Laurel Lee woke up the audience with personality and charms. Laurel might have done the big time the compliment to offer a little new material, which she didn’t. With more ballast to her stuff the child would sail to heaven with a Majestic audience making wind for her with hand motions; as it was, she took good laughs and applause and got she! And she! And other audible approvals. She is first-rate stuff in appearance, talents, individuality and amazing gracefulness of every gesture and mood. She has $2,000,000 worth of eyes – $1,000,000 an eye. They drew heavy interest Monday.
Paul McCarthy, a former local, and Elsie Faye, entering as a sketch team, dawdled through ten worthless and hopeless minutes of a comedy talk which led somewhere but never got there. They did some numbers pretty well. A finish is which Miss Faye is supposed to represent 500 years from now was done without preparation, seemingly, and let them off to embarrassing silence.
Jed Dooley, before a special drop, did series of rope-stunts and dances, assisted by a girl not programmed. She is probably not mentioned because she does nothing worth a whisper, but she should be mentioned because she looks worth shouting about. Jed and his lollapalooza entertained lightly and wittily and were well liked if not wildly applauded. This is not one of the turns that was out of its sphere.
Ed Janis and his revue, with the pleasant Southern Sisters, easily the class and talent of the turn, ran niftly. The jazz-shimmy finish was commonplace. The sisters, in two dances and a song, went nobly. Janis, who has a boyish personality and can dance a few in the long-legged fashion, was mildly pleasing. Carmen Rooker, a young woman with fresh-from-the dancing-school manners and technique danced toe and Oriental. A pianist (Irving Buckley), smiled broadly all through, as though to say “I’m not just a pianist – I’m a principal.” And so he was. He did a song written for principals, but not for him. Whoever picked the tunes for the act did it well, a prettier set of melodies being seldom collected in one turn.
LaFrance and Kennedy followed and fought a harder battle with the heat than the one Kennedy had framed for LaFrance in the act. They got some laughs, couldn’t help getting some, but they didn’t do the things that they usually do in the way of convulsing the guests.
