Joe Frisco

This biography of vaudeville comedian Joe Frisco aims to capture the world of show business in its transition from the heyday of vaudeville through film and radio to the early years of television. As the author tells readers, Joe Frisco in his day was so famous for his jazz dance that F. Scott Fitzgerald mentions him when describing one of Gatsby's parties: "Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out along on the canvas platform". The book follows Frisco's career from his beginnings in Chicago on the midwestern circuit, through his New York heyday in vaudeville theatres and nightclubs, to his final years in Los Angeles when first film and then television came to dominate show business. Lowry and Foy, both vaudeville insiders, describe Frisco's world, with its hotels, theatres, restaurants, clubs, racetracks, and, not least, its famous people - Flo Ziegfeld, W.C. Fields, Walter Winchell, George Jessel, Bing Crisby (who contributed the foreword to this book), and even William Randolph Hearst.