Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-01-13
HER MAGICAL WORD
How an Actors Wife Punctures
Husbands Vanity.
WHEN HE GETS TOO CHEsTY
She Simply Utters the Single Word
Baltimore"
THEN HE BECOMES HUMBLE
The Incident in the Beginning Of His
Stage Career That He Can
Never Forget.
WHEN HE GETS TOO CHESTY
THEN HE BECOMES HUMBLE

~
tor who has for years been known as
"headlner'' in the vaudeville business UNI
coiled the little narrative as to how he had
| busted irto the show business He told
the story In place Of giving his regular
stunt and the extreme modesty OF the story
made as much of a hit as the unctuous
manner with which, the yarn was related.
1t should be stated, In advance, that On the
stage the vaudeville actor does sketch"
with his wife, an exceedingly graceful. ac-
complished and amusing woman.
Nowadays said the yauderiian,
whenever / chest up with that gay-dog
feeling that I'm the only one in the sketch,
and that I'm only carting my wife around
the country with me as excess baggage and
to sort of act a clothes model I'm eur
| playettes, she has only 10 pronounce the
word Baltimore so that / can hear il and
| then it's me 10 curl UP like garter snake
on top of boys bonfire and to ask her If
there isn't anything new and shiny that she
needs
For it was in Baltimore that land She
broke into the acting business. and it was,
similarly, at that time that she gained the
lifelong clutch on me, There are some men,
| cries that win not down, This is enc OF
| them.
up to the year 1894 1 had been touring
the southwestern hanky-pank circuit
hardware drummer. But, after the hard
| year 1850, liltEt WASH / even liver anu lIli!h
in sight for most of the smoker tourists
| selling goods on the road, and when, one
day, my firm called me back to New York
I was in bad and no mistake. The fiat-rent
| gag had to be kept UP, and the ice, milk
| and butcher autocrats had to be appeased
and with nothing coming in and all going
| out, It simply wasn't in the deck. even with
| the Joker left in. SO, the excftement-plan
| furniture with which that fiat was orna-
! mented had to go to cold storage, and the
wife and found an ouiony plant down at
| Bensonhurst, on Long Isiand-it was in the
autumn timewhere the landady consented
| to let us for $40 the week for BOTH top floor,
| back, under the sloping roof and near the
| caves, because the season was about over,
| and slipped her a good hard-luck story. l
| hadn't doped it out where the SO per lunar
| week was going to fall from, the main idea
just then being to get under cover.
Cut Out for the Show Business.
well. my wife had a sister down at Ben
sonhurst who had put in a season in the on
somb-chorus girls, they called EN- them
with an extravaganza company. She had
been doing serio-comic singing down at
| Bath Beach, near Bensonhurst, for cakes
Uncle Tommers' term for board-and a
| little more. She looked US over, and she
| generously told us there was nothing what
| ever to tive were cut out and made for
| the theatrical business.
! why, your coon stuff is all the candy
was what she said to me, and all you've got
| to do is to dig up feeder-any old kind of
a sawed-off will do-and get one of those
| Philadelphia hop-smokers to fake you up
| dingei sketch Call yourself Barton &
| Sanger. or any old thing. You've got the
dinge dialect thing strange6 to death and
| under a choking pull. All you need is
| working plug to ask you questions and
| there you are. Your singing shows that
| you're there with the pipes all right enough,
| and. with plano set, those four chords
| of yours ought to make Wood & Sheppard
a In her a-lxu afovhf dow off
| a pay-oR waiting for schooner on the
] Cleveland waterfront
| "Oh. she was an encouraging and a bust
| ness-like girl, that sfster-in-law of mine
| and guess maybe she didn't know how to
| keep other folks spirits up!
AS for Aggie,' she went ahead, refer
ring to my wife, it's Aggie and me for
| the sister stuff. l don't know where she's
| picked up all she already knows about
| the dance thing out she's got it straight
enough. and us two ought to be able to
| pick up a sister act and run away with it.
| Aggie is there with the sings too, and l
| know a New York costumer that We can
| swing for the two changes-weve got to
| dress the sister sketch right down to the
hem. know thousand hop-men who
| can write US the original words and music
| over night if we stake them to forty cents
| worth of dope seconds, and so that part'll
| be easy. It's arranged. SEVERAL cheers
Went Right After It.
''Well, it looked like better than nothing,
| and SO we went right after 1t. Down at
| Coney Island, which was still running. L
| found barker for hootchy-kootchy plant
| who occasionally doubled in black. He was
| only mailing cakes and precarious beers
| at that job, and so he fell to my sketch
suggestion with a rattle. Not only that, bu-
| he had the sketch in his trunk-a thing
| called The Doctors Office'-the funny coon
| coming into the doctors Office with car
| pet-bag and four-foot tin razor and ask
| ing for work as an office boy-you know
| all that junk; and he WaS ready for re-
hearsals on the jump.
My wife's sister got an armful of over
night songs and dances from the accom-
plished morphine fends whose addresses
she possessed. and the four of US got to-
gether In twos, in the shed back of our
boarding house, and did the rehearse thing
without music. After four rehearsals l
had it about doped out that the black-face
sketch in which I was to get under the
spotlight was the certified check, and that
the continuous bookers ought to be eager
to hand US about $400 the week for it.
but there was a drawback to my new
found happiness. l was pretty gloomy
| about my poor little wifes entrance upon
a theatrical career. 1t didn't seem to me
as If she were there or within seven miles
OF 1t. Her sister struck being just
about good enough as a chaser. but my
wife In sister sketch just saddened me,
and I would have out and told her SO only
that hated to bruise her feelings.
well, when we were ready we took our
acts over to vaudeville booking man in
New York and let him look 'em over one
gray morning. was astonished to see how
easily my wife and her sister got by with
their sister sketch. which they did first,
and the only way that could figure it out
was that the booking man had had hard
previous night.
when. however, that booking man de-
clined to chuckle any over my bIackface
sketch, contenting himself by saying that
he'd give US a try-out at his house In
Baltimore and pass 1t along to the stage
manager there, concluded that he was
insane. and felt sorry for him. He booked
US for two weeks in a Baltimore vaudeville
house, sixty a week for each sketch, and
transported us down to Baltimore
Felt Sorry for the Wife.
well, I began to feel more and more
sorry for my wife. because her hopes We're
running SO high She really thought. you
see that she wasn't wholly impossible
in that sister sketch. Not only that. but
she seemed to cherish the deluston that
she'd do, and that she and her sister would
be able to get by with 1t. / knew that
after my working partner and had done
our coon stun the house management of
Tim T3alfifnOre plant would tell US that 1t