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The FReeper Canteen Presents 
~Favorite Comedians~ The 1920's, Vaudeville, and Silent Films
Welcome to the FReeper Canteen! It's great to have you with us!!
Thank you to all of our Troops, Veterans, and their families for allowing us to entertain you! 
Vaudeville was a genre of variety entertainment prevalent in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Developing from many sources, including concert saloons, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary burlesque, vaudeville became one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America. Each evening's bill of performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts. Types of acts included musicians both classical and popular, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, acrobats, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and short films. Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields Eddie Cantor Vaudeville Follies The term "vaudeville," itself, referring specifically to American variety entertainment, came into common usage after 1871 with the formation of "Sargent's Great Vaudeville Company" of Louisville, Kentucky. Benjamin Franklin Keith, however, earns the distinction of "the father" of American Vaudeville. Keith began his career in show business working variously as a grifter and barker with traveling circuses in the 1870's, and for dime museums in New York. He returned to his home state of Massachusetts and in 1883 established his own museum in Boston featuring "Baby Alice the Midget Wonder" and other acts. His success in this endeavor allowed Keith to build the Bijou Theatre. 
At the Bijou, Keith established a "fixed policy of cleanliness and order." He strictly forbade the use of vulgarity or coarse material in his acts "so the that the house and the entertainment would directly appeal to the support of women and children. There was no abrupt end to vaudeville, though the form was clearly staggering by the late 1920s. The continued growth of the lower-priced cinema in the early 1910s dealt the heaviest blow to vaudeville. Lured by greater salaries and less arduous working conditions, many early film and old time radio performers, such as W. C. Fields, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Edgar Bergen, and Jack Benny, used the prominence they first gained in live variety performance to vault into new media. Other vaudevillians who entered in vaudeville's decline, including The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, Kate Smith, Bob Hope, and Rose Marie used vaudeville as a launching pad for later careers.
Silent comedy films placed a heavy emphasis on visual and physical humor, and what are known as "sight gags", to tell a story and entertain the viewer. Many of these physical gags were exaggerated forms of violence, and came to be called "slapstick". The term "slapstick" refers to a doubled, or "tricked", hitting stick that makes a loud sound upon (light) contact with another person. The "prat fall", slipping on a banana peel, getting soaked with water, and getting a pie thrown in one's face are all classic examples of slapstick comedy devices. Mack Sennett (creator of the Keystone Cops) and Hal Roach were two of the most famous producers of silent comedies. Actors from this era are now legendary: Ben Turpin, Mabel Normand, Edna Purviance, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase, and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. 
Charlie Chaplin and the "Table Ballet" 
Buster Keaton in "The General" 
Keystone Cops in "Bangville Police" 
Harold Lloyd In "A Sammy In Siberia" 
Laurel And Hardy in "You're Darn Tootin'" 
W. C. Fields in "Pool Sharks"
In the early years of "talkie" films beginning in 1927, a few actors continued to act silently for comedic effect, most famously Charlie Chaplin, whose last great "silent" comedies City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1935) were both made in the sound age. Another late example was Harpo Marx, who always played a mute in the Marx Brothers' films.
Another important legacy of silent film comedy was the humor in animated cartoons. Even as live-action comedy moved towards a focus on the verbal humor of Abbott and Costello and Groucho Marx, animated cartoons took up the entire range of slapstick gags, frenetic chase scenes, visual puns, and exaggerated facial expressions previously seen in silent comedies. These devices were most pronounced in the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons from Warner Brothers directed by Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, and Friz Freleng and in the MGM Cartoons of Tex Avery and the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Bosko And Bruno Felix The Cat - The Stone Age Chimpy Chimp - Hosin' Around
FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT~Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allies military and the family members of the above. Honoring those who have served before.
Please remember: The Canteen is a place to honor and entertain our troops. The Canteen is family friendly, and please leave politics at the door. Let's have fun! We pray for your continued strength, to be strong in the face of adversity.
We pray for your safety, that you will return to your families and friends soon.
We pray that your hope, courage, and dignity remain unbroken, so that you may show others the way.
God Bless You All ~ Today, Tomorrow and Always
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