![]() ![]() 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 Hall. In 1874, Pastor moved his company a few blocks to take over Michael Bennett Leavitt's former theater at 585 Broadway. 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. Soon he 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. Pastor was popular with the nearly all-male variety theater audiences however, he knew that his ticket sales would double if he attracted a female audience. Although Pastor was referred to as the "Dean of Vaudeville," as mentioned before, he is best known for cleaning up variety acts. The same year he organized traveling minstrel troupes who toured the country annually between April and October. The theater was located on the Bowery in partnership with minstrel show performer, Sam Sharpley, whom he later bought out. In 1865, Pastor opened his own theatre, Tony Pastor's Opera House. Pastor sang for the Union cause throughout the Civil War, then started his own variety show which went on tour for around five months before settling in New York City. Tony Pastor and Bonnie Thornton (circa 1897) The subject matter of his music was intended to be bawdy and humorous. The music had no notation, as it was assumed that the audience had a collective knowledge of popular song. Pastor published "songsters," books of his lyrics which were sung to popular tunes. He established himself as a popular singer and 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 became a celebrated singing clown at a time when circus performances typically concluded with a variety revue. During the next few years he worked in minstrel shows, where he often performed scenes in blackface. Barnum's Scudder's American Museum where he brought his riding, tumbling, and mimicry skills to performances. In 1846, at the young age of fourteen, Pastor embarked on a career in show business. He had a taste for entertaining when he was young, producing his own plays in the basement of his family's home. Their third child, and first son, also named Antonio Pastor, was born in Manhattan in 1837 at his parents' residence at 400 Greenwich Street, in what is now the financial district of lower Manhattan. His family was reputed by contemporaries to be "of gypsy blood." He met his future wife, Cornelia Buckley, from New Haven, Connecticut after he came to New York. Life and career Family Īntonio Pastor, father of Tony, was a fruit seller, barber, and violinist from Spain. Although he was a performer and producer, Pastor is best known for "cleaning up" bawdy variety acts and presenting a clean and family friendly genre called vaudeville.Ī collection of his papers is maintained at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin, and in the archives of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. He was sometimes referred to as the "Dean of Vaudeville." The strongest elements of his entertainments were an almost jingoistic brand of United States 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. Vaudeville Entertainer, Showman and Theater ManagerĪntonio Pastor (– August 26, 1908) was an American impresario, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind American vaudeville in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. ![]()
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