A Revolution in Three Acts

After this wonderfully illustrated account, you’ll . . . be able to name three of the best [vaudeville performers], each of whom grappled with Blackness, gender, or sexual identity while entertaining the greedy masses. * Neil Patrick Harris's Wondercade *
A wonderful example of the ability of comics to present and bring to life little-known histories—the fact that the creators made it all feel relevant to modern times makes it downright valuable. -- Robert Kirby * The Comics Journal's Best Comics of 2021 *
Music critic Hajdu and artist Carey recapture the bygone days of vaudeville, bringing to fresh light and life the stories of three transgressive performers in this entertaining graphic group biography . . . The history is relayed via robust storytelling, combining a little-remembered piece of showbiz history with insights into the ways in which entertainment both reflects and shapes American cultural life and values. * Publishers Weekly *
This is an extremely remarkable comic, at once a historical look at the great and hugely popular genre of vaudeville, and a treatment of the margins, racial and gender, that pushed closer to the surface than radio or films would reach before the 1950s . . . The high spirits of these three characters, the visions they had of themselves and the crushing reality of a world unsuited for them, comes home collectively as we follow their lives. * Comics Grinder *
Neither revolution nor radical are terms commonly associated with vaudeville. Yet Hajdu and Carey effectively illuminate the significance of three trailblazers who merit such rhetoric and who have been largely forgotten since vaudeville lost its audience to the movies . . . Hajdu’s lively scholarship and critical perspective match Carey’s spirited renderings, which range from ebullience to devastation. A sharp account that brings life and light to a period that has gone dark in popular memory. * Kirkus Reviews *
A Revolution in Three Acts is an incredible work of historical scholarship, entertainment, and artistry. * Foreword Reviews *
David Hajdu and John Carey’s A Revolution in Three Acts offers a thoroughly engrossing, kaleidoscopic historical portrait of three landmark entertainers: Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge, artists who challenged the presumptive rigidity of racial, gender, and class categories both off the stage as well as on it. With its crisp, vivid, animated narration, it is a book that illuminates the intersecting careers of these pathbreaking performers and the electrifying ways that they each used vaudeville as the space where American identity could be radically reimagined. A page-turner. -- Daphne A. Brooks, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound
Brimming with insight and graphic creativity, this is a highly engaging and informative history of three of the most transformative American performers of the early twentieth century: a Black man who subverted blackface by performing in it, a “wild woman” who “didn’t care” about social convention, and a female impersonator who provided beauty advice to multitudes of American women. Hajdu and Carey deftly show us how, rather than being consigned to the margins, they made themselves unlikely stars of the most popular entertainment form of their day: vaudeville, the voice of the city. -- George Chauncey, author of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940
A Revolution in Three Acts is a vivid window into a bygone era of American entertainment. Here is vaudeville and all its comic, dramatic, and tragic dimensions as witnessed in the lives of three of its most pivotal practitioners. David Hajdu and John Carey have not simply crafted an elegy for an art form, they have chronicled the figures whose talent made it great in the first place. -- Jelani Cobb, author of To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic
Three amazing people—Bert Williams, a Black entertainer who pushed the boundaries of minstrelsy; Eva Tanguay, a sexually provocative and funny performer whose best-known song is about not caring what people thought of her; and Julian Eltinge, a cross-dressing vaudevillian who even had his own magazine—are the stars of this entertaining, thought-provoking work of graphic history. -- Roz Chast, author of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
This vivid book offers the tales and truths of pioneering performers who challenged the rules of race, gender, and sexuality. “Change the joke and slip the yoke,” as Ralph Ellison said. And so they did, remaking American art and history and culture in the process. -- Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland: A Memoir
Using a format as episodic as the unique performance tradition they are depicting, David Hajdu and John Carey introduce readers to three figures who transformed vaudeville and defied the values of their age. Giving voice and images to these remarkable performers and their social and political milieu, we see Bert Williams convert the stereotypes of Blackness in what Frederick Douglass referred to as the ‘pestiferous nuisance’ of blackface minstrelsy into performances that depicted the pathos of Black people’s experience in the racist and segregated US; Julian Eltinge’s cross-dressed delineations of femininity reveal the fluidity and performativity of gender, and Eva Tanguay’s embrace of the Salome character’s sensuality signify ‘new’ women’s rebellion against social constraints. -- Lisa Merrill, author of When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators
In this fabulously illustrated graphic novel, writer David Hajdu and artist John Carey bring to life three of the most enigmatic and unique entertainers of the vaudeville era . . . Although I would say it achieves an even loftier goal — capturing the spirit of vaudeville itself, the stage as a laboratory of cultural experimentation. -- Greg Young * Bowery Boys *
Hajdu offers a clear history with humor and research that makes the book fun and informative, with lovely illustrations by Carey. * San Francisco Book Review *
[This] book serves up a fun mix of historical fact, art, and fiction. * The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era *