Shuffle Along on Tour in the South

While the original Shuffle Along was a major success in New York and in Northern and Midwestern cities on tour, the show never ventured into the racially segregated south. This spot was taken by a “second company,” licensed by the original producers for touring more widely. Under the direction of George Wintz and featuring John Vaughner and Edgar Connors as the comic leads, this version hit smaller cities in the Midwest and even ventured into the deep South, including a three-day run in Nashville towards the end of December 1922. The local producer noted that the show played to “absolute capacity” and that it was the “cleanest and fastest dancing musical comedy” ever to appear there. Unlike the main company when it toured, many of the #2 company’s dates were limited to a single night so its travel schedule was grueling through autumn 1922-spring 1924.

When the Wintz company hit Birmingham, the local critic was astounded by the lack of “negro humor—typical, traditional and fictional, as the South knows it” when he encountered instead “a smart, light stepping, wise cracking bunch of New York actors who, with clear enunciation and cream-like complexions, upset expectations. Indeed, the absence of dialect is marked even in … the principal comedians…” Nonetheless, once the critic realized that “the show is a straight musical comedy…in the hands of trained negro actors” he found it “rattingly good, altogether diverting, and a piece of stage work regular theater goes will enjoy.” Not surprisingly, however, the theater remained segregated and the show’s audience was split between a Monday night show for “colored only” and a Tuesday night performance for white patrons.

To assuage Southern theater managers—and their audiences—advance notices appeared in local papers as much as 3-4 weeks before the show arrived, assuring possible patrons of the show’s appropriateness for white patronage. Before its arrival in Charlotte, North Carolina, the theater’s manager there took the unusual step of purchasing a boxed advertisement for the purpose of letting his white audience know the show’s “great success” in a number of other Southern venues. Similar articles appeared in other Southern papers citing the show’s warm reception on the road as a way of assuring white patrons that they could be comfortable coming to the theater to see it.

Not all theaters that the #2 company played were aimed at white patrons. They also hit the houses typically part of the TOBA (tough-on-black-acts) circuit. And some of these theaters were excluded or were hostile to white audiences. In fact, the Belmont Theater in Pensacola, Florida, flipped segregation on its head, limiting its white audience to the balcony and giving blacks the plum seats when the road company played there.

Learn more about the Shuffle Along tours here, including  interactive tour maps: http://www.eubieblake.net/exhibits/show/shuffle-along–tours-1921-1923