First of the Red Hot Mamas: "Coon Shouting" and the Jewish Ziegfeld Girl

Abstract

Jewish women vaudevillians at the turn of the century popularized what is now a little-discussed and misunderstood performance venue, known as "coon shouting." These once well-known, now obscure popular entertainers were crossing and breaking racial and gender boundaries, enacting narratives of immigration and Americanization on the Jewish female body. Coon shouting, the last descendent of the nineteenth-century minstrel show, represented not only popular theatre's transition from blackface minstrelsy to American vaudeville, but found currency in and capitalized on the suppressed identities of these Jewish performers. Provocative ambiguity fueled the racial uncertainty, meaningful messages and theatrical success of a popular fad lasting nearly 40 years, from 1880 to 1920. 1 This study, part of a larger project on Jewish minstrelsy, reflects an interdisciplinary move to merge performance studies with Jewish and cultural studies in order to understand the deeper meanings of performance in historical context. 2