# Did people really throw vegetables at bad (vaudeville) performers?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 18, 2007, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897 "2007-11-18T03:27:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2007, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897/1 "2007-11-18T03:27:36Z")
Been watching the movie **Young Frankenstein** , where the audience throws various vegetables at the Monster when he gets freaked by the shorted-out light. Question of course is whether audiences ever did such things-I want to say it was during vaudeville’s heyday but it likely predates that (the meme anyway).
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2007, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897/2 "2007-11-18T04:00:43Z")
It predates vaudeville. Washington Irving in 1802 described audiences expressing displeasure by “stamping, hissing, roaring, whistling,” occasionally “groaning in cadence,” and throwing “apple, nuts, and ginger-bread” at the stage. (_Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent._).
Theater audiences in the early 19th century were boisterous, loud, and unattentive. Protitutes plied their trade pretty openly in the balcony, audience membered routinely heckled the actors, the actors would drop character to comment on things happening in the audience, and people often paid more attention to others in the audience than in the performance.
Audiences quieted down by the end of the century, but the tradition had been established.
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### Author:  [@Polymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polymer)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2007, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897/3 "2007-11-18T05:41:36Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
…throwing “apple, nuts, and ginger-bread” at the stage.
[/QUOTE]
I would think that most food products, especially the nuts and prepared gingerbread would have been too expensive to just be wasted like this. Now, rotten produce I can kinda see. But gingerbread? 😕
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### Author:  [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2007, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897/4 "2007-11-18T06:13:28Z")
[Here](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpeanut.html) and [here](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mriots.html), if these guys are to be believed.
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### Author:  [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2007, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897/5 "2007-11-18T06:20:08Z")
& [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato):
> [@](#):
>
> Tomatoes are also a popular “non-lethal” throwing weapon in mass protests; and there is a common tradition of throwing rotten tomatoes at bad performers on a stage, although this tradition is more symbolic today. Embracing it for this protest connotation, the Dutch Socialist party adopted the tomato as their logo.
[Here.](http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:0_UktwQS0LYJ:eftours.com/pdf/DBD/A/APE.pdf+pelt+actors+with+rotten&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us)
Here:
> [@](#):
>
> Even in the Elizabethan Era, sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of the English speaking theatre, Shakespeare’s audiences felt free to pelt the actors with rotten fruit during a show, and anyone connected with theatre was considered unsavory.
No primary source cites, though.
But [here’s](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402E7D8103CF936A25751C0A96E958260) a nice contemporary account, of a sort.
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### Author:  [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2007, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897/6 "2007-11-18T07:37:18Z")
[QUOTE=Polymer]
I would think that most food products, especially the nuts and prepared gingerbread would have been too expensive to just be wasted like this. Now, rotten produce I can kinda see. But gingerbread? 😕
[/QUOTE]
They sold all those things to the audience, so I imagine it was a case of what they had on hand at the time.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2007, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-really-throw-vegetables-at-bad-vaudeville-performers/426897/7 "2007-11-18T15:57:16Z")
[QUOTE=Polymer]
I would think that most food products, especially the nuts and prepared gingerbread would have been too expensive to just be wasted like this. Now, rotten produce I can kinda see. But gingerbread? 😕
[/QUOTE]
I was only quoting a contemporaneous observer.
But it was more a matter of opportunity: they had brought the food to eat, but started throwing it to disapprove of the performance. If they were\* planning\* to boo the performance (which was a common occurance), then they would bring food they weren’t planning to eat.