stage variety entertainment show, featuring a series of short acts - songs, dancing, acrobatics, comedy skits, and animal acts; it was highly popular in America from the late 1880s to the 1920s, when it became overtaken by sound films and radio; most of the early film, radio and TV comedians found their start on the vaudeville circuit. Examples: vaudeville performers included W. C. Fields, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Edgar Bergen and The Three Stooges. Abbott and Costello's vaudeville act ' Who's on First?' was adapted from stage to screen. The Catskill Mountains in New York and the Poconos in Pennsylvania were holdovers from the vaudeville era late into the 70's
A stage variety show, with singing, dancing, comedy skits, and animal acts; highly popular in America from the late 1880s to the 1930s, when it lost out to movies, radio, and subsequently television.