The San Francisco call., 1909-08-09
HIGH STANDARD MAY
| HANDICAP ORPH[UM
Holdoyer Acts Prove Best Part
of Program With Perhaps
One Special Attraction
Newcomers Headed : by Miss
Gordon, Who Plays Sketch
With Joseph Sullivan
BY WALTER ANTHONY


vaudeville standard. It becomes hard to
live up TO. Five acts could be assem-
bled on new bill .at the Orpheum from
attractions now playing over its elliptic
circuit which would cast a shadow so
deep on subsequent programs as to
damn them to darkness as deep as
Dante's nethermost circle. The vaude-
vile business, 1 take it, is like any
other-there are the elements of supply
and demand, for instance. There are the
material and the consumers. The vaude-
Vile business is different from any
other business. in this: there is, natur-
ally, limit to the supply of material
meaning acts-but there is. apparently.
no limit whatever to the demand
meaning the patrons who buy tickets
The Orpheum, to illustrate, was packed
70 the doors Saturday afternoon. You
couldn't pry your way in with shoe
horn or with gold. A string passed from
the box Office that night at o'clock to
the end of the human line would meas
ure 100 feet, and yesterday afternoon
when l was caught in the current of
variety lovers and carried in the jam
past the gates there were hundreds of
unfortunate ones outside hungering and
thirsting for glimpse at the vaude-
vile feast within Which means that
the house wasn't large enough for the
crowds. And the show was good; but
that brings us back to the beginning of
the story again.
H0LDOVER ACTS ARE BEST
The best of the program was the hold
over acts, If you except the bright turn
in which Eleanor Gordon appears at the
head of dandy little company I'm a
concise and bright playlet Tips on
Taps. But If you had just come back
from the Santa. Cruz mountains or Mon
terey or Del Monte or Tahoe or some
other place where you had been gather
ing tan, poison oak and fish stories. and
had dropped into the Orpheum for the
first. time in three weeks, You would
pick as the best acts on the bill this
week the ones~that were there last
week, with the addition of the skit
Eleanor Gordon stars in. And that is
why / say it's dangerous to establish
too high standard in vaudeville. 1t
can not be lived up to week in and
week out.
There are four new acts this week
and four old. All of the latter are fine.
i laughed as much as ever at three of
them and admired the dancing stunt of
the six American dancers more than
before. Sam Chip and Mary Marble re-
main the headline attraction this week
in. their quaint sketch. "In Old Edam.'
nConroya and LeMaire, In "A King For a
Night" are delieiously funny from be-
ginning to end aed are worth a second
shasm.- Held Up" edges forward with
Ia .successful bid for applause, and the
dancing sextet is nimbly effective and
one of the best of its kind
NOVEL ENTERTAINING SKETCH
Miss Gordon. who is no stranger here
heads the newcomers. She has a
bright sketch with touch of Isbens
.Doll.s House." and a tinge of "The
Thief suggested IN its one emotional
scene. but otherwise 1t Is novel and
entirely entertaining sketch full of
humor and the slang of the track, with
dip. into real sentiment, besides. Miss
Gordon, as the wife who CANDLES to
provide her husband with money, is a
mistress of pretty equivocation. She
lis deft and light in all her scenes. and
she proves herself an artist. Joseph
Sullivan, principal in her support, is
no less effective. The sketch doesn't
amount TO much, but it serves its pur-
pose we'll when it introduces the two
clever principals.
c HEERs GREET OLD GLORY
The five AVOIDS do xylophone en-
semble which is good if you like the
xylophone. One of the quintet sings
we'll and is accompanied in her GLOW
Worm song by a quartet of the xylo
phone artists. The American flag is
run down at the conclusion of the
musical turn. while the players do a
xylophonic stunt which presents in inc
extricable medley our national airs.
Other American flags meantime fall
from the front of their tables and
patriotically conceal foreign banners
which had been disclosed previously to
appropriate music. Enthusiasm is a
certainty when the stars and stripes
fiutter over and cover st. Georges
cross. Eicorei
MUSIC AND CATERwAULING
La Petit Revue" advertised as the
feature act is a we'll staged act. but
not equal to the company it keeps
The curtain rises son drawing room
Charles Lovenburg, who is responsible
for the sketch. sings from his arm
chair beside the incandescent crate
fire about the players on the stage He
tells in lyric burst positive facts
which don't square with the poetic
muse, and a miniature curtain in front
of a miniature stage arises and we
see the faces of Montgomery and
Stone, Calve, Eva Tanguay, Andrew
Mack and the Merry Widow. The faces
are real and more or less like the per-
sons they represent. The bodies are
manilxins and the result is rather anna
teurish and slow.
After another song from Lovenburg
the miniature curtain arises again and
"Pinafore' is seen. The singing, with
the exception of the prima donna, is
not up to the requirements of the real
music presented. After another Loven-
burg song caterwauling concert is
heard. The human heads, much be-
daubed, appear over disproportionate
bodies of cats and mewing concert
results. Mr.. Lovenburg opens a nearby
window, shoots one of the cats and the
close is requiem of walls.
Miss Lena Panther, assisted by Sam
Mint, opens the program with dances
on wire rope and acrobatic dances on
the stage. 1t is a fair act
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