Joe Frisco – Vaudeville dancer

This dancer smokes, literally.

I can’t imagine we’ll ever see cigarettes in American animated films again, but they are great props. Cruella DeVille wouldn’t have been the same without her quellazaire.

Little Tich

The phrase “little tich” is sometimes used to describe a diminutive person.  It began as the stage name of a famous actor of the British music hall, whose real name was Harry Relph.  He was a small person played various characters, but he found his greatest success by dancing in his “big boots”, which were 28 inch long slap shoes that allowed him to do interesting tricks.

It is very fortunate there is a film of him doing some of this dance.  It was created around 1900 as a very early effort to sync sound with film.

He was popular enough that someone produced an automaton to simulate part of his act.

Spencer Norwich in Paris

The earlier version of this post failed to load the youtube video. Apologies.

I previously posted a video of Spencer Norwich doing his Variety Radio act.  He recently sent me a video that was shot of him performing the piece in Paris.  Not only is the video quality much better, the act seems to have developed as well.  Thanks Spencer!

Not Quite Comedy – The Wrecking Crew

This isn’t comedy, but I love this sort of stuff. I’m screaming along with the audience.

It’s like watching the classic Disney Skeleton Dance performed live. But cooler.

Variety Radio – Spencer Norwich

Spencer Norwich is the young man dancing to cartoony sound effects.  He saw my post and sent me a link to a better quality video.  

Spencer is interested in possibly getting into motion capture.  This is exactly the kind of person who should doing mocap.

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