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.
Little Pipifax and Co. closed. The straight man does some very good tumbling. Pipifax had no trouble in getting the laughs for his funny pantomime comedy, and his bumps and falls gave plenty of thrills. He does whiteface in sailor uniform and held everybody in to the closing trick.
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.
Maude Earle and Co. in “The Vocal Verdict,” big time quality, was the headliner and the outstanding hits. She opens in “one” with a prolog, then goes to full stage, with a white wigged judge sitting at his bench in cutout of a special set, and she is put on trial. She sings five selections of which “Macushla” and the flute number scored best. Miss Earle makes five very pretty changes.
The Robbins Family closed. This act consists of father, mother and four children from three to twelve. The father and one of the youngsters open in one with some bewhiskered gags, then going into full. A double dance and a number by the other boy and sister, and then into their tumbling act, the father sitting on the back of a chair coaching the kids while the mother appears in pierrette [sic] outfit just for encouragement. The three year old child also appeared in a pierot [sic] costume and ran up and down stage playing while the act was on.
[Baird and Burns] made way for Hirschon’s Song Birds, one man and three women all in Swiss attire, the man playing a zither and the women yodeling. The act being easily encouraged, went through several numbers. Good for Chautauqua.
The third and last of the amateurs was Baird and Burns, a two-men blackface act. The boys seemed uneasy about the routine. They read their line through from a script. The act was slow and draggy and sagged in spots. For a finish they did a double dance, one as a wench.
De Burns Trio closed, a chubby woman with a beautiful face and very curved lines (in a silk shirtwaist, very tight velvet knickers and white hose) and two men, seemingly brothers; rings and strong work, the woman lifting both men and carrying them off for a finish. This is an acceptable small time closing act, but should knit their tricks together more closely and eliminate gapping waits between stunts.
Archie Foulk, single, next. Foulk has worked in numerous acts hereabouts. He has good appearance and is a pretty good actor. In his single he does stories, songs and dances. There is plenty of room in acts for his type of players. He should get a partner, one with a script preferred.
The next was a tragic thing. It was carded as the Gordon-Russell Trio, ringing up in a purple spot with garish second-hand drapes spotted with profile parrots and a man in what may have been a costume singing what might have been a song. At the right stood a lady with a rose in her teeth, a la Suratt. The first look was the tip-off. It was one of those home-made acts, staged by the family piano teacher. The man blew and the lady did an operatic number, every gesture denoting the novice. Either through nervousness or lack of range, she muffed the entire lower half of the register. On romped another girl, probably her sister, in a Spanish dance which proved she belonged with the act. The bender, though, came when the man returned in a Tuxedo outfit with tan shoes, and rendered a lyric, also rended [sic] it. That brought the second girl back for a toe dance so outlandishly awkward that even the unlettered hot polloi laughed.
