Posts Tagged ‘Bert Williams’
“If there really is such a thing as turning in one’s grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise”*…
Your correspondent is off on a whistle tour of the Midwest. While altogether auspicious, it packs what may be too many stops into too few days… Thus, regular service will likely be interrupted until late this month… See you all again as Independence Day approaches. Meantime, something to keep you amusedly occupied…
A newly redesigned website from Emory University, Shakespeare & the Players, displays a collection of nearly a thousand photo postcards of actors depicting Shakespearean characters on stage, in the late -19th and early-20th centuries. The site is browsable by actor, character, and play.
In the 19th century, scholar Lawrence W. Levine writes, many Americans, even if illiterate, knew and loved Shakespeare’s plays; they were the source material for endless parodies, skits, and songs on the American stage… in the first half of the 19th century, theater “played the role that movies played in the first half of the twentieth … a kaleidoscopic, democratic institution presenting a widely varying bill of fare to all classes and socioeconomic groups.”…
from The Taming of the Shrew
Richard Carline, writing in 1971, says:
Those who only know the postcards of today can scarcely be expected to appreciate what they meant to people sixty or more years ago. Many of us seldom think of buying a picture postcard, except as a matter of convenience; but during the quarter of a century that preceded the Great War in 1914, it would have been hard to find anyone who did not buy postcards from genuine pleasure…
More at “Browse Nearly 1,000 Photo Postcards of Late-19th-Century Stage Productions of Shakespeare,” and at the curator’s preface.
* George Orwell
###
As we bark the Bard, we might recall that it was on this ate in 1910 that Florenz Ziegfeld, in a blow against racial prejudice, opened the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910, with actor Bert Williams as co-star, marking the first time white and black entertainers appeared on stage together in a major Broadway production. Williams was one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He was by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920. In 1918, the New York Dramatic Mirror called him “one of the great comedians of the world.” Fellow vaudevillian W.C. Fields, who appeared in productions with Williams, described him as “the funniest man I ever saw – and the saddest man I ever knew.”
It’s Alive!…
Bacteria from the belly button of Project Leader Jiri Huler
From the Dunn Lab at North Carolina State University and the Nature Research Center at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences: The Belly Button Biodiversity Project.
You are alive, but just how alive? We know that species live under our beds or in our backyards. But how many living organisms are on a square centimeter of your skin? What do they do, and how they differ from those of your neighbor? Very little is known about the life that breathes all over us. Each person’s microbial jungle is so rich, colorful, and dynamic that in all likelihood your body hosts species that no scientist has ever studied. Your navel may well be one of the last biological frontiers. It is time then, to explore…
More, intrepid reader, in the bacteria galleries here.
[TotH to GMSV]
As we wash even more vigorously, we might recall that it was on this date in 1917 that showman Florenz Ziegfeld staged the first Ziegfeld Follies on the roof of a New York theater. (N.B., the date is given by some sources as July 7.) Ziegfeld’s extravaganzas were produced annually through 1931; they featured production numbers choreographed to the works of composers that included Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Jerome Kern, and performances by a panoply of stars including Nora Bayes, Fanny Brice, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Marilyn Miller, Will Rogers, Bert Williams, Ann Pennington, Billie Burke, and Anna Held. The shows moved indoors after the premiere; in 1927, Ziegfeld opened the eponymously-named Ziegfeld Theater on Broadway (actually, on Sixth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets). Before Ziegfeld’s death in 1932, he managed the migration of the Follies to motion pictures and radio.
“Flo” Ziegfeld (source)
Poster for the Follies, 1912 (source)
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