The Earl Carroll Vanities was a Broadway revue presented by Earl Carroll in the 1920s and early 1930s. Carroll and his show were sometimes controversial.
In 1923, the Vanities joined the ranks of New York’s other popular revues: The Greenwich Village Follies, George White's Scandals, and The Ziegfeld Follies. At a time when Florenz Ziegfeld was hailed as “The Great Glorifier of the American Girl,” Carroll bragged that “the most beautiful girls in the world” passed through the stage door of his theatre. As many as 108 women were onstage in Carroll's show at one time.[1] Critics often insinuated that Carroll's performers were provocatively dressed.[2] Carroll frequently sublimated public scrutiny into free publicity.[3] Though Carroll boasted of presenting larger casts than his peers, his fare was frequently regarded as somewhat unsophisticated.[4] One critic in the New York Times described the show's comedy bits, which featured burlesque-styled dancers and minstrel-styled blackface comics,[5] as “The same old stuff”.[6] One of Carroll’s innovations was his “living curtain,” which featured scantily-clad models in striking stage pictures.[7] This wordless mise-en-scène was similar to the “ballad ballet” of The Greenwich Village Follies and the tableau vivant of The Ziegfeld Follies.
The following chart shows the various editions of the revue:[8]
| Year | Opened | Closed | Perf. | Theatre | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1923 | Jul 05, 1923 | Dec 29, 1923 | 204 | Earl Carroll Theatre | |
| 1924 | Sep 10, 1924 | Jan 03, 1925 | 133 | Music Box Theatre/Earl Carroll Theatre | |
| 1925 | Jul 06, 1925 | Dec 27, 1925 | 199 | Earl Carroll Theatre | |
| 1926 | Aug 24, 1926 | May __, 1927 | 303 | Earl Carroll Theatre | |
| 1928 | Aug 06, 1928 | Feb 02, 1929 | 200 | Earl Carroll Theatre | |
| 1930 | Jul 01, 1930 | Jan 03, 1931 | 215 | New Amsterdam Theatre | |
| 1931 | Aug 27, 1931 | Apr 09, 1932 | 300 | Earl Carroll Theatre/44th Street Theatre | |
| 1932 | Sep 17, 1932 | Dec 10, 1932 | 87 | Earl Carroll's Broadway Theater | |
| 1940 | Jan 13, 1940 | Feb 03, 1940 | 25 | St. James Theatre |
Over the years, the revue proved to be a training ground for up-and-coming talent. In 1924, Sophie Tucker was Carroll's featured “chirper.”[9] W. C. Fields was credited as both a comic and an author in the 1928 show. Jack Benny made his Broadway debut in the 1930 edition. Burton Lane, who would later compose several other Broadway scores, contributed music to the 1931 edition. In 1932, long before he wrote “Over the Rainbow,” Harold Arlen composed “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues” for Carroll.[10] The scenery and costumes that appeared in that number (and throughout the evening) brought a young Vincente Minnelli recognition.[11] Also in that year, the comic Milton Berle[12] played a number of eccentric characters, as he would frequently do in his television show three decades later.
Of course, not all of the revue's contributors went on to become household names; lesser-known alumni included Joe Cook, Lillian Roth, Ted Healy, David Chasen,[13] George Moran, Charles Mack, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, Kathryn Reed Altman, Faith Bacon, Will Mahoney, Frank Mitchell[14] Yvette Rugel, Geneva Duker, and Beryl Wallace.
Propriety wasn’t the only scandal that plagued the production. Before the first edition ever opened, actors were under the impression that they had auditioned for a vaudeville-type show—free from the purview of Actors’ Equity. When they realized that they were rehearsing a revue, they demanded that Carroll either hire an all-Equity cast or join the Producing Managers' Association. Carroll fired the Equity members. In retaliation, around 150 Equity members refused employment with Carroll.[15]
By the mid-1920s, audiences were starting to crave storylines; Carroll took notice. With Murder at the Vanities (1933), he successfully inserted a revue into a book musical. The first edition of The Earl Carroll’s Sketch Book opened in 1929, but patrons surmised that it was merely the Vanities under a different guise. Carroll’s last attempt to re-stage his signature revue on Broadway closed after twenty-five performances.[16] Bankruptcy prompted Carroll to take his operation to Los Angeles, where his spacious theatre drew appreciative crowds, especially among soldiers on leave during World War II. The new venue, with its table-and-chair seating arrangement, had the cabaret atmosphere he had once hoped to achieve in New York, notably with the fourth edition of the Vanities.[17] In 1945, the Vanities inspired a musical film of the same title. Two other films inspired by Carroll's productions were Murder at the Vanities and The Earl Carroll Sketchbook.