Bennett and Richards
Bennett and Richards took the house entirely
with surprise through their “dramatic
sketch,” opening with the audience seeing a
couple of “bum niggers” in the centre of the
parlor after heavy dramatic speeches in the
dark that looked as though another domestic
triangle was to unfold. Besides the opening,
which makes It harder for the two blackface
men to follow, the shorter of the pair is an
eccentric dancer of original steps with comedy
feet that seem jointless from the rapidity of
their motions. The dancing alone could hold
up the turn. These boys could cut oft Just a
bit of the dialog at the start, to get to the
opening more quickly, and it would be Just as
well If the audience did not see the parlor set
before the pistol shot denouement.
“Engaged – Married – Divorced”
Tom Kennedy and Ethel Burt have
a neatly devised talking act in ‘one,’
with a story that carries into three sections,
all in “one,” differentiated by
special drops.
Aerial Mitchells
The Aerial Mitchells do a breakaway
ladder act that has some good
work in the performance of the two
young people, with the girl of the
couple owning as pretty a figure as
vaudeville displays. She wears full
acrobatic tights, but neatly broken to
remove the fleshing or union suit effect.
The man goes in for comedy, in
make-up and work. The boy dressed
as neatly as his partner would make a
very attractive looking act, with the
added interest of having a girl performing
this kind of acrobatics.
George Marck’s Animals
There are six people and four lions,
besides a heavy setting, in the Marck
animal act. It came over here from
Europe and played one performance at
the Hippodrome when “The Big Show”
first opened there late last summer.
The act opens with a picture (film)
for the pantomimic story of “The Wild
Guardians,” of which the program has
a badly written synopsis. The picture
is called “The Animal Hunt” and is
supposed to take the audience into the
jungles of Africa, where the lions are
captured by an admirer of a countess,
who sends the lions to her as a present
and then goes back himself to find out
how they are getting along. It is at
this point the human part of the tale
starts. The countess has placed the
lions to one side of the villa, facing
the street, with a high wrought iron
fence in front of them. An organ
grinder who has a grudge against someone
climbs the fence, arranges to release
the lions, climbs back, pulls a
string, the doors of the cages open and
the lions come out. to the consternation
of a little dinner party on the
veranda of the house. Out from that
party leaps Marck, the man who caught
the lions in Africa, and he again subdues
them, forcing the animals back
into their cages after a series of crossleaps
and snarls by them.
“The Corner Store”
“The Corner Store” is a Fred J. Ardath
bucolic comedy skit, with Ardath
and Allman programed as presenting
it. The set is a grocery store, with a
widow running the place, her mischievous
son tending store and creating the
fun with his pranks. It’s a sort of
“Peck’s Bad Boy” reset. There
are the surefire rural characters, types,
four men and three women. Toward
the finish there is a painting bit that is
a Chaplin and Keystone all in one for
messy business.
Dooley and Nelson
Bill Dooley and Eddie Nelson are
this two-men team. It’s another Dooley
family, from the wild west, not the
Philadelphia Dooleys who have a Bill
of their own. This Bill Dooley must be
a brother of Jed Dooley, for they both
use lariats and this Bill rides a single
wheel cycle besides doing other things,
getting the most laughs for what he
did by a Hula burlesque dance at the
finish, to Nelson’s singing of the son^.