Smith and Dale

Smith and Dale were a well-known vaudeville duo who performed together for over seventy years. Joe Smith was born as Joseph Sultzer on February 16, 1884 and Charlie Dale was born as Charles Marks on September 6, 1881. Both men were born in New York City. They met in December of 1898 after getting in an accident while riding bicycles. Both boys had rented bikes from the same shop and they brought they bikes back to the shop bickering with each other all the way. The shop owner told them that they reminded him of Weber and Fields, and that the two should perform together. The two began to sing and dance in the saloons of the Bowery, performing first in black-face. Their names became Smith and Dale when they found a printer who had made up calling cards for a vaudeville act of that name who had subsequently declined to pay for the cards. Smith and Dale got a deal on the cards and their show names, and real names, were changed forever.

In 1900, they joined the Imperial Vaudeville and Comedy Company, which played in the Catskills. After a few years, they returned to New York and began performing with two new partners, Will Lester and Jack Coleman, who were working as singing waiters at the Avon Care on 116th St. Using the name of the saloon, the four became known as The Avon Comedy Four. One of their first sketches was based off of a sketch perfected by Smith and Dale, The New Schoolteacher . The Avon Comedy Four would play on different iterations of altercations at a school. Lester and Coleman were later replaced by Irving Kaufman and Harry Goodwin. In 1914, The Avon Comedy Four headlined the first all-American bill at London's Finsbury Park Empire. In 1916, the group added a restaurant sketch, with Smith playing the chef who feigns illness when he gets too many orders. Kaufman left The Avon Comedy Four in 1919 and was replaced by Dale's brother Lew. The quartet ended soon after and Smith and Dale continued as a duo. They developed the new sketch, Dr. Kronkheit, which became one of their most famous and long lasting sketches.

In 1929, Paramount did a film short The False Alarm Fire Company that was based off of the Smith and Dale sketch Battery to the Bronx that first debuted in 1925. The sketch opens with a song, Canal Street, and then moved into a scene in the office of lawyer U. R. Struck (played by Dale) and then to Harlem which Smith and Dale placed two firemen who were too busy playing cards to attend a fire.

Aside from vaudeville, the pair appeared in a number of reviews and in several short films and three features, including Manhattan Parade (1931), The Heart of New York (1932) and Two Tickets to Broadway (1951). Additionally, they made frequent television appearances, and participated in the Judy Garland show at the Palace, which opened on October 16, 1951. In their later years, Smith and Dale both became residents of the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey. Dale died in 1971. Smith kept on making appearances and performing comedy, including many recordings for Dial-a-Joke, until his death ten years later in 1981.

From the guide to the Smith and Dale papers, additions, 1898-1987, 1920-1978, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)