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This sketch entitled “The Pool Room” is a moralistic tale about young men who frequent pool rooms. There are two full pool tables onstage and the interior is meant to look like a cheap pool room. A boy (played by Ezra F. Kendall Jr.) soon runs inside, claiming to have shot a man. An older crook (Charles Wildisch) then takes the blame for him when the detectives arrive. The older man then takes poison and dies, but not before “begging his younger companions to go home and stay there.”
The sketch received "liberal applause" not for its excellence, but for its moral lesson.
Vaudeville managers should book the sketch not for its acting credibility, (there was none) but for its moral value. "They will receive the thanks of all the fathers and mothers along the route of the several circuits."
Source:
Variety Vol. 25:11 (02/17/1912)