Vaudeville was a hugely popular type of live entertainment in America from the 1880s through the 1930s. A vaudeville show was like a variety show, featuring many different short acts performed one after another on the same stage. You might see jugglers, comedians telling jokes, acrobats doing flips, singers, dancers, magicians, trained animals, and actors performing short skits, all in a single afternoon or evening.

Think of it as the original talent show, except professional performers traveled from city to city, performing the same polished acts in theater after theater. Before movies and television became common, vaudeville was how most Americans experienced live comedy and music. Famous performers like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and the Marx Brothers all got their start in vaudeville, developing their skills in front of live audiences night after night.

Vaudeville became distinctly American. Theaters advertised their shows as family-friendly entertainment, unlike the rowdier shows in saloons. When movies with sound arrived in the late 1920s, vaudeville began to fade. People could now watch entertainment at their local movie theater instead, and vaudeville's era gradually came to an end. Today, when someone describes entertainment as vaudevillian, they mean it has that old-fashioned variety show feeling, with different acts and broad physical comedy.