30 min. “Two sweethearts.” A one-act comedy sketch which proved a very good laugh-winner with a holiday audience. The story is an unusual one and numerous comedy situations brought plenty of laughs. Went very well and finished to a big hand.
In “Tony and His Legal Adviser” — Comedy Skit which kept the audience in one whirl of laughter throughout the entire act. One takes the character of an Italian, the other as a Lawyer advising him on points of law. 18 min. in one; went great.
In a Comedy Skit Entitled “The Shop-girl’s Romance” — This act is full of slang talk throughout; but it seemed to take with the audience, as it created lots of laughs and got a good hand at the finish. 18 min. full stage.
John Butler and Co. in “His Wedding Night,” third, got their full quota of laughs with their light comedy sketch offering. A young woman, unprogammed, playing an engenue [sic] role does excellent work playing opposite Mr. Butler. The sketch holds an unusual number of complications and a surprise finish that makes it a very pleasing turn of its kind.
[New Act] Sketch, 16 mins; One and full stage. A comedy playlet the should hold its own on the circuit, due to Walter Poulter’s efforts though his support may be put down as negligible. Assisted by a girl, as his supposed ward, and a man as he fiancé, though an unsuspected crook until the finish the act shaped up with enough comedy in it to keep its head above water. It did nicely at the close.
A school act having seven people billed as “The District School,” depending on hoke for their big laughs, but otherwise containing good entertainment, went over exceptionally big. They conclude with jazz orchestra playing following some good singing and dancing specialties.
22 Mins.; Five (Office). Paul Gilmore and his company rushed into the Fifth Avenue program Tuesday evening, playing a comedy sketch that will get over in those small time houses where the audiences are not over-particular, as to story and methods of playing. Perhaps this sketch was built for the small time. It certainly could not have been intended for big time. There is not enough body to it, for the piece is only held up my Mr. Gilmore’s playing with that remembering a matter of preference. When a bachelor around 45 years says he hasn’t had a kiss for years, and balks away from one with the girl he has just became engaged to wed, it’s on a par with the vaudeville business of a decade ago about the woman a skins what a kiss is. And the Kiss-Moon Song is Heaven compared to it. The Gilmore-sketch story is of the bachelor in love with his youthful stenographer but won’t declare himself. The girl and her brother frame him to ask her. His only fear seems to be that he is too old. Then into the kiss stuff. The girl did the best of the quartet a couple of others having minor roles. There is plenty in this playlet that will make women who have missed much of what it contains laugh immoderately at the dialog and the antics, and they will laugh harder at it in the smaller houses than the large.
Gallagher and Claire, following, got plenty of laughs with the former Ames and Winthrop skit, “Caught in a Jam.” They got everything possible out of the lines and business and contributed to the dancing carnival with a neat eccentric double, closing with a confortable balance on the right side of the applause ledger.
O’Donnell and Blair, No. 3, made them yell with the rough, low comedy sketch, “The Piano Tuner.” Some of O’Donnell’s falls look dangerous, the finish, rocking astride a tall ladder mounted on top if the piano, making the audience gasp when they weren’t yelling with each teeter. The ultimate collapse was a howl and they were soundly applauded.
Vera Gordon, the Yiddish actress, appeared in “Lullaby,” the Edgar Allen Woolf tragi-comedy. The sketch divided headline honors with Joseph E. Howard’s revised “Chin Toy.” It took the film “Humoresque” to give Miss Gordon high rank on the spoken stage. Judging from the way she was accepted at the Riverside several weeks ago and both performances Monday she is due for a long stay in vaudeville.
Unquestionably the percentage of Jewish patrons will aid Miss Gordon in New York. Her performance in “Lullaby” cannot be denied high praise. She brings a catch to the breath in her serious moments. Her dialect dealing comedy is sure fire, even if natural. But the big laugh of the turn came when she asked the detective whether the man who her son had defrauded out of $230,000 would settle for $200,000. The Palace bunch accorded the act seven or eight curtains.
