This is a one-of-a-kind reference work to the history of vaudeville, performance art, burlesque, revue, and comic opera. Most of these artists are not profiled in other reference books and the author has done deep research, including archival work and personal interviews, to uncover the rich history of this American artform. This will be a must-have for students of theater history and performance art, but it is also essential for anyone insterested in the cultural history of America.
Frank Cullen (b. 1936) is still living, though a bit dimmer and unwilling to exit the stage. Unable, early on, to discern a career path suited to an excitable child who only wished to read history and go the movies, he majored in day-dreaming. He could draw (faces, but neither hands nor feet) sing (occasionally on key), dance (but his brain was absent the part that memorized choreography), yet he was able to register events and dates at a glance. He couldn't 'do' algebra or foreign languages and had no interest in science & technology except cosmology and physics (both of which were beyond his capacity to comprehend).
Because public school attendance was compulsory, Frank's education was limited to after-school visits to the many museums and libraries that graced Boston in the 1950s. He read history by Artur Koestler and Pierre Van Paassen, every showbiz bio he could find in the library, and "The Realist," a periodical by Paul Krassner; listened to Eddie Cantor's radio show featuring recordings of vaudevillians, and Tallulah Bankhead's "Big Show," a clever outing that hosted sophisticated wits of stage and screen. With guidance from knowledgeable friends, he learned to see exhibition art and loved both Hudson Valley painters and Post-War German Expressionists like Schiele, Grosz, Beckmann and Kadinsky; explored music (serious from Vivaldi to Britten), blues and gospel (bless Symphony Sid), and trad and modern jazz. Modern dance seemed to lead the way for dramatic theatre. Early TV also claimed a hold on Frank's affections for its live variety shows that starred vaudeville comedians like Ed Wynn, Buster Keaton, Olsen & Johnson, Martha Raye, Donald O'Connor, Imogene Coca and Sid Caesar, and filmed fare like the shoot 'em up, Saturday-matinee westerns of the 1930s.
Minus many useful skills yet in search of a way to earn a living, Frank's attempt at a career path was more a stumble through various thickets: performance, government, business, teaching, animal rights and writing. As a boy he ran errands, shined shoes and sold newspapers. In his teens he did Chaplin and Baby Snooks impersonations in a Stateside, bottom-of-the-barrel USO troupe, but made better money as a warehouseman, graduating over a decade to customer service manager and then buyer for Sears while serving in Army Reserve Quartermaster corps (which developed his taste for deal-making) and dabbling off-hours in la vie boheme.
He retired in 1968 to finally earn, after 12 years (1959-1971) of night school, his BS in Politics and Urban Affairs from BU and to immerse himself more fully in "alternative living."
In 1971 Frank Cullen and Donald McNeilly started a successful gallery business (Journeyman) in Harvard Square. Frank served on various appointed and elected committees in state and municipal government; then both men sold the gallery and retired in 1981 to Provincetown, Cape Cod, to act, direct, design for the stage. Frank also wrote reviews of dance and cabaret for newspapers; and disk jockeyed "Café Society" on radio.
Broke by 1990, Frank returned to Boston to serve (capably) as treasurer and (less than capably) as executive director of New England Anti-Vivisection Society. Awarded five Massachusetts teaching certifications: English, Drama, History, Social Studies and (inexplicably--because he knows nothing about the subject) Behavioral Sciences, Cullen closed out his wage-earning years as an educator, mostly as a substitute in K-12 art and 10-12 moderate special needs (his kids had either an assigned social worker or parole officer). At the same time, he won his masters degree (Independent Study/Performance and Social History in the USA) from Lesley Universsity, was lecturing about performance history at the university level and performing voice-over gigs.
Cullen & McNeilly had founded the American Vaudeville Museum in 1982 (Frank had collected show biz memorabilia since age ten). In 2008 their collections were donated to the University of Arizona in Tucson where they are available to view at Special Collections. Earlier, at the advent of the Web, Donald created an on-line site (www.vaudeville.org--still extant), and the two men began researching, writing and publishing 40 issues of the AVM quarterly, "Vaudeville Times," from 1998-2008. Routledge Press invited them to write an encyclopedia of vaudeville, and in 2007 published it in two volumes as "Vaudeville, Old & New: an Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America," for which Frank was lead researcher and writer.
Their latest books are "Murder at the Tremont Theatre" (2010) and "Murder at The Old Howard" (2011), historically accurate showbiz whodunits set in Boston. These are the first two of a projected series of five Porridge Sisters Mysteries spanning 1908-1928 that feature a cast of eccentric characters, principally two sisters who are the vegetarian proprietors of a 'boarding house for theatricals.'
During 2009-2010, Frank produced and co-directed the "New Vaudeville Revue" at UA in Tucson, was a panelist in its Distinguished Lecture Series, emceed two annual "Talkies Comes to Tucson" galas, lectured on film at University of NM in Albuquerque, NM, and currently curates and emcees the (2010-2011) four-part series," The Golden Age of Comedy Films" at Albuquerque's sole art house, the Guild Cinema.
For more information about the American vaudeville Museum's Performance and Cinema Projects and Cullen & McNeilly's books, please visit www.vaudeville.org.
Because Amazon invites authors to make personal comments in one's bio section, Frank Cullen makes bold to offer a few pieces of advice.
"I won't offer a guess about any possible hereafter or reincarnation, but, because I have been a recurrent and even late bloomer--my first book was published when I was 70, I can assure you that your current life is not over until they put pennies on your eyelids.
"There's no special merit to a life lived full on one's own behalf, but if you have the compulsion to express your ideas I've found that there are essential traits for success (which I offer in debatable order).
"Persistence is the number one quality (this does not mean becoming an annoying nuisance). Knowing what you are talking about (also knowing that you know less than you think you know) is recommended. One must love to actually work on projects (instead of spending energy talking about doing them). An interest and respect for what other people are doing (in your field, at the very least) is critical to your judgment and growth. Keep learning new things and reviewing your past opinions. Take charge of your life to remain healthy and happy enough to focus on your work, but recognize you have obligations to others, the world and all its life forms, otherwise you can slip easily into monomania. Don't be indifferent: that is the same as enabling the bad guys. Graciously take "no" as a response but never as a deterrent to venturing another, possibly more welcoming path. (Disappointment wounds, but keeping several projects on your burners and pursuing multiple avenues of opportunity make it easier to stay productive.). Expand your horizons. Delve beyond your time, your formative years, to appreciate the accomplishments of the past and the incipient, often underground movements that may emerge in the future.
Lastly: talent is never enough. You have to work hard to turn talent into skill and then present it in a compelling way. The ability to write or perform does not entitle one to subject an audience or readership to an indulgent display of self.
"I've also been fortunate to take advice, so I'll pass on three bits that I find vital. 'The dew drop knows the sun only through its own tiny orb' (source: Rabindranath Tagore). 'Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages' (source: Thomas Edison). 'Have as much fun and do as little harm as possible while you're alive; when you die, pay your 'tab' (both real and metaphorical) and leave enough for a big tip' (source: a bar fly)."
