Judge — August 14, 1926 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

N THE evening of July 19, 1926, O after the first act of “Pyra- mids,” at the Cohan Theater, I cabled George Jean Nat London as follows—to wi zs if I were under two blankets stop wish you were here!” It’s the height of something, after spending the day at the beach, to have to come twenty-five miles into a sweltering city to review a play and I'm starting a movement right now to abolish the theater during the summer months. “Pyramid: melodrama Pattern 6, in which the woman pays and pays all over the place. The play opens with a prolog in the interior of a limousine going up Fifth avenue, and from the way the car jiggled I would suggest that the management invest in a set of snubbers. From there it takes us to the poor but proud home of Mr. and Mrs. Amory (Carroll Me- Comas and one Roy Gordon) where poor pappa gets mixed up in Wall street with somebody’s else’s money and has to go to jail. But sts What does the little wife do? She knows the villain (Charles Waldron) covets her beautiful body, so she moves to Madison avenue on the strength of the villain’s promise that he will get poor pappa par- doned. But curses! She finds out the villain is a dirty double-crosser, and just as they are battling in the de luxe Madison avenue apart- ment, who should come in but poor pappa! Yes, sir, you guessed it. He broke jail! Well, to make an awful story short the villain gets his just deserts in the shape of a bullet and Roy Gordon goes back to jail to finish his sentence. I would sug- gest that they keep him there and get a new leading man. In spite of JUDGE NG the SHOWS JUDGE JUNIOR “a whitting for George deeniinthea {mericana (Belmont) —Go see the Garrick Gaieties! Ziegfeld Rerue (Globe)—U: direction of the Right Re der the pe nd Flo Zi The Blonde Sinner (Cort)—Enid Markey is the blonde we prefer. The Great Temptations (Winter Garden) You'll probably go anyway. omed Pyramids (Cohan)—Good ol melodrama. Honest. Liars (Harris) —The press agent refused to send me passes and I hear it’s not worth the 82.85. | tlias the Deacon (Hudson)—Good poker show. (Ah, there, George! | Sunny (New Amsterdam)—! ! ! | Scandals (Apollo)—8 8 8 Kongo (Biltmore)— ? ? ? The Shanghai Gesture (Shubert)—% % ¢ Tolanthe (Plymouth)—Fine revival Great God Brown (Klaw)—Fine show. Laff That Of (Wallacks)—About the only show t Jat Wallacks over a week Craig's Wife (Morosco)—Cheystal Herne | cleaning house | Sez (Daly’s)—* * # The Vagabond King (Casino) —Vocal dri The Cocoanuts (Lytiv Ha! Ha! Hat | Garrick Gairtics (Garrick) —Good show. What Every Woman Knows (Bijou)—Helen | Hayes. The Merry World (Imperial) —Good show Kitty's Kisses (Playhouse) —One good song. The Girl Friend (Vanderbilt) —Two good songs. Is Zat So? (40th St.)—Funny. -Abic's Irish Rose (Republic)—As Jack Osterman says they ought to close the show for a week so the players could have their faces lifted. Love in a Mist (Gaiety)—Madge Kennedy keeps this one going. Cradle Snatchers (Music Box)—If you think middle-aged women with boy friends are funny see this. At Mre. Beam's (Guild)—Fine comedy. A Night in Pas bert’s shady shows. (44th St.)—One of Shu- | =) o all this, the darn play will hold you in your seat. II Arter several days research work, +4 collecting data and_ statistics, visiting the public library, the Algon- quin and the Coffee House, I have obtained the complete dope on the average “Opening Nighter.” He is a man about forty years old, in- clined to stoutness, rather well dressed and has very bad manners. He knows two people in the show, is -quainted with all the dramatic critics by sight, or I should say sound, and has forty friends in the audience. He claps loudly at the exits and entrances of his two friends in the show, and after the said friends have left the stage keeps on clapping during the next number. He laughs uproariously at any mention of Rotarians, Kiwani. J. Shubert, Earl Carroll, Heywood Broun, H. L. Mencken and George Nathan, and looks around to see if his forty friends also got the joke. At the end of each act he rushes out into the lobby, and shakes hands with the forty friends. He is a metropolitan super Babbitt, but he imagines he’s one of the cog- noscenti. He attended the opening of ““Amer- icana,” which starred that 100 per cent. American Lew Brice, and my gracious, what a good time he had! He nearly fell out of his seat at the reference to the Garrick Gaieties, and almost collapsed at the scene be- tween Jake Shubert and the Theater Guild Director. There are two people in “Amer- icana” which make the show well worth seeing. Charles Butterworth and Betty Compton. Butterworth’s after-dinner speech at the Rotary (Continued on page 26) 16 comicbooks.com