Pinski, Solomon Libin, Jacob Michailovitch Gordin and Leon Kobrin. Concurrently with Yiddish theatre was the development of Vaudeville (a term thought to be a corruption of the old French word vaudevire, meaning an occasional or topical light popular song), a style of multi-act theatre which flourished from the 1880s through to the 1920s. An evening's schedule of performances (or "bill") could run the gamut from acrobats to mathematicians, from song-and-dance duos and Shakespeare to animal acts and opera. The usual date given for the "birth" of vaudeville is October 24, 1881, the night during which variety performer and theatre owner Tony Pastor, in his effort to lure women into the male-dominated variety hall, famously staged the first bill of self-proclaimed "clean" vaudeville in New York. African American audiences had their own Vaudeville circuits, as did speakers of Italian and Yiddish. The Palace Theatre on Broadway, described by its owner, Martin Beck, as "the Valhalla of vaudeville" opened with vaudeville shows from the Keith Circuit and lured the best and brightest in vaudeville. Its shift to a full bill of movies on November 16, 1932, is generally regarded as the death of vaudeville. Today the 39 largest theatres (with more than 500 seats) in New York are collectively known as "Broadway" after the major thoroughfare through the Theater District, and are mostly located in the Times Square vicinity. Many Broadway shows are world-famous, such as the musicals Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Along with those of London's West End, theaters in New York's Broadway district are often considered to be the most professional in the English language. Smaller theatres, termed off Broadway and off-off-Broadway depending on their size, have the flexibility to produce more innovative shows for smaller audiences. An important center of the American theatre avant-garde, New York has been host to such seminal experimental theatre groups as The Wooster Group and Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater. The subways of New York are also occasional venues for beauty pageants and guerrilla theater. The MTA's annual Miss Subways contest ran from 1941 to 1976 and again in 2004 (under the revised name "Ms Subways"). Past Miss Subways winners include Eleanor Nash, an FBI clerk described by her poster that hung in subway cars in 1960 as "young, beautiful and expert with a rifle." The 2004 Ms Subways winner, Caroline Sanchez-Bernat, was an actress who played a role in Sunday Brunch