Who Is Billy Watson 1

Billy Watson

Watson, Billy [né Isaac Levie or Levine] (1866-1945), singer, comic, and producer. He was born on New York's Lower East Side and made his debut as an entertainer in 1881. He did so well as a "Dutch" comedian in burlesque and vaudeville that he soon had his own theatre. He rejected David Belasco's offer to head the main road company of The Music Master, instead playing for many years in Krausemeyer's Alley, in which he played a Jewish father who objects to his son's marrying an Irish girl. When Anne Nichols was sued for plagiarism after the opening of Abie's Irish Rose, she used the text of Krausemeyer's Alley to prove the basic theme was public property. However, Watson's greatest fame came as the producer of Billy Watson's Beef Trust, a comic burlesque show that featured a line of chorus girls all weighing over 190 pounds and dressed in striped tights. He retired from the stage in 1925, returning only for rare revivals of Krausemeyer's Alley. (The last sentence is wrong, as he was advertising in Amusement Business in the 1940's for big girls, plus the next article..

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Theatre TIME MAGAZINE

Fat of the Land

Feb. 21, 1938

When Billy Watson (born Isaac Levy) retired from the burlesque business he had made his pile. At 72 he still had plenty, but felt that he was "going nuts from not doing anything." So last week he gave a heave and a shove, and out on a Philadelphia stage waddled his revived Beef Trust, once the prime ribs of burlesque. The current show, Watson claims, is an exact duplicate, gags and all, of the old-time one. But in 1898 top weight for burlesque beauties was 180 pounds; today all Beef-Trusters weigh 200 or more. The Trust got its name during a Chicago stockyards investigation, trouped for 25 years, laid off in the early 1920s. Last week a new generation greeted it with the same roars, in the same places, for the same reason.