Judge — April 26, 1919 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

— ey seen T H E RISKY farce as prac- tised this season is based on the science of false alarms; set- ting the stage for a big shock, ostentatiously wav- ing danger signals and then having, instead of the im- plied awful happening, an awful hoax If in a melodrama a desperate woman should cry, “Monster, you'll pay for this with your life!” and then snap a cap-pistol, we should lose patience with the play; but in scientifically skittish farce all the elaborately y clicks, yet the audience prepared hot shots are er remains anxiously expectant of dreadfulness. Hoax springs eternal. Chief among farce frauds nowadays is the bed. When the curtain rises on a heavily gewgawed rox containing an even more heavily gewgawed piece of sleep furniture with satin sheets and a pink cov erlet, you can be certain of what is going to happen in that act A comely woman is going to enter (with or without husband), tinker with the bedclothes, let her hair down, shed a safely shedable garment, withdraw to an alleged dressing-room or bathroom (stage characters never t dress in bedrooms) and reappear shortly after in nifty night attire—the latter being piquant but quite sub- stantial. Then, the Man, the compromising situati the knocking at the door, the room full of people, the grand hurry-scurry scrimmage that brings down the house and brings down the curtain. It was appropriate that on April Fools’ Day there were running in New York no less than five of these bedroom bunk shows, not nting Bessie McCoy’s canopy-couch tableau in the Ziegfeld Frolic. Most of these are still with us. In “The Kiss Burglar” which came back to Broad- way for a short visit) the Man is a lumbering boob and the Woman a duchess divine, who remains perfectly self- possessed throughout the proceedings. Her couchant cuteness and his enthralled boobosity supply the inter- est of the occasion. Still_ more boobous is John Cumberland—he of the anguished upper lip—in “Up in Mabel’s Room,” and Hazel Dawn, as Mabel, is not only self-possessed but bullysome. She holds him in the hollow of her ridicule, tor she has on the tateful chemise which he Attractions Wik: COCkde. Ck rashly sent her from Paris cou S H O W Bedridden Constance Binney. Note the sunny exposure. S H O P years ago, before he married his esent—oh, so present! —wife. He has invaded her sleeping precincts to recover the bit of telltale lingerie Farce By Lawton Mackatt and she nabs him hiding under the bed. The rest is anything but silence. In “The Kiss Burglar” the invader seeks a jewel; here he seeks a garment; but in both cases the real pur- pose is a speciously frisky situation with which to kid the audience. In “Keep It to Yourself” the intruder is neither oafish nor awkward: he enjoys perfect serenity, being in a state of hypnosis. While the lady is in the dressing- room doing the customary transformation or night shift, he marches in through a communicating door and gets into bed. When you know that this is the lady’s nuptial soirée and that her husband, who has gone out in ‘search of a lost jewel-case, is due back at any mo- ment—well, you can readily prognosticate the rumpus. In “A Sleepless Night” it is the lady who intrudes. Or rather, the ladies. A young man, secretly married, is overnighting at a Long Island mansion where his wife is also a guest. She stealthily visits his room and is indulging in a conjugal confab, when a communicating door opens and in flounces the daughter of the house, an ultra-modern minx who has been dared into proving her book-acquired theories of conduct by doing some- thir defiance of convention. This is her idea of throwing off false shackles. Under the same roof are a practical papa and a jealous lover. Need I say more? his: in order that the room and bed may be the required million aire’s baby-crib- style of knick-knackery, it is care- fully established that this is a female room, being or- dinarily occupied by a gay young aunt, now absent i town. Hence pink doodads ad lib. In “Please Get Mar- ried”’ a pair of diffident but desperate honeymooners are persistently intruded upon by hotel people—the pert chambermaid, the stammer- ing night clerk, and finally the house detective with a flashlight camera. In the culminating chase-about the conflagration of the hotel is a mere detail. From these enlightening examples it is safe to say that audiences witnessing bedroom scenes need have no fear. The worst is al- ways yet to come. comicbooks.com