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17 Mins.; Two (Special) and One. A number of years ago Butler Haviland and Alice Thornton were well known in Boston and their reception should have been cordial, but there was no abundance of enthusiasm over their new sketch Monday. A special drop is used, showing a French bathing beach, with a dressing tent. Haviland appears in full dress, but wearing a pair of bathing trunks over his underwear. Miss Thornton is in a bathing suit. The patter is light, but good. It needs to be cut wherever there is not a laugh a minute, and when this is done it will be a good sketch carried by Haviland’s personality and long legs. A speciality song, “It Was Just on the Tip of My Tongue,” goes fairly, and the act closes in “one.” If Haviland uses more stuff like this syncopated and speedy encore specialty, the act will jump fifty per cent. It is all right from one point of view, but the latent possibilities are so many it is a vaudeville crime not to work them up. The only apparent excuse for the title is about two minutes of explanation as to who Haviland is. It is without a laugh except for the mention of investing all his money in ham sandwiches for a picnic, only to find it a gathering of Hebrews.
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Variety, Volume XXXVI, no.4, September 26, 1914