Entertainment in the 1900s

Popular Entertainment

At this time, Broadway in New York was not yet the major entertainment center that it would later become, and moving pictures were still new technology. While there were places where people could see serious theatrical dramas or opera, vaudeville variety shows put on by traveling performers at smaller local theaters were the major form of entertainment. This style of entertainment was extremely influential on the budding movie industry and, later, radio and television (1900s: Film and Theater).

Vaudeville was a form of live theater that was popular in the United States between the 1880s and 1930s, similar to the music hall shows in Britain. Vaudeville performances were collections of shorter acts that included a variety of entertainment forms, including music, dancing, acrobatics, comedy skits, ventriloquists, juggling, and short plays. These vaudeville performances helped to inspire and promote popular music of the time and the early movie industry. Some early radio and movie actors who later became famous had their start in vaudeville or came from families of vaudeville performers, such as the Marx Brothers and Fred Astaire. Fred Astaire and his sister Adele had a musical brother and sister vaudeville act when they were children and later became Broadway performers.

Books

Among the books published for adults in the early 1900s:

• Kim (1901) - By Rudyard Kipling. Kim is a young orphaned boy, the son of an Irish soldier. As he grows up in Imperial British India in the late 19th century, he is caught between the Indian culture in which he is raised and the world's expectation for him when his identity and heritage is discovered and he begins to be educated as an English boy. Young Kim is swept up into the Great Game of politics, espionage, and struggles for power between Britain and Russia in Asia (events which had far-reaching consequences and continue to shape world politics and terrorism even into the 21st century). Throughout the novel, Kim maintains a relationship wtih a Tibetan lama who helps to guide Kim's development and view of the world.
• The Story of My Life (1902) - By Helen Keller.
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) - By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Possibly the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories. A doctor, Dr. Mortimer, consults Sherlock Holmes about the sudden death of his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. Although he apparently died of a heart attack, the large footprints of a dog are found at the scene, and there is a legend about a demonic hound that haunts the Baskerville family. Sir Charles's heir, Henry, will be arriving soon, and Dr. Mortimer is worried that he might be in danger.
• The Call of the Wild (1903) - By Jack London.
• The Riddle of the Sands (1903) - By Erskine Childers. A pair of young adventurers become spies and discover that Germany is planning to invade England from the north, through the Baltic Sea. The author specifically wrote this story to convince the British government to improve its North Sea defenses.
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) - By Emmuska Orczy. An Englishman with a secret identity helps to rescue French nobles during the French Revolution. He becomes conflicted and increasingly secretive when he becomes convinced that his new bride may be on the side of his enemies. First of a series.
• Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) - By Rudyard Kipling. A collection of fantasy stories that take place in different historical periods.
• Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief (1907) - By Maurice Leblanc. Arsene Lupin is a highly intelligent master thief. In some ways, he is a Robin Hood-type figure, pulling off daring thefts that benefit the poor and innocent at the expense of the rich and powerful, all while outwitting the police and his detective nemesis.
• A Room with a View (1908) - By E.M. Forster. A trip to Italy changes the life of a young English woman.
• The Circular Staircase (1908) - By Mary Roberts Rhinehart. The suspense story in this novel was later simplified and made into a play and then into movie versions under the name The Bat. In the original story, an elderly woman rents a house in the country for the summer, where she will be staying with her grown niece and nephew. People are keeping secrets (including her niece and nephew), and there is a mysterious intruder and a murder. Some of these characters were changed or even dropped later in the shorter version of the story. The character of The Bat was a criminal whose calling card was a bat, either as a drawn symbol or even an actual, dead bat left at the scene of his crimes. Later, in the 1930s, the idea of leaving a bat as a calling card helped to inspire the creation of Batman, who would be a hero instead of a villain.

Music

Culturally, this was the era of ragtime music. Ragtime is a style of music that is related to marching songs (which were also popular) but with altered rhythms based on African/African-American music. The synchopated rhythms of ragtime later influenced the creation of jazz. Home radio would not be invented and popularized as a form of entertainment until the 1920s, so the only ways that people could listen to music were by seeing live performances, buying phonograph records to play at home, or learning to sing or play an instrument or listening to a family member or friend who could.

A number of popular songs from this time were from vaudeville acts or Broadway musicals before being recorded on phonograph records or wax cylinders. (The example of The Woodchuck Song below shows a wax cylinder recording from this time period.) Among the popular songs of the 1900s:

• A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900) - A ballad bout a woman who regrets marrying for money instead of love. The British music hall song, Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird (1903), has a similar theme, but it takes a different turn. It is about a free bird who turns down love with a pet bird in a golden cage, preferring freedom over captivity, even in the middle of winter.
• The Entertainer (1902) - A ragtime piano song by Scott Joplin.
• In the Good Old Summer Time (1902)
• The Woodchuck Song (1902) - The origin of the tongue twister "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" The recording that I found is one of the best-known versions from 1904.
• Waltzing Matilda (1903) - The song was actually composed earlier, in 1895, but it wasn't published until 1903. It was also based on previous folk music.
• Life's a Funny Proposition After All (1904) - Although the song was written in 1904, the earliest recording I could find of it was from 1911. In that recording, the singer is really speaking it as a poem to the music, rather than singing. Some people might remember this song when it was actually sung in the tv show Boardwalk Empire, although that tv show was set in the 1920s. It's actually a rather deep song about the oddities, complexities, and contradictions of living life and how no one completely understands it. In a way, I think it's kind of reassuring, whenever you're not quite sure about what you're doing with your life, to realize that your great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents really didn't have a clue, either. Understanding life isn't an absolute requirement for living it.
• Yankee Doodle Boy (1904) - Also called (I'm a) Yankee Doodle Dandy. It was originally written for a Broadway musical.
• Give My Regards to Broadway (1904)
• Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye (1904)
• Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis (1904) - This song is best known from the 1944 movie Meet Me in St. Louis with Judy Garland, but it was actually written for the real 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
• In My Merry Oldsmobile (1905) - About a courting couple who go for a ride in a new car.
• In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree (1905)
• Mary is a Grand Old Name (1906)
• Anchors Aweigh (1906) - The march song of the United States Navy.
• All She Gets from the Iceman is Ice (1907) - She's in love with the iceman (the man who brings blocks of ice for the ice box where they store food), but he's a little frigid. Ha, ha.
• He Goes to Church on Sunday (1907) - A humorous song about people who are dishonest but are considered respectable because they go to church on Sunday. It's more about poking fun at the hypocrisy of some people and what they do to maintain their public image than a criticism of religion itself.
• School Days (1907) - A married couple remembers when they fell in love as schoolchildren and how things have changed since then. "School days, school days, dear old golden rule days ..."
• The Teddy Bears' Picnic (1907) - Surprisingly ominous-sounding music for a song with teddy bears having a picnic. The ominous sounds are why this song is now frequently used around Halloween. Originally, the song was instrumental. The lyrics were added in 1932. "If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise. If you go down in the woods today, you'd better go in disguise ..." I could never figure out why they seemed so worried about encountering teddy bears who are having a picnic. Are teddy bears that scary?
• Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1908)
• Casey Jones (1909) - An oddly cheerful song about a train engineer who was killed in an accident. Based on a true story.
• She Sells Sea Shells (1909)

These songs are now considered public domain.

Movies

The movies produced during the early 1900s were silent films. Because film technology was still developing, the earliest films were very short, only about 30 seconds long. Some of them were shown in early coin-operated arcade machines, like the Mutoscope, which functioned similarly to a flip book. Short films were also often shown as segments in vaudeville variety shows, which mainly featured live actors and dancers, performing other acts and skits. As the decade continued, more movies were shown at special theaters, called nickelodeons, because admission only cost a nickel. Longer films, new developments in film technology, new filmmaking styles, and the beginnings of the modern professional movie industry took shape during the following decade (1900s: Film and Theater).

Among the silent films of the early 1900s were:

• Sherlock Holmes Baffled (made 1900, copyright 1903) - The oldest known film featuring the character of Sherlock Holmes. It was only 30 seconds long and was shown in Mutoscopes. Sherlock Holmes surprises a burglar in his drawing room. However, the burglar suddenly disappears. Holmes lights his cigar, trying to ignore the mysterious disappearance. The thief suddenly reappears, and Holmes tries to shoot him, only to have him disappear again. Holmes tries to pick up the sack of stolen goods, but it also suddenly vanishes from his hand and suddenly reappears in the thief's. The thief then jumps out the window, leaving Holmes confused. Because the film was so short and completely silent, there isn't really a mystery or Holmes-style deductions. It was really more about showing off some early film editing techniques, like making objects or people suddenly appear or disappear.
• Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost (1901) - An early British film showing scenes from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Includes early film techniques for superimposing film images on top of each other and making the "ghost" seem transparent. Parts of the film are now considered "lost."
• The Great Train Robbery (1903) - At 12 minutes long, it was one of the longest of the early films and shows some of the pioneering film techniques.
• Life and Passion of the Christ (1903) - An early French silent film, Vie et Passion du Christ. It was actually a collection of 31 shorter films, aimed at producing what we would think of as a feature-length film, one of the earliest attempts to do so.
• The Adventures of Dollie (1908) - An early D.W. Griffith film. Dollie is a little girl who is kidnapped by gypsies. They hide her in a barrel that is accidentally lost in a river, and a boy who is fishing finds it and saves Dollie.

These films are now public domain. Many films from this period have not survived, are considered "lost," or exist only in part because film technology was still very experimental and films were not being made to be preserved for long periods. For more information about films in the early 1900s, see Wikipedia: 1900s in film.