Sixties and Oldies

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Brian Siano writes:
"There's a book by Drew and Josh Alan Friedman titled _Any        
Resemblance to Persons living of Dead is Strictly Coincidental_, and
much of their work focused (at the time) on old vaudeville comedians
whose careers extended into the early television era. One of the two
or three forewords/liner notes to the book points out that in
vaudeville, anyone could get on stage, good or bad, and since their
performances just went off into the aether, nobody cared that much.
But about halfway through this Recorded Century, someone realized that
this aether was now _retrievable_, and since television (especially)
needed to be filled 24 hours a day, a lot of these genuinely awful
comics got a kind of second (Thanatoid?) life. Sure, we got to see
such greats as Abbott and Costello, or the Three Stooges... but we got
a lot of grotesques, too."


This is a valid point--and one that's overlooked too often, but do the
Friedman'
s say anything about *radio*, which really started the process? 

Some vaudeville performers and routines made their way into film, usually
via radio.  And when you consider some of our favorite cartel interlocks,
it's no wonder--eg., the Orpheum vaudeville circuit, which was tied
to NBC (and hence RCA) via the RKO studios.  U.S.W.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)