Going Out: The Rise And Fall Of Public Amusements - Hardcover

Nasaw, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465070302 ISBN 13: 9780465070305

Publisher: Basic Books, 1993

Synopsis

There was a time not very long ago when "going out" was only for the rich and the reckless. At the turn of the century, "going out" became part of everyday life as vaudeville halls, photograph parlors, penny arcades, nickelodeons, nightclubs, dance halls, world's fair midways, amusement parks, ballparks, and movie palaces opened their doors to the people of the city. The new amusement centers welcomed women, men, and children, native-born and immigrant, rich, poor, and middling. Only African Americans were excluded or segregated in the audience, though they were overrepresented on stage.
Going Out chronicles the twentieth-century entertainment revolution that changed forever the ways we live, work, and play. In a matter of decades, a new public world of amusements was created where ethnic, class, and neighborhood differences were subordinated to the common pursuit of a good time. Clerks and bankers, sales girls and society ladies "turkey trotted" to ragtime in nightclubs and dance halls; "shot the chute" and clutched one another in "barrels of love"; visited "Darkest Africa" on the world's fair midways; and sat together in the dark watching pictures move on a screen.
In Going Out, we meet the colorful characters who invented show business: Thomas Alva Edison, who was astonished when his phonograph made money playing music (he had designed it to take business dictation); Benjamin Franklin Keith, the circus grifter who opened a dime museum in Boston in the 1880s and within a decade owned the world's largest vaudeville theater circuit; Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew, the New York furriers who made millions in the early picture-show business; and the dozens of small-time show businessmen who rode the rails with their "shows" in their trunks. And we hear the stories of the early black performers and their struggles to maintain their dignity and livelihood while audiences demanded their public humiliation.
Going Out is a history of twentieth-century show business and of the new American public that assembled in the city's wondrous pleasure palaces, parks, and theaters. The book concludes with an account of the fall or relocation of this entertainment world, as central city amusement parks, movie palaces, and ballparks were uprooted and transported to the suburbs in the decades following World War II.

About this title

About the Author

David Nasaw is a Professor of History and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the College of Staten Island.

Reviews

Another sparkling urban cultural history from Nasaw (History/The College of Staten Island; Children of the City, 1985, etc.), chronicling the great entertainment arenas--movie palaces, amusement parks, World Fairs, ballparks, etc.--of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which, he says, helped to heat and stir the American melting pot. In the early 1800's, Nasaw contends, urbanites ``were segregated from one another at work and at home, by income, ethnicity, gender, and social class.'' But with the population explosion fostered by immigration, the increase in available income and leisure time, as well as technological innovations--especially the harnessing of electricity--entrepreneurs began creating venues for the middle- and working-classes, beginning with vaudeville theaters. But excluded, or at least segregated, from vaudeville performances--except as self-parodic performers (playing the ``imbecile,'' the ``dandy,'' the ``lazy fool,'' or, later, ``the razor-wielding coon'')--were African-Americans. This exception to the democratic mingling of socially diverse urban audiences served a specific purpose, argues Nasaw in a recurrent theme: to ``mute'' the social distinctions between ``decent'' audience members by elevating them above ``indecent'' blacks. For most Americans, though, it was an age of wonders: an 11-acre re-creation of Jerusalem at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair; Coney Island's Luna Park, with its 250,000 light bulbs; Lowe's ``transcendently glorious'' Midland movie palace in Kansas City, Missouri (the movies' grip on public entertainment forms the somewhat familiar core of the latter half of Nasaw's study). It was only after WW II that the great wave of public amusements waned--a casualty, the author points out, not only of TV but also of suburbanization and the growing fear of urban violence. Elegant, well-researched Americana, highlighting both the sweet excitement of a golden age and the bitter racism that helped it thrive. (Illustrations--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Historian Nasaw chronicles the rise of amusement parks, vaudeville, world's fairs, baseball games, movie houses, and other public amusements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The origin of each amusement is sketched in a chapter or two, including in every instance a mention of how ethnic and class barriers were affected and how blacks were consistently excluded. The anecdotal style is engaging, but the narrative often only skims the surface. The chapter on baseball, for example, is a mere eight pages long. The last chapter, on the fall of public amusements, leaves one wondering if the decline was a consequence of racial integration and changing urban demographics or if in fact public amusements are as popular as ever, only in new forms. An optional purchase for history collections.
- Eric Hinsdale, Trinity Univ. Lib., San Antonio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Nasaw paints a vivid and animated picture of urban nightlife around the turn of the century, when "going out" was all the rage for white-collar workers. Electricity had made city streets safer and more alluring at night, and clerks and salespeople felt they deserved a little fun after a dreary day on the job. All sorts of public amusements were created with inspired and greedy alacrity to keep pace with the demand for evening entertainment, from phonograph and kinetoscope parlors to vaudeville halls, "blood and thunder" melodrama theaters, dance halls, movie palaces, city ballparks, and the midways of world's fairs. What people seemed to like most during that heady, eclectic pretelevision era, according to Nasaw, were the lights, the music, and the exhilarating feeling of being surrounded by dozens of eager strangers. Nasaw believes that those rowdy pursuits created a sense of "civic sociability" that transcended class and ethnic divides, but he never loses sight of one crucial element, racism, and discusses at length segregation, racist stereotyping on stage and screen, and the {‚}elan of African American theaters and clubs. A fresh and intriguing assessment of American entertainment at its most spontaneous and uninhibited. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465070302
• ISBN 13: 9780465070305
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320