Customer Reviews

American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times

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Douglas Gilbert, the author of this fine work was a character to say the least. He drank hard and played hard but loved vaudville. My father, George A.Gilbert a journalist, who worked for Variety for 45 years told me his father could play a mean piano and loved to play all sorts of ragtime. Living in New York City and working for every newspaper at one time or another , he was getting constantly fired for his drinking,and writing his "show biz" column meant he had to be out in the forefront of all happenings in the city. So adept at this he landed a major radio show during the depression and was quite the "bon vivant".Like i said he loved broadway and really loved vaudville , sadly my grandfather died in 1948 appropiately at the bar in the Gotham hotel on west 56 st., i never met him .If you like vaudville then read this book ......it's the real deal.see ya grand pa .........larry

This book was a junk-shop treasure for me. I picked it up for a few dollars, and was reading aloud from it annoyingly for two days.

I'm a casual student of American music and popular culture, and this lively, opinionated, and florid account of Vaudeville from its early days to its death in the 1930's hit just the right spot for me. Vaudeville is at the center of so much popular entertainment--reading accounts will give you deja vu from its later incarnations.

The previous reviewer gives some biographical info about Douglas Gilbert. Let me just say that Gilbert's personality really shines through in this book, obviously a labor of love, hate, and fascination. Gilbert's collected a thousand great early show-biz stories, juicy gossip, and excerpts from comic bits. The result is eminently entertaining. I bought it for a lark, and wound up literally laughing out loud at least a dozen times (sometimes at Gilbert's pull-no-punches writing style). This is one show that's worth the price of admission, and then some.

Douglas Gilbert, the author of this fine work was a character to say the least. He drank hard and played hard but loved vaudville. My father, George A.Gilbert a journalist, who worked for Variety for 45 years told me his father could play a mean piano and loved to play all sorts of ragtime. Living in New York City and working for every newspaper at one time or another , he was getting constantly fired for his drinking,and writing his "show biz" column meant he had to be out in the forefront of all happenings in the city. So adept at this he landed a major radio show during the depression and was quite the "bon vivant".Like i said he loved broadway and really loved vaudville , sadly my grandfather died in 1948 appropiately at the bar in the Gotham hotel on west 56 st., i never met him .If you like vaudville then read this book ......it's the real deal.see ya grand pa .........larry