as distinctively Yiddish as are the movies and the popular song industry. So, the Jewish song publisher makes an arrangement with the Jewish manager of the musical comedy show. This arrangement provides that one or more of the song publisher’s songs should be sung several times at every performance, in response to the applause and encores of a professional song boosters’ claque which is always on hand for such purposes. This claque is paid for just as any other service might be paid for.
The night comes. The song is sung. Persistent applause. Sung again. More applause. Apparently the song is a “hit.” As the audience files out the lobby is echoing with the cries of Yiddish song vendors proclaiming the song of the evening to be “the big hit of the season,” hundreds of copies being sold in the meanwhile.
That is the usual Broadway introduction.
The next step is to capture the “provinces”—the musical comedies and vaudeville acts playing within 100 miles of the metropolitan centers. Actors called “song pluggers” are engaged. The arrangement with them is that they will sing a particular song exclusively—give no other song a chance. The public pays to hear the actor sing; the manager pays to have him sing; the song publisher pays him to sing a certain song.
From theater to theater, from company to company, from artist to artist, the publishers’ agents wend their way, making what terms they can to single artists, vaudeville teams or comedy companies for boosting a new song by giving it prominent place in the program.
There are also the “stag entertainers,” the young men who go about to “parties” of one kind or another, offering amusement to the guests. This is a class of entertainers known only to the rich, but numerous enough. For instance, when the Prince of Wales toured America he was accompanied by a young man nicknamed “Rosie,” of whose racial origin