Variety (Jan 1906)

Id VARlfiTY. KEENEY'8. The best thai can be said of Joseph Hart and Carrie DeMar. who headed the bill at Keeney's this week, is that they used to be very successful in musical comedy. They are still successful in vaudeville as far as bookings go, but it hardly seems possible that the merit of their act is responsible for this. Their sketch, 'The Other Fellow," is interest ing only as a demonstration of how far good musical numbers will go to lighten up an otherwise dead and boresome farce. The i)rograni left the sketch in the siiadow of kindly anons'mity, but the manuscript must have read about as en- tertainingly as a Congressional Record. The only bright spots in it were the songs of the two principals. There is hardly a bright or clever line from be ginning to end, and the story, although it- might have been made a reasonably interesting one. is decidedly not humor- ous and takes too long in the telling. Ray Cox, billed as "The Clever Sing- ing Comedienne," was bright, but missed a well-deserved encore by the haste of the uniformed page in chang- ing the cards. Her costume of simple white gave her a charming Southern air and suggested the effects that Clarice Vance gets applause with her delight- ful Dixieland voice. Miss Cox's South- ern drawl doesn't reflect the Sunny South quite so pleasantly as her cos- tume. It sounds more like Bostonese with a reverse English. Her impersona- tion of Bert Williams, of Williams and Walker, in his famous song, was excel- lent. It was this that won her the re- call. The Herald Square Quartet have pre- served their act unchanged during their wanderings about the Eastern houses. They still play comedy pretty strong. There is a good deal of rather forced fun that seemed to eaten the audience, but there appeared to oe a little too much of it. It worked to the exclusion of the really good vocal work of the four The bass has a voice of excel- lent quality, but his sense of humor is not so well develop ed. Cherry and Bates, a pair of bicycle experts, were better in their comedy work than in their riding. The straight member of the combination performed some stunts on a ten-foot stand. From the floor of the house it looked as though the front wheel of the bicycle was locked to safeguard against a fall and the ease with which the difficult act was performed rather strengthened this impression. Hayman and Franklin got four cur- tain calls, and an opportunity to make a curtain speech. The turn moves along fairly well and the man, who does a Hebrew, carries his part quietly but ef fectively. Little is required of the wom- an of the team, but she does that little with quiet grace. The act closed in "one" with an alleged operetta consist- ing of a medley of the year's ten be.st selling songs. The Griff Brothers were a muscular pair of European acrobats dressed in pink silk and medals, who supported each other by their teeth. There is not enough action in the performance to make it interesting. The bill opened with .John Delmore and Emily Darrell, a dancing and sing- ing pair, who dressed luxuriously and sang acceptably. ■ DEWEY. ■ ■'■■ '•■.•■.•.''.■.■■ ■ ,"■ • ■ i> The Bon Ton Burlesquers, this week's attraction at the Dewey, at least demon- strates one thing—that Fourteenth street audiences don't want originality. The closing burlesque of the show was a startling novelty in the particular that it actually contained some really intelli- gent and timely humor and conspicuous- ly lacked those three time-honored main- stays of burlesque—the knockabout Irishman, German and Hebrew come- dians. Net result: The audience was bored from the start and began to get into its coats fifteen minutes before the curtain. The opening feature was a burlesque of the ordinary sort. Its fun was clean but horsey and devoid of humor. There was not a line or a scene in it that had not been done a hundred times before, but it went better with the audience than the final travesty, which was prob- ably inspired by Weber and Fields' "The College Widower," but was nevertheless clean and clever. The hit of the olio was a specialty done by Berg's Merry Girls, a company of half dozen good looking young women. The act was in three parts, the first being the best. This was a dance in which each girl carried a wonderfully lifelike dummy in evening clothes and opera hat. They finished with an acro- batic turn of rather ordinary merit, which was saved alone by the whirl- wind speed wiih which they worked. Harry Keeler and Joe Watson were applauded thunderously, chiefiy because of a bunch of parodies on popular songs sung by the Hebrew member of the team. The parodies were fairly pointed and not as badly written as the ordinary run. One of them was rather loo point- ed, being too broad even for Dewey audiences. Toraa Hanlon was a dainty figure in white flannel trousers and sang reason- ably well, but will never make the boys tumble out of the gallery unless she puts a little more ginger into her turn. Burlesque audiences are not very strong for dignifled soubrettes. —Chris— Wh e l e n -and^ Minnie— S ea rle g staged their act "Just Nonsense" on the program. It is just as well to let it go^ at that. Laredo and Blake took the final place in the olio. They have an excellent acro- batic act, showing some features of the Rice and Prevost turn, but with orig- inality enough to absolve them from the charge of piracy. The straight member of the combination does some fast work with style and smoothness, and is capa- bly supplemented by his clown partner. The burlesques were well dressed, and the choruses well managed, except that several of the ensembles were done un- der an irritating red light that made the stage partly invisible. The fencing girls and football girls In the final burlesque were particularly good. The company did not come above the fair average. The men, Harry Keeler, Chris Whelen and Joe Watson, were much better in the latter end of the evening, when their lines and opportuni- ties were better. ;v,.-:;...:,,. • :., QOTHAM. ,..,./;:' .. v'-^^^^ Rice aiid Barton have abandoned their former evil ways and at the Gotham this week they are using a show that is ab- solutely free from vulgarity and from which slapsticks, bladders and other of- fenses are entirely eliminated. The re- sult is one of the smartest performances seen In town this season. The first part and burlesque is of a farce-comedy order. It is called "A Night at Coney Island." The author must have had a good many sleepless nights to insert so many rich lines as there were in the burlesque. Of course, as usual. Charles Barton and Burt Baker were the chief fun makers, ably assisted by Annie Don Mullen, and kept the audience laughing for the length of time they were on the stage. Time must have been taken in selecting the chorus, for such singing has seldom been heard in a burlesque show. The opening number—of the operatic kind— showed sixteen chorus girls in the front line and ten men in the rear. They had to sing the selection over several times. The olio opens with Burt Baker as a typical "Tad." He has a clean mono- logue that is a little above the heads of the audience but makes up by the sing- ing of an old-time Irish song and wakes them up to the fact that Burt Baker has the best singing voice in this kind of work in burlesque. The audience could not get enough of him. Bertha Hollen- bec, billed as the English Nightingale, is way out of place in a show of this kind. While she has a voice of a rich quality, it does not meet with approval for the reason that it is loo high class. I would suggest that, while she is with a show of this kind, she get some songs of the popular kind, that's what the average burlesque audience likes, especially the gallery. Lemuels, Mono- han and Nolan, as the big three min- strels, do^some good singing and dan- cing, but mar their performance by the use of some very old gags that would not be good enough for an amateur min- strel uhow.—Tltese-three men are clever comedians and should get some new talking material at once. Goldsmith and Hoppe have a fairly good musical act and finish their act with a burlesque on Sousa, with apologies to Snyder and Buckely. Renzitia and La Rue have a neat acrobatic act with some good tum- bling and comedy, but spoil the effective- ness of their act by "stalling" in one to give the stage hands a chance to set the burlesque. In the finishing burlesque Barton, with the assistance of all his men, still does a burlesque band which he has done for a number of years and which is out of place here. It has ceased to be funny, and as the show is pretty long it would be well for him to cut this out. The show Is too good to be spoiled by this piece of nonsense. Joe Raymond. Joseph Yarrick, the liquid air demon- strator, played a Christmas date at Geo. W. Vanderbilfs home. In Biltmore, S: C. making the Jump from New York and returning here. CUT RATES ALL AROUND. The cutting of rates among music publishers, made necessary by the finan- cial condition of some and the demand of the department stores, has resulted In a reduction of royalties. One and a half cents and one cent are growing to be the present royalty for the writer and composer. "Sklgle" Goes to Syracuse. Sees the Show at the Grand Opera House. Says It Smulls Bad.: Wants to Gome - i- Home- ("SKlgie" is a boy, seven years old. Hav- ing been a constant attendant at vaudeville theatres since the age of three, he has a decided opinion. "Skigie's" views are not printed to be taken seriously, but rather to enable the artist to determine the impres- sion he or his woric leaves oo the infantile mind. What "Skigie" says is taken down verbatim, without the change of a word or syllable.) Syracuse, Jan. 4. Gee, this town is bum. and that the- atre is bummer (Grand Opera House). I had to climb a lot of stairs before we got there, and when we got there it was only the box office, and we had to climb Fome more before we cculd sit down. 1 didn't like the show. It stinks. The only thing I liked was those.fellows up in the air (Four Flying Dunbars). rhey're the goods. Wish they would take me to throw, and the pictures were all right, and they don't have intermis- sion here, so I was glad, because I saw the pictures so much sooner, but I wante I a drink while that rotten sketch was being played (Patrice, "A New Year's Dream"), and my mother wouldn't let me get it because she didn't want to miss any cf the show. Then a fellow made a lot of figures on a blackboard and then he smiled (Sol- omon II.). They said his name was Sol- omon, and I know lot of Solomons here, but I never-gaw^ntiff before, and then^ar girl gets In a ball (Belle Stone) and lolls up to the top of something and then rolls down again and I bet it's easier coming down than going up, and then a man (John Gleger) with a violin says, "I will now make this machine say 'Mary had a little lamb.' " and it said it. but I couldn't understand what it said. Six girls all dressed up funny (Peri Sisters) sang and danced and I didn't like either, and then a fellow came out and talked and talked (James J. Mor- ton), and they made him come out a lot of times, but he made me sick and I don't know why he came baCk so oflen. Everybod> but me was laughing. But I liked the pictures the best be cause they stole a safe, and the police chased the robbers in a boat, and then the safe and the whole crowd spilled over In the river and got wet. I want to go back home. The Barnum & Bailey Company has declared a dividend of 7 1-2 per cent, for the year ending October 28, 1905. Few outsiders know that the Barnum & Bailey firm is a stock company organ- ized under the English Limited Liabili- ties Act.