performed under the name Les Marchantes, still playing mandolin and guitar. This group also had two female performers, who sang and played instruments. Sometime between 1920 and 1930, the brothers began to perform separately. By 1930, Nicolas was living in Queens, working as a musician in a theater. Bernardo began to branch out into other performance venues. In 1931, he gave a performance over the Blue radio network. He also branched into the movie and recording industry, doing work for Vitaphone in 1927 and Metro-Movietone in 1929. With Vitaphone, Bernardo performed in a short film called The Wizard of the Mandolin on April 4, 1927. The films of the time were silent films, but Vitaphone tried to change that by synchronizing a recording to play while the silent movie rolled. De Pace was the subject of the short film, and his music was recorded live, even as the 35mm was being exposed. The short film was also known as Bernardo De Pace in the Wizard of the Mandolin Plays Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna. In the film, De Pace was dressed as a clown or Pierrot. As he played, he used exaggerated facial expressions as part of his Pierrot pantomime-act. He used similar "contortions" in his live acts as well. A reviewer for the Des Moines Register saw the performance in 1925, two years before it was filmed. Seeing it on stage, he found the combination of music and comedy effective, saying, "In an effective frame he appears as a Pierrot with a mandolin which cries, laughs, and talks under his skillful fingers. His music is worth going far to hear." The music he played in the short was Morning, noon and night in Vienna, That's why I love you, Tarentella, and a medley of Souvenir (from The Tales of Hoffmann) and Humoresque. Films of Bernardo De Pace showed variations on his act with the clown costume as late as 1935, when his performance with the Andrini Brothers was briefly reviewed in Minneapolis. The performers were wearing white chalk makeup and Pagliacci costumes. The act, which had been popular enough that it played around the country and as far away as Australia for almost ten years was wearing thin by 1935. The Minneapolis Star Tribune commented then that the group "clowned feebly" and "raised no blood pressure." De Pace didn't face a decline of popularity alone; Vaudeville itself was