The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1909-01-03

were grievous; but the dancing chorus
might have been drafted-as possibly
they were-frOm the same sources that
supply show girls for the exhibitions CT
beauty from which sybarite million
aires make UP their harems. Plain
talk? Well, it is a plain fact. The
twenty in The Airy Widow change
their clothes on about a quarter hour
schedule, and from fully draping gowns
to those with knee-short skirts, slit
freely to the hips, yet at no time are
they as bare as the bathers in Mr.
Hamlet of Broadway" or the artists
models that have brought the police
down on ''Fhe Queen of the Moulin
Rouge" They follow their leader i'm
implicit obedience, whether it be the
prettily graceful daughter or her time
beaten mother. the handsomely stall
wart son or his corpulent father, the
Shaping and thwacking of whose ro-
tund belly is alike a chief resource of
fun as done with a girls palm or a
mans spit spanker. A Yankee. a Ger
man and an Irishman are familiar IL
bells, but here / hail a sign of allevia-
ton, for those three, after more than
half an evening Of cruelty torturing
comedians, suddenly reveal themselves
as exceptionally clever comic acrobats.
After few minutes of knockabout
Glowing, they bring an agile girl into
action, toss and twirl her, throw her
about and fiip-fap her and give traves-
ties Of the Merry Widows waltz and
Salome's posturings.
x
Perhaps I vaguely expected to meet
the wroth wrath of Tony Pastor as I
went out from the theater that had
been his, but an usher thought it was
dissatisfaction with the performance
that he saw in my face, for he said:
@There'il be hot livin' picters i'm tn
show to'mOrrer." If I had gone there
IN the afternoon of the next dav I
might have to tell of an especiaIIv
wicked exhibition under the roof. if not
quite under the auspices of Tammany
hail. There would have been the ex-
cUse. however. that people of extreme
fashion had Of late gone to see such
Things. isadora Duncan has Just re-
turned 10 the Metropolitan Opera house
to dance barelegged to classical music
played by the Damrosch orchestra. and
that was commonly esteemed as art ex-
quisite. Maude Odeli and Ray Bever-
edge had ended competitive exploits re-
Gently at two city rounds of vaudeville
houses belonging to rival syndicates.
and modish women had crowded the
matinees to see Maud practically naked
as an example of advanced physical
culture, and-well-
Ray Beveredge played trick worth
a separate paragraph. Ray is a sister
OF kuhne Beveredge, the seulptress.
and posed as model for Kuhne's statue
of Venus; but they didn't care to eE-
pose one of them stripped as the CAD
dess of beauty, so they hit on the de-
vice of showing her as draped classical
figures, while three unnamed girls kept
the advertised promise of nudity. Tie
act occupied fifteen minutes in an al
formation of Ray as a carved white
stone image with drapery covering MOST
of her and the three others positively.
absolutely naked except for scant
bTeechclouts and a wash that turned
the hue of their skin to bronze First,
the tall, heavy and symmetrical girl
would be posed alone, or in a group
with one or two men of muscle and ali
in white: next, the small. slim girl
would be shown with men bronzed to
match; and so on stWixt imitation mar
bic and metal through a succession or
seeming sculptures in which nothing
but the breathing of the models be-
trayed life. 1t was something like a
surprise when they finally bowed their
thanks for the applause.
Our mayor seems to have made I'D HIS
mind that nude art had gone beyond al
lowable license in The Queen of the
Moulin Rouge" where in a studio scene
eight inches were suddenly filed ey
girls who looked unclOthed utterly. That
and other indecencies brought such
vogue to a music hall that sIdewaSx
peddlars sold two-dollar seats for five.
and the line of carriages ran twice
around the block. The mayor sent his
police to compel some modification n
the direction of modesty.
Now. the sense Of propriety that had
kept .Tammany from permitting It's
theatre to be devoted to burlesque I'M
der the name af Tammania caused d
eensoring of the Olympia entertain
ment 'twixt matinee and evening. IN
view of the mayors move against var
ious kinds of illegal shows. and so ali
the posed picture girls whom saw IN
1.-THE RiaIto Founders" had clothes on.
A sOngstress gave an Introductory verse
each to three very pretty and quite
modest tahleaus of summer maidens or
a rural fence, and in the third the CEN
trail figure wore a bathing dress; Di,s
the series stopped abruptly there am
I guess some of the spectators felt Ike
demanding a rebate for the curtail-
ment of what they had expected to see.