Judge — February 1, 1930 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

IMIG: The Stag at Eve ING just a Missouri boy who has to be shown, I took in the N tional Winter Garden show. You see, they had told me it was the last stronghold of the real, old-fashioned unoxidized burlesque. “Hot stuff. my stepdaughter put Hereafter Vil take my feelthy chromos by my fireside, well-bolstered with a tall glass and a copy of Rabelais to read between encores. It wasn’t good fun nor was it bad. It was just withered. So here goes: “Houston Street, Lower East Side, 8:45 P.M. The National Winter Garden. Boloney shops; Yid- dish Follies theatres; boys studying to be rabbis, gangsters, cloak-and-suiters and song-writers. Upstairs by elevator. Out into the darkened house; old as Mrs. Whiffen; odorous as a nickel Havana; and shabby as Pete. ‘Quiet, gents; show's on.’ Our seats: right up under the front runway. On the runway a soubrette. Long- legged and coy, mumbling the words to a hot number. Then returning for encore after encor removing more costume each time. The audience slouching indifferently over cigars. Her coming back, whether they encored or not. The final encore signaled by a roll of the drummer's drums, His scowling face when the audience awakened to applaud. To the drummer, at least: no newds were good newds. “The sketch. The one about the wife, the hus- band and the old friend. Innuendo after innu- endo, no worse than the better-dressed ones in the uptown revues. “Then another steam-heated number; another soubrette, once obviously cute but now ravished into an ancient prejudice. Then the chorus. Girls, girls, girls. Ziegfeld would beat his old chest and George White would cultivate pansies. Girls built in a Big Way. Girls with high cheek 2 =l\ ic looks. Girly leading an artistic life here rather than at Wool- worth’s, Girls with defiant looks. Dark, parboiled Roman matrens. Old. tough cabby horses: veterans of a thousand turns on the Gayety Wheel. But all with the same eyes and legs. Legs like mooring masts. Legs like Yale guards. Legs by Steinway. The legs of fat Buddhas. The thought that these were the bread-and-buddha girls of the stage. The thought that the pun was awful. Their feeble out-of- step dancing. Their entrance onto the runway. Not one of them looking at the sluggish audience. "Their prop les. Their shrill voices. The retreat from the runway. Two girls bumping by accident and glaring at cach other nkly, openly. ‘The feeling they will fight bs “The soubrette ync. Built like a Japanese wrestler. All pudge, terrible strutting and egrets. ‘The girl of a thousand egrets.’ Encore. The denuding gag. The final whirr of the disgruntled trapdrummer, “More comic relief. Bigamy trial stuff. Something happening; the audience stirring slug- i kening and beginning to greet each lustful ar. The Lew Fields comic getting hot and clowning like a Jim Barton. His acco nying each joke with a sock of a bladder. Joke. Socko! Joke. The second cot low fellow, Bringing-Up-Father type getting hit harder. “And so on through the first act. A torrid, indistin- guishable song. The house growing bluer with smoke. The piece of gauze over the tuba to keep balcony wags from throwing butts into it. The gray- “stage. Courtroom scene. ic ted ‘copper TE GOMEDAN Wook” THE TEWE FRENCH MAID NTH A BOUQET OF CELERY, comicbooks.com