AMERICAN MUSIC AND THE BIRTH OF CABARET FROM THE EARLY JAZZ ERA TO PRESENT

By Maximillien de Lafayette

Billy Dove,  1919

Billy Dove,  1920

Billy Dove,  1924

Paulette Goddard, 1926

Lupe Velez

Ruth Etting

Ruth Etting

Ruth Etting was one of the most popular singing stars of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Florenz Ziegfeld, who glorified Ruth in the Follies, rated her as "the greatest singer of songs" that he had managed in a forty-year career. On radio she established herself as America's pre-eminent popular singer, continually voted in listener polls as the top female singer on the air. Even though radio and the recording industry were still in their early developing years, Ruth Etting recorded over 200 songs by such composers as Irving Berlin, Johnny Green, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. She was a regular performer on at least eight network radio programs. She appeared in six Broadway shows, made three major full-length movies and was the featured performer in 35 movie short subjects between 1928 and 1936.

Claire Luce

Claire Luce in her Ostrich outfit

AMERICAN MUSIC AND THE BIRTH OF CABARET FROM THE EARLY JAZZ ERA TO PRESENT

By Maximillien de Lafayette

THE DAWN OF AMERICAN MUSICALS WITH ANNA HELD

Anna Held

The child was raised in a convent, and the uncaring parents both went back to their separate lives. Anna's primary benefit from this marriage was that it gave her the excuse to convert to Catholicism. While she cared little for religion, she was anxious to escape the stigma faced by Jews in most of Europe. It also made it easier for her to perpetuate the myth that she was a native born French woman – a claim she clung to long after the press had proven otherwise. Anna resumed her career, touring Germany and England with success. She was appearing at London's Palace Music Hall in 1896 when the brash American producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. bribed his way into her dressing room. Ziegfeld wanted Held to appear in an upcoming Broadway production, and offered her the then-staggering sum of $1,500 a week. Anxious to get away from her husband's mounting gambling debts, Held was quite willing to make the trip. Thanks to Ziegfeld's masterful publicity (and his selective bribery of the press), Held's name and photo soon appeared in every newspaper and souvenir shop in New York. By the time she arrived in the U.S., she was a ready-made celebrity.

A Parlor Match (1896) was the story of a clever hobo who hoodwinks a gullible millionaire out of his valuables. At one point, the hobo uses a rigged "spirit cabinet," producing performing "ghosts" to prove that his victim's house is haunted. Held appeared as one of these phony phantoms, singing her popular hit, "Won't You Come and Play With Me?"

I wish you'd come and play with me,
For I have such a way with me,
A way with me, a way with me.
I have such a nice little way with me,
Do not think it wrong.

Her charming, suggestive delivery and outrageous French accent made a tremendous hit, and she had to sing several encores. After the show a wild group of admirers (no doubt paid off by Ziegfeld) unhooked her carriage from its horses and pulled her through the streets. Most critics were less than impressed by Held's performance, but she was the talk of New York.

Whenever she was photographed, Held preferred poses that showcased her petite waist .Always in search of a fresh publicity angle, Ziegfeld got an idea from the milky bath mixture Held used to condition her skin. He informed the press that Miss Held bathed in several gallons of fresh milk every day, and reinforced the story by saying he had returned one shipment from a local dairy because it had gone sour. The dairy owner sued Ziegfeld for libel and the hoax was eventually revealed – but Held's name made headlines every step of the way.

At its time, the milk bath incident made titillating headlines for weeks and supposedly started a brief fad. an auspicious beginning for Ziegfeld's aggressive publicity blitz for Anna Held as a daring European performer. "The name of the young woman became as well known in this country as the name of the President," the New York World declared a year after her arrival.
- Linda Mizejewski, Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 41.

Anna Held at age 15 with her mother.

Over the next twelve years, Ziegfeld featured Held in seven Broadway musicals tailored to showcase her charms. Each one ran in New York before going on tour (where most shows made their real profits at that time), but Held's first few shows were not the smash hits she and Ziegfeld had hoped for. In 1897, Held wrangled a divorce from Maximo Carerra. She and Ziegfeld had been living together for some years, but they now declared to friends that they were married. They never went through the formality of a ceremony -- theirs was a "common law" union. This spared Held any wrangling with the Catholic Church, and made it easier for Ziegfeld to keep his options open for the future.

AMERICAN MUSIC AND THE BIRTH OF CABARET FROM THE EARLY JAZZ ERA TO PRESENT

By Maximillien de Lafayette

Niblo’s Garden, a 3,200 seat theatre at the corner of Broadway and Prince Streets.

The First American Musicals

The early American musicals were performed as British ballad comic operas. The very first musical was “Flora”. It was performed in 1735 in Charleston and  moved to New York in 1750. The first national musical “The Archers” written by Benjamin Carr and William Dunlap premiered on April 18, 1796 at the John Street Theater in New York city. In  1800, the musical melodrama genre came to life. The first blockbuster was “The Black Crook” a 240 performer extravagant musical play which premiered at the fabulous Niblo Garden. “The Black Crook” was condemned by ethicists and moralists as a flesh show, and libeled as an immoral production. The producers profited from this negative publicity. Consequently, the show sold tickets like hot cakes. It became an instant success. This brought fortune to William Wheatley and his associates . The musical play was played and replayed for several years and was richly revived on Broadway. The troupe's prima ballerina, Marie Bonfanti, became an international celebrity and the toast of the city of New York. Some historians tend to believe that this  famous and infamous production paved the way for burlesques.  

Lt. Rudy Vallee

At the same time, Vaudeville remained strong and prospered thanks to the first ladies of Vaudeville: Ethel Waters, Baby Peggy, Nora Bayes, Maggie Cline, May Irwin,  Ida Cox,  Marie Dressler, Judy Garland, Gilda Gray, Alberta Hunter, Texas Guinan, Clarice Vance, Tixie Friganza, Fifi D’Orsay, Alberta Hunter, Sophie Tucker, Patsy Kelly, Cissie Loftus, Mary Irwin,  Sissieretta Jones, Marilyn Miller, Florence Mills, Helen Morgan, Mae Questel, Ma Reiney, Lillian Russell.

Cabaret in America

Photos, left and below,  from L to R: Anita O'Day, Margaret Whiting.

In the fifties, the Cabaret surfaced in the United States;  a “typically American style” founded on American standards and works by American music and musicals pioneers. It is safe, polite, entertaining and delightful American art and entertainment platform. Famous and less known artists perform quite frequently on stage, whether it is an impressive stage setting or modestly decorated.                                            

Type of performers: Anna Bergman, Julie Wilson, Anne Kerry Ford, Lizabeth Flood, Simore Marchand, Amanda McBroom, Barbara Cook, Sofia Laity et al.  The “American Cabaret” is a modified genre of Cabarets of the world which are classified below in 13 different kinds and genres.