Latest news with #vaudeville
Yahoo
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Once a vaudeville playhouse, the historic Baker Theater in Dover is listed for $3.7M
The term "vaudeville" may make you think of musty old theaters and outdated forms of entertainment. But at one point, it was a thriving outlet for artistic expression. It's where music, dance, theater and comedy became one, completed with the allure of plate spinners, contortionists, mimes and more. North Jersey was home to some of the region's largest vaudeville playhouses during the early 20th century. And while this style of entertainment is a thing of the past, a relic of this bygone era still stands in Morris County — and now it's listed for sale. The historic Baker Theater, located at 39 W Blackwell St. in the heart of downtown Dover, is officially on the market for $3.7 million. The venue was one of North Jersey's most popular spots for vaudeville performances and motion picture screenings during its time. "It's an important part of the Dover community, but it's also a really important part of Morris County and the arts as a whole because of the history behind where it started," said listing agent Mary Dougherty of The Dougherty Group at Compass New Jersey. It all started with local businessman William H. Baker, who originally sold groceries and dry goods out of separate businesses in Dover in the 1870s. Baker broke into the entertainment business in the 1880s by opening the Baker Opera House, a venue specifically designed to house vaudeville acts. The building — which still stands today at 16 W Blackwell St. and is on the National Register of Historic Places — operated for nearly 20 years before it abruptly closed in 1904. Two years later, Baker officially opened the new Baker Theater: A bigger and better entertainment destination just down the street from his original venue. "Baker's involvement in the entertainment business grew to such a degree that his original Opera House became both too small and inadequate for the type of productions often staged there. By 1906, Baker's ambition resulted in the construction of the Baker Theater," the National Register of Historic Places form for the Baker Opera House states, dated 1981. Boasting 1,200 seats, two balconies and a stage big enough to accommodate 500 people, it had the largest seating capacity of any auditorium at the time, according to the National Register of Historic Places. While the new venue would also host vaudeville performances, it was built to accommodate stage productions and motion picture screenings. It underwent major renovations in 1924 and continued to operate for years, moving mainly to showings of motion pictures, but ultimately closed in 1978. In the years following, there were failed attempts to convert the theater into a rock concert hall and it had a brief stint as a special events space. For the past several years, it has served as a place of worship by its current owners. The venue has undergone several upgrades by its previous owners, Dougherty said, including updates to the building's lighting, heating and sound system to ensure they follow modern codes. The theater's iconic marquee from 1924, which was damaged during a storm in 2020, was also recreated in recent years. Despite this, though, Dougherty said the building still maintains much of its historical architecture and vibrant design details. "It's got original marble. It has the concession bar just as it was built," she said. "It's has these beautiful gold, ornate ceilings and columns. Literally, you walk in and walk back in time. But it's been updated enough to be able to really support what anyone wants to use it for." Situated in the Blackwell Street Historic District, she said the Baker Theater is also protected by Dover's Historic Preservation Commission. Because the commission is responsible for reviewing proposed alterations to historic structures, like the Baker Theater, she said it's likely that someone wouldn't be permitted to make any major changes to the building. Dougherty also noted that if the next owner intends on using the space as a venue for the arts, they could be eligible for grant opportunities through the state to help them with improvement projects. In addition to the Baker Theater, the sale of the property includes five one-bedroom apartments and a vacant retail space, which was previously used as a restaurant. "What a gift that it kept the Baker name," Dougherty said. "I feel like its this historic icon that can draw so much from all over. It's absolutely a jewel of Dover." Maddie McGay is the real estate reporter for and The Record, covering all things worth celebrating about living in North Jersey. Find her on Instagram @maddiemcgay, on X @maddiemcgayy, and sign up for her North Jersey Living newsletter. Do you have a tip, trend or terrific house she should know about? Email her at MMcGay@ This article originally appeared on Baker Theater in Dover NJ listed for sale in Morris County Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Chaps frame the buttocks in a beautiful way': John C Reilly on Magnolia, moving into music – and his nice bum
Your roles fluctuate wildly between the serious and silly. Does one necessitate the other? vammypI've always thought it's all the same. You just try to be as honest as you can, and if you're being honest in absurd circumstances then you're in a comedy. It's not like I try to be funny or serious – just honest. If you're watching someone play a bad guy and there's nothing about the performance that makes you feel for the person or understand them in a deeper way, that's a fail to me. Because the truth of life is that at a funeral someone always cracks a joke. There's something so rich about being able to laugh at a funeral. That is what life is to me: all those grey areas, these contradictory things. I'm impressed and baffled by this left turn with Mister Romantic [Reilly's vaudevillian crooner alter ego]. How did you come up with the character? Why did you pick out the songs that you did? steve__bayley I made the musical Chicago years ago and played this character Mister Cellophane, and it reawakened my love of musical theatre. In particular, my love of the vaudeville performance style: very presentational, trying to connect with the audience and not aloof in any way. I love performing like that. I wanted to sing all those songs, but I was also looking at the world and I thought: man, things are getting pretty unkind and divisive out there. So I created Mister Romantic. He has no memory of the past and so that puts the show live, in the moment. The whole mission is to create empathy and connection and to explore ideas of love. Who were your main inspirations for this album? EddieHaskellRespect must be paid to the real musical inspirations, such as Harry Nilsson, Irving Berlin, Tom Waits and Nat King Cole. I'm not saying I'm as good as them by any means, but what those people did was they fell in love with a song and said: this is a beautiful thing, I'm going to share it with the world. I feel part of that lineage. If you really love a song, it can't be set in amber by one performer; it has to be given life. It's a little nervy of me, I admit, to try to reinterpret these songs after they've been done so beautifully by other people. But life is for living and we have to keep renewing these things if they have meaning for us. Big fan here. Also a big fan of Tom Waits. Do you think Mister Romantic could be persuaded to record an album of Waits covers, à la Scarlett Johansson? TheManWithoutFearI love that Scarlett Johansson did that. I guess Mister Romantic could do an entire album of Tom Waits songs, but I think it's more likely that I would. I literally refer to Tom as Saint Tom. He's a big influence in my life. Not only musically, but also as a performer – his ethos, the way he treats performance and the way he carries himself. I came upon him when I was 18 and he changed my life. I love the way he interprets characters. I've had the luck to meet him a couple of times. Once, he was getting ready to do a movie and he said: 'Can you hook me up with an acting teacher?' I was like: Tom, with all due respect, you're one of the greatest living storytellers, what could anyone tell you about acting? But I set him up with Patrick Murphy, my first acting teacher and closest friend, and they met in Sacramento and went to the zoo and talked about character and looked at animals. I thought you really captured the frailty and humanity of Oliver Hardy perfectly in Stan & Ollie. What kind of research did you do to prepare for the role? Which Hardy performance is your favourite and why? brucevayne1000 I have trouble picking favourites, but I love Brats. It really inspired my absurd sense of comedy. In a weird way, I'd been preparing to play that role my whole life since watching the films on repeat as a child. Oliver Hardy has been a lifelong inspiration and is one of the greatest clowns who ever lived. But one of the great tragedies about him is that he was a beautiful singer, a really incredible tenor, and yet when you look for recordings of him singing there's only about three or four and they're all tied to movies. That's a real shame and I don't want that to happen to me. If people like my singing, I want them to be able to hear me express myself. What compliment still makes you smile? ashtyndsSomeone told me I had a nice butt. I was wearing chaps at the time, which have a way of framing the buttocks in a beautiful way. I have a hard time receiving compliments, actually. I don't live in a place of narcissistic wonder. I live in a place of wishing I was better most of the time or seeing my shortcomings. It's good for an artist to keep their ego in check as much as they can. What is it like to be in a film that just doesn't work or doesn't find an audience? covskyEvery film is like a prayer and it's a miracle when they work. Even if you make the perfect piece of art, it can still trip over itself at the box office if it's not the moment in the zeitgeist when people want that story. I try not to get too caught up in the immediate success or failure of things. If you've made something you're proud of, that is success. I've not always felt that way – there were box office disappointments that were devastating – but I've learned things can be unexpectedly successful or unsuccessful. In the end, what you carry with you is your personal experience. Yesterday's reviews are recycling. I'm convinced that Dr Steve Brule [the parodic public TV host played by Reilly between 2007 and 2016] is one of the most extraordinary characters ever. Nobody could bring that character to life like you. My question – did you really drink the water from the marina? Was that your idea? papalzalewdSteve definitely drank water from the marina. I was executive producer on that show, so I can't speak to Steve's experience. You'd have to check with him, but I'm not sure I would take his advice on everything as a doctor. I'm not even sure what kind of doctor he is. Someone told me once that his mother actually named him 'Dr Steve Brule' – that his middle name is Steve and he is not a medical doctor. I'm so proud to be involved with that show and I'm delighted that people love it. I love it as much as they do. Did Magnolia [Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 ensemble drama] simply belong to a special time? Can a film in a similar style happen again? Why are most films so formulaic, without any of that movie's surprises or spontaneity? julian6 I don't agree with the underlying sentiment. You could have said the same thing about Badlands: no one makes movies like that any more. But that's the job of the artist – to push on no matter what it seems like you're allowed to make. That's certainly what Paul Thomas Anderson did with Magnolia. I won't go into it, because he's a private person, but almost everything in that movie has some personal connection to him. Things come in waves: capitalism and the marketplace get the upper hand, but then humanity has this need for stories and honesty in art and it comes back around. Don't let yourself get too depressed about the way things are. There have definitely been moments in the last few years, especially with the current state of the movie business, when I've felt just like this reader. I went to Cannes film festival a couple years ago, really feeling dejected, like: that's it, the streamers have taken over, the movie business is dead. But then you watch these movies from all over the world, Mongolia or Sudan, and you realise: oh no, it's alive and well. This art form is never going to die, because it still works. You just have to seek it out. If you're worried that there aren't more things you like out there, then you have to make sure you show up for the things you do. Because that's what's gonna keep them alive. What's Not to Love? by Mister Romantic is released on 13 June on Reilly's label Eternal Magic Recordings
New York Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
What Desi Arnaz Could Teach Hollywood Today
Seventy-five years ago, a fading redheaded movie star and her itinerant bandleader husband were searching desperately for a way to save their careers — and their marriage. She was starring in a network radio show in Hollywood and he was a musician on the road all the time, so they rarely saw each other. In their 10 years together, she'd already filed for divorce once, and was nearing her wits' end. The movie star was Lucille Ball and the bandleader, of course, was Desi Arnaz. In 1950, a glimmer of hope appeared for the couple: CBS intended to transfer Ball's radio show, 'My Favorite Husband,' to the untested new medium of television. But there was a problem: Ball wanted to make the move only if Arnaz — who'd helped start the conga dance craze in nightclubs in the 1930s and fueled America's demand for Latin music after World War II — could play that husband on TV. The network and prospective sponsors believed the public would never accept a thick-accented Latino as the spouse of an all-American girl. 'I was always the guy that didn't fit,' Arnaz would later tell Ed Sullivan. Arnaz, a Cuban immigrant and self-taught showman, had an idea: The couple would undertake an old-fashioned vaudeville tour of major cities around the country. He and Ball would demonstrate the real-life chemistry that he knew would click with Americans if they only had a chance to see the act. Racism was a fact of daily life even in Arnaz's adopted hometown, Los Angeles, where some restaurants still refused service to Latinos. The term D.E.I. did not yet exist, but Arnaz's gambit amounted to a bold push for diversity, equity and inclusion in the white-bread monoculture of a dawning mass medium that was sponsor-driven and cautious to a fault. Miracle of miracles, it worked. Critics and audiences from coast to coast raved at the couple's onstage antics, as Lucy clowned with a battered cello while Desi sang and drummed his heart out. A.H. Weiler of The Times pronounced the pair 'a couple who bid fair to become the busiest husband-and- wife team extant.' Soon enough, they were. Based on the success of Ball and Arnaz's tour, CBS executives agreed to film a test episode. The network had trouble finding a sponsor until a leading ad man, Milton Biow (as it happens, the grandfather of the actor Matthew Broderick) persuaded his client Philip Morris cigarettes to take a chance on the new show. 'I Love Lucy' was born, the rest is history, and it was Desi Arnaz who made much of that history possible. At a time when so many universities, cultural and business institutions are retreating from formal efforts to increase inclusion and the federal government is working to discourage and erase diversity efforts in all areas of life, Arnaz's tactics offer an instructive example for performers and institutions alike. Arnaz's differences — the very elements that made network chiefs hesitant to feature him — became his greatest strengths, as his charming portrayal of the solid, bread-winning paterfamilias of an intermarried family broke new ground in television and made Ricky Ricardo a beloved figure to the 30 million people who watched his show each week. He was the one TV star who did not look or sound like any other — he was forever telling Lucy she had some ''splainin' to do' — an immigrant who became the all-American man. The show's sponsor had been so skeptical about Arnaz's appeal that the contract with Desilu stipulated that Ricky could sing only if it was absolutely necessary to the plot. The audience's near-immediate embrace of Arnaz and his music made that a moot point and the clause was eventually dropped. Once the show became a cultural juggernaut, Arnaz rewrote the rules of stardom. When the network suits and advertising honchos balked at the idea of Ball, who was pregnant in real life, appearing that way on the show, it was Arnaz who went over their heads and straight to the top, to the chairman of Philip Morris, who responded with a blunt Anglo-Saxonism: Don't mess around with the Cuban! 'In real life or fiction, neither Desi nor Ricky ever betrayed his Latino identity,' the New York Daily News columnist Miguel Perez wrote on Arnaz's death in 1986, noting that when audiences remember him, 'they will see him as the head of an American family who, in spite of his accent and Cuban quirks, is realizing the Latino-American dream.' Arnaz heard 'no' a lot in his career but he never took it as a final answer. Before 'I Love Lucy,' television was largely a live medium in which programs ran once, then disappeared. Arnaz assembled a team that arranged to film their show in front of a live audience so that it could be preserved pristinely on 35-millimeter film. This production method was more costly, so the network insisted that Ball and Arnaz take a weekly pay cut. They agreed — if they could own the negatives of the show. The eventual multimillion-dollar value of the approximately 180 half-hours they produced provided the capital that made Desilu Productions the largest studio in Los Angeles, and the biggest producer of television content in the world. Arnaz's technical innovations also made it possible for the show to be repeated (thus giving birth to the rerun) and resold (thus creating the syndication market). His refusal to be shut out of television led to the birth of a business model that persisted for seven decades. Behind the scenes, Arnaz rose to become the most prominent Latino entertainment executive of his day and one of the most prominent Latino creative forces in the history of Hollywood. He remains the rarity that proves the necessity — indeed, the essential Americanness — of diversity. The fact that Latino stories are now part of the pop-cultural landscape, from a reimagined 'One Day at a Time' on Netflix to the current success of Broadway shows like 'Buena Vista Social Club,' can be traced directly to Arnaz's creativity, intelligence and courage. He looked and sounded nothing like the preconceived notion that the entertainment business had of a successful star. So he changed the way Hollywood did business, and whom we can imagine as stars. Anyone who can't understand that has some 'splainin' to do.
