Oliver and Olp, with a stage full of furniture and props, tortured out some laughs. The act, “The Bee-Hive,” was the second sketch on the bill. The program says it was written by Mattie Keene and Leo Well. It doesn’t sound as though it took two authors to write it, though it looks as though it took wagons to haul it. A rainstorm finish saved it and it took three curtains here.
Doc Baker made his first appearance as a big-timer here. Like many another he had to travel far to make the home folks believe it. Baker proved a good entertainer and quick worker at changes, but he was snowed under but the other features of the act, “Flashes.” First of all in credit for the handiwork of Menlo Moore and Macklin Megley, the producers. Second was the all-around stellar showing of Polly Walker, the niftiest showbrette let loose on an unexpected public this year. If “Flashes” must go plural, the little one must at least be recorded as main flash.
Moore stands alone as a vaudeville producer of girl acts. Like Ziegfeld in higher-priced revues, he has that something – and that something is everything. Class tells it about as broadly and as comprehensively as any word. The corking good taste in costuming, setting, staging and routine; the freshness, the crisp animations, the cleanly sophistication – they mark a Menlo Moore product. Miss Walker typifies every attribute of her manager; he selects as he creates. Baker is a masculine looking baritone, excellent in ballads, lost in comedy. The turn assisted by a flock of assorted babes in an assortment of delicious costumes, held the Palace mob in to a man, closing the matinee, and drew applause.
Johannes Josefsson and His Original Icelandic “Glima” Co., with their novelty wrestling, made a capital closer, the speed of the attack and defense contests between a wrestler and supposed footpads, holding interest for the four or five minutes necessary to put a finish on a great bill.
Maude Lambert and Ernest R. Ball were a riot opening the second half after the “Topics of the Day.” There is nothing like the singing of one time popular songs by the writer to stir the listless palms of a vaudeville crowd. This pair make their act a family party, in perfect good taste and done in a spirit of agreeable intimate badinage that communicates itself to any audience. They somehow seem to convey across the footlights the atmosphere of “regular folks.” Stage women of ample figure might do well to study Miss Lambert’s scheme of dressing. In the last gown she wears she is a picture of stateliness where a single wrong line might easily have given the impression of bulk.
Flo Lewis, assisted by the colored lady’s maid, “Dardanella,” was a bit of a let-down, although there was much in her flash kidding that hit the “wise” Palace audience. Miss Lewis occupied an amusing quarter of an hour, in spite of a little too much of a colored maid. The personal talk of Miss Lewis’ about getting her new vehicle was plenty of the “just among ourselves” sort of thing. The interjection of the colored girl, however, somehow take away the atmosphere of “class” that one expects at the Times Square Keith house. The hoke is rather obvious.
Eduardo and Elisa Cansino did a fast 15 minutes of real dancing. Their grace and activity not to mention the perfect good taste of their costuming and simple presentation, are calculated to show up a lot of “society dancers,” who make a lot more pretense in billing and parade in stage work. Their colorful specialty likewise fitted in nicely as programmed. Indeed the bill ran off just as printed and the original layout came through 100 per cent.
Mignonette, Kokin and Fred Galetti made a great opener. The turn is an odd frameup and catches attention from the entrance of the three players in the costume of Italian street musicians wheeling what looks like a hand organ. Their routine, aside from the work of the monkeys is varied and keeps the speed up, and the monks themselves are screams with burlesque barber shop scene. They had the house laughing uproariously and put the early comers in an agreeable frame of mind.
Louise Gunning, the light opera prima donna, next offered five selections. She had her leader to thank for receiving an encore call. The Palace audience was passing her up after the operatic selection and were ready to let her pass on when the leader pulled up the tempo of the men in the pit and secured enough for the closing selection. It was “Mighty Lak a Rose,” and it is by far the best suited to her voice of anything in the repertoire offered.
A.C. Astor, the ventriloquist, fared much better at the hands of the Palace audience than he did last week at the Riverside. There were two reasons: The first is that Astor seems to have speeded his act a little over the preceding week and the other that he could be heard in the Palace, whereas a great deal of his material was lost in the big uptown house.
The hit of the performance came with the advent of Eddie Leonard just before the interval. Leonard held stage for almost half an hour, did two encore number, made a little speech, and still the audience remained seated and asked for more. Finally “Roly Boly Eyes,” as a third encore, let the minstrel favorite get away. That dancing boy Stewart and Leonard has in his act and the showmanship which the star displays in presenting him is going to make vaudeville audiences sit up and take notice. The young man is a phenom as a stepper, and the routines that he showed won the house for him.
