Judge — November 12, 1921 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

rc THE BOOZE HUNT The smart set have taken to this new sport with joy. The booze-hounds locate the still and you can easily guess the rest. Jolson, the Jester to get into the Biltmore Hotel that it takes a letter from the Pope. He says he went there with a letter from his Rabbi but they wouldn’t even open it. In his monologue toward the end of “Bombo” he takes his audience con- siderably into his more or less ficti- tious confidence and in a rambling sort of way, hooks up the probable with the impossible so humorously that he leaves his audience gasping for breath. When he infers that New York has become a two weeks’ stand he touches humorously on what is fast becoming a truth. New York in the past sea- son has declared itself as willing to pay for only such offerings as are worth the money. It’s a long run or a quick one these days. Again speaking of the Biltmore (we wonder what the hotcl did to him) he says that the long silken rope with the big tassel at the end of it which hung down over his pillow caused him so much curiosity that his fingers itched to pull it. Yet so grand was it that he didn’t dare. For nights he feared the thing till, screwing up enough courage, he did pull it ex- pecting some awful calamity to fol- low. What do you suppose hap- pened as a result of the pull? The story was suggested to him by what actually happened to him in a hotel in Philadelphia. Speaking of Philadelphia which has stood for so much from those who call it the city of the dead, Jolson in a merry, quippish moment, referring to the voyage of Colum- bus says that the weary nights of Columbus must have been the Phil- adelphia chapter. Political Washington comes for its share of his satire when mention is made of one who col- lects gold and never works. And our delinquent telephone service is heavily scored when the King of Spain, one Ferdinand, is trying his A L JOLSON says that it’s so hard in crochet. of the needle.” He says he went to Atlantic City for his health. He wanted to go there By Gerorce MiItTcHELL durndest to be heard. Says he: “Nobody’s been listening to me for over a week.” To which Jolson speed- ily and quite zippily comes back with: “You must have been standing in a telephone booth.” One of his best stories is almost too subtly hidden away in that de- licious scene in which he appears ta be misunderstood by a man he refers to as “just a big brute man.” Jolson’s trembling lip and pathetic timidity is very funny, not to say very artistic. “You don’t even know if I’m well or not,” he says. “I just love birds and flowers. I was playing with a little animal the other day. A nice, furry little animal it was and I jes’ played with it all day and nobody would come near me for a week! I jes’ love gentle things. Some days I'd like to I jes’ nacherly feel the call \] 1K because he could speak the language. ~ 13 But it was too cold. So he went to New Orleans, but there is was too hot. “You may imagine how hot it was,” he says, “when a greyhound was chas- ing a rabbit through the streets and beth were walking.” Later he came to New York, where he engaged an apartment of four rooms and_ tub, from which he moved to the surburbs and took a little house. “It was painted green,” says he, “and you may imagine how small it was. People used to come and drop letters in it.” “Do you know why the people on the Ark couldn't cut the cards?” he asks, and when everybody has given it up: “Because Noah sat on the deck.” We were very much interested in learning from Jolson where he gets his stories. This led to his dressing- room, where we found him after the performance in a black sweater and a gracious mood. Most of his stories are picked up from actual experi- ences. He says he used to try them on the family, but that didn’t always work out. Once he heard the story of the poor artist who was stony broke. “You mean the wolf’s at the door?” said Joison. “Not only at the door,” said the poor artist, “but she’s had a litter of pups in the vestibule.” Jolson thought it a good story and told it to his wife, but she couldn’t see it and Jolson gave it up till one night he told it to a little circle of friends who laughed their heads off. He lost faith in home judgment and now tries his stories outside. The funniest thing about travel- ing, he told us, is the number of people who know it all. It seems that he was crossing the border into Canada, by auto. While he was in with the customs officials his friends waited outside in the car. Said one of his friends to a Canuck: “You've seen Jolson, haven’t you?” and the Canadian, not to be outdone, re- sponded quite loftily: “Oh, my, yes. T’ve a cousin living there.” comicbooks.com