No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous [Paperback]

Trav S.D. (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0865479585 | ISBN-13: 978-0865479586 | Publication Date: October 31, 2006 | Edition: 1st

A seriously funny look at the roots of American Entertainment

When Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin were born, variety entertainment had been going on for decades in America, and like Harry Houdini, Milton Berle, Mae West, and countless others, these performers got their start on the vaudeville stage. From 1881 to 1932, vaudeville was at the heart of show business in the States. Its stars were America's first stars in the modern sense, and it utterly dominated American popular culture. Writer and modern-day vaudevillian Trav S.D. chronicles vaudeville's far-reaching impact in No Applause--Just Throw Money. He explores the many ways in which vaudeville's story is the story of show business in America and documents the rich history and cultural legacy of our country's only purely indigenous theatrical form, including its influence on everything from USO shows to Ed Sullivan to The Muppet Show and The Gong Show. More than a quaint historical curiosity, vaudeville is thriving today, and Trav S.D. pulls back the curtain on the vibrant subculture that exists across the United States--a vast grassroots network of fire-eaters, human blockheads, burlesque performers, and bad comics intent on taking vaudeville into its second century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Much has been written about the American institution of vaudeville, but readers would be hard-pressed to find an account as humorous and sharp as writer and performer Trav S.D.'s tasty chronicle. Although critics in the early 20th century lambasted vaudeville as crude, sometimes clever, but generally "trite and empty," the author points out that from 1881 to 1932, vaudeville "was the heart of American show business," so ubiquitous that "if you were beyond the reach of vaudeville, then you were really in the sticks." He comments on the artistic and commercial ties between vaudeville and Hollywood's glamour industry and Broadway; they often shared performers in hit plays and films (though Trav S.D. also reveals how essential managers were to the medium, since "performers, as Jesus said of the poor, are always with us"). There are candid moments about the resistance to hiring black players in a few fascinating segments about minstrelsy and blackface, as Trav S.D. writes of the trials African-American legend Bert Williams endured. Throughout, the author, a humorist, never forgets to get his laugh quota, whether he's talking about audiences (Midwestern crowds were tough: "Do they like me? Hate me? Are they alive? Hello?") or burlesque ("a sort of bush league for broad comedians"). The result is a well-researched, riotous book about a cultural mainstay, "the theatrical embodiment of freedom, tolerance, opportunity, diversity, democracy, and optimism." B&w illus. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Late in the nineteenth century, America's variety theatre—which was notorious for the brawling, drinking, thieving, gambling, stripping, whoring, and cursing that went with it—was supplanted by the comparatively clean-cut vaudeville. "Don't say 'slob' or 'son of a gun' or 'Holy Gee' on the stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily," one manager's memo read. Trav S.D., himself a performer, describes with infectious relish such acts as a banjo-playing Shakespeare reciter, a one-legged tap dancer, a man who wrote backward, a comic lecturer on human anatomy, a drag trapeze artist, and "The Vagges—World Champion Bag Punchers." Vaudeville withstood critics from Hitler to Henry Ford, along with innumerable tough crowds (Yale students were reportedly among the worst), to become a big business with a lasting impact; Bob Hope, George Burns, Fred Astaire, Buster Keaton, and the Marx Brothers all got their start there.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; 1st edition (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865479585
• ISBN-13: 978-0865479586
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars irreverant, funny and on the mark, December 7, 2005

By 

Frank Cullen "Frank Cullen, American Vaudevil... (formerly Boston, MA and now Edgewood, New Mexico, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Hardcover)

"No Applause-Just Throw Money, or the Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" is as sassy as its title. As bold a writer as he is performer, Trav S.D.'s book is all the better for it. Critics have commented that it is amusing-and it is-very, but it also affords, within its 300 plus pages, a solid survey of vaudeville history from its roots through several stages of growth to its blossoming and institutional decline.
One of the book's greater strengths is the cultural context Trav S.D. provides without losing his story in academic meanderings. The marrying of high and low purpose in this book reflects vaudeville's eclectic (some might say indiscriminate) embrace of art forms, a formula that made it the most popular mass entertainment of its day--fit for both toffs and toughs--ladies and children invited.
One can quibble about several particulars-this is true of every book written about vaudeville, but Trav S.D. has captured the shape, size and feel of vaudeville by examining it as a business as well as an entertainment form peopled by beloved performers.
Trav S.D. is producer/performer with American Vaudeville Theatre and a writer whose work has appeared in various periodicals including The Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out New York, and Reason.
Frank Cullen, merican Vaudeville M useum, "fcullen'

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Loses Steam in the Final Third, but Well Worth the Time, March 5, 2006

By 

Graceann Macleod "Books Fuel My Life" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Hardcover)

The whole book is informative and very, very funny, with the first third concentrating on the ancient history of vaudeville and its beginnings, the middle third concentrating on its heyday, and the final chapters dedicated to its decline. However, the text does contain some glaring errors with regard to Buster Keaton's life and abilities (probably owing to the author's unfortunate use of Marion Meade's atrocious "Cut to the Chase" as a resource). For the record, Buster Keaton was neither functionally illiterate nor abused. The final chapters are bogged down a bit with the author's own philosophy as to what is needed in vaudeville, rather than a straight telling of what has happened to it in the last 40 or 50 years. This is a shame, because the first two thirds of the book are uproariously funny and page-turningly readable, and I would have like to have seen this continue through to the conclusion. Even the acknowledgements are entertaining - not always the case.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book Worthy of its Subject, June 30, 2008

By 

T. Berner (New York, New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Hardcover)

In the last five years, three unrelated books, the subject book, together with Seriously Funny by Gerard Nachman and Comedy at the Edge by Richard Zoglin, have been published which, together, comprise the history of American comedy since the American Civil War. All of them have their merits, but No Applause - Just Throw Money (NAJTM) is the best of them.

It is not just that vaudeville is broader than comedy alone and the vaudeville era was a lot more interesting in show business history than the periods that followed it. The other virtue to NAJTM is that, while the other books try to capture an age by induction - focusing on the lives of a handful of performers and drawing universal conclusions - NAJTM discusses the era and illustrates the author's points with references to individual performers. The result is that the uniqueness of each act, its independence and individuality is honored.

And unique and independent and individualistic they were! What a wonderful collection of oddballs, tyrants and crackpots and what a talented, original and creative bunch as well. As one surveys modern entertainment - the intellectual wasteland that comprises theater, television and, especially, American cinema today, one longs to slip into the Palace for just one day to see this bunch walk the boards one more time.