Judge — October 27, 1923 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

A recent visit to the “Vanities of 1923,” at Earl Carroll's Theater, found Mr. Joe Cook still won- dering (after three and a half months) why (and if) all mankind falls for Miss Peggy Hopkins Joyce. AT LAST A REAL THEATRICAL ar AND Away the best: entertai Fe that the New York theater has provided so far this season w produced by Arthur Hammerstein on the Century Roof the evening of October 3. After a long series of plays by Owen Davis, Samuel Shipman, Sydney Rosen- feld, Herbert Hall Winslow, Jules Eckert. Goodman and other such entrepreneurs of belles lettres, Mr. Hammerstein's offe: ing came as breath from the green, den meadows. Here at last was critic of the theater given an oppor- tunity to forsake all the adjectives of de- traction and go in wholcheartedly for culogy. Heretofore this season his only chances to lift hymns were few and far between—for a pretty piece of scenery, perhaps, or for a good-looking girl in’a maid’s part, or for a comedian. surpris- ingly more talented than his red nose. 3 sion of plays about de- i poor little moon-mad actors, master crim- inals, reformed harlots, amnesia victim suburban wives and dope fiends. sure provided small ground for critical en- thusiasm. The time for striking was hot. And Mr. Hammerstein took admirable advantage of it. Mr. Hammerstein, a sagacious show- man, appreciated that one of the chief current troubles with the American theater is the soberness of its audiences. An intelligent. man, he realized that. pro- hibition is the leading curse of the drama. How anyone but a thoroughly coc 1 person could sit through three-quarters of the present productions he could not, for the life of him, understand, A savant of the stomach, further, he knew that in order to get pickled properly one must lay in a sufficient groundwork of edibles, After a foundation of consommé Royal, croustades Dieppoise, filet de boeuf Renais- sance, timbales de suprémes de rolailles, cuissots de Chevreuil sauce poivrade, salmis de faisans et perdrix, dindes ala Perigqueur, foie gras @ la Frangaise, salade de laitue, pointes d’asperges veloutée, glace Maltaise EVENING by George Jean Nathan and gdteaur and, seriatim, a half dozen Bronx cocktails, three glasses of rich and nutty Oloroso. sherry (from the Mount Royal cellars), two glasses of Nuits St. Geor; or Chambertin (Collin and Bourrisset) if one preferred, five glasses of Krug 1906, private curée a couple of gl Sandemans’ Royal port, six ponies of a very fair brandy, and then perhaps a half dozen highballs or so, not forgetting a seven-inch de luxe cigarro— after this, he asseverated, anyone, even J. Ranken Tow: could sit) through “Children of the Moon” or almost any- thing else and—with the aid of two or three more highballs, maybe—enjc But words are one thing and ac another. Mr. Hammerstein is what the Success ne calls a man of action. No idle theorizing for him. And so it came about that on the evening of Octo- ber 3 he got into touch with Sherry’s, Pierre’s and the Hofbriul nd, more importantly, with the estimable boot- leggers, the Messrs. Guggenheimer, Fitz~ patrick and Lucatelli, and at one swoop improved the opportunity of the Ameri- can theater as Augustin Da David Belasco and Michael Goldreyer, with all their herculean artistic effort, were never able to. Tt sHow began promptly at seve when the critic e to stand ktails in five thirty standard tim for the —— (we crit together) downed eight minutes and was saved from falling down- stairs and breaking his neck only by the quick action of ——, eritie for the —— (ditto), who had arrived at 7. thus had time to get down only five. By ten minutes of eight, due to the generosity of the praiseworthy Mr. Hammerstein and the nimble footwork of the no less praiseworthy garcons, the Messrs. Louie, Otto, Sigismund and Ferdinand, two- thirds of the invited patrons of art were not only full of hors d'oeuvres, tomato soup, turbot Nantua, selle de Chézelles aux épinards, pain de liévre a la Joinville, 13 frai tons, sorbet a la Romain grillés @ la Jeanne d'Are, pommes de terre Monte Cristo, bécasse sur canapés, hari- cots flageoléts & la maitre Chétel, laiturs au jus, profiteroles au chocolat garnies. de ruites ylaces, legierte sparyclsuppr, gebackene sardinen, Leipziger allerlei. Wiener schnitzel, puréekartofieln and vier. huchen mit schinken—and were boast about it—but were also full, extreme Bronx, Manhattan, Orange Blossom, Jo, Rob Roy, Clover Club, Martini, Bolo, Lonetree, Old Fashioned) Whisky, I quiri, Palmetto and Absinthe co to say nothing of Scotch high superieur, Chateau Yquem, on, Chateau Margaux, Vouvray, Monopole, Fleurie-Che Hocheimer, Trittenheimer. Ov nheimei Asti Spumante, Piper Heidscick, Pom. mery, Veuve Cliquot, Perrier Jouct, pale ale, stout, anisette, cherry brandy, peach brandy and rye highballs. So effective was the service, indeed, that one member of the party proclaimed loudly—he was sitting in a pot of palms—that he was ready to go right down to the Playhouse and see “Chains” all over again. a la Charle- filets de truite I" was, in fact, an ideal audience. One member, who was the fountain on the terrace under the impres- sion that it was Augustus Thomas, swore that never in his life had he so thoroughly d anything as the performance by the National Theater Company of “As You Like 11.” Another, who mistook Heywood Broun for Helen Gahagan and rushed up and kissed him, shouted that the greatest. play of the year was ‘A Mad Honeymoon” and that the next best was “We've Got to Have Money.” A third, just before he fell down the steps leading to the al freseo promenade, livered himself of the opinion th: Bluebeard” addressing de- Little was a play he was going ten times. The critic for the —— (the spirit. of the corps prevents the (Continued on page 30) comicbooks.com