Junie McCree: Vaudeville Scribe

Junie McCree (born Gonzalvo Macrillo this day in 1866) earned a good living writing jokes, sketches and song lyrics for other vaudevillians, and performing on variety, vaudeville, burlesque and musical comedy stages himself. He first made his name on the stages of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and moved to New York sometime before the turn of the century. In his later years he was very much involved with the White Rats, the vaudeville performers union, becoming its president in 1912. He passed away in 1918. The song referenced above is one of his better known. It appears in at least eight Hollywood movies, including Coney Island, Louisiana Hayride, and In the Good Old Summertime.

To find out more about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.