Judge — July 20, 1929 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

uat the great art of vaudeville is on its last legs nd is calling desperately for the doctor been apparent to everyone for the last years. How it has managed to survive even this long is somewhat of a mystery. For if ever a form of entertainment was allowed to get into a rut, vaude- ville is its name. Not a new ic not a single trace of originality or invention, b en brought to it for almost twenty years a onsequence, it has presented itself for at le ade and a half as the lowest form of theatrical entertainment, except- x perhaps only the half-woman-half-man at Hu- bert’s Museum, home of the flea circus. Not long ago, I took a look at what was going on in several vaudeville theatres and what I saw there was almost exactly what I had seen on similar stages as a boy. And that goes for the squirting dill pickle joke, too. As a matter of record, heavily jocose allusions to the moist propensity of the Ger- man national flower were promulgated from two out of the three stages that I surveyed. The same old 1895 acrobats with the same old dirty handkerchief and the same o'd “whoops,” the same old sidewalk conversationalists with jokes filehed from back num- bers of the comic weeklies, the same old sketch about the burglar who turns out to be the detective or vice versa, and the same old clog dancers were still in evidence. And, accompanying the able fat women in white spangled evening gowns crooning popular songs, the venerable piano and red standing-lamp that have appeared in every vaude- ville dramatic sketch since vaudeville began, the ven- erable hoofers dressed as sailors who periodically interrupt their stepping to exchange presumable nifties, and the even more venerable gent who comes out with a cigar-box converted into a pseudo-violin and plays what is blandly announced as music. dn not one of the stages that I inspected was there n, were the vener- “Bird in Hand” (Moronco)—Diverting “The Little Shew” (Music Box)— ynes in an English inn. You'll There's some real humor on tap b get a lot of chuckles out of it. “Skidéing” (Bayes)—But dogze “Street Scene” (Playbouse)—Life in little of any bere. vi Scoret, Spay att sttet chocolates” (Hud ladies and geatlemen in wong and d . * (Hopkins)—If you like detective stuff, you'll be entertained Bamboola” (Royale)—More of the by it. came. “Hold Everything” (Broadhurst) — Grand Sweet Follies” (Rooth)—A Kicking, warbling and wivecracking. divertimement that tries altagether too Goal pasticne. hard to be clever Theatre Digest ‘Journey's Es “What Price Glory? JUDGE anything that I hadn't seen in one form or another in the ile theatres of the Middle West years and years ago. Moving pictures, true enough, have been added to some of the bills, but they only go to show to what extremities vaudeville has been forced to keep alive at all. Aside from these movies, all terrible, the bulk of the programs consisted in the sort of stuff that entertained a generation now in the gr I have mentioned the dill pickle joke. Be lieve me or not, it still has et any in the vaudeville halls in the one about the grapefruit possessed of similar effusive qualities, ihe one-about opera singers’ taste for garlic, the one about the Scotchman who was kilt, and the one about the surgeon who left his instruments in the patient after the operation. Only the ones about the chicken crossing the road and I've got-a-sister-Lena were missing. and I a feeling if I had gone to some other vaudeville theatre I'd have duly heard them. To what the vaudeville entreprencurs attribute the death of vaudeville, I don't know. Doubtless, fol- lowing formula, to the movies, talkies, radio, auto- mobile, dance halls and everything else but the real reason. That reason is simply the aforesaid entre- preneurs’ own lack of imagin d resource, and general incompetence. They have killed vaudeville— for which we should all be properly thankful—by sitting back in their chairs and doing nothing about it. And it has died of inanition. Now and again, a per- former drafted from the legitimate theatre or music show stage manages to give it a moment of life, but soon thereafter the twenty-year-old standbys come on again, do their wet-blanket tricks and it there- upon promptly lies down, rolls over and expires. It is significant to note that Variety, which orig- inally started out as a vaudeville journal, now devotes only a couple of pages to it, and those, it is plain, (Continued on page 29) “Follow Thr” (46th Street) —The best ta Kind eurreatly on echibition. 's End” “Mice Women” (Longacre) —Very poor comedy built out of stale materials, but with a good performance by Sylvia Sidney. “Brothers” (48th Servet) —Zero. (Imperial) —Sorre ¥ voices and some fair songs Sot up to , but 9 good war play. “A Wight im Venice” (Shubert) —As ore, it's Dr, Healy who is the ‘Let Us Be Gay” ( =A comedy ebout marital alarms that will entertain you. “Great Day” (Conmopolitan)—Viecest | * (New Amsterdam)— Younans’ latest score, Ziegfeld pus Cantor. es comicbooks.com