Bert Levy

Bert Levy – Australia's first global Vaudeville star

  • Bert’s ‘on stage’ performance

    There are many descriptions of Bert’s Vaudeville act, however this one in the Melbourne Age of 1911 is one of the clearest. The device Bert used to project his images was of his own making and perhaps Bert should also be credited with being the inventor of the overhead projector ?
    April 1, 1907 Los Angeles Herald describes the apparatus and its later commercial application.
    Bert was very protective of its workings in order to prevent rival sketch artists from copying.
    1921 article above. Variety magazine There were a number of attempted imitations and as he became well known on Vaudeville, theatre managers refused to book these acts.
    An early sketch of Bert at work. The projection onto a large screen was something very novel on the Vaudeville scene. (sketch not by Bert) Source: 1908 San Francisco Call June 15 1908 Page 14 Sketch

  • Bert Levy Bio Note # 5

    In the Lone Hand Magazine article of 1912 again, Bert continues his description of his early career missteps. His second job as a pawn broker (probably around the age of 16 -17 ?) was a little more colourful than an eyelet machine, however it ended pretty much the same way. Joshua Langley had married Bert’s older sister Matilda and the Pawn shop was in Bourke Street.

    Matilda (Tilly) was 7 years older (b. 1864) than Bert and had been born in White Chapel, London just as Bert’s father Simon embarked for Port Phillip. The Argus below published Matilda’s and Joshua’s wedding notification in 1883. (Trove) They had two children that survived to adulthood, Mena (Minnie) & Emma (Elsie) and they lived at 179 Elizabeth Street in the 1880s. Joshua’s real name was Ottolangui and he was 16 years older than Matilda. He died in 1909, Matilda 26 years later in 1935.

    We read in the Melbourne Herald on Sept 6, 1888 (after Bert’s departure from pawn broking) that his artistic ticket writing may have still have been causing Joshua trouble some years later. (see price of Waltham watch in Bert’s piece above)

  • Bert was quick to recognise talent in a fellow artist….

    Advertisement for Broadway Theatre on May 22, 1910 in the New York Sun newspaper. An evening at Vaudeville usually involved 7-8 different acts each usually given a 10 to 12 minute time slot to entertain.
    This week at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre Bert and another young performer played minor billing to the original Adele, singer Adele Ritchie. This Billboard Magazine review of June 4 covers part of the evening with Bert opening his act declaring………
    Bert was only too quick to acknowledge the young 24 year old Al Jolson’s talent. In 1910 Jolson had just split up from performing with his brother Harry and would not make a success of Vaudeville until the following year when he started at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City.
    The same Billboard review continues — Bert was right on a couple of facts above. Al Jolson was Jewish, his name wasn’t Issacs however, he was born Asa Yoelson in Russia in 1886. Al was married, however there were certainly no children in June 1910. Jolson married 4 times, had no children of his own, however, he did adopt 3 children with two of the wives.  

    Wikipedia informs Jolson was referred to by modern critics as “the king of blackface performers”. With his dynamic style of singing jazz and blues, he became widely successful by extracting traditionally African-American music and popularizing it for white American audiences who would be unwilling to listen to it when performed by black artists. Wanting to know more on Jolson – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jolson

  • other friendships

    Bert started performing in Vaudeville for Keith’s Theatre in 1907 and Mark Twain died in 1910, so this encounter and journey took place sometime between.

    Lone Hand Magazine Feb 1912

    Bert would have been a young man (24) hauling buckets of paint as a scenic artist when Mark Twain visited Australia in 1895-96. Twain gave orations in the largest theatre houses in both Sydney & Melbourne.

    he remarked on Australia –

    “Australian history … does not read like history, but the most beautiful of lies”.

    “Sydney harbour was superbly beautiful”. “God made the harbour … but Satan made Sydney”.

    Twain travelled down to Melbourne by rail.

    His comments about disembarking in the “biting cold at night” in Albury, to change trains, a usual requirement until the standard-gauge rail line was installed from Sydney to Melbourne in the 1960s, are succinct.

    “Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth.”

    He described “the Melbourne Cup as the Australian National Day”

    Bert’s sketch of a fellow traveller who was on their voyage to San Francisco in 1904, Sydney businessman Frank Coffee. https://abc17603.wordpress.com/history/people/coffee/
    Twain on board the SS Warrimoo bound for Sydney (Faulk, Sydney)

  • Bert Levy Bio Note #4

    Bert’s schooling ended abruptly, probably at the age of 13 or 14 around 1884 -1885. Most sons at that time would have been expected to work in their father’s business. Bert describes his first job in the Lone Hand Magazine of 1912.

    Lone Hand Magazine February 1912

    From a newspaper report of 1883, we know Simon Levy (Bert’s father) had established a boot factory in industrial West Melbourne. (19 Howard Street according to a West Melbourne Heritage Review. Melb City Council)

    That industrial action mentioned by Bert rolled on for nearly a decade after 1883 with Mr W. Trenwith and the Boot making union campaigning to end the use of ‘sweating’ where employers hired non skilled and non-union labour at much reduced rates. The term obviously referring to ‘sweat shops’. Simon Levy’s factory may have been in the firing line early in the dispute in 1883 however, it is not mentioned again in the Melbourne press. The focus of the strike action switched to Richmond and Collingwood boot operations and either the Levy Boot making operations came into line with union demands and banned sweating or there were bigger players that needed attention.

    Ballarat Courrier report

    In moving from Ballarat in 1875, Simon Levy may have initially started boot making in Melbourne at 59-63 Cardigan Street, Carlton. Sands & McDougall Trade Directory lists Simon Levy, a boot maker at this address in 1880. There are a number of references in local and Jewish newspapers of the Levy children winning prizes etc and living in Carlton in the 1880s, possibly in Cardigan Street, however we do know the family later moved to a terrace house at No. 32 Story Street, Parkville.

    Number 32 Story Street, Parkville (left) behind the tree. (Number 34 has the lights on) Thanks to neighbour ‘Thornie’ (@No.36) for supplying photo. Finally, in Bio note #4 a photo of Bert’s father, Simon.

    Final paragraph of Bert’s piece in the Lone Hand Magazine in 1912. Bert’s father had passed away in 1904 not long after he had left for America. This was his first visit home to Australia in 8 years.

  • good friend to the biggest star of the era

    The photo and caption above appeared in Melbourne’s ‘Table Talk’ theatre newspaper in 1930. It was one of the very few photos and images of Bert Levy that appeared on the internet when I first started researching Bert life early this year. Bert’s friendship with Charlie Chaplin certainly predates this, as the following clip shows.
    This photo and article was published in Melbourne’s short lived ‘The Winner’ newspaper (1914-1917) in May 1917. Link below. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/154549675?searchTerm=Chaplin%20and%20bert%20levy

    Their friendship may have gone back to Bert’s early touring of London which started 1908 when Chaplin was first appearing on the Vaudeville stage. Chaplin did not go to America till early 1914 to work for Keystone Studios. Below, Bert writes of their friendship and Chaplin’s character in a Hollywood Filmograph in 1929 (link below for larger copy) The sketches of Chaplin again demonstrate Bert’s skill of caricature.

    Their friendship and collaboration on projects seems to have lasted an incredible length of time by Hollywood standards as we read in another Hollywood tabloid ‘The Legitimate’ in May 14 1930. Bert did release a book in 1921, however there is no evidence of another book ‘Twenty years Around the World with an Entertainer’ in the 1930s. Given the reference in the final paragraph in the article there may have been a stumbling block with the publishers. I’m unsure at this stage what Bert needed to tone down? Others who follow the blog may have insight.

  • artist to the stars

    Bert’s black and white sketches of Hollywood’s leading artists would have numbered in the hundreds. Most would have been used in theatre or movie promotion, many would have been sold at charity events or given away. However, I’m yet to find what happened to his collection on his (1934) or his wife’s death (1945). There were no children to inherit his work and family on both sides of the marriage resided a long way away in Australia. Maybe a family member is in the know !

    Actor and artist Bert Levy, sketching Joan Crawford, 1925.

    Original Vintage Art Deco Ink Drawing of Joan Crawford “Criterion” by Bert Levy completed in 1933
    1927 Exhibitors Herald
    Even Movie Directors posed for Bert. Clarence Brown’s films gained a total of 38 Academy Award nominations and earned nine Oscars.  He holds the record for most nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director without a win, with six.

  • Bert Levy Bio note #3

    Bert’s family moved to Melbourne in 1875. Bert was 4. In his own words again in the ‘Lone Hand’ Magazine in 1912 he described his school days.

    Interesting, two of Bert’s brothers became successful bookmakers on the Kalgoorlie gold fields in the early 1900s. (I’ll cover them later in the blog)
    Here is Bert’s headmaster Joel Fredman. His biography states he attended the Melbourne Hebrew School, behind the Bourke Street synagogue. He was Dux of school 1875 and passed matriculation and public service exams 1876. He became a pupil teacher, teacher (1878) then headmaster (1883 – 1886). Bert would have been 12-15 years of age when Joel Fredman was headmaster.
    A photo from the State Library of Victoria shows the beautiful Bourke Street Synagogue at 472 Bourke Street, which first was erected in 1847, with a seating capacity of 100 and was enlarged and completed in 1854/55. Charles Webb was the architect. The fire station and tower can be seen in background which was in Little Bourke Street next to the Hebrew School. The Synagogue was on the north east corner of Bourke Street between Queen and William Streets. Next door was St. Patrick’s Hall. Both buildings are gone with the Synagogue demolished in 1929. The Oddfellow’s Hall mentioned by Bert was a grand building on the corner of Victoria and Russell streets and as expected is no longer with us.
    Daniel Bowen, a Melbourne blogger’s photo shows there still some evidence the Synagogue on Bourke street existed. He quotes, ‘In 1868 the name of Synagogue Lane was changed to Little Queen Street because the former name ‘has unfortunately acquired a notoriety’. A quote in the 1869 Colonial Monthly, describes the area:
    ‘The blackest sheep of all the flock make their home here. It is dangerous to pass through the place in daylight, unattended, and open robberies have been committed at noonday’. N.B, no association between the Jewish community of Melbourne at the time and the referenced ‘black sheep’ fraternity is implied. I have a feeling my forebears hanging out at St. Patrick’s hall were probably more likely suspects. This name change took place before Bert was born and dozen years before he attended the school, so he is off the hook, for the moment.

  • Dangers of Ragtime

    Report in Punch (Melbourne) from an American paper 1913. In scenes reminiscent of a Marx Bros movie, Bert describes dining in New York. Twenty years later Bert would sketch two scenes for Paramount Pictures for the launch of their new movie, Duck Soup in 1933. The Marx Bros were a New York Jewish family who started out in Vaudeville around the same time as Bert in 1907. The two elder brothers Groucho & Gummo were joined on stage by performer Mabel O’Donell for a singing trio known as ‘The Three Nightingales’ managed by the boy’s mother Minnie Marx. I’m yet to discover whether Bert & the Marx Bros. ever performed on the same bill.

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/176034238?searchTerm=Greenroom%20gossip%20bert%20levy
    Paramount Pictures sketch by Bert Levy Jun 1933

  • Bert Levy bio fact #2

    One final reference to Bert’s birth place. The Levy family were certainly in Ballarat in 1870 and may have likely been there for at least a couple of years. Prior to Bert’s birth in 1871 his parent’s new boot making business possibly had a perilous beginning. The first reference to Simon Levy (Bert’s father) in the Ballarat newspapers is a reference to the Geelong Insolvent’s Court in May 1870 when he and a number of other Ballarat business people are mentioned.

    We know the boot making took place in Armstrong street North from the above 1872 Ballarat Star advertisement. Street numbers have changed over the years so the exact location of the Levy business is unknown.

    The family fortunes were not helped by the following natural disaster.

    Bert’s older sister Sarah (born in 1869) would have been that baby in the cradle that went sailing around the floor of the bedroom. The flood was certainly bad as we read in The Ballarat Courier’s report.

    The flood had further ramifications on Bert’s family. Bert’s older brother (by 20 years) Joseph would also fall on harsh times in the metropolis.