Mae West, Sarah Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore and Helen Keller are perhaps among the best known women to appear on vaudeville stages. Each came to vaudeville by a different path with a different offering, as did all of the performers detailed in this book. Mae West entered vaudeville with a song and dance routine when she was 13 years old and went on to a stellar career in movies, radio, nightclubs, recording and comedy. Occasionally the great dramatic actress Ethel Barrymore dropped in to the Palace Theatre to present one-act plays. Dramatist Sarah Bernhardt was being celebrated by the British for her fifty years on the dramatic stage when she agreed to appear in the U.S. Helen Keller appeared on the stages of first-class vaudeville houses with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, telling about how she overcame the handicaps of blindness and deafness. This book tells the stories of 80 women who were among the top vaudeville acts in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when entertainment was often live variety shows in theatres across the country.