Like I do a lot of is cross references current things going on in my mind and what I am doing in amateur history searching, I sometimes let my searches take me someplace.
And running into old newspaper script and fame shot photos put my visual interpreting brain on overtime.
First of all on the news today something about the perfect PC Vegan? Far left Taliban high holies protecting womanhood or whatever finding a off color, or colour for the Brits, Twitter of Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, and or joke about Aborigine women while in Australia that was distasteful. But I agree cunty Jim Jefferies, an Ozie, if it don't hurt somebody else in the telling of the joke, it's not a good joke.
The thing about Noah is that he is young and half black and South African and has a global appeal personality even if he might be a shit in private. Whatever.
He obviously is not telling the right jokes about the Right in a correct and perfect dogmatic matter, so it time to attack him etc.
That and some people miss Jon Stewart.
This is blends into my researching a variety of 19th century blending into early 20th century circus, stage and vaudeville people who all lived in their own bubble world and some of them were very successful and some died broke.
The most beautiful woman in America in 1880 - the "Ten Thousand Dollar Beauty" Louise Montague was an invention of Philadelphia Showman Adam Forepaugh, who I had never heard of before a few days ago. I was looking for an obit page and ran into a big circus ad in the online newspaper and the ad was so filled with activity and energy I was amazed how I had never heard of someone like Adam Forepaugh, (how do you pronounce that?) who in his day was as big or bigger and better than Barnum as a showman when it came to animal display, humane care and exhibition of horses and exotic animals in probably the original Greatest Show of Earth and originating right there in old Philly.
So Louise Montague leads me out of curiosity as to what she did and where she ended up as in a graveyard to see if all of what had been written about her and her career was true, they had their own version of fake news back when, and typos etc.
Could not find her burial place. NYC obits mostly end in "Internment private" whereby Philly obits most times include the place of burial, that is if they have been handing around the hat at the local church hall and or saloon and the obit in the paper would know where a poor person's final resting place might actually be.
No middlemen back then btw. "Undertaker" was usually a carpenter that made a fresh pine box for the deceased or he was rich enough to have a few spec caskets on hand for various size bodies. Wake and funeral were in the residence of the deceased or one of their relatives, no church service on average, and a ride on the back of the carpenter's wagon for the casket to the graveyard. Very efficient. And up to the turn of the 20th century, poor people's funeral cost an average of about 20 dollars in big east coast cities. 7-10 dollars for a plot, 8-10 dollars for the box. And 3-4 dollars for the grave diggers. Amen optional.
Louise Montague after a little research in what some say was the first American Beauty Contest was already married into show business and married to the Allen half of the famed vaudeville minstrel team of Lester and Allen.
Her personal beauty was accented by her perfect white teeth that showed when she spoke. Forepaugh the judge and awarder of the ten thousand dollar "talent/beauty" search made his first fortune in horse trading before falling into the circus business, a default on a horse debt, left him part owner of a circus etc... knew good teeth when he saw them on horse flesh and what difference is there in the filly of a woman?
Some misleading urban legends in some of her obits about once being married to one time theater matinee idol Henry James Montague from England, aka Harry Montague, who if straight was quite a heartthrob.
And even if not straight, still a dish? LOL
Died alone in San Francisco at age 37, never married and buried in his manager's family plot in Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn - his manager, one of the famous Wallacks of Wallack's theater fame at 13th and Broadway, NYC.
Trying to find Louise Montague's grave site led me into the obits of the both Lester and Allen, though at first I did not know they were black face players. One clue was in the obit of Billy Lester whose legacy it would seem in his obit named the wonderful songs he would be remembered by:
Allen died in Bellevue Hospital of cirrhosis of the liver and was cremated care of the Actor's Fund. I suspect Louise's one son at her death, also named Montague, was Allen's child.
And the idea of black face as a means to deface a whole race of people was not brought home to me until January 1, 1965 when the televised all day TV event in Philly of the Mummers Parade when some local judge banned all black face of performers in that Parade of local neighborhood, local ethnic banjo and accordion players and music clubs all of which were white. That parade segregated until that point as well until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which precipitated the judge's ban on black face.
I can remember seeing a group on TV back then playing their banjos and accordions as they marched with black cottony wigs and fake leopard skin costumes and the word across the family TV viewing was that that group had probably planned on winning a prize using black face. No comment beyond that. My parents were party line kind of people. In retrospect in general their point of views were dictated by the editorial pages of the Evening Bulletin, the protestant Republican newspaper, as opposed to the morning Inquirer, Jewish and Democratic point of view. But somehow briefly, my parents went visual media and sided with the fairness of civil rights as seen every night on TV with firehoses and dogs let loose on Negros in the South etc. They did verbally continue to tell us their liberl POV on civil rights. But Vietnam etc. soured them somehow and I know they secretly voted for George Wallace in 1968. Shrug.
With me in my research of circus and show biz people here make me wonder why this third party minstrel thing endured so long except to reinforce a false notion of stupid, lazy and dishonest black people in America.
And to be quite honest I am ashamed to know of this black face thing in American history and have to wonder why immigrant Jews like Harry and Al Jolson made so much money and fame continuing the white Protestant line to keep the ex-slave Jim Crows down. And then after some further research I see that Billy Lester of Lester and Allen is buried in an old Jewish Cemetery in Brooklyn.
I guess success in America for Russian Jewish immigrants like the Jolsons was hinged on the pain and suffering of others even if their money making entertainment helped to perpetuate the stereotype of others, sharing the guilt of the original white slave masters, their outsourced guilt a condition of immigrants to assimilate and accept the origin myths of white men as the bona fide (Fake) origin myths of America.
Which leads me to wonder why so many people in show business hide behind masks then and now. And even then, 'da Gays, were probably hiding in plain site. etc.
That the most famous minstrel team of McIntyre and Heath set my gaydar off a bit because of doing so much research in the past and seeing how coded language on all levels of American society exists, has existed to hide the truth about one's true self in so many instances.
That the first minstrel group to get the title "headliners" in vaudeville was McIntyre and Heath. They headlined for close to six decades together. That they both seemed to lead parallel private lives to match their public lives. That anemic beard marriages or not, gaydar?, I am many times wrong on that btw, these two highly paid black faced minstrel performers invested in Long Island real estate over the years, made millions, lived near each other over the decades, in Long Island and wintered in Florida living near each other and dying near in time to each other, one at least dying surrounded by nieces and nephews and a male companion with theatrical background, a groupie? in some sad like ending to it all before being put to rest in a Greek temple like mausoleum somewhere in some rich cemetery. And all this built on one famous racist stage skit of one darkie talking to another darkie and lamented the loss of trees that were now extinct and use to grow hams on dem.
That the idiocy of the racist or bigot who sees substance in raw and vicious humor is a bully humor like Minstrel Black Face that sends evil vicious and many times anonymous Tweets into the modern age to reinforce disinformation.
But southern blacks who supposedly liked the humor of McIntyre and Heath had their own way of displaying truth out in the open about "dem boys" in an oppressed truth world for American blacks made fun of by "minstrels".
(Holy Brokeback Mountain? Batman.)
Be careful. Be safe. Don't believe everything you read. Shrug.
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