"A performer called 'The Human Fish' ate a banana, played a trombone, and read a newspaper while submerged in a tank of water." This is one example of the vaudeville entertainment that traveled around the country from about 1880 to 1930. This and other tidbits of that bygone era are highlighted for our attention in a recent book: American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott (Random House.)
For almost five decades vaudevillians traveled the United States and Canada and sang, juggled, told jokes, acted out skits, swallowed swords and belched fire to thrill and entertain. They hung on in the face of silent movies, sometimes appearing on stage before a movie. When talkies came in it was the beginning of the end of "The Human Fish" and other weird acts: an old dowager, Lady Alice, kept audiences gaping as she performed with rats. One of them sat on her head blowing a kazoo while others paraded across her arms. Lady Alice's long kept secret: a trail of Cream of Wheat slathered on her neck and shoulders.
Movies won out until the late 1940's when television was in its infancy and for a few years the vaudevillians were back. The respite was (mercifully) brief and they did not survive.
I am indebted to delanceyplace.com for some of this information.
