American show business essentially begins in the 1830s with the blackface minstrel show. Ever since that time, audiences have complained.
For two hundred years, performers were subjected to criticism, protest, and outrage. Long before modern catchphrases like “PC police,” “cancel culture,” and “woke mob,” popular artists were threatened, blacklisted, fired, and publicly shamed. Sometimes the grievances were thoughtful and logical. Just as often they were impulsive and irrational.
Religious patrons objected to performances considered insulting to their faith. Ethnic minorities protested that which they found bigoted. The political class attempted to censor that which criticized their rule and expressions of sexuality were against the law.
The notion of a “cancel culture” was already present in the colonial era. “Public amusements were criticized, and acting was considered sinful,” explained showbiz historian Armond Fields. “The stalwarts of the Continental Congress passed a law decreeing the closure of all places of public entertainment.”
The original blackface craze began in the 1830s. It was Thomas Rice as his enslaved character Jim Crow that made blackface a national phenomenon. The comic was described as a “scrambling-looking man with a sepulchral falsetto voice” and he inspired hundreds of performers to alter their skin tone, speak in dialect, and sing about the plantation.
Blackface troupes were soon pilfering material from one another, and as the same material was repeated over and over in the early 1840s, blackface minstrel songs became American standards. The New York Tribune was surprised by its popularity: “It seemed as though the entire population had been bitten … In the kitchen, in the shop and in the street, Jim Crow monopolized public attention.”
To white Americans, blackface was just another form of stage makeup, used by the same actors who previously wore pancake powder or spirit gum. You were scarcely considered a thespian unless you applied burnt cork to darken your face. But not everyone considered it acceptable. As early as 1848, abolitionist Frederick Douglass referred to blackface comedians as the “filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and to pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.”
The formerly enslaved Douglass was touring the country at the time. His antislavery speeches were often interrupted by hecklers armed with “brickbats, fire-crackers and other missiles.”
Minstrel shows presented takeoff versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The popular novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe was antislavery in theme but stereotypical in nature. Detractors said it was racist. Fans said it was anti-racist. A believer in phrenology, the pseudoscience that equates the shape of the head with the size of the mind, Stowe claimed Uncle Tom’s Cabin had come to her “in a vision,” and had been written by God.
In a 1956 study of her work, author J. C. Furnas said Stowe sent “her readers into deepening their belief in the half-baked racism of that time … Her books are the only racist propaganda known to have been read favorably by very many at that time, and their effect must always have been to instill or to strengthen racist ideas.”
And yet the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin galvanized abolitionist sentiment. It was credited with bringing the antislavery movement mainstream. It also solidified stereotypes for a new generation of blackface performance.
Minstrels used blackface to further both progressive and regressive points of view. Historian Eric Lott said a blackface show might contain “proslavery and antislavery views, depending on who was doing the writing and performing.”
Many blackface acts advocated for abolition, but as the Civil War approached, they were outnumbered. Historian Mel Watkins explained, “From about 1853 to the Civil War … nearly all vestiges of black humanity were excised from minstrel performances. During this period the portrait of the plantation was made even more idyllic, and the stereotype of black males as childlike, shiftless, irresponsible dolts was heightened … distorted comic stereotypes intended to ‘prove’ that slavery and black subordination were justified.”
It remained that way after the Civil War. According to historian Jim Haskins, “White southerners had no sympathy for former slaves, and so the caricatures became cruel.”
Vaudeville shows in the post–Civil War era were informed by the old minstrel shows. For that reason, comedians were criticized as old fashioned and unoriginal. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote in October 1877, “Hitherto … the form of amusement we call comedy has not changed much. We meet the same types every day played by the same men who pictured them twenty years ago. Indeed, the traditions of the stage have preserved the old men and maidens of the earliest times.”
Immigration would change it. Jewish immigrants, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, and formerly enslaved African Americans took to the stage and established the roots of modern American showbiz. They did so because there was nowhere else to go. Xenophobia shut them out of the traditional workforce.
Samuel Morse, the man for whom the Morse Code was named, was convinced immigrants were destroying America. “A conspiracy exists … its plans are already in operation,” he wrote. “The serpent has already commenced his coil about our limbs, and the lethargy of his poison is creeping over us … We must awake, or we are lost.”
Business owners deflected labor discontent in the direction of immigrants. Newspapers blamed an economic slump on “long-haired, wild-eyed, bad-smelling, atheistic, reckless foreign wretches, who never did an honest hour’s work in their lives.” The president of the American Iron and Steel Association said the country’s economic depression was due to “thousands of idle and vicious foreigners who have not come here to work for a living but to stir up strife and to commit crime.”
Newly arrived Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants joined the formerly enslaved in a scramble for employment. Medicine and law were “restricted” professions. In order to survive, immigrants sold scrap metal or did hard labor under perilous conditions. Most found it difficult to secure a living wage.
Meanwhile, show business was considered a disreputable genre comparable to prostitution or drug dealing. Actors were considered ne’er-do-wells, bums, liars, perverts, reprobates, and thieves. Among the upper class, it was an embarrassment if your daughter dated an actor. Showbiz historian Arthur Frank Wertheim said these “traditional animosities” could be traced to the Puritan era. “The more conservative religious groups viewed actors as the devil’s advocates. The low pay of the average performer, frequent unemployment, and a reputation as alcoholics and philanderers only served to intensify the stereotype.”
In the town of Bethel, Connecticut, show business was “rigorously forbidden by law, and even those found playing a social game of cards were arrested and fined.”
Accused of spreading immorality and crime, performers were often assaulted and run out of town. Vaudevillian Sam Devere fought an attacker and beat him to death with his banjo. Vaudeville comic Eddie Foy was tied to a horse, dragged through town until his limbs were raw, and dumped face-first into a water trough.
The material of vaudeville comedians was subject to criticism. Comics who had done the same shtick for years found themselves doing damage control as societal attitudes changed. A vaudevillian named Nat Goodwin walked to the footlights in 1895 and apologized for some unspecified stand-up material:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, during a professional career of over twenty-two years, this is the first time I have appeared before the curtain with a heavy heart. I assure you what occurred last night was the fault of the head and not of the heart. I endeavored to hold a mirror up to nature and failed. If you will forgive me you will make me very happy … Forget this, my first offense, and I promise it will never happen again.”
Vaudeville reporter Grant Dixon observed, “It is not unusual for comedians to go a little bit too far. One example of the license taken by comedians engaging in what Broadway calls ‘ad libbing’ is brought to my attention. The comedian, during the middle of his act … pointed to the pit orchestra … describing the musicians as ‘five men and two other people.’ Pointing to the bass player, the actor added there was one he couldn’t vouch for. The musician, infuriated, leaped over the footlights, grabbed the actor and dragged him in front of the curtain, forcing him to apologize to the house for his bad taste.”
The Topeka Daily Capital argued that vaudeville’s greatest sin was not insult comedy nor blackface caricature, but references to unwed mothers. “If there is one objectionable, unwarranted and discreditable feature of up-to-date farce-comedy it is not caricature, but such false and immoral depictions of contemporary life … a disgrace to the theatrical business. Compared to rank indecency, the grossest mere caricature is harmless.”
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Rank indecency in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s focused on sexuality and ignored bigotry. Dance shows were raided if too much leg was shown. Medical literature was seized for providing clinical information about pregnancy.
Anthony J. Comstock was the king of such anti-sex campaigns. He founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873 and started rounding up anyone involved in sex. Comstock said masturbation was “dangerous” and “embracing” was pornographic. “If almost all of America’s young men are addicted to this lethal practice,” wrote Comstock, “what hope remains for America?”
Comstock was skeptical of reading. “It breeds lust,” he claimed. “Lust defiles the body, debauches the imagination, corrupts the mind, deadens the will, destroys the memory, sears the conscience, hardens the heart, and damns the soul.” He bragged of the books he confiscated and the authors he hounded. “I have destroyed 160 tons of obscene literature [and] convicted persons enough to fill a passenger train of sixty-one coaches, containing sixty passengers each.”
Juries convicted authors without even hearing the offending passages as they were considered “too obscene to be placed upon the records of the courts.” Police reports about obscenity were deemed obscene. A document prepared for an anti-obscenity crusade in Chicago was banned from the mail because it was pornographic. Even the Bible was too salacious. Noah Webster of Webster’s Dictionary published a new abridged version of the Bible, explaining, “Many passages are expressed in language which decency forbids to be repeated in families and the pulpit.”
George Bernard Shaw coined a new phrase, “Comstockery,” and the defensive Comstock responded by dismissing Shaw as “an Irish smut dealer.”
“Inevitably Comstock was the chief object of animosity and ridicule,” said his biographer Heywood Broun. “No other person connected with the cause of purity was so forthright, so colorful, so extravagant and fanatical … To him the liberals and the freethinkers were always ‘smut-dealers’ and ‘ex-convicts.’”
Comstock had poor grammar and seldom patronized the theaters he condemned. He attended vaudeville only once “to investigate a complaint that one of the dances was obscene” and his notes were full of misspellings like “gass,” “yeild,” and “smutt.”
Ruining the lives of authors and artists, Comstock was targeted for revenge. While escorting an arrest, he was stabbed in the head. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “The blow was instantly repeated, the dirk this time cutting a fearful gash in Comstock’s face, extending from the temple to the chin, and laying the flesh completely open to the bone. Four of the facial arteries were severed. With the blood spurting from his wound, Comstock seized the prisoner … and presenting a revolver, threatened to shoot him if he resisted.”
Comstock survived, and his crusade inspired others. The Western Society for the Suppression of Vice began in 1876 to stop the “contamination of the youth of the country.” Others sprang up throughout the Midwest and New England, but even in a puritanical era, they were accused of totalitarian lunacy.
“Do these people need to be informed at this late day in the world’s history that words and ideas are not crimes?” asked a newspaper editorial in 1891. “Do they not know that it was a difference of opinion as to words and ideas that all or nearly all the religious persecutions of the past have arisen?”
Some of the world’s most famous authors were included in the purge. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy was banned for questioning the logic of marriage, leading Theodore Roosevelt to declare Tolstoy a “sexual and moral pervert.” Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned on the grounds that it was “suitable only for slums.” The federal government banned Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, but controversy was good for business. It increased demand and earned Whitman enough in royalties to buy a new house.
Anthony Comstock, his face covered in gruesome scars, raided a New York gallery and seized 117 French photographs. “The morals of the youth of this country are endangered by obscenity and indecency in the shape of photographs of lewd French art,” said Comstock. He attended a dance pavilion at the world’s fair in Chicago in 1893 and declared, “The whole World’s Fair must be razed to the ground.”
To the Pure, an early book about American censorship, argued that people like Comstock didn’t give a shit about morality—merely control: “During many centuries the great moral drive was to protect women. They were restricted in dress, limited as to hours when they could walk the thoroughfares and even discouraged from entering into serious discussions. When the stage became a transmitter of public thought, women were barred for years from the audience … Knowledge was kept from the poor. They weren’t ready for it … Our poor brothers were to be kept poor in knowledge, for knowledge is power and we wanted to retain the power … Censorship became synonymous with subjection.”
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And so it was in vaudeville comedy. Throughout the 1890s, comedians were accused of “lowering the standards of thinking and in consequence of living.” Lighthearted references to the Bible were completely forbidden. The Maysville Evening Bulletin reported in April 1894, “A sacrilegious comedian in a Cincinnati beer hall made light of the Bible and referred to preachers in an offensive way last Saturday evening. This raised a storm of protests and he was hissed off the stage.”
In an attempt to prevent “sacrilegious” comedy, the towns of Red Bank, New Jersey, and Madison, Indiana, forced comedians to attain a license. If they performed “sacrilegious” material, their license was revoked. The First Baptist Church said the licenses were necessary to ensure “the morals of the young people.” The McKay Opera Company was “ordered out of town” for presenting “an obscene show” in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in January 1898. The Chambersburg Valley Spirit observed, “Some of the jokes, especially those by the black faced comedian were indecent and obscene.”
Vaudeville comedians were frequently busted for obscenity, but the definition of obscenity was broad and arbitrary. References to birth control or demonstrations of “race mixing” were enough to get a vaudevillian arrested.
At the turn of the century, objections to ethnic and racial stereotyping on the vaudeville stage turned into a movement. Vaudeville comedy frequently ridiculed immigrants. The most common stereotypes portrayed the immigrant “as a lawless creature, given over to violence and disorder.”
With each new round of immigration, comedians perfected ethnic dialect at their expense. The mockery of immigrants using mangled English gave comedy one of its most effective devices: malapropisms. Ironically, vaudeville largely consisted of assimilated immigrants who held contempt for newer arrivals. And yet, the more established the immigrant group, the less patience they had for being insulted. By the end of the 1890s, Irish and Italian immigrants were objecting to portrayals of intoxicated leprechauns and moronic organ-grinders. And when their children came of age, they organized sustained protest movements to end ethnic stereotyping on the stage. Vaudevillian Walter Kelly received “a letter threatening his life if he did not immediately cut out several Italian stories in his act,” and a group called the Clan na Gael sabotaged shows wherever Irish stereotypes were presented.
Meeting with vaudeville impresario Oscar Hammerstein, the Clan na Gael informed him that any “act ridiculing the Irish, or in any way calling attention to the pronounced characteristics of the race, would be met by stern objection.” They threatened “means of the most stringent sort” if their demands were ignored. The Washington Evening Star reported, “Hammerstein had agreed with the committee that if any act in which the Irish were portrayed proved objectionable to the Irish themselves it should not be presented … however … a contract had already been signed with the Russell Brothers, and since their act had proved unobjectionable for many years, he had no legal right to break the contract with them.”
The Russell Brothers dressed in drag in an act called “The Irish Servant Girls.” Performing as scheduled, the newspapers explained what happened next:
HISSED OFF THE STAGE
Remarkable Demonstration at Theater in Gotham
MUST RESPECT THE IRISH
Three Hundred Irishmen Resent the Ridicule of Their Country
CLAN-NA-GAEL ARE INVOLVED
Theater Audience Thought a Riot Was in Progress Curtain Had to Be Rung Down
The Victoria Theater was the scene of a remarkable demonstration last night in which nearly 300 persons in the audience joined. Hardly had the curtain gone up on the sketch of the Russell Brothers, who portray comic Irish servant girls, when screams and catcalls arose from the orchestra and galleries. In all parts of the house men arose, shouting, ‘Take ’em off,’ ‘Get the hook,’ ‘Away with ’em,’ ‘They’re rotten.’ Others contented themselves with whistling and hooting … The Russells, on the stage, struggled to make themselves heard and the uproar became louder. The orchestra and the sound of the actors’ voices were drowned in the general racket. Finally the curtain was rung down on the struggling brothers. Then almost instantly the house became quiet … the audience slowly settled back in their seats.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle concluded, “Sensitiveness under such conditions may very easily be carried to extremes. The stage abounds in racial types of which a multitude are frankly caricatures. The violent objection … is a spirit that reveals a regrettable absence of the sense of humor.” In their opinion, ethnic minorities were selfish for wanting to eliminate stereotype comedy when it was enjoyed by so many: “A few may seriously object, from rooted prejudice to racial caricature. But more enjoy and applaud, and they have rights that are at least worthy of consideration.”
An editorial published in the Topeka Daily Capital in 1903 cautioned vaudeville comedians not to succumb to pressure groups because it might inspire others: “This may well worry the playwrights and players, for racial caricature … has been regarded as legitimate ever since Shakespeare. If the well-known and almost indispensable Irish policeman is to be abolished from the stage by decree of the Clan-na-gael, what is to hinder the ‘Afro-American’ societies from following suit and threatening dire consequences on the heads of players who represent the stage type of negro?” The writer predicted it would lead to the death of comedy. “The final upshot [would be] to strip comedy of its most engaging and popular features. If the raid should extend to all sorts of people caricatured in the theater and in print, then good-bye to comedy.”
Black stereotypes were seldom objected to in the white newspapers, but complaints were common in the Black press. The Indianapolis Freeman reviewed a minstrel show in 1901: “As a whole the show was one that the citizens of this place care not to see repeated. It is a slander on the Negro of America … Every flag was displayed with honor, then a rag with a chicken and watermelon on it was displayed … The white people enjoyed this flag business … but for us, we say shame, shame!”
As the Topeka Daily Capital had feared, minority protests proliferated once Irish and Italian protests prevailed. In 1910, the Placer Herald wrote of a rabbi who “protested against cheap and vulgar misrepresentation of Jews on the stage and in the comic press, and advises a campaign against it, pointing to the good results of a similar movement among Irish leaders against the stale and witless caricatures of alleged Irish types.”
Jewish Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans organized against stereotypes while actors, comedians, and lyricists specializing in racial and ethnic caricature scrambled to defend themselves.
The Pittsburgh Daily Post reported in 1910, “The hue and cry that is being raised all over America against racial caricatures on the vaudeville stage, particularly those of Hebrews and Irish types, has provoked a defense of the stage from Ben Welch, a caricaturist, representing types of Hebrew and Italian characters. He is, therefore, qualified for such a defense. He cites the case of a young Hebrew of the Eastside, New York, who, through the impersonation of his own parent’s manners and customs, lifted his family from poverty to affluence.” The new argument was that racial stereotyping wasn’t racist, but a helpful way for impoverished minorities to climb the social ladder—and everyone else should gain a sense of humor. “No person should be so thin skinned as to find fault with an innocent caricature,” concluded the Daily Post. “We ought to be broad enough to recognize our own racial eccentricities, however, and to laugh with other people.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette defended blackface in November 1910 by noting that many Black performers also did minstrel routines, therefore those routines could not be racist. Furthermore, they claimed “critics of acting contend that the white man can portray the negro character far more accurately than can the negro himself, and perhaps the contention is true.”
The American Israelite in Cincinnati strongly disagreed. In an editorial from 1910 titled “Racial Caricature Out of Date,” the paper argued, “It is high time racial caricature on the stage or in the press should be reformed altogether. Everything about such caricatures is so ancient, so pointless, so devoid of reason, art, legitimate fun, that their complete retirement would please all. Including the manufacturers of the ghostly jokes.” The Tonopah Daily Bonanza agreed: “The stage loses nothing by the removal of racial caricatures. In fact, their removal clears the way for some realism that is sadly needed.”
After years of agitation, theater owners and vaudeville chains buckled to the demands of protest and altered their policies. The New York Herald Tribune ran the headline “NO RACIAL CARICATURES—William Hammerstein Explains That His Order Forestalls Probable Protest.”
Hammerstein, recalling the aggressive nature of the Clan na Gael, said, “A number of years ago the Irish people made several demonstrations. There was one right here in this theatre, while the Russell Brothers were on the stage, and another in a theatre in Greenpoint, when an audience took umbrage at an act. I have taken the initiative now because I feel it will only be a matter of time before the Jewish people will take up the situation … It may take the form of letters or petitions, but I have forestalled protest here.” Asked if he expected other vaudeville theaters to follow suit, Hammerstein answered, “Without a doubt: it will only be a question of time … Vaudeville actors who portray Hebrew characters are too apt to overdo the thing, thereby making the impersonation repulsive, both in make-up and dialect, not only to Hebrews, but to the public in general.”
Native Americans did not have the same clout as the immigrants who displaced them, but they protested just the same. A Nevada paper reported in 1911, “Taking his cue from other races, the American Indian has begun to protest against the caricatures of his race perpetrated by the cheap theaters [that are] misleading and libelous … Nearly every other race has filed protests, more or less vigorous against coarse and vicious caricaturing and lampooning. It is the one form of dramatic censorship that is effective and that deserves support.”
Protest changed what was acceptable in vaudeville, drama, and comedy. Some comedians were forced to throw out racial material they had honed for years. In an era when comedians seldom wrote their own material and veteran comics rarely changed their act, coming up with an all-new routine seemed an insurmountable task.
“Should this disposition on the part of offended races that are for stage caricature continue, the poor vaudeville actor and imitator will be put out of business,” reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1915. “To object to the reproduction of the speech and supposed lineaments of Shylock, for instance, if done with intelligence should not be a ground for resentment.”
The Chicago Record-Herald took the opposite view, encouraging comedians to adjust material to reflect the new era, “Let our humorists try fresh fields and new pastures. Let them exercise their ingenuity, their imagination, their power of observation … give us a sense of freshness and unexpectedness. Professional entertainers and comic writers must move with their age, as the rest of us do.”
Humorist Montague Glass concluded that what had made America laugh in 1860 was no longer funny by modern standards. “Certainly our ideas of what is funny have changed,” he wrote in April 1915. “Humor is an ephemeral thing. A generation ago we laughed at what today would merely make us ill.”
Major theatrical agencies, usually bitter enemies, released a joint statement. A trade journal reported under the headline “Theatrical Men Taboo Offensive Racial Joke”:
“There is to be no more offensive racial reference or caricature in the theaters of the United States. An understanding to that effect has been reached by A.L. Erlanger and Lee Shubert, the respective heads of the rival booking offices, which are now working in harmony by agreement. Offensive racial reference is any reference in story, dialogue, joke, gag, or song that would be held offensive by the members of the race it was aimed at. For instance, Jewish people object, and rightly enough, to tales about members of their race starting fires to collect insurance, Irish folk do not like to hear their countrymen depicted as living with pigs in their parlors.”
Senator William E. Bauer of Ohio proposed legislation to make racial caricature illegal: “The bill forbids the impersonation of Irish, German, Jewish and negro characters on the stage, and any sketch or monologue with dialog which might arouse racial prejudice … The fine set for any offense is $200 to $1000.”
“All that sort of ‘offensive racial reference’ from now on is out,” concluded the South Bend Tribune in 1922. “No more of it to be allowed … if they can be in any way construed as offensive they will be deleted from [the] stage.”
Vaudevillians who insisted on racist humor would have to contend with the potential blowback. “A near-riot was narrowly averted at the Alhambra, New York, at midnight the other day,” reported Variety in February 1927. “A young man came out during the show and started off saying: ‘Well, folks, I am going to tell you a little [N-word] story, and I hope you coons will like it.’ That was the touch-off. Upstairs the Negroes not only booed and hissed, but a bunch started walking down to get the chap. A panic or riot was sidetracked when another white entertainer, sensing the trouble, rushed on and kidded the audience until the other was forgotten.”
Vaudeville comedians were in a constant panic as rules regarding what was permissible kept changing. Comedian Lew Kelly was best known for his popular drug-addled character Professor Dope, which made light of a slovenly narcotics junkie. Kelly had to throw the whole thing out when vaudeville announced a ban on portrayals of any “dope fiend, wherein the act of taking a hypodermic injection, the inhaling or eating of dope, or the use in any manner of dope.”
All comedy concerning alcohol was banned in 1922. “All references to Prohibition, whether serious or humorous, have been ordered stricken from jokes, songs, and patter contained in the acts appearing on the Keith vaudeville circuit,” reported the Vancouver Sun. “This ban includes the affiliated B.S. Moss and Proctor circuits and practically makes it impossible for actors to refer to Volsteadism [prohibition] on the majority of the stages of the United States.”
President Warren Harding placed an unofficial taboo on political comedy. Will Rogers, the famous Cherokee comedian, made a joke suggesting the administration was on the take. The new attorney general, Harry Daugherty, was sent to the stage door of the Amsterdam Theater to deliver a message to Rogers: no more jokes about the president. Rogers dropped the joke and told his next audience, “I had a line here but the President doesn’t like it. So I’ll save it for the next President. I’m sure the Democrats will have a better sense of humor.”
Xenophobia was on the rise again in the early 1920s. Anti-Semites in the farm belt objected to the dominance of Jewish comedians. The editorial staff of the South Bend Tribune proposed “a rule similar to the federal three per cent immigration quotas from foreign countries and in that way regulate the racial representation among the performers sent from New York in road companies. From the standpoint of native-born Americans, there has been decidedly too much lower east side in the entertainment foisted upon the rest of the public.”
A wave of bigotry swept through the United States, even as vaudeville suppressed racial depictions. A vaudeville comic named Alan Corelli was playing the Texas state fair when the Dallas police recruited him for a private gig. “While working this date, they booked me for a club date [a onenighter] in the hills,” said Corelli. “That was the craziest club date I ever had. I was picked up by a car filled with three big guys, all detectives from the Dallas Police Department. After about fifteen minutes we turned off into a dark path and there I was in the middle of a Ku Klux Klan gathering—white sheets, hoods, and everything. I did my act and got $1000.”
The majority of vaudeville censorship focused on sexuality, immorality, and vulgarity. The Moline Dispatch wrote, “Wouldn’t it be a blessing if something could be done to exterminate that loathsome pest, the vulgar comedian [who] is given opportunity to turn loose brothel jokes on an unsuspecting and suffering public?”
Clampdowns occurred throughout the country. Depictions of women smoking were banned in Kansas. References to pregnancy were forbidden in Pennsylvania. Detroit police banned “bare knees on the stage” and depictions of the “moral pervert or sex degenerate.” Herbert Lloyd’s Vaudeville Trails, a guidebook for traveling performers, featured an essay about vaudeville vulgarity:
“The trouble with profanity is not so much that it is wicked, but that it is just plain dirty. It is not so much that you shock religious people, as that you disgust decent people. Swearers are behind the times. They are hold-overs from a former century. A hundred years ago … ladies swore in the parlor. Husband and wife cursed each other across the breakfast table. The world has grown more decent since then … Americans, in former times, were so profane that the porters of the railway stations, in Europe, on seeing an American traveler alight from a train, would shout, ‘Right this way, Mr. Goddam!’ Nowadays anybody who swears is set down at once as being coarse and vulgar. Nobody wants a swearer in the office, nor in the theatre, nor on the train, nor in the hotel.”
A clampdown on vaudeville profanity included a ban on the words “bloody,” “damn,” “floozy,” “guts,” “harlot,” “hellcat,” “hellion,” “lousy,” “punk,” “screwy,” “trollop,” “wench,” and “nuts.” Vaudeville was in flux because America had changed. Several decades of complaint and protest had forced performers to evolve. Some felt it necessary, others considered it a giant step backward. Accused of racism, immorality, and vulgarity, the vaudeville theater struggled to adjust. And now it faced competition from an exciting and extremely profitable new medium: motion pictures.