If vaudeville is all but extinct, it has, at least, a reservation in Britain, a sort of sanctuary for the vanishing boffolo, where variety acts by the dozen still command high prices and audiences queue up in multiple thousands. Strung out along a seven-mile waterfront promenade, Lancashire's Blackpool could well be called the world's foremost indoor resort. The salt air that attracts so many Britons to the edge of the Irish Sea is so often filled with raindrops that all comers are driven inside to watch everything from burlesque with pratfalls to...
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