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Vaudeville is a style of theater, also known as variety, which flourished in North America from the 1880s through the 1910s. Its popularity rose in step with the rise of industry and the growth of North American cities during this period, and declined with the introduction of motion pictures and radio.
Vaudeville theaters featured performers of various types: music, comedy, animal acts, novelty, acrobatics and gymnastics, and celebrity lecture tours. Many early film and radio performers, such as W.C. Fields, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Edgar Bergen and The Three Stooges, started in vaudeville.
There was no sharp end to vaudeville, but the closing of the Palace in New York City in 1932 is regarded as an end point. Of course, the variety show continued to be popular, particularly with the rise of television in the 1950s.