There are thirty or forty reviewers who represent magazines and periodicals, but, for the most part, these are _de classe_. They flock alone in the lobbies during intermissions, when the men from the daily newspapers congregate in groups to exchange a word or two about the play and to discuss other matters of common interest. These foyer gatherings pronounce a verdict that, as we have seen, is seldom--perhaps too seldom--overruled. Many a manager has leaned against his box office after the third act of a new piece, eavesdropping to learn what intelligence, experience, keen judgment and careful reading and rehearsing have not told him.
For there are two "anxious seats" on a "first night" in New York: One in the author's box and one in the manager's.
Being inside information regarding a kind of entertainment at which one requires intelligence no more than the kitchen range.
Variety is the spice of life. So is vaudeville. If you doubt it, consider Gertrude Hoffmann, Valeska Suratt, Eva Tanguay, and other beauties unadorned of "the two a day."
Time was when "continuous performances" offered the best means of convincing Aunt Jane that there were harmless theatrical entertainments besides "The Old Homestead." Variety, of course, had been a word to excite horror. But vaudeville--well, vaudeville was to variety what "darn" is to "damn!"
And, as the advertisements have it, there was a reason. B. F. Keith, when he took the curse off a type of amusement generally associated with dance halls, "stag" houses, minstrel shows and "The Black Crook", had his eye on Aunt Jane. Vaudeville, born in France during the Fifteenth Century, and named after Les Vaux de Vire, the home of its father, Oliver Basselin, stood for something just a little more ribald than variety. Mr. Keith resolved to stand for nothing of the kind. Beginning in Boston, he soon invaded Philadelphia and New York with shows so religiously expurgated that they couldn't have drawn the slightest protest from a Presbyterian Synod.
Oaths might not be spoken at Keith's. Betighted damsels were banned and barred--forbidden fair. Short skirts were permitted under certain rigorous restrictions. One of the restrictions was that ladies who wore short skirts must not wear silk stockings. I remember wondering wherein the silk worm was more immoral than the cotton-gin, and concluding that, despite the phrase "ugly as sin", Mr. Keith had defined sin as anything attractive.