This paper discusses the emergence of vaudeville in California’s Inland Empire region of San Bernardino and Riverside counties. It will consider the social changes underway in late nineteenth-century America and their impact on attitudes towards popular entertainment. This paper will draw on Lawrence Levine’s observations of cultural hierarchies that emerged during the late nineteenth century and shaped American understandings of culture. Entertainment of the nineteenth century will be examined for the ways it was unable to match urban trends, and contrasted with vaudeville’s appeal to a diverse urban populace. The cities of San Bernardino, Redlands and Riverside were home to a number of opera houses and theaters to serve rapidly growing communities, and a review of the performances offered in these communities and at these venues will demonstrate these shifts in popular entertainment.

In the early days of the twentieth century when vaudeville was the most popular theatrical entertainment in America, there were a number of female singers who became its star performers. In the process of conducting preliminary research for a dissertation topic on female singers of this era, it quickly became evident that while much has been written about opera singers of that era, only limited material was available on female vaudeville singers. Furthermore, the small amount of information which was available was so randomly scattered among various sources that it was difficult to perceive a composite picture of these performers.The purpose of this investigation into the musical styles and repertoire of three great female singer-comediennes of early vaudeville--Eva Tanguay, Nora Bayes and Sophie Tucker--is to determine what the reasons were for their tremendous popularity. Because vaudeville was the prime source of entertainment before the days of mass media, the American public was quick to make stars of many of its performers. This study seeks to ascertain what it was about thesewomen's particular musical styles, repertoire and personalities which made them so interesting and caused the public to make them vaudeville stars. Though there are certainly other female singers of this period which are also of interest:, these three were chosen because they were unique.This study is presented as a series of articles with separate chapters devoted to Eva Tanguay, Nora Bayes and Sophie Tucker as individuals. These chapters include biographical material, especially from books about vaudeville performers, and also explore critical reviews and other reports on their work from such sources as "Variety," "Theatre Magazine," and various newspaper accounts. Analysis of these sources on each individual within the chapters is included as well. The final chapter contains a summary of the research and a discussion of what conclusions were reached about the musical styles and repertoire of Eva Tanguay, Nora Bayes and Sophie Tucker as a result of this investigation.In addition to discovering the reasons for these performers' popularity and appeal, it is hoped that a viable by-product of this research has been to arouse renewed public interest in these three fascinating ladies of early vaudeville.

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