Harry and Anna Seymour picked up the show after the intermission and got the audience settled again and in an agreeable mood. Miss Seymour’s imitation of Nora Bayes is the weakest of her bits. The others are capital. So is her clowning and “nut” stuff, guaranteed to tie up any audience of the Riverside class. Harry’s dancing is the goods. As a sample of faultless specialty, it stands out like Caruso’s high C.
Louise Gunning was No. 4 and Bobby O’Neill with “Four Queens and a Joker” closed the first part.
The O’Neill turn is a model of speed and varied specialty in an act of this sort. The brightness of the stage picture, with its golden tones, hits the audience at the rise of the curtains, and from that moment to the finale there is an unbroken succession of surprises and snappy material that holds unflagging interest. The poker bit, with the versified give and take of smart chatter, is a capital bit of comedy and the gossip incident with the three girls is another. Between these high spots there are costume changes and diversified episodes that build up an especially diverting twenty minutes.
The Four Ortons, one of the best comedy wire acts in the business, held them in. The three straight members of the turn are excellent wire workers. The comedian makes a couple of comedy impressions, aided and abetted by a live duck, which struts across the stage in a march following the comic, who is playing a fife. Later the comedian mounts the wire to do some impossible slides and stunts with a wire attached to his shoulder and handled from the files a la Collins and Hart. His facial make-up also runs to the “tramp.” It’s a dandy turn, nevertheless, and will hold the attention of any gathering that gets a peek at the opening.
They were followed by Robert Emmett Keane, who opened like Man o’ War with several new stories and a corking comedy Spanish song. Keane then took advantage of the customers by repeating the same collection of war stories that he was using during the quarrel. He closed with “Scotland in the Morning,” his best recitation. The old boys went just as well as the new ones, so why worry about new material. He was a resounding hit.
Comedy acts predominated, with honors going to George N. Brown, the walker. Brown utilized several boy plants from the audience demonstrate his untameable [sic] home trainer. Two girls also put over ad lib volunteer comedy, finally running out of the theatre in confusion. They fooled a lot of the wise ones. Brown’s finish remains the same. He is considerable showman and is getting the same kind of yells with his plants that used to greet Cliff Berzac’s comedy circus, in a trey spot he goaled them.
Combe and Nevins, a two-man piano and singing turn, were confronted with the same difficulty, the late arrivals slamming down seats on them all through their act. The vocalist has a good tenor voice. The act should progress rapidly with experience.
Morris and Campbell, next to closing, did their regulation clean-up. It was a cinch that half the house knew the routine by heart, but that, didn’t matter in the least. It even helped Morris and Campbell’s hit, as many of the gags and most of the business were anticipated with laughs.
Irving and Jack Kaufman whopped things up for an explosion opening the second part. They are doing the same routine of harmonized numbers, as offered at the other Keith houses recently, with one exception. The Kaufmans have developed into metropolitan favorites in remarkably short space of time. Their act is real vaudeville of the standard variety.
It took quite a while for the show to get started Tuesday night, the first three turns falling in a row. Ben Bernie, fourth, finally succeeded in creating some real vaudeville atmosphere and the rest of the show just romped along for a series of consecutive applause wallops. Mr. Bernie has developed into a first rate monologist, the fiddling now being a secondary consideration. Preceding Bernie, Baroness De Hollub had taken a terrific flop, which made it all the harder for the kidding violinist. He had a lot to overcome but managed to win out with honors. A raft of encores and a “speech” attested Bernie’s hit.
Beatrice Herford followed adding to the comedy score. Miss Herford was out of vaudeville for a time last season, going into the legitimate with “What’s in a Name.” With that attraction still to {illegible}, she is back in the two-a-day and mated word pictures or perhaps more properly closed as characteristically cameos, found a new addition. It was “At the telephone pay station,” the gal with the plugs doing the chattering. Miss Herford also gave her more familiar but always amusing. “At the Matinee,” “At the Five and Ten Cent Store” and “The Little Boy in the Street Car.”
