Through much of the '90s, I was going through Hamburg, Germany once a year or so. I gradually became aware of a theater practically just around the corner of my hotel that specialized in live "Variete." I dropped in once and was immediately entranced. The bill changed monthly, and it was all the sort of acts you'd see on the Ed Sullivan Show, alive and still apparently thriving in Europe. Acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers, contortionists, animal acts, people who did strange things with trick bicycles -- the works. I thought it was great to actually see this stuff (like an indoor circus) in person, so I made it a point to visit the Variete theater every time I was in Hamburg thereafter.

Unfortunately, it became evident that the theater had its problems. A sign outside announced (a little desperately, I thought) that the theater offered a show you wouldn't see on TV. The neighborhood was near the main train station and decaying, and establishments around the theater seemed to be mainly sex shops. Not to mention the young ladies lounging on the sidewalk waiting for buses that never seemed to arrive. I noticed the theater's clientele seemed to be of some age (like whole busloads of senior citizens), so for them to even reach the theater meant running a guantlet in a seedy section of town. Once I sat near a grandmother who brought her two grandsons with her, and one of the boys was rather pointedly listening to his Walkman during acts that bored him (like the Argentinean tango dancers), and the acts that bored him seemed to be most of them.

Sadly, the theater finally closed a year or two back. Just my luck, I thought -- I take an interest in something that's been there for 107 years, and that's when it closes. But competition from TV and the deteriorating neighborhood apparently did the theater in. I don't know if other European cities have live variety theaters (the performers were an international crew, so must have had venues elsewhere), but now there was one less.

One thing I noticed. Things happen in live shows. Like the juggler who was off his stride during an afternoon show and dropped things (and clearly not intentionally). Or the animal act where one of the seals got bored and hopped off its stand and ambled off stage...

I don't know what my anecdote says about trends in show business overall, but I was certainly sorry to see the Hamburg Variete go.

Posted by: Dwight Decker on October 19, 2003 01:34 AM

Vaughan Meader -- that was his name. Did a damn fine JFK. Thanks to Mike.

Interesting movie-history note: lotsa people suspect that part of what gave movies their charge up to, oh the mid'60s or so, was that they were feeding off what had been built up over decades by performers in vaudeville, burlesque, touring theater, etc -- people who'd put years and year into developing "acts" in front of audiences before ever performing them in front of cameras. So they were carrying all this audience expertise and savvy, and all this well-weathered experience and energy with them, by the time they hit the movies. Those careers started running out in the, oh, '50s or so, then over the '60s and '70s the new generations started showing up. And what with the old in-person venues gone, the new performers (however attractive and fun in their own right) didn't bring anything like the same charge with them. Plus, what with the studio system gone, few people got a chance to do 30 or 40 minor roles before moving to the front of the crowd. Very different pressures and demands than it had been before.

These days, and for a while now, many of the biggest stars come from standup. They may or may not be much as actors, but they've got a lot of energy and audience savvy, they know how people take 'em, and they know how to turn it all on at the drop of a hat. Maybe standup's the last outpost of vaudeville.

I wonder how the movie-performer thing is going to be affected by the new new generation of video-jocks and MTV personalities and kids who grew up with Daddy pointing a video camera at them ...

Great story, thanks Dwight. Almost a little novel in itself.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on October 19, 2003 05:50 PM

In his indispensable though idiosyncratic book about modern American comedy, Going Too Far, Tony Hendra recounts the dilemma that faced Lenny Bruce on the night of November 22, 1963--he had a gig scheduled, and despite the events of the day (or because people needed a break from the televisual wringer) the house was packed. How would Lenny deal with the ultimate downer? Apparently he came out, stepped to the mic, looked pensive for a minute, shaking his head, and said "Pheeewwww--Vaughn Meader!"

It's a big part of Bruce's legend, apparently, that he was able to get a belly laugh out of a U.S. audience so soon. It's probably just as well no one felt up to the task immediately after 9/11. (As Hendra points out, Meader was finished after the JFK assassination, and a First Family album already in the can had to be scrapped.)

Posted by: Colby Cosh on October 20, 2003 01:25 AM

"Acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers, contortionists, animal acts, people who did strange things with trick bicycles -- the works." (Bill & Dwight)

The bicyclists and skateboarders who might have gone into yesterday's circuses go into today's "Extreme Sports" shows.

And the Ed Sullivans and Major Bowes seem to have degenerated into today's "American Idols". As in, "whatever happened to ... you know, ..... whatisname" (last year's winners)?

Posted by: Mike on October 20, 2003 07:09 PM

Comedy teams - that _is_ an interesting thing to have lost. The last comedy team I know of was Cheech and Chong. No, wait - I believe there are some black comedy teams: the Wayans Brothers, for instance.

But there used to be so _many_: Abbot and Costello, Burns and Allen, Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, Bob and Ray, the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers, the Bowery Boys.

Something must have changed, but what?

Posted by: Rich Rostrom on October 21, 2003 09:33 PM






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