Vaudeville

From time to time I’ve mentioned that my mother’s family was in vaudeville. Well, this weekend while visiting me my sister dropped off a few pictures she’d gotten from our mother and among them was this picture of my grandfather, Owen Blanchard (on the left), and his comedy partner. My mom’s forgotten what his name was although she may remember it yet.

They had a dialect comedy routine, my grandfather doing a broad, comedic German dialect and his partner an Irish brogue. Odd, since my grandfather didn’t have a drop of German blood. However, he grew up in St. Louis and there certainly were plenty of people with German accents there at the time.

I’m not certain when this picture was taken. I’d guess around 1910 but it’s hard to say.

BTW, if anybody runs across anything about the “Arlington Blanchard Carr Comedy Co.”, I’d appreciate knowing about it. That was the name of one of the vaudeville troupes my grandfather managed.

Judging by the studio pictures we have and the newspaper clippings I’ve seen they covered a lot of territory—everywhere from North Carolina to Arkansas to Wyoming, small towns mostly. It certainly wasn’t the high life.