Judge — January 3, 1920 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

Photo by Abbe Nep Wayeurn’s Capit Ture NINE oF S BROOKLYN in Americ asks the simple Breton maid in “ Buddies.” “People who live there,” explains the Yank, “like to think it is.” What would Broadway do without the Butt End of Oft-abused Brooklyn! years playwrights and librettists have instilled in the public mind the notion that the locality is laughable, till now the mere mention of it on the stage Long Island to jibe at? gains aneasy grin. In the realm of ridicule this bedeviled borough occupies on the east approximately the same position that the Erie Railroad holds on the It is considered as funny as a west. Ford. Those indefatigable bookmakers and lyric-framers, Messrs. Bolton and Wodehouse, have ceased not to celebrate Brooklyn’s multi- tudinous baby carriages and rubber plants, have unremit- tingly ammed its sloth Even in “The Rose of China” where the scene the far-off Orient, their songs and dialogue back-fire at it. Raymond Hitchcock, in a “Koo” of a couple of years ago, elicited large laughs as a perambulator-push- ing papa of Flatbush. In Martin Brown's ill-starred, but to us ex- ceedingly diverting, comedy, “A Very Good Young Man” the model of pro- priety in question worked in a brass- bedstead factory for twelve dollars a week, was named Gumph, and inevitably dwelt There. In “Happiness” Laurette Taylor, as the modiste’s little errand-girl, hailed from across the big bridge, but Hartley Man- ners, the playwright, interceded with the ot Demt- E-HOUR-AND-A-HALE Tassers Lixneo Up at tHe BeGinninc or A Bint Greater New York’s Comic Section Lawton MAcKALL By For Photo Ov bra. Hill Ina Crater’s Gown Dic: cer Metuops Were Unxxxown To THE Forty-Niners 26 audience in behalf of Broo} lyn. When a score or sc withering witticisms had been sprung at B’s expense, he, gallant’ English gentleman, rushed nobly to its rescue showed Manhattan to be Mammon, and Brooklyn to be the headquarters of Happiness, the Borough of Bliss. With the exception of this one great vindication, the subway’s eastern terminal moraine had no champion in the ‘Times juare Theatre-Tourne Show people find it expedient to keep it an irre- denta, subject to perennial gagging. For comedians know that Bill Bryan’s name will no longer bring a guffaw, that wives’ mothers have narrow comic limitations, that intoxication-humor is passing into the past, while Pro- hibition is too appallingly fixed upon us to be enduringly funny; so that all that remains of sure- fire stuff is nearly-married mix- ups, conjugal bickerings, and Brooklyn. And the easiest of these is Brooklyn. But at last the tormented one turned. Like Gianetto in “The Jest” it nursed its re- venge till a fit opportunity, then sardonically inflicted upon truculent Manhattan Red Mike Hylan. r Desirous of enjoying at first hand the humor of Mr. Hylan’s home town, we recently took ourselves thither, confident in the expectation of a big laugh. For hours we strayed and trol- leyed. Nary a snicker rose to our surface. Streets, sedate houses, placid parks and rambling L’s. Horrible disillusionment! Asa child trusts in Santa Claus, we had pinned our faith to the thought that Brooklyn was funny, and it wasn’t. comicbooks.com