Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-06-06
YOUNG CHORUS GIRLS
Stage Struck Pemininity
Abounds in Gotham.
TWO SURE r Is ULTs
OF FREE SCHOOL, s. ~ Kn1cKzn~
BOOKER rHEArEER.
coney Island, "Dear Old coney," Now
Has Curfew Law-Snap
Shot Fiends.

NEW YORK, June 5, 1903
On every other week day morning, about
10 o'clock, there's an odd and (until you
know mystifying procession of girls troop
ing through the stage entrance to the
Knickerbocker Theater on Broadway. The
girls range in years from fifteen to eigh-
teen. The fustian, rusty-seamed skirts of
most of them reach to their shoe tops only,
but in the laughing. chattering throng there
are many singularly robust and well-built
young girls, whose skirts do not extend
much below their knees. Nine out of ten
of these girls are exceedingly, If blowsily,
pretty-and the remaining girl out of the
ten is at least wholesome looking, If not
pretty In the trooping, tripping, noisy
crowd are swart Scilian and Syrian girls,
with black hair and heavy black
eyebrows, tawny- skinned, midnight-eyed,
pomegranate-lipped Jewesses as lovely as
those in old-time Bible prints, fair Slavonic
and Scandinavian girls with molten gold
hair, indigo eyes and piquantly out-of-line
snub noses, budding specimens of gray-eyed
and auburn haired Irish girls, sparkling
orbed French girls with the healthy pallid
Gallo complexion, am-and-rose- skinned
German girls with great masses of coiled
brown hair, skipping and scampering girls
verging upon WomanhoOd, of all deriva
lions and descents, and, last but not least,
scores upon scores or Vlvac1ous voluble
and volatile American girls, delightful COM
posites of all of the other distinct types.
But how they all do rig themselves out
for the street! Already they are, in pal
pable ana rather pathetic way, imitation
"show girls" of the extravaganza COM
panes instead of-for the most part-mere
children striving to be SHOW girls"
Tawdry picture hats Uttered with cheap
gathers and rusty flowers, shoddy jackets,
cheap, high-heeled patent leather ties that
,fac <I,a
sun, bunchy gloves, all too ornate and cot
tony bits of neckwear, openwork stockings
OF make and material that are the mereSt
travesties upon their models brassy belt
buckles, many imitation turquoise and gar
net and amethyst rings on fingers none too
clean in some cases-how these pretty, I'M
der-educated Cor educated not at alb and
ruggedly healthy girls do struggle to make
themselves, even before they've donned
long skirts resemble in outward seeming
the extravagant show girls" whose SAN
dals most of these novitates are hoping
some day to fill
Free Chorus Girls School
These girls are the accepted pupils at the
free chorus girls school which was re-
Theater There are already more than a
thousand of them, the pick of several thou
sands who heller sheltered to the theater
ships in dancing, singing and stage busi-
ness when the school was opened. Watch
ing the hordes and sWalms of girls and
young women who fairly jswamped the
plant when the new institution was exam
lining applicants. the late Max O'Rell. al
ways amfably eXaggerative, might have put
it in this way: There are about million
girls in Greater New York-all of whom
want to be chorus girls Only the young
est and best-looking girls were elected
the day of the stodgy, heroic Amazon, ma
ture chorus girl has fed, and. unless they
are singularly voluptuous and accepted
beauties the show girls past thirty now
have difficulty in finding work" outside
of the travelling companies Indeed, 1T is
not absolutely required that the debutantes
in the chorus ranks Of New York be ac-
tually pretty of feature or exquisite of con-
formation, SO that they have the fresh and
unmistakable stamp of youthfulness.
Very young women-mere girls, in fact
have become the stage rage over here, and
the beauty of the odalsques-unless it be
very sumptuous beauty, indeed-is at a dis
count. 1t has come to be that New York
ers will mo longer tolerate the slightest sug-
gestion of adiposity even in its leading
actresses and singers; the sinuous girl
who yet has partridge-like suggestions is
all to the fore.
Every one of these thousand and odd girl
pupils of the free chorus girls school Is
promised place with company just as
soon as she becomes competent, and there
Is every probability that these promises will
be for the most part redeemed, since the
scarcity of presentable chorus girls has
been the despair of managers for two or
three years past. and was, indeed, the rea-
son for the establishment of this school,
for the expense of maintaining which all
of the managers employing chorus girls
are chipping in. The girls are instructed
by very competent men, and 1T is aSsuredly
all business and no play whatever for
them during their hours of instruction.
Once they emerge from the jammed dressing
rooms in their knee skirts (most of chem,
sadly enough, call EN- "skoits,' but they'll
have learned differently Ly the time they
become show girls. all right, they are put
through dancing gyrations and contortions
for couple of hours that are calculated
to test the endurance Of a troupe of ground
and lofty tumblers. The instructors are
men, and the discipline is rigid on the
dismal stage as it is for the graduated and
more 1ntractable girls of the chorus ranks
In organized companies. Besides dancing.
the girls are instructed in stage business"
and tbs surely an odd sort of thing, when
this part of the program is in progress, to
see four or five hundred prodigiously POM
padoured young girls-few of whom were
born when Grover Cleveland first became
President of the United States-smfling and
smirking and making goo-goo eyes alice
same their elder and envied graduate sis
tiers of the front ranks and sextets whose
imported red devils and jewels and huge
stock winnings make up the greedily de-
voured mental pap Of newspaper reading
New Workers. In addition the girls whose
voices are promising are given f1rst-rate
instruction In choral singing by no less
competent a teacher than Freddie Solomon
doesn't that name conjure up memories of
the halcyon Erminie' days. and doesn't
the mere mention of "Erminie" cause you
to wonder what's become Of the shows OF
yesteryearD, who used to be such veri-
table genius in the development of women
AMBITIOUS for comic opera ihonors
Two Inevitable Results.
In the meantime, two results that were
inevitable and might, indeed. have been
looked for, have followed the establishment
of this free school for chorus girls in
embryo. In the first place, the several
thousands of chorus and show girls (by the
way, the difference between chorus girl
and show girl would make too long
story who have already learned the miser-
les Of making up in packed and stuffy
dressing rooms have already foreseen-and
with reason-that it will only be matter
of year or so before the graduates of the
free chorus girls school will be forcing
them out of their jobs and making 1T diff
cult If not impossible for them to obtain
work. Consequently, the chorus and
snow girls who have already been through
the mill are now in violent state of fer
and they're talking of organic
ing union! If it happens, will not that
the Chorus and Show Girls Union-be al
40 ba n 6UVfc