Antonio Pastor (May 28, 1837 – August 26, 1908) was an American impresario, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind American vaudeville in the mid-to-late-nineteenth century. He was sometimes referred to as the "Dean of Vaudeville". The strongest elements of his entertainments were an almost-jingoistic brand of United States patriotism and a strong commitment to attracting a "mixed-gender" audience, the latter being something revolutionary in the male-oriented variety halls of the mid-century. Although he was a performer and producer, Pastor is best known for "cleaning up" bawdy variety acts and presenting a clean and family-friendly genre called vaudeville.
A collection of his papers is maintained at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin, and in the archives of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Life and career
Family
Antonio Pastor, father of Tony, was a fruit-seller, barber, and violinist from Spain. His family was reputed by contemporaries to be "of gypsy blood". He met his future wife, Cornelia Buckley, who was from New Haven, Connecticut, after he came to New York. They then lived in Manhattan. Their third child, and first son, also named Antonio Pastor, was born in Manhattan in 1837 at his parents' residence at 400 Greenwich Street, in what is now the financial district of lower Manhattan. He had a taste for entertaining when he was young, producing his own plays in the basement of his family's home.
Early career
In 1846, Pastor embarked on a career in show business. He obtained a job singing at P.T. Barnum's Scudder's American Museum where he brought his riding, tumbling, and mimicry skills to performances.
During the next few years he worked in minstrel shows, where he often performed scenes in blackface. Pastor became a celebrated singing clown at a time when circus performances typically concluded with a variety revue. He established himself as a popular singer and songwriter during a four-year run at Robert Butler's American Music Hall, a variety theater located at 444 Broadway in what is now called Soho, but was then the heart of the lower Manhattan theater district. Pastor published "songsters", books of his lyrics which were sung to popular tunes. The music had no notation, as it was assumed that the audience had a collective knowledge of popular song. The subject matter of his music was intended to be bawdy and humorous.
left|thumb|225px|Tony Pastor and [[Bonnie Thornton, 1897]]
Pastor sang for the Union cause throughout the Civil War, then started his own variety show which went on tour for around five months before settling in New York City. In order to do this, Pastor sought out to make vaudeville "respectable". He did not sell liquor in his theatre and required a level of decency to his performances which encouraged women and families to attend.
In the musical Hello, Dolly!, the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" includes the line, "We'll join the Astors at Tony Pastor's". It also references seeing "the shows at Delmonico's", which suggests that the character does not really know about upper-class social life in New York.
Death
Tony Pastor died in Elmhurst, Queens County, New York, on August 26, 1908, and was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. He was 71, and though greatly mourned at his death as one of the last gentlemen of the early vaudeville halls, the medium had passed him by with the advent of the vaudeville circuit in the 1880s. Pastor had remained a local showman in an epoch that increasingly came to be dominated by regional and national chains. Fighting against the monopolies for the rights of individual local showmen was an undertaking that marked the last years of his life, earning him the nickname of "Little Man Tony".
Afterpieces
Throughout the 1880s, Pastor's performances often had an afterpiece following it. They played a major role in his shows, often written in the final act of the program. The afterpieces were written by a group of regular writers, and sometimes Pastor himself. They lasted anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour.