Kingsley Benedict and Co.

Dialogue.

''Wild Oats" hits the limit of improbability and is the champ coincidental playlet of vaudeville; but it is a well written sketch by Clifford Parker, and holds sufficient tenseness to make an audience attentive. Kingsley Benedict, its star,' returning to vaudeville after an absence of several years (when he did heroic juvenile roles as jockey, fighter, etc.), has a dual part in this piece, playing half-brothers. If obvious at least the double representation has the merit of smoothness,- and for a three-people sketch, with really only two principal characters, the dual matter has been skillfully manipulated; besides which Mr. Benedict gives a first-rate performance; much better, however, as the escaped convict, who seeks refuge in the shack of his unknown half-brother, located just outside the gates of Sing Sing. The convict meets his unknown father, the father having reached Sing Sing that evening to persuade his acknowledged son to leave his morbid existence, which is looking out of the living room door at the walls of the prison. Father and son argue the subject, with the son unyielding. The boy wants to know if the father has ever done a wrong that, rested on his conscience, and the father says no, other than in his "wild oats" days, that don't count. The son goes to bed after the prison's siren warned the village a prisoner had escaped. As the father sits at the table idealizing his son the escaped prisoner rushes in, draws a gun and proceeds to tell the history of his life - how he was an unnamed child, sent to a reformatory, came out with a bad name to find his mother dead, and his vow never to rest until he located his father; and how in Syracuse one day, a woman had identified him as the man who had shot her. Then he asked the name of the man of whom he had sought shelter. Hearing it was Lawrence Stanley Forbes everything came out. The father was his father, and he would give him 60 more seconds to live; but after an officer of the prison tapped upon the door inquiring for news the illegitimate son disappeared behind the portierres. The father gave the son a written acknowledgment. The son could not dictate it himself, and then the father double-crossed his other boy he throttled him and threw him again behind the window. The noise awoke the son, who came out, saw the revolver, looked behind the window and guessed something of the escaped convict, sent up for shooting a girl in Syracuse. (When in Syracuse, father, make it Utica.) The regular son, in atonement, then changed clothes with his half-brother and, as the keeper returned, went back to Sing Sing to take the punishment his conscience had been bothered over. The other son, later reappearing, also guessed the truth without much explanation. He and his father shook hands, the ex-escaped asked dad for a cigarette and the audience applauded quite lustily. It's a good enough dramatic for the big-time in an early spot and sure for the smaller-time houses. The father role is well played; there are some laughs in the convict's retorts, and it shapes up as a rather fair sample of the unreasonable sketch.

Variety, 54:1 (02/28/1919)