Judge — September 11, 1920 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

“Something J ust as Good” By J. A. Warpros ONSISTENCY has been classified with jewels, and faith-keeping is an attribute that means fame as well as money. The politi- cian who keeps faith with his constituency continues to reside on Easy Street, and in all sorts of business that characteristic makes and holds prosperity. When a theatrical manager is consistent—when he keeps faith with his public—it means ample rewards. A striking example of consistency by one of the most active of metropolitan entrepreneurs has attracted de- served attention. Although this manager had, season after season, pro- duced plays which indicated a wide range of enterprise, he became identified—-perhaps in a measure not wholly deserved—with that curiosity-inspiring type of play known as “the bedroom farce.” These bedroom farces as they were shown one after another did not disclose things of a nature expected by that part of the public whose peeping instinct was stim- ulated by a prospect of something quite unusual in the theatre; yet this part of the public went to see one bed- room farce after another, no doubt expecting that sooner or later something might happen. The worst that did happen was a succession of ex- hibitions of lingerie, with the physical disclosures in- evitable to very scant costume, and little else. Such frankness had long been discounted by the regular undress of the chorus in other shows. A farce, of course, is exaggerated comedy; and the comic elements of the bedroom farces revolved around that stock device of a fat comedian trying to hide in a confined space. The hiding in the bedroom farce was funniest when it was attempted under a low-set bed, and was made the more amusing because the fat come- dian had to get down on all-fours. This device was as effective as the custard-pie calamity that the fat come- dian in the movies encounters. And the plot of the bedroom farce was moral to the extent that it let the audience know—no matter what the jealous husband or lover in the play might think—that the comedian was really guiltless of any wrongdoing of the sort that has to do with the sundering of marital relations and the divorce court. So many bedroom farces came into fashion, how- ever, and several of them through the enterprise of this particular manager, that the critics began to write about 20 their sameness, and the more curious of their patrons began to resent their tameness, although the shows still “drew.” Their auditors no doubt still expected the impossible to come to pass. And then the critics began to discuss the immorality of the bedroom farce as an abstract theatrical idea, and to advise the manager who had done his best, conscious that there was nothing whatever in any of these “shows” that would bring a blush of shame to the cheek of any manager, that something different would be welcomed. Willing to take expert advice, the manager there- upon promised that he would produce no more bed- room farces. He would turn to something more novel and bracing. And he did. He kept faith with the ¢ s, and still pleased that part of the public whose vagrant curiosity is always alert. To prove his conversion, the manager recently pro- duced the farce entitled ‘Ladies’ Night.” There is nothing resembling a bed in it, unless the tables upon which massage is administered look like beds. For *‘Ladies’ Night” means an evening devoted exclusively to women at a Turkish Bath. And this farce details some of the complications which might happen, at least on the stage, when three men invade such an exclusive place unexpectedly and under the impulse of a police raid of an adjoining dance hall of a sub-rosa character that makes their entry through a window necessary. The three men in the case are two husbands and a youth, whose wives and fiancée are in the bath, with the mixed company which such an establishment usually enter- tains. In this case a movie vamp, a very fat lady, an amazingly thin female, several shapely chorus girls off duty, a Venus-like mistress of ceremonies, a comedy negress masseuse, and the three young women related to the intruders disport themselves, all dressed as eco- nomically as befits such a place, and all candid in their conversation. The audiences that see this substitute for the bedroom farce—the manager can really say it is “something just as good”—rock with merriment, and exclaim in their joy. hey are so violently amused that if they blush at some of the situations, some of the revelations, or some of the lines, the suffusion may well be pleaded as due to their vociferous cachin- nation. The joke seems to be the manager's; and it is on the critics, for that part of the public to which ‘Ladies’ Night” is addressed is getting something it wanted. COMCHOOKSSCOM