From Dick Flint

The Birth of Sugar Babies "Sugar Babies," an intentionally low-down show is indeed the offshoot of a high-brow project, an erudite paper on burlesque comedians titled "At My Mother's Knee and Other Low Joints: Notes from a Misspent Youth" that Ralph Allen, then a professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, delivered at the "Conference on the History of American Popular Entertainment” held at Lincoln Center, November 17-20, 1977, and co-sponsored by the American Society for Theatre Research and the Theatre Library Association. While Allen's paper gave birth to a Broadway hit, my presentation on the circus spawned no new big top hit (nor did the presentation of Dr. Marcello Truzzi, son of the great juggler). Making this more than the usual erudite conference were great performances and extraordinary presentations by veterans of the business: on the bill was the truly old-time vaudevillian Joe Smith (of Smith & Dale fame) doing his famous Dr. Kronkhite sketch, Morton Minsky recalling run-ins with the NYC vice commission, and Gibtown's own Mae Noell narrating projected views of pages from her family scrapbooks recalling old tab, minstrel, and medicine show days. According to the “Cambridge History of American Theatre,” this event is considered “a watershed in the scholarly treatment of amusements.”