Life — August 2, 1929 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

24 Sound Effects “Sailing, sailing Over the bounding main’* > HICH brings us right smack up to the Larchmont Regatta, whatever that is, which hap- pened last week ...a Regatta, as far as I could make out, is a body of water full of sail boats going nowhere in particular... the boats, I mean, not the water... but maybe I’m wrong .. . maybe a Regatta is a body full of liquor going nowhere in particular in sail boats, Joke of the Week Regatta new joke . . . First Yachts- man (with a yachting cap)—“What was that Long Island Sound?” ... Second Yachtsman (with a yachting cap)—"That was somebody shaking a cocktail shaker.” ... Some fun, ch kid! Beware Sailor! A sailor is a person who wears an old pair of duck trousers, an old shirt and a new yachting cap . . . he knows all about luffs, booms, tacks, jibs, and thingamis ... he works all spring polishing the bottom of his boat, and the rest of the summer he spends skimming over the top of the waves at the nerveracking speed of ten miles an hour, or should I say knots?, sitting on rkKx_ °. Vey Si a deck which is tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees . . . every once in a while he has to duck or he gocs boom! ss. Tf that’s fun I'm Mary Pick- ford... . f can understand getting a kick out of a boat that will do forty but this idling along, siting on a cellar door, is my idea of nothing to do... which statement will lose me my en- tire yachting following. Larchmont Nights Regatta week is full of nights... Pool night, Fancy Dress Ball night, Fireworks night, Firewater night, etc. «+. on Pool night all the guests try to keep from falling in the pool .. . at the Fancy Dress Ball all the mem- bers come disguised as Yachtsmen and the ladies as Indian gels . . . on Fire- works night everybody sits on the beach and says “Ah!” every time a skyrocket goes up or a guest goes down . . . it’s just a week packed full of innocent fun! . . . at the end of the week there are more wrecks on land than there are in the water. Curtain! But enough of sailing! .. . they really should have gotten Joan Lowell to cover this regatta anyway! ... here’s my chance while Odd McIntyre is holidaying (with pay) in Holly- wood to tell you what is wrong with the theatre . . . or, at least, one thing, which T thought up all by myself . . there is nothing new in the thea- tre... that’s what’s wrong with the theatre! I'm referring now to the eye and ear end of the theatre which is supposed to contain comedy .. . take Eddie Can. tor, Will Mahoney, the Marx Brothers, Moran & Mack, Jimmy Durante, Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, and a dozen other ex-vaudeville clowns «+ they've all been doing the very same act for the past ten years! ... and why, don’t they get a new act? ~~. they're like the fellow that said “I've got a book!” . . . and when the old stuff makes the audience roll in the aisles why should they U bother racking their brains or their gag writers with new ones? . . . a comedian is like an editor of a magazine (here’s where | get the airl) ... when he gets hold of something that seems to take he's scared to death to change it so he keeps pounding away at the old hokum until the Lambs give him a nice Campbell funeral or he goes to the Editor's Home (Well, 1 was going to quit anyway!) .. . and yet he calls himself an artist! (The comedian, | mean, not the editor!) . . . the come comicbooks.com