Photo Vault: Vaudevillian Jiu-Jitsu

For today’s Photo Vault entry we are traveling back to the early 1900s with an image that captures both the art of Vaudeville and juijitsu.

The above image was taken by Alexander Bassano and was originally published in the magazine Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ) in 1907. It shows French Vaudeville star Gaby Deslys in a “dancing pose of juijitsu”.

In our vault we have a second image from Bassano’s photo shoot with Deslys. You can see that below:

Vaudeville was one of the most popular forms of entertainment between the 1880s and 1930s.