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Vaudeville Shows
- Most popular kind of live theortical performances was Vaudervile --> A type of inexpensive show that appeard in the 1870's.
- Comic sketches based on ethnic or racial humor; song and dance routines, magical acts, and performances by ventriloguist, jugglers, and animals
- An american invention "there's nothing like it around the world" - actor Edwin Miltion Royle
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Minstrel Shows
- Popular form of entertainment from the 1840s
- Featured white actors in "Blackface" (exaggerated makeup caricutring African Americans)
- Racial sterotypes
- African Americans were only allowed stage jobs
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Magazines
- Magazines appeared weekly or monthly and contained helpful articles, advertising, and fiction.
- Many of the popular magazines of this era featured stories appealing to the average American's desire and determination to succeed.
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Newspaper
- For generations, newspapers had been a vital source of information for city dwellers.
- In the late 1800s, they became a popular form of entertainment as well.
- Between 1870 and 1900, newspaper circulation soared from 2.6 to 15.1 million copies a day.
- Because of heated competition, publishers urged their reporters to discover lurid details of murders, vice, and scandal—anything to sell more papers.
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Music
- Music was an important part of life in the late 1800s.
- People went to concerts, operettas, and dances, or gathered around the piano at home. But this era also saw important changes that would influence American music forever.
- Ragtime: In 1899, composer and piano player Scott Joplin wrote “Maple Leaf Rag,” which was recorded in 1903.
- While African American influences were beginning to enrich American music, two new ways of enjoying music at home appeared on the scene.
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Movies
- Vauderville started getting competition
- The Great Train Robber - 1903 - Huge success
- 1908 - the nation had 8,000 Nickolodean
