Publisher's Synopsis
Leaving his hometown of Viroqua, Wisconsin, to travel with a medicine show, twelve-year-old Henry Wood became hooked on show business. He joined a traveling theater troupe, and leading lady Clarabelle Fendell helped the boy become "Jack," a gentleman and vaudeville performer, so transformed that he was barely recognized by his own mother when he returned home.
Wood spent the years 1910-1941 in traveling medicine and tent shows that featured a variety of vaudeville acts, from skits to full-length dramatic plays. Whether recalling his experiences skydiving from hot-air balloons, serving in the air force, or being accosted by angry theatergoers unable to distinguish him from the villains he portrayed on stage, Wood's story paints a lively and vivid picture.
While most books on this period of American theater history focus on major names in vaudeville and the entertainment industry, A Sawdust Heart shows what it was like for the real show-business workers and the performers who never made it big but eked out a living doing what they loved on minor stages across America.
Introduced by Wood's grandson-in-law Michael Fedo with a concise history of these traveling shows, A Sawdust Heart is an amusing read for anyone interested in early-twentieth-century rural America.