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Type:
Singing and comic dialogue.
"That's How I Miss You," "Neighbors," "You're so Cute," "English Rag," "The Ghost of John Barleycorn," "The Skeleton in Her Closet," "How Do They Fall For Those Guys?"
The talk runs 12 minutes and the Monday night house lapped it up like hungry kids.
Here is an act which is just what it says it is. Miss Dresser and her husband, having gone it on diverging paths since they were married some ten years ago, "went on strike" for their matrimonial rights, as the vehicle by Jack Lait, called "The Union," sets out. Via sparkling dialog and a new piece of stage business, this plot is developed and brought to a vaudeville conclusion where they begin slapping together their new "double" act. The novelty is a tour of the eastern and western vaudeville circuits executed by both on the stage, stepping of at the points on the supposed map, showing how they nearly meet here and there, and winging up on Miss Dresser's birthday, she in Los Angeles and he in Brooklyn. That's when they rush together in "Chicago" and serve notice that "What God hath joined let no booking agent put asunder." The songs had more than a mere entertaining interest, as they meant the means of support for the venture. And they went strong. Miss Dresser's first is a puny ballad called "That's How I Miss You," and she exits to try on her new Lucille gowns, and Mr. Gardner goes into "English Rag," a violent applause number. She returns and he crosses her to exit and she does her "Neighbors," a nifty comedy lyric with a smart laugh monolog cutting in. Closing to a crash of applause, she is joined by Gardner for a duet, "You're so Cute," which tapers off on a dance to an exit. It looks like a piano solo by Les Hoadley for a second, but the alarm is unjustified - he only plays a few bars and Jack runs in and executes a whale of a topical number called "The Ghost of John Barleycorn," which he does with a punch, and which is so timely and in tune with the innermost emotions of theatregoers that it brings down the house. Louise then returns for two single songs, the first a number called "The Skeleton in Her Closet," which paves the way for a ripping comedy song, torn up all the way through by laughs, entitled "How Do They Fall For Those Guys?" Gardner cuts in for a medley of all the old song hits of both, which snaps the curtain down with the folks feeling in friendliest humor. An after-curtain comes in a gag by phone, and the next one has a piece of amusing business consisting of his putting his pajamas in her trunk. After that it's curtains and curtains galore.
Source:
Variety, 53:8 (01/24/1919)