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Vaudeville's Orpheum circuit — Debussy's prelude, 1913
The tie: Edward La Vine was born in New York City in 1879 and brought to Fort Wayne in childhood, when his parents moved here; at fourteen he was working in a Fort Wayne electrical factory. He ran away, and the act he built on the road made him, under the name General Lavine, one of vaudeville's documented eccentrics — a wooden-soldier dancer and juggler on the Orpheum circuit, the big-time western chain. The tie is an upbringing, printed at that strength; the act itself was formed after he left.
The record: Lavine's afterlife is out of proportion to his billing, and it is documentary: Claude Debussy saw the act in Paris and set it, in the second book of the Préludes (1913), as "Général Lavine — excentrique." The facts of the Fort Wayne childhood survive because Debussy's biographer Oscar Thompson traced the prelude's subject: the New York birth in 1879, the parents' move to Fort Wayne, the factory job at fourteen, the running away, and the Orpheum career. Fort Wayne's vaudeville era is mostly a record of houses and touring bills; Lavine is the one comedy act of the era the record can follow out of this city onto the international stage — a local boy in the strict sense that he was raised here, and a reminder that the road ran both ways: the same circuits that brought comedy to Fort Wayne carried at least one Fort Wayne-raised comic away on them.
Sources:
- Oscar Thompson, Debussy, Man and Artist, as excerpted at debussysparis.com — Edward "General Lavine" La Vine: born New York City, 1879; taken to Fort Wayne as a child; the electrical-factory job at fourteen; the runaway start; the Orpheum circuit act; Debussy's prelude.
- Claude Debussy, Préludes, Book 2 (1913) — "Général Lavine — excentrique," the act's permanent record.