Fast all the way, whopping laughs, more hands than they cared to acknowledge. Ralph Dunbar’s Maryland Singers (four girls and a man in gaudy fullstage special), a flash for the money, plenty of surefire singing by the quartet and banjo by the man, with an inexpensive but effective “picture” as the drapes part and light illuminate a back drop scene for a big bang finale; well liked and taken.
Cameron and Meeker turned out to be two old friends – Tudor and Matt – the comic of Cameron and Gaylord and Cameron and Flanagan fame, and the genteel straight of Meeker and Kent. The material is disordered and harum scarum, but the work is punchy, the big time aura hovering over it from the first minute.
A slow, draggy bill that played to a full house, with only one notably bright spot, Dave Vine and Luella Temple. This team comes back to the Rialto every season, but could play here every few months and do better each time. They were reviewed last week at McVicker’s where they kept the audience in a turmoil of laughter, but what they did here was a shame. They were greeted with an ovation like A. Jolson would receive. Vine on his opening told several Jewish gags that seemed to strike the crowd’s funnybone, and from there they had easy sailing. Miss Temple, a sweet plump doll, won admiration on looks and voice, and though she sang “After You’ve Gone,” an old ballad, she put it over with a tremendous success. Here’s a team ready to headline all small time houses and ripe for the two-a-day.
Weaver and Weaver, “The Arkansas Travellers” followed. They open with a rube song, one playing a ukulele. The taller one plays a one-string fiddle on a pitchfork, and when the boys played melodies on their saws they couldn’t give the audience enough of it. They were a big applause hit.
Harvey De Vora Trio, in No. 4, disclosed two men and a woman, one couple doing “high brow” and the featured male comic an “ace of spades” nance. The offering is titled “A Darktown Cabaret” and carries with it some furious funnies and azure lines that are stingless, bow over.
George Yoeman and Murray and Volk provided the comedy punch of the middle portion of the show. Yoeman had a tough time getting started. He tried the house with everything, laughing himself when a number of his pet gags failed to connect. But the exploration was successful. The automat matter did get over, and so Yoeman specialized on it, the laughs coming easily then. Yoeman is keeping his talk freshened by little additions, and there are always a few more laughs. His mention of the Lenox avenue subway train as the “Black diamond Express” is really funny for anyone who has gone uptown on those trains. The “hoke” of the Murray and Volk act also found a true target and the men delivered a hit on fourth, following the Yoeman single.
In the next to closing spot Billy Hibbitt and Eddie Malle offered their chatter in Southern dialect. The turn suggests the old Aveling and Lloyd turn in patterned close to that routine, though the actual material appears to have been written to carefully evade using the Aveling and Lloyd matter. Hibbitt and Malle got over nicely.
Four of the eight acts were laugh-getting turns, the show ending with “Pedestrianism,” the George N. Brown act with Marian Ardell. Brown provided an extra laugh in asking for his “committee,” starting to say “three or four local people,” only he said it “yokels” the first time, and perhaps that wasn’t so much out of the way at that.
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.
