Judge — November 29, 1919 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

Drawn by Henman PaLMen N Broadway they sel- dom serve you one thing of akind. Asa rule you cither get none at all, or a lot. No spy = Ethiopian Entertainers By Lawton Mack att with idealization, nor do they flip the light fantastic. They deal in darky dialogue. They are the bl face Weber & Fields. Most comedy teams plays, then a raft of them, till they become a glut and go hence. Then a flock of wistful orphans, making the stage sticky with sugar till they melt away to the provinces. The shimmy no sooner shivers into town than all showdom is a-shake with it. Now we have on the board a bevy of blackfaces. Not new fangled Al Jolsons and Frank Tinneys (we speak of them in the plural, as cach is advertised b his loving imitators); these exponents of up-to-th minute sophistication are rollicking on the road: no, the charcoal-completed worthies we have with us in New York this evening are regular old- fashioned minstrels. And what is more, they are proving popular. First came Eddie Leonard, he of the famous hot-potato voice and soft-shoe grace, and shiny silk glory—the personi- fication of darky dapperness. He was welcomed back from his long exile in vaudeville most enthusiastically. He is the dearly beloved dude of minstrelsy. “Roly-Boly Eyes,” the show given him to star in, is a creaky vehicle indeed, the book consisting of mawkish mush en- livened with raw stupidity; yet Leonard, no whit disconcerted by the dullness, dis- ports himself debonairly and sings his sliding-scale songs, His magnetic per- sonality keeps mediocrity moving. He is monarch of all the array. Despite anything the piffling plot may pretend, the gleaming, idealized Black Brummel is not presented as a character having any particular relationship to life He is neither a negro nor a white man nor a mulatto. He is as much a fancy- created personage as Pierrot. And here lies the appeal of Eddie Leonard: his dancing is nothing extraordinary, his singing is curious rather than clever; but he gives us a distinct and pleasant picture for our mental memory-book. Messrs. McIntyre & Heath, of “Ham- Tree” fame, now visible and audible in “Hello, Alexander,” are little concerned 11-29-19 « Strxs Our Ei Leonarp Gors, It's a Cas: Nobbiness Oblige 26 consist of one domineering guy and one goat—Mr. Savoir Faire and Mr. Simp. McIntyre plays the part of Alexander, whose voca- tion in life is that of valet to horses in a stable. To this lowly Iummox comes Henry Clay Jones, the Grand (played by Heath), a highfalutin’ nigger with stove- pipe hat, cat’s fur collar, and an imposingly protuberant waistcoat terminating in a huge brass watch chain and two-pound fob. Henry is impressive, persuasive. Con- descendingly, he acquires Alexander's bank-roll, for Henry has irresistible glamour and Alexander has in- exhaustible gullibili What if Alex- ander is left impoverished pro tem? The livery stable is still open for him to earn more money for Henry. Alexander is a victim of the high cost of fiction. Before absorbing his assets Henry gets him into a beatific state by means of spell-binding descriptions of fabulous delights in store for him. Mes- merized, Alexander's eves gleam and his mouth H,O’s. What matters it to him that his present lot is o’ercast with tin In “Palmy Days,” the shaggy crew of 'Forty-niners are entertained at the Lone Tree saloon by a troupe of strollers consisting of a dancing girl, her mother who recites, and her step-father, billed as the Banjo King. Their primitive show is presented on an improvised stage. The Lone Tree audience sit with their backs to the Broadway audience (as though occupying front pews) and the players in the show-within-the-show per- form for both sets of people. The play- wright avoids boring us with Mamma’s recitations ; of the girl's dancing he gives us little; but of the Banjo King he gives liberally, knowing we will like him. Broadway smiles at the primitive delight of the Lone Tree miners, but this old- fashioned banjo stuff captures both the large audience and the small, completely. Old-time minstrelsy is pretty live yet! comichooks.