Tony Pastor
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Antonio Pastor (May 28, 1837 – August 26, 1908) was an American
impresario An impresario (from the Italian ''impresa'', "an enterprise or undertaking") is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays, or operas, performing a role in stage arts that is similar to that of a film or television producer. Hist ...
, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
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 ...
in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. He was sometimes referred to as the "Dean of Vaudeville." The strongest elements of his entertainments were an almost
jingoistic Jingoism is nationalism in the form of aggressive and proactive foreign policy, such as a country's advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national inter ...
brand of
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patriotism and a strong commitment to attracting a "mixed-gender" audience, the latter being something revolutionary in the male-oriented variety halls of the mid-century. Although he was a performer and producer, Pastor is best known for "cleaning up" bawdy variety acts and presenting a clean and family friendly genre called vaudeville. A collection of his papers is maintained at the
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at the
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in Austin, and in the archives of the
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...
.


Life and career


Family

Antonio Pastor, father of Tony, was an Italian fruit seller, barber, and violinist. He met his future wife, Cornelia Buckley, from
New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
after he came to New York. They then lived in Manhattan. Their third child, and first son, also named Antonio Pastor, was born in
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
in 1837 at his parents' residence at 400
Greenwich Street Greenwich Street is a north–south street in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan. It extends from the intersection of Ninth Avenue (Manhattan), Ninth Avenue and Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District, Manhat ...
, in what is now the financial district of lower Manhattan. He had a taste for entertaining when he was young, producing his own plays in the basement of his family's home.Kattwinkle, Susan. ''Tony Pastor Presents: Afterpieces from the Vaudeville Stage.'' Greenwood P, 1998.


Early career

In 1846, at the young age of fourteen, Pastor embarked on a career in show business. He obtained a job singing at
P.T. Barnum Phineas Taylor Barnum (; July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871–2017) with James Anthony Bailey. He was ...
's
Scudder's American Museum Scudder's American Museum was a museum located in New York City from 1810 to 1841, when it was purchased by P.T. Barnum and transformed into the very successful Barnum's American Museum. Before Scudder The roots of the museum date back to 1791 ...
where he brought his riding, tumbling, and mimicry skills to performances.Lewis, Robert M. ''From Traveling Show to Vaudville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830 - 1910'', Johns Hopkins UP, 2007. During the next few years he worked in
minstrel show The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spe ...
s, where he often performed scenes in
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 ...
. Pastor became a celebrated singing clown at a time when circus performances typically concluded with a variety revue. He established himself as a popular singer and songwriter during a four-year run at Robert Butler's American Music Hall, a variety theater located at 444 Broadway in what is now called Soho, but was then the heart of the lower Manhattan theater district. Pastor published "songsters," books of his lyrics which were sung to popular tunes. The music had no notation, as it was assumed that the audience had a collective knowledge of popular song. The subject matter of his music was intended to be bawdy and humorous. Pastor sang for the Union cause throughout the Civil War, then started his own variety show which went on tour for around five months before settling in New York City. In 1865, Pastor opened his own theatre, Tony Pastor's Opera House. The theater was located on the Bowery in partnership with
minstrel show The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spe ...
performer, Sam Sharpley, whom he later bought out. The same year he organized traveling minstrel troupes who toured the country annually between April and October. Although Pastor was referred to as the "Dean of Vaudeville," as mentioned before, he is best known for cleaning up variety acts. Pastor was popular with the nearly all-male variety theater audiences; however, he knew that his ticket sales would double if he attracted a female audience. Soon he began to produce
variety shows Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a compèr ...
, presenting an evening of clean fun that was a distinct alternative to the bawdy shows of the time and more appropriate for middle-class families. With shows that appealed to women and children as well as the traditional male audience, his theater and touring companies quickly became popular with the middle classes and were soon being imitated.


Later career

In 1874, Pastor moved his company a few blocks to take over Michael Bennett Leavitt's former theater at 585 Broadway. The theater district was moving uptown to Union Square, however, and in 1881 Pastor took a lease on the former Germania Theatre on 14th Street in the same building that housed
Tammany Hall Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main loc ...
. He alternated his theater's presentations between
operetta Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its s ...
s and family-oriented variety shows, creating what became known as
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 ...
. Vaudeville was popular with the masses from the 1880s to the 1910s. Pastor wanted to capture a mass audience by bringing family entertainment to the middle class.McLean, Albert F. ''American Vaudeville as Ritual''. University of Kentucky Press, 1965 In order to do this, Pastor sought out to make vaudeville "respectable." He did not sell liquor in his theatre and required a level of decency to his performances which encouraged women and families to attend. His theater featured performers such as
Ben Harney Benjamin Robertson "Ben" Harney (March 6, 1872 – March 2, 1938) was an American songwriter, entertainer, and pioneer of ragtime music. His 1896 composition "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down" is the second ragtime compositi ...
presenting a new style called "
ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...
" as well as other up-and-coming talents such as Weber and
Fields Fields may refer to: Music * Fields (band), an indie rock band formed in 2006 * Fields (progressive rock band), a progressive rock band formed in 1971 * ''Fields'' (album), an LP by Swedish-based indie rock band Junip (2010) * "Fields", a song b ...
,
George M. Cohan George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudev ...
,
Sophie Tucker Sophie Tucker (born Sofia Kalish; January 13, 1886 – February 9, 1966) was an American singer, comedian, actress, and radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertaine ...
,
Lillian Russell Lillian Russell (born Helen Louise Leonard; December 4, 1860 or 1861 – June 6, 1922), was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, known for her beauty ...
,
Buster Keaton Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression ...
, Gus Edwards,
Eva Tanguay Eva Tanguay (August 1, 1878 – January 11, 1947) was a Canadian singer and entertainer who billed herself as "the girl who made vaudeville famous". She was known as "The Queen of Vaudeville" during the height of her popularity from the early 1 ...
, Blossom Seeley,
Benny Fields Benny Fields, occasionally billed as "Bennie Fields" (born Benjamin Geisenfeld; June 14, 1894 – August 16, 1959), was a popular singer of the early 20th century, best known as one-half of the Blossom Seeley-Benny Fields vaudeville team. ...
,
May Irwin May Irwin (born Georgina May Campbell; June 27, 1862 – October 22, 1938) was an actress, singer and star of vaudeville. Originally from Canada, she and her sister Flo Irwin found theater work after their father died. She was known for her per ...
and
Eddie Leonard Eddie Leonard (October 17, 1870 – July 28, 1941), born Lemuel Golden Toney, was a vaudevillian and a man considered the greatest American minstrel of his day, at a time when minstrel shows were an acceptable and popular mainstream entertainm ...
. Harry S. Sanderson was his business manager from 1878 until 1908. The business records from this period are available to researchers. In the musical Hello, Dolly!, the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" includes the line, "We'll join the Astors at Tony Pastor's". It also references seeing "the shows at
Delmonico's Delmonico's is the name of a series of restaurants that operated in New York City, with the present version located at 56 Beaver Street in the Financial District of Manhattan. The original version was widely recognized as the United States ...
", which suggests that the character does not really know about upper-class social life in New York.


Death

Tony Pastor died in Elmhurst, New York on August 26, 1908, and was interred in the
Cemetery of the Evergreens The Cemetery of the Evergreens, also called Evergreen Cemetery, is a non-denominational rural cemetery along the Cemetery Belt in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. It was incorporated in 1849, not long after the passage of New York's Rural Cemetery ...
, in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
. He was 71, and though greatly mourned at his death as one of the last gentlemen of the early vaudeville halls, the medium had passed him by with the advent of the vaudeville circuit in the 1880s. Pastor had remained a local showman in an epoch that increasingly came to be dominated by regional and national chains. Fighting against the monopolies for the rights of individual local showmen was an undertaking that marked the last years of his life, earning him the nickname of "Little Man Tony".


Afterpieces

Throughout the 1880s, Pastor's performances often had an
afterpiece An afterpiece is a short, usually humorous one-act playlet or musical work following the main attraction, the full-length play, and concluding the theatrical evening.p24 "The Chambers Dictionary"Edinburgh, Chambers,2003 This short comedy, farce, o ...
following it. They played a major role in his shows, often written in the final act of the program. The afterpieces were written by a group of regular writers, and sometimes Pastor himself. They lasted anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. There were three categories; pantomime, melodrama, and parodies. Pastor's afterpieces became popular from 1865 to 1875, and because of its popularity, the afterpieces became a staple in Pastor's shows. Although the afterpieces were all different, they all dealt with what is meant to be a working-class citizen in New York. Not only did the afterpieces discuss issues such as crime and poverty, but they also discussed leisure activities the working class couldn't afford. This made Pastor's audiences respond well to the afterpieces, since the working class was his target audience.


Music

According to the humor of the time, Pastor wrote several songs that negatively portrayed ethnic stereotypes, such as "The Contraband's Adventures", the story of a freed slave. After the slave is set free by
Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...
soldiers, he attends an anti-slavery meeting where the
abolitionists Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The Britis ...
try to scrub off his dark pigment. The slave concludes by singing...
...De nigger will be nigger till de day of jubilee
For he never was intended for a white man.
Den just skedaddle home-leave de colored man alone;
For you're only making trouble for de nation;
You may fight and you may fuss
But you never will make tings right
Until you all agree for to let de nigger be
For you'll neber, neber, neber wash him white!
Though he separated some ethnic groups in his music, he also intended to unite the lower and middle classes. In songs like "The Upper and Lower Ten Thousand", he defended the common man of the Bowery:
If an Upper-Ten fellow a swindler should be
And with thousands of dollars of others make free
Should he get into court, why, without any doubt,
The matter's hushed up and they'll let him step out.
If a Lower-Ten Thousand chap happens to steal,
For to keep him from starving, the price of a meal,
Why the law will declare it's a different thing-
For they call him a thief, and he's sent to
Sing-Sing Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York. It is about north o ...
!


References


External links

*
Olympic TheatreTony Pastor Collection at NYPL
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pastor, Tony Vaudeville performers American theatre managers and producers Blackface minstrel performers Vaudeville producers Impresarios American people of Spanish descent 1837 births 1908 deaths Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens 19th-century American singers 19th-century American businesspeople