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Joe Devlin (actor)
Christopher Joseph Devlin (February 7, 1894 – October 1, 1973), better known as Joe Devlin, was a vaudeville and burlesque performer, and American actor with over 170 film and television credits. A singer, comedian, and actor, he toured extensively in vaudeville and burlesque between 1911 and 1937. Devlin was a member of the Minsky Winter Garden house company in New York City for a few seasons. He relocated to California in 1937 and worked as a character actor in film and TV until 1967, often playing henchmen, bartenders, and cops. He had a co-starring role in Dick Tracy TV series in the early 1950s. Early life Devlin was born on February 7, 1894, in a tenement on Vandam Street in Manhattan, New York, the son of Anna (Bird) Devlin and John Francis Devlin, a fireman. His father was Irish, from County Meath, and his mother was of Irish and English ancestry. Devlin attended NYC Public School #8 and LaSalle Academy. Career Early career Devlin started performing in an ...
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Half A Sinner (1940 Film)
''Half a Sinner'' is a 1940 American comedy crime film directed by Al Christie. It stars Heather Angel as a schoolteacher who in one day becomes Public Enemy Number One in Pennsylvania. The film is based on Dalton Trumbo's short story "Lady Takes a Chance". The working titles of this film were ''Everything Happens to Ann'' and ''The Lady Takes a Chance''. Plot On the last day of the school year, plain 25-year-old teacher Anne Gladden has her student Willy write punishment lines on the blackboard. After the class is dismissed, she releases the boy and tells him that few can do what they want in life, so they might as well make the best of what they have. She is overheard by Margaret Ree, an older teacher. Margaret tells Anne that she regrets not doing wild things when she was young. She advises Anne to do what she never did and Anne decides to take her advice for one day. She buys a pretty dress and hosiery and releases her pet canary. Sitting in a public park, Anne is proposi ...
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Steve Mills (vaudeville)
Steve Mills (October 9, 1895 - March 9, 1988) was a Burlesque performer. Although he did stints in vaudeville, he was known and spent his lifetime on the Burlesque and Legitimate stage. Biography Mills was born on October 9, 1895, in Boston, Massachusetts. His career in vaudeville began in 1910, when he appeared at an amateur night hosted by Fred Allen and Benny Rubin. He married Roberta Lean (later Abagail Mills). With his first wife, Dorothy (Rosenthal) Mills, they had a daughter, Rachel Hope Mills. He formed a comedy team called the Castle Trio around 1917. In 1924, he was in ''Whiz Bang Babies'', and in 1926 he played the lead in '' Miss Tabasco''. He next was a headliner for Bill Minsky at the Winter Garden Theater in Manhattan. He then signed with The Shubert Organization and appeared in '' Three Little Girls'', ''No, No, Nanette'' (1925), and '' Prince of Pilsen''. and many of the early Schubert Operettas. He alternated between working for the Shuberts with stints on the ...
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Billboard (magazine)
''Billboard'' (stylized in letter case, lowercase since 2013) is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events and styles related to the music industry. Its Billboard charts, music charts include the Billboard Hot 100, Hot 100, the Billboard 200, 200, and the Billboard Global 200, Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in various music genres. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm and operates several television shows. ''Billboard'' was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Donaldson acquired Hennegan's interest in 1900 for $500. In the early years of the 20th century, it covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs and burlesque shows, and also created a mail service for travelling entertainers. ''Billboard'' began focusing more on the music industry as the jukebox ...
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The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area and has a national audience. As of 2023, the ''Post'' had 130,000 print subscribers and 2.5 million digital subscribers, both of which were the List of newspapers in the United States, third-largest among U.S. newspapers after ''The New York Times'' and ''The Wall Street Journal''. The ''Post'' was founded in 1877. In its early years, it went through several owners and struggled both financially and editorially. In 1933, financier Eugene Meyer (financier), Eugene Meyer purchased it out of bankruptcy and revived its health and reputation; this work was continued by his successors Katharine Graham, Katharine and Phil Graham, Meyer's daughter and son-in-law, respectively, who bought out several rival publications. The ''Post ...
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Irving Place Theatre
The Irving Place Theatre was located at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue (Manhattan), Irving Place and East 15th Street (Manhattan), 15th Street in the Union Square, Manhattan, Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1888, it served as a German language theatre, a Yiddish theatre, a burlesque house, a union meeting hall, a legitimate theatre and a movie theatre. It was demolished in 1984. History The original building on the site was Irving Hall, which opened in 1860 as a venue for balls, lectures, and concerts. It was also for many years the base for one faction of the city's Democratic Party. The facility was rebuilt, and opened as Amberg's German Theatre in 1888 under the management of Gustav Amberg, as a home for German-language theatre. Heinrich Conried took over management in 1893, and changed the name to Irving Place Theatre. The first night of the play ''Narrentanz'' (''The Fool´s Game'') by Leo Birinski took place here on November 13, 1 ...
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The Night They Raided Minsky's
''The Night They Raided Minsky's'' is a 1968 American musical comedy film written and produced by Norman Lear, with music and lyrics by the duo of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, and directed by William Friedkin. Based on a 1960 novel by Rowland Barber, the film is a fictional account of the invention of the striptease at Minsky's Burlesque in 1925. It stars Jason Robards, Britt Ekland, Norman Wisdom, Forrest Tucker, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott, Elliott Gould and Bert Lahr. The film was released by United Artists on December 18, 1968, to generally positive reviews. It was a financial success and later spawned a stage musical adaptation, '' Minsky's'', in 2009. Plot In 1925 Rachel Schpitendavel, an innocent Amish girl from rural Pennsylvania, arrives in New York's Lower East Side hoping to make it as a dancer. Rachel's dances are based on Bible stories. She auditions at Minsky's Burlesque, but her dances are much too dull and chaste for the bawdy show. But Billy ...
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Billy Hagan (burlesque)
Billy Hagan (1889–1986) was a burlesque comedian whose catchphrase was "cheese and crackers". The phrase came from his religious German immigrant father, who used it as a substitute for blasphemy.''Variety''. Obituaries. June 18, 1986 When Hagan died, Milton Berle called him "one of the funniest men on the burlesque circuit. I learned a lot of my expertise from him."Rochester Democrat and Chronicle; June 12, 1986 According to Ralph G. Allen, one of Hagan's most famous sketches was "Meet Me Around the Corner," which he performed on the Mutual wheel. Born William Hagedorn in San Francisco, Hagan boxed and was the amateur lightweight champion of California before breaking into show business in 1907. Hagan met his future wife, Anne Toebe (1894-1968), in 1910 when she auditioned as a chorus girl. They married in 1914 and toured together until 1931, when she left show business to raise their son. Toebe regularly performed in a boxing skit with Hagan and was also an early striptea ...
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Mutual Burlesque Association
The Mutual Burlesque Association, also called the Mutual Wheel or the MBA, was an American burlesque circuit active from 1922 until 1931. Controlled by Isidore Herk, it quickly replaced its parent company and competitor, the Columbia Amusement Company, as the preeminent burlesque circuit during the Roaring Twenties. Comedians Bud Abbott, Lou Costello (not yet a team), Harry Steppe, Joe Penner, Billy Gilbert, Rags Ragland, and Billy Hagan, as well as stripteasers Ann Corio, Hinda Wausau, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Carrie Finnell, performed in Mutual shows. Mae West appeared in Mutual shows from 1922 to 1925. Mutual collapsed during the Great Depression. Formation David Krause (a theater owner), Dr. George E. Lothrop (a physician who operated Boston's Howard Athenaeum), and Al Singer (who mounted shows on the Columbia wheel) incorporated the MBA in 1922. Most of the franchisees and producers came from the American Wheel, a subsidiary of the Columbia circuit that played less prestigious ...
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American Burlesque
American burlesque is a genre of variety show derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall, and minstrel shows. Burlesque became popular in the United States in the late 1860s and slowly evolved to feature ribald comedy and female nudity. By the late 1920s, the striptease element overshadowed the comedy and subjected burlesque to extensive local legislation. Burlesque gradually lost its popularity, beginning in the 1940s. A number of producers sought to capitalize on nostalgia for the entertainment by recreating burlesque on the stage and in Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1960s. There has been a resurgence of interest in this format since the 1990s. Literary and theatrical origins The term "burlesque" more generally means a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.
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Straight Man
The straight man (or straight woman in the case of female characters), also known as a "comedic foil", is a stock character in a comedy performance, especially a double act, sketch comedy, or farce. When a comedy partner behaves eccentrically, the straight man is expected to maintain composure. The straight man is a foil, a contrasting character to the funny man. The direct contribution to the comedy a straight man provides typically comes in the form of a deadpan. A straight man with no direct comedic role has historically been known as a stooge. Typically, he is expected to feed the funny man lines that he can respond to for laughs (and is hence sometimes known as a feed), while seeking no acclamation for himself. History In vaudeville, effective straight men were much less common than comedians. The straight man's name usually appeared first and he usually received 60% of the take. This helped take the sting out of not being the laugh-getter and helped ensure the straig ...
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Harry Rose (vaudevillian)
Harry Rose ( 1893 – December 10, 1962) was an American vaudeville comedian, singer and songwriter. There is some uncertainty over his origins. Anthony Slide's ''The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville'' states that he was born in Leeds, England, on December 2, 1893, moving to Milwaukee as a child in 1905;Anthony Slide, "Harry Rose", ''The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville'', University Press of Mississippi, 2012, p.436 but official records and a newspaper obituary give his birth name as Henry Arthur Rosenthal, born in Milwaukee on July 13, 1892. Rose claimed to be a nephew of the vaudeville comedian Joe Weber. He made his stage debut as a comedian and singer in Milwaukee in 1910, and then served in the military in France during the First World War. After his return he became established on Broadway in shows such as ''George White's Scandals'' (1921), ''The O'Brien Girl'' (1921), and ''The Merry Malones'' (1927). He was a popular master of ceremonies, known as "The Broadway Jester".
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Loch Sheldrake, New York
Loch Sheldrake is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of Fallsburg, New York, United States, in Sullivan County. The zip code for Loch Sheldrake is 12759. The community was originally named Sheldrake Pond after a deep, glacially formed pond, which forms the center of town. It is bordered by the hamlet of Hurleyville, the Town of Liberty, the hamlet of Hasbrouck, the hamlet of Divine Corners, and the hamlet of Woodbourne. The commercial center of Loch Sheldrake is the intersection of County Road 104 and NYS Route 52, at the edge of Sheldrake Pond. In its heyday as a Catskills Borscht Belt resort it was home to numerous hotels, bungalow colonies and boarding houses. Some of the best known of these were the Brown's Hotel, where comedian Jerry Lewis worked; the Evans Hotel; and the Karmel Hotel, now Stagedoor Manor, a renowned performing arts summer camp. It is also the home of Sullivan County Community College and the Lochmor Golf Course.
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