Rank ladies : gender and cultural hierarchy in American vaudeville
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Rank ladies : gender and cultural hierarchy in American vaudeville
（Gender & American culture / coeditors, Linda K. Kerber, Nell Irvin Painter）
University of North Carolina Press, c1999
- pbk.
Available at / 12 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
ISBN 9780807824832
Description
A disrobing acrobat, a female Hamlet, and a tuba-playing labor activist--all these women come to life in Rank Ladies. In this comprehensive study of women in vaudeville, Alison Kibler reveals how female performers, patrons, and workers shaped the rise and fall of the most popular live entertainment at the turn of the century.
Kibler focuses on the role of gender in struggles over whether high or low culture would reign in vaudeville, examining women's performances and careers in vaudeville, their status in the expanding vaudeville audience, and their activity in the vaudevillians' labor union. Respectable women were a key to vaudeville's success, she says, as entrepreneurs drew women into audiences that had previously been dominated by working-class men and recruited female artists as performers. But although theater managers publicly celebrated the cultural uplift of vaudeville and its popularity among women, in reality their houses were often hostile both to female performers and to female patrons and home to women who challenged conventional understandings of respectable behavior. Once a sign of vaudeville's refinement, Kibler says, women became associated with the decay of vaudeville and were implicated in broader attacks on mass culture as well.
|An illuminating study of vaudeville, this book shows how women-as performers, patrons, and workers-influenced its rise and fall as America's favorite form of live entertainment.
- Volume
-
pbk. ISBN 9780807848128
Description
In this comprehensive study of women in vaudeville, Alison Kibler reveals how female performers, patrons and workers shaped the rise and fall of the most popular live entertainment at the turn of the century. She focuses on the role of gender in struggles over whether high or low culture would reign in vaudeville, examining women's performances and careers in vaudeville, their status in the expanding vaudeville audience, and their activity in the vaudevillians' labour union. Alison Kibler demonstrates that respectable women were key to vaudeville's success, as entrepreneurs drew women into audiences that had previously been dominated by working-class men and recruited female artists as performers. But, although theatre managers publicly celebrated the cultural uplift of vaudeville and its popularity among women, in reality their houses were often hostile both to female performers and to female patrons and home to women who challenged conventional understandings of respectable behaviour. Once a sign of vaudeville's refinement, Kibler says, women became associated with the decay of vaudeville and were implicated in broader attacks on mass culture as well.
by "Nielsen BookData"