Glenn and Jenkins
Glenn and Jenkins stopped show next to closing with harmonica and guitar playing and dancing, securing good laughs with preceding comedy talk, including some common property gags.
Bessie Clayton
25 Mins.; Full Stage (Special Set-Drapes). Assisted by Lester Sheehan and The Clayton Sextet. Pep., Ginger, Paprika and Mustard, Bessie Clayton and her company, and that composes the best modern dancing act vaudeville has had, bar none. When the Bessie Clayton turn is seen, you will think of all the others – and then forget them. Miss Clayton heads and Lester Sheehan assists, also The Clayton Sextet, the latter furnishing the music. It’s 50-50 in this turn between the dancing and the music. The white orchestra on the stage, programmed as The Clayton Sextet is Mel Craig’s College Inn orchestra from Cony Island, and which also played at the College Inn on 125th street. The “Sextet” has seven clean-looking young fellows, with Mr. Craig leading, adding a dancing violin insert, and another trick violinist is Al Tucker, while there is a trap-drummer with a cartload of effects, including a “fire alarm” number that takes the engine to the fire, also returning, but it isn’t strong enough to make it worth while, unless needed. Besides in the orchestra are two banjos, a piano and another violin. It’s necessary to make the music as important here as it is on the stage, for Miss Clayton’s act might not have been voted such a good one without it. In proof of that, the Joan Sawyer act and her musicians preceding on the same bill were enough. Craig’s men, including himself, played as though they breathed the very spirit of ragtime. It was their music (“Ragpicker” and “Michigan”) that made Clayton and Mr. Sheehan’s Fox Trot the biggest dancing hit the Palace has ever held. The dancers were entitled to all credit for their work in this, but the music carried them along. They just had to dance to it. Opening after termission, Miss Clayton appeared before the cloth to announce what the program had already stated, that she would do a series of dances of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. “Yesterday” was a Colonial number in costume; “Today,” the fox Trot, followed by their own idea of a Tango, nicely executed with a Spanish movement thrown in for good measure, the turn concluding with Miss Clayton’s own fast tow dancing, such as she did years ago in fast time, hurling a hundred steps into three minutes. Between the dances the orchestra had its opportunities. Mr. Sheehan is a useful dancing partner, and looked well while doing the stepping. Miss Clayton looked truly remarkable, was dressed in that way also, and gave an exhibition of the way to frame a vaudeville act with dancing that commences where the best of the others leave off. It was the fastest and most pleasant 26 minutes the Palace has seen in many a day.
Carlos Sebastian and Dorothy Bentley
11 Mins.; Full Stage. Carlos Sebastian and Dorothy Bentley have arranged a new routine of dances, which they are offering in vaudeville. They open with “Romance De Fleur,” a rather novel idea, in which the young woman attempts to keep a red rose away from the man during a fast dance, finally to yield it to him at the finale. Other dances in the routine are the “Sebastian Stop Step,” “Valse Artistique” and the “Fox Trot.” The dances are all lively, pretty well worked out, and some of such a novel nature they call out applause during the run of the act. Turn gets over nicely.
Mae Murray and John Jarott
16 Mins.; Full Stage. After all is said regarding the modern dances and their exponents there is only one conclusion to be arrived at and this is that dainty Mae Murray is without a doubt at the top rung of that branch of entertainers. It seems a strange fact that the three most famed of all the women who have risen through the modern dance all worked in the chorus of the same show about six or several years ago. It was “The Merry-Go-Round,” at the Circle. Joan Sawyer and Florence Walton were show girls, while little Mae Murray was just one of the merry-merry. This week at the Palace with Jack Jarott as a partner Miss Murray is showing all that there is that is new in the modern dance. They have shown good taste in eliminating the usual banjorines from the colored orchestra made up of eight musicians culled from Europe’s orchestra. There are two violins, bass, ‘cello, drums and two pieces of brass. One number which the musicians offered between the second and third dances was heartily applauded. Miss Murray and Jarott are doing four dances. All are different from anything that has been shown and the stepping in two of the numbers was as nifty as anything that has been shown by anyone anywhere. Opening with a waltz, prettily done and well rehearsed, the team next do what they term “The Pidgeon Trot” (evidently named in honor of Eddie Pidgeon). This is as clever a routine of steps as ever shown in ballroom dancing. It is followed by “The Sunshine Frolic,” a combination of Greek classical dancing, the Bacchante a modern waltz. A fast Fox Trot was the closing. It has a number of steps that will never be popular for the regulation ballroom steppers and there is but little chance that any of the other exhibition folk hereabouts will try to “copy” the routine, for it looks exceedingly difficult from the front. Miss Murray was charmingly gowned, and the costume she donned for the final number is a most striking affair. It is a mandarin coat of gold cloth under which she wore black bloomers that came to her ankle tops. Jarott has grown slightly stouter since last at the Palace, but he has also improved as a dancer. It may be that in Miss Murray he has a partner more suited physically to Jack’s proportions and therefore he appears to better advantage. The act was easily the hit of the first half of the show at the Palace Monday night. At its conclusion Miss Murray was almost smothered in a shower of floral offerings.
Newsky Troupe
8 Mins.; Full Stage. Three women and four men, all Russian dancers, open in the usual picturesque costume, playing string instruments while bunched together for a “sight.” Later they dance, with one of the men featured for this portion the girls dance also to the customary fast closing routine. Not a bad act of its sort.
Ramsey and Hartla
6 Mins.; Full Stage. One of the usual modern dancing turns, although in this case the girl is a much better dancer than the customary run of steppers in acts of this type on the small time.
Dorothy Hunter and Jack McEnness
12 Mins.; Three (Interior). If this pair has displayed their dancing wares a year ago they might have started something. It looks now as though the pardon come too late. The Fox Trot was the closer and the best of the lot. The team let loose here and the woman actually smiled, thereby relieving the mechanical animation of the preceding numbers. The dancers work very well together.
Francis and Rose
9 Mins.; One. Two boys, one taller than the other, both dressed in black cutaway suits, wearing silk hats and black gloves. They try eccentric dancing, something after the style of many better-known dancers. The opening is different and odd but not well worked out. Position was against them.
Paul Swan
14 Mins.; Full Stage (Curtain). New York men haven’t been educated up to classical dancers of the Paul Swan type. He is wholly classical. The women may like him. The older the women the more they will like to see him float about the stage, with his arms moving snakewise, and his body twisting, almost squirming. But the men over here don’t understand it. Art isn’t held very high at Hammerstein’s and Mr. Swan got more snickers than applause, but the horrid men were responsible, the brutes! Mr. Swan danced three times, each time a different costume, but never at any time wearing enough clothes to cover him up. He was almost as naked as some of the women who have danced around for different reasons. Mr. Swan wore some silken drapes for covering. They exposed his bare arms and his bare legs and his bare back and his bare chest. The program said is “The Most Beautiful Man in the World,” but Mr. Swan ducked this way and then ducked that way, and he would never stand still long enough to let the house see his face. Of Mr. Swan’s three dances, the first, second and third seemed to be over the heads pf the audience. He died in the final dance, and it’s tough to die at Hammerstein’s.
Adeline Genee
22 Mins.; Full Stage. The daintiest of dancers, Adeline Genee is again with us. The little Danish woman has lost none of her exquisite charm since she was last seen in this country and still thrills with her terpsichorean art. Genee is a keyword for all that is delightful in dancing, and as she floated before the Colonial audience Monday night she received an ovation that must have gladdened her heart. The artiste is doing four dances from her repertoire, ably assisted by Serges Litavkin. For the waits between there is a little sprite who weaves her way about the stage in graceful manner. The program names Mlle. Vanoni, who shows she has long followed the steps of the only Genee. The opening number is “Pierrot et Pierette,” a neat exposition, and heartily applauded. This was followed by another double number, a waltz, also pleasing. Then Genee appeared in the ballet costume in which the audience remembered her, and the dancer’s mere appearance in this costume was received with applause. Following Mons. Litavkin offered his conception of “The Warrior Dance,” clad in a costume that must have been designed by Paul Iribe, for it is as modern and colorful as anything Reinhardt has brought to this country. As a male dancer, Mons. Litavkin reminds one very much of Nijinski. He is fully as graceful and equally as clever a dancer in the little that he shows in this movement. For the closing number Genee does her Hunting Dance Gallop and at its conclusion two encores were demanded. Two beautiful floral offerings found their way across the footlights to the dancer as she bowed her thanks. In accepting the flowers the dancer showed she was also a capable actress and comedienne and with several little tricks managed to capture a neat little laugh from the house.