Judge — August 23, 1930 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

Reflections While Drinking a Bottle of Clos Mougeot HEY’RE announc this coming season a play for called “In- s of which > ina theatre lobby du Although so far they J one to be played 1 st of one-legged men with chiffon whiskers or one that will be played by all the pes lying on the floor with their feet in the air, we may expect the news any day now. For whenever business is bad in cer- tain managers’ shops, they conclude that the public is fed up on the more or less conventional drama—like, for example, “June Moon”, “Strictly Dis- honorable” and “Dishonored Lady"— and that the w termissior take p the entr haven't y to pull in customers in large numbers is to give the 1 some- different, however coo- Once in a great while one of these novelties, as they are called, suc- ceeds in getting the trade, but more often the trade has a funny way of persisting in paying out its mazuma for the standard, tried and true stuff. The search for dramatic novelties pretty generally produces nothing but thing entirely coo. a lot of senseless whim-wham. | We have thus been ed with plays acted by asin slike August Stramm’s ver"; produced by Reinhardt at the Kammerspiele— whose dialogue consists chiefly in such ragnificent monosyllabic eloq as “door”, and “noodle ys acted in the audience, plays acted throughout on a pitch dark plays without stage, intermissions, ds, plays acted s with- in plays, plays so expressionistic that they express nothing, other ] impressionistic that they impress no s in which phosphores- cent spooks fly over the audience and muss up everybody's hair. The n jority of these novelties are about satisfactory as a dinner served hind end foremost, and are just as disturb- ing to one’s stomach, plays played backws AvS SO JUDGE eIAUE °ADEACIIR IE Wis a sta rique turns liter- ary and commits his humors in book form, the result is usually pretty sad. During the last year two stage funny men, Eddie Cantor and Joe Cook, have published books in which they tried to get into type some of the spirit of their platform jocosity. Both are approximately as hilarious as What the books con- tain might be highly comical delivered by the gents on the stage—indeed, has long been comical there—but read in cold blood it falls dismally flat. When Cantor, prancing about the platform in blackface, observes. th: he is the coon of Kuhn, Loch and C nobody shoots him lemon. squash. His antics while he is delivering himself of the mot get a laugh, even from persons who have v heard the wheeze two or three nd times. But when he puts tticisin into chilly print, there's nothing to do but walk out on him and sue him for getting money under false comic pretenses, ‘The same with the M. Cook. On the stage, he can allude toa Hawaiian playing the eucalyptus or to another Hawaiian playing the as, and itr conceivably be at is, if he wiggles his ears and falls on his roundhouse while he is doing it. But when you read the ne thing in a book, the effect is something like catching a bad cold. s book, called I Will Not Imit a particular] ample of the mel- rs that attend a median when he turns lit- humor that seems spon- the stage becomes ex- tremely sour in type. And the devices wherewith the comique seeks to am- plify his stage humors are as pathetic as seeing a dog run over, He prints a facsimile of a stock certificate of “Amalg: 1 Radium Mines”, with Jesse James listed as president and Dick Turpin as vice-president, and described as “Very Common” stock. He facetiously lists as “Other Books by Joe Cook", “Uncle Tom's Cabin”, 18 taneous on 0 GEORGE JEAN NATHAN e Niad”, “The Merch nd “The Three 3 He goes in for the old mock-serious verse stencil, with such lines as “Stalked a thought unclothed brightness rare, while the granite of He dedi- time hung balanced there”. cates the book “To Stone son”, He prints one y 1, with a note to the effect that “I wrote this page while standing on my ids", Another page is he Below u will find a list of > dov ew York night clubs where a marvelous an be had for little or nothing”, Still another drolly, the M. time the page being blank. page is devoted—ver Cook apparently b board Air Line Railw picture of John L. by the M. Co Fighting Son.” “Handy Information”, doubtless sup- posed to be very funny, contains such stuff as “F ch 18, 1888, to March 18, 1898, is exactly ten years”; “Toast left too long on the fire will burn”; “The majority of bottles are made of glass The longer you smoke a cigar the shorter it gets”; “Washington (George) was the first President of the United States”; and “Independence Day falls on the Fourth of July”. At the back of the book there are a number of blank pages, “at no extra cost, mind you,” remarks the M. Cook. “These can be used for a great many purposes, such as jotting down ‘phone numbers, drawing pictures or, if you tear them up into small bits, to make first-class confetti The tail of the book has this line: “The End—Thank God”. It is just « ruciatingly funny as that. If you are still skeptical. you'll also find Rudy Vallée alluded to as Ruddy Valet; the one that goes: “How's your uncle “IT have no uncle”, “How is he?”, ine; the one about grandma's falling off the roof—"Father really pushed her off, but he was only fooling”; and the one (Continued on page 29) comicbooks.com