Remembering Vaudeville. Yes! Vaudeville!

My Grandfather Spillard was quite the character.  He left school at a young age to go into vaudeville in Chicago.  He wanted to be an actor and singer, but was advised he wouldn't make it, and so became a song plugger.  He just loved show business, and loved meeting and schmoozing with show people when they came to Chicago. In 1918, a Federal Movie Theater Admission Tax was instituted (moving pictures had just started) and he was hired to collect these taxes. Because he did such a good job doing this, he was hired to be a United States narcotics agent, a job he did for many years.  However, he still wrote songs and mixed with show people for the rest of his life.  On the left is a picture of my Grandmother Louise and Grandfather William at their 50th wedding anniversary party, along with a copy of "Chicago Wants You to Have a Good Time, "written by none other than my Grandfather.

My sister Susan (who is after all MUCH older than I am) remembers this much more clearly than me.  My Grandfather and Grandmother Spillard  would take her to the circus, where many of these vaudeville actors wound up after vaudeville disappeared.  They were getting old by then, and the audience did not think they were very funny, and frequently booed.  My sister still talks about how sad this was to see.  On a lighter note, Susan recalls that whenever Jimmy Durante came to town, my Grandfather would bring him home for dinner. Susan says my Grandmother did not mind setting an extra plate, and probably didn't even know who he was, other than a pleasant and amusing guest.  I assume this was around the time my father Nelson was in Okinawa during World War II and my mother Mary and Susan were living with my grandparents at their first floor flat at 1633 East 85th Place - a golden time for my sister, who along with her best friend Janet were know around the neighborhood as Bad Susan and Bad Janet. And probably well deserved, too.  They are pictured in the photograph on the right (Bad Susan on the left, Bad Janet on the right), which I took when I went back to Chicago a few years ago, recounted in my international best seller "The Journey Home:  Returning to Chicago."  Be sure to check it out at http://www.blurb.com/b/1361398-the-journey-home-returning-to-chicago.