Variety (October 1915)

VARIETY ELIZABETH M. Chicago "Daily News" Tuesday, Sept. 14, 1915 GREAT PROGRAM FOR VAUDEVILLE HOUSES After a Most Successful Tour Old Friends Come Trooping Back, Among Them Clever Elizabeth Murray. MAJESTIC HAS STAR BILL of the BY AMY LESLIE When vaudeville sees its way clear it is likely to fling out its banners of defiance so sensationally attractive in devices, that no matter how other theatres are equipped with stars, crowds find time to welcome their idols of variety. Thi- happens to be one of the starry weeks when bookings have crammed the bills at both the loop theatres with attractiveness worth while. Elizabeth Murray at Majestic At the Majestic, Elizabeth Murray, who seems to have side-tracked any ambitious plunges into more stately fields of endeavor, returns to her vaudeville throne in good trim and well supplied with new and old means of entertaining. She is among the several head- liners decorating the Majestic offerings. Miss Murray has her triumphs of several years in musical comedy as a star of great popularity to lean back upon and though, perhaps, she would have been just as great a favorite had she never risen to eminence in a wider world of conquest, still her Irish Mme. Sherry and her other triumphs are remembered. Miss Murray is blithe and richly humorous, has good songs and wears handsome frocks. She looks in splendid health and is possibly in better temper than she was when last here, for fate had been unkind to Betty just then and she had a whole lot of trouble which haunted the joy in her happy Irish voice. No matter who is the top notcher in a bill, if Elizabeth Murray is among those present she is the star. ORPHEUM CIRCUIT Opens Her EASTERN TOUR at the PALACE THEATRE NEW YORK CITY NEXT WEEK (Oct. 4) Direction, ALF T. WILTON Chicago "Examiner" Wednesday, Sept. IS, 1915 BRAVING THE HEAT TO SEE ELIZABETH Even the Musicians Revive at the Majestic When Miss Murray Begins to Sing. BY ASHTOnT STEVENS^ Elizabeth Murray, the professional first aid to ailing musical' comedy or wounded vaudeville, was just in time. The editor of an afternoon daily had been strick- en in his shirt sleeves and one of his few surviv- ing slaves had issued a paper containing the in- tefligence that this wintry day was the hottest of the year. Some madman brought a copy into the Majestic theatre and the official confirmation of what everybody knew spread like—well, let's be not only original but truthful: it spread like wild- fire. Ladies never known to pale before mopped their faces white and their handkerchiefs scarlet. Large men, too robust for toil, the men that make matinees and ball games profitable, sucked the poison from their manicured fingers. The unionists in the orchestra pit were cursing their union suits. And on the stage Will M. Cressy, the promising young sketch writer, was dry- sobbing like a cayuse on the desert in his opus 4803, "The Man Who Remembered." The very curtain, as Joan Sawyer would say, sweated like Percy Hammond. Then entered Miss Murray, as crisp as green sallad, the dressing of which had gone through the cool processes of elimination. She had dis- carded even her middle initial, the famous M that stands with her—as it does with Mr. Cohan —for money, merry, mettle, miracle, music, move- ment. Boy, bring us another order of hopless brew and weightless wine while we look up some more "m's" in the Century Dictionary. There it was in the program—Elizabeth Mur- ray. She was utterly M-less, but not entirely nude at that. Her cuticle colored gown had room for a V. And her wide gauze hat was a modest awning. A handsome figure of a woman is Miss Mur- ray—as our forefathers would have said—clean as a hound's bicuspid, thrillingly upstanding, yet no Harrison Fisher model when it comes to face. But in her dear unhandsome face is the mobility that makes for expression, character, spell. It is the most effective front-drop in all vaudeville. As the band struck up "The Alabama Jubilee," Miss Murray made a smile that revived even the musicians. It went through the house like a spring zephyr. My landlord, a cold, stern man (especially on the first of the month), was sitting seat by seat with me. I heard him chuckle. You would have gathered from that chuckle that he rather than Mr. Blrckstone is Miss Murray's hired host. It came out of him as a bright dime comes out of a well-shaken baby's tin bank, or rather a baby's well-shaken tin bank (our night school English ain't all it ought to be in this weather). And when Miss Murray sang, the house rose from its swoon and the heat waves curled up and perished. She dominated. She was magical. She turned hell to heaven. She brought back to baked earth its succulent sense of humor. Every song she sang was a character plav in miniature. The suggesting art of Yvette Guilbert was born anew. Hot hands beat one upon another to make her do it over and over again. To the best of my totteirng memory I never have used the term "triumph" on any actress. Headline artists frequently have put the awful word over me, but, so far as I remember, they never got it from the "copy." But to-night I don't care how I'm optimized by the hideous head-hanger. Let his honey run. Let him sugar-powder the whole page. For the unblemished truth is that Elizabeth M-less Murray fought heat and man to a triumph yesterday afternoon, September 14, 1915. And this is, not in manner but in matter, history. We thank you, Elizabeth.