Evening star., 1912-07-07

he'll be able to execute a mighty elegant
guess; he might show the crouch how the
use of a typewriter would hustle his after
noon correspondence so he could get away
from the office half an hour earlier and see
so much more of the ball games SO on.
A somewhat exaggerated case, to be sure;
but the point of an argument may be dis
covered in it, all the same.
And that is the way you have to handle
the grouch-or the crouch multiplied, the
"cold house'-in the theater. If you per-
ceive that the crouch audience likes joke
about Roosevelt, give it two more on the
same subject, show your teeth in the cartoon
manner, strike an attitude like San Juan
Hill; in short, play its weak point, whatever
it is, to the limit. And you will get that
audience! Find out quickly what the crouch
audience likes, and give it to the crouch audi
ence. A comedian can't please himself and
succeed. He must please the man-no mat
ter what sort of odd soul that man is-who
paid to see him. Normal human nature of
the kind we have analyzed SO far as humor is
concerned is present in the crouch (the "cold
house7) too; but you have got to get it
going, YOU have got to root 1T out, you have
got to start the small SNOWFALL rolling down
hill, in the way we mention. At least, that
is what we believe, and that is the campaign
doctrine on which we work and always have
worked.
THERE is no money in smiles in the Amer
ican theater; in the case of comedians,
especially. A comedian must make an audi
ence laugh. Otherwise he will not have sue
cess of any considerable sort. A smile won't
do. As we argue it out, an audience that
goes to see comedian act says to itself, if
the comedian only makes it smile, "H'm m,
we've been bamboozled! We went to laugh,
and he didn't make us laugh. We smiled a
lot; but he should have turned the smiles
into laughs and he didn't It's easy to
make person smile" The comedian must
turn every smile into laugh. This is one
phase of the science Gf you want to call it
that) Of the comedian business.
And, really, while it is a curious method, a
curious bag of tricks that changes smiles into
laughs, it is fundamentally, childishly sim
pie. But the lay public as in every previous
case, would probably never suspect it.
smile must be worked into a giggle, and
thence nto guffaw. That's the only thing
that counts in the boxofice. We could
write dozen articles detailing the long table
of secrets in snile-laugh maneuvers; but
couple of illustrations will indicate how we
have worked out the problem SO far as it
concerns us.
Take two stage characters, like us, for in
stance. Neither is supposed to be deaf; yet
in a certain scene one yells at the other at
the top of his lungs. Suppose the audience
only smiles at this. If the man yelled at will
then quickly take hold of the lobe of his ear
with two fingers of one of his hands and pull
it down as if to hear better, the audience as
a whole will shout with laughter. Why?
For the verv simple reason that the smile
has been multiplied by another smile and
has thus been turned into laugh. That,
dear reader, is theatrical arithmetic.
In the first place, the audience smiled at
the man because he yelled at another man
who could have heard him perfectly well if
he had spoken in whisper. Then the audi
cnce saw the second man turn the tables on
the first man by pretending that he didn't
hear, although the first man knew perfectly
well that he did. In other words, the first
smile was topped by another smile, and no
human being can smile twice in quick sue
cession. It's impossible! The man who
tries to smile twice in quick succession will
fail. He will laugh, even if he doesn't want
to. This trick, therefore, of topping one
smile with another smile is a most valuable
one in the comedy trade.
Take another trick. Suppose an audience
smiles at comedian who is indulging i'll
loud exhibition of braggadocio. Try as he
NAV the comedian is not able to make his