The annual yearbooks published by NVA (National Vaudeville Artists), provide some of the most intriguing and rare information in the American Theatre Architecture Archives collection. 

One of many unions designed to provide steady streams of entertainers across broad theatre circuits, and to protect the rights of performers and managers, the NVA annual publication features page after page of advertisements and descriptions of the year’s most popular acts. 

Edward F. Albee describes the business and union side of vaudeville in his essay “Twenty Years of Vaudeville,” originally published in Variety  magazine in 1923, and excepted below

In twenty years there has gradually come about the present era of good feeling between artists and managers. The organization of the National Vaudeville Artists-an independent body of 15,000 men and women to represent the player as against the manager-organized in the Vaudeville Mangers’ Protective Association, has resulted in eliminating many petty abuses, has placed the humblest artist in as strong a position for enforcing right and just treatment as the headliner, and has instituted and maintained a reign of justice and square dealing throughout vaudeville.

Vaudeville has decidedly changed for the better in twenty years. What makes me happiest is the new concept of mutual interdependence and responsibility between artists and managers. The artists have an equal voice with the managers in stating the terms and conditions of their employment and both sides realize that the square deal works out best for everybody. The arbitration board that takes up matters at issue in vaudeville is no longer busy, for disputes are growing fewer and fewer, the organization of the artists on one side and the managers on the other having almost automatically brought about harmony and contentment. Unfailing politeness and courtesy to the public is the first rule impressed upon all employees. Patrons are invited to criticize and make suggestions. We make the vaudeville theatre a part of community life.

(credit: American Theatre Architecture Archive, Theatre Historical Society of America)