William C. Lengel for The Green Book Magazine, the subject assumed
such bigness in my eyes that when I began the writing of this book,
I spent months harvesting the knowledge of others to add to my own
experience. With the warm-heartedness for which vaudevillians are
famous, nearly everyone whose aid I asked lent assistance gladly.
"It is vaudeville's first book," said more than one, deprecating
the value of his own suggestions, "and we want it right in each
slightest particular."

To the following kindly gentlemen I wish to express my especial
thanks: Aaron Hoffman, Edwin Hopkins, James Madison, Edgar Allan
Woolf, Richard Harding Davis--the foremost example of a writer who
made a famous name first in literature and afterward in
vaudeville--Arthur Hopkins, Taylor Granville, Junie McCree, Arthur
Denvir, Frank Fogarty, Irving Berlin, Charles K. Harris, L. Wolfe
Gilbert, Ballard MacDonald, Louis Bernstein, Joe McCarthy, Joseph
Hart, Joseph Maxwell, George A. Gottlieb, Daniel F. Hennessy,
Sime Silverman, Thomas J. Gray, William C. Lengel, Miss Nellie
Revell, the "big sister of vaudeville," and a host of others whose
names space does not permit my naming again here, but whose work
is evidenced in the following pages. To Alexander Black, the man
who made the first picture play twenty-one years ago, I owe thanks
for points in the discussion of dramatic values. And for many
helpful suggestions, and his kindly editing, I wish to express my
gratitude to Dr. J. Berg Esenwein. To these "friends indeed"
belongs whatever merit this book possesses.


BRETT PAGE
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK