If you ever find yourself in Circleville, Ohio, look for a small storefront on Main Street called the Ted Lewis Museum. Then go in and have a look around to learn about the city’s most famous son who happened to be one of the great entertainers of the early 20th century.
We visited a few Saturdays ago while out enjoying a quiet day of book and ice cream consumption. The museum is free so we decided to venture in. I knew of Ted Lewis because there’s also a city park named in his honor and had looked him up once.
He was a Vaudeville performer who had been on Ed Sullivan at least once and he was the son of Jewish parents whose Friedman’s Bazaar supplies local women the latest fashions.
That’s the end of what I knew.
Adah, Ted’s beloved wife of 56 years, opened this museum in 1977 after his death from lung failure in 1971. Let’s stop here for a moment. This museum has existed in the same location since about two months before I was born. In other words, it has been there for my entire life and it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago I finally made my way there. This, friends, is a common predicament for local attractions because people just don’t think to visit the places close to home.
But I digress.
Who was Ted Lewis?
Well, he was a bandleader, a singer, a musician and one of the great Vaudevillian performers. He was funny and he’s said to be one of the first northern musicians to emulate the New Orleans Jazz style that was so popular when he was beginning his career in the 1910’s.
As a boy, he ran away with an old time medicine show so he could play clarinet to draw a crowd for the show. His father tracked him down in Chillicothe, a city several miles south of Circleville, and brought him home. His parents enrolled him in business college in Columbus but his job in a music store led to him joining the Vaudeville circuit.
From there, he was playing clubs in New York City, traveling the world, recording his music, making movies, then making television guest spots and more. No matter where he went, the museum docent said he never failed to mention his hometown which he called “The Capital of the World.” In fact, he remembered his hometown in other ways too, donating land for a city parking which opened in 1941 and then continued raising money to pay for its upkeep and expansion for the remainder of his life. He raised money for the hospital too. He and his wife made semi-annual visits to the city’s famed Pumpkin Show and he even celebrated his 80th birthday with a big party in 1970.
The museum has his musical instruments, tux, top hat, movie posters, records, furniture, and memorabilia. If you’re willing to stand and read some things on the wall, you’ll find some rich stories from his early life and career. There’s a small theater in the back with films playing from some of his appearances. We saw a charming performance from Ed Sullivan’s Toast Of The Town when we were there.
As we watched this performance, I got to thinking about how generously Ed Sullivan celebrated the old Vaudevillians, many of whom didn’t make the transition from stage to film or recording as well as Ted Lewis was able to do. I was also thinking about how quaint or perhaps hokie his brand of entertainment must seem to kids today. Yet, this is what real talent looks like. Long before auto tuning, Artificial Intelligence and whatever else they’ve used for the last fifty years to make people who aren’t that good sound like superstars, there were people like Ted Lewis who actually needed talent to survive on stage night after night. He knew how to entertain but, more importantly, he knew how to engage and delight an audience.
How fabulous.
His tag line that endured his entire career asked a very simple question: Is Everybody Happy?
I certainly was happy after spending some time in Ted Lewis’ world. If you get a chance, I recommend dropping by as well. The Ted Lewis Museum has a nice website with a lot more of his life story. Check them out for his story and for museum information.
Also, catch a glimpse of Ted’s talent and charm in this video clip!
