Variety (Jan 1906)

VARIETY '^'rV C h i CO t ALHAMBRA. Continuous comedy is all that is lacking on the bill at the Alhambra this week. Th«y are doing a land office business and the audiences like the whole show, but there are only one or two drops. The best of the comedy is had from Jack Nor worth, who in his College Boy stunt has not only a capital idea but a good outworking. It is a real pleasure, more particularly to those who attend vaudeville houses regu- larly, to find an act which is at once new in idea and outworking. The college slang may prevent a few from gathering all of the points, but this does not hurt in large measure and the jokes are all new. In the owl song Norworth presented what are a series of vocal cartoons, so pointed are the allusions. Joe Welch has a com- edy monologue on the second half of the bill. In consideration of the salary he is receiving for the three Williams dates alone, Mr. Welch might have unbelted a little for new material. He opens with a couple of small boys, but just as one imagines that he is about to get in some real comedy talk with them he sends them home and digs down in the mournful past for some of the talk he used six and seven years ago. It is very discouraging, but as long as the audiences laugh there will be no use in talking to Welch. If tlie managers should suggest that he dig up some new stuff it would have its effect. The only way to reach him is through his pocketbook, apparently; he seems to take no pride in his work. Ned Nye and his "rollicking girls" have a good program place. There is more of the Reid sisters than Nye—which is not altogether a fault. Mr. Nye suggests I>an Daly in his speak- ing and singing and Charles Wayne in his dancing The act pleases though it drags somewhat, and they lug out that anti- quated idea of the swings that the Shu- berts and the Frohman forces are squab- bling over. A "swinging first part" was a stale idea in vaudeville twenty years ago. Chassino does clever shadowgraphs and until his last section does not use profile aids. He should shave his arms if he wants to be polite. Some of the imita- tions are hurt by the shadow of the hairy arms. His pedal shadowgraphs are new. Young and De Voie show some good danc- ing on the front set. They would do bet- ter with more space but might find their bookings crampe<l by the enlarged work- ing ground. Tom Nawn has gone back to his earlier love, "A Touch of Nature," and Miss Nawn does very well with the part of the daughter, though it will still be some years before she will be accepted as a regular actress. Carlotta scares the women in her audiences with her death- defying loop-the-loop. The act would be a little more death-defying did they more cleverly hide the safety device, which should be a matter of no great difficulty. Silvano has some equilibristic work and Aimee Angeles does imitations of which the George Cohan is the best. Miss An- geles seemed afraid that she would do more work than her contract called for and lost friends in consequence. She is not yet clever enough to put on airs. FIFTY-EIGHTH STREET. That there is the sort of bill they like at Proctor's Fifty-eighth street house this week is evinced by the fact that there is a good attendance even in the afternoon, when a large house should not be ex* pected. It's a comfortable sort of house to go to, the Fifty-eighth, for M. E. Rob- inson has shown the ushers how to convey to a patron the impression that he is anx- ious to see him well cared for without adding the extra impression that he ex- pects a quarter for the solicitude. It's a well run house and that is half the battle. The opening number this week pleases, though it should not have a place on most bills. It is the doughy comedy of Rob- inson and Grant, and it tires the intelli gent but pleases the gallery. The Tobin Sisters, who are next, are the opposite, for the chief charm of the act is its quiet- ness. They play various instruments of percussion and brass wind and go away while the audience is still willing to have more of the same in theirs. Cabaret's dogs are a well trained bunch of canines small enough to work on a table. The somersault dogs are the best; they are de- cidedly clever. The high leaping should be cut out until the obstacle can be cut down. At present not a single dog makes a clean jump. The special tricks are well han- dled, and when the man stops wearing a straw hat and the woman a gown that looks like a spangled Mother Hubbard wrapper, the act will be good. John Hyams and T^ila Mclntyre have what is calle<l a sketch because most persons are too polite to make use of the epithet which should properly be applied. Miss Mclntyre gives a clever performance that is some distance removed from the work she did in vaudeville before her venture into the spectacular field, while Mr. Hyams confirms the previous impression that the "Y" and "S" are entirely unnecessary in tlie spelling of his name. By all critical standards Melville and Stetson should not have scored. • They are nothing if not in-- artistic, but they had the audience in an uproar and were asked back after they were through. The Barrows-Lancaster act is always good when not seen too often, and it made a hit here, while the Pesch- koff troupe gave some Russian dancing that had the audience sitting up and tak- ing notice. A. O. Duncan was one of the favorites. TT^oe« jiot matter much how often he plays town, for t^a long as the night editions come out before the matinee lie has some newspaper jokes, and even to the jaded his act seems fresh. Duncan would do well to drop the ventriloquial pretense and simply announce himself as a comedian. The Cattaneos have good acrobatics. The comedian, for a wonder, is a good worker and some of his tricks please best. He has his own ideas and works them out to the satisfaction of the spectator. There are two capital picture films this week and the Jap tea girls. The tea girls are not beautiful, but if you like the spooils you may lick *em—and take them home. LONDON. _ Sain Devere's own show is at the Lon- don this week with ANDY LEWIS (the printer will please remember that Mr. Lewis in pained when he sees his name in small tyre) and some others (the others are to ba put in small type). LEWIS is a pushing person with some good ideas of stage management and inordinate vanity. If he kept the vanity down he would be in better company. He hais his "Queen of Bavaria" in the olio and makes a particu- lar hit with this. He has changed the act soiuewliat, and has added a girl of the Sis Hopkins type who some of these days will have lier leg or her neck broken according to whi;h end she lauds on. He is entirely too careless in throwing her about the stage at the end of the act. His depiction • ' the cocaine fiend is medically correct. There are many other features of medicine not apjMMiling to the taste for the humorous. In the afterpiece LEWIS plays a Hebrew character very well. He gets away from the old ideas and offers some good work. The nfuerijiece is funny—as aften>iece8 go —but there is a lack of real comedy. Many of the song idetus are good and there i.s more intelligent use made of the chorus than in most of this year's shows. For this LEWIS must be given credit, for he is the .stage manager (and incidentally holds (Ih best numbers out for himself). The costuming is good, though the mate- rials awe not. They secure effective color (ombinations and let it go ai that and their judgment is justified. The last song costumes are as good as any seen in town at the burlesque houses this sea.son and the girls arc a willing lot. The opening is jM'r- mitted to be dull. LF^WIS does not take part in this and seems to feel no interest in it. It .should be made smarter even if LEWIS ih compelled to have his name put on tlie program again as taking part in it. The S<'hr«Kle-. liave a c(nnerly acrobatic act in wliicli most of the comedy is the simpler work of nice and Prevost. More origi- TTitl sTuff would be-better, but Schrode lias a I U'lxst the merit of doing the work acceptjiMy. lie needs a man for a ixartner to work out the act proi)erly. The Bijou Comedy Four sing and at the finish the orchestr.i players shoot at them. There are two faults to bo found with this idea. The Hist Ls that the guns are not loade<l. The oilier is that the shooting should prop- erly C!)iiiin«'nce when the act first comes on. It is I'^^ither good comedy nor g()o«l singing. The Mistletoe Four have some good danc- ing and some bad work. The bad work is in the latter part of the act when the turn sags and becomes formless. Keene, a juggler, v.oiks fairly well, but with old stuff, and there an» some motion pictures that iiitfrc.wt when the operator can keep the pictures in focu.s—which is not often. La Berat will open in a "Grotto act" at Proctor's on September 10. Harry Tate's "Motoring," but not the originals, has been incorporated into "Babes and the Baron" at the Lyric theatre. James Thornton is playing the Howard in Boston this week. Battling Nelson, the pugilist, will be the feature there next week. lk>th acts were booked by Al Mayer. Julian Eltinge has fully recovered from his recent attack of throat trouble, and he has resumed his full act. While suf- fering, Mr. Eltinge did a dance instead of the songs. V CORKS ON GROUCHES. "How's the imitations coming on ?" asked the head of the table as the Human Cork- screw dropped into a seat and looked around to make certain that help, in the shape of the waiter, was near. "Fine and dandy," declared Corks. "There ain't so many of the big vaude* ville fellows around this past week, bul-^ I got some good gags and I put in the rest of the time at the big shows. I got Eddie Foy, Raymond Hitchcock, Fred Walton (he don't talk, but I got one of his pan- tomimes) and some of the other fellows. Now I want to get some dates. "The trouble is that I don't stand plenty high with some of the managers and they won't see me even if I have a bunch of stuff that would make good if it was., told by a phonograph. "Managers gets grouches quicker than any wad of supposed brainy men I ever hit off. I was in an oflTice the other day ' when a chap comes in and says, 'I ain't played for you in five years.".. The book- ing man was a good fellow and he says, *You sassed the old man's son six years ago. (iet hep and save your stamps.' ?> "The chap was all right, at that, but he lost his temper and talked back when :. ' a fresh guy wanted to show off to some of his college chums what a good stage manager he was for Pa, and the whole bunch got down on him. "That manager knew that he would draw money with these people, but he was sore and he's been keeping 'em out ever since. I know a lot of others the same way. They think that just because they're managers they push up the sun in the towns they live in and when they can't stage-manage the whole blamed busi- ness they get mad and sore and after that you could sell a bunch of trained elephants for seven dollars a week and yet couldn't get in. "All the row I had was when I doing my act in one of the out-o'-town houses and I had a row with 'props' because he , wanted to charge me fdt the twelve apples Eve bit into in my garden of Eden act. He said Eve only took one bite and with care she ought to make one apple last a week. "I said the whole bunch was pikers that would take two and a half per cent, from a suffering agent and I've not had a ihance yet to get back right. "One of these days when I smoke a whole lot and get some money I'm going to hire a theatre and tack a sign up. It's goin' to read: Never mind what names an act called you 80 long as the audience wants it. "I bet I could make money on that policy, but there's some whose pride is as big as their heads and a hundred times the size of their brains." Then Corks reached for the second seidl and seemed to feel better. Al Mayer, the vaudeville agent in the St. James Building, has taken charge of the Sunday night bills at Miner's Bow- ery. Business at the theatre on that night has climbed up with extraordinary rapidity under his guidance. Cliffe Berzac is booked solid until March, 1907.