Burlesque in America

Burlesque in America. Traditional burlesque, in the sense of a travesty or satire, came early to America and was well represented both in specific works, such as the 18th‐century spoof of The Blockade as The Blockheads, and in more extended manifestations, such as the productions mounted in the 1840s by William Mitchell at the Olympic. Notable later 19th‐century examples might be John Brougham's Pocahontas and the musicals Evangeline and Adonis. The modern burlesque, which is perceived as a much lower order of entertainment filled with bump‐and‐grind strippers and raunchy clowning, began to develop in the last half of the 19th century. Coming on top of the sensation caused by a chorus line of girls in tights in The Black Crook (1866), the arrival in 1868 of Lydia Thompson and her “British Blondes” in their burlesques started the slow and at first subtle transition. Her burlesques were totally in the older tradition, but the presence of a line of beautiful women in tights added a new and ultimately telling dimension. The decline of minstrelsy, oddly enough, was the next major factor. Michael Leavitt ran an all‐girl blackface company called Mme. Rentz's Female Minstrels, and when business waned he changed the nature and name of his troupe, dropping blackface, adding vaudeville turns not unlike the often suggestive comic bits of the time, and emphasizing his line of beautiful girls. Since his leading performer was Mabel Santley, Leavitt called his reconstituted troupe the Rentz‐Santley show. Before long another star, May Howard, headed her own companies. The cleaning up of vaudeville by Tony Pastor and later by Keith shoved many less‐amenable players and producers into the ranks of burlesque and underscored the emerging difference. Many historians suggest that Sam T. Jack, who had worked with Leavitt and who incorporated risqué features of Western honky‐tonk entertainments, initiated the more modern show in Chicago. His and other burlesque shows of the turn of the century still assumed much of the form of period musical comedy or revue, to an extent to give the productions a certain legitimacy. During this period the two great circuits were formed. The Empire (or so‐called Western) Circuit was first established as a loose confederacy of houses from such cities as Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, and Minneapolis in the early 1880s and officially incorporated in 1897. The Columbia (or Eastern) Wheel was established in 1902. Sam A. Scribner, its first president, attempted to de‐emphasize the growing bawdy elements, but failed. While suggestive dress and even nudity were not unknown to the legitimate stage, the modern striptease began to come to the fore about the time of World War I and continued to grow in importance until burlesque was finally closed by police order in the 1930s and faded away on its own a decade or two later. The Minskys and their greatest star, Gypsy Rose Lee, exemplified burlesque at its modern apogee. She was one of the few strippers to move into legitimate theatre and make a mark there, but in its heyday burlesque proved a remarkable training ground for great comedians, among them Fanny Brice and Bobby Clark. A few leading clowns, such as Billy “Cheese 'n' Crackers” Hagen, were never able to transplant their art. In 1979 the successful Broadway musical Sugar Babies, starring Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller, revived much of the old material for a nostalgic look back at the genre's comic aspects. Burlesque was also the subject of two musical plays: the popular Gypsy (1959) and the dark, short‐lived Grind (1985).