Vander Clyde Broadway, aka Barbette

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh. This one's been on my list for a while. It was actually sent to me a while back by my friends Amanda and Christina, and it finally made it to the top of the rotation because I finally got some time to seek out some reading material around it. This is Vander Barbett, who you will see as different names. He went by a few different names in his life, but Barbette is the one that he got famous with. He was a female impersonator originally from Texas who became the toast of Paris in the nineteen twenties. But of course that's kind of only a small portion of the story. Barbette is an example of someone who played really artfully with ideas of sex and gender, and sometimes that performance was lauded for its brillian Sometimes it was not so welcomed, but his reputation for excellence enabled him to continue his career well after he was done performing. So we are going to talk about him today. As a brief heads up, there is a mention of death by suicide late in this episode. So Vander Clyde Broadway was born on December nineteenth, but the year is a little less clear. Earliest year that comes up is eighteen ninety seven, and then just about every year between then and nineteen oh four has come up in various accounts. His parents were Henry and Hattie Wilson Broadway. He was born in Trickham, Texas, which is in Coleman County, about one hundred and eighty miles southwest of Dallas one hundred and fifty miles northwest of Austin. Henry died when Vander was still a baby, possibly even before he was born, and then Hattie moved around a bit after that. She lived with relatives while earning money as a milliner, then moved to Williamson County when she remarried. That was to a man named Samuel C. Loving. Hattie and Samuel had five children together, and Vander took the last name Loving after they got married. I feel like I should say he took a lot of last names. I'm not sure he legally ever changed his name, but he did go buy a few different names, and when he was still a boy, Vander and his mother at one point went to the circus while it was in Austin, Texas, and Vander was completely entranced by it. He decided after seeing that that he wanted to be a performer, and specifically an aerialist, so he started to test out and then develop his skills by walking on his mother's clothes line, or, if you believe some lore, on the narrow rails of the railroad tracks nearby. He also just went to the circus as often as he could, and to pay for his tickets, he took field work, mostly during the summers, and specifically picking cotton. If you've ever picked cotton, that is grueling. So he really wanted circus money. He wanted to quit school and just run away and join the circus, but his mother would not allow it. She made it clear that he had to graduate before he could leave home or do any such thing. His eagerness led him to double up on classes, and he finished high school at the age of fourteen through the Round Rock Institute, which at the time was an offshoot of Round Rock High School. Fourteen is pretty young, but this school only went up to tenth grade at the time. Perhaps more impressive is that despite taking on a heavier workload. Vander also graduated valedictorian of his class. He later said of this pretty hasty education quote, the chief thing I regretted not going on with was Latin. I'd had only two years of it. Once he had completed his education, Vander wasted no time searching for an opportunity to make his dreams come true, and when he saw an opening advertised for an aerialist with the Alfaretta Sisters, he jumped on it. That audition was more than one hundred twenty miles away in San Antonio, but Vander got there and was hired. The Alpharetta sisters were billed as world famous aerial queens, and that meant that Vander was going to have to dress as a girl. He was told it was more dramatic for women to do wire acts, and he was fine with taking on that stage persona, and so his performing career began. Vander was replacing one of the two sisters who had died, which may have been the real reason he was asked to perform in disguise, kind of like we want the act to go on as it has already been. After working as an Alpharetta, Vander started appearing with Erford's whirling sensations. This is a style of act you've probably seen before. It involves several performers, in this case three holding on to a twirling ring by their teeth, which to me is one of the most terrifying possibilities of all time. In the case of the Erfords, they also dressed as butterflies for part of the act, so it looked like several butterflies spinning through the air. There was an other act that Vander had in mind early in his performing career, and it was one that played with the idea of performative gender. This was a solo act which debuted at the Harlem Opera House in nineteen nineteen. He would start out in the guise of a woman, but once he had finished dazzling the audience with all of his aerial tricks, he would take off his wig and reveal himself to be a man. This became a real hallmark of his act for the rest of his performing career, although it changed and how he performed the reveal over the years. It was during this time that he also started using the name Barbette. This is sometimes described as a selection that he thought of as androgynists. But it's more that barbette could sound like a woman's first name or anyone's last name. Yeah, it does make it androgynist. But sometimes some people say because barbette is androgynists. I know. When I first read that, I was like, is it the But he intended it to potentially be a last name as well. He later stated that quote, I wanted an act that would be a thing of beauty. Of course, it would have to be a strange beauty. And part of the inspiration for this act, he later said, were the many instances of young men like actors disguising themselves as women to perform in the plays of Shakespeare when the writer was writing them. So those initial stagings at shakespeare plays where men played women were what he said, was what inspired this. Vander Clyde Broadway toured his act around Vaudeville in the early nineteen twenties, and we should mention that his big reveal aside, this act was considered very thrilling. He would frequently stage sort of near misses, making it appear as though he had fallen, but he always managed to catch himself and recover. Obviously, audiences found this just very gripping. In the early years, he'd take off his wing and show the audience that he was a man. As part of his bow, he would doff the wig in a way that a gentleman might normally raise his hat. Yeah. One of the things that I read over and over is about how in these falls he would look like he had fallen, and he would catch himself by one foot at like the last second. Again to me terrifying, but people loved it. The William Morris agency signed Vander and thought that his act might be a hit in Europe. So he was booked for shows in England and Paris and sent on tour, and the agency was absolutely right. Paris in particular loved the act, and Vander loved Paris. He later said, Paris was the experience. As soon as I got to my little hotel Maderne, near the Place de la Republique, I felt that I'd found my city in Paris. Barbette was initially booked at the Alhambra and from there went to Casino de Paris. He fell in with some socialite expats in the Paris art scene, and he met everyone from royalty to the tastemakers of the day. In July of nineteen twenty six, the periodical Nouvelle Revue Francaise featured an essay by Jean Cocteau titled The numer Barbette. This has come to be recognized is an important essay on art, and Barbette later stated that quote, But of course the most perceptive was Cocteau. He saw even more in the act than I had realized was there myself. Coctau made the case in this essay that Barbette's performance wasn't really impersonating a woman and then revealing himself to be a man, but that it was going from an extreme example of femininity and grace and then an extreme example of performative manliness, writing quote, imagine what a letdown it would be for some of us if, at the end of that unforgivable lie Barbette were simply to remove his wig. You will tell me that after the fifth curtain call he does just that, and the letdown takes place. There is even a murmur from the audience, and some people are embarrassed, in some blush. True, for after having succeeded as an acrobat in causing some people almost to faint, he now has to have his success as an actor, but watch his last tour de force. Simply to re become a man, to run the real backward is not enough. The truth itself must be translated if it is to convince us forcibly, as did the lie. That is why Barbette, the moment he has snatched off his wig, plays the part of a man, all of it to erase the fabulous, dying swan impression left by the act. Coctau wrote of the deception of Barbette's guise, using the dangerous backdrop of aerial stunts as an art comparable to poetry, rather than just some sort of gender stunt. He describes Barbett as reaching a sort of transcendent sex that is not part of the accepted binary of the day, but was the supernatural sex of beauty. Of course, even as this writing was quite unconventional for its time, it is based on outdated ideas of sex and gender, and critiques note that Cocteau is working with a binary idea of gender, even as he strives to say that Barbette is outside of that binary. And if you really want to dig into analysis of the essay, there's a great piece written by Chase Dimmick in twenty eleven titled The Surreal Sex of Beauty Jean Cocteaux and Manray's Le Numero Barbette, and that was published in As It Ought to Be magazine that will be linked in the show notes, and it's quite a good read. To accompany this essay, Coctau got visual artist Man Ray to take a series of portrait photographs of Vander becoming Barbette in preparation for a performance. The photos specifically include the artist in androgynist states, showing both masculine and feminine characteristics at once. The essay and accompanying photos have become an important work in queer studies, showing this gender fluidity in a way that celebrates it in the early twentieth century. So even though Vander Barbette, as he came to be known, identified as a man, he was also very willing and extremely good at crosses any gender lines that were set in place by social mores, and he did that in a way that audiences really embraced for the most part. Yeah, of course, this is a time way before the language of non binary gender existed as it does today. He might identify differently today, but that's sort of a matter of speculation. We're going to talk a little bit more about Barbett's act when we return from a sponsor break. We mentioned that Barbett's act as it had evolved, had really become one of gender extremes. So when he first appeared to the audience, he was essentially in full drag, often in a ball gown, fully accessorized with jewels and ostrich plumes, and after the athletic feats and stunts were completed, the fact that he was a man ended up being revealed, not as part of a bow but through a sort of stylized strip tease, as a former sat on a sofa that was included as part of the set and got undressed. Once it was shown that he was a man, Barbette would then flex and pose muscleman style for the audience, and then he would perform once again on the trapeze, no longer pretending to be a woman. While early audiences would have been surprised by the reveal, Barbett became pretty famous rather quickly, so it's safe to say that a lot of people were buying tickets for his show because of the appeal of watching him move from one gender expression to another, and this ability to glide between two genders was something that Cocteau described as frightening. Because he was so good at it, he was soon being billed as Barbette the Enigma, and he could command as much as two thousand dollars a show. As an aside, there was already a connection between disrobing and the trapeze. Around the same time that Vander was born, another performer, Lavery Velli, performing under the stage name Charmian, had started to disrobe why on the trapeze as part of her act. This was recorded to film in nineteen oh one by Thomas Edison and was released as the two minute movie Trapeze Disrobing Act. Charmian's career, in some ways followed the path that Barbette would take, finding a lot of success in Europe and vaudeville. She'd make a great episode, and if we can find enough information about her, we may want to do one at some point, but we want to make it clear that it wouldn't have been completely unheard of by the time Barbette had come along. For an aeralist to incorporate undressing as part of the act, Jean Cocteau's fascination that we mentioned with Barbette is legendary. As the aerialist and female impersonator traveled around Europe, Cocteau would write friends in the various cities the tour was headed to and encourage them to see the show, describing Barbette as a great actor and angel. Cocteaux also told friends how very smart Barbett was and that they should spend time with him, adding quote, you won't be wasting your time. The two men were romantically involved, at least briefly. Vander recounted to an interviewer later in life that they sometimes visited a brothel in Paris that showed pornographic films that included homosexual content, although he also said that Cocteau usually just spent the time critiquing the acting in them. As for other romantic partners, there are certainly indications that Barbette had relationships with other men, but he kept them entirely under wraps. We really don't know if there was ever anybody with whom he had like a serious, long term relationship. In nineteen thirty, Barbette appeared briefly in Cocteau's first film, Blood of a Poet. That project was bankrolled by the Viccombe Charles de Noai, who had given Coctaux one million francs to make it. The Vicomte also gave Salvador Dali and Louis Bonnoeil a million francs for their film project Laje d'Or. Both films were controversial bo kind of damaged Noa's reputation, and in the case of Blood of a Poet, the aristocrat and others made up an audience that was filmed in a theater chatting and applotting. They were going to be included in the film, but they did not know that the scene that they were applotting, which was filmed separately and then edited in, was a card game that concludes with one of the players dying by suicide. And it was because no I was so concerned about being part of it that the audience section was reshot and at that point Barbette was one of the audience members. Barbette later said of the filming quote, Cocteau told me that I was substituting for the vicomb test to no I, whom I knew, but neither he, nor she, nor anybody else told me why. Sitting in the box, I tried to imagine myself a descendant of the Marquis de Sade, of the Comtesse de Chevigne, who was one of Proust's models for his Duchesse de Guillemont, and of a long line of rich bankers, all of which the vicomtest was for a boy from Round Rock, Texas that demand a lot of concentration, at least as much as working on the wire. Barbette was also quite chagrined when he discovered what he was applauding in the film. He also had not been told what the other part of the scene was, but he didn't actually see the movie when it was released. That movie wasn't released for two years until nineteen thirty two, in part because of concerns about the content, and Barbette didn't learn of the gruesome aspect of it for several years. Barbette became a favorite at the Moulin Rouge and other high profile theaters in Paris, and Vander also toured the act throughout Europe, but he always felt like France was his home, and noted that he believed that having chosen a name that sounded French, had made French audiences kind of feel like he was one of their own. As he gained fame and was able to set rules and boundaries about his setups. One of the things that Barbett insisted on was that only two people were allowed to be in the wings during his performances at thea his maid on one side of the stage and the stage manager on the other. He also did have a second made to help the first because he had gotten to the point where his traveling wardrobe Filder reported twenty eight trunks, but made number two not allowed to be in the wings. Barbett was aware of how exacting and fastidious he was in his work in his life and later said quote, since those years in Paris, I've never been able to readjust to crudity. By the time Barbette returned as an act to the US in the late nineteen twenties, he was famous. A New York Times article about Barbette that was published on February eighth, nineteen twenty seven, opens with quote, the female impersonator known as Barbette, who some ten years ago might have been found opening or closing shows and the minor vaudeville houses with his wirewalking Specialties returned to the Palace yesterday after an interval abroad and registered what seemed to be an authentic success. That same write up goes on to praise Barbette's work, writing quote, Barbette does some really sensational stunts, not only on the slack wire, but also on the flying rings and trapezes. Particularly, did his ability to negotiate a cross between a summersault and complete revolution on the flying rings Yesterday and press one spectator usually anesthetic to the exploits of this sort. But in that same paper, just five days later, a very different review appeared. This one was written by New York Times theater critic Jay Brooks Atkinson as part of his survey of current theater events titled Songs, Dances and Costumes. One thing that's apparent in Atkinson's writing is that the gender bending nature of the show did not land well with him. Every single time he mentions Barbette by name, he puts the name in quotations with a question mark, and his review is scathing, primarily because he seems to feel he and the rest of the audience were duped into thinking that this act was some sort of high European culture Atkinson's review opens with quote when Barbette question Mark, the sensational European novelty slack wire walker at the Palace last week, removed a blonde wig after the fact and became awkwardly male, the gum chewing dame of the row in front exclaimed hotly, gone, ain't that awful. The review then details how daintily and beautifully Barbette performed in womanly attire, but how the woman who made the exclamation was responding to the letdown that in removing the wig, the performer quote became just a man. Atkinson points out that Broadway Pedance noted that Barbette was a small timer on the vaudeville circuit and now appeared back in the US having quote glazed his gymnastic exhibition with stylized hocum and in an a bit of a spe actually bad taste. The critic concludes by saying that if Barbett falls and breaks her neck, it would be quote a loss to the crowned nitwits of Europe. Atkinson would later become a well respected Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent, but in this one right up, he manages to insult Barbette and the gum chewing Woman and any European whoever found this act entertaining. So that's quite an accomplishment of insults. Yeah, I could talk about how long it took me to pick apart that review and figure out if he was really trying to be mean to everybody or not. I concluded he was. After we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going, we will talk about the end of Barbette's performing career and the new career that followed. In nineteen thirty eight, Barbette's performing career ended when he fell. Maybe his retreat from the trapeze and high wire acts that had made him so beloved in Europe and quite popular on the US vaudeville stage is sometimes reported as an accident, sometimes as an illness. There are other accounts that say that he fell and then caught pneumonia while convalescing. There is even speculation that the culprit may have been polio. The Texas State History Association states in its Barbett biography that Vander had been performing at the Lowe's State Vaudeville Theater in New York when he caught pneumonia. The version that Barbett gave decades later in his sixties, noted that though he had fallen on a number of occasions, those had not caused his career to end, but he had occasionally had to cancel shows. So his version supports this pneumonious story and the nineteen thirty eight date, although other years are listed in various sources. He stated that he had left the Low's State Theater hot and sweaty, had caught a chill when he walked out into the night air, and woke up the next morning unable to move. His bones and joints were, he said, deeply affected. It's entirely possible that his illness was made more severe by various injuries he had sustained over the years that he had just performed through. Yeah, you'll even see dates as early as nineteen thirty one as when he fell, and that was the cause. He probably did fall in nineteen thirty one at some point, and somebody has conflated them at some point, but he says it is pneumonia. But whatever the cause and whatever the moment, his act could not go on. Vander was rendered unable even to walk for a long time and had a long roadback from his illness, reportedly needing eighteen months of rehab, during which he needed to relearn how to walk. But even after that, the performer was plagued by pain pretty much for the rest of his life, and his body did not have the strength and agility required for the work that he had been doing for sixteen years. At that point, he had to sell off property that he owned in Texas. He later told reporters to pay for his extensive treatment. Once his performing career was over, Barbette moved back to Texas and another name change was made. From that point on, it seems like he went by the name Vander Barbett, presumably to make use of the name recognition that he had achieved as a performer. He did stay in entertainment, he worked as a choreographer and a consultant, so it makes sense that he would want to keep that Barbette. Yeah, so at that point, instead of just seeing him listed as Barbette, he's pretty much always Vander Barbett when you read about him in the paper. It was no longer a first name. Now it was his last. Barbette found work putting his expertise to use, first with the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, where he was the aerial and costume director. In June nineteen forty three, he was mentioned in the Washington D c. Paper Evening Star, not for his skills, though he is noted as the director of aerial ballet. Unfortunately, this particular bit of news was about him and a one hundred and fifty other people with the circus. It was about one tenth of their full staff getting food poisoning after eating a late afternoon meal a filet of soul and chicken salad with mayonnaise. UH nineteen forty eight write up in the San Francisco Examiner was written by Paul Gallico and mentions the astounding artistry often found at a circus that goes unappreciated by many attendees. Galico's article mentions Barbette only in passing writing quote. A matinee audience of grown ups and children were thrilling to and obviously enjoying the work of the fabulous Alzanos on the high wire. But as I stood down in the arena with Vander Barbett, director of the Aerial Ballets, watching Harold Alzana balanced on the wire beneath the garden roof without aid of a balancing pole or safety net. I wanted them to enjoy and appreciate it. Still more, I thought they ought to be on their feet, cheering and shouting because they were witnessing one of the great living athletes of the world. While Paul Gallico may have admired and appreciated the work of the performers, this is such a great distance from the way that Barbette had been written about twenty years earlier as an artist who transcended known labels to become something new. Barbette later moved to the Cole Brothers Circus in the late nineteen forties. An April nineteen forty nine article about the circus preparing for its opening mentioned Barbette for his great style. Quote, in contrast with the general dishevelment of the practicing personnel, was the immaculate Vander Barbett wearing a Hollywood beret and directing the aerial ensembles in a rehearsal. Then just a couple months later, in July, Barbett gave a quote to a reporter about the Cole Brothers Circus and its emphasis on beauty, which was touted in the headline of the article. The opening line of this article includes the unfortunate quote, which reads, quote It's just as easy to train pretty girls for circus work as it is to work with those whose physical attractions are negligible. This article then goes on to say that vander Barbett is known as a quote famous international trainer of circus girls for aerial work. The act that he designed for the Cole brother Circus included two dozen performers dressed as moths and included spinning while hanging by their teeth. That's an act that sounds very much like the show that he did with Erford's Whirling Sensations in the nineteen teens. While he was working with various circuses, Barbette also found work in theater and film. In nineteen forty six, he was hired to stage a circus finale in Around the World. That was a musical theater project written by Orson Wells with music by Cole Porter. The play was based on Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days. This has so many names together that make it seem like something I should have recogniz It's already no. It only ran for seventy five days, Okay, it wasn't super well reviewed, And to make it even more confusing, there was a different project called Around the World with Orson Wells, which was a series that came out later. But this was a play's there's not much remaining. I don't want to say evidence. That's not the right word. There's not much remaining material from it. Orson Wells had even like directed some film that was incorporated as part of the play that's lost. We don't really know what it was. It sounds potentially amazing. Yeah, we'll never know what it could be for sure. Barbette was also the obvious choice to train actor Gilbert Roland for the movie Big Circus, which intended to create a true to life reflection of the Circus. This was in nineteen fifty nine. A write up about the pre production rehearsals noted quote Barbett, a former high flyer of Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, Renown is so distinctly continental one would never suspect. He was born in Texas and named Vander Clyde Broadway, and perhaps his most long lasting influence and entertainment when the Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot was in production in nineteen fifty nine, it was Vander Barbette who was hired to help Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis with their performances as musicians who put on drag disguises to get jobs with Sweet Sue in her society syncopaters. In nineteen sixty three, Vander Barbett moved in with his half sister Mary Cahill in Austin, Texas. He often returned to the Austin area in between jobs, but he never seemed to consider it home. In nineteen sixty nine, he was interviewed by Jean Cocteau's biographer, Francis Stiegmuller, and that interview was published in The New Yorker. This was an interview that Barbette was initially reluctant to give and described it to the person who connected the writer to him as quote the arrival of the literary FBI. Steigmuller described Barbette as looking like quote, a very trim older man fashion model, although the writer also noted the stiffness of Barbette's movement the lingering effect of the illness that had taken him away from performing. While in recent years Barbette has been honored by his hometown of Round Rock, Texas, which is just a twenty minute drive north from Austin. He didn't have kind things to say about the area. In that nineteen sixty nine interview, He told Stigmuller quote, I'm living temporarily with my sister here in Austin before joining a big show a few months from now. I'll not be a performer, of course, but a trainer trying to give young present day acrobats some faint idea of what a refined act can be. I have to say that, apart from my family, everything about Austin offends me, and I know I'll be lucky if, in return for my very handsome salary, I succeed in persuading a few young trapezists just not to chew gum during their act. Imagine, Yeah, not really a hometown hero in the Eric kind of like I tried so hard to get away from here. Here I am again. As the nineteen sixties wound down, Barbett worked less and less as his health had gotten steadily worse. He worked on the touring show Disney on Parade in nineteen sixty nine in preparation for its nineteen seventy season. If you don't know what that is. That was a touring stage show that Disney and NBC co produced, and it had scenes from the various Disney movies performed by live actors. It's kind of like Disney on ICE's precursor. On August fifth, nineteen seventy three, Vander Barbett died by suicide. His cause of death was listed as an overdose of somniferous drugs. He was cremated and was buried in round Rock Cemetery at the foot of his mother's grave. His obituary in the papers didn't mention his cause of death, sating simply quote Vander Barbett, a world run now trapeze artist of the nineteen twenties and thirties, died Sunday at his home here. He was sixty eight years old. It also mentioned his sister Mary kay Hill and his brother Sam Loving as his next remaining kin. Austin and round Rock have in recent years really embraced Barbett as part of the area's history, including adding a historical marker to his final resting place, and presumably being okay with him having talked pretty negatively about the area. I'm really curious about, like what Austin was like at the time versus the reputation of Austin in Ray world. I don't know the answer. I have not looked into it. In August of twenty twenty two, an exhibit opened at the Williamson Museum in Austin dedicated to Barbette's life and career. As of this recording in June of twenty twenty three, it should still be open. According to an article from CBS Austin when it launched, it's supposed to run into twenty twenty four. It seems most fitting to end Barbett's store with a quote about him by Jean Cocteaux, which read quote, he walked tightrope high above the audience without falling above incongruity, death, bad taste, indecency, indignation. And that is Barbette, who I am super fascinated by. Yeah, very appreciative that friends put him on my radar. So thank you, thank you. I have listener mail which is not about history really at all, but it's about one of my favorite things, which is Disney Parks. This is from our listener Hannah, who writes, Hello, So I've been a fan of the podcast for about seven years. Now, But today I have a question for Holly about Disney World. My boyfriend and I are planning a trip to Disney, but we will likely only be able to budget two and three quarter days time wise. I have been to Disney in the past. He hasn't. Really, I haven't been since Galaxy's Edge opened. I really want to be able to spend a full day in Magic Kingdom and a full day in Animal Kingdom, but he thinks he needs a full day for Holliyllywood Studios, could you do three quarters of a day there and do everything in Galaxy's Edge, including the Lightsaber building experience. We would only be doing Galaxy's Edge and one go on the Tower of Terror. It's really cool hearing your take on Disney and Star Wars stuff in the podcast, and I'd love to hear your input. Hannah also sent pictures of They're Orange kitties Marie and Thor and Phoebe, who are adorable. I and Phoebe is is no longer with us, and I hope she is in the best part she's non orange, and I hope she is in the best part of Kitty Heaven because she has a great expression that's like the expression I love in cats where they have had enough of you, but they're willing to tolerate you for food. Galaxy's Edge, so this is a little bit tricky because I can spend days in Galaxy's Edge. However, if you are a person who doesn't want to like sit and linger and people watch, you could totally knock it out in three quarters of a day. In my opinion. There are only two attractions really, so there's Smuggler's Run, which is the Millennium Falcon ride, and then there's Rise of the Resistance, which is an amazing, fabulous ride, and the Lightsaber building experience lasts about twenty minutes. Also, this is from not that long ago, a couple weeks, so hopefully she still has time. You do want to make a reservation for that lightsaber experience because those go pretty fast. If you want to build a droid, you can kind of get into that on a walk in usually, and then mostly you want to do food and if you want to get into Oga's the canteena, you definitely want to make that reservation ahead of time. I think most people feel like they can knock out galaxies Edge in a half day, especially if you're like the kind of person who gets there at rope drop in the morning. You can absolutely do it all. Like I said, I want to stay there constantly, so even when there's not much more to do, I'm still happy to do it. The only other thing that is a little bit of a time, and I think if it's your first time you don't want to mess with it is something called Bounty Hunt, where you use your Magic Band Plus and there's an interface over by the garage area that gives you bounties to go hunting around the land. It's all digital, it's not like you actually go interact with anything. You find doors and scan them to see what might be behind them. It's very fun for people that have been a lot, but for first timers, I would say you are fine to steer clear of it. You're not You're not going to feel like you missed a big, cool thing. It's more like in something that augments your experience there if you go a lot. In my opinion, so that's what I would do. I would knock out Rise first thing in the morning because that line gets very very long unless you buy Lightning Lane, which can you can schedule a time. Smuggler's Run not usually as battle line, and if you're willing to separate, you can do single rider and that usually goes very fast. And then just work that around your reservations for lightsaber building and ogas if you do that. I will say, if you want to get cocktails and you can't get in Ogu's reservation, don't sweat it because in Florida, Galaxy's Edge is in Hollywood Studios, which is an alcohol park, So you can actually get drinks at like any of the food stands, and the milk stand will do alcoholic versions of the milk if that's your thing. Just in case you're like, oh, but I wanted cocktails, you can get them anywhere that's my thing. I would say to me, I don't know that I need a full day in Animal Kingdom, so your mileage may vary on that. It's amazing. There's a lot of beautiful stuff, but uh, the big one there is Flights of Passage, which is over in the Pandora area. In terms of like amazing rides and if you just love to look at animals, there's tons of great stuff, but that's it. Also great restaurants, Yak and Yetti forever Man. Yeah, I think the trick I learned from you for Animal Kingdom is get there right when they open, b line back to like the Safari ride, Yes, and then your way work back. Oh have you changed your opinion? Well, only because flights of passage get so busy, Okay, And so that is it was when we were there. Yeah, And it's not a thing because I've been back one time since the time that we were there, and like, I just did not It was not something that I was into spending my time on. So the prior advice of being lined to the Safari ride and work your way back, I will say for the Safari the best times and you've probably read this are first thing in the morning and last thing in the day because in the middle of the day it is so hot that all the animals are like, I'm gonna go find shade. Yeah, you don't see as much activity. So but that's the scoop. So I hope, uh right back and send me pictures and tell me how it all went. But I think you can absolutely do. Three quarters is plenty of time for Hollywood studios. There are lots of yummy places to eat if you want to eat somewhere that's not Galaxy, said brown Derby. One of the great things too, is that they have gotten a lot better across all the parks. If you are a plant based eater, at offering way better options than there used to be. So there are some really much more delicious opportunities than there used to be for plant based folks. So Hannah, like I said, report back please because I want to know, and also it will sustain me until I get tickoback next and I hope you have an amazing time. But also if you want to Wed Jane Epcott, Guardians and Galaxy, the Cosmic rewind. Basically, I want everyone to do everything. If you would like to write us about doing everything, or about your trips to Disney World or anywhere that's pretty fun, you should do that at Historam podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social media as Missed in History, and if you have not subscribed yet, you can do that any iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuck Fumous in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. 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