[1] In the New York Clipper for December 19, 1914, there is an interesting article:  “The Days of Tony Pastor,” by Al.  Fostelle, an old-time vaudeville performer, recounting the names of the famous performers who played for Tony Pastor in the early days.  It reads like a “who’s who” of vaudeville history.  Mr. Fostelle, has in his collection a bill of an entertainment given in England in 1723, consisting of singing, dancing, character impersonations, with musical accompaniment, tight-rope walking, acrobatic feats, etc.

For Pastor’s success in New York did not at first seem to the average vaudeville manager something that could be duplicated everywhere.  A large part of the profits of the usual place came from the sale of drinks and to forego this source of revenue seemed suicidal.  Therefore, vaudeville as a whole continued for years on the old plane.  “Variety” was the name—­in England vaudeville is still called “variety”—­that it held even more widely then.  And in the later seventies and the early eighties “variety” was on the ebb-tide.  It was classed even lower than the circus, from which many of its recruits were drawn.

Among the men who came to vaudeville’s rescue, because they saw that to appear to the masses profitably, vaudeville must be clean, were F. F. Proctor in Philadelphia, and B. F. Keith in Boston.  On Washington Street in Boston, B. F. Keith had opened a “store show.”  The room was very small and he had but a tiny stage; still he showed a collection of curiosities, among which were a two-headed calf and a fat woman.  Later on he added a singer and a serio-comic comedian and insisted that they eliminate from their acts everything that might offend the most fastidious.  The result was that he moved to larger quarters and ten months later to still more commodious premised.

Continuous vaudeville—­“eleven o’clock in the morning until eleven at night”—­had its birth on July 6, 1885.  It struck the popular fancy immediately and soon there was hardly a city of any importance that did not possess its “continuous” house.  From the “continuous” vaudeville has developed the two-performances-a-day policy, for which vaudeville is now so well known.

The vaudeville entertainment of this generation is, however, a vastly different entertainment from that of even the nineties.  What it has become in popular affection it owes not only to Tony Pastor, F. F. Proctor, or even to B. F. Keith—­great as was his influence—­but to a host of showmen whose names and activities would fill more space than is possible here.  E. F. Albee, Oscar Hammerstein, S. Z. Poli, William Morris, Mike Shea, James E. Moore, Percy G. Williams, Harry Davis, Morris Meyerfeld, Martin Beck, John J. Murdock, Daniel F. Hennessy, Sullivan and Considine, Alexander Pantages, Marcus Loew, Charles E. Kohl, Max Anderson, Henry Zeigler, and George Castle, are but a few of the many men living and dead who have helped to make vaudeville what it is.