1A type of entertainment popular chiefly in the US in the early 20th century, featuring a mixture of speciality acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance.
‘his comedic roots are in vaudeville’
‘a stage show with vaudeville acts and dancing girls’
‘Their march will take them to the old Town Hall, which has been replaced by ‘The Palace,’ a saloon that features vaudeville acts and dancing girls.’
‘Singalongs, comedy acts, and ‘variety’ performances were staged in pubs regularly before music halls and vaudeville theatres became firmly established from the mid-nineteenth century.’
‘As early as 1913, Billboard, a music industry journal, had begun printing weekly sheet music bestseller charts and surveys of the most popular songs in vaudeville.’
‘Early film included actors from theater and vaudeville, entertainers from the circus, boxers, dancers, and non-actors caught in actualities or put on screen for staged events.’
‘Adding drama to the downtown scene are the melodramas and vaudeville revues presented at the Gaslighter Theater.’
‘As for her most memorable lines, they are demonstrable reworkings of old vaudeville and burlesque gags that had been kicking around since the dawn of creation.’
‘Drinking songs, in vaudeville performances, were often performed by cross-dressed women.’
‘In 1924, Seldes came out with a book called The 7 Lively Arts, a celebration of comic strips, vaudeville, slapstick, musical comedy, and other non-elitist culture.’
‘In Edinburgh, we are promised the best of contemporary burlesque and vaudeville performers.’
‘Father stayed on the vaudeville circuit for a few years after he and mother got married.’
‘The dynamic reminds me of the old George Burns and Gracie Allen vaudeville routine about the property implications of marriage.’
‘About the same time, Bob Hope, like every other comic in vaudeville, learned a useful lesson: When a sketch starts to tank, it's safer to make the audience part of the act than to pretend it isn't there.’
‘The 16-year-old Shakespeare in the Park company moved into new digs this year in a former vaudeville house, the Rex, which had fallen into disrepair.’
‘Part of the appeal was the venue, the Théatre National, an old vaudeville house on Ste-Catherine E. recently restored to a semblance of its former glory.’
‘He was effectively born in a trunk; his parents worked in a vaudeville company run by his grandmother, and as a child he joined them on stage in their comedy act.’
‘Christmas would bring back the memory of losing his father, a minor vaudeville star and alcoholic, who died when Charlie was a child.’
‘Once a vaudeville dancer on Broadway, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell is now 80.’
‘Like a vaudeville performer, Victorian novelist, or stand-up comic, Hirst will do anything to hold your attention.’
‘Cutter is no suave sophisticate, but Grant's background in vaudeville honed his comic sensibilities and paved his way to wonderful performances in classic screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby.’
‘Hope instinctively knew that he needed to build a marketable image for himself if he was going to stand out from all the other vaudeville and radio comics trying to break into movies in the 1930s.’
‘The Classic has been many things in its lifetime: an acting space, a cinema, a porn palace, a vaudeville establishment, and - until recently - a disused warehouse.’
light entertainment
1.1count nounA light or comic stage play with interspersed songs.
‘Cellier wrote numerous comic operas, vaudevilles, one grand opera, The Masque of Pandora, and a few instrumental works.’
‘In English Canada, Shakespeare served as protection against the incursions of American commercialism; in French Canada, against imported French vaudevilles.’
‘It made its presence felt in turn-of-the-century vaudevilles and was crucial to many Hollywood comedies in the years surrounding World War II, particularly the films of Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder.’
‘A character based on the prototypical French soldat-laboreur figured in La cocarde tricolore, a vaudeville performed in Paris in 1832 and set during the taking of Algiers two years earlier.’
1.2archaic count nounA satirical or topical song with a refrain.
Origin
Mid 18th century from French, earlier vau de ville (or vire), said to be a name given originally to songs composed by Olivier Basselin, a 15th-century fuller born in Vau de Vire in Normandy.
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