Variety (Dec 1905)

. • VARIETY. WKiETY A Variety Paper for Variety People. PubllMhed every Saturday by THE VAIURTY PUBLISHING COMPANY. Kni>ktil>ockr:r Theatre BulldlnK. k New York City. SUBSCRIPTION RATES. Annual W Foreign »•* 3 Six and three months in proportion. Single copies five cents. Variety will be mailed to a permanent address or as per route, as desired. ADVERTISING RATES ON APPLICATION. Kirst Year. No. 2. Well, how did you like the first issue of Variety? Something of a novelty lo & : thirteen pages of solid reading matter for five cents, isn't it? Something of a relief to pick up a paper not cumbered with a lot of routes and dates, which do not particularly in- terest you unless you happen to be an agent. Something new to get a paper that will speak right out in meeting and that will print an item without look- ing all through the advertisements to see whom it is going to hurt. Judging from the sales, there is room for a paper of just this sort. We pur- pose giving it to you every Saturday morning, fifty-two weeks in every year. The best way to make sure that you get it is to send in your subscription and your route. The paper will be ad- dressed weekly to your route, and you won't find that the stand is sold out and that you will have to wait until you can send on for a copy. Better attend to this to-day. Send us in your news. We are al- ways glad to get items. We want to get all the news and it will do us good. as well as you. to print the items you send in. Tnh> week we are starting a department for the feminine vaude- villers, cond ICied by a well-known worn an writer whose name you would prob- ably recognize were we to give it. If you have any stories that would tit in there send them along, too. We want to make this the vaudeville paper and we are going to. so get in quick and be friends from the start. Willy Zimmerman in the first issue of Variety made a plea for an American so ciety on the lines of the German lodge. Keenly mindful of the White Hat .strike, it will be difficult to make performers realize that such an organization will ever be a success in America, and yet such a combination of artists was never more greatly needed than ai present. The conditions prevailing at the time the White Rats were moved to activity were far better than the present state of affairs. The White Rats, with an hys- terical head and no definite aim or sta- bility, won a great victory— which they Immediately afterward lost. A new or- ganization, if formed, should be framed up on enduring lines and officered by some cobl headed man rather than a glowing enthusiast. Previous developments prove that there is no chance of ever gaining a vie- tory through a strike. It was shown at the time of the White Rat strike that victory could be gained without resort to extreme measures. Whflt is needed now is an organization of the solidly con- servative members of the variety profes- sion who can act as a board of arbitra- tion and settle disputes between man- agers and performers without,recourse to the courts except as a last resort. A few favorable decisions gained in the higher courts to serve as precedents would make future disputes easy of set- tlemen, and while such litigation would be expensive the resultant good would be worth the cost. - „,,,. When an artist seeks the law court he is compelled to waste valuable time in attending the trial, and only after vexa- tious delays does ihe matter ever come to issue. If a case could be assigned to a representative of the society, the depo- sition of the artist could be taken and trial had in New York while the artist was playing in San Francisco. After it was shown that any case not susceptible of amicable sett lenient would be brought to trial and pushed to a conclusion, man- agers would fed less secure in trusting to the inability of the artist to be pres- ent at the trial and would be more cau- tious in canceling an act at the eleventh hour. The two weeks' cancellation clause would have a new and more hon- est meaning, and several trick clauses would be abolished after they were shown to be illegal. A new contract, in itself, would be necessary and the elaborate system of rules and regulations would be done away with in favor of some simpler form, easily understandable and fair alike to the artist and the employer. At present the artist is compelled to sign whatever contract it pleases the man- ager to put forward, and while the aver- age contract has absolutely no status in law. it is of no avail for the artist to Know that, Since the law is not for a homad who spends but one or two weeks in a place, the manager, with the bene tit of residence and establishment, can bluff out a contract and enforce its pro- visions. Until the contract is shown to be ilbgal the artist has no recourse but suit. Such a society would have to be offi- cered by p'uso/is whose own motives would be above suspicion and whose business capacity would lead them aright. The hot-headed enthusiast, all oratory and socialistic Ideas, arouses only momentary enthusiasm. What would be needed would be men whose deeds snoke louder than words, whose positions were guarantee of thalr honesty and whose administration would inspire confidence. Rightly started, a society of this sort could work a revolution in vaudeville affairs and give to the busi- ness a permanency that does not, at present, exist . Lugi Del Oro. whos" concertina play- ing is a revelation at Hyde and Behman's this week, possesses a marvelous mem- ory for music. Monday he asked Will- iam Iv Slafer, tb" leader at the bouse, to give him ope of his own compositions, .lust before he went on Slafer gave him a piece of music he had written. Del Oro thanked him, glanced it over and put. it in his pocket. Slafer supposed tlrat he would play it later in the week, but to his surprise Del 'Oro came out and played it through without a break, though he had memorized it after glanc- ing it over only a couple of times. More than one old timer echoes Acton Davies' plaint that there are no more oldtime variety shows, the dramatic headliner pervading the program, and yet there is one style of performance •that still bears a resemblance to the kind of shows they used to have. With the cleaning up of the burlesque houses, many of the companies offer clean and smart performances which attract to these houses persons who five years ago fought shy of the London or the Miner theatres. Most of the managers of the road combinations are shrewd enough to realize that the filthy and disgusting exhibitions of ten years ago would not draw now, and they have cleaned up their shows and an added profit at the same time. After Mr. Davies gets through with his nightly dose of the divine Sarah, he should take a night off and go to the Circle for a change. There'll be no dramatic headliners there. It is fashionable to throw things at the motion picture machine if you write about the variety theatres for the pa- pers. "Shep" Friedman started a regu- lar crusade, but gave it up In disgust before he turned from criticisms to ad- vertising affairs. As a matter of fact the picture machine is one of the most valuable things about a variety house. There is a certain proportion in any audience that will cut the last act no :u;tt er what it may be. If the picture machine Is the last, they stay in for the specialty Immediately preceding it, and instead of losing the value of some three hundred dollar headliner the manager afets er. lit for that and it is the fifty or s 'venty-flve dollar pictures that the next to the last-act patron cuts. In the pres* in day when Q special train is hired and a branch railroad Med up for a set of train robbing or wrecking pictures, the offerings ate really excellent and those who remain and watch them get sonie- tii*i* ;s what io really the best thing on a bill. The picture machine is here to sray as long as a change of film may be had i aeh week. Then \r a company making a business oi pai.'iting drop curtains of street scenes on Ihe fences of which signs may be posted. They give the curtain to the mauag M r and make a certain payment to Ii1m weekly for exhibiting the drop t! rough a specified number of turns. It > nbs n manager a certain small rev.» ei> i, •'(.••sides saving the eost of a drop; a 1 'I audiences have become hardened to il"' ,.tn. cities by now. II 'he manager dtaws a revenue from this advertising, why r-hoai . he not charge Joseph Hart ftvi tlollai ' a week for the privilege of booming a very poor brand of eham pagne, or t;n\e ton dollars from Searle and Violet for routing for a whisky and a medicinal water. If he is entitled to a revenue from the painted si^ns. why should he not secure some profit from the spoken advertisements? one man at Kurtig <fc Seamon's this week drags a joke in by the hair of the head in order that the poor, decrepit hu- 1 morism may enable him to make use of the name of a proprietary remedy* three times within two minutes. Surely' be does not take out the ad in trade.' He must get something for it, and yet* llurtig & Seamon are paying him to en- ; tertaln their audiences; not to persuade' them to use a catarrh remedy. It is about time that a halt was called on this growing evil. It is out of place in the theatre. DEPARTMENT STORE SHOWS The attention of th*» Police Depart- ment is called to the fact that unlicensed pi rlormanccs are being given at several of the department stores as a bid for 1 the Christmas trade. Throughout the year the piano-playing devices are kept going as an added in- ducement to patronage" and in the sheet music department one may hear the i.ewest songs by simply standing around i i.d listening, but the shows now re- ferred to are stage performances in which several players of the museum grade are employed to keep things go- ing Some years ago one Sixth avenue firm had shows going for several weeks be- fore a complaint from a variety man- ager caused an investigation and the abrupt termination of the unlicensed shov/, but from time to time since then the scheme has been renewed. This year half a dozen of the big shops throw ii a free vaudeville with purchases of pickles o.- patterns. It is not fair to the managers who are compelled to make heavy payments to the city for the privilege of conducting places of amusement that these stores should be permitted to give free per- formances untrammeled by the exac- tions of the Police and Building depart- ments, especially when the Christmas shopping makes business bad at the reg ular houses. Many persons who go shopping might drop into Proctor's or Keith's on thej way home did they not find free enter-] t nment at the places where they spendj the r< .t of their money. , NEW ILLUSION COMING. The Mascot Moth Is to be brought to this country by the Marinelll Agency, opening at the Colonial on January 15. The illusion is one of the latest crea- tions of Maskclync and Cook and comes s raight from Egyptian Hall, London. It is said to be far ahead of anything of the sort ever shown here, and from the account given of the work that claim would appear to be correct. . The Moth is a girl who stands on a carpet on a clear stage close to the too: lights. In place of the old cumber- some red or black backings, the stage is set with ordinary scenery unprovided with traps, and yet at the word of com- mand the girl vanishes from view in- stantly. All previous disappearing acts have required that a cloth be held before the I < rfomier for an instant, but in this act nothing of that sort is done. The method by which the trick is ac- complished is said to be so puzzling that eyen the magic sharps ar»- unable to penetrate the mystery, and the principle being absolutely new there is no chance of discovering just how the trick Is worked bv comparing it to other acts.