Judge — July 26, 1930 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGE O GEORGE JEAN NATHAN FP ruose persons who do not go to ‘Picen shows are full of a firm conviction that the humor on tap in such divertissements is very low, very juicy and eminently rough. The legend has enjoyed a life pecu- liarly unjustified by the facts. Not only is the humor generally quite in- nocent; it is only on very rare occ sions that it gets within even hailing distance of much of that retailed in the Broadway pastimes. By way of substantiating the truth of toda lantern-slide lecture, I bade my © ored assistant, the Rev. Dr. Fer nand Johnson, Harvard '08, to n the rounds of the burlesque empor to take notes and to make known ke findings for your delectation and in- struction. Rev. Johnson proudly reports that he has covered forty-six burlesque shows, including ‘Cracker-Jacks,” “Hindu Belles, Nifties,” “Whoopee Girls,” “Sugar Babies,” “Step. Lively, Girls,” ‘Radium Queens,” “Moonlight Maid dainty Dolls,” “French Models,” “Dimpled Darling: “Ginger Girls,” “High Flyers,” ““Kuddling Kut Lifters, lischief Maker Babic neial = Maid. s Girls” and “Puss Puss.” The only semi-rough jokes he heard in’ the whole forty-six, including “The Girls From the Follies,” “The Girls From the Moulin Rouge” and the Girls From Everywhere Else But Akron, Ohio, were the following: 1 Babe La Tour: “I'm going with a deaf-and-dumb guy now, dearie, and he makes love with both hands.” Belle La Belle: “Say, kid, that guy may be deaf, but he ain’t dumb!” 2. Soubrette: “We've had a miracle up at our house.” Izzy Cohen: “Yes, and vat Soubrette: “I've got a new baby brother and ma says a fairy brought it.” 38. Fifi: “Are you goin’ to be busy to- night Gaby: “I dunno. Zis is my first date wiz him.” 4. O’Brien: “Do yez know what the line of least resistance is, swate one?” Mlle, Allah: “Yes.” O'Brien: “That's right, begorra!” Surely, when it comes to the warm stuff, these sound pretty Sunday- school compared with the mots in “It's a Wise Child,” “Lost Sheep” and other such Broadway deviltries. The leading humor in the burlesque shows, Rev. Johnson goes on to re- port, is—save for the standardized pants-seat wallops, seltzer sprayings and garter-peckings—largely devoted to such relatively innocuous subjects as inebriety, kissing in the dark, wom- en's propensity for gold-digging, the theoretical virility of ice-men, love- making in taxi-cabs and the lack of excitement one finds in one’s wife. In six of the shows the Rev. Johnson heard the one beginning “I know a place where women don't w thing except a string of bead: the query, “Where?”, “Around their necks.” In five he was presented with the bewhiskered: “Don’t you trust in Providence?” ‘aw, and what's more, I don’t trust in no city.” In eight he was re- quested to laugh at the one about “What's your wife goin’ to give you for your birthday?” and the retort, “T don’t know what I can afford yet!" And in no less than two dozen, he in- forms me, he heard the rich one that goes: “That tenor reminds me of Hoover"—"But Hoover ain't no singer”—Well, neither is that tenor.” Desirous of finding at least one sample of hot jocosity in the bur- lesque halls, Rev. Johnson reports that he went i ion to one of the “speci night per- formances. These _ performances— the night sometimes varies—are sup- posed to be more fruitful in exotic 16 humor than the others. At the show in question, the height of s: was reached in the three appended wheezes: siness 1. Mlle, Frou-Frou: “Whipping kids don't do no good. I wuz never spanked but onct in my life, and that wuz fer being good.” Finkelstein: “Vell, baby, you!” it cured 2 Betty Bootleg: “So you say your new stenographer is young and will- ing?” Reggie Van Astorbilt: “Well, she ain't so very young.” 3. Miss Violet: “Jack took me out riding in his new car last night.” Miss Dottie: “How far did you go?” Miss Violet: “That ain't none of your damn business ! The rest of the witticisms on this particularly hot occasion, my assist- ant reports, consisted in the one about the wife's divorcing her husband for incompatibility because he z woke up at about two o'clock in the morning and wanted to go home; the one about the sudden increase in the population after Deacon Tutwiler's daughter got married because ten of the boys came back home; the one about the man who boasts he has a broad acquaintance and the inquiry as to her name; the one about the girl friend who gives the comedian a pain in the neck, with the comed ing her teeth marks to prov the one about men being nice thing to have around the house, provided your husband doesn’t come in sud- denly. To say nothing of the on “Could I interest you in a Ford? “Say you, you couldn’t interest me in a Rolls-Royce !"; the one: “Didja take your gal home last night?” “Nix, I left her at her house”; the one about the girl who was called Niagara be- cause she falls so easily; the other one: “I want a hat,” “Let me show (Continued on page 27) ———-g comicbooks.com