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He'll Be A
BIG
StarlnAYear
Yes, Zafs Unquestionably I True of Robert Armstrong fWith Success Before And
A Love-Life Behind Him
By HERBERT CRUIKSHANK
B
OB ARMSTRONG'LL be a star in another year.
Is zat so? Yeah, zat's so! Mob Armstrong has played a dozen leading roles during his very first year in the racket. A picture a month, no less. Is zat so? Yeah, zat's so! But, come, come now: what is all this business about "is zat
SO .'
Well, you see, it's this-a-way Whenever I hear of, see, speak to or write about this guy Armstrong. I just can't help but remember the dumb pug in Jimmy Gleason's stage show. And the name of the play was, and is, "Is Zat So?" Remember it? Wasn t it a darb? I saw it so often I knew the first act by heart.
Is zat so?
Yeah, za — ah g'wan.
But seriously, dear listeners-in of radio land, this mug Armstrong isn't half the palooka he made out to be in the show. As a matter of fact, he may be rated, without fear of successful contradiction, as a real Bright Bozo. Bright enough to get a fat film contract. Bright enough to make a bit in pictures. Bright enough to marry a charming wife. Bright enough to be well along the road to stardom after a single year in what used to be called the deaf-and-dumb racket before they made yellies to cure the deaf part.
Bob used to be a stage actor. His peerless press-agent rells me that he "remembers vividly when he played in theatrical stock at Des Moines." Naturally he would. The whole troupe lived on the vegetables the Death Moans audiences showered upon them six nights a week. Wednesday and Saturday were feast days. Matinees, you know.
Lansing Brown
The first stage success of Robert Armstrong in New York made a name for himself — and a change in the name of the girl who used to be Ethel Jones
Side-Stepping the Sheepskin
EFORE that he was re
spectable. The old folks
sent him to Washington University, in Seattle. Bob studied law. And all the neighbors back in Saginaw, Michigan, where Bob was christened Robert, were feeling awful sorry for Clarence Darrow when Bob started in to be a legal light. For Bob was the prize baby of Maple Street, and all the folks kind of took an interest in him.
But there's many a slip between the varsity and the bar. Any bar. And this Armstrong lad took it on the scram three months before he would have received the old sheepskin. And instead went aseeking of the Golden Fleece of fame in the realm of Booth, Barrett, Boucicault and Barrymore. Such a trial to the family!
Arid my, oh my, how collegiate the boy was in those days. Husky wow-wow, rah rah, 'n' everything! He and a couple of more accessories before the fact whom he had led astray from the legal road to learning, made up an act called "A Campus Romance." And, believe it or not, the durned fools got weeks' and weeks' and weeks' time from a {Continued on page 74)
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