Life — June 14, 1929 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

26 New York Life ED HEALY, as this oozes out of the portable at 3:00 a. M., is one of my favorite comedians. I care for him. The sun is prank- ish and with daylight I may change what psychiatrists jokingly call my mind, but I don’t think so. His flip talk in the Shuberts’ “A Night in Venice” stamps him as the most: hila- rious harlequin since Bert Lahr’s horse- laugh echoed through the Rialto earlier in the season. This, for the most part, is a quickly paced summer show calculated to keep front row dodderers from cracking knuckles in ennui. Often beautiful, sometimes smutty but always divert- ing, it will be with us until prestidigi- tators concoct livelier hoop-la. Along with Healy, it has a couple of knock-about acrobats who literally romp off with the show. They are billed as Joe and Pete Michon and were so rough and slam-bang in their gymnastics that Percy Hammond's lumbago was touched off again. They hurled each other into the or- chestra pit, landed on their heads in high dives across the stage and had me so nervous I had to sit on my hands. Ted Healy has as foils three dopey bimbos who attained a new peak of piffle. Two of them spent ten minutes smacking each other cock-eyed. I know! Low comedy, but I'm a low person and so is your old gondola! My kind of mentality leaps to it. Ican sit purring all evening just watching two dead pan comics slap one another goofy. The harder they smack the more I love it. Stanley Rogers with his pansy patter tries hard as a female impersonator Se that orator couldn't but minus his straight man Jay Bren- nan was like a fish out of water. His new boy friend wanted to play house. “All right,” said Rogers, “you be the door and I'll slam you.” And that was his wisest crack. O, yes, he has supplanted “You slay me!” with “I'm in sections!” The Dodge Sisters, twins I always thought hailed from Dodge City, Kan., when they were in vaudeville, were billed as “Milles. Beth and Betty “That's not Yeu drive That's not Dodge.” An engagement at the Moulin Rouge brought this on. Ladies who can whistle through their teeth usually inspire me to slick up a red apple hopefully and one of the Dodge twins whistles like nobody's affair. They are also a neat eyeful. But they lack that evanescent qual- ity Mme. Glyn exploits. There wouldn't be an ounce of personality in acar load. Featured, too, are a couple of glibly smart chatter-boxes Arthur and Morton Havel. Any revue with- out them will be all right with me. There was also a wrestling bear. A gorgeous toe-dancer named Betsy Rees floated about airily like a puff ball. And the inevitable Chester Hale girls stepped high. The fun was still go- ing on when [ left about 11 o'clock just as Mayor Jimmy and Will Rogers’ buddy Paul Block paraded down the izzle,—Plattsburg for aisle. In formative days I never had to be dragged to an unprotected keyhole, neither was I a slouch collecting naughty cigarette pictures but, hells- whispers, the boy grows older. “Stepping Out” was too much for me. A pair of comfortably fed business men. send their buxom wives off to the mountains in order to have a week’s whoopee with two herring- hipped film flusies. The wives return unexpectedly just as the quartette is playing you-chase-me-and-I'll ha se- you in the swimming pool, wearing only enough clothes to dust off a sec: ond hand flute. The first act, before the muck be- gan to fly, was packed with abdomi- nal spasms. My wife threatened to leave twice if I didn’t stop braying like a Mexican burro. A real critic or so laughed right out loud before all those people, But after that the show was done for—as dead as a door nail. In the other acts the husbands sought to head off divorces by having the wives live with them again and thus legally condone their misbe- havior. It was all incredibly filthy. with a bedroom scene that would gag a buzzard. Jobyna Howland and Grace La Rue were the wives, the types husbands refer to as “the girls.” The Juno- esque Miss Howland usually jakes any show for me, but not this mess of spinach. Miss La Rue, and I scarcely knew her without a wide brimmed hat. is good to look upon and dresses up to the pulchritudinous mark. Yet it seemed to me the acting honors of the evening were carried off by Lillian Bond. She is a bright eyed brunette fashioned for cuddling. and as one of the Hollywood houris with the degage stare and a baby lisp she did a job of gold digging that was eighteen karat. What a girl! But about all that will keep this opus run- ning is a police lieutenant shouting “Put on them clothes, you! The wagon’s waiting.” comicbooks.com