If you want the best in black entertainment in the best theater in the best city, check out the Apollo.
IT’S SHOWTIME
Harlem’s Apollo Theater opened in 1914 as a burlesque hall, and even though it was located in the heart of New York City’s most prominent African American neighborhood, blacks were not allowed to attend the shows. They didn’t even perform at the theater until 1925, when, with the Harlem Renaissance in full bloom, whites began to recognize the value of black entertainment. But even as African American acts appeared on the playbill, the audience remained whites only.
The theater stayed that way until the early 1930s, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia began a campaign to clean up New York City’s vices and inadvertently created the most famous black theater in the United States. One of the “low-class” entertainments La Guardia wanted to get rid of was burlesque. (Another was organ grinders; he blamed them for causing traffic congestion and had them banned in 1936.) So in 1934, the Apollo’s owner, Sidney Cohen, decided that instead of getting in the mayor’s way, he’d change what kinds of shows played at his theater. In setting up the new playbill, Cohen also decided to cash in on the large, potential audience that lived in the neighborhoods surrounding the theater. That year, the Apollo “home of burlesque shows” became the Apollo “the center of African American entertainment.” For the first time in New York’s history, blacks and whites attended the same shows and cheered for the same (black) entertainers: Billie Holiday, the Count Basie Orchestra, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Bessie Smith, among others.
BEWARE THE EXECUTIONER
Since 1934, one of the most popular shows at the Apollo has been Amateur Night. Held every Wednesday, new singers, dancers, and comedians climb onto the theater’s big stage to compete for prizes and, hopefully, to wow the audience. A good performance can make a career; a bad performance can kill it. And at the Apollo, it’s the audience that decides good from bad. If the crowd doesn’t like a performer on Amateur Night, they make it known—by yelling, jeering, heckling, stomping their feet, and, in the old days, occasionally throwing things. Then it’s the job of a man known as “the Executioner” to chase the unsuccessful contestants from the stage. Stagehand Norman Miller created the character in the 1930s. Today, the Executioner is played by singer and comedian C.P. Lacey.
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Many Amateur Night performers have gone on to great careers. Seventeen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut on Amateur Night in 1934. She’d originally planned to dance, but was so intimidated by a group that went before her that she chose to sing instead. The Executioner didn’t come for Ella, and she went on to win first prize: $25. Other Amateur Night performers include Pearl Bailey, Dionne Warwick, James Brown, Sarah Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Gladys Knight, and the Jackson 5.
FAMOUS FANS
Tourists and Harlem residents aren’t the only people who love the Apollo. The theater has some famous fans too.
• In the 1930s and ’40s, comedian Milton Berle used to take in shows at the Apollo, gauging crowd reaction so he could apply jokes and the comedians’ timing to his own performances.
• In the 1970s, when Aretha Franklin performed at the Apollo, the marquee read, “She’s Home,” because in the 1950s, long before she’d recorded any hit records, Franklin hung out at the theater. She came to watch and support her friends, like the Motown group the Four Tops.
• In 1964, on their first trip to the United States, the Beatles came to New York. When asked what they wanted to see in the city, the first thing they came up with was “a show at the Apollo.”
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
Although the Apollo is known for nurturing black entertainers, many white performers have played on its stage too. Among them: Buddy Holly, Rod Stewart, Boy George, and Joe Cocker.
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