A Revolution in Three Acts
The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge
-
- USD 13.99
-
- USD 13.99
Descripción editorial
Winner - 2022 Deems Taylor / Virgil Thomson Book Awards in Pop from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
Bert Williams—a Black man forced to perform in blackface who challenged the stereotypes of minstrelsy. Eva Tanguay—an entertainer with the signature song “I Don’t Care” who flouted the rules of propriety to redefine womanhood for the modern age. Julian Eltinge—a female impersonator who entranced and unnerved audiences by embodying the feminine ideal Tanguay rejected. At the turn of the twentieth century, they became three of the most provocative and popular performers in vaudeville, the form in which American mass entertainment first took shape.
A Revolution in Three Acts explores how these vaudeville stars defied the standards of their time to change how their audiences thought about what it meant to be American, to be Black, to be a woman or a man. The writer David Hajdu and the artist John Carey collaborate in this work of graphic nonfiction, crafting powerful portrayals of Williams, Tanguay, and Eltinge to show how they transformed American culture. Hand-drawn images give vivid visual form to the lives and work of the book’s subjects and their world.
This book is at once a deft telling of three intricately entwined stories, a lush evocation of a performance milieu with unabashed entertainment value, and an eye-opening account of a key moment in American cultural history with striking parallels to present-day questions of race, gender, and sexual identity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Music critic Hajdu (Adrianne Geffel: A Fiction) and artist Carey recapture the bygone days of vaudeville, bringing to fresh light and life the stories of three transgressive performers in this entertaining graphic group biography. Hajdu convincingly argues that, through their individual acts, these performers "transformed themselves for the vaudeville stage and their audience was transformed in the process." Bert Williams (1874–1922) subverted the virulent racism of the early 20th century by performing his own version of minstrel shows, determined to present his authentic Black experience to white audiences. Eva Tanguay (1878–1947) performed uninhibitedly sexual musical numbers, while her fierce rejection of "acceptable" behavior for women anticipated modern-day feminism. Rounding out the trio, the closeted Julian Eltinge (1881–1941) devised meticulous cross-dressing presentations, which mainstreamed expressions of gender fluidity (he once advertised himself as a "feminine delineator"). Though all three met with great success, the advent of motion pictures eventually killed off vaudeville and their careers. Carey's art can be stiff, but his hand-drawn, crosshatched style ably captures the flavor of the post-Victorian era. The history is relayed via robust storytelling, combining a little-remembered piece of showbiz history with insights into the ways in which entertainment both reflects and shapes American cultural life and values.
