Judge — October 7, 1922 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

T: 2 Hippodrome never fails to provide a show that children and Mr. Alan Dale enjoy immensely. The oral oh’s and ab’s of the youngsters and the written ah’s and oh’s of Mr. Dale are as integral a part of every New York september as Mr. William A. Brady's announcement of his forthcoming pro- uction of foreign masterpieces followed promptly by the production of a play by Oven Davis. But perhaps T single out Mr. Dale unfairly. He has com among a num of his fellow-re vie wers on the metropolitan press. It is true that when I meet these other gentle- men out in the lobby after the second act their enthusiasm is not perceptible to the naked ear, but nevertheless I al- ways find, when I read their reviews the next morning, that I have been sadly mistaken. ‘These reviews prove to me— for all the gentlemen’s coolness and bored mien in the foyer—that they have had the time of their lives at the show, and have enjoyed it fifty times more than the show the year before, and seventy- five times more than the show the year before that. On these previous occa- sions they looked just. as profoundly bored out in the lobby, but on casion their subsequent written reviews similarly proved to me what bad eye and ud. For each of these ante- cedent exhibitions—so I duly read—was also a truly wonderful thing, a veritable pulse-jouncer—in short, the Real Thing. The annual newspaper reviews of a Hippodrome show are like so 1 Sanatogen testimonials. ‘The trained cle. phants regularly get notices that Salvini would have envied, and Bernhardt in her prime never got half the smear of praise that is yearly bestowed upon the act in which a mime dressed as a farmer catches the of his pantaloons on a pitchfork, the while the tenor sings an appropi song entitled either “Hail to the U or “My Andalusian Babe” and the girls come on relevantly costumed as butter- flies. It doesn’t matter in the least how good or how bad the shows are: the re- views are always the same. And then the next night the reviewers get back into their old form and roast the hell out of Eugene O°? 5 Although T can find no great reason for the reviewers’ excitement over the current Hippodrome spectacle, the truth is that it actual teal better thar two shows that have prec considerably sounder ta symptoms of greater originality inality in such things goes; it moves George Jean Nathan’s T heater Page ‘Sweet and more gracefully, A ballet in which figure several hundred prettily colored fans is illing than anything the big led in several seasons, and there is a black and white number, remi- niscent of the Hanlons’ “Fantasma,” that works out nicely. ‘The tank business is much the same as it has been for y the Hippodrome is in need of new’ ideas for the moist end of its bill. Burnside seems to be worn out when he gets this far. And Hubbell's music is a feeble more © stage has reve patterning after Dave Stamper and Irving Berlin. But still, as I have said, the Hippodrome remains the most ad- mirable theater in New York to which to take the youngsters and Mr. Dale. Il HAVE laid an eye to many sour shows in the last twenty years, but the Order of the Custard Pie, Second Class, surely goes to “A Fantastic Frieassee, recently unveiled in the Greenwich Vil- lage Theater. It is true that: my en- durance gave out at the end of the first slice of the entertainment and that I then went home, but if the second slice was anything like the first—and my. trust- worthy agents report to me that it was— the award) must. stand unchallenged. Let me sketch briefly what crossed the vision during the hour and a half that I in my rst item on the bill, the prologue, revealed a lady and gent bemoaning their connubial unhappiness. Suddenly the lights went out. When they came up again a fat gal in strip tights with a heart painted upon her right’ breast center of ‘the stage.” “Who are demanded the ‘I Cupid!” cried the fat ated the he said now the fat girl, who poured out a u brace of drinks for the unhappy couple. The latter dri Smiles promptly wreathed their features. Love had re- turned to them! Curtain. Item No. 2 was an “Oriental” dance hefty Trish miss named Burke. This Oriental colleen bent herself in_ at the middle eight or ten times, lifted her great toe in the air after each bend, and gesticulated the meanwhile like a Jewish snake. This done, she stood upon her toes four times, turned around twice, and made her exit. Item No. 3 was a tournament in Little ew adjectives and phrases by the i Messrs lenheim and Hecht. It was named “The Master Poisone Sobe, the poison professor, fashions a poison that will) make its swallower super- humanly beautiful. He gives it to Fana, his wife, who is loved by Maldor, the assistant poisoner. Fana lifts her veil. She is now, according to Sobe, so damned beautiful that he can hardly stand it, although Fana, from where I was sitting, looked much like every other fat woman of thirty-five so. However, Sobe obeyed the stage directions of the Messrs Bodenheim and Hecht, put his hands before his eyes to shut out the theoretical beauty, and fell back dead. ved his hand upon the ow. “De hed nodded Maldor. Curtain. No. was a cabaret imita of Al Jolson, from Kansas City. He was assisted by a smirking chubby blond also from Kansas City, dressed up to look like men. The blond pirow- etted on her toes while the young man, after carefully buttoning his dinner coat in the middle, sang. No. 6, the only fairly good thing on the bill, was a marionette show handled by Re pmo Bufano. n ditty by the Ki 5 are “Waiting for You.” Four girls, three of them with legs like nator Borah’s, served as a chorus. Ttem No. 8 was “Bobby” Edwards, one of the Village’s pets, who strummed a_cigar-box ukulele and, with eminent self-consciousness recited several Village masterpieces. The ninth and concluding item of the first. part of the entertainment’ was a ballet called “Virgins of the Sun.” Against a backdrop painted by Janssea, the Hofbriiuhaus, a number of fat girls, headed by a thin one without any clothes on, did their « Jozen, After running around twenty or thirty. times, indicating they Suddenly dejected (Continued on paye