The University of Arizona Alumnus / Summer 2008
vaudeville lives
The world's largest vaudeville memorabilia collectiondonated to The UA
BY JOHNNY CRUZ, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA LIBRARY,
The American Vaudeville Museum — holder of the largest collection of vaudeville memorabilia and artifacts in the world — has given its entire collection to The University of Arizona.
Recordings, sheet music, videos, costumes, and posters, dating back to vaudeville's beginnings in the 1860s, are all part of the museum's rich treasure trove. Once the materials are archived at UA Special Collections, the university will become a center for studies of this unique American art form, which still influences contemporary entertainment and popular culture. Students in
theater arts, music, film, and other disciplines — along with faculty, visiting scholars, and the general public — will have access to more than a century's worth of materials.
"The UA is an ideal place for the collection," says David Soren,
Regents' Professor of classics and himself a former tap dancer on vaudeville stages. "The collection is going to benefit a lot of people. It's popular. It's entertainment. It's America."
The American Vaudeville Museum, originally based in Boston, was the brainchild of veteran theater professionals Frank Cullen and Donald McNeely. They spent many years amassing artifacts and generating donation commitments, in addition to publishing the Vaudeville Times magazine.
When they both became ill three years ago, the search began for a permanent holder for the collection. "When the collection was going to be taken down, I thought about the UA being a center for this great American art form," Soren says. "We communicated that the UA would be a place that would cherish it."
Owning the world's largest collection of vaudeville artifacts will allow the UA to integrate the materials into classroom instruction — especially for students in the College of Fine Arts.
"I teach a course in the history of theater in the Americas," says Jerry Dickey, vice director of theater arts at the UA. "It has long been a goal of mine to educate students about 19th-century popular entertainment, like Wild West shows and vaudeville. This way students will get into the material firsthand."
Dickey predicts that students and professors will be particularly attracted to the individual performer files, which include correspondence, photos, and sound recordings.
Vaudeville's influence on contemporary American entertainment is extraordinary, Dickey and Soren say. Television programs such as American Idol, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the Late Show with David Letterman are all heavily influenced by the vaudeville tradition of brief variety acts, with music and comedy interspersed between other forms of entertainment.
According to Maurice Sevigny, dean of the College of Fine Arts, students in his college will especially benefit since vaudeville encompassed all the performing arts disciplines that the UA teaches — music, dance, theater, media arts, and visual art.
"Students in our five professional schools will be able to go back to history for new ideas," Sevigny says.
He also hopes that owning the collection will help the UA grow its relationships with Hollywood and attract other collectors interested in donating their memorabilia. And the vaudeville collection will help ensure that this robust American performing tradition will continue to influence today's young artists as well as keep alive the memory of vaudeville's pioneers.
"Vaudeville was seminal to the entertainment business," Soren says. "We need to know about these people and they shouldn't be forgotten lives."
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