Before movies, the entertainment of the day was known as Vaudeville. The profession of Vaudeville was lucritive but not by today's movie star status. In 1907, the Vaudeville circuit was bringing in over 30 million a year and that was big money back then. Vaudeville entertainers worked a "Circuit" which would mean 42 weeks plus on the road living out of a suitcase. Performers were paid well, about three times average wages at the time. The "Top Billers" of the day could command as much as $1000/ week, which was huge in 1900. Most papers had a section that was dedicated to Theatre and Vaudeville, so we bring you, Old News Ads of Vaudeville. Kaufman Brothers - Henry and Hank in Vaudeville - 1910 - Press Play Button
The New York Tribune – June 04, 1905 Some months ago at
a dinner of the Theater Managers Association at a New York can say
emphatically that there are no other places o£ amusement
whose stages are more generally free from suggestive or
questionable This may be
regarded as the first recognition of vaudeville as a real
and potent
The twelve thousand persons who find their livelihood in vaudeville may be divided approximately as follows: Players or artists, 7,500, theater employees, 3,000; agents and assistants, 250 ; song-writers, dramatists. etc. 350. Of the players mentioned forty five hundred are employed steadily. and receive weekly salaries on an average of something over fifty dollars each. These people have invested in wardrobe, scenery, music plays and one thing or another necessary to their work over a million and a half. and pay to the railroads of the country a sum in excess of twenty-one thousand dollars weekly. Hurley Burly - Extravaganza and Refined Vaudeville - Own it as a Print or a Poster The theaters
devoted to vaudeville expend an enormous sum for providing
their
Harry Houdini was a popular Vaudeville headliner of the day. This is an original theatre poster that has been digitally remastered for T Shirt art. Own this T Shirt created specifically for Oldnewsads.com. It id available in many styles and sizes for men, women and children as well. Click the image below to see all the options from our Zazzle Store. |
hotel, Daniel Frohman, in the course of a
speech touching upon the amusement enterprises of the
country and their relation to public life, paid his
respects to a little understood and much derided amusement
industry by the following remark: "Vaudeville is creative
and progressive in its character. In behalf of the men who
conduct that class of entertainment,
scenes or incidents than the houses maintained
by the managers of this class of theatrical performance.
Indeed, in vaudeville the relations of the family circle
and of good taste are always respected. Each year sees a
further improvement in the class of material offered, and
the whole tone is one of healthy energy and
prosperity.
factor in the amusement supply of the nation.
Yet vaudeville is no new thing, for the present-day form
of it was conceived twenty-four years ago in a little
oblong room on the first floor of a ramshackle building in
Washington-st., Boston. Since that time it has advanced,
until to-day it means something more than those whose
interest in it is confined to the announcements in the
daily papers would believe. To begin with, there is
invested in the vaudeville enterprises of
this country a little more than twenty six million
dollars, distributed among three hundred theaters. More
than twelve thousand persons find their living in
vaudeville, in one way or another, and the public is
sufficiently interested to expend nearly a million a week
in admission fees. 
Vaudeville offers an easy and pleasant means of
livelihood to some seventy-five hundred players of all
classes. The vaudeville artist in some respects is better
off than his fellow in the "legitimate" branch of the
profession, for his salary almost always is paid
regularly, and seldom if ever is there heard a tale such
as many returning actors tell of hardships on the
road.
patrons with entertainment. Including the cost
of operating the playhouses, this amounts to
an expenditure of
close to six hundred thousand dollars every week that the
theaters remain open and a large number of them are
running steadily the year round. It is a conservative
estimate to state that fifty million dollars is spent
annually for vaudeville. The gross receipts at all the
vaudeville theaters from the three and a half million
patrons at an average of twenty-five cents each", will run
to nine hundred thousand dollars a week.
© OldNewsAds.Com Webwerks, 2010. All Rights Reserved.