[Hopefully] this book can be a launching pad for new scholarship on the period that continues to fill in the gaps of variety entertainment. There is much to be learned from how variety entertainment spoke to so many disparate audiences and shaped how Americans understood themselves and others.

Theatre Topics

This is a thorough and thoroughly engrossing work about the long-gone world of American vaudeville. The author has taken the raw data of hundreds of names and terms and turned it all into something readable and highly interesting.

Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion to the American Musical

Part of the "Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts" series, Fisher's Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville has a clearly defined scope: it records details of variety show performers, musicians, impresarios, animal trainers, tools, and techniques on the American stage between 1881 and 1932 that are "in danger of being lost to posterity" (p. xi). A chronology describes the origin and demise of the genre; the introductory essay and entries such as “Ethnicity and Race on the American Stage” address the racism and xenophobia that was part of entertainments of that era as well as the way the industry built a mythology of showbiz as a ticket out of poverty. Entries describing agencies, managers, and professional organizations provide rich background about the business aspect of vaudeville circuits. Fisher looks at a deep, diverse roster of performers and performances, supplying original capsule biographies and cross-referencing entries about collaborators, managers, venues, and genres of the act. Particularly valuable is Fisher's documentation of theater argot and lore, such as the origin of the phrase “Get the Hook!," used when an “oil can” (an unpopular performer) is removed from the stage by a stagehand via hook. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Choice Reviews