Writing for Vaudeville Part 9

(b) _The "Nut Comedian"_--who does all manner of silly tricks to make his audience laugh, but who has a carefully prepared routine of "nut" material.

(c) _The Parody Monologist_--who opens and closes with funny parodies on the latest song hits and does a monologue routine between songs.

(d) _The "Original Talk"_ Impersonator--who does impersonations of celebrities, but adds to his offering a few clever points and gags.

VI. A FINAL WORD

Before you seek a market [1] for your monologue, be sure that it fulfills all the requirements of a monologue and that it is the very best work you can do. Above all, make sure that every gag or point you use is original with you, and that the angle of the subject you have selected for your theme is honestly your own. For if you have copied even one gag or point that has been used before, you have laid your work open to suspicion and yourself to the epithet of "chooser."

[1] See Chapter XXIV, Ma.n.u.scripts and Markets.

The infringer--who steals gags and points bodily--can be pursued and punished under the copyright law, but the chooser is a kind of sneak thief who works gags and points around to escape taking criminal chances, making his material just enough different to evade the law. A chooser damages the originator of the material without himself getting very far. No one likes a chooser; no one knowingly will have dealings with a chooser. Call a vaudeville man a liar and he may laugh at you--call him a chooser and you'll have to fight him.

There are, of course, deliberate choosers in the vaudeville business, just as there are "crooks" in every line of life, but they never make more than a momentary success. Here is why they invariably fail:

When you sit in the audience, and hear an old gag or point, you whisper, "Phew, that's old," or you give your companion a knowing look, don't you? Well, half the audience is doing the very same thing, and they, like you, receive the impression that all the gags are old, and merely suppose that they haven't heard the other ones before.

The performer, whose bread and b.u.t.ter depends on the audience thinking him bright, cannot afford to have anything ancient in his routine. Two familiar gags or points will kill at least twenty-five percent of his applause. He may not get even one bow, and when audiences do not like a monologist well enough to call him out for a bow, he might as well say good-by to his chances of getting even another week's booking. Therefore the performer watches the material that is offered him with the strained attention of an Asiatic potentate who suspects there is poison in his breakfast food. He not only guards against old gags or points, but he takes great care that the specific form of the subject of any routine that he accepts is absolutely new.

Some of the deliberate choosers watch the field very closely and as soon as anyone strikes a new vein or angle they proceed to work it over. But taking the same subject and working around it--even though each gag or point is honestly new--does not and cannot pay.

Even though the chooser secures some actor willing to use such material, he fails ultimately for two reasons: In the first place, the copier is never as good as the originator; and, in the second place, the circuit managers do not look with favor upon copy-acts.

As the success of the performer depends on his cleverness and the novelty of his material, in identically the same way the success of a vaudeville theatre lies in the cleverness and novelty of the acts it plays. Individual house managers, and therefore circuit managers, cannot afford to countenance copy-acts. For this reason a monologist or an act is often given exclusive rights to use a precise kind of subject-material over a given circuit. A copy-act cannot keep going to very long with only a few segregated house willing to play his act.

Therefore before you offer your monologue to a possible buyer, be sure--absolutely sure--that your theme and every one of your points and gags are original.

CHAPTER VII

THE VAUDEVILLE TWO-ACT

The word "two-act" is used to describe any act played by two people. It has nothing to do with the number of scenes or acts of a drama. When two people present a "turn," it is called a two-act. It is a booking-office term--a word made necessary by the exigencies of vaudeville commerce.

If the manager of a theatre requires an acrobatic act to fill his bill and balance his show he often inquires for an acrobatic two-act. It may matter little to him whether the act plays in One or Full Stage--he wants an acrobatic act, and one presented by two people. If he requires any other kind of two-people-act, he specifies the kind of two-act of which he is in need.

On the other hand, if a performer asks an author to write a vaudeville two-act, an act of a certain definite character is usually meant and understood. For, among writers, the vaudeville two-act--or "act in One" as it is often called--has come to mean a talking act presented by two persons; furthermore, a talking act that has certain well-defined characteristics.

1. What a Vaudeville Two-Act Is

The most carefully constructed definition cannot describe even the simplest thing with satisfying exactness. But the human mind is so formed that it have a definition for a guide to learn anything is new. Therefore let us set up this dogmatic definition:

A pure vaudeville two-act is a humorous talking act performed by two persons. It possesses unity of the characters, is not combined with songs, tricks or any other entertainment form, is marked by compression, follows a definite form of construction, and usually requires from ten to fifteen minutes for delivery.

You have noticed that this definition is merely that of the monologue very slightly changed. It differs from it only in the number of persons required for its delivery. But, like many such verbal jugglings, the likeness of the two-act to the monologue is more apparent than real.

2. How the Two-Act Differs from the Monologue

Turn to the Appendix and read "The Art of Flirtation," by Aaron Hoffman. [1] It was chosen for publication in this volume as an example of the vaudeville two-act, for two reasons: First, it is one of the best vaudeville two-acts ever written; second, a careful study of it, in connection with "The German Senator," will repay the student by giving an insight into the difference in treatment that the same author gives to the monologue and the two-act.

[1] The Art of Flirtation," by Aaron Hoffman, has been used in vaudeville, on the burlesque stage, and in various musical comedies, for years and has stood the test of time.

Aside from the merely physical facts that two persons deliver the vaudeville two-act and but one "does" the monologue, you will notice in reading "The Art of Flirtation," that the two-act depends a surprising lot on "business" [1] to punch home its points and win its laughs. This is the first instance in our study of vaudeville material in which "acting" [2] demands from the writer studied consideration.

[1] _Business_ means any movement an actor makes on the stage.

To walk across the stage, to step on a man's toes, to pick up a telephone, to drop a handkerchief, or even to grimace--if done to drive the spoken words home, or to "get over" a meaning without words--are all, with a thousand other gestures and movements, _stage business_.

[2] Acting is action. It comprises everything necessary to the performing of a part in a play and includes business.

So large a part does the element of business play in the success of the two-act that the early examples of this vaudeville form were nearly all built out of bits of business. And the business was usually of the "slap-stick" kind.

3. What Slap-Stick Humor Is

Slap-stick humor wins its laughs by the use of physical methods, having received its name from the stick with which one clown hits another.

A slap-stick is so constructed that when a person is. .h.i.t a light blow with it, a second piece of wood slaps the first and a surprisingly loud noise, as of a hard blow, is heard. Children always laugh at the slap-stick clowns and you can depend upon many grown-ups, too, going into ecstasies of mirth.

Building upon this sure foundation, a cla.s.s of comedians sprang up who "worked up" the laughter by taking advantage of the human delight in expectation. For instance: A man would lean over a wall and gaze at some distant scene. He was perfectly oblivious to what was going on behind him. The comedy character strolled out on the stage with a stick in his hand. He nearly walked into the first man, then he saw the seat of the man's trousers and the provokingly tempting mark they offered. In the early days of the use of the slap-stick, the comedian would have spanked the man at once, got one big laugh and have run off the stage in a comic chase. In the later days the comedian worked up his laugh into many laughs, by s.p.a.cing all of his actions in the delivery of the blow.

As soon as the audience realized that the comedian had the opportunity to spank the unsuspecting man, they laughed. Then the comedian would make elaborate preparations to deliver the blow. He would spit on his hands, grasp the stick firmly and take close aim--a laugh. Then he would take aim again and slowly swing the stick over his shoulder ready to strike--a breathless t.i.tter. Down would come the stick--and stop a few inches short of the mark and the comedian would say: "It's a shame to do it!" This was a roar, for the audience was primed to laugh and had to give vent to its expectant delight. A clever comedian could do this twice, or even three times, varying the line each time. But usually on the third preparation he would strike--and the house would be convulsed.

In burlesque they sometimes used a woman for the victim, and the laughter was consequently louder and longer. It is an interesting commentary on the advancement of all branches of the stage in recent years that even in burlesque such extreme slap-stick methods are now seldom used. In vaudeville such an elemental bit of slap-stick business is rarely, if ever, seen. Happily, a woman is now never the victim.

But it was upon such "sure-fire" [1] bits of business that the early vaudeville two-acts--as well as many other acts--depended for a large percentage of their laughs. It mattered little what were the lines they spoke. They put their trust in business--and invariably won. But their business was always of the same type as that "bit" [2] of spanking the unsuspecting man. It depended for its humor on the supposed infliction of pain. It was always physical--although by no means always even remotely suggestive.

[1] Any act or piece of business or line in a speech that can be depended on to win laughter at every performance is called _sure-fire_.

[2] Anything done on the stage may be called a _bit_. A minor character may have only a _bit_, and some one part of a scene that the star may have, may be a _bit_. The word is used to describe a successful little scene that is complete in itself.

Because such acts did not depend on lines but on slap-stick humor, they became known as slap-stick acts. And because these vaudeville two-acts--as we have elected to call them--were usually presented by two men and worked in One, in front of a drop that represented a street, they were called "sidewalk comedian slap-stick acts."

Their material was a lot of jokes of the "Who was that lady I saw you with last night?"--"She weren't no lady, she was my wife,"

kind. Two performers would throw together an act made up of sure-fire comedy bits they had used in various shows, interpolate a few old "gags"--and the vaudeville writer had very little opportunity.

But to-day--as a study of "The Art of Flirtation" will show--wit and structural skill in the material itself is of prime importance.

Therefore the writer is needed to supply vaudeville two-acts. But even to-day business still plays a very large part in the success of the two-act. It may even be considered fundamental to the two-act's success. Therefore, before we consider the structural elements that make for success in writing the two-act, we shall take up the matter of two-act business.

4. The "Business" of the Two-Act

The fact that we all laugh--in varying degrees--at the antics of the circus clown, should be sufficient evidence of the permanence of certain forms of humor to admit of a belief in the basic truth that certain actions do in all times find a humorous response in all hearts. Certain things are fundamentally funny, and have made our ancestors laugh, just as they make us laugh and will make our descendants laugh.

"There's no joke like an old joke," is sarcastically but nevertheless literally true. There may even be more than a humorous coincidence--perhaps an unconscious recognition of the sure-firedness of certain actions--in the warnings received in childhood to "stop that funny business."

5. Weber and Fields on Sure-Fire Business

However this may be, wherever actors foregather and talk about bits of stage business that have won and always will win laughs for them, there are a score or more points on which they agree.

No matter how much they may quarrel about the effectiveness of laugh-bits with which one or another has won a personal success--due, perhaps, to his own peculiar personality--they unite in admitting the universal effectiveness of certain good old stand-bys.