THE VAUDEVILLE CRITICISM OF EPES WINTHROP SARGENT, 1896-1910 (NEW YORK)

The vaudeville criticism of Epes Winthrop Sargent provides an untapped source of information about vaudeville\u27s great expansion period, 1896-1910. During this time, Sargent wrote reviews for a number of New York City newspapers, including Variety, which he helped to found. His approach to vaudeville criticism can be divided into three major areas: judging quality, cleaning up vulgarity, and stream-lining business methods. Sargent\u27s reviews also provide a look at vaudeville\u27s reflections of current events in three major areas: the Spanish American War; the issues raised by the New Woman; and white vaudeville\u27s exploitation and ultimate dismissal of black entertainers. According to Sargent, the good vaudeville performer combined an easy, but not overfamiliar, manner with tremendous energy. Vaudeville had to offer novelty and surprise without asking its audience to think or feel deeply; it had to produce sentimentality that was neither too serious nor too maudlin; and it had to show itself responsive to audience whims and to the exigencies of the box office. Sargent also catalogues the development of the vaudeville bill from a fourteen-act, continuous performance to a nine-act show with an intermission. Between 1896 and 1910, vaudeville managers like B. F. Keith worked to clean up vaudeville and divest it of concert-saloon vulgarities. In fact, changing social standards were equally responsible for the refinement of vaudeville. Sargent provides a coherent point of view on the cleanup of vaudeville; in particular the development of the comic sketch from the one-act play, the changes in comedy from slapstick to sophistication, and the range of the permissible in language and nudity. During this period, labor and management warred over the enormous profits to be made in vaudeville. Sargent began his career on the side of management, but as the United Booking Office obtained a monopoly over vaudeville, Sargent urged performers to organize against management. When inexpensive film-and-vaudeville theatres became popular, Sargent warned that film posed a serious threat to vaudeville. In 1910, he left vaudeville to become a film scenario writer and latter an expert in film advertising. Around 1930 he returned to Variety, where he wrote a column on film advertising until his death in 1938