Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World (Apr-Jun 1930)

EXHIBITORS HERALD-WORLD 49 April 26, 1930 pleasing personality and put her act over in nice style. Miss Perfect received a good applause for her efforts. McKay & Ardine presented a comedy song and dance act which eeemed to have a bit too much gab which failed to register. Their present act lacks much of the sure fire pep of the old act and the greater part of this is due to the poor material used. However, the act was fairly well received by the patrons. Don Santos and Band. Don Santo is the lad who has "IT” when it comes to handling a unit and he keeps this one moving in a snappy breezy manner. There is enough entertainment and diversification in this one offering to comprise a complete stage show although Don could cut out a bit of his gab the audience seemed to respond to all of it and evidently enjoyed his various nonsensicalities. As a director and dancer he is unsurpassed. He is a great worker and his comical imitations certainly go over with a bang. Xexie Butler offers several blues numbers which were especially well done and warranted encores. The “Shine on Silvery Moon” number by Miss Butler was especially pleasing and reached the older generation. Others in the unit are a boy harmonica player who is well received and a girl acrobat who is very good. The offerings of the seven piece band hit the right spot and special mention is to be made of the banjo and guitar player as his work was highly commendable. The entire act is Al. Oklahoma City Orpheum Week Ending April 18 The Columns’ Idea was Fanchon and Marco’s glorious offering of Grecian beauty and rhythm and featuring Rome and Gaut with Maxine Evelyn, Billy Rolls, Dorothy Henley and the 16 Sunkist Beauties. The Columns’ Idea presented their remarkable study of living sculpture — a fantasy of rhythm and music — with Athenian maidens in moonlight temples, and the offering was very pleasing and took with the big audiences daily. On the screen was “The Melody Man’’ and Fox Weekly. The “R K O Big Time Vaudeville” was a clever, 1 dashing variety program of “big time” entertainment— fun, beauty, music, laughs — everything. Eddie Pardo’s offering of songs and steps was a veneer of fun, and Eddie was some comedian. Marc Nathal as “the man monkey” was some I monkey, and hard to distinguish from the real thing. Everett Saunderson is Oklahoma’s gift to vaudeville, and he did his Oklahoma stunts in a very entertaining way. Franklyn D’Amore with Jack Lane in “A Vaude Iville Surprise” was a real surprise and pleased ’em mightily. The screen offering was Fox Weekly and “The Swellhead,” was James Gleason. St. Louis Fox Week Ending April 17 The stage offering of the week was the Fanchon and Marco revue “Manila Bound” which the toughest critic in town admitted was a good show and it was. Bert Frohman was the master of ceremonies and featured in the cast were Lydia Roberti, Harry and Frank Seamon, Romero Family, Stella Royal, Samuel Pedrazza and the Sunkist Beauties. Philadelphia Mastbaum Week Ending April 18 “Puttin’ on the Dog,” the stage show at the Mastbaum this week, with Sammy Cohen in person and Bobby Baldwin acting as guest master of ceremonies, was particularly entertaining to the school children enjoying the Easter holidays as well as to grown ups. Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” proved so popular last week that it was repeated by the Mastbaum Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vito La Monaca, with blue back drops and the piano draped in blue and silver. The piano solo by Edmond Vichnin was characterized by volume rather than by dynamic shading or tonal beauty but was heartily applauded. Stanley Templeton at the organ gave a beautiful interpretation of “The Rosary,” at the conclusion of which the curtains parted showing a dimlylighted road with an illuminated cross in the distance. The Fred Evans Girls in pink danced gaily about the stage as Jud Brady’s collies decorated with big pink bows wove in and out as the girls stepped over them. Then the dogs obediently sat on their haunches while the girls sang, after which the girls started jumping rope with the collies jumping with them and enjoying the fun immensely. A burlesque of the previous act followed with four grotesque looking spinsters wearing dresses of the vintage of 1880 and four awkward mongrels who furnished a lot of comedy as they tried to play with each other and continually tripped their mistresses in their leashes. This act brought shouts of laughter from young and old. George Ali, well known animal impersonator, followed with a representation of a bulldog who did all the stunts that a showman would like to exhibit in a real dog. The scene where the dog tried to smoke, his alert surprise and interest in the smoke pouring from his mouth and his subsequent illness was a “doggone” clever bit. Sammy Cohen’s comedy in which he took the part of three characters was given a good hand. The Fred Evans Girls in black and silver costumes with large ostrich plume fans danced as the band played a dreamy waltz. Bobby Baldwin did some fast stepping and sang a song or two and Doris Roche sang and chatted with Verne Buck, ending with a mock wedding. But the act which was given the greatest applause was Barbarina and Pal, a perfectly-trained diminutive spaniel, who danced with her and as she walked across the stage bending backwards on her hands, kept his front paws on her forehead and followed her across the stage on his hind legs. As the girl barrel rolled slowly across the stage, the dog made the circuit of her body and as she did hand springs backwards he roly polyed round her body in the most surprising manner. In the finale the Fred Evans Girls in black velvet were grouped on graduated steps against a black back drop with the collies sitting gravely beside them. St. Louis Ambassador Week Ending April 17 Arthur Nealy, the reformed policeman, who found hie tenor voice a more pleasing and effective means of keeping the wolf away from the bungalow than pounding a beat as a member of the Metropolitan Police Department, was given a very enthusiastic home coming when he appeared in the cast of "Tip Toppers Revue,” the stage attraction offered by Ed Lowry, master of ceremonies for the Ambassador. Nealy ha6 always been a favorite with St. Louis amusement lovers since he first attracted attention in a Police Relief Show several years ago, and needless to say he didn't lose any of his friends with his singing in "Tip Toppers Revue.” Other entertainers in the cast were Helen Nafe, Norton and Haley, Stanley Twins, Dorothy and Harry Dixon, and the Ambassadorians and the Evans Beauties. Stuart Barrie’s organ solo and Albert Roth’s orchestral prelude rounded out an excellent music program. When the show opened there was on display six of the Fred Evans Ensemble dressed in silk toppers and short black and silver dresses and dancing on six huge high hats. Suddenly from each hat appears a man in full dress and then follows some real dancing. The Stanley Twins proved to be good acrobatic persons and the type that gentlemen prefer. The offering of Harry and Dorothy Dixon was a Tia Juana Tango filled with much pep and went over in grand style. Morton and Haley proved excellent conversationalists and topped off their humor with a song “Just Off the Boat.” Helen Nafe proved a charming strutter. But from a local viewpoint the singing of Nealy was very much It. Shapiro-Bernstein Will Publish Songs from “Swing High,, Shapiro-Bernstein and Company announces that they have acquired the publishing rights to the three principal songs of “Swing High,” Pathe’s new circus musical. The numbers are “There’s Happiness Over the Hills” and “It Must Be Love” sung by Fred Scott, and “Do You Think That I Could Grow on You,” rendered by Little Billy, the famous midget. Both the publishers and Pathe are putting a heavy campaign behind these numbers, the “Swing High” editions of which are already off the press. The radio campaign starts this week with Frances White featuring one of these numbers over the R K O hour. Shapiro-Bernstein have published a number of Pathe theme songs in the past including “Shady Lady” from the picture of the same name ; “The World Is Yours and Mine” from “Mother’s Boy,” “Love Found Me” from “Oh, Yeah!” “Dearest One” from “Fancy That” and “After You Say ‘I Love You’” from “So This Is Marriage.” Organ Solo Slides Plug Pictures Balaban & Katz are utilizing a new scheme for publicizing forthcoming pictures. They are making a direct tieup between the organ solos and the pictures. It is done in this manner: The title of a picture is used as a shadow background for the lyrics of the theme song. For instance, the song — SWEEPING THE CLOUDS AWAY The first slide of the four slide chorus has asa shadow background the word, “From” in large block letters. The second slide contains the word “Paramount,” the third “On” and the fourth “Parade.” Thus, the song and the feature are given excellent plugs without one obviously advertising the other. Bob H. King Weds Bob H. King, well known in theatrical circles of Boston and New York, was married on March 29 to Miss Dolly Johnson, former tea-room hostess of Miami, Fla., and graduate of Vashta College of Georgia. King will be remembered as former New York reporter for EXHIBITORS HERALD-WORLD, having previously been assistant director of Jack Linder’s Broadway drama, “The Squealer,” and editor and publisher of New England Film News, a moving picture trade journal of Boston. Oh, for an Orange Some folks are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, others have cigars and face powders named after them, but the latest is the Lou Breese Orange, a product of a New Orleans bottling works. It is said that the drink is as pleasing as the popular conductor of the Saenger theatre. Rose Hobart for “ Liliom ” (Special to the Herald-World) NEW YORK, April 22. — Rose Hobart has been signed by Fox Films to take the leading feminine role in the forthcoming production “Liliom.” Among other things, she is an accomplished harpist. Wray Gets Long Term (Special to the Herald-World) NEW YORK, April 22. — John Wray, who portrays the character of Himmelstoss in Universal’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” has been signed by Universal to a long term contract. Long T erm for Sherman (Special to the Herald-World) NEW YORK, April 22.— Lowell Sherman, who recently appeared in Radio Pictures’ “Ladies of Leisure,” has been signed to a long term contract by that company. UNIFORMS COSTUMES BROOKS