Dancing Violinists

 

 Playing the fiddle
is a very physical activity.
With a nimble movement of the bow
rasping over the strings
a violinist transform a hollow wooden box
into a brilliant musical instrument.

 

 

 

 

The fiddler's arm deftly guides
the bow across the violin's strings
imparting the rhythm of the music.

Their body moves in time
contorting hands and arms
to make the instrument sing.
It's sound in motion.

And sometimes a skillful player
can take fiddling to extremes
and send the music's beat
from their hands to their feet.

 

 

The first photo is of a young woman playing the violin while gracefully balancing on one foot. Her back is gently arched as her other leg bends backward. She's dressed in a kind of child's play suit that reveals quite a bit of her shapely legs. She's obviously a performer who knows when the spotlight is on as she directs her gaze to the upper balcony seats. 

 

This 8 x 10 inch promotional photo was taken by Bloom of Chicago. We've met their work before in my story from March 2019, All That Jazz.  The Bloom Photography Studio of Chicago was owned by David Hyman Bloom, along with his younger brother Samuel Bloom and sister Beatrice Bloom. They operated a studio in central Chicago from about 1910 to 1935 with a specialty in taking stylish photos of entertainers who worked in the nearby theater district. A quality photograph was a priceless key to success for any vaudeville artist to send to agents and theater managers. 

 

This young musician is identified on the back of the photo as Hilda Major, Dancing Violinist, and she was represented by the Ned Hasting Bureau of Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

 

 

Fortunately her unique name and occupation let me find her in the newspaper archives. However in the earliest report I could find from May 1917, Hilda Major was not a dancing but a skating violinist, which seems like a very risky musical gig.

 

Pittsburgh Daily Post
4 May 1917

She was a member of the "Hip, Hip, Hooray Girls" company that had first opened in New York City and was now touring the vaudeville theater circuit. The show included an act called "Winter Sports in the Frozen North" which featured "premier ice skaters, Dolly Smith, Hilda Major, the skating violinist, and others." It sounds like an ice show, but in the month of May, even Pittsburgh is not that cold. 

 

From what little history is available on the internet, the first ice shows started in 1915 at the Hippodrome theater in New York. In 1916 another troupe from Berlin brought over an ice ballet called "Flirting in St. Moritz." But the engineering and technology available in 1917 did not seem advanced enough to allow a traveling show to carry along portable refrigerated ice rink. Then I found a second notice on the Hip, Hip, Hooray Girls that explained real ice was not used but instead the performers skated on a newly invented composition. This material was not identified but it wasn't anything like Teflon, or Polytetrafluoroethylene, which was not discovered until 1938. So I'm not sure what Hilda skated on, but it was probably very slippery.

 

Little Rock Arkansas Gazette
10 September 1926

Over the next several years, Hilda Major's name appeared in a number of touring shows or as a featured act with a night club band. In 1926 at the Palace Theatre in Little Rock, Arkansas, she and a blues singer, Marion Kane, were listed as assisting Katz and his Kittens, "They're Hot." It was a mix of live acts with a silent film, The Plastic Age, starring Clara Bow and Donald Keith.  "As good a picture as the book. It flames with the spirit of youth."

 

 

Jackson MS Citizen Patriot
16 November 1926

 

Two months later, Hilda was billed as a dancing violinist for the Capitol Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi. She was an act in a "Meet the Gang" musical cocktail with another dancer, Legs Lamonte and a singer/dancer, Lorraine Hayes. This time the featured film was "We're in the Navy Now", with the two wonder stars of "Behind the Front", Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton. There was also a Hal Roach "Our Gang" comedy entitled "The Fourth Alarm."

 

  

Cincinnati Enquirer
26 June 1927

The next summer in June 1927, Hilda Major, the dancing violinist, got her picture added to a notice for the Castle Farm playhouse in Cincinnati. This photo shows her wearing a similar outfit as in my photo, though she may be in a skirt rather than shorts. She was described as a popular Keith vaudeville star meaning that she played the B. F. Keith Theatre circuit. A year later in 1928 Keith Theatre merged with Martin Beck's Orpheum Circuit to form the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit. At its height this combined theater chain managed over 700 theaters in the United States and Canada, with a combined seating capacity of 1.5 million. The company contracted with 15,000 vaudeville entertainers like Hilda Major who traveled the country to perform exclusively at their theaters.

 

 

 

Milwaukee Journal
11 December 1927

Hilda was in Milwaukee in December 1927 where she was presented by the Eagles Million Dollar Ballroom. The show also included a "fur fashion style frolic" parading the latest gorgeous furs. In this grainy photo Hilda is seated and without a fur, but her dancing legs, and her shoes too, are the same.

As she finished the year 1927, Hilda surely took notice that show business was about to change. The hundreds of vaudeville theaters that booked live acts like a dancing violinist and maintained full orchestras and bands to accompany silent films were soon forced to convert into silver screen cinemas that featured "talkies". The age of films with synchronized dialogue, sound, and music was just beginning while the age of vaudeville was coming to an end.

 

 

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My second photo is from a postcard showing a very limber young man with legs splayed and a violin under his chin. He's dressed in a conventional men's suit with a velvet jacket. The caption reads:

 

Eric Percival, Dancing Violinist

 

 

 

The postcard was never sent through the mail, but fortunately the back very proudly says: British Made, which conveniently narrowed my search for Eric to just the United Kingdom.

 

 

Hillingdon Advertiser & Gazette
8 June 1928

Like Hilda, Eric also played at a Palace Theatre, only this one was in Hillingdon in West London. There were two shows on Saturday at 7 and 9 o'clock with "first class singing and dancing." The headline act was Thorn & Lee in a screamingly funny sketch. Then followed by Tubby Phillips, the well-known film star, in song and story. Also appearing was Cissy Madele, chorus comedienne; Gorden Henson, comedian; Delany & Stephen, Lady and 'Gent; and Eric Percival, acrobatic violinist and dancer.

 

Derby Daily Telegraph
10 July 1928

 

A month later in July 1928, the reviewer for the Derby Daily Telegraph made note that in the latest show at the Pavilion Theatre in Derby, Eric Percival was "not only a light comedian but also a dancing violinist with a keen sense of rhythm and technique". "Clever dancing" was "also contributed by Edna Percival, whose suppleness—she can kick well over her head—is combined with grace."  

  

Edna Percival might be Eric's wife or even his mother, but my bet is that she was his sister, and that they came from a musical acrobatic family. It's just a hunch, but maybe one day I'll discover what the relationship was. Unfortunately, the UK census records list several men named Eric Percival which makes identification problematic. Without his middle initial or a place of residence in Britain, I've been unable to make any personal history for Eric. All we can know from the newspapers and his postcard is that he was a handsome young man who played British music halls as a dancing, acrobatic violinist from around 1926 to 1931. After that his name leaves the newspaper notices.

Finding Hilda Major had the same difficulty with official records in the United States. I don't know where she was born, or where she called home, or if she ever married. One newspaper notice from Richmond, Virginia promoted her in 1925 as partnering with her sister, who was not named. So again the best I can do is to present Hilda as a skating, dancing, and even singing, violinist with shapely legs who once performed at theaters and night clubs around America from 1917 to 1929. After that, Hilda disappears from the stage.

These photos of Hilda and Eric are like those of thousands of similar performers from the great age of vaudeville theater. I wish I could describe their dancing or the music that they played, but that kind of detail was never recorded in newspaper reports. Their acts were never considered high class culture. They were purely part of a popular entertainment designed to be consumed by millions of people at 25¢ a ticket. We may not know their personal stories but we can imagine what it was like for them to work in show business.

 

A violinist needs regular practice everyday to stay in musical shape. A dancer needs constant training to keep physically fit. To be a successful entertainer, you needed stamina, discipline and a good portion of talent. And for anyone who could simultaneously dance and play the violin on stage for two shows every night for weeks on end you needed a lot of endurance to keep a smile on your face. I think Hilda Major and Eric Percival were genuine "hoofers" and "fiddlers" in every sense of those words.

Of course I have to wonder,
did Hilda and Eric ever meet?
Did they trade steps,
exchange music,
compare bows? 

At least now
they can share the same webpage.

* * *

 

I conclude with a YouTube video of a modern day dancing violinist.
This is Hillary Klug, playing her own original fiddle tune
Le Petit Chat Gris. 
I think Eric and Hilda would approve 
of her old time clogging style.

 

 

 

 

 

"Uncle Frank", woodcarving by Mike Brubaker, 1986

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone has at least one leg to stand on.