#Aida Overton Walker

[baura-bear]

Something possessed me. First thing I’ve drawn in months.

[vintagestagehotties]

Hot Vintage Stage Actress Round 3

Aida Overton Walker: Miss Hannah from Savannah in Sons of Ham (1900 Off-Broadway); Rosetta Lightfoot in In Dahomey (1903 Broadway); Bandanna Land (1912 Broadway)

Dorothy Gish: Fay Hilary in Young Love (1928 Broadway); Helen Storer in Mainly for Lovers (1936 Broadway); Mary Surratt in The Story of Mary Surratt (1947 Broadway)

Propaganda under the cut.

Aida Overton Walker:

As fucking gorgeous as she looks in every picture ever that exists of her, it makes me so so sad that there aren’t any photos of her when she was a drag king in her vaudeville shows, I just know that if I had seen that back in ye olden days my heart would explode 

Dorothy Gish:

[silentdivasblog]

Lady of The Day 🌹 Aida Overton Walker ❤️

[cmonbartender]

Aida Overton Walker (1908) - Cavendish Morton

[valkyries-things]

AIDA OVERTON WALKER // PERFORMER

“She was an American vaudeville performer, actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, and wife of vaudevillian George Walker. She appeared with her husband and his performing partner Bert Williams, and in groups such as Black Patti's Troubadours. She was also a solo dancer and choreographer for vaudeville shows such as Bob Cole, Joe Jordan, and J. Rosamond Johnson's The Red Moon (1908) and S. H. Dudley's His Honor the Barber (1911).”

[costumeloverz71]

Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914), aka "The Queen of the Cakewalk", was an African-American vaudeville performer, actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, and wife of vaudevillian George Walker. She appeared with her husband and his performing partner Bert Williams, and in groups such as Black Patti's Troubadours. She was also a solo dancer and choreographer for vaudeville shows such as Bob Cole, Joe Jordan, and J. Rosamond Johnson's The Red Moon (1908) and S. H. Dudley's His Honor the Barber (1911).

[lemaldusiecle]

[peridotlionheart]

I don't see as much art at this time in history. I do genealogy, and I often think of what my ancestors went through. It's nice to see joy from this time.

Aida Overton Walker (1880 to 1914) also known as  “The Queen of the Cakewalk.“    American vaudeville performer, actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, and wife of vaudevillian George Walker.

Artwork by Abbi Udell

[2t2r]

15 des plus belles femmes de 1900

Nouvel article publié sur https://www.2tout2rien.fr/15-des-plus-belles-femmes-de-1900/

15 des plus belles femmes de 1900

[make-friends-with-the-rats]

can i hear more about why you think the bowery beauties were brought in "to retain vaudeville/burlesque elements while desexualizing Medda?" :0

But of course!

Allow me to set the stage...

Vaudeville and burlesque were both popular forms of variety shows in the 19th century. The first vaudeville show in America can be traced to 1816. A vaudeville show might have acts ranging from singing and comedy to acrobatics and ventriloquism [source]. Burlesque was introduced to theaters in New York as early as the 1840s and often were composed of comedic skits, satire, songs, and women dancers in rather provocative costumes [source].

As I touched upon in my previous post, Medda Larkin, in her stage musical iteration, is inspired by the vaudeville star Aida Overton Walker.

Born in 1880, Aida Overton Walker was arguably the most famous and influential African-American star of her generation. She was as progressive as she was talented. She refused to conform with black stereotypes on the stage and devoted much work to helping young African-American artists [source]. With her as inspiration, Medda becomes bold, comedic, and confident, every bit the vaudeville star.

As a result, in nearly every Newsies the Musical character description or script you can find, Medda is described as a vaudeville performer. But before the rewrite, this wasn't strictly the case. Of course, Newsies is a Disney musical at the end of the day, so you would never have found an overtly burlesque performer in the story. But in the original movie, the line between vaudeville and burlesque is blurred.

What I mean, to put it plainly, is that Medda Larkson in the film was sexualized. (The actress Ann-Margaret herself had been a popular pin-up star in the 1960s and 70s.) Although she is portrayed as a caring adult figure and a successful actress, several characters all but drool over her and we hear catcalls in the background of both of her songs. Not to mention her first song, My Lovey-Dovey Baby is very suggestive. The overall atmosphere that is created around Medda in the film is highly reminiscent of burlesque rather than purely vaudeville.

In the musical adaptation, that burlesque energy is redirected away from Medda and towards the Bowery Beauties. This is particularly obvious in the way the song Don't Come a-Knocking was presented in the Broadway show/proshot in comparison to Medda's solo, That's Rich. While Medda commands the stage with confidence and comedy, the Bowery Beauties are shown obscured behind a male audience or are viewed literally from the male gaze.

The Newsies musical adaption took Medda Larkson and created a separation between the vaudeville and the burlesque. Or: it made Medda purely a vaudeville actress and created the Bowery Beauties. In doing so, Medda was desexualized. There are two major reasons for this. First, because of the vaudeville inspiration taken from Aida Overton Walker herself. And second, to have Medda be portrayed as a more maternal figure.

But should Medda have been completely un-burlesqued? Here's the part where I take advantage of this ask to yap about something you didn't ask for. Enjoy!

While burlesque shows did tend to attract a largely male audience, there is another aspect of burlesque that is largely overlooked.

Burlesque and vaudeville not only gave women a chance to join the stage, but gave them the freedom to be loud and self-aware when society called for women to be soft-spoken and modest. But burlesque took it a step further in the costumes female performers wore. Not only were the costumes in direct contrast (and perhaps defiance) to the Victorian image of a woman...

"A woman onstage, displaying her body, speaking freely, and challenging her audience, was a strange and shocking sight in the nineteenth century, when female performers of any kind were still conventionally equated with prostitutes." [source <- highly recommend checking this one out]

Burlesque performances at it's best gave women a unique outlet for self expression as well as confidence in her body. It was much more forward thinking and feminist than you might think.

"Men loved to watch burlesque performers, but at the same time, they were afraid that her feminine power was too dynamic to stay safely confined to the stage." [source <- same as above, literally such an interesting read]

Now, keeping this perspective in mind, the original Newsies film had the right idea in giving Medda more burlesque elements, they were just going about it wrong. And rather than fixing the problem of sexualization with a complete separation between Medda and the Bowery Beauties, Medda and the Bowery Beauties should be building off of each other.

Personally, I think that Newsies UK did it best. In the West End production of Newsies, there isn't much difference between Medda and the Bowery Beauties. They share the same costume and they share the stage during That's Rich. Medda is still commanding the audience, but the addition of the Bowery Beauties here lends new meaning. Medda has remained the vaudeville star, but the Bowery Beauties have broken out of the male gaze and joined Medda in challenging 19th century society.

[baura-bear]

Reminder that Miss Medda is loosely based off of Aida Overton Walker! African American Vaudeville performer that did a lot of work to help young black women get on the stage. She refused the stereotypical “mammy” role that was often placed upon black women and became a sensational star, even going on to perform in Buckingham palace for King Edvard VII.

[theeleventhsignofthezodiac]

Unknown Photographer

Aida Overton Walker

[vintagestagehotties]

Hot Vintage Stage Actress Round 5

Aida Overton Walker: Miss Hannah from Savannah in Sons of Ham (1900 Off-Broadway); Rosetta Lightfoot in In Dahomey (1903 Broadway); Bandanna Land (1912 Broadway)

Ginger Rogers: Babs Green in Top Speed (1929 Broadway); Molly Gray in Girl Crazy (1930 Broadway); Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello, Dolly! (1965 Broadway)

Propaganda under the cut.

Aida Overton Walker:

As fucking gorgeous as she looks in every picture ever that exists of her, it makes me so so sad that there aren’t any photos of her when she was a drag king in her vaudeville shows, I just know that if I had seen that back in ye olden days my heart would explode 

Ginger Rogers:

justice for hot dancers!!!

[notchainedtotrauma]

I wrote this poem exclusively for my Root Beer patrons (20$). I wrote it thinking of Aida Overton Walker, the "Queen of Cakewalk", choreographer, dancer, actress, singer, who was a legendary performer and an imprint in the history of Black performance. She was a sublime artist, and she eargely championed Black women getting on the stage and exercising their skills and artistry. And so the title is a parallel of her voice.

Archival photographs of Aida Overton Walker, The "Queen of Cakewalk", Queen of The Vaudeville Circuit, dancer, singer, choreographer, actress

Abbey Lincoln was a jazz vocalist and songwriter.

Bobby Humphrey is a flutist and singer. Her works have been sampled by the like of Digable Planets, Eric B & Rakim, Ludacris.

Megan Thee Stallion is a rapper, performer, dancer, actress. In simultaneity with her artistic craft as a Black female performer, she is an entrepreneur and has an educational background in health administration.

Missy Elliott is a songwriter, a producer, a rapper, a worldmaker, a performer, and a constant innovator.

The visual archives above best visually describe the poem. Here are some excerpts to whet your appetite:

We nod and nod and nod and nod; a sign of reluctance and wistfulness.

We're a leg lifted across a graceful back, a waste of shoulder: more oil in the voice.

and

Cars pace up the streets slurry with neutered teeth, a familiar grit, nobody smiling.

In every room there can be, an attempt at proper dislocation, sleepless beer.

and

Is she middle of the night curling, a head tense with needle marks, pointing ?

We resemble the carpeted grass of molten glass, the cake cracklings.

[emmedoesntdomath]

On behalf of @caw-salem

I have to ask you for

The woman

The myth

The LEGEND

MISS MEDDA LARKIN/LARKSON

MEDDA IS SO UNDERRATED AND FOR WHAT

medda’s actually such an interesting character, historically AND personality wise, and we definitely don’t talk about that as much as we should???? and so- of course- we’re going to talk about all of it.

medda larkin/larkson (which, by the way, likely wasn’t her real name, but a stage name, probably because it rolled of the tongue better) wasn’t a real person, but she WAS based off of a real person: aida overton walker.

aida overton walker was a black actress, dancer, choreographer, and vaudeville performer who performed in various musicals, acts, and dances from 1898 to her death in 1914. she is often renowned as the ‘queen of the cakewalk’ and is seen as one of the most influential black performers of the early 1900s. she orchestrated benefits for institutions that supported primarily black women, refused to perform stereotypes on stage, and starred in the first all-black musical to be performed in a broadway setting, and then in england.

by the time she passed away, she had independently produced shows for two different black female groups, performed on some of the finest stages in the world, choreographed dance numbers for high class white socialites, created roles for black women on stage, and set a standard for performing vaudeville.

SHE WAS THIRTY FOUR.

THIS WOMAN WAS A BADASS.

so if medda larkin/larkson was based on this absolute bombshell of a woman (also, side note- I have no idea why they decided to make her white in 92sies. it’s definitely a decision that I’m not a fan of), then clearly, medda herself has to be HALF as amazing as she was, right?

medda first begins as a dancer, and as backing vocals to a bigger name in the bowery. she works her ass of, smiling sweetly, dancing with grace and a little bit of flair. she gets noticed almost a year in, when she has to stand in for the lead vocalist. suddenly, everything takes off for her.

she becomes a main act, garnering so much attention that she’s consistently in the papers. she doesn’t get paid much, but it’s enough that she can set aside a little bit here and there. she gets her own backing vocalists, her own gorgeous costumes.

and then the bowery owner dies.

there’s no more shows, no more crooning to the audience. the pay stops coming, and there’s a sign on the front door warning of close. medda, who has now spent years of her life here, who thinks of it as her home, is devastated. that is, until she asks how much they’re selling for.

so she borrows some money, pulls some favors (she knew the governor, and damn, if she wasn’t going to use that to her advantage). she begs, pleads, literally cries on her knees. gets a lawyer when they stare at her in disgust. takes ‘em to court, and then-

the bowery’s hers.

by the time she meets jack kelly, she’s been in charge for a couple years, and has met her fair share of poor kids who just need to get out of the cold. she more or less takes him in (he looked too afraid for her not to), and somehow that leads to her claiming the rest of the newsies as her children (not just the manhattan kids, either). she had a rough life too, she reasoned. she can cut some corners for these kids.

miss medda larkin, ladies, gentlemen, and my good people. the angel, the saint, the absolute fucking badass.

[newsiesproduction]

Hey i can't see anything about auditions for Medda I was wondering if you've already found one or if you just weren't auditioning her yet

The post is right here (you have to scroll down really far to get to it)