Why I Love Vaudeville, by DeAnna Cameron

I blame my love for vaudeville on the belly dancers. The Egyptian belly dancers who performed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, to be exact, because it was my curiosity about what happened to them after the fair closed in the fall of that year that led me to the wonderful and strange, topsy-turvy world of vaudeville.

Perhaps I should admit upfront that before I started this research, I knew little about vaudeville. To me, vaudeville theaters were lumped into the same entertainment stew as concert saloons, burlesque theaters and even the dime museums that hired song and dance acts to amuse and distract patrons who might otherwise grumble that the proffered collection of oddities and curiosities were not so odd, nor so curious.

It was all the same entertainment—or so I thought. The truth is, just as society was deeply stratified during the late 1800s and early 1900s, so was public entertainment. The concert saloons and the burlesque theaters occupied the lowest rungs; the opera theaters and “legitimate” theaters occupied the highest. The space between them was vaudeville’s domain. It was touted as “polite entertainment,” and theater owners went to great lengths to appeal to the gentle dispositions of women as a means to bolster their audience numbers.

For many in the middle class, vaudeville became the preferred form of entertainment because it was a place where a person—male or female—could pay a few coins to sit in a comfortable theater and see a variety of amusing acts. Variety truly was the hallmark of vaudeville. A vaudeville show’s bill tended to have between eight and ten independent acts, and while singing, dancing, and comedy sketches were always favorites, the audience might also be treated to any number of talents: trained animals, high-wire displays, ventriloquism, magic, lectures, gymnastics and soliloquies. Just about anything was welcome, as long as it entertained the audience.

Despite the rigid divisions between the different entertainment venues, however, the theater world was more fluid for the performers themselves. Even the biggest stars of the day—Lillian Russell, Eddie Cantor, Eve Tanguay and the like—found themselves booked for vaudeville runs between bigger bookings, or when their popularity ebbed.

Yet it wasn’t the headliners who appealed to me as much as the performers who worked at the other end of the spectrum—the show openers and the chasers, and all the acts that filled the least desirable spots on the bill. These were performers who worked long hours in poor conditions for very little pay, and even less prestige, with the hope of one day making it big. They were people who lived on hopes and dreams and promises—and that captivated me.

I also found myself captivated by the idea that at this time in vaudeville’s evolution, before the slick productions that Florenz Ziegfeld and others would go on to pioneer, the magic of a theatrical production depended almost entirely on people: the performers, of course, but also the workers backstage, from the seamstresses stitching costumes to the stagehands who built the sets and then muscled them to their mark between acts.

It was a much more human endeavor than it is now, and that was the world I wanted to explore in my new historical novel, DANCING AT THE CHANCE. It was a world where people could determine their own success—or failure—as well as the wonderful joys and challenges and heartaches that could bring. I wanted readers to experience this sometimes eccentric and often chaotic environment where the rules of the outside world didn’t always apply, and where individuals—performers and others—were free to rewrite the scripts of their own lives, to reinvent themselves, if they had the courage and the talent to do it. A world, I think, many of would like to inhabit, at least for a little while.

Ultimately, that’s what I came to love most about vaudeville—the courage and determination, the imagination and perseverance of the dreamers and believers who inhabited this world: the vaudevillians themselves.

To celebrate the back-to-back releases of DANCING AT THE CHANCE and the reissue of THE BELLY DANCER, weekly prizes & a grand prize of a Kindle or Nook (winner's choice) are up for grabs on the author's website. Visit http://www.deannacameron.com/ and follow the contest link for details.

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DeAnna Cameron writes romantic historical fiction featuring feisty heroines destined for passion and fame. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a professional journalist, writing and editing for several Southern California newspapers and magazines. She lives in Orange County, Calif. with her family, and is at work on her next novel. Find out more at http://www.deannacameron.com/.

DeAnna Cameron on Why I Love the Legend of Little Egypt

We are pleased to host a guest blog from debut author DeAnna Cameron whose first book, The Belly Dancer, is released today.

Everyone loves a good mystery, and for me, as someone who has had a passion for the art and history of belly dance for nearly 20 years, there’s been no more compelling a mystery than the one surrounding the legendary Middle Eastern dancer known as Little Egypt, a figure consider by many to be the country’s first well-known belly dancer.

Until I began to delve into the origins of belly dance in America as part of my research for my debut novel, THE BELLY DANCER, I simply accepted the common belief that Little Egypt was a dancer who got her start at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. I was fascinated to discover, however, that her story isn’t so simple at all. In fact, there continues to be a healthy debate over the identity of the original Little Egypt.

Some theorize, as author and history professor Robert Muccigrosso does in “Celebrating the New World: Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893,” that the true Little Egypt is the Syrian dancer named Fahreda Mahzar—often billed as Fatima—who did appear at the Street in Cairo exhibit on the fair’s Midway Plaisance.

There seems to be greater evidence, however, to suggest that another Little Egypt is responsible for establishing that name’s place in history. That candidate is Ashea Wabe, a New York dancer who went by the stage name of Little Egypt and who became the focus of a notorious police investigation detailed in the New York Times and other newspapers across the country a few years after the fair closed. The investigation centered on a police raid of a dinner held by Herbert Seeley for a group of prominent men that became known as the “Awful Seeley Dinner” and which went on to make headlines largely because Wabe and other dancers were alleged to have been hired to perform indecent dances. The scandal became a source of intense reader interest and was talked about from coast to coast, making its players – especially the comely and enigmatic Little Egypt – well-known public figures.

The Ashea Wabe theory is supported by extensive research conducted by dancer and historian Donna Carlton and presented in her book, “Looking for Little Egypt.” It’s also consistent with statements made by Sol Bloom, the man primarily responsible for the Midway Plaisance, in his 1948 autobiography.

And yet, despite these two strong candidates, there remains the possibility that the original Little Egypt is someone else altogether, that her real name has been so obscured by the haphazard record keeping habits of the World’s Fair exhibitors and in the flood of imitators who rushed to capitalize on her notoriety that we may never know her true identity.
As you can imagine, the storyteller in me embraces this possibility because it’s the kind of mystery that can set your imagination on fire. It leads to so many tantalizing questions: Who else could she have been? What led her to Chicago? How did she learn to belly dance?

Each question led to more questions, and I found myself following them like stepping stones as I wrote THE BELLY DANCER. My answers – my vision of what could have been – ultimately became the basis for my novel. And while my characterization of Little Egypt is entirely fictional, I was happy to pay homage to this wonderful icon by giving her something the mystery surrounding her identity had not – a life story at last.

Thanks so much to DeAnna for her post. If you would like to find out more information about DeAnna or The Belly Dancer, you can visit her website at www.deannacameron.com