This is my blog where I write about music, and myself. Vaudeville, burlesque, blues, jazz, novelties, and whatever else I feel like posting. Mostly from my own LPs and 78s. Comments and feedback always appreciated. Please do not link directly to mp3s. It's rude.

Click through the vaudeville items I've posted and you're sure to notice the melting pot of ethnic caricatures. Some vaudevillians played up their actual heritage and some created a persona (or several) based on one of the many immigrant stereotypes flooding into the United States.
People from all walks of life attended vaudeville shows to laugh at themselves and each other.
The appropriate-ness of such humor is probably judged by most people in the context of social status, perceived or real.
In addition to immigration-inspired monologues like this, there was also the minstrel influence on vaudeville. Another one of my records, instead of "Norwegian dialect" declares that it's a "Darky Specialty."
I don't suppose I need to go into the way that piece of vaudeville history is looked upon today.
But without that history and baggage, "for many, vaudeville was the first exposure to the cultures of people living right down the street."
I don't know where Ethel Olson was born or what she looked like. I can determine that her specialty was gleeful laughter and Norwegian Dialect. (Scroll down that last link to a transcript and brief commentary about the monologue that's on the other side of the mp3 I'm posting.)


Ethel Olson
At The Movies
1923?

Labels: comedy, ethnic, vaudeville

Posted by: Kara Mae 3/01/2008