 There was no abrupt end to vaudeville, though the form was clearly sagging by the late 1920s.Joseph Kennedy Sr. in a hostile buyout, acquired the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theatres Corporation (KAO), which had more than 700 vaudeville theatres across the United States which had begun showing movies.The shift of New York City's Palace Theatre, vaudeville's center, to an exclusively cinema presentation on November 16, 1932 is often considered to have been the death knell of vaudeville.