The usual date given for the "birth"…

October 1881 CE

The usual date given for the "birth" of vaudeville is October 24, 1881 at New York's Fourteenth Street Theater, when impresario Tony Pastor, a circus ringmaster turned theater manager, famously stages the first bill of self-proclaimed "clean" vaudeville in New York City.

Hoping to draw a potential audience from female and family-based shopping traffic uptown, Pastor capitalizes on middle class sensibilities and spending power when he begins to feature "polite" variety programs in several of his New York City theaters.

He bars the sale of liquor in his theaters, eliminates bawdy material from his shows, and offers gifts of coal and hams to attendees.

Pastor's experiment proves successful, and other managers soon follow suit.

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