Antonio Pastor was born on May 28, 1837 in Manhattan, New York, United States. His father was a violinist in Mitchell's Opera House. His brothers, William and Frank, were acrobats and fancy riders in small circuses, and Tony himself spent his youth in the shadow of public performance.
Antonio Pastor began at the age of six singing comedy duets with Christian B. Woodruff, afterward state senator, at a temperance meeting at the old Dey Street Church, and was kept busy for two years thereafter singing at such meetings which were a highly popular form of diversion.
In 1846 Antonio Pastor made his first stage appearance at Barnum's Museum, singing in "blackface" to the accompaniment of a tambourine. In 1847 he joined Raymond & Waring's Menagerie, in a long tour, during which he learned to know at first hand many of the local types he afterward portrayed and in which he had a varied experience as clown, minstrel, ballad singer, low comedian, and general performer. At fifteen he was ringmaster of John J. Nathan's circus and subsequently he was with Mabie's circus as a singing clown. He opened his own Music Hall at 444 Broadway in the early sixties, singing comic songs with great success, and during the Civil War he developed a form of historical topical song, dealing chiefly with the events of the war, which made some one say of him that he "sang history into the theatre. " In 1865 he went into partnership with Sam Sharpley, an old minstrel man, and opened at 201 Bowery, Tony Pastor's Opera House. Here he worked to perfect the form of entertainment later known as legitimate vaudeville. In 1875 he moved to 585 Broadway, a house of many names, best known as the Metropolitan Theatre. In 1881 he acquired the Fourteenth Street Theatre, neighbor to Tammany Hall, which became famous as Tony Pastor's and which he operated as a variety house until 1908. Tony Pastor was not only a shrewd theatre manager and an actor of many talents, but a good producer and an idealist within his understanding of the theatre's ideals.
His performances were intended to be "unexceptionable entertainment, where heads of families can bring their ladies and children, " in distinct contrast to most of the music halls of the day. In spite of his own great popularity as a performer and as a song writer (he wrote over two thousand songs), he never absorbed the first place on his programs but was proud to develop other players and give them a leading chance. Many of the most important comedians and comic singers in American theatre history had their first, or their best, opportunity in Tony Pastor's theatre and under his direction. Among the names of those who were at some time in their career closely associated with him are: Nat Goodwin, Billy Emerson, Francis Wilson, Gus Williams, Denman Thompson, Weber and Fields, Lillian Russell, Evans and Hoey, Lettie Gilson, May and Flo Irwin, Maggie Cline, and Marie Lloyd. Pastor died on August 26, 1908 in Elmhurst, New York, at the age of seventy-one.
Tony Pastor was a central figure in the establishment and development of vaudeville in America. Pastor was known for influencing vaudeville performers towards using more family-friendly material, thus broadening the popularity of the form. He opened Tony Pastor's Opera House. Antonio Pastor formed Tony Pastor's Variety Show.
In 1877 Antonio Pastor married Josephine Foley. She died on October 5, 1923. They had no children.
