Antonio Pastor (May 28, 1837 – August 26, 1908) was an American
impresarioImpresario Impresario Impresario (from the Italian impresa, an enterprise or undertaking Origin: mid 18th century, from Italian impresa, ‘undertaking.’ New Oxford American Dictionary.
Impresa: enterprise; deed; company...
, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The strongest elements of his entertainments were an almost
jingoisticJingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy". In practice, it refers to the advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what they perceive as their country's national...
brand of
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
patriotism and a strong commitment to attracting a mixed-gender audience, the latter being something revolutionary in the male-oriented variety halls of the mid-century.
Antonio Pastor (May 28, 1837 – August 26, 1908) was an American
impresarioImpresario Impresario Impresario (from the Italian impresa, an enterprise or undertaking Origin: mid 18th century, from Italian impresa, ‘undertaking.’ New Oxford American Dictionary.
Impresa: enterprise; deed; company...
, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The strongest elements of his entertainments were an almost
jingoisticJingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy". In practice, it refers to the advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what they perceive as their country's national...
brand of
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
patriotism and a strong commitment to attracting a mixed-gender audience, the latter being something revolutionary in the male-oriented variety halls of the mid-century.
Biography
Tony Pastor was born in
BrooklynBrooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located southwest of Queens on the western tip of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area...
, New York.
He embarked on a show business career at a very young age, obtaining a job singing at P.T. Barnum's
Scudder's American MuseumBarnum's American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York City, USA, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was owned by famous showman P.T. Barnum and his partner and original owner, John Scudder. Prior to their partnership, the museum was known as Scudder's American...
. During the next few years he worked in
minstrel showThe minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
s, the circus business, and as a comic singer in variety revues. He established himself as a popular songwriter during a four-year run at Robert Butler's American Music Hall, a variety theater located at 444 Broadway in what is now called Soho but was then the heart of the lower Manhattan theater district. Pastor published "songsters", books of his lyrics which were sung to popular tunes. The music had no notation, as it was assumed that the audience had a collective knowledge of popular song. The subject matter of his music may be shocking to modern audiences, but was intended to be bawdy and humorous rather than revolutionary.
Though Pastor was popular with the nearly all-male variety theater audiences, he knew that his ticket sales would double if he attracted a female audience. Eventually Pastor began to produce variety shows, presenting an evening of clean fun that was a distinct alternative to the bawdy shows of the time and more appropriate for middle class families. In 1865 Pastor opened Tony Pastor's Opera House on the Bowery in partnership with
minstrel showThe minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
performer, Sam Sharpley, whom he later bought out. The same year he organized traveling minstrel troupes who toured the country between April and October of each year. With shows that appealed to women and children as well as the traditional male audience, his theater and touring companies quickly became popular with the middle classes and were soon being imitated.
In 1874, Pastor moved his company a few blocks to take over Michael Bennett Leavitt's former theater at 585 Broadway. The theater district was moving uptown to Union Square, however, and in 1881 Pastor took a lease on the former Germania Theatre on 14th Street in the same building that housed
Tammany HallTammany Hall , was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City politics and helping immigrants rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s...
. He alternated his theater's presentations between
operettaOperetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Operetta in French:...
s and family-oriented variety shows, creating what became known as
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
. His theater featured performers such as
Ben HarneyBenjamin Robertson "Ben" Harney was a United States of America songwriter, entertainer, and pioneer of ragtime music. His 1895 composition "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down" is regarded as one of the first published ragtime songs...
presenting a new style called "
ragtimeRagtime is an originally American musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged", rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being...
" as well as other up-and-coming talents such as
Lillian RussellLillian Russell was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th century and early 20th century, known for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence.Russell was born in Iowa but raised in Chicago...
,
May IrwinMay Irwin , was an actress, singer and star of vaudeville.Born Ada May Campbell, her father died when she was 13 years old and her stage-minded mother, in need of money, encouraged May and her younger sister Flora to perform. Creating a singing act, the sisters debuted in nearby Buffalo, New York...
and
George M. CohanGeorge Michael Cohan , known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Known as "the man who owned Broadway" in the decade before World War I, he is considered the father of American musical comedy...
.
In the musical
Hello, Dolly!Hello, Dolly! is a musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955....
, the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" includes the line, "We'll join the Astors at Tony Pastor's." It also references seeing "the shows at Delmonico's," which suggests that the character doesn't really know about upper class social life in New York.
Tony Pastor died in
ElmhurstElmhurst is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is bounded by Roosevelt Avenue on the north; Corona to the northeast; Junction Boulevard on the east; Rego Park to the southeast; the Long Island Expressway on the south; Middle Village to the south and southwest; and Maspeth...
, New York on August 26, 1908 and was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, in
BrooklynBrooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located southwest of Queens on the western tip of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area...
. He was 71, and though greatly mourned at his death as one of the last gentlemen of the early vaudeville halls, the medium had passed him by with the advent of the vaudeville circuit in the 1880s. Pastor had remained a local showman in an epoch that increasingly came to be dominated by regional and national chains. Fighting against the monopolies for the rights of individual local showmen was an undertaking that marked the last years of his life, earning him the nickname of "Little Man Tony".
Music
According to the humor of the time, Pastor wrote several songs that negatively portrayed ethnic stereotypes, such as
The Contraband's Adventures, the story of a freed slave. After the slave is set free by
UnionThe Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
soldiers, he attends an anti-slavery meeting where the
abolitionistAbolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves in western Europe and the Americas. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical...
s try to scrub off his dark pigment. The slave concludes by singing...
...De nigger will be nigger till de day of jubilee
For he never was intended for a white man.
Den just skedaddle home-leave de colored man alone;
For you're only making trouble for de nation;
You may fight and you may fuss
But you never will make tings right
Until you all agree for to let de nigger be
For you'll neber, neber, neber wash him white!
Though he separated some ethnic groups in his music, he also intended to unite the lower and middle classes. In songs like
The Upper and Lower Ten Thousand, he defended the common man of the Bowery in lyrics like...
If an Upper-Ten fellow a swindler should be
And with thousands of dollars of others make free
Should he get into court, why, without any doubt,
The matter's hushed up and they'll let him step out.
If a Lower-Ten Thousand chap happens to steal,
For to keep him from starving, the price of a meal,
Why the law will declare it's a different thing-
For they call him a thief, and he's sent to Sing-SingSing-sing is a gathering of a few tribes or villages in Papua New Guinea. People arrive to show their distinct culture, dance and music. The aim of these gatherings is to peacefully share traditions.- External links :*...
!
Biography
Parker Zellers, Tony Pastor: Dean of the Vaudeville Stage (Ypsilanti: Eastern Michigan
University Press, 1971).