Nicholas Brothers African American Dancers Vintage Photos Fantastic Harlem

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176278959813 NICHOLAS BROTHERS AFRICAN AMERICAN DANCERS VINTAGE PHOTOS FANTASTIC HARLEM. 2 VINTAGE ORIGINAL PHOTOS OF LEGENDARY DANCERS THE NICHOLA BROTHERS. ONE MEASURING 8X10 INCHES AND THE OTHER 5X7 INCHES The Nicholas Brothers were an entertainment act composed of brothers, Fayard and Harold, who excelled in a variety of dance techniques, primarily between the 1930s and 1950s.



The Nicholas Brothers were an entertainment act composed of brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), who excelled in a variety of dance techniques, primarily between the 1930s and 1950s. Best known for their unique interpretation of a highly acrobatic technique known as "flash dancing", they were also considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day, if not all time. Their virtuoso performance in the musical number "Jumpin' Jive" (with Cab Calloway and his orchestra) featured in the 1943 movie Stormy Weather has been praised as one of the greatest dance routines ever captured on film. Growing up surrounded by vaudeville acts as children, they became stars of the jazz circuit during the Harlem Renaissance and performed on stage, film, and television well into the 1990s. Diminutive in size, they were appreciated for their artistry, innovation, and soaring leaps. Early lives Fayard Antonio Nicholas was born October 20, 1914, in Mobile, Alabama,[1] and Harold Lloyd Nicholas was born March 17, 1921, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,[1] to Viola Harden (maiden; 1893–1971), a pianist, and Ulysses Dominick Nicholas (1892–1935), a drummer. The Nicholas Brothers grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of college-educated musicians who played in their own band at the Standard Theater. At the age of three, Fayard would always sit in the front row while his parents worked, and by the time he was ten, he had seen most of the great African-American vaudeville acts—particularly the dancers, including such notables of the time as Alice Whitman, Willie Bryant, and Bill Robinson.[2] The brothers were fascinated by the combination of tap dancing and acrobatics. Fayard often imitated their acrobatics and clowning for the kids in his neighborhood.[2] Neither Fayard nor Harold had any formal dance training.[3] Fayard taught himself how to dance, sing, and perform by watching and imitating the professional entertainers on stage. He then taught his younger siblings, first performing with his sister Dorothy as the Nicholas Kids, later joined by Harold. Harold idolized his older brother and learned by copying his moves and distinct style. Dorothy later opted out of the act, and the Nicholas Kids became known as the Nicholas Brothers.[4] Career As word spread of their talents, the Nicholas Brothers became known around Philadelphia. They were first hired for a radio program, The Horn and Hardart Kiddie Hour, and then by other local theatres such as the Standard and the Pearl. When they were performing at the Pearl, the manager of The Lafayette, a New York vaudeville showcase, saw them and immediately wanted them to perform for his theater.[2] The brothers moved to Philadelphia in 1926 and gave their first performance at the Standard a few years later.[5] In 1932, they became the featured act at Harlem's Cotton Club when Harold was 11 and Fayard was 18. They astonished their mainly white audiences dancing to the jazz tempos of "Bugle Call Rag"; they were the only entertainers in the African-American cast allowed to mingle with white patrons.[3] They performed at the Cotton Club for two years, working with the orchestras of Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Jimmy Lunceford. During this time, they made their uncredited movie debut, in the 1932 short Pie, Pie Blackbird, featuring Eubie Blake and his orchestra.[2][6] The brothers attributed their success to their unique style of dancing - a hybrid of tap dance, ballet, and acrobatics sometimes called "acrobatic dancing" or "flash dancing" [1] - which was greatly in demand during this time.[7] Producer Samuel Goldwyn saw them at the Cotton Club and invited them to California to be a part of Kid Millions (1934), their first performances in a Hollywood movie. The brothers made their Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and also appeared in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's musical Babes in Arms in 1937. They impressed their choreographer, George Balanchine, who invited them to appear in Babes in Arms. With Balanchine's training, they learned many new stunts. Their talent led many to presume they were trained ballet dancers.[8] Ben Bernie with the Nicholas Brothers, photographed during a Radio City broadcast (Radio Mirror magazine, April 1936) By 1940, they had moved to Hollywood and for several decades divided their time between movies, nightclubs, concerts, Broadway, television, and extensive tours of Latin America, Africa, and Europe.[1] They toured England with a production of Blackbirds.[2] They gave a Royal Command Performance at the London Paladium for King George VI in 1948.[6] In 1991, the Nicholas Brothers received Kennedy Center Honors in recognition of their six decades of achievements. A year later, a documentary film, We Sing & We Dance, celebrated their careers and included tributes from Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, M.C. Hammer, and Clarke Peters. In 1994, members of the cast of Hot Shoe Shuffle also paid them tribute.[9] Teaching The Nicholas Brothers taught master classes in tap dance as teachers-in-residence at Harvard University and Radcliffe at Ruth Page Visiting Artists. Among their known students are Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson, and Michael Jackson.[2] Several of today's master tap dancers have performed with or been taught by the brothers: Dianne Walker, Sam Weber, Lane Alexander, Mark Mendonca, Terry Brock,[10] Colburn Kids Tap/L.A, Channing Cook Holmes,[11] Chris Baker, Artis Brienzo, Chester Whitmore, Darlene Gist, Chris Scott, Tobius Tak,[12] Carol Zee, and Steve Zee.[13] Style and moves External video YouTube logo Nicholas Brothers - Jumpin' Jive video icon Stormy Weather in color - The Nicholas Brothers and Cab Calloway - Colorized with DeOldify The brothers were particularly known for their expressive use of their hands and arms while dancing, particularly tap. One of their signature moves was to leapfrog down a long, broad flight of stairs, while completing each step with a split. Its best remembered performance is in the finale of the movie Stormy Weather (1943).[3] In that routine, the Nicholas Brothers leapt exuberantly across the orchestra's music stands and danced on the top of a grand piano in a call and response act with the pianist, to the tune of "Jumpin' Jive".[3] Fred Astaire once told the brothers that this dance number was the greatest movie musical sequence he had ever seen. Numerous articles have been written about this whole dance being filmed in one take and unrehearsed. As unbelievable as that sounds, the Nicholas Brothers confirmed it in an interview shortly before their recognition at the 14th Annual Kennedy Center Honors. The choreographer, Nick Castle, said, "Just do it. Don`t rehearse it, just do it." And so it was done, unrehearsed and in one take, which relieved Harold Nicholas because he did not want to do the rigorous routine over and over all night.[14][3][15] In another signature move, they would rise from a split without using their hands.[3] Gregory Hines declared that if their biography were ever filmed, their dance numbers would have to be computer-generated because no one now could emulate them.[3] Ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them the most amazing dancers he had ever seen in his life.[16] Personal lives Fayard Fayard married four times. His marriage to Geraldine Pate lasted from 1942 until their divorce in 1955.[17][18] That year, he married Mexican dancer Victoria Barron.[19][20] As of May 1960, that marriage remained intact, with "Vicky" also working alongside Fayard professionally.[21] He married Barbara January in 1967,[18] the same year he converted to the Baháʼí Faith,[22] and they remained together until her death in 1998. He married Katherine Hopkins in 2000.[23] He died on January 24, 2006, of pneumonia contracted after a stroke.[3] His memorial service, presided over by Mary Jean Valente of A Ceremony of the Heart, was standing-room only and featured personal tributes, music, dance, and one last standing ovation.[24] Two of Fayard's granddaughters dance as the "Nicholas Sisters" [25] and have won awards for their performances.[26] Harold Harold was married three times.[27] From 1942 to 1951, he was married to singer and actress Dorothy Dandridge, with whom he had one child, Harolyn Nicholas, who was born with a severe intellectual disability[28] In Paris, he had a son, Melih Nicholas, with his second wife Elayne Patronne. He lived on New York's Upper West Side for twenty years with his third wife, producer and former Miss Sweden, Rigmor Alfredsson Newman.[citation needed] Harold died July 3, 2000, of a heart attack following minor surgery.[29][30] Filmography According to a Los Angeles Times article on the brothers, "Because of racial prejudice, they appeared as guest artists, isolated from the plot, in many of their films. This was a strategy that allowed their scenes to be easily deleted for screening in the Jim Crow-era South".[31] Pie, Pie Blackbird (1932) (short subject) (uncredited) The Emperor Jones (1933) (Harold Nicholas) Syncopancy (1933) (short subject) (Harold Nicholas) Kid Millions (1934) An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935) (short subject) Coronado (1935) The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) The Black Network (1936) (short subject) My American Wife (1936) Babes in Arms (1937) Calling All Stars (1937) My Son Is Guilty (1939) Down Argentine Way (1940) Tin Pan Alley (1940) The Great American Broadcast (1941) Sun Valley Serenade (1941) Orchestra Wives (1942) Stormy Weather (1943) Take It or Leave It (1944) The Reckless Age (1944) (Harold Nicholas) Carolina Blues (1944) (Harold Nicholas) Dixieland Jamboree (1946) (short subject) The Pirate (1948) Pathe Newsreel (1948) I'm in the Revue (1950) El Misterio del carro express (1953) El Mensaje de la muerte (1953) Musik im Blut (1955) Bonjour Kathrin (1956) L'Empire de la nuit (1963) (Harold Nicholas) The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970) (Fayard Nicholas) Uptown Saturday Night (1974) (Harold Nicholas) That's Entertainment! (1974) (archive footage) Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (1975) (archive footage) Disco 9000 (1976) (Harold Nicholas) That's Dancing! (1985) (archive footage) Tap (1989) (Harold Nicholas) That's Black Entertainment (1990) (archive footage) The Five Heartbeats (1990) (Harold Nicholas) "Alright" (Janet Jackson song) and video (1990) The Nicholas Brothers: We Sing and We Dance (1992) Funny Bones (1995) (Harold Nicholas) I Used to Be in Pictures (2000) Night at the Golden Eagle (2002) (Fayard Nicholas) Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003) Hard Four (2005) Carmen Miranda, something of a sensation on Broadway and therefore a subject for exploitation in this appearance, performs four characteristic numbers but plays no part in the film save as herself. Charlotte Greenwood contributes comedy and a bit of dancing, both in the vein she is known for, but it is the Nicholas Brothers, Negro dance team, which stops the show.[32] — Down Argentine Way (20th Century-Fox) - REVIEW, Motion Picture Herald Awards and honors Harold received the DEA Award from the Dance Educators of America [33][34] Harold received the Bay Area Critics Circle Award (Best Principal Performance, Stompin' at the Savoy)[33] Harold received the Harbor Performing Arts Center Lifetime Achievement Award [33] An honorary doctorate from Harvard University was awarded to both brothers [2] Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame (1978)[33] Ellie Award (1984), National Film Society for both brothers [33] Apollo Theater's Hall of Fame (1986), First Class Inductees for both brothers [33] Ebony Lifetime Achievement Award (1987) for both brothers [33] Fayard Nicholas received Broadway's 1989 Tony Award for Best Choreographer for Black and Blue along with his collaborators Cholly Atkins, Henry LeTang, and Frankie Manning.[35] Scripps American Dance Festival Award [36] Kennedy Center Honors in 1991 for both brothers who were in attendance [1][33] The National Black Media Coalition Lifetime Achievement Award (1992)[33] Flo-Bert Award (1992)[33] New York's Tap Dance Committee, Gypsy Award (1994)[33] A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7083 Hollywood Blvd (1994)[33] Professional Dancer's Society, Dance Magazine Award of (1995)[33] The 1998 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement in Modern Dance National Museum of Dance Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame Inductees (2001)[37] Other achievements The brothers gave a royal command performance for King George VI at the London Palladium in 1948 A retrospective of their work in films appeared at the 1981 Academy Awards ceremony [34] Carnegie Hall sold out for a tribute to the brothers in 1998[citation needed] During the course of their lives, the brothers danced for nine different presidents of the United States[2] The brothers' home movies were selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry in 2011 [38] Several of these home movies were preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.[39] Fayard Antonio Nicholas (October 20, 1914 – January 24, 2006) was an American choreographer, dancer and actor. He and his younger brother Harold Nicholas made up the Nicholas Brothers tap dance duo, who starred in the MGM musicals An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935), Stormy Weather (1943), The Pirate (1948), and Hard Four (2007). The Nicholas brothers also starred in the 20th Century-Fox musicals Down Argentine Way (1940), Sun Valley Serenade (1941), and Orchestra Wives (1942).[1] Early life Nicholas was born in Alabama, but grew up primarily in Philadelphia. He learned to dance while watching vaudeville shows with his brother while their musician parents played in the orchestra.[2] His father, Ulysses D. Nicholas, was a drummer and his mother, Viola Harden Nicholas, was a pianist.[3] Career Fayard Nicholas dances with Harold Nicholas and Bob Hope, 1965 In 1932, when he was 18 and his brother was only 11, they became the featured act at Cotton Club in New York City. The brothers earned fame with a unique style of rhythm tap that blended "masterful jazz steps with daredevil athletic moves and an elegance of motion worthy of ballet". They appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway and in London they worked with jazz choreographer Buddy Bradley. The performances led them to a career in film. Nicholas appeared in over 60 films, including the 1943 musical Stormy Weather with their signature staircase dance.[4] His career was interrupted from 1943 to 1944 when he served in the U.S. Army during World War II.[3] Nicholas achieved the rank of Technician fifth grade while in WWII.[5] After his dance career ended, Nicholas and his wife, Katherine Hopkins Nicholas, embarked on a lecture tour discussing dance. In 2003, Nicholas served as "Festival Legend" at the third "Soul to Sole Tap Festival" in Austin, Texas.[4] Nicholas was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001. Personal life Nicholas was married three times. He remained friends with his first wife, Geraldine Pate, after their divorce. His second wife was Barbara January, and they remained married until her death in 1998. He married dancer Katherine Hopkins in 2000. He was a member of the Baháʼí Faith. Nicholas died of pneumonia following a stroke in 2006 at age 91.[6][7] His widow Katherine died in 2012.[8] Harold Lloyd Nicholas (March 27, 1921 – July 3, 2000) was an American dancer specializing in tap. Nicholas was the younger half of the tap-dancing pair the Nicholas Brothers, known as two of the world's greatest dancers. His older brother was Fayard Nicholas. Nicholas was featured in such musicals as An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935), Stormy Weather (1943), The Pirate (1948), and The Five Heartbeats (1991). Life and career Early years Nicholas was born to drummer and orchestra leader Ulysses Domonick and pianist Viola Harden in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By the age of three, his older brother Fayard enjoyed sitting in the audience of the black vaudeville theater where his parents performed, enraptured by the great performers on stage. Immersed in show business, when the Nicholases added a second son to the family, seven-year-old Fayard insisted that the child be named after his idol, Harold Lloyd, the silent-screen comedian. The two brothers soon began dancing, and they quickly gained acclaim for their elegant acrobatic moves and mastery of tap. When Fayard was 16 and Harold nine, they made their first appearance at the legendary Cotton Club in New York City and were a popular success immediately. Career Their reputation grew rapidly, and Harold and Fayard became established superstars at Twentieth Century Fox with their astounding dance numbers in the studio's musicals features. The brothers began appearing in musical films with Eubie Blake. They performed in vaudeville, on Broadway, in nightclubs, on television, and in movie musicals. Harold appeared in more than 50 feature films, including The Big Broadcast (1936), Down Argentine Way (1940), Tin Pan Alley (1940), and Sun Valley Serenade (1941), which features the show-stopping "Chattanooga Choo Choo" tap dance number performed by Harold, Fayard, and Dorothy Dandridge. Fred Astaire told the brothers that their dazzling footwork, leaps and splits in the Jumpin’ Jive dance in Stormy Weather (1943) produced the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen. In the number, the brothers dance on a piano and leap over performing musicians. The Nicholas Brothers’ Hollywood career began after movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn spotted them in a nightclub and cast them in Kid Millions (1934). The two became big film stars despite racial restrictions at the time prohibiting speaking parts and scenes with white co-stars. Their last film together was 1948's The Pirate, in which Gene Kelly danced with them, breaking the color barrier. Harold went on to work as a solo artist, moving to France and touring as a singer and dancer. He appeared in the French film L’Empire De La Nuit (1964). Later life Harold returned to America occasionally to do shows with his brother. Harold also appeared in the films Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Tap (1989), The Five Heartbeats (1991) and Funny Bones (1995). In 1985–86, Nicholas played the role of "Daddy Bates" in the National Tour of the Broadway musical The Tap Dance Kid.[1] In 1993, he starred in the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre's world premiere of If These Shoes Could Talk,[2] which also starred Tony nominee Ted Levy, an original tap dance musical by Lee Summers and Kevin Ramsey. The leading character, a seasoned triple threat/hoofer, "Dr Rhythm," was written for Nicholas and would be his farewell stage performance in a musical. Carnegie Hall sold out for a tribute to him and his brother in 1998, who were both present. By that time he had been living on New York's Upper West Side, where he lived for approximately 20 years with his third wife Rigmor Alfredsson Newman, a producer. Personal life Nicholas was married three times and had two children. His first marriage, on September 6, 1942, was to the actress, singer and dancer Dorothy Dandridge. They met at the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1938. Together they had a daughter, Harolyn Suzanne, who was born on September 2, 1943 (died in 2003), with severe brain damage that prevented her from speaking or even acknowledging her parents. By 1948, their marriage had deteriorated and Nicholas abandoned his family.[3] Their marriage lasted nine years, ending in 1951.[4] Nicholas had been linked briefly in Europe to Swiss actress Nyta Dover.[5] Nicholas had a son, Melih, with his second wife Elyanne Patronne.[6][citation needed] At the time of his death, he was married to Rigmor Newman Nicholas.[6] Death and honors Nicholas died in New York City on July 3, 2000, at the age of 79, from heart failure. Nicholas was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001, along with his brother Fayard Nicholas. Filmography Nicholas appeared in the following films dancing alongside his brother Fayard, with occasional solos: Pie, Pie Blackbird (1932) The Emperor Jones (1933) [solo] Syncopancy (1933) [solo] Kid Millions (1934) An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935) The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) Coronado (1935) The Black Network (1936) My American Wife (1936) Calling All Stars (1937) Down Argentine Way (1940) Tin Pan Alley (1940) The Great American Broadcast (1941) Sun Valley Serenade (1941) Orchestra Wives (1942) Stormy Weather (1943) Take It or Leave It (1944) The Reckless Age (1944) [solo] Carolina Blues (1944) [solo] Dixieland Jamboree (1946) The Pirate (1948) Botta e Riposta (1951) Pathé News Reel (1948) L'Empire de la nuit (1963) [solo] The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970) Uptown Saturday Night (1974) [solo] That's Entertainment! (1974) Disco 9000 (1974) [solo] That's Dancing! (1985) Tap (1989) [solo] The Five Heartbeats (1990) [solo] A&E Special: The Nicholas Brothers (1992) [as self] Funny Bones (1995) [solo] Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2002) [as self] Flash dancing was a form of tap dance (tap was also called jazz dance at the time) that evolved in the 1920s–1930s, which combined dance with acrobatics.[1][2] Prominent flash dance acts of the time include the Nicholas Brothers, The Four Step Brothers and the Berry Brothers.[3] Examples of such dance appeared in film predominantly between the 1920s and 1940s.[3] The Nicholas Brothers' spectacular leap-frogging performance in the musical number "Jumpin' Jive" (with Cab Calloway and his orchestra) featured in the 1943 movie Stormy Weather has been praised as one of the greatest dance routines ever captured on film. Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.[2] Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole.[3] Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming known as the "Hi-de-ho" man of jazz for his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher", originally recorded in 1931. He reached the Billboard charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s).[4] Calloway also made several stage, film, and television appearances until his death in 1994 at the age of 86. He had roles in Stormy Weather (1943), Porgy and Bess (1953), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and Hello Dolly! (1967). His career saw renewed interest when he appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Calloway was the first African-American musician to sell a million records from a single and to have a nationally syndicated radio show.[5] In 1993, Calloway received the National Medal of Arts from the United States Congress.[6] He posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His song "Minnie the Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2019.[7] Three years later in 2022, the National Film Registry selected his home films for preservation as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films".[8] He is also inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame and the International Jazz Hall of Fame. Early life Calloway was born in Rochester, New York, on December 25, 1907 to an African American family.[9] His mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a Morgan State College graduate, teacher, and church organist. His father, Cabell Calloway Jr., graduated from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania in 1898,[10][11] and worked as a lawyer and in real estate. The family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, when Calloway was 11.[12] Soon after, his father died and his mother remarried to John Nelson Fortune.[13] Calloway grew up in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Druid Hill. He often skipped school to earn money by selling newspapers, shining shoes, and cooling down horses at the Pimlico racetrack where he developed an interest in racing and betting on horse races.[14][15] After he was caught playing dice on the church steps, his mother sent him to Downingtown Industrial and Agricultural School in 1921, a reform school run by his mother's uncle in Chester County, Pennsylvania.[15] Calloway resumed hustling when he returned to Baltimore and worked as a caterer while he improved his studies in school.[15] He began private vocal lessons in 1922, and studied music throughout his formal schooling. Despite his parents' and teachers' disapproval of jazz, he began performing in nightclubs in Baltimore. His mentors included drummer Chick Webb and pianist Johnny Jones. Calloway joined his high school basketball team, and in his senior year he started playing professional basketball with the Baltimore Athenians, a team in the Negro Professional Basketball League.[16] He graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1925.[12][17] Music career 1927–1929: Early career In 1927, Calloway joined his older sister, Blanche Calloway, on tour for the popular black musical revue Plantation Days.[13] His sister became an accomplished bandleader before him, and he often credited her as his inspiration for entering show business.[18] Calloway's mother wanted him to be a lawyer like his father, so once the tour ended he enrolled at Crane College in Chicago, but he was more interested in singing and entertaining. While at Crane he refused the opportunity to play basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters to pursue a singing career.[15] Calloway spent most of his nights at Chicago's Dreamland Café, Sunset Cafe, and Club Berlin, performing as a singer, drummer, and master of ceremonies.[13] At Sunset Cafe, he was an understudy for singer Adelaide Hall. There he met and performed with Louis Armstrong, who taught him to sing in the scat style. He left school to sing with the Alabamians band.[19] In 1929, Calloway relocated to New York with the band. They opened at the Savoy Ballroom on September 20, 1929. When the Alabamians broke up, Armstrong recommended Calloway as a replacement singer in the musical revue Connie's Hot Chocolates.[13] He established himself as a vocalist singing "Ain't Misbehavin'" by Fats Waller.[20] While Calloway was performing in the revue, the Missourians asked him to front their band.[21] 1930–1955: Success In 1930, the Missourians became known as Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. At the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York, the band was hired in 1931 to substitute for the Duke Ellington Orchestra while Ellington's band was on tour. Their popularity led to a permanent position. The band also performed twice a week for radio broadcasts on NBC. Calloway appeared on radio programs with Walter Winchell and Bing Crosby and was the first African American to have a nationally syndicated radio show.[5] During the depths of the Great Depression, Calloway was earning $50,000 a year at 23 years old.[20] Calloway by Carl Van Vechten, 1933 In 1931, Calloway recorded his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher." It was the first single record by an African American to sell a million copies.[5] Calloway performed the song and two others, "St. James Infirmary Blues" and "The Old Man of the Mountain," in the Betty Boop cartoons Minnie the Moocher (1932), Snow-White (1933), and The Old Man of the Mountain (1933). Calloway performed voice-over for these cartoons, and through rotoscoping, his dance steps were the basis of the characters' movements.[22] As a result of the success of "Minnie the Moocher", Calloway became identified with its chorus, gaining the nickname "The Hi De Ho Man".[23] He performed in the 1930s in a series of short films for Paramount. Calloway's and Ellington's groups were featured on film more than any other jazz orchestras of the era. In these films, Calloway can be seen performing a gliding backstep dance move, which some observers have described as the precursor to Michael Jackson's moonwalk. Calloway said 50 years later, "it was called The Buzz back then."[24] The 1933 film International House featured Calloway performing his classic song, "Reefer Man", a tune about a man who smokes marijuana.[25] Fredi Washington was cast as Calloway's love interest in Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho (1934).[26] Lena Horne made her film debut as a dancer in Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935).[27] Calloway made his first Hollywood feature film appearance opposite Al Jolson in The Singing Kid (1936). He sang several duets with Jolson, and the film included Calloway's band and 22 Cotton Club dancers from New York.[28] According to film critic Arthur Knight, the creators of the film intended to "erase and celebrate boundaries and differences, including most emphatically the color line...when Calloway begins singing in his characteristic style – in which the words are tools for exploring rhythm and stretching melody – it becomes clear that American culture is changing around Jolson and with (and through) Calloway".[29][30]: watch  Calloway's band recorded for Brunswick and the ARC dime-store labels (Banner, Cameo, Conqueror, Perfect, Melotone, Banner, Oriole) from 1930 to 1932, when he signed with RCA Victor for a year. He returned to Brunswick in late 1934 through 1936, then moved to Variety, run by his manager, Irving Mills. He remained with Mills when the label collapsed during the Depression. Their sessions were continued by Vocalion through 1939 and OKeh through 1942. After an AFM recording ban due to the 1942–44 musicians' strike, Calloway continued to record. In 1938, Calloway released Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A "Hepster's" Dictionary, the first dictionary published by an African American. It became the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library.[31] A revised version of the book was released with Professor Cab Calloway's Swingformation Bureau in 1939. He released the last edition, The New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive, in 1944.[32] On a BBC Radio documentary about the dictionary in 2014, Poet Lemn Sissay stated, "Cab Calloway was taking ownership of language for a people who, just a few generations before, had their own languages taken away."[33] Calloway's band in the 1930s and 1940s included many notable musicians, such as Ben Webster, Illinois Jacquet, Milt Hinton, Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham, Ed Swayze, Cozy Cole, Eddie Barefield, and Dizzy Gillespie. Calloway later recalled, "What I expected from my musicians was what I was selling: the right notes with precision, because I would build a whole song around a scat or dance step."[20] Calloway and his band formed baseball and basketball teams.[34][35] They played each other while on the road, play against local semi-pro teams, and play charity games.[36] His renown as a talented musician was such that, in the opening scene of the 1940 musical film Strike Up the Band, starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Rooney's character is admonished by his music teacher, "You are not Cab Calloway," after playing an improvised drum riff in the middle of a band lesson. In 1941, Calloway fired Gillespie from his orchestra after an onstage fracas erupted when Calloway was hit with spitballs. He wrongly accused Gillespie, who stabbed Calloway in the leg with a small knife.[37] From 1941 to 1942, Calloway hosted a weekly radio quiz show called The Cab Calloway Quizzicale.[38] Calling himself "Doctor" Calloway, it was a parody of The College of Musical Knowledge, a radio contest created by bandleader Kay Kyser.[39] During the years of World War II, Calloway entertained troops in United States before they departed overseas.[40] The Calloway Orchestra also recorded songs full of social commentary including "Doing the Reactionary," "The Führer's Got the Jitters,"[41] "The Great Lie," "We'll Gather Lilacs," and "My Lament for V Day."[42] In 1943, Calloway appeared in the film Stormy Weather, one of the first mainstream Hollywood films with a black cast.[43] The film featured other top performers of the time, including Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne, the Nicholas Brothers, and Fats Waller. Calloway would host Horne's character Selina Rogers as she performed the film's title song as part of a big all-star revue for World War II soldiers.[44] Calloway wrote a humorous pseudo-gossip column called "Coastin' with Cab" for Song Hits magazine. It was a collection of celebrity snippets, such as the following in the May 1946 issue: "Benny Goodman was dining at Ciro's steak house in New York when a very homely girl entered. 'If her face is her fortune,' Benny quipped, 'she'd be tax-free.'" In the late 1940s, however, Calloway's bad financial decisions and his gambling caused his band to break up.[19] One of Cab Calloway's zoot suits on display in Baltimore's City Hall, October 2007 In 1953, he played the prominent role of Sportin' Life in a production of Porgy and Bess with William Warfield and Leontyne Price as the title characters. 1956–1960: Cotton Club Revue Calloway and his daughter Lael recorded "Little Child", an adaption of "Little Boy and the Old Man". Released on ABC-Paramount, the single charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1956.[45][4] In 1956, Clarence Robinson, who produced revues at the original Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater, and choreographed the movie Stormy Weather, cast Calloway as the main attraction for his project in Miami. The Cotton Club of Miami featured a troupe of 48 people, including singer Sallie Blair, George Kirby, Abbey Lincoln, and the dance troupe of Norma Miller. The success of the shows led to the Cotton Club Revue of 1957 which had stops at the Royal Nevada Hotel in Las Vegas, the Theatre Under The Sky in Central Park, Town Casino in Buffalo. For the second season, Lee Sherman was the choreographer of The Cotton Club Revue of 1958, which starred Calloway. The revue featured tap dancing prodigies Maurice Hines and Gregory Hines.[46] In March 1958, Calloway released his album Cotton Club Revue of 1958 on Gone Records. It was produced by George Goldner, conducted and arranged by Eddie Barefield. That year, Calloway appeared in the film St. Louis Blues, the life story of W.C. Handy, featuring Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt.[47] The Cotton Club Revue of 1959 traveled to South America for engagements in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. They also stopped in Uruguay and Argentina before returning to North America which included a run on Broadway.[48] Directed by Mervyn Nelson and choreographed by Joel Nobel, this edition featured Ketty Lester, The Three Chocolateers. The revue toured Europe in 1959 and 1960, bringing their act to Madrid, Paris, and London. 1961–1993: Later years Calloway remained a household name due to TV appearances and occasional concerts in the US and Europe. In 1961 and 1962, he toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, providing halftime entertainment during games.[49][50] Calloway was cast as "Yeller" in the film The Cincinnati Kid (1965) with Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret, and Edward G. Robinson. Calloway appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on March 19, 1967, with his daughter Chris Calloway.[51] In 1967, he co-starred with Pearl Bailey as Horace Vandergelder in an all-black cast of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway during its original run. Chris Calloway also joined the cast as Minnie Fay.[52] The new cast revived the flagging business for the show[53] and RCA Victor released a new cast recording, rare for the time. In 1973–74, Calloway was featured in an unsuccessful Broadway revival of The Pajama Game with Hal Linden and Barbara McNair. His autobiography, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me was published in 1976. It included his complete Hepster's Dictionary as an appendix. In 1978, Calloway released a disco version of "Minnie the Moocher" on RCA which reached the Billboard R&B chart.[54][4] Calloway was introduced to a new generation when he appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers performing "Minnie the Moocher".[3] In 1985, Calloway and his Orchestra appeared at The Ritz London Hotel where he was filmed for a 60-minute BBC TV show called The Cotton Club Comes to the Ritz. Adelaide Hall, Doc Cheatham, Max Roach, and the Nicholas Brothers also appeared on the bill.[55][56] A performance with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra directed by Erich Kunzel in August 1988 was recorded on video and features a classic presentation of "Minnie the Moocher", 57 years after he first recorded it.[57] In January 1990, Calloway performed at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, with the Baltimore Symphony.[58] That year he made a cameo in Janet Jackson's music video "Alright".[3][59] He continued to perform at Jazz festivals, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Greenwood Jazz.[60][61] In 1992, he embarked on a month-long tour of European jazz festivals.[62] He was booked to headline "The Jazz Connection: The Jewish and African-American Relationship," at New York City's Avery Fisher Hall in 1993, but he pulled out due to a fall at home.[63] Personal life Marriages and children In January 1927, Calloway had a daughter named Camay with Zelma Proctor, a fellow student.[64][15] His daughter was one of the first African-Americans to teach in a white school in Virginia.[65] Calloway married his first wife Wenonah "Betty" Conacher in July 1928.[64] They adopted a daughter named Constance and divorced in 1949.[66] Calloway married Zulme "Nuffie" MacNeal on October 7, 1949. They lived in Long Beach on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, on the border with neighboring Lido Beach. In the 1950s, Calloway moved his family to Westchester County, New York, where he and Nuffie raised their daughters Chris Calloway (1945–2008),[67] Cecilia "Lael" Eulalia Calloway,[68] and Cabella Calloway (1952–2023). Legal issues In December 1945, Calloway and his friend Felix H. Payne Jr. were beaten by a police officer, William E. Todd, and arrested in Kansas City, Missouri after attempting to visit bandleader Lionel Hampton at the whites-only Pla-Mor Ballroom. They were taken to the hospital for injuries, then charged with intoxication and resisting arrest. When Hampton learned of the incident he refused to continue the concert.[69] Todd said he was informed by the manager, who did not recognize Calloway, that they were attempting to enter. He claimed they refused to leave and struck him. Calloway and Payne denied his claims and maintained they had been sober; the charges were dismissed. In February 1946, six civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, demanded that Todd be fired, but he had already resigned after a pay cut.[70] In 1952, Calloway was arrested in Leesburg, Virginia on his way to the race track in Charles Town, West Virginia. He was charged with speeding and attempted bribery of a policeman.[71] Death On June 12, 1994, Calloway suffered a stroke at his home in Westchester County, New York.[58] He died five months later from pneumonia on November 18, 1994, at age 86, at a nursing home in Hockessin, Delaware.[23] He was survived by his wife, five daughters, and seven grandsons. Calloway was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.[14][3] Legacy Music critics have written of his influence on later generations of entertainers such as James Brown, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, as well as modern-day hip-hop performers.[72][2] John Landis, who directed Calloway in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, stated, "Cab Calloway is hip-hop."[12] Journalist Timothy White noted in Billboard (August 14, 1993): "No living pathfinder in American popular music or its jazz and rock 'n' roll capillaries is so frequently emulated yet so seldom acknowledged as Cabell "Cab" Calloway. He arguably did more things first and better than any other band leader of his generation."[20] In 1998, the Cab Calloway Orchestra directed by Calloway's grandson Chris "CB" Calloway Brooks was formed.[73][74] In 2009, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy released an album covering Calloway's music titled How Big Can You Get?: The Music of Cab Calloway.[75] In 2012, Calloway's legacy was celebrated in an episode of PBS's American Masters titled "Cab Calloway: Sketches".[12][72] Calloway's boyhood home in Baltimore, before its demolition in September 2020 In 2019, plans were announced to demolish Calloway's boyhood home at 2216 Druid Hill Avenue in Baltimore, replacing the abandoned structure and the rest of that block with a park to be named Cab Calloway Legends Park in his honor.[76][77] Family members and the National Trust for Historic Preservation advocated preservation of the house, however, as a significant artifact of African-American cultural heritage. Although the block is designated "historically significant" on the National Register of Historic Places, Baltimore City officials said at a hearing on July 9, 2019, that there is "extensive structural damage" to the Calloway house as well as adjacent ones.[78] The Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation's executive director, however, said that properties in worse condition than the Calloway House have been restored with financial support from a city tax credit program. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan also urged that demolition of the Calloway House be forestalled for its potential preservation as a historic house museum akin to the Louis Armstrong House in New York.[5][78] Design options for the planned Cab Calloway Square may include an archway from the facade (pictured) as part of the Square's entrance, as proposed by architects working with Baltimore City and the Druid Heights Community Development Corporation, a Non-Profit community oriented group.[79] Despite objections, the house was razed on September 5, 2020.[80] Awards and honors In 1985, Town Supervisor Anthony F. Veteran issued a proclamation, declaring a ''Cab Calloway Day'' in Greenburgh, New York.[81] In 1990, Calloway was presented with the Beacons in Jazz Award from The New School in New York City. New York City Mayor David Dinkins proclaimed the day "Cab Calloway Day".[82] In 1992, the Cab Calloway School of the Arts was founded in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1994, Calloway's daughter Camay Calloway Murphy founded the Cab Calloway Museum at Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland.[83][12] The New York Racing Association (NYRA) annually honors the jazz legend, a native of Rochester, N.Y., with a stakes races restricted to NY-bred three-year-olds, as part of their New York Stallion Series. First run in 2003, The Calloway has since undergone various distance and surface changes. The race is currently run at Saratoga Racecourse, Saratoga Springs, NY, one of America's most popular, premier racetracks. The Cab Calloway Stakes celebrated its 13th renewal on July 24, 2019, and was won by Rinaldi. In 2020 Calloway was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame Calloway received the following accolades: 1967: Best Performance, Outer Critics Circle Awards (Hello, Dolly) 1987: Inducted into Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame[84] 1990: Beacons in Jazz Award, The New School[82] 1993: National Medal of Arts[85][6] 1993: Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, University of Rochester 1993: Cab Calloway School of the Arts dedicated in his name in Wilmington, Delaware[86] 1995: Inducted into International Jazz Hall of Fame[87] 1999: Grammy Hall of Fame Award for "Minnie the Moocher" 2008: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award[88] 2019: "Minnie the Moocher" added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry[89] Discography Albums 1943: Cab Calloway And His Orchestra (Brunswick) 1956: Cab Calloway (Epic) 1958: Cotton Club Revue 1958 (Gone Records) 1959: Hi De Hi De Ho (RCA Victor) 1962: Blues Makes Me Happy (Coral) 1968: Cab Calloway '68 (Pickwick International) Select compilations 1974: Hi De Ho Man (Columbia) 1983: Mr. Hi. De. Ho. 1930–1931 (MCA) 1990: Cab Calloway: Best Of The Big Bands (Columbia) 1992: The King Of Hi-De-Ho 1934–1947 (Giants of Jazz) 1998: Jumpin' Jive (Camden) 2001: Cab Calloway and His Orchestra Volume 1: The Early Years 1930–1934 (JSP) 2003: Cab Calloway & His Orchestra Volume 2: 1935–1940 (JSP) Charting singles Release date Title Chart positions [90][91][4] 1930 "Saint Louis Blues" 16 1931 "Minnie the Moocher" 1 "Saint James Infirmary" 3 "Nobody's Sweetheart" 13 "Six or Seven Times" 14 "You Rascal, You" 17 "Kicking the Gong Around" 4 "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" 15 "Trickeration" 8 1932 "Cabin in the Cotton" 17 "Strictly Cullud Affair" 11 "Minnie the Moocher's Wedding Day" 8 "Reefer Man" 11 "Hot Toddy" 14 "I've Got the World on a String" 18 1933 "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" 17 1934 "Jitter Bug" 20 "Moon Glow" 7 "Chinese Rhythm" 7 1935 "Keep That Hi-De-Hi in Your Soul" 20 1936 "You're the Cure for What Ails Me" 20 "Copper Colored Gal" 13 1937 "Wake up and Live" 17 "Congo" 17 "Peckin'" 18 "She's Tall, She's Tan, She's Terrific" 17 "Moon at Sea" 19 "Mama, I want to Make Rhythm" 20 1938 "Every Day's a Holiday" 18 "Mister Toscanini, Swing for Minnie" 19 "F.D.R. Jones" 14 "Angels With Dirty Faces" 3 1939 "The Ghost of Smokey Joe" 13 "(Hep Hep!) The Jumpin' Jive" 2 1940 "Fifteen Minute Intermission" 23 1941 "Bye Bye Blues" 24 "Geechee Joe" 23 "I See a Million People" 23 1942 "Blues in the Night" 8 1943 "Ogeechee River Lullaby" 18 1944 "The Moment I Laid My Eyes on You" 28 1945 "Let's Take the Long Way Home" 28 1946 "The Honeydripper" 3 (R&B) 1948 "The Calloway Boogie" 13 (R&B) 1956 "Little Child" 62 1966 "History Repeats Itself" 89 1978 "Minnie the Moocher" (disco version) 91 (R&B) Vaudeville (/ˈvɔːd(ə)vɪl, ˈvoʊ-/;[1] French: [vodvil]) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain,[2] a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and films. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a "vaudevillian". Vaudeville developed from many sources, also including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called "the heart of American show business", vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades.[3] Etymology The origin of the term is obscure but often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville ("voice of the city"). A second speculation is that it comes from the 15th-century songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin, "Vau de Vire".[4] In his Connections television series, science historian James Burke argues that the term is a corruption of the French "Vau de Vire" ("Vire River Valley", in English), an area known for its bawdy drinking songs and where Basselin lived.[5] The Oxford English Dictionary also endorses the vau de vire origin, a truncated form of chanson du Vau de Vire ("song of the Valley of the Vire"). Around 1610, Jean le Houx collected these works as Le Livre des Chants nouveaux de Vaudevire [fr], which is probably the direct origin of the word. Some, however, preferred the earlier term "variety" to what manager Tony Pastor called its "sissy and Frenchified" successor. Thus, vaudeville marketed itself as "variety" well into the 20th century. Beginnings See also: Comédie en vaudevilles From newspaper promotional for vaudeville character actor Charles Grapewin, c. 1900 With its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the concert saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as "Polite Vaudeville".[6] In the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere. In the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatergoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy.[citation needed] As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found an increasing number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns.[7] A handful of circuses regularly toured the country; dime museums appealed to the curious; amusement parks, riverboats, and town halls often featured "cleaner" presentations of variety entertainment; compared to saloons, music halls, and burlesque houses, which catered to those with a taste for the risqué. In the 1840s, the minstrel show, another type of variety performance, and "the first emanation of a pervasive and purely American mass culture", grew to enormous popularity and formed what Nick Tosches called "the heart of 19th-century show business".[8] A significant influence also came from "Dutch" (i.e., German or faux-German) minstrels and comedians.[9] Medicine shows traveled the countryside offering programs of comedy, music, jugglers, and other novelties along with displays of tonics, salves, and miracle elixirs, while "Wild West" shows provided romantic vistas of the disappearing frontier, complete with trick riding, music and drama. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in America's growing urban hubs. From the mid-1860s, impresario Tony Pastor, a former singing circus clown who had become a prominent variety theater performer and manager, capitalized on middle class sensibilities and spending power when he began to feature "polite" variety programs in his New York City theatres.[10] Pastor opened his first "Opera House" on the Bowery in 1865, later moving his variety theater operation to Broadway and, finally, to Fourteenth Street near Union Square. He only began to use the term "vaudeville" in place of "variety" in early 1876.[11] Hoping to draw a potential audience from female and family-based shopping traffic uptown, Pastor barred the sale of liquor in his theatres, eliminated bawdy material from his shows, and offered gifts of coal and hams to attendees. Pastor's experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit. Popularity Performance bill for Temple Theatre, Detroit, 1 December 1902 The manager's comments, sent back to the circuit's central office weekly, follow each act's description. The bill illustrates the typical pattern of opening the show with a "dumb" act to allow patrons to find their seats, placing strong acts in second and penultimate positions, and leaving the weakest act for the end, to clear the house. As well, note that in this bill, as in many vaudeville shows, acts often associated with "lowbrow" or popular entertainment (acrobats, a trained mule) shared a stage with acts more usually regarded as "highbrow" or classical entertainment (opera vocalists, classical musicians). (1) Burt Jordan and Rosa Crouch. "Sensational, grotesque and 'buck' dancers. A good act ..." (2) The White Tscherkess Trio. "A man and two women who do a singing turn of the operatic order. They carry special scenery which is very artistic and their costumes are original and neat. Their voices are good and blend exceedingly well. The act goes big with the audience." (3) Sarah Midgely and Gertie Carlisle. "Presenting the sketch 'After School.' ... they are a 'knockout.'" (4) Theodor F. Smith and Jenny St. George-Fuller. "Refined instrumentalists." (5) Milly Capell. "European equestrienne. This is her second week. On account of the very pretty picture that she makes she goes as strong as she did last week." (6) R. J. Jose. "Tenor singer. The very best of them all." (7) The Nelson Family of Acrobats. "This act is composed of three men, two young women, three boys and two small girls. The greatest acrobatic act extant." (8) James Thornton. "Monologist and vocalist. He goes like a cyclone. It is a case of continuous laughter from his entrance to his exit." (9) Burk and Andrus and Their Trained Mule. "This act, if it can be so classed, was closed after the evening performance." "The Opera" in Kirksville, Missouri was on the Vaudeville circuit. Vaudeville played in both large and small venues in cities and towns. B. F. Keith took the next step, starting in Boston, where he built an empire of theatres and brought vaudeville to the United States and Canada. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, managed the chain to its greatest success. Circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudeville's greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the single-theatre booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years. Albee also gave national prominence to vaudeville's trumpeting "polite" entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos (e.g., those that used words such as "hell") were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the week's remaining performances or were canceled altogether. In spite of such threats, performers routinely flouted this censorship, often to the delight of the very audience members whose sensibilities were supposedly endangered. He eventually instituted a set of guidelines to be an audience member at his show, and these were reinforced by the ushers working in the theatre.[4] This "polite entertainment" also extended to Keith's company members. He went to extreme measures to maintain this level of modesty. Keith even went as far as posting warnings backstage such as this: "Don't say 'slob' or 'son of a gun' or 'hully gee' on the stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily... if you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or even suggestive you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theatre where Mr. Keith is in authority." Along these same lines of discipline, Keith's theatre managers would occasionally send out blue envelopes with orders to omit certain suggestive lines of songs and possible substitutions for those words. If actors chose to ignore these orders or quit, they would get "a black mark" on their name and would never again be allowed to work on the Keith Circuit. Thus, actors learned to follow the instructions given to them by B. F. Keith for fear of losing their careers forever.[4] By the late 1890s, vaudeville had large circuits, houses (small and large) in almost every sizable location, standardized booking, broad pools of skilled acts, and a loyal national following. One of the biggest circuits was Martin Beck's Orpheum Circuit. It incorporated in 1919 and brought together 45 vaudeville theatres in 36 cities throughout the United States and Canada and a large interest in two vaudeville circuits. Another major circuit was that of Alexander Pantages. In his heyday, Pantages owned more than 30 vaudeville theatres and controlled, through management contracts, perhaps 60 more in both the United States and Canada. This 1913 how-to booklet for would-be vaudevillians was recently republished. At its height, vaudeville played across multiple strata of economic class and auditorium size. On the vaudeville circuit, it was said that if an act would succeed in Peoria, Illinois, it would work anywhere.[12][13][14][15] The question "Will it play in Peoria?" has now become a metaphor for whether something appeals to the American mainstream public. The three most common levels were the "small time" (lower-paying contracts for more frequent performances in rougher, often converted theatres), the "medium time" (moderate wages for two performances each day in purpose-built theatres), and the "big time" (possible remuneration of several thousand dollars per week in large, urban theatres largely patronized by the middle and upper-middle classes). As performers rose in renown and established regional and national followings, they worked their way into the less arduous working conditions and better pay of the big time. The capital of the big time was New York City's Palace Theatre (or just "The Palace" in the slang of vaudevillians), built by Martin Beck in 1913 and operated by Keith. Featuring a bill stocked with inventive novelty acts, national celebrities, and acknowledged masters of vaudeville performance (such as comedian and trick roper Will Rogers), the Palace provided what many vaudevillians considered the apotheosis of remarkable careers. A standard show bill would begin with a sketch, follow with a single (an individual male or female performer); next would be an alley-oop (an acrobatic act); then another single, followed by yet another sketch such as a blackface comedy. The acts that followed these for the rest of the show would vary from musicals to jugglers to song-and-dance singles and end with a final extravaganza – either musical or drama – with the full company. These shows would feature such stars as ragtime and jazz pianist Eubie Blake, the famous and magical Harry Houdini, and child star Baby Rose Marie.[16] In the New-York Tribune's article about Vaudeville, it is said that at any given time, Vaudeville was employing over twelve thousand different people throughout its entire industry. Each entertainer would be on the road 42 weeks at a time while working a particular "Circuit" – or an individual theatre chain of a major company.[17] While the neighborhood character of vaudeville attendance had always promoted a tendency to tailor fare to specific audiences, mature vaudeville grew to feature houses and circuits specifically aimed at certain demographic groups. Black patrons, often segregated into the rear of the second gallery in white-oriented theatres, had their own smaller circuits, as did speakers of Italian and Yiddish. (For a brief discussion of Black vaudeville, see Theatre Owners Booking Association.) This foreign addition combined with comedy produced such acts as "minstrel shows of antebellum America" and Yiddish theatre. Many ethnic families joined in on this entertainment business, and for them, this traveling lifestyle was simply a continuation of the circumstances that brought them to America. Through these acts, they were able to assimilate themselves into their new home while also bringing bits of their own culture into this new world.[18] White-oriented regional circuits, such as New England's "Peanut Circuit", also provided essential training grounds for new artists while allowing established acts to experiment with and polish new material. At its height, vaudeville was rivaled only by churches and public schools among the nation's premiere public gathering places. Another slightly different aspect of Vaudeville was an increasing interest in the female figure. The previously mentioned ominous idea of "the blue envelopes" led to the phrase "blue" material, which described the provocative subject matter present in many Vaudeville acts of the time.[4] Many managers even saw this scandalous material as a marketing strategy to attract many different audiences. As stated in Andrew Erdman's book Blue Vaudeville, the Vaudeville stage was "a highly sexualized space ... where unclad bodies, provocative dancers, and singers of 'blue' lyrics all vied for attention." Such performances highlighted and objectified the female body as a "sexual delight", but more than that, historians think that Vaudeville marked a time in which the female body became its own "sexual spectacle". This sexual image began sprouting everywhere an American went: the shops, a restaurant, the grocery store, etc.[citation needed] The more this image brought in the highest revenue, the more Vaudeville focused on acts involving women. Even acts that were as innocent as a sister act were higher sellers than a good brother act. Consequently, Erdman adds that female Vaudeville performers such as Julie Mackey and Gibson's Bathing Girls began to focus less on talent and more on physical appeal through their figure, tight gowns, and other revealing attire. It eventually came as a surprise to audience members when such beautiful women actually possessed talent in addition to their appealing looks. This element of surprise colored much of the reaction to the female entertainment of this time.[19] Women In the 1920s, announcements seeking all-girl bands for vaudeville performances appeared in industry publications like Billboard, Variety and in newspapers. Bands like The Ingenues and The Dixie Sweethearts were well-publicized, while other groups were simply described as "all-girl Revue". According to Feminist Theory, similar trends in theater and film objectified women, an example of male gaze, as women's role in public life was expanding.[20] These expectations for women in the 19th century played a big role in the compelling aspects of vaudeville. Through vaudeville, many women were allowed to join their male counterparts on the stage and found success in their acts. Leila Marie Koerber, later Marie Dressler, was a Canadian actress who specialized in vaudeville comedy, and eventually won an Academy Award for Best Actress later in her career. Being the daughter of a musician, she moved to the United States of America in her childhood. At just fourteen years old, she left home to begin her career, lying about her age and sending her mother half of her paycheck. Dressler found great success and was known for her comedic timing and physical comedy, like carrying her male co-stars. She eventually worked on Broadway, where she had a great desire to become a serious actress but was advised to remain in comedy.[21] She went on to star in a few films but again returned to vaudeville, her original career. Another famous vaudevillian actress was Trixi Friganza, originally born Delia O'Callaghan. She had a famous catchphrase; "You know Trixi with her bag of tricks."[22] She began her career in opera, performing to help provide for her family. The oldest of three daughters, she wanted to help her family financially but had to do it secretly, as female performers were frowned on at the time. She worked largely in comedy and gained acclaim and success due to her willingness to step into other's roles who had fallen ill, and were otherwise unable to perform. In her acts, she often emphasized her plus-size figure, calling herself the "perfect forty-six". Friganza was also a poet and writer. She used many of her performances as ways to raise money to support the poor or disenfranchised and went on record publicly numerous times to support these social causes. Friganza also spent much of her life fighting for women's equality and pushing for self-acceptance for women, both publicly and within themselves, as well as their rights in comparison to men. Another famous comedienne, one who brought in thousands of audience members with her signature improvisational skills, was May Irwin. She worked from about 1875 to 1914. Originally born Ada Campbell, she began her life on the stage at thirteen years old following the death of her father. She and her older sister created a singing act called the "Irwin Sisters". Many years later, their act had taken off and with performances in both vaudeville and burlesque at famous music halls, until Irwin decided to continue her career on her own. She then changed her approach to vaudeville, performing African-American-influenced songs, even later writing her songs.[23] She introduced her signature in vaudeville, "The Bully Song", which was performed in a Broadway show. This is when she began experimenting with improvisational comedy and quickly found her unique success, even taking her performances global with acts in the U.K. Selected vaudeville artists Main articles: List of vaudeville performers: A–K and List of vaudeville performers: L–Z Immigrant America In addition to vaudeville's prominence as a form of American entertainment, it reflected the newly evolving urban inner-city culture and interaction of its operators and audience. Making up a large portion of immigration to the United States in the mid-19th century, Irish Americans interacted with established Americans, with the Irish becoming subject to discrimination due to their ethnic physical and cultural characteristics. The ethnic stereotypes of Irish through their greenhorn depiction alluded to their newly arrived status as immigrant Americans, with the stereotype portrayed in avenues of entertainment.[24] Following the Irish immigration wave, several waves followed in which new immigrants from different backgrounds came in contact with the Irish in America's urban centers. Already settled and being native English speakers, Irish Americans took hold of these advantages and began to assert their positions in the immigrant racial hierarchy based on skin tone and assimilation status, cementing job positions that were previously unavailable to them as recently arrived immigrants.[25] As a result, Irish Americans became prominent in vaudeville entertainment as curators and actors, creating a unique ethnic interplay between Irish American use of self-deprecation as humor and their diverse inner city surroundings.[26] Harry Houdini and Jennie, the Vanishing Elephant, January 7, 1918 The interactions between newly arrived immigrants and settled immigrants within the backdrop of the unknown American urban landscape allowed vaudeville to be utilized as an avenue for expression and understanding. The often hostile immigrant experience in their new country was now used for comic relief on the vaudeville stage, where stereotypes of different ethnic groups were perpetuated.[27] The crude stereotypes that emerged were easily identifiable not only by their distinct ethnic cultural attributes, but how those attributes differed from the mainstream established American culture and identity.[28] Coupled with their historical presence on the English stage for comic relief,[26] and as operators and actors of the vaudeville stage, Irish Americans became interpreters of immigrant cultural images in American popular culture. New arrivals found their ethnic group status defined within the immigrant population and in their new country as a whole by the Irish on stage.[29] Unfortunately, the same interactions between ethnic groups within the close living conditions of cities also created racial tensions which were reflected in vaudeville. Conflict between Irish and African Americans saw the promotion of black-face minstrelsy on the stage, purposefully used to place African Americans beneath the Irish in the racial and social urban hierarchy.[30] Although the Irish had a strong Celtic presence in vaudeville and in the promotion of ethnic stereotypes, the ethnic groups that they were characterizing also utilized the same humor. As the Irish donned their ethnic costumes, groups such as the Chinese, Italians, Germans and Jews utilized ethnic caricatures to understand themselves as well as the Irish.[31] The urban diversity within the vaudeville stage and audience also reflected their societal status, with the working class constituting two-thirds of the typical vaudeville audience.[31] The ethnic caricatures that now comprised American humor reflected the positive and negative interactions between ethnic groups in America's cities. The caricatures served as a method of understanding different groups and their societal positions within their cities.[31] The use of the greenhorn immigrant for comedic effect showcased how immigrants were viewed as new arrivals, but also what they could aspire to be. In addition to interpreting visual ethnic caricatures, the Irish American ideal of transitioning from the shanty[32] to the lace curtain[28] became a model of economic upward mobility for immigrant groups. Decline The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (February 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Styles of Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, as presented in a vaudeville circuit pantomime and sketched by Marguerite Martyn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in April 1918 The continued growth of the lower-priced cinema in the early 1910s dealt the heaviest blow to vaudeville. This was similar to the advent of free broadcast television's diminishing the cultural and economic strength of the cinema. Cinema was first regularly commercially presented in the US in vaudeville halls. The first public showing of movies projected on a screen took place at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in 1896. Lured by greater salaries and less arduous working conditions, many performers and personalities, such as Al Jolson, W. C. Fields, Mae West, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Edgar Bergen, Fanny Brice, Burns and Allen, and Eddie Cantor, used the prominence gained in live variety performance to vault into the new medium of cinema. In doing so, such performers often exhausted in a few moments of screen time the novelty of an act that might have kept them on tour for several years. Other performers who entered in vaudeville's later years, including Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Kate Smith, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Judy Garland, Rose Marie, Sammy Davis Jr., Red Skelton, Larry Storch and The Three Stooges, used vaudeville only as a launching pad for later careers. They left live performance before achieving the national celebrity of earlier vaudeville stars, and found fame in new venues. The line between live and filmed performances was blurred by the number of vaudeville entrepreneurs who made more or less successful forays into the movie business. For example, Alexander Pantages quickly realized the importance of motion pictures as a form of entertainment. He incorporated them in his shows as early as 1902. Later, he entered into a partnership with the Famous Players–Lasky, a major Hollywood production company and an affiliate of Paramount Pictures. By the late 1920s, most vaudeville shows included a healthy selection of cinema. Earlier in the century, many vaudevillians, cognizant of the threat represented by cinema, held out hope that the silent nature of the "flickering shadow sweethearts" would preclude their usurpation of the paramount place in the public's affection. With the introduction of talking pictures in 1926, the burgeoning film studios removed what had remained the chief difference in favor of live theatrical performance: spoken dialogue. Historian John Kenrick wrote: Top vaudeville stars filmed their acts for one-time pay-offs, inadvertently helping to speed the death of vaudeville. After all, when "small time" theatres could offer "big time" performers on screen at a nickel a seat, who could ask audiences to pay higher amounts for less impressive live talent? The newly-formed RKO studios took over the famed Orpheum vaudeville circuit and swiftly turned it into a chain of full-time movie theatres. The half-century tradition of vaudeville was effectively wiped out within less than four years.[33] Inevitably, managers further trimmed costs by eliminating the last of the live performances. Vaudeville also suffered due to the rise of broadcast radio following the greater availability of inexpensive receiver sets later in the decade. Even the hardiest in the vaudeville industry realized the form was in decline; the perceptive understood the condition to be terminal. The standardized film distribution and talking pictures of the 1930s confirmed the end of vaudeville. By 1930, the vast majority of formerly live theatres had been wired for sound, and none of the major studios were producing silent pictures. For a time, the most luxurious theatres continued to offer live entertainment, but most theatres were forced by the Great Depression to economize. Some in the industry blamed cinema's drain of talent from the vaudeville circuits for the medium's demise. Others argued that vaudeville had allowed its performances to become too familiar to its famously loyal, now seemingly fickle audiences. There was no abrupt end to vaudeville, though the form was clearly sagging by the late 1920s. Joseph Kennedy Sr. in a hostile buyout, acquired the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theatres Corporation (KAO), which had more than 700 vaudeville theatres across the United States which had begun showing movies. The shift of New York City's Palace Theatre, vaudeville's center, to an exclusively cinema presentation on 16 November 1932, is often considered to have been the death knell of vaudeville.[34] Though talk of its resurrection was heard during the 1930s and later, the demise of the supporting apparatus of the circuits and the higher cost of live performance made any large-scale renewal of vaudeville unrealistic. Architecture The most striking examples of Gilded Age theatre architecture were commissioned by the big time vaudeville magnates and stood as monuments of their wealth and ambition. Examples of such architecture are the theatres built by impresario Alexander Pantages. Pantages often used architect B. Marcus Priteca (1881–1971), who in turn regularly worked with muralist Anthony Heinsbergen. Priteca devised an exotic, neo-classical style that his employer called "Pantages Greek". Though classic vaudeville reached a zenith of capitalization and sophistication in urban areas dominated by national chains and commodious theatres, small-time vaudeville included countless more intimate and locally controlled houses. Small-time houses were often converted saloons, rough-hewn theatres, or multi-purpose halls, together catering to a wide range of clientele. Many small towns had purpose-built theatres. A small yet interesting example might include what is called Grange Halls in northern New England, still being used. These are old-fashioned, wooden buildings with creaky, dimly-lit, wooden stages all of which is which is meant to offset the isolation of a farming lifestyle. These stages can offer anything from child performers to something called contra-dances to visits by Santa to local, musical talent, to homemade foods such as whoopee pies. Vaudeville's cultural influence and legacy Some of the most prominent vaudevillians successfully made the transition to cinema, though others were not as successful. Some performers such as Bert Lahr fashioned careers out of combining live performance with radio and film roles. Many others later appeared in the Catskill resorts that constituted the "Borscht Belt". Vaudeville was instrumental in the success of the newer media of film, radio, and television. Comedies of the new era adopted many of the dramatic and musical tropes of classic vaudeville acts. Film comedies of the 1920s through the 1940s used talent from the vaudeville stage and followed a vaudeville aesthetic of variety entertainment, both in Hollywood and in Asia, including China.[35] The rich repertoire of the vaudeville tradition was mined for prominent prime-time radio variety shows such as The Rudy Vallée Show. The structure of a single host introducing a series of acts became a popular television style and can be seen consistently in the development of television, from The Milton Berle Show in 1948 to Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s.[36] The multi-act format had renewed success in shows such as Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and The Ed Sullivan Show. Today, performers such as Bill Irwin, a MacArthur Fellow and Tony Award-winning actor, are frequently lauded as "New Vaudevillians".[37][38] References to vaudeville and the use of its distinctive argot continue throughout Western popular culture. Words such as "flop" and "gag" were terms created from the vaudeville era and have entered the American idiom. Though not credited often, vaudevillian techniques can commonly be witnessed on television and in movies, remarkably in the recent, worldwide phenomenon of TV shows such as America's Got Talent. In professional wrestling, there was a noted tag team, based in WWE, called The Vaudevillains.[39] In 2018, noted film director Christopher Annino, maker of a new silent feature film, Silent Times, founded Vaudeville Con, a gathering to celebrate the history of vaudeville. The first meeting was held in Pawcatuck, Connecticut.[40][41] Archives The records of the Tivoli Theatre are housed at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, with additional personal papers of vaudevillian performers from the Tivoli Theatre, including extensive costume and set design holdings, held by the Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne. The American Vaudeville Museum, one of the largest collections of vaudeville memorabilia, is located at the University of Arizona.[42] The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres in Toronto houses the world's largest collection of vaudeville props and scenery. The Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward F. Albee Collection housed at the University of Iowa includes a large collection of managers' report books recording and commenting on the lineup and quality of the acts each night.[43] See also "How can they tell that I'm Irish?" 2:14 1910 Edison Records recording of vaudeville performer Edward M. Favor's rendition of Clarence Wainwright Murphy's song "How can they tell that I'm Irish?" Problems playing this file? See media help. American burlesque Blackface Borscht Belt Cabaret Chapeaugraphy Chautauqua Concert party (entertainment) Concert saloon For Me and My Gal (film) Music hall Medicine show Minstrel show Nightclub Revue Tab show Tivoli circuit Tom show Variety show Vaudeville Bellydance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after The New Negro, a 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke. The movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by a renewed militancy in the general struggle for civil rights, combined with the Great Migration of African-American workers fleeing the racist conditions of the Jim Crow Deep South,[1] as Harlem was the final destination of the largest number of those who migrated north. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood, many francophone black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the movement,[2][3][4][5] which spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s.[6] Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, took place between 1924—when Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance—and 1929, the year of the stock-market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. The Harlem Renaissance is considered to have been a rebirth of the African-American arts.[7] Background A map of Upper Manhattan with pink sections for Harlem Harlem in Upper Manhattan Until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. During the Reconstruction Era, the emancipated African Americans began to strive for civic participation, political equality, and economic and cultural self-determination. Soon after the end of the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave rise to speeches by African-American Congressmen addressing this Bill.[8] By 1875, sixteen African Americans had been elected and served in Congress and gave numerous speeches with their newfound civil empowerment.[9] The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was followed by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, part of Reconstruction legislation by Republicans. During the mid-to-late 1870s, racist whites organized in the Democratic Party launched a murderous campaign of racist terrorism to regain political power throughout the South. From 1890 to 1908, they proceeded to pass legislation that disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites, trapping them without representation. They established white supremacist regimes of Jim Crow segregation in the South and one-party block voting behind Southern Democrats. Democratic Party politicians (many having been former slaveowners and political and military leaders of the Confederacy) conspired to deny African Americans their exercise of civil and political rights by terrorizing black communities with lynch mobs and other forms of vigilante violence[10] as well as by instituting a convict labor system that forced many thousands of African Americans back into unpaid labor in mines, plantations and on public works projects such as roads and levees. Convict laborers were typically subject to brutal forms of corporal punishment, overwork and disease from unsanitary conditions. Death rates were extraordinarily high.[11] While a small number of African Americans were able to acquire land shortly after the Civil War, most were exploited as sharecroppers.[12] Whether sharecropping or on their own acreage, most of the black population was closely financially dependent on agriculture. This added another impetus for the Migration: The arrival of the boll weevil. The beetle eventually came to waste 8% of the country's cotton yield annually and thus disproportionately impacted this part of America's citizenry.[13] As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate north in great numbers. Most of the future leading lights of what was to become known as the "Harlem Renaissance" movement arose from a generation that had memories of the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Sometimes their parents, grandparents – or they themselves – had been slaves. Their ancestors had sometimes benefited by paternal investment in cultural capital, including better-than-average education. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the early 20th century Great Migration out of the South into the African-American neighborhoods of the Northeast and Midwest. African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life. Uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem. Development 15:11 A silent short documentary on the Negro Artist. Richmond Barthé working on Kalombwan (1934) During the early portion of the 20th century, Harlem was the destination for migrants from around the country, attracting both people from the South seeking work and an educated class who made the area a center of culture, as well as a growing "Negro" middle class. These people were looking for a fresh start in life and this was a good place to go. The district had originally been developed in the 19th century as an exclusive suburb for the white middle and upper middle classes; its affluent beginnings led to the development of stately houses, grand avenues, and world-class amenities such as the Polo Grounds and the Harlem Opera House. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by the white middle class, who moved farther north. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s. In 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group.[14][citation needed] Many more African Americans arrived during the First World War. Due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and New York. Despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North.[15] After the end of World War I, many African-American soldiers—who fought in segregated units such as the Harlem Hellfighters—came home to a nation whose citizens often did not respect their accomplishments.[16] Race riots and other civil uprisings occurred throughout the United States during the Red Summer of 1919, reflecting economic competition over jobs and housing in many cities, as well as tensions over social territories. Mainstream recognition of Harlem culture The first stage of the Harlem Renaissance started in the late 1910s. In 1917, the premiere of Granny Maumee, The Rider of Dreams, Simon the Cyrenian: Plays for a Negro Theater took place. These plays, written by white playwright Ridgely Torrence, featured African-American actors conveying complex human emotions and yearnings. They rejected the stereotypes of the blackface and minstrel show traditions. In 1917, James Weldon Johnson called the premieres of these plays "the most important single event in the entire history of the Negro in the American Theater".[17] Another landmark came in 1919, when the communist poet Claude McKay published his militant sonnet "If We Must Die", which introduced a dramatically political dimension to the themes of African cultural inheritance and modern urban experience featured in his 1917 poems "Invocation" and "Harlem Dancer". Published under the pseudonym Eli Edwards, these were his first appearance in print in the United States after immigrating from Jamaica.[18] Although "If We Must Die" never alluded to race, African-American readers heard its note of defiance in the face of racism and the nationwide race riots and lynchings then taking place. By the end of the First World War, the fiction of James Weldon Johnson and the poetry of Claude McKay were describing the reality of contemporary African-American life in America. The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the changes that had taken place in the African-American community since the abolition of slavery, as the expansion of communities in the North. These accelerated as a consequence of World War I and the great social and cultural changes in early 20th-century United States. Industrialization was attracting people to cities from rural areas and gave rise to a new mass culture. Contributing factors leading to the Harlem Renaissance were the Great Migration of African Americans to Northern cities, which concentrated ambitious people in places where they could encourage each other, and the First World War, which had created new industrial work opportunities for tens of thousands of people. Factors leading to the decline of this era include the Great Depression. Literature In 1917, Hubert Harrison, "The Father of Harlem Radicalism", founded the Liberty League and The Voice, the first organization and the first newspaper, respectively, of the "New Negro Movement". Harrison's organization and newspaper were political, but also emphasized the arts (his newspaper had "Poetry for the People" and book review sections). In 1927, in the Pittsburgh Courier, Harrison challenged the notion of the renaissance. He argued that the "Negro Literary Renaissance" notion overlooked "the stream of literary and artistic products which had flowed uninterruptedly from Negro writers from 1850 to the present," and said the so-called "renaissance" was largely a white invention.[citation needed] Alternatively, a writer like the Chicago-based author, Fenton Johnson, who began publishing in the early 1900s, is called a "forerunner" of the renaissance,[19][20] "one of the first negro revolutionary poets".[21] Nevertheless, with the Harlem Renaissance came a sense of acceptance for African-American writers; as Langston Hughes put it, with Harlem came the courage "to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame."[22] Alain Locke's anthology The New Negro was considered the cornerstone of this cultural revolution.[23] The anthology featured several African-American writers and poets, from the well-known, such as Zora Neale Hurston and communists Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, to the lesser-known, like the poet Anne Spencer.[24] Many poets of the Harlem Renaissance were inspired to tie in threads of African-American culture into their poems; as a result, jazz poetry was heavily developed during this time. "The Weary Blues" was a notable jazz poem written by Langston Hughes.[25] Through their works of literature, black authors were able to give a voice to the African-American identity, as well as strive for a community of support and acceptance. Religion Christianity played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance. Many of the writers and social critics discussed the role of Christianity in African-American lives. For example, a famous poem by Langston Hughes, "Madam and the Minister", reflects the temperature and mood towards religion in the Harlem Renaissance.[26] The cover story for The Crisis magazine's publication in May 1936 explains how important Christianity was regarding the proposed union of the three largest Methodist churches of 1936. This article shows the controversial question of unification for these churches.[27] The article "The Catholic Church and the Negro Priest", also published in The Crisis, January 1920, demonstrates the obstacles that African-American priests faced in the Catholic Church. The article confronts what it saw as policies based on race that excluded African Americans from higher positions in the Church.[28] Discourse Religion and Evolution Ad Various forms of religious worship existed during this time of African-American intellectual reawakening. Although there were racist attitudes within the current Abrahamic religious arenas, many African Americans continued to push towards the practice of a more inclusive doctrine. For example, George Joseph MacWilliam presents various experiences of rejection on the basis of his color and race during his pursuit towards priesthood, yet he shares his frustration in attempts to incite action on the part of The Crisis magazine community.[28] There were other forms of spiritualism practiced among African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. Some of these religions and philosophies were inherited from African ancestry. For example, the religion of Islam was present in Africa as early as the 8th century through the Trans-Saharan trade. Islam came to Harlem likely through the migration of members of the Moorish Science Temple of America, which was established in 1913 in New Jersey.[citation needed] Various forms of Judaism were practiced, including Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism, but it was Black Hebrew Israelites that founded their religious belief system during the early 20th century in the Harlem Renaissance.[citation needed] Traditional forms of religion acquired from various parts of Africa were inherited and practiced during this era. Some common examples were Voodoo and Santeria.[citation needed] Criticism Religious critique during this era was found in music, literature, art, theater and poetry. The Harlem Renaissance encouraged analytic dialogue that included the open critique and the adjustment of current religious ideas. One of the major contributors to the discussion of African-American renaissance culture was Aaron Douglas, who, with his artwork, also reflected the revisions African Americans were making to the Christian dogma. Douglas uses biblical imagery as inspiration to various pieces of art work, but with the rebellious twist of an African influence.[29] Countee Cullen's poem "Heritage" expresses the inner struggle of an African American between his past African heritage and the new Christian culture.[30] A more severe criticism of the Christian religion can be found in Langston Hughes's poem "Merry Christmas", where he exposes the irony of religion as a symbol for good and yet a force for oppression and injustice.[31] Music The multi-talented Adelaide Hall and Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson in the musical comedy Brown Buddies on Broadway, 1930 A new way of playing the piano called the Harlem Stride style was created during the Harlem Renaissance helping to blur the lines between the poor African Americans and socially elite African Americans. The traditional jazz band was composed primarily of brass instruments and was considered a symbol of the South, but the piano was considered an instrument of the wealthy. With this instrumental modification to the existing genre, the wealthy African Americans now had more access to jazz music. Its popularity soon spread throughout the country and was consequently at an all-time high. Innovation and liveliness were important characteristics of performers in the beginnings of jazz. Jazz performers and composers at the time such as Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Jelly Roll Morton, Luckey Roberts, James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Andy Razaf, Fats Waller, Ethel Waters, Adelaide Hall,[32] Florence Mills and bandleaders Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson were extremely talented, skillful, competitive and inspirational. They are still considered as having laid great parts of the foundations for future musicians of their genre.[33][34][35] Duke Ellington gained popularity during the Harlem Renaissance. According to Charles Garrett, "The resulting portrait of Ellington reveals him to be not only the gifted composer, bandleader, and musician we have come to know, but also an earthly person with basic desires, weaknesses, and eccentricities."[7] Ellington did not let his popularity get to him. He remained calm and focused on his music. During this period, the musical style of blacks was becoming more and more attractive to whites. White novelists, dramatists and composers started to exploit the musical tendencies and themes of African Americans in their works. Composers (including William Grant Still, William L. Dawson and Florence Price) used poems written by African-American poets in their songs, and would implement the rhythms, harmonies and melodies of African-American music—such as blues, spirituals and jazz—into their concert pieces. African Americans began to merge with whites into the classical world of musical composition. The first African-American male to gain wide recognition as a concert artist in both his region and internationally was Roland Hayes. He trained with Arthur Calhoun in Chattanooga, and at Fisk University in Nashville. Later, he studied with Arthur Hubbard in Boston and with George Henschel and Amanda Ira Aldridge in London, England. Hayes began singing in public as a student, and he toured with the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1911.[36] Musical theatre Poster for Run, Little Chillun According to James Vernon Hatch and Leo Hamalian, all-black review, Run, Little Chillun, is considered one of the most successful musical dramas of the Harlem Renaissance.[37] Fashion During the Harlem Renaissance, the African-American clothing scene took a dramatic turn from the prim and proper many young women preferred, from short skirts and silk stockings to drop-waisted dresses and cloche hats.[38] Women wore loose-fitted garments and accessorized with long strand pearl bead necklaces, feather boas and cigarette holders. The fashion of the Harlem Renaissance was used to convey elegance and flamboyancy and needed to be created with the vibrant dance style of the 1920s in mind.[39] Popular by the 1930s was a trendy, egret-trimmed beret. Men wore loose suits that led to the later style known as the "Zoot", which consisted of wide-legged, high-waisted, peg-top trousers, and a long coat with padded shoulders and wide lapels. Men also wore wide-brimmed hats, colored socks,[40] white gloves and velvet-collared Chesterfield coats. During this period, African Americans expressed respect for their heritage through a fad for leopard-skin coats, indicating the power of the African animal. The extraordinarily successful black dancer Josephine Baker, though performing in Paris during the height of the Renaissance, was a major fashion trendsetter for black and white women alike. Her gowns from the couturier Jean Patou were much copied, especially her stage costumes, which Vogue magazine called "startling". Josephine Baker is also credited for highlighting the "art deco" fashion era after she performed the "Danse Sauvage". During this Paris performance, she adorned a skirt made of string and artificial bananas. Ethel Moses was another popular black performer. Moses starred in silent films in the 1920s and 1930s and was recognizable by her signature bob hairstyle. Photography James Van Der Zee's photography played an important role in shaping and documenting the cultural and social life of Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. His photographs were instrumental in shaping the image and identity of the African-American community during the Harlem Renaissance. His work documented the achievements of cultural figures and helped to challenge stereotypes and racist attitudes,[41] which in turn promoted pride and dignity among African Americans in Harlem and beyond. Van Der Zee's studio was not just a place for taking photographs; it was also a social and cultural hub for Harlem residents.[42] People would come to his studio not only to have their portraits taken, but also to socialize and to participate in the community events that he hosted. Van Der Zee's studio played an important role in the cultural life of Harlem during the early 20th century, and helped to foster a sense of community and pride among its residents. Some notable persons photographed are Marcus Garvey, the leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), a black nationalist organization that promoted Pan-Africanism and economic independence for African Americans. Other notable black persons he photographed are Countee Cullen, a poet and writer who was associated with the Harlem Renaissance; Josephine Baker, a dancer and entertainer who became famous in France and was known for her provocative performances; W.E.B. Du Bois, a sociologist, historian and civil rights activist who was a leading figure in the African-American community in the early 20th century; Langston Hughes, a poet, novelist and playwright who was one of the most important writers of the Harlem Renaissance; and Madam C.J. Walker, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who was one of the first African-American women to become a self-made millionaire, as well as her daughter, Dorthy Waring, an artist and author of 12 novels. Van Der Zee's work gained renewed attention in the 1960s and 1970s, when interest in the Harlem Renaissance was revived. Van Der Zee's photographs have been featured in numerous exhibitions over the years. One notable exhibition was "Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968,"[43] which was organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. The exhibit included over 300 photographs, many of which were by Van Der Zee, and was one of the first major exhibitions to focus on the cultural achievements of African Americans in Harlem.   Van Der Zee's work was the eyes of Harlem. His photographs are recognized as important documents of African American life and culture during the early 20th century. They serve as a visual record of the achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.[44] His portraits of writers, musicians, artists and other cultural figures helped to promote their work and bring attention to the vibrant creative scene known as Harlem. Characteristics and themes A jazz combo playing Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie is emblematic of the mixture of high class society, popular art, and virtuosity of jazz. Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro, who through intellect and production of literature, art and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes to promote progressive or socialist politics, and racial and social integration. The creation of art and literature would serve to "uplift" the race. There would be no uniting form singularly characterizing the art that emerged from the Harlem Renaissance. Rather, it encompassed a wide variety of cultural elements and styles, including a Pan-African perspective, "high-culture" and "low-culture" or "low-life", from the traditional form of music to the blues and jazz, traditional and new experimental forms in literature such as modernism and the new form of jazz poetry. This duality meant that numerous African-American artists came into conflict with conservatives in the black intelligentsia, who took issue with certain depictions of black life. Some common themes represented during the Harlem Renaissance were the influence of the experience of slavery and emerging African-American folk traditions on black identity, the effects of institutional racism, the dilemmas inherent in performing and writing for elite white audiences, and the question of how to convey the experience of modern black life in the urban North. The Harlem Renaissance was one of primarily African-American involvement. It rested on a support system of black patrons and black-owned businesses and publications. However, it also depended on the patronage of white Americans, such as Carl Van Vechten and Charlotte Osgood Mason, who provided various forms of assistance, opening doors which otherwise might have remained closed to the publication of work outside the black American community. This support often took the form of patronage or publication. Carl Van Vechten was one of the most noteworthy white Americans involved with the Harlem Renaissance. He allowed for assistance to the black American community because he wanted racial sameness. There were other whites interested in so-called "primitive" cultures, as many whites viewed black American culture at that time, and wanted to see such "primitivism" in the work coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. As with most fads, some people may have been exploited in the rush for publicity. Interest in African-American lives also generated experimental but lasting collaborative work, such as the all-black productions of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts. In both productions the choral conductor Eva Jessye was part of the creative team. Her choir was featured in Four Saints.[45] The music world also found white band leaders defying racist attitudes to include the best and the brightest African-American stars of music and song in their productions. The African Americans used art to prove their humanity and demand for equality. The Harlem Renaissance led to more opportunities for blacks to be published by mainstream houses. Many authors began to publish novels, magazines and newspapers during this time. The new fiction attracted a great amount of attention from the nation at large. Among authors who became nationally known were Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Omar Al Amiri, Eric D. Walrond and Langston Hughes. Richard Bruce Nugent (1906–1987), who wrote "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade", made an important contribution, especially in relation to experimental form and LGBT themes in the period.[46] The Harlem Renaissance helped lay the foundation for the post-World War II protest movement of the Civil Rights movement. Moreover, many black artists who rose to creative maturity afterward were inspired by this literary movement. The Renaissance was more than a literary or artistic movement, as it possessed a certain sociological development—particularly through a new racial consciousness—through ethnic pride, as seen in the Back to Africa movement led by Jamaican Marcus Garvey. At the same time, a different expression of ethnic pride, promoted by W. E. B. Du Bois, introduced the notion of the "talented tenth". Du Bois wrote of the Talented Tenth: The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the best of this race that they may guide the mass away from the contamination and death of the worst.[47] These "talented tenth" were considered the finest examples of the worth of black Americans as a response to the rampant racism of the period. No particular leadership was assigned to the talented tenth, but they were to be emulated. In both literature and popular discussion, complex ideas such as Du Bois's concept of "twoness" (dualism) were introduced (see The Souls of Black Folk; 1903).[48] Du Bois explored a divided awareness of one's identity that was a unique critique of the social ramifications of racial consciousness. This exploration was later revived during the Black Pride movement of the early 1970s. Influence A new Black identity Langston Hughes, communist novelist and poet, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1936 The Harlem Renaissance was successful in that it brought the black experience clearly within the corpus of American cultural history. Not only through an explosion of culture, but on a sociological level, the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance redefined how America, and the world, viewed African Americans. The migration of Southern blacks to the North changed the image of the African American from rural, undereducated peasants to one of urban, cosmopolitan sophistication. This new identity led to a greater social consciousness, and African Americans became players on the world stage, expanding intellectual and social contacts internationally. The progress—both symbolic and real—during this period became a point of reference from which the African-American community gained a spirit of self-determination that provided a growing sense of both black urbanity and black militancy, as well as a foundation for the community to build upon for the Civil Rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s. The urban setting of rapidly developing Harlem provided a venue for African Americans of all backgrounds to appreciate the variety of black life and culture. Through this expression, the Harlem Renaissance encouraged the new appreciation of folk roots and culture. For instance, folk materials and spirituals provided a rich source for the artistic and intellectual imagination, which freed blacks from the establishment of past condition. Through sharing in these cultural experiences, a consciousness sprung forth in the form of a united racial identity. However, there was some pressure within certain groups of the Harlem Renaissance to adopt sentiments of conservative white America in order to be taken seriously by the mainstream. The result being that queer culture, while far-more accepted in Harlem than most places in the country at the time, was most fully lived out in the smoky dark lights of bars, nightclubs and cabarets in the city.[49] It was within these venues that the blues music scene boomed, and, since it had not yet gained recognition within popular culture, queer artists used it as a way to express themselves honestly.[49] Even though there were factions within the Renaissance that were accepting of queer culture/lifestyles, one could still be arrested for engaging in homosexual acts. Many people, including author Alice Dunbar Nelson and "The Mother of Blues" Gertrude "Ma" Rainey,[50] had husbands but were romantically linked to other women as well.[51] Harlem Renaissance influence from Women and the LGBTQ community The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) The neutrality of the style of writing in this article is questioned. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) It is critical that the roles of lesbian and transgender women in history receive more close and critical inquiry. Recognition of the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality, and its effects on larger societal perceptions of identity, establishes the greater and fuller historical context of this period. Many leading literary, musical and theatrical figures of the Harlem Renaissance are believed to have, at some point, engaged in lesbian, gay or bisexual relations; but that did not mean there was a widespread tolerance.[52] Although 1920s and 1930s queer blackness is often rendered invisible, the Harlem Renaissance also presented a new space for queer African American artists to showcase their work without fear of social backlash. Many historical Harlem renaissance artists, such as ClaudeMckay, Langston Hughesm and Ethel Waters, engaged in private queer relations, although it was not public knowledge.[53] Many integrated communities, and homosexual and heterosexual people, gathered in the same recreational spaces. Places such as the Cotton Club and Rockland Palace routinely held drag shows in addition to straight performances of art. Lesbian or bisexual performers, such as blues singers Gladys Bently and Bessie Smith, were a part of the Harlem music scene. This style of music helped to renew black interest in African American's culture, while also introducing it for the first time to others.[54] Women during this time were seen as too blinkered by their middle-class location to identify the 'real' issues of African-American life. There are, of course, exceptions to this categorization: legendary blues women like Bessie Smith and Florence Mills. Furthermore, there has been considerable effort on the part of black feminist critics in recent years to shift perceptions of women's cultural production during the Harlem years, and authors such as Nella Larsen and Jessie Fauset have gained a renewed degree of critical credence. But, overall, women were not seen as expressing genuine issues and were never taken seriously.[55] Many famous black women of the early 20th century, such as Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Bessie Jackson, turned being lesbian into socially acceptable instead of a taboo for not only the black community but for women all over.[citation needed] Ma Rainey was known to dress in traditionally male clothing, and her blues lyrics often reflected her sexual proclivities for women, which was extremely radical at the time. Ma Rainey was also the first person to introduce blues music into vaudeville.[56] Rainey's protégé, Bessie Smith, was another artist who used the blues as a way to express herself with such lines as "When you see two women walking hand in hand, just look em' over and try to understand: They'll go to those parties – have the lights down low – only those parties where women can go."[49] Blues singer Gladys Bentley Another prominent blues singer was Gladys Bentley, who was known to cross-dress. Bentley was the club owner of Clam House on 133rd Street in Harlem, which was a hub for queer patrons. The Hamilton Lodge in Harlem hosted an annual drag ball that attracted thousands to watch as a couple of hundred young men came to dance the night away in drag. Though there were safe havens within Harlem, there were prominent voices, such as that of Abyssinian Baptist Church's minister Adam Clayton Powell Sr., who actively campaigned against homosexuality.[51] The Harlem Renaissance gave birth to the idea of The New Negro. The New Negro movement was an effort to define what it meant to be African American by African Americans rather than let the degrading stereotypes and caricatures found in black-face minstrelsy practices to do so. There was also The Neo-New Negro movement, which not only challenged racial definitions and stereotypes, but also sought to challenge gender roles, normative sexuality and sexism in America in general. In this respect, the Harlem Renaissance was far ahead of the rest of America in terms of embracing feminism and queer culture.[57] These ideals received some push back as freedom of sexuality, particularly pertaining to women (which during the time in Harlem was known as women-loving women),[50] was seen as confirming the stereotype that black women were loose and lacked sexual discernment. The black bourgeoisie saw this as hampering the cause of black people in America and giving fuel to the fire of racist sentiments around the country. Yet, for all of the efforts by both sectors of white and conservative black America, queer culture and artists defined major portions of not only the Harlem Renaissance, but also define so much of our culture today. Author of "The Black Man's Burden", Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote that the Harlem Renaissance "was surely as gay as it was black".[57] Criticism of the movement Many critics point out that the Harlem Renaissance could not escape its history and culture in its attempt to create a new one, or sufficiently separate from the foundational elements of white, European culture. Often Harlem intellectuals, while proclaiming a new racial consciousness, resorted to mimicry of their white counterparts by adopting their clothing, sophisticated manners and etiquette. This "mimicry" may also be called assimilation, as that is typically what minority members of any social construct must do in order to fit social norms created by that construct's majority.[58] This could be seen as a reason that the artistic and cultural products of the Harlem Renaissance did not overcome the presence of white-American values, and did not reject these values.[citation needed] In this regard, the creation of the "New Negro", as the Harlem intellectuals sought, was considered a success.[by whom?] The Harlem Renaissance appealed to a mixed audience. The literature appealed to the African-American middle class and to whites. Magazines such as The Crisis, a monthly journal of the NAACP, and Opportunity, an official publication of the National Urban League, employed Harlem Renaissance writers on their editorial staffs, published poetry and short stories by black writers, and promoted African-American literature through articles, reviews and annual literary prizes. However, as important as these literary outlets were, the Renaissance relied heavily on white publishing houses and white-owned magazines.[59] A major accomplishment of the Renaissance was to open the door to mainstream white periodicals and publishing houses, although the relationship between the Renaissance writers and white publishers and audiences created some controversy. W. E. B. Du Bois did not oppose the relationship between black writers and white publishers, but he was critical of works such as Claude McKay's bestselling novel Home to Harlem (1928) for appealing to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers for portrayals of black "licentiousness".[59] Langston Hughes spoke for most of the writers and artists when he wrote in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926) that black artists intended to express themselves freely, no matter what the black public or white public thought.[60] Hughes in his writings also returned to the theme of racial passing, but, during the Harlem Renaissance, he began to explore the topic of homosexuality and homophobia. He began to use disruptive language in his writings. He explored this topic because it was a theme that during this time period was not discussed.[61] African-American musicians and writers were among mixed audiences as well, having experienced positive and negative outcomes throughout the New Negro Movement. For musicians, Harlem, New York's cabarets and nightclubs shined a light on black performers and allowed for black residents to enjoy music and dancing. However, some of the most popular clubs (that showcased black musicians) were exclusively for white audiences; one of the most famous white-only nightclubs in Harlem was the Cotton Club, where popular black musicians like Duke Ellington frequently performed.[62] Ultimately, the black musicians who appeared at these white-only clubs became far more successful and became a part of the mainstream music scene.[citation needed] Similarly, black writers were given the opportunity to shine once the New Negro Movement gained traction as short stories, novels and poems by black authors began taking form and getting into various print publications in the 1910s and 1920s.[63] Although a seemingly good way to establish their identities and culture, many authors note how hard it was for any of their work to actually go anywhere. Writer Charles Chesnutt in 1877, for example, notes that there was no indication of his race alongside his publication in Atlantic Monthly (at the publisher's request).[64] A prominent factor in the New Negro's struggle was that their work had been made out to be "different" or "exotic" to white audiences, making a necessity for black writers to appeal to them and compete with each other to get their work out.[63] Famous black author and poet Langston Hughes explained that black-authored works were placed in a similar fashion to those of oriental or foreign origin, only being used occasionally in comparison to their white-made counterparts: Once a spot for a black work was "taken", black authors had to look elsewhere to publish.[64] Certain aspects of the Harlem Renaissance were accepted without debate, and without scrutiny. One of these was the future of the "New Negro". Artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance echoed American progressivism in its faith in democratic reform, in its belief in art and literature as agents of change, and in its almost uncritical belief in itself and its future. This progressivist worldview rendered black intellectuals—just like their white counterparts—unprepared for the rude shock of the Great Depression, and the Harlem Renaissance ended abruptly because of naïve assumptions about the centrality of culture, unrelated to economic and social realities.[65] Works associated with the Harlem Renaissance Blackbirds of 1928 Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (book) The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke Shuffle Along, musical Untitled (The Birth), painting Voodoo (opera) When Washington Was in Vogue The Negro in Art Taboo (1922 play) There'll Be Some Changes Made See also flag New York City portal flag United States portal 1920s portal icon Jazz portal Black Arts Movement, 1960s and 1970s Black Renaissance in D.C. Chicago Black Renaissance List of female entertainers of the Harlem Renaissance List of figures from the Harlem Renaissance New Negro Niggerati William E. Harmon Foundation award Cotton Club, nightclub General: Roaring Twenties African-American art African-American culture African-American literature List of African-American visual artists
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