Baggy Pants Comedy : Burlesque and the Oral Tradition (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History) (Reissue)

Taking readers inside the burlesque houses of Depression-era America, Baggy Pants Comedy explores the role of comedy in a show remembered mostly for strip-tease. It examines how burlesque comics, straightmen, and talking women approached the craft of comedy, working in a genre that relied not on scripts but on a remembered tradition of comedy bits that circulated orally. The book opens a long-neglected area of American folklore, presenting transcripts of dozens of fondly-remembered routines like "Who''s On First" and "Niagara Falls (Slowly I Turned)," as well as long-forgotten classics in print for the first time.