If vaudeville died in 1932, as so many historians believe, why
is local musician and retired CCRI teacher Lloyd Kaplan
scheduled to lecture about it at the Warwick Public Library next
Tuesday? Isn’t it a bit late to mourn its passing? “Mostly, I
love old songs and the days of Tin Pan Alley,” said Kaplan.
“Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley had a symbiotic relationship and
they both grew up at the same time. Vaudeville depended on Tin
Pan Alley for new music and the publishers depended on
vaudeville to sell their songs.” For those who were alive before
the dawn of television, radio and the iPod, the idea of sitting
in a theater for the better part of an evening, watching
acrobats, comics and animal acts may seem quaint, but for the
years between the Civil War and the dawn of talking movies, it
was the most popular form of entertainment in America. Many
people believe that it was a uniquely American entertainment
that grew out of the Industrial Revolution in this country and
the prosperity of the middle class that en