Book Review: Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890-1925 - by David Monod (Book) (original) (raw)

David Monod's study of vaudeville's role as "the United States' first modern mass entertainment" (2) is a fundamental reading in the study of popular music, theatre, and film. Monod, a history professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, deftly evokes the vitality of now archaic variety acts and elucidates the early decisions by theatre owners and entertainers who created the foundations for popular entertainment in America. He provides an overview of the performance and business practices of vaudeville informed by statistics and anecdotes compiled from a detailed survey of 35,000 reviews (transcriptions available online at the author's website, "Vaudeville America"). In contrast to other recent studies of vaudeville, which, as Monod comments, tend to focus on understanding the intent of individual performers and interpreting their performances as transgressive (7), he focuses on the development of the modern cultural and business environments that influenced, and were influenced by, performers and performances.