Vaudeville

New York: Mitchell Kennerley. Very Good. 1914. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [good sound copy, moderate wear to extremities, hinges and binding fully intact, gilt lettering still bright on spine and front cover; top edge gilt]. (caricature sketches) A survey of the vaudeville scene of the day, with discussions and caricature sketches of nearly fifty leading performers. Many legendary names are included -- Harry Lauder, Nora Bayes, Ruth St. Denis, Vernon and Irene Castle, Elsie Janis, Houdini, Annette Kellermann, Al Jolson, Will Rogers, Bert Williams, Lillian Russell, etc. -- and just as many others whose one-time renown has faded to nothingness: Laddie Cliff or Ray Cox, anyone? Ching Ling Foo? (Also a few who you might not automatically think of as vaudeville performers, e.g. Ethel Barrymore and Sarah Bernhardt.) There are 49 plates in all: one in color (Bernhardt, the frontispiece), six in tint, and the remainder are black-and-white line drawings in what I would call a kind of proto-Hirschfeld style. The author was the wife of art critic Charles Henry Caffin, and the author of several works of dance criticism; the illustrator was a Mexican-born artist and gallery owner who was influential in New York art circles in the 1910s and 1920s. Very scarce, even lacking (as is this copy) the rare dust jacket. And to save you the trouble: this book can be read online, and you can order a POD reproduction from any number of sources; if you want the real thing, though, it may be a long time before you run across another one. I'm just saying. .