1910-1914 War and Peace, 1914-1918 Parting, 1921-1934 Afterthoughts Notes Bibliography Index

'Woods shows how international performers in American vaudeville and British music hall wrought new understandings of celebrity, gender, patriotism and empire. This lively storyilluminates an era in global culture that bears important lessons for our own time.' - Robert W. Snyder, Rutgers-Newark; Author of The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture

LEIGH WOODS is Professor of Theatre and Drama and Head of Theatre Studies at the University of Michigan, USA.