A Hard Act to Follow: Live Performance in the Age of the Hollywood Studio System (1920-1950)

Abstract

This dissertation argues that scholars should not equate the demise of vaudeville as a cultural industry in the early 1930s with the disappearance of live performance in movie theaters in the United States, which continued with much success in many large luxurious downtown theaters until the 1950s. Doing so has concealed variety theater as a critical shaping force in the industrial history of studio era Hollywood, the star system, and the experiences of theatergoers. This dissertation intertwines the history of variety theater with that of the American film industry to recast the Hollywood studios as multimedia conglomerates (not just film companies) which came to control stage entertainment and displace big-time vaudeville through the creation of large theater chains and studio-run live performance circuits. Stage entertainment likewise played a crucial role in the industrial growth, organization, management, and financial success of the studios from the 1920s to the 1950s, affecting film production, distribution, and exhibition. This dissertation explains why the prevalence of variety theater symbiotically developed and reached new heights within movie theaters during the growth of the studio system, why it declined but continued during the Great Depression, and how this system continued to function economically and industrially until the 1950s.

In the course of making these arguments, this dissertation provides an overview of the major forms and formats of variety theater that played alongside films and their general prevalence. It also explains how and why the coming of sound and Depression did not completely standardize urban exhibition. Live performance continued during and after the Depression because control over exhibition was not centralized and relied instead on the autonomy of local theater managers, who valued stage entertainment for its showmanship and profits. Even after Hollywood encouraged and incentivized standardized film-only programming during the Depression, the studios did not supply enough quality feature films to satisfy theaters in oversaturated urban markets. In need of headline-worthy entertainment, live performance remained a viable strategy for both studio-affiliated and independently-owned theaters.

These live performance circuits also supported a more diverse star system, and make visible in new ways the experiences and tastes of audiences of color. At a time when people of color were marginalized in highly stereotypical roles in Hollywood films, live performances by racially and ethnically diverse performers received star billing in many of the same theaters showing these films. Some theater managers and talent agents featured multiracial performers as a strategy to attract diverse audiences, especially African Americans, to movie palaces. This dissertation details the experiences of these under-researched audiences who were an important, but largely overlooked part of the movie palace experience. These claims are supported by a case study on live swing music and its African American stars and multiracial audiences, which argues were at the center of a contest to control and democratize movie-going that extended even into the Jim Crow South. The cross-racial popularity of African American bands and their dance music brought diverse audiences together, pushing against a range of racial barriers in movie-going. These included expanding the number of theaters that people of color could patronize, where they sat within theaters, and how they could act, challenging enforced norms of spectatorship that worked to discipline and segregate spectators.