Primrose and West was an American

blackface Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...

song-and-dance team made up of partners George Primrose and William H. "Billy" West. They later went into the business of

minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...

troupe ownership with a refined, high-class approach that signaled the final stage in the development of minstrelsy as a distinct form of entertainment.

History

In 1877, Primrose and West were playing with a minstrel troupe owned by J. H. Haverly. That year, they both quit when their demands for more pay were not met. They formed their own company, which largely copied

Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels was a blackface minstrel troupe created in 1877, when J. H. Haverly merged four of the companies he owned and managed. Promotion Borrowing techniques from showmen like P. T. Barnum, Haverly advertised the ...

with its elaborate sets and visual spectacle. The troupe proved so successful that in 1879, ''

The Clipper ''The Clipper'' was a weekly labor-orientated newspaper published in Hobart, Tasmania, from 8 April 1893 until 25 December 1909, before its merger with the '' Daily Post'' in 1910. History Its first editor was James Paton, a Christian sociali ...

'' gave them a front-page story, treatment normally reserved for famous actors and actresses. In 1881, the pair became familiar with Sam Hague's British Minstrels, then on a U.S. tour. Primrose and West adopted Hague's techniques of ultra-refinement:

Ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

and high-class music played by a large

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

replaced low comedy and

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

-themed song and dance as the main focus, and sets and costumes came to mimic fancy European powdered wigs and eveningwear. Only the (sometimes) blackfaced endmen kept the new troupe from severing its ties to minstrelsy completely. George Thatcher, one of the troupe members who became a partner of Thatcher, Primrose & West (and later had his own troupe), explained later that "We were looking for novelty, and for a change tried white minstrelsy." When Milt Barlow left the troupe in 1882, Primrose and West did away with plantation and blackface material completely. In its place, audiences witnessed such upper-class pursuits as

fox hunting Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase and, if caught, the killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds. A group of unarmed followers, led by a "master of foxhounds" (or "master of ho ...

lawn tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cove ...

, and

yacht racing Yacht racing is a Sailing (sport), sailing sport involving sailing yachts and larger sailboats, as distinguished from dinghy racing, which involves open boats. It is composed of multiple yachts, in direct competition, racing around a course marke ...

. Primrose and West had a hit, and they came to be called "The Millionaires of Minstrelsy". Still, traditional blackface entertainers disliked the new approach.

Lew Dockstader Lew Dockstader (born George Alfred Clapp; August 7, 1856 – October 26, 1924) was an American singer, comedian, and vaudeville star, best known as a blackface minstrel show performer. Dockstader performed as a solo act and in his own popula ...

remarked that Primrose and West

had refined all the fun out of it. Minstrelsy in silk stockings, set in square cuts and bag wigs is about as palatable as an amusement as a salad of pine shavings and sawdust with a little salmon, lobster, or chicken. ... What is really good is killed by the surroundings.July 1893. Clipping from "Dockstaders Ideas". Quoted in Toll 154-5.

Nevertheless, Primrose and West's approach caught on, and the blackface act continued only with minor troupes and as a regular fixture of

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) 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 ...

. George Primrose was mentioned in song as "Georgie Primrose" during the 1954 movie '' White Christmas''.

Notes

References

*Toll, Robert C. (1974). ''Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America''. New York: Oxford University Press. {{authority control Blackface minstrel managers and producers Blackface minstrel performers Blackface minstrel troupes American comedy duos American comedy troupes