Variety show n. A stage entertainment, live or televised, of successive separate performances, usually songs, dances, acrobatic feats, dramatic sketches, exhibitions of trained animals, or any specialties. When performed live in a theater, it was often called a vaudeville show, but when television became a dominant form of entertainment live vaudeville performances almost completely ceased.
... Commerce the Prince went to the Academy of Music where there was a picture and variety show staged for him, and which he enjoyed enormously. The thrill of this item of the program was rather in the crowd than in the show. It was an immense crowd, and for once it vanquished the efficient police and ... — Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Kate, and at the mere prospect of separation, he forthwith was driven to ask her for her hand, and was accepted—on probation, thus departing in leading strings. Hawkes, melancholy as of old, drifted into a comic part in a "variety show," acquiring new laurels as a dry comedian of the old school. But he continued to live alone in the world, mournfully ... — The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... as they passed down the boardwalk and looked at the moonlight. Down on the Bowery-like part of the boardwalk they devoured hot sausages, and in a long pavilion drank passable beer and saw a fair variety show. Thence they left the boardwalk, walked to Atlantic Avenue and mounted a car that bore them to Shauffler's, where among light-hearted beer drinkers they heard the band play "Sousa's Cadet March" and "After the Ball," and ... — Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
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