The Old Time Vaudeville Show Expertease

Welcome to the podcast, everybody. Tonight, our audience is composed mostly of vaudevillians. And Danno, that's your... Expertise. Spelled wrong? Naturally. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. What an exciting day we have for our listeners' ears today. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Mr. Danno Sullivan, an accredited and acclaimed expert on the oldie style of joyous frivolity upon the stage, vaudeville.

Clare, I'm excited to be doing five shows a day with you here. Balcony seats are available for 25 cents. And if anyone would like to move into the luge, only 50 cents. Oh, Danno, look at you, full of terms and terminology of the oldie days of vaudeville. That's mostly how it worked, Clare. It was all about terms and terminology that you got your huffers, you got your slingers, your novelty hoppers. If you don't know the jingo, you can't talk the lingo. So vaudeville got its start, you said, around the 1850s. Is that when the style of that type of duos, you know, with one big, one little and, you know, a lot of that sort of stuff?

This is the sort of thing that the specialists like me really get annoyed by. There was very little going on in vaudeville. Or really there's there's never been a form of popular entertainment. That is like some sort of bebop thing you're talking about. Really? I thought that vaudeville invented the horn sound. Let's just, let's backpedal a little bit. Yes. That is not where horn sounds came from Claire. Horn sounds came from horns and horns were used on vehicles and animals. Get out of the way. Clear the road. Danger, danger. Vehicle approach. I'm sorry, Dano.

I am just laughing at hearing that sound. It is a very funny sound and, and I think it was employed to good use in vaudeville. It was not employed in vaudeville. That's my point. You're putting your idea of what could have been comedy onto a past that never existed the way you want it to. Let me ask you this. How old are you? I'm 41. All right. In your four decades of life, have you ever seen a form of entertainment that involved horn sounds? Harpo. Very different. I'm realizing something that, um, in your study of vaudeville, you became an adjunct expert in horn sounds.

This was the biggest reason I had a hard time writing about my speciality, Claire. There's almost no way to really spell out what it really needs to exist in the audio format, which is why I was so delighted to be invited onto an audio podcasode. Well, we are absolutely, we're delving deep into the roots of vaudeville, into what does make an American person of 1899 laugh out loud? Sure. I think the comedy teams that you're feeling existed at that time did exist at that time. You got a tall person and a small person. That's funny. That's just funny. This is the greatest.

We really don't even need to go past that. I mean, if I just say tall person, a small person. I love the innovation of vaudeville. People think of it as lighthearted entertainment, but it was really breaking envelopes and then throwing the confetti from within them. Claire, we are mostly talking about comedy at this point, but there was so much more than comedy in the world of vaudeville. So vaudeville had dramatic acts. Oh, sure. Sarah Bernhardt herself had an act where she burned her heart right there on the stage. That's so funny that there was a Sarah Bernhardt and a Sarah Bernhardt, the famous actress, but the Bernhardt, what a, that's a catchy.

I want to see that act immediately. Yeah, it was, can she rip the organs out of her own body, burn them in front of the audience on stage. So this was an act of protest. Yeah. I'm not sure quite what she was protesting by tearing out her heart. She did not live to actually explain the reasoning behind her activity. Well, it sounds like she was French and she was protesting love. That's my guess. Why protest love though? Well, if you've been spurned, if you are a woman spurned, you tear out your heart and burn it. Now, isn't this the truth of so many of the clowns you see on stage behind the scenes, you see the tears, the tears of those clowns.

Yeah. There's the famous story, Claire, I'll never forget. Oh. Of, uh, Oh God, I forgot it. Yeah. So to answer your question, there was a huge variety of variety entertainment. You know, give me a couple of, um, physical objects from the 3D world, for example, and I'll bet you there was an act that existed. Hubcap. That's one, a hubcap. Okay. Give me another object. A coffee cup. So you wouldn't think that there was a coffee cup hubcap performance, but there was. What? In fact, I've got a little footage that we can replay right now. Okay. Mr. Johnson, if I am not mistaken, is that not a hubcap in the center of your wheel?

Mr. Johnson, your phone amuses me very much. Now that you'll hand me my coffee cup, we can proceed with the proceedings. It's a lot, it's a lot more somber than I expected. Almost like I was just thinking on a court case. That was from a courtroom drama. There were entire troops, Claire, that would travel the countryside doing these little scenarios. And this was a courtroom drama called The Thrilling Case of the Hubcap and the Coffee Cup. Well, Daniel, this has really been kind of a fascinating look into vaudeville. And I don't feel like I've really given you any useful information.

Don't you want to know about the, like the tic-tac-toe championships? Of vaudeville? Of vaudeville. Or, you know, the, the, the man who was shot to death live on stage. Oh, I, I would like to hear about the man who was shot to death live on stage. That seems like a dark period in vaudeville's history. It was very dark. It was not meant to be part of his act. What he would do at the beginning to try to win the audience over, a lot of acts would come out and throw out gumballs or popcorn or, you know, the comic fake water to get the crowd sort of warmed up and ready to go along.

Yeah. Yeah. This was a show that took place in Nagadoches and Texas, Texas. And the performer was Wild Jim Phillipson, a nephew of Wild Bill Hillcock. And his inexperienced idea of warming up the crowd, he threw out pistols to the entire audience. Is that where the saying, he's a real pistol comes from? Sure. Yeah. I'd say it is. And then he threw out live ammunition. He was looking for a catchphrase and he hadn't worked this out in advance, but he says, Hey folks, here's my catchphrase. Load em up. Oh. And everybody laughs and says, load em up. And they were repeating, load em up.

And of course what they did was load em up. Oh no. And now in a weaponry terms, that means to put your bullets into the gun. Oh, that's what that means? Yeah. Now he was not an experienced performer, but he was a natural and he had that sense that he wasn't winning the crowd over. Do you ever, you know, you just, you want the crowd with you. Oh, I see. So he felt like load em up was not really going to be the catchphrase that would catapult him to stardom. So he tried, um, point em this way, boys. Point em this way, boys. As just as a catchphrase, you can just see that.

That's an innocent, fun time. Yes. You just see a man in a suit run to the middle of the stage and yell at the audience, point em this way, boys. Yeah. Or folks joking around at the factory the next day, you know, kind of elbowing each other, point em this way, boys, when it's fun. The water cooler, point em this way, boys. It's a little threatening for a woman to hear that and thinking about being in an audience of, you know, all men. I won't gainsay that, but this was, uh, Wild Jim. You know, he was setting up his own thing. So it seemed like the act was going great.

He had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was on his second catchphrase. Yes. He was already up to two catchphrases. Everything seemed to be going great for Wild Jim. And this was his first night, Claire. You've got to understand that, you know, the manager's backstage, the agents are all around, you're thinking, is this going to lead to a show business career for me, for Wild Jim? Yeah. He says, you know, catchphrase one went great. Catchphrase two went even better. I'm coming up with a third one right here on the spot. I almost, I feel like I'm there.

I feel like I'm there in the audience at this crazy vaudeville show. And, uh, well, can you even guess what his third unfortunate catchphrase might've been? I, I can't, I'm on the edge of my seat. I I'm loaded up and I'm pointed. He thought pull the trigger would be the thing that just had that audience eaten out of his hand. Unfortunate. Well, I don't even need to say, wait a second. I am to say I'm putting it together. I'm putting it together, which is another catchphrase. Yeah. Yeah. If he had used putting it together, you know, folks would still be laughing today, that little thing, but now it's just the tragedy of Wild Jim.

Pull the trigger did catch on for about seven seconds. People loved it for the first six seconds, right? Right. Second, seven on Claire. It was just, uh, screams. The ambulances rolling up the streets, which would have brought up a lot of mixed emotions, people feeling awful, but starting to laugh just out of Pavlovian. You know, they're hearing horns, even if they are ambulance horns, you're starting to laugh. You know what? The way he was going through catchphrases, he would have run out very soon, no matter what. If he had not been shot to death, he would have died on stage one way or the other.

I love that era of vaudeville with the catchphrases. So many catchphrases came out of vaudeville that we still use today. There were the trained animal acts. So there are phrases like, well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. Right. Stick your head in that lion's mouth. Yeah. People say that a lot. Yeah. Um, the poodle is pooping. Get him off the stage. Claire, I just got the cutest little stuffed poodle for my niece and it still says the poodle is pooping. Get him off the stage. And she just, she was beside herself. She was giddy with happiness. Oh, and isn't that funny?

A child today, not knowing really where that comes from, but it's still ring. 150 years later, still laughing at poodle poop. Yeah. So there were a lot of catchphrases. I mean, those were just from the animal acts and then there were the, uh, the dancers, a lot of slogans that came out of that, you know, the words that we use today, like hoofers. Yeah. Um, they're jiggling baby. Yep. As a woman in front of an all-male audience, if I may ask, how do you feel about the catchphrase? They're jiggling baby. I think, I think that's what you said it is, right? Oh yeah.

That's, that's a catchphrase that has lasted, you know, since the 1800s. And yeah. Yeah. And I got that out a little poodle recently too. That was so cute. Well, Dana, I'm going to shut down the footlights on this podcast and thank you so much for coming and sharing what you call expertise on this subject of vaudevillainry. Claire, it's been a real pleasure to be here in my size 36 shoes, my barrel strapped over my shoulders with suspenders and a horn under each arm. Oh, don't make me laugh. I'm trying to do the sign off. I know that only a dozen or two listen to this podcast on any given episode, but in a typical day of vaudeville, that's how many people you had in the audience.

So I've got to say, this feels like a full house to me. Oh, absolutely, Dano. And you know, we might have you back to talk about your next book, Behind the Burlesque. It's actually Behind the Behind of Burlesque. Ah, Behind the Behind of Burlesque. Claire, can I just interject real quick and ask how tall are you? Uh, I'm 5'8". You're 5'8". Yeah. I don't know if you can tell because I'm sitting down. I'm 2'2". Like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com and follow us in your favorite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are.

One last question before we let you go, Dano. Um, we did get a few reader questions. One of the reader question was, how do I read this podcast?