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Costumes, blackface makeup, some slapstick comedy in the doctor scene.
Comic dialogue.
"The Doctor Shop."
Frank Conroy looks to be all set with his latest "straight man," Harry Murphy. Mr. Murphy is a heavy fellow and stands up well alongside the little bent-over, funny darkey of Mr. Conroy's. Both are in blackface. They are doing "The Doctor Shop," opening with the insurance talk in "one" before going into the setting. They secured plenty of laughs and once or twice had to laugh at one another. They have not been working long enough as a team to overcome that. Mr. Murphy has a colored twang and it fits in with Conroy's dialect. Some of the old insurance talk of Conroy and Lemaire's was omitted, probably accidentally, and a couple of fine new lines inserted. In the doctor scene, after Murphy gives Conroy a physical examination - thumping him all over, besides banging his arm up a down - Murphy says: "You need glasses." At another time when Conroy is on the table and Murphy is sharpening a large knife, Murphy, after asking Conroy's home address, and being queried by Conroy for the reason, says: "While I am operating that phone (pointing to a phone) may ring and I must answer it." Mr. Conroy cut the "hell" out of the finish, substituting "devil"; but it seems since the war and what it brought to the stage in the form of forcible exclamations that a "hell" where it legitimately belongs isn't going to shock any one anymore. When Frank Conroy and Goerge Lemaire dissolved their stage partnership, in which they ranked very highly among blackface comedians, it was agreed between them either might use any at they had done together, but neither could give permission for any act in which they did not appear to do any of them. ... Mr. Conroy experienced some trouble in locating a straight man who could replace Lemaire. The latter had a commanding personality contrasted with Conroy's meek coon characterization, and it was not an easy matter. Fred Stanton and Sam Bennett were tried by Conroy, but apparently did not satisfy, since Mr. Murphy now has the former Lemaire Role. Mr. Murphy was a member of an act or so some time ago, but latterly has been in the executive department of the Vaudeville Managers' Protective Association. He was induced to go back to the stage with Mr. Conroy, and in him the act appears to have secured just what it needed. For the short time together Mr. Murphy did remarkably well. On the present form Mr. Conroy and Mr. Murphy are now a standard vaudeville number, for if any one can watch and listen to Frank Conroy without laughing then there isn't a laugh left in him.
Source:
Variety, 53:7 (01/10/1919)