I have been a very lucky man.

                                      Enjoying a beer in Hong Kong




A slightly different history. Some about me.

I have been very lucky in my life.

Perhaps many think this. I hope they do. But I really feel that I have had a really great and fascinating life.

 As friends are getting older and some have passed away. We look back on what was. This was going through my mind the other day as I was flying out of Singapore to Hong Kong.  I thought to myself, think of all you have been involved with. What you have done and seen.

 It is really quite a lot in many ways.  I really kind of think I have had several wonderful and not so wonderful epochs of my life.  While maybe some are more concerned about money, I am more about the experience.

  I have often thought that the next endeavor should be radio. I have had so much experience in life, it sure would be good to share some of the experience and experiences of my life. Also I have a good speaking voice. If anyone reading this can help me to that area that would be great.

I wanted to recall a few of the events that were really exciting, interesting, or very special for me.  I am writing this on the other side of the world from which I usually write.  I am in Hong Kong right now, on a rainy, stormy, night.

 Even this has its own special parts. I have had the chance to meet many people from all over the world, see their world from their perceptive. It has been really wonderful to chat with and live with people from all over.

 To see the world and life from a whole new vantage point. I had some very different views on life and the world till I got the chance to talk to many who changed my life.Many of these people could neither read nor write. But they had what many scholars do not have. That is a natural sense of life and a common understanding of life itself.

I grew up really poor, that is very much a fact. My mother held our dysfunctional family together and somehow we existed together. We were on Welfare and every kind of assistance  We did not get the chance to see the doctor much, or ever go on a vacation. I still have a bit of envy when I hear people talk of their childhood taking a trip here or there. We never took trips, how could we?

Christmas we would often give each other something we loved and had already to each other. Buying something was just out of the question. I remember I took my mothers coat and gave it back to her for Christmas. The same was done by all of us. I received something I had already as did my sister and as mentioned before my mother.

We spend a few months living with my grandmother. My grandmother was a vicious drunk who in drunken rages would pull out a knife, or lie drunk on the floor . It was a pathetic existence and she made it known what was important. Her.  I had a few records that I listened to now and then and she came in my room and broke them. After a really bad moment in November of 1970, in which she took out a knife and held it to my mother saying she would kill her..... we moved out.

My mother was drawing at straws to exist. She married a guy who was the worst example of a man I have ever met
 We lived in a very beat up, dirty, insect infested cheap apartment. It was a really gross place. To this day I really cannot handle bugs, I see one and I run. Perhaps it is part of those awful memories. It is hard to even put into words.

 We were many times close to being taken to foster care, or housed as there was not enough money to feed us, but we survived. I know I hid from the police a few times when my Grandmother would call them and try to get us taken away.
 My step father who would often get drunk and beat me up. Not slap me, but punch me and holding a knife to me often threaten to kill me. I guess that and a number of other dreadful stories (That  would be looked on as practically unbelievable) and events from my youth has given me a very strong, but tender sense. He was an animal. he beat my mother, punched me around like a rag doll and giving me various bruises, did other things I will not write to my sister.

 I was 14 and very slight and I would often stand up to him and get beaten. I collected records and he would break them. He stole my grandfathers WWI material and threatened me constantly out of view or earshot of the other members of the family. Now I can take a lot of stress, pressure, and abuse. It falls off my back like a duck.

  I can be like a rock, but I can still cry when I see something that moves me.

 Oh that drunk step father, I finally got the nerve to fight back, and we got rid of him. A gun was used to keep him away for ever. He was not shot, but would have been if he had come back.

 Thanks to my mother for her devotion and love. We had nothing but love, but in our case it was just what was needed, nothing material, but devotion to each other to survive, and survive we did.

So the first thing I wanted to say here is....Thank you Mom for giving me everything you had and more. I love you. I was very lucky to have her, as few would have given as much.

My mom went through a lot. My father left in 1969 and put us on the street. Cause there was no money. We begged to live in other peoples houses. We were homeless, and very poor. My father's brother refused to help us. Saying we were no longer part of the family. Finally we went back to my grandmothers, which was just awful.

My mom as I mentioned married the drunk and I saw when my mother was ill and needed surgery . He punched her in the stomach and and pushed her into the TV behind her.  It is hard to explain the anger you feel when you see that. I charged at him when I saw that, I was 15 and small. He was a 6' 2" bruiser. I was just beaten.  My mom had the surgery and took care of the awful pain she was in.   My mom is very happy today and has a wonderful husband. I wish her every happiness.

I started working at 12 to help the family. I got jobs during the summer and somehow between beatings and stress I made it through school.  Just barely to be honest. So did my sisters.

How we did it I do not really know, I was on autopilot and just did what I had too. So did my mom who would work everywhere for us.  Then after we disposed of the drunk stepfather, our lives too on a better tone. My mother reunited with her mother. I started to study. The storm was over. But it would take many years for the clouds to disappear.

I find it really amazing that this very poor kid would have the chance to meet and talk with on a personal level two former Presidents. To know some of the greatest Opera singers who ever lived, to have the chance to meet talk with and record some of the great men of the media like Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Mike Wallace and Charles Osgood. That I would have lunch with the Governor of New Jersey. Meet two famous mayors of New York City. Get yelled at by Lauren Bacall, Chat with Norman Mailer. Meet Buzz Aldrin, who was one of the first two men who went to the moon in July of 1969, and to meet the brother of the man who pushed for it in the first place, Senator Edward Kennedy.

I was able to meet and study with Theodore Edison, who was the son of the famous inventor, Thomas Edison. I was able to talk with Enrico Caruso's son and learn from him about his remarkable father..

That is just part of it. To have had such diverse careers in my life. I was a house singer for the New Jersey Racing Authority. I sang at all the race tracks in NJ, Sang with my buddies Ray, Bill and John. We worked in restaurants, Bars, Hotels, Boats, and even sang a funeral. That was a over period of 10 years and we did performances all over and made some damn good money. But being young and foolish I went through it pretty quick. It was a great time in my life and I do not regret my actions, but just wish I had been wiser. We all think that after. But that was a great time for me. There is nothing like walking into a restaurant and have people applaud you for just being you. That really is a thrill. It was back then and the memory still is with me.

I had the delight of running a museum for a number of years and taking it from a little place and making it world known. That was a thrill

I was able to appear on over 60 TV programs on various subjects, but mainly as a Thomas Edison expert of which I was and still am. I was on programs all over the world. It was thrilling to have friends from another country tell you that you just appeared on TV there. I would be recognized now and then by people on the street or where ever. It was fun.

I got to appear in 2 movies and in one which was a documentary type movie on talking pictures called the Jazz Singer Set on Warner. I got to just be me and talk.

I was given the chance to teach in 2010 and that was perhaps the greatest gift I ever received and working with kids was the most rewarding moment of this life. I will always remember them. I often get emails from former students who made my life and will forever be in my heart.

There is a great deal more to this life and I hope someday to write a book about it. Cause there is so much that happened and now I am here on the last few laps of life and want to put much of it all together. Cause as perhaps as simple or crazy as my life has been, it has been a very good one. My sisters are well and happy. We all have a roof over our heads.


 I have really been a very lucky man. Even the bad that happened gave me strength to go on. Cause once you deal with really bad things, everything else is very small indeed.  I have had a most wonderful life.

The original spelling of the word Jazz...here are some examples..

Jazz has been a part of our world for near 100 years. It started from the dark alleys and houses of ill repute. I remember hearing Eubie Blake talk about his youth and playing in as he called them, houses of ill repute. A whore house to be more general. But it was in that environmental that much of this music got its start.  Once it got its claws on us, it has never let go.

 But the term Jass or getting Jassed had a decidedly sexual connotation. There is no set story to how it got its name but one can say it always was on a more deviant bend. The term originally offended people and finally by 1919 everyone was pretty much using Jazz as the name for this music, rather than its original JASS.

 I thought it would be fun to show two examples that today are rather rare of the use of the word JASS on record.  Today when you hear Jazz, remember it came from another word all together.  Back when everyone was trying to figure what this new and wonderful music was.

 The Original Dixieland Jass Band first made records for the Victor Company in 1917.  This was the usual and sad story. Most of Jass and Jazz has an African American heritage. Yet here we have a record of a batch of white performers trying to sound black.

The Funny Jas Band from Dixieland is another example of the spelling. This Edison cylinder record is mainly a vocal record with an orchestra trying to sound like a Jass Band. Which is rather funny to hear as they had no idea what a Jass Band sounded like.. So they created their own and unique sound that has fortunately not been repeated.  This recording is from 1916

Happy 140th birthday Enrico Caruso..

It has been a long time since I had first heard of Caruso. I discovered him on my own in 1971. In that year I found my first Caruso record. In fact, if I have said this before I am sorry, but I traded a 1935 Philco Cathedral Radio for my first Caruso record. I knew nothing  about the value of his records then. I thought as many do today that his records were amazingly valuable.  Well, they are not usually. Save for his early stuff of pre - 1906.  But I studied him a lot as a boy and marked my few Caruso's with lots of information on the smooth other side of the record.  I see these records and now laugh a little. But in 1971 what did I know.

Now I have a sizable Caruso collection of recordings made from 1902 to 1920.  And I do prize many of them for their artistic qualities. As for value only the very early as I mentioned before have that.  For the rest of his recordings from 1906 on, they have never been out of print. Be it shellac disc, cylinder, vinyl disc, 78, 45, 33,  or CD and now downloaded from the net.

I cannot think of any singer in our history who has had 111 years of success on record. I will imagine that when we in the very distant future land on Mars. The voice of Caruso will be there to be heard by a lover of fine singing.

So happy birthday Enrico, little did you know how much you would touch the world of the future.

Thank you

VAUDEVILLE....Just remembering and writing down some about a bunch of performers from the age of Vaudeville..Part 4

This last posting I want to do on this topic, at least for now. I wanted to talk about a few more people and events that were important to vaudeville.

Performers like Bob Hope and his brother who was often drunk were involved in vaudeville . I learned this from Eddie Bracken who told me that Bob Hope's brother  was the best man at his wedding. But he was drunk and did not make it. Bob Hope was popular monologist and he would make it into radio, TV, movies, and of course entertaining the troops.

But I learned something from Eddie Bracken when I interviewed him that during WW2,  Bob Hope and every other major performer was out and about entertaining the troops. When the war was over, the person who received the massive award as the greatest entertainer for the troops was Eddie Bracken. I saw the massive award. It was nearly 4 feet in length.

He told me that after he received this award, Bob Hope hated him.

Bracken was in vaudeville in his early days and became a major performer in radio, TV, movies and had issues during the McCarthy hearings, pretty much ending a lot of his career.  But when he was on radio he was delighted to learn that Al Jolson was a big fan, and that was rare for Jolson to say such things.


Milton Berle was in show business from womb practically. His mother was his biggest fan and promoter. He was in silent films, vaudeville, radio, a pioneer in TV and movies that talked. He was a major force in theater. He was one of the saviors of the Friars Club during its dark days. He would live and entertain till the dawn of the 21st century.  He had joined the Friars Club in 1920 and got to meet John L Sullivan, Enrico Caruso, George M Cohan, Victor Herbert, and countless others in the early days of the entertainment industry.

Victor Herbert wrote songs for the Friars and the Lambs. These clubs were a haven for the actor as he would be in the company of not just other actors, but agents as well.

It must have been interesting to be at a function at one of these clubs and see Victor Herbert, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin at a table. What stories have been lost to us.

Fanny Brice was also a big name in the industry. Her voice, comedic personality, and looks made her the perfect comedian. She would reign in vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies. In later years she was on radio and for a little bit on TV. But she never made it.

George Jessel was a friend of Al Jolson which was one of his problems. Jessel made his mark all over in vaudeville, movies (he was almost in the first talking picture), TV and radio. His last years were quite sad as he would perform anyplace they would take him. That was not many places. He was at one time one of the kings, but he lived longer than his popularity. He died the same day as another unique former vaudevillian. That was Rosa Ponselle.

  Rosa and her sister Carmela worked in vaudeville and sang slightly operatic duets. They were both excellent singers. One night Enrico Caruso heard her sing and met her with her afterwards.. He felt she had a great voice for opera. Then he gave her the frightening complement that she looked like him.

 He was right, not about that she looked like him, but that she was a great singer. In fact she would be one of the greatest sopranos in the operatic world in the 20th century. Her debut was opposite Caruso in Forza.  I used to listen to her on the radio when I was a boy as she would tell time and time again how she was discovered by the great Caruso.

Not too many opera singers did vaudeville, but many who were on the end of their careers sometimes were.

Many acts were just awful. Many animal acts were problematic. Cause often the animal would do it's act on stage and that was not exactly expected, but would bring down the curtain and often end the act.

There were a few acts that were so bad that they would perform behind a net, cause things were thrown at them. Not every act was golden, some were not much better than plated tin. But many a great vaudevillian would hone his craft after each theater they would be thrown out of. They would often change their name as they came to each theater.

It was an adventure I am sure. But knowing what it was like to tour with a show for 3 months, I can only imagine what it was like for 3 years. I did it for 3 months and was worn out. These people were troopers.


Another great vaudevillian and perhaps one of the greatest was Will Rogers. He was known as the Oklahoma Philosopher and would hold a high place in the circuit. He would often star in the Zeigfield Follies. he would also make phonograph records, do radio, movies and would have done more if he did not join Wiley Post, a one eyed aviator who crashed in Alaska with Rogers on board.

Now there was vocal quartets who would work in vaudeville and do comedy as well. Such as the Avon Comedy Four. Which did contain Smith and Dale as well. I remember when I spoke to Joe Smith, we went to his room and there he had a Victrola and we listened to some recordings that he and his friends had made.    I mentioned that he was in the Avon Comedy Four. He said to me, "Kid, no one has said that to me in 50 years".  He told me about many of his friends at the Victor Company, which was the company he mainly recorded for. He said they had to sing in the tube.

One group from the Victor talking Machine Company that toured with Vaudeville was "The Eight Great Victor Artists" which was a group of the leading performers at Victor. Performers like Monroe Silver, Billy Murray, Henry Burr, Albert Campbell, Frankie Banta, and few others who would change now and then.

I have mentioned Jack Benny here and there but he was a fellow who started by playing the violin, discovered he could be funny, dropped the violin, became the greatest comedian of the time, and in later life discovered he loved the violin and started playing again in his 60's. He would star in, radio, TV, movies, and of course in his later years playing solos he raised over 7 million dollars to help symphonic orchestras and was very helpful in raising money to save Carnegie Hall.

What started to kill vaudeville was first radio, then talking pictures, and finally the depression. By the later 1930's it was pretty much over. It was pretty dead.

Vaudeville was a wonderful period of time. Every town had their theater. Entertainment was always around. Today we do not have anything like it. It is too our loss I think.  Oh how I wish it never left us.


I need to write a lot more about this era, hopefully I will and add to this blog. Cause I have just touched the surface. There were so many performers and I will never talk about perhaps 99% of them. Cause you do have to remember that every vaudeville theater in the country was filled with acts. That would count in the 10's of thousands. Just like anything there were a few who really made it, others were there for a while and vanished. It was an age where theater flourished as it had never done before and will never again.

The age of Vaudeville......

VAUDEVILLE....Just remembering and writing down some about a bunch of performers from the age of Vaudeville....Part 3

One of the group of performers who really had an effect on the age of vaudeville were the musicians.  Music and what was considered music acts were always popular. One of the people who found and promoted singers and songwriters was Gus Edwards. He found singers like Eddie Cantor and wrote tons of music that would ring in the sounds of the new century. Edwards discovered others who were not singers or musicians. He discovered Walter Winchell, the Marx Brothers, and the hoofer Ray Bolger. These were major players who would influence vaudeville.

The Marx Brother's were part of a vaudeville family.  All were musical, all had talents beyond comedy. They had a mother, Minnie, who pushed hard to make her boys a success. The Marx Brothers had an uncle in the business, his name was Al Shean.

Shean had been a average and not too famous vaudevillian till he teamed up with Ed Gallagher. They performed a piece that became a national craze. A piece called "Absolutely Mr. Gallagher, positively Mr. Shean". This became so popular that is was redone several times, always to acclaim.

The Marx Brothers became a zoo on stage. They did just about everything and became very popular in the smaller theaters around the country. It is interesting that around 1913 while playing in a Waukegan, Illinois vaudeville house, Minnie Marx asked a violinist in the pit, who she found worked very well with her boys if he could join the act. Well, this young violinist named Benny Kulbelsky went home and asked his parents if he could. He mother totally forbid it, so the Marx Brothers never had this violinist join their act.

 But, act together they would in the future. For that young violinist would become Jack Benny.


One of the great performers and writers of music in those early days of vaudeville was Irving Berlin. He had a wonderful knack for just popping out songs that would become popular. Some of his early songs had influence on the era.

 Songs like Alexander's Ragtime Band became an international hit. So much of a hit that it was played on the RMS Titanic as it sank.

His music more than most became the sounds of that wonderful era of 1910 -1925.  Berlin was a prolific writer who also was a shrewd businessman. He renewed every one of his copy rites for his music when he was close to 100 years of age. His family will be getting revenue from his music till well past the middle of the 21st century.

One of the great comedy groups of vaudeville was Smith and Dale. This duo of comedians performed in vaudeville, movies, radio and TV, and are one of the few groups from that era who would be memorialized in a Broadway Play and later movie called "The Sunshine Boys" Smith and Dale were the basis for the show.

They did many acts, but perhaps no lines became part of the American like theirs...

Dr. Kronkite, it hurts when I do this. Well, says the doctor, don't do this!

I got a chance to interview this charming old man at the Englewood Actors Home many years ago.  He gave me lots of information about vaudeville. But oh how many questions I have now!  But will never know, cause  everyone is long dead.

One of the musical masters of this age was Jimmie Durante. He was much more involved in music than most people know. He was known in his youth as "Ragtime Jimmy". He played all over New York working at times with a very young Eddie Cantor and George Jessel,

He would in time become part of some very famous bands such as "The Original New Orleans Jazz Band" and the "Frisco Jazz Band". These were important bands that recorded for labels like Edison, Columbia, and Okeh.

Durante would become a fixture in vaudeville and would in time go from vaudeville, movies to radio and TV.

In this vain of thought lets remember the team of Burns and Allen . They were one of the few vaudeville acts who never needed to change their act. They used the same material from the 1920's to the 1950's.

George Burns starting in the 1960's and went alone. Sometimes having a guest play Gracie Allen, even a few times with Jack Benny in drag. What is most interesting was that George Burns would play a vaudevillian in "The Sunshine Boys" His career was perhaps one of the most successful post vaudeville. As it went on till the 1990's He ranks with Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Red Skelton .

Lastly in this post was the composer George Gershwin. His music became very important after Al Jolson used one of his songs in 1918 called Swanee. It was an instant hit and Gershwin was in the middle of vaudeville. its performers, developers, and the magic of Tin Pan Ally.

VAUDEVILLE....Just remembering and writing down some about a bunch of performers from the age of Vaudeville.... Part 2

One cannot think of the age of vaudeville without thinking of Al Jolson. While Jolson was not a vaudeville performer, he did have his roots in the golden days of the minstrels and was a star in just about everything he was involved with. While many were going from theater to theater in those days, Jolson was just in one, the Winter Garden Theater for years. The shows would change and he would star in each new one. There is nothing like that today. He was a king in his field. He would help and hurt many in the business. He also made phonograph records. By the time of about 1920, his records would start to proclaim on the label "The World's Greatest Entertainer".  George Burns put it best, "Al Jolson had a love affair with Al Jolson and he was always faithful".  Much of what Jolson had, died with him.

The man who was the headliner with the minstrels before Jolson was Eddie Leonard. It is sad Leonard is pretty much forgotten today. He was a star of great renown and was always a headliner. He wrote the song Liza, which Eddie Cantor used as his theme song. Sadly Leonard did not make records, or film (save for a short moment in 1940) and would die pretty much forgotten in NYC in 1942. But few were as popular as he. But as you can see fame is fleeting.

Another of the greats of early vaudeville were Weber and Fields. These guys were wildly popular, had their own vaudeville houses and productions. They were also smart enough to make phonograph recordings. Also a number of the productions put on by them were made as covers by many other performers. They would live long enough to make sound films of some of their acts.

Another of the greats of this time who was really not of vaudeville but was very much a part of the scene in his past was George M Cohan. He had grown up in the theater and of course in the 1880's till the early part of the 20th century, the Four Cohan's were a popular troupe that travel from town to town.

 By the beginnings of the century George had gone out on his own and partnered with Sam Harris to win international acclaim for his shows and songs. Many of his songs are still sung today and most people who do sing them have no idea of their author.

 Few actors have been so decorated as Cohan. His is the only statue on Broadway, near 46th Street. The statue was put up by and pushed for by Oscar Hammerstein the second.  Who was expecting I am sure that the next would be his.There are only two actors so honored in NYC.  The other was Edwin Booth, the great Shakespearean actor and brother of Presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Edwin Booth would form a theatrical and business group called "The Players Club". Which still is a factor in the New York scene. This writer has been there countless times over the last 20 some odd years.

George M Cohan's father, Jerry Cohan  was a terrible and nasty drunk. He would mess up the bar at the Lambs club and repeatedly be expelled. This led George M to create another theatrical club that would allow his father in. This club was called the Friars. The Friars are still very active today and it has been my pleasure to go there a few times and have dinner with some dear old actor friends who have sadly passed away. The Lambs club that was once the largest and most powerful has been down sized some.

 I was there once at their new headquarters and it was great to see the place. It was on the day of the funeral of John Cardinal O'Connor and the funeral was right by the Lambs as Saint Patrick's Cathedral is right across the street from the Lambs.

 But it was the lambs that were the greatest of these clubs in the age of vaudeville. They had a massive club on 44th Street. There were shows, dinners, bars that Jerry Cohan and later John Barrymore would mess up. Also it was a place to stay or hide. It had rooms to rent for fellow Lambs.  I mentioned before that Nat M Wills used to stay there.

It was there they had something called a "Lambs Frolic" Staring everyone from Enrico Caruso, Victor Herbert, Nat M. Wills, Weber and Fields, George M. Cohan, DeWolf Hopper and countless others. It was a wonderful period of time for entertainment.

 I do need to tell the story about John Barrymore. He was a dreadful drunk as well, but a great actor. I always remember Tony Randall telling me that the drunks were always the best actors.  However,  Barrymore was suspended from the Lambs club for tearing up the bar in a very drunk frenzy. Once he was reinstated,  he was asked while sitting in the bar why he was kicked out before. Barrymore replied "For doing this!" and proceeded to tear up the bar again!


The last person I will mention in this 2nd part of this group of articles that are just memories and thoughts in my mind, is Victor Herbert. He was very much a part of the music scene in the early days of vaudeville. He usually wrote operettas, operas, symphonic pieces and when the mood hit him, fun little ditties. His music was a part of the scene and it was his disagreeable moment listening to his music at dinner that led to the forming of ASCAP. He was the champion of that organisation.   It is also interesting that the last meal Herbert would ever have was at the Lambs club in 1924. I will talk more about Herbert in our next installment.

VAUDEVILLE....Just remembering and writing down some about a bunch of performers from the age of Vaudeville. Part 1

When one thinks of the first 30 years of the 20th century. It is very much a part of the age of vaudeville. There was a theater in nearly every town. It was at these theaters you would get to see all kinds of acts from around the country and at times from around the world.  Some of these old timers made careers that would last till the end of the 20th century and in a few cases, into the 21st!

I was born long after vaudeville, but through TV was able to see many of the old timers, doing acts they had done for well over a half century. There was a great thing about Vaudeville. You never needed to change your act for years. Cause you would travel all over the country and play in every little hamlet, town or city. It was not an easy life.

Vaudeville did not just inhabit the stage, it also made its ways in restaurants, amusement parks, phonograph records, and of course in time radio and TV.

Some of the great actors or music hall performers found their way into early movies and were also doing a vaudeville tour advertising themselves.

The great days of vaudeville made their ways from the minstrel shows of the 19th century. In the first 20 years or so of vaudeville, the minstrel was still a power to be reckoned with.   Great performers and minstrel troupe creators like Lew Dockstader were very popular and even made phonograph recordings in the first ten years of the 20th century.

But vaudeville would have a very different pull on society and it grew up with motion pictures, or flickers as they called them. Another industry was the recording industry and that was also where many a vaudevillian would leave their mark.

I think of the some of the more unknown vaudevillians like Archie Leach.  He was a stilt walker, acrobat and hoofer who worked mainly in Coney Island. On a side line he also painted ties. He was given a break by Fatty Arbuckle, who was a king in the world of motion pictures and sadly today is remembered just for a phony scandal in the early 1920's. But he gave a Archie a break and soon that stilt walker was performing on stage and soon the movies. But with another name, Cary Grant.

Some of the other acts were not so remembered. One of the biggest performers of the day in 1913 was Nat M. Wills. He was known as the Hobo comedian and did great comedy and songs. He was so popular many of the recordings he made were big sellers. The combined sales of his records were well over a million. But who knows of Wills? He is forgotten save for a few who still recall his wonderful story called "No news. or what killed the dog ?"   That bit was performed on stages, dinner speeches, and recorded several times on record.  Wills was so popular he played the Palace in NYC for a few weeks. In fact he was only the second person given the honor. Remember the old saying, "You haven't made it, till you play the Palace" The great Palace theater was the high altar of vaudeville.

Many performers spend a good deal of their lives hoping to play the Palace. It opened in 1913 and the person who was the first to appear was Ed Wynn. Followed by Nat M. Wills. Two major names in theater in those days. Wynn would survive to appear in film, radio, and TV. In fact 50 years after he was headlining at the Palace in 1913, he was filming for Disney a role in Mary Poppin's. He would play the old crazy uncle who would fly when he laughed. His song called "I love to laugh" is pretty much what his career was. Save for a few dark years in the 1950's.

Sadly for Wills it was not the same. He was wildly popular on stage and record. But had a dark personal life of several marriages, divorces, and through them massive financial difficulties. He was living for a while in a rented room in the Lamb's Club on 44th Street. Soon he remarried again and seemed happy. But one day in 1917, he went into his garage with his Ford model T, closed the door and started the car.  He was found dead a few hours later at the door of the garage. Sadly, no one knows for sure what he was trying to do. But it seems that this great clown was ready to make an exit.

There are so many in vaudeville that only a few I can talk about. But just think of the dog acts, seal acts, penguin acts, donkey acts, horse acts, spinning dishes acts, operatic acts, monologist acts, patter song acts, dramatic acts, bad acts, local acts that would always remain so, and of course the stars now and then.

But think of the stars who would travel the country. Entertainers like Eddie Cantor would was not a great dancer or singer. But he would do it all so fast and in such a wild style you could never tell. He would have a career for 50 years and do it all from vaudeville to TV, radio and movies. He found his home in comedy and would stay there for all those years.

Sophie Tucker who to the older among us will recall the name. She was known as the "Last of the red hot momas" She had a voice that would carry into another state when she sang. She spent a lifetime singing a song called "Some of these days" and would play the role that she was least likely to play. A sexy powerful woman who would in later years influence Bette Midler.  Midler would use many of the jokes of Tucker to a new audience and they took on a new life of their own.

 In Tuckers early days she was looked on as shocking and vulgar in some circles. But no one sang like she did. In the early days of her recording career for Edison starting around 1906, she was referred to as a "coon shouter"  She was still making recordings fifty years later.

Blanch Ring was a popular performer in early vaudeville and in theater. Her song "I've got rings on my fingers and bells on my toes" was a hit in many musical reviews and in vaudeville. Today that song is lost in the memory of but a few.

William Claude Dunkerfield was a wonderful and well trained juggler. He shortened his name to W. C. Fields and worked all over the country. later he would do movies and one would never know that he was a remarkable juggler. but he also had a great ability in comedy.  He had that sense right to the end. When he was dying in 1946, he was found looking at a bible. When asked why he replied..." Looking for loopholes" ..


Nora Bayes and her partner Jack Norworth made many an appearance in vaudeville houses around the country. In later years she would even have as a partner, Jack Benny. In later years she lost pretty much career and health and today rests in an unmarked grave in NY.


One more person to mention in this first installment of vaudeville was the counter tenor, Will Oakland. He was very famous and made many recordings. He was not very famous in his later days. He used to hang out in Livingston, New Jersey at a bar called English's. In fact he was on his way to Livingston, when he died on a bus en route. Perhaps the poem, " the face on the bar room floor" would fit for Oakland in his later years.

End of part 1

A very unique find in a Mark Twain book.

I was sitting in my Library, in my Lincoln rocker that I just wrote about the other day.  I was going through some books. Behind the chair is some Dickens and Twain. I have not read all of the books in the sets. I will, I hope before I  assume room temp.   But I was sitting in the chair and pulled out one of the books and was running my hands through it and a bill flew out of the book. A 2 dollar bill!

On closer inspection I saw it was a Philippians 2 Pesos bill.  It was a VICTORY bill. These were the currency made in the United States and brought in when MacArthur came back in 1944. I was so shocked I checked every other book in the set.......Nothing!  One can dream huh?

 But what an odd find.  So I figured I would share with you what a Victory Bill looks like. Obviously put in that book many years ago by perhaps someone who was fighting there in 1944-45.

Surprises come in all sizes and kinds.. this was truly one of them