Writing for Vaudeville · Chapter 7Part 7
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For ten cents.
Note that the straight-man does not say, "with the eye, cane, umbrella—" and so on through the list. He says "With the eye, with the fan, with the cane—." There can be no mistake—as there might be if the items were enumerated swiftly. Each one is given importance by the "with the eye, with the fan." The words "with the" lend emphasis and a humorous weight.
Shut up. Now when you see a pretty woman coming along who wants to flirt with you, what is the first thing a man should do?
Run the other way.
No, no. This is the handkerchief flirtation. . . .
You see precisely what the subject of this particular point is because it is stated in unmistakable words.
. . .As soon as a pretty woman makes eyes at you, you put your hands in your pockets.
And hold on to your money.
Now this is a big laugh at every performance—a sure-fire laugh when it is well done. Note that it is the fourth line the comedian has after the specific point introduction, ". . .See—how to flirt with a handkerchief?" Now the line "Who wants to flirt with a handkerchief? I want to flirt with a woman," is not intended to be a real laugh-line. It serves as an audience settler, gives emphasis to the explanation of just what the book tells and helps to blend into the next line.
There's a first laugh on, "For ten cents." A bigger laugh comes on, "Run the other way." And the bigest—in this point-division— on the third laugh line "And hold on to your money."
2. Blending into the Following Point
When you have a big laugh, you must make the next line carry you on smoothly into the succeeding lint. It matters not whether the points are all related to the same general subject or not—although we are considering here only the single-routine two-act—you must take great care that each point blends into the following one with logical sequence.
The line, "Who wants to flirt with a handkerchief? I want to flirt with a woman," helps in the blending of the point division we have just examined.
The straight-man's line following the big laugh line in that point division, "No, you take out your handkerchief," (biz. [1]) is another example of the blend-line. And it is the very first introduction of the peculiar style of business that makes of "The Art of Flirtation" so funny an act.
[1] Biz. is often used in vaudeville material for bus., the correct contraction of business.
3. The Use of Business
Let us continue in the examination of this example.
Suppose you ain't got a handkerchief?
Every flirter must have a handkerchief. It says it in the book. Now you shake the handkerchief three times like this. (Biz) Do you know what that means?
(Biz. of shaking head.)
That means you want her to give you—
Ten cents.
The reason why these two words come with such humorous effect, lies in two causes. First, "ten cents" has been used before with good laugh results—as a "gag line," you recall—and this is the comedian's magical "third time" use of it. It is a good example of the "three-sequence mystery" which Weber and Fields mentioned, and which has been used to advantage on the stage for many, many years.
Second, the comedian had refused to answer the straight-man's question. He simply stood there and shook his head. It was the very simple business of shaking his head that made his interruption come as a surprise and gave perfect setting for the "gag-line."
Read the speeches that follow and you will see how business is used. Note particularly how the business makes this point stand out as a great big laugh:
. . .Den you hold your handkerchief by the comer like dis.
Vat does that mean?
Meet me on the corner.
Och, dat's fine. (Takes handkerchief). . . Den if you hold it dis way, dat means (biz.): "Are you on the square?"
This line reads even funnier than many laughs in the act that are bigger, but its business cannot be explained in words. It seems funnier to you because you can picture it. You actually see it, precisely as it is done.
Then the next line blends it into the next point, which is clearly introduced with a grin—is developed into a laugh, a bigger laugh by effective business, and then into a roar.
Point after point follows—each point topping the preceding point—until the end of the two-act is reached in the biggest laugh of all.
The business of the two-act, which secures its effects by actions that are often wholly without words, makes the two-act more difficult to time than a monologue. Furthermore, even if the time-consuming bits of business were negligible, the precise timing of a two-act by the author is not really necessary.
Precisely as a monologist can vary the length of his offering by leaving out gags, the two-act performers can shorten their offering at will—by leaving out points. Hence it is much better to supply more points than time will permit to delivery in the finished performance, than to be required to rewrite your material to stretch the subject to fill out time. All you need do is to keep the two-act within, say, twenty minutes. And to gauge the length roughly, count about one hundred and fifteen words to a minute.
Therefore, having arranged your points upon separate cards, or slips of paper, and having shuffied them about and tried them all in various routines to establish the best, choose your very biggest laugh for the last. [1] Wherever that biggest laugh may have been in the sample routines you have arranged, take it out and blend it in for your final big roar.
[1] See description of card system, Chapter VI, section III.
Remember that the last laugh must be the delighted roar that will take the performers off stage, and bring them back again and again for their bows.
The manuscript of a two-act is only a prophecy of what may be. It may be a good prophecy or a bad prognostication—only actual performance before an audience can decide. As we saw in the monologue, points that the author thought would "go big"—"die"; and unexpectedly, little grins waken into great big laughs. There is no way of telling from the manuscript.
When you have finished your two-act you must be prepared to construct it all over again in rehearsal, and during all the performances of its try-out weeks. Not only must the points be good themselves, they must also fit the performers like the proverbial kid gloves.
More two-acts—and this applies to all other stage-offerings as well—have started out as merely promising successes, than have won at the first try-out. For this reason, be prepared to work all the morning rehearsing, at the matinee and the night performances, and after the theatre is dark, to conjure giggle points into great big laughs, and lift the entire routine into the success your ability and the performers' cleverness can make it.
Even after it has won its way into a contract and everybody is happy, you must be prepared to keep your two-act up-to-the-minute. While it is on the road, you must send to the performers all the laughs you can think of—particularly if you have chosen for your theme one that demands constant furbishing to keep it bright.
It is with direct purpose that the discussion of the two-act has been confined to the kind of act that Weber and Fields made so successful—and of which Mr. Hoffman's "The Art of Flirtation" is a more up-to-date, mild and artistic form. There are other forms of the two-act, of course, but the kind of two-act we have discussed is peculiarly typical of two-act material. It holds within itself practically all the elements of the two-act that the writer has to consider. It is only necessary now to describe the other forms briefly.
By "pure two-act form," I mean the two-act that is presented without songs, tricks, or any other entertainment elements. Yet many of the most successful two-acts open with a song, introduce songs or parodies into the middle of their dialogue, or close with a song or some novelty.
Do not imagine that a two-act in which songs are introduced cannot be precisely as good as one that depends upon its talk alone. It may be an even better act. If it pleases the audience better, it is a better act. Remember that while we have been discussing the two-act from the writer's view-point, it is the applause of the audience that stamps every act with the final seal of approval. But, whether a two-act makes use of songs or tricks or anything else, does not change the principles on which all two-act points and gags are constructed.
The more common talking two-acts are:
1. The Sidewalk Conversation or Gag Act
This form may or may not open and close with songs, and depends upon skillfully blended, but not necessarily related, gags and jokes.
2. The Parody Two-Act
This sort of act opens and closes with parodies on the latest song-hits, and uses talk for short rests and humorous effect between the parodies by which the act makes its chief appeal.
3. The Singing Two-Act
This type makes its appeal not by the use of songs, but because the voices are very fine. Such an act may use a few gags and unrelated jokes—perhaps of the "nut" variety—to take the act out of the pure duet class and therefore offer wider appeal.
4. The Comedy Act for Two Women
Such acts may depend on precisely the same form of routine the pure talking two-act for men uses. Of course, the treatment of the subject themes is gentler and the material is all of a milder character.
5. The Two-Act with Plot Interest
Acts of this character make use of a comedy, burlesque, melodramatic or even a dramatic plot. This form of sketch seldom rises into the playlet class. It is a two-act merely because it is played by two persons. Often, however, this form of the two-act uses a thread of plot on which to string its business and true two-act points. It may or may not make use of songs, parodies, tricks or other entertainment elements. We have now come to a form of two-act which is of so popular a nature that it requires more than passing mention. This is
6. The Flirtation Two-Act
Usually presented with songs making their appeal to sentiment, almost always marked by at least one change of costume by the woman, sometimes distinguished by a special drop and often given more than a nucleus of plot, this very popular form of two-act sometimes rises into the dignity of a little production. Indeed, many two-acts of this kind have been so successful in their little form they have been expanded into miniature musical comedies [1].
[1] See Chapter XXX, The One-Act Musical Comedy.
(a) Romance is the chief source of the flirtation two-act's appeal. It is the dream-love in the heart of every person in the audience which makes this form of two-act "go" so well. Moonlight, a girl and a man—this is the recipe.
(b) Witty Dialogue that fences with love, that thrusts, parries and—surrenders, is what makes the flirtation two-act "get over." It is the same kind of dialogue that made Anthony Hope's "Dolly Dialogues" so successful in their day, the sort of speeches which we, in real life, think of afterward and wish we had made.
(c) Daintiness of effect is what is needed in this form of two-act. Dialogue and business, scenery, lights and music all combine to the fulfillment of its purpose. The cruder touches of other two-act forms are forgotten and the entire effort is concentrated on making an appeal to the "ideal." Turn to the Appendix, and read "After the Shower," and you will see how these various elements are unified. This famous flirtation two-act has been chosen because it shows practically all the elements we have discussed.
The playlet is a very definite thing—and yet it is difficult to define. Like the short-story, painting as we know it today, photography, the incandescent lamp, the telephone, and the myriad other forms of art and mechanical conveniences, the playlet did not spring from an inventor's mind full fledged, but attained its present form by slow growth. It is a thing of life—and life cannot be bounded by words, lest it be buried in the tomb of a hasty definition.
To attempt even the most cautious of definitions without having first laid down the foundations of understanding by describing some of the near-playlet forms to be seen on many vaudeville bills would, indeed, be futile. For perhaps the surest way of learning what a thing is, is first to learn what it is not. Confusion is then less likely to creep into the conception, and the definition comes like a satisfactory summing up of familiar points that are resolved into clear words.
Even in the old music hall days, when a patron strolled in from a hard day's work and sat down to enjoy an even harder evening's entertainment, the skit or sketch or short play which eventually drifted upon the boards—where it was seen through the mists of tobacco smoke and strong drink—was the thing. The admiration the patrons had for the performers, whom they liberally treated after the show, did not prevent them from actively driving from the stage any offering that did not possess the required dramatic "punch." [1] They had enjoyed the best of everything else the music hall manager could obtain for their amusement and they demanded that their bit of a play be, also, the very best of its kind.
[1] It is worthy of note in this connection that many of the dramatic and particularly the comedy offerings seen in the music halls of twenty years ago, and in the "Honkitonks" of Seattle and other Pacific Coast cities during the Alaskan gold rush, have, expurgated, furnished the scenarios of a score of the most successful legitimate dramas and comedies of recent years. Some of our greatest legitimate and vaudeville performers also came from this humble and not-to-be-boasted-of school. This phase of the growth of the American drama has never been written. It should be recorded while the memories of "old timers" are still fresh.
No matter what this form of entertainment that we now know by the name of vaudeville may be called, the very essence of its being is variety. "Topical songs"—we call their descendants "popular songs"—classic ballads, short concerts given on all sorts of instruments, juggling, legerdermain, clowning, feats of balancing, all the departments of dancing and of acrobatic work, musical comedy, pantomime, and all the other hundred-and-one things that may be turned into an amusing ten or twenty minutes, found eager welcome on the one stage that made it, and still makes it, a business to present the very newest and the very best of everything. To complete its claim to the title of variety, to separate itself from a likeness to the circus, to establish itself as blood brother of the legitimate stage, and, most important of all, to satisfy the craving of its audiences for drama, vaudeville tried many forms of the short play before the playlet was evolved to fill the want.
Everything that bears even the remotest likeness to a play found a place and had a more or less fleeting—or lasting—popularity. And not only was every form of play used, but forms of entertainment that could not by reason of their very excellencies be made to fill the crying want, were pressed into service and supplied with ill-fitting plots in the vain attempt.
Musical acts, whose chief appeal was the coaxing of musical sounds from wagon tires, drinking glasses, and exotic instruments, were staged in the kitchen set. And father just home from work would say, "Come, daughter, let's have a tune." Then off they would start, give their little entertainment, and down would come the curtain on a picture of never-to-be-seen domestic life. Even today, we sometimes see such a hybrid act.
Slap-stick sidewalk conversation teams often would hire an author to fit them with a ready-made plot, and, pushed back behind the Olio into a centre-door fancy set, would laboriously explain why they were there, then go through their inappropriate antics and finish with a climax that never "climaxed." All kinds of two-acts, from the dancing pair to the flirtatious couple, vainly tried to give their offerings dramatic form. They did their best to make them over into little plays and still retain the individual elements that had won them success.
The futility of such attempts it took years to realize. It was only when the stock opening, "I expect a new partner to call at the house today in answer to my advertisement (which was read for a laugh) and while I am waiting for him I might as well practice my song," grew so wearisome that it had to be served with a special notice in many vaudeville theatres, that these groping two-acts returned to the pure forms from which they never should have strayed. But even today you sometimes see such an act—with a little less inappropriate opening—win, because of the extreme cleverness of the performers.
Among the dramatic forms—by which I mean acts depending on dialogue, plot and "acting" for appeal—that found more or less success in vaudeville, were sketches and short plays (not playlets) using either comedy, farce, or dramatic plots, and containing either burlesque or extravaganza. Let us take these dramatic forms in their order of widest difference from the playlet and give to each the explanatory word it deserves.
1. Extravaganza Acts
Extravaganza is anything out of rule. It deals comically with the impossible and the unreal, and serves its purpose best when it amazes most. Relying upon physical surprises, as well as extravagant stage-effects, the extravaganza act may be best explained, perhaps, by naming a famous example—"Eight Bells." The Byrne Brothers took the elements of this entertainment so often into vaudeville and out of it again into road shows that it is difficult to remember where it originated. The sudden appearances of the acrobatic actors and their amazing dives through seemingly solid doors and floors, held the very essence of extravaganza. Uncommon nowadays even in its pure form, the extravaganza act that tries to ape the play form is seldom if ever seen.
2. Burlesque Acts
Burlesque acts, however, are not uncommon today and are of two different kinds. First, there is the burlesque that is travesty, which takes a well-known and often serious subject and hits off its famous features in ways that are uproariously funny. "When Caesar Sees Her," took the famous meeting between Cleopatra and Marc Antony and made even the most impressive moment a scream. [1] And Arthur Denvir's "The Villain Still Pursued Her" (See Appendix), an exceptionally fine example of the travesty, takes the well- remembered melodrama and extracts laughter from situations that once thrilled.
[1] In musical comedy this is often done to subjects and personalities of national interest. The Ziegfeld perennial Follies invariably have bits that are played by impersonators of the national figure of the moment. Sometimes in musical revues great dramatic successes are travestied, and the invariable shouts of laughter their presentation provokes are an illuminating exemplification of the truth that between tragedy and comedy there is but a step.
Second, there are the acts that are constructed from bits of comedy business and depend for their success not on dialogue, but on action. Merely a thread of plot holds them together and on it is strung the elemental humor of the comedy bits, which as often as not may be slap-stick. The purpose being only to amuse for the moment, all kinds of entertainment forms may be introduced. One of the most successful examples of the burlesque tab, [2] James Madison's "My Old Kentucky Home" (See Appendix), serves as the basic example in my treatment of this vaudeville form.
[2] Tab is short for tabloid. There may be tabloid musical comedies—running forty minutes or more—as well as burlesque tabs.
3. Short Plays
Short plays, as the name implies, are merely plays that are short. They partake of the nature of the long play and are simply short because the philosophic speeches are few and the number of scenes that have been inserted are not many. The short play may have sub-plots; it may have incidents that do not affect the main design; its characters may be many and some may be introduced simply to achieve life-like effect; and it usually comes to a leisurely end after the lapse of from twenty minutes to even an hour or more.
Again like the full-evening play, the one-act play that is merely short paints its characters in greater detail than is possible in the playlet, where the strokes are made full and broad. Furthermore, while in the playlet economy of time and attention are prime requisites, in the short play they are not; to take some of the incidents away from the short play might not ruin it, but to take even one incident away from a playlet would make it incomplete.
For many years, however, the following tabloid forms of the legitimate drama were vaudeville's answer to the craving of its audiences for drama.
(a) Condensed Versions, "Big" Scenes and Single Acts of Long Plays. For example—an example which proves three points in a single instance: the need for drama in vaudeville, vaudeville's anxiety for names, and its willingness to pay great sums for what it wants—Joseph Jefferson was offered by F. F. Proctor, in 1905, the then unheard-of salary of $5,000 a week for twelve consecutive weeks to play "Bob Acres" in a condensed version of "The Rivals." Mr. Jefferson was to receive this honorarium for himself alone, Mr. Proctor agreeing to furnish the condensed play, the scenery and costumes, and pay the salaries of the supporting cast. The offer was not accepted, but it stood as the record until Martin Beck paid Sarah Bernhardt the sum of $7,500 a week for herself and supporting players during her famous 1913 tour of the Orpheum Circuit. In recent years nearly every legitimate artist of national and international reputation has appeared in vaudeville in some sort of dramatic vehicle that had a memory in the legitimate.
But that neither a condensed play, nor one "big" scene or a single act from a long play, is not a playlet should be apparent when you remember the impression of inadequacy left on your own mind by such a vehicle, even when a famous actor or actress has endowed it with all of his or her charm and wonderful art.
(b) The Curtain-Raiser. First used to supplement or preface a short three-act play so as to eke out a full evening's entertainment, the little play was known as either an "afterpiece" or a "curtain-raiser"; usually, however, it was presented before the three-act drama, to give those who came early their full money's worth and still permit the fashionables, who "always come late," to be present in time to witness the important play of the evening. Then it was that "curtain-raiser" was considered a term of reproach. But often in these days a curtain-raiser, like Sir James M. Barrie's "The Twelve Pound Look," proves even more entertaining and worth while than the ambitious play it precedes.
That Ethel Barrymore took "The Twelve Pound Look" into vaudeville does not prove, however, that the curtain-raiser and the vaudeville playlet are like forms. As in the past, the curtain-raiser of today usually is more kin to the long play than to the playlet. But it is nevertheless true that in some recent curtain-raisers the compact swiftness and meaningful effect of the playlet form has become more apparent—they differ from the vaudeville playlet less in form than in legitimate feeling.
Historically, however, the curtain-raiser stands in much the same position in the genealogy of the playlet that the forms discussed in the preceding section occupy. As in the other short plays, there was no sense of oneness of plot and little feeling of coming-to-the-end that mark a good playlet.
Therefore, since the short play could not fully satisfy the vaudeville patron's natural desire for drama, the sketch held the vaudeville stage unchallenged until the playlet came.
4. Vaudeville Sketches
The vaudeville sketch in the old days was almost anything you might care to name, in dramatic form. Any vaudeville two-act that stepped behind the Olio and was able to hold a bit of a plot alive amid its murdering of the King's English and its slap-stick ways, took the name of "a sketch." But the "proper sketch," as the English would say—the child of vaudeville and elder half-brother to the playlet—did not make use of other entertainment forms. It depended on dialogue, business and acting and a more or less consistent plot or near-plot for its appeal. Usually a comedy—yet sometimes a melodrama—the vaudeville sketch of yesterday and of today rarely makes plot a chief element. The story of a sketch usually means little in its general effect. The general effect of the sketch is—general. That is one of the chief differences between it and the playlet.
The purpose of the sketch is not to leave a single impression of a single story. It points no moral, draws no conclusion, and sometimes it might end quite as effectively anywhere before the place in the action at which it does terminate. It is built for entertainment purposes only, and furthermore, for entertainment purposes that end the moment the sketch ends. When you see a sketch you carry away no definite impression, save that of entertainment, and usually you cannot remember what it was that entertained you. Often a sketch might be incorporated into a burlesque show or a musical comedy and serve for part of an act, without suffering, itself, in effect. [1] And yet, without the sketch of yesterday there would be no playlet today.
[1] Not so many years ago, a considerable number of vaudeville sketches were used in burlesque; and vice versa, many sketches were produced in burlesque that afterward had successful runs in vaudeville. Yet they were more than successful twenty-minute "bits," taken out of burlesque shows. They had a certain completeness of form which did not lose in effect by being transplanted.
(a) The Character Sketch. Some sketches, like Tom Nawn's "Pat and the Geni," and his other "Pat" offerings, so long a famous vaudeville feature, are merely character sketches. Like the near-short-story character-sketch, the vaudeville sketch often gives an admirable exposition of character, without showing any change in the character's heart effected by the incidents of the story. "Pat" went through all sorts of funny and startling adventures when he opened the brass bottle and the Geni came forth, but he was the very same Pat when he woke up and found it all a dream. [1]
[1] The Ryan and Richfield acts that have to do with Haggerty and his society-climbing daughter Mag, may be remembered. For longer than my memory runs, Mag Haggerty has been trying to get her father into society, but the Irish brick-layer will never "arrive." The humor lies in Haggerty's rich Irishness and the funny mistakes he always makes. The "Haggerty" series of sketches and the "Pat" series show, perhaps better than any others, the closeness of the character-sketch short-story that is often mistaken for the true short-story, to the vaudeville sketch that is so often considered a playlet.
Indeed, the vaudeville sketch was for years the natural vehicle and "artistic reward" for clever actors who made a marked success in impersonating some particular character in burlesque or in the legitimate. The vaudeville sketch was written around the personality of the character with which success had been won and hence was constructed to give the actor opportunity to show to the best advantage his acting in the character. And in the degree that it succeeded it was and still is a success—and a valuable entertainment form for vaudeville.
(b) The Narrative Sketch. Precisely as the character sketch is not a playlet, the merely narrative sketch is not a true playlet. No matter how interesting and momentarily amusing or thrilling may be the twenty-minute vaudeville offering that depends upon incident only, it does not enlist the attention, hold the sympathy, or linger in the memory, as does the playlet.
Character revelation has little place in the narrative sketch, a complete well-rounded plot is seldom to be found, and a change in the relations of the characters rarely comes about. The sketch does not convince the audience that it is complete in itself—rather it seems an incident taken out of the middle of a host of similar experiences. It does not carry the larger conviction of reality that lies behind reality.