Did People Really Do This?

Or is it something that only happens in the movies? Sometimes especially in an older film set in the past, they may show a performer doing their act, like in the vaudeville era, up on a stage in a theater. If their act really sucks, then people in the audience start to throw vegetables and garbage at the stage. Did that sort of stuff really happen? I ask because it seems so ridiculous. I mean, did people actually come to the theater already carrying a bag of garbage with the hopes they could throw it around? Didn't the theater owners try to stop it from happening? Couldn't you get arrested for doing something like that?

• A version of that still happens at the Apollo Theater. The crowd demands and end to the act and a guy with a cane comes out and literally chases them off the stage.

• I always bring rotten vegetables with me to live performances just in case.

• I just open my legs and the stench clears the room.

  Cheryl

• I'd guess stuff that is sold at sports venues like bottles, or hot dogs being thrown around in the stadium when something displeases the audience can happen, but anything else? Highly unlikely in any era.

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• Yes, this type of insult was experienced by a lot of us 'decaying gays.' That's the life stage after, eldergay. I recall when I was appearing at the Susquehanna Theater in Scranton, PA, I had only performed two or three times before in Hoboken, I suddenly began to experience dry mouth; for my act, that was the worst possible thing to happen on stage. I was a young handsome sword swallower and I began to gag with only half of it down my throat. Dagger, I think that was his name, couldn't pull out of my throat. I swear they threw everything but the porcelain urinals at us on that stage. I think it was the first time I ever experience egg plant when it was snowing outside. You can read about it in my book, "How Did They Get Egg Plant in January." Copies are hard to find, Birds Eye bought all the copies they could find as they thought it besmirched innocent vegetables.

• Yes, in the vaudeville era people would do that. I don't think they went to the theater with the specific intent of just randomly throwing rotten fruit and veg, but if word got around that the show was a stinker, then they would definitely go armed and ready. Watch "Elmer Gantry" for a good example of this kind of audience reaction. Gantry had fallen off his pedestal in the eyes of the public, and they wanted him to know how they felt.

• yes, Elmer Gantry, R6. Thank you. I was trying to think of an example other than that singing frog cartoon.

• One of the Judy Garland bios recounted an incident where the Gumm Sisters got pelted with food during their vaudeville act.

• Today they just throw shade.

• DID IT REALLY HAPPEN? I'm still pulling bits of spinach and okra out of my cleavage from Victor, Victoria.

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• There's a scene in one of Mark Twain's books, probably "Huck Finn". A terrible troupe of actors comes to town, plays for several days, and on the last day they notice the audience coming into the theater smells of aged vegetables. So, they skip town with the box-office takings, and avoid the pelting. So apparently it did happen, but it was premeditated.

• Sure it was premeditated, R11. That was part of the fun for the audience. If the show got bad word of mouth, they would attend in droves and up the entertainment factor with a little garbage-tossing.

• I assumed that the concept came from performing in the marketplace where the stage was at one end of the square and vendors selling produce was at the other end. In the middle of the square was the stake where they burned witches and the stockade where bad boys would be buttfucked in the dark of the night.

• R5 thinks he's funny. Isn't that sad for the poor old fella?

• I encouraged them to bring rotten eggs

  Tristan%20Tzara

• I wish throwing rotten food at a bad performer would make a comeback. It sounds like a lot of fun. I'd certainly be willing to bring some perishable missiles to a live performance.

• Gay men have been bringing fish to Mamma Mia for years.

• My god, R5. Dementia is a terrible disease. Did you really spend time crafting that inane dreck, thinking it was funny?