A look at Oregon’s vaudeville history

At the turn of the 20th century, vaudeville performances exploded in growth in America, entertaining audiences with a variety of acts from magicians to comedy shows and more. In Astoria, Oregon, the historic Liberty Theatre was home to some of these acts. Melissa Hart is a journalist and author based in Eugene. Her great-grandparents were vaudeville performers themselves and traveled around the world with their act. She wrote about the history of vaudeville both in Astoria and more broadly for the publication Hidden Compass. She joins us to share more on who her great-grandparents were and the impact vaudeville had in the U.S.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with one Oregonian’s personal connection to the golden age of vaudeville. Melissa Hart is a journalist and an author based in Eugene. About a century ago, her great grandparents were vaudeville performers who performed in the U.S. and in Europe. They were known as Hap Hazard, the careless comedian; and Mary Hart, who cares less. Melissa Hart wrote about their lives and the broader story of vaudeville on the site Hidden Compass. She joins me now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Melissa Hart: Oh, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to talk with you.

Miller: How did your great grandparents meet?

Hart: Oh, well, my great grandfather ran away from his family’s sanitarium in San Jose and joined a traveling circus. My great grandmother ran away from her family’s farm in Missouri and ended up in the same circus. They met there. They did not fall in love. However, they decided to put together a vaudeville act. And they got married so that they could travel from theater to theater around the country and not be accused of indecency.

Miller: They did not fall in love – you said that pretty pointedly. Did they eventually grow to like each other?

Hart: I don’t believe they did. I don’t believe they ever particularly liked each other. It was all about the act in those days.

Miller: What was the act?

Hart: The act was multifaceted. It involved tight wire walking, juggling, balancing on a chair while juggling, some comic joke telling. There was a little soft-shoe, there was a little accordion playing, and my great grandfather perfected the art of sliding down a tight wire on his head.

Miller: You’ve written that the comedy, the jokes that he specialized in, weren’t particularly funny.

Hart: You know, I have a notebook of his old jokes. And maybe it’s just not my humor. I don’t find them particularly funny. It was jokes like, “Oh, Mary, your hen is so mean that she lays deviled eggs.” I mean, OK. [Laughter] That was probably funny back then.

Miller: Or you need a laugh track to really have it come alive in 2024.

Hart: Exactly.

Miller: What are your memories of your great grandmother?

Hart: Well, every time we visited, I got to play on the trapeze that was hanging from her ceiling in her living room.

Miller: How old was she at this point when she had a trapeze in her room?

Hart: Oh goodness, she would have been in her 70s. She used it to keep fit.

Miller: She would hang from a trapeze as a 70-something-year-old?

Hart: Sure, oh sure. I also remember she was kind of a pack rat. So she had suitcases and suitcases full of newspaper clippings, photos, snapshots, vaudeville programs and posters. So when she passed away, I became sort of the caregiver of her archives. I have amazing artifacts, including the helmets that my great grandfather used when he slid down the wire on his head.

Miller: What did it mean to you that your great grandparents had run away to join a circus and that they were international vaudeville performers? I imagine it was more exciting than if they had stayed and worked in the family farm or stayed at this family sanitarium.

Hart: They lived in Monterey, California when I was born. I really grew up with this powerful sense that I was among celebrities. I didn’t have a very good idea of what vaudeville was at that time. But gradually over the years, I learned … I think I had her mixed up with Judy Garland when I was a little kid, which is interesting because Judy Garland was also on the vaudeville stage when she was just getting started.

Miller: So that’s when you were younger. But as you got older, as you write in this essay, you began to wrestle with darker aspects of vaudeville’s history, in particular the fact that a lot of vaudeville acts trafficked in racist or sexist tropes. What are examples of that, that strike you as helpful ways to think about this now?

Hart: Yeah, that is a great question. And by the way, there’s a wonderful PBS/OPB documentary about vaudeville from maybe 15 years ago that I would highly recommend to anybody interested in the genre. But as I watched that and as I dug deeper into the genre, I realized a lot of the performers made their living, made their fame trafficking in stereotypes. There were many men on stage sort of making fun of their Jewish backgrounds, their accents, their mannerisms would poke fun at Jewish people. There were some female impersonators who were making fun of women and stereotyping women. I think among the most egregious were those white performers who were in blackface, they made fun of people from the south, former slaves. And even Black vaudevillians were required to appear in blackface for a time, because they weren’t supposed to be on stage as Black performers. But if they were in blackface, then audiences couldn’t tell what race they were.

And we’re not even getting into the animal abuse, teaching chimpanzees to ride bicycles or making dogs jump through flaming hoops of fire. But people made fun of each other, they made fun of themselves. It was kind of a free for all.

Miller: At the same time, and as you were alluding to a little bit there, a lot of vaudeville performers themselves were People of Color or people who we’d now say are members of LGBTQ communities. What did they have to navigate onstage and offstage?

Hart: Exactly. So that was what I wanted to explore the most in the essay for Hidden Compass Magazine, this sort of juxtaposition of racism, and sexism, and homophobia, transphobia, etc. And yet, the vaudeville theaters themselves and the community of performers represented a safe space for marginalized communities. So I remember my great grandmother telling me many times about she and my great grandfather hosting these wonderful potlucks in their hotel room after each show at night, and how it would be all of their friends from the vaudeville stage. And it was really a sanctuary of sorts, a place where all sorts of people could come, be themselves, and feel secure and safe.

But, Duke Ellington, who performed in vaudeville for a time, had to rent a private train car for himself and his band members so that they would have somewhere to sleep, because they weren’t allowed to sleep in hotels that were whites only. They weren’t allowed to dine in restaurants that were whites only restaurants. So you had all of this sort of conflict going on at the same time.

Miller: What can you tell us about the Liberty Theater in Astoria?

Hart: Oh, we are so lucky in Oregon to have several vaudeville palaces, vaudeville theaters, which are still standing. And the Liberty in Astoria is one of the most beautiful of all. I believe it celebrates its 100th birthday this year – I hope I have that right. You can go there and you can take a tour with the theater historian. You can learn about the different performers who are on stage there. You can still see the gorgeous chandelier. And I believe that’s the theater that still has graffiti in the basement, though that might be the Whiteside in Corvallis.

When I was writing the article for Hidden Compass, I took tours of many different vaudeville theaters around our state, just to get a feeling of the decor and the history of the theater. So the Liberty, obviously, is still home to many, many performing acts. And what a wonderful place where you can go and see David Sedaris reading from his work on the same stage where Duke Ellington once played.

Miller: What happened to these acts when movies started displacing vaudeville as a more popular entertainment, and a cheaper one to put on as well?

Hart: That is a great question. So initially, the silent films still gave vaudevillians the opportunity to perform their acts. The silent film would be sort of the final act of the night or the day. But as the talkies, as pictures and sounds begin to sync, then vaudevillians could still perform, but they were what became known as “cooler acts.” They would perform five times over a day and an evening only while the projector cooled, because if you didn’t give an old projector time to cool off, it would burst into flames.

So for a while, my great grandparents were part of these cooler acts, where while audiences were waiting for the projector to cool down, they’d get up on stage and entertain with their juggling and their jokes, etc. But then as vaudeville sort of came to a close in the U.S., they went overseas to Europe where it was still a robust entertainment. And then, when vaudeville kind of came to an end there, they entertained with Bob Hope in the USO during World War II, and in Korea. And then later, they took their act to county fairs all over California.

Miller: Where do you see the legacy of vaudeville acts in entertainment today?

Hart: Oh, we owe such a deep, deep debt to vaudeville. Look at “America’s Got Talent.” That is just vaudeville. That is fantastically impressive, bizarre acts, one after another, and you’re never quite sure what you’re gonna get. I also think a lot of the reality TV shows, like “The Great British Baking Show” and some of those, I think they owe a debt to vaudeville as well. Vaudeville was a variety act. And you can still go to Portland’s burlesque halls, and you can see acts that really have their roots in vaudeville. And my goodness, the Oregon Country Fair every single July is full of vaudeville acts.

Miller: Melissa Hart, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thanks very much.

Hart: Oh, thanks so much.

Miller: Melissa Hart is a journalist and author based in Eugene. You can read her most recent article about vaudeville, about her own personal connection to it, at the site Hidden Compass.

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