Vaudeville Wars: How the Keith-Albee and Orpheum Circuits Controlled the Big-Time and its Performers

by Arthur Frank Wertheim

This book maps the intriguing story about how the tycoons of the two most powerful circuits, Keith-Albee in the East and the Orpheum in the West, conspired to control the big time. Despite the battles between the performers and the circuit moguls, the vaudeville wars forged an electrifying entertainment that at its zenith brought joy to millions.

Genres: Nonfiction

349 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 2006

About the author

(22 December 1935 - 24 November 2020)

Reviews

[Theobald Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

With a title like Vaudeville Wars: How the Keith-Albee and Orpheum Circuits Controlled the Big-Time and it's Performers, I knew it would be right up my Roaring Twenties alley. I was right, and I learned some things. But the book itself was excruciatingly dull reading. Granted, it was published by Palgrave-MacMillan, the academic imprint for MacMillan publishing company, so I should have expected dry. This book is good for scholars researching that era.

Basically it is about how Keith, Albee, and other vaudeville tycoons monopolized the business and screwed the performers as they made millions.