New-York tribune., 1918-07-26
Drama
Passing Show" Makes Ap-
peal to the Eye at Winter
Garden
By Haywood Broun

The Passing Show of 1918" has a
gorgeous setting, good songs and
dances and q rather dull book. The
spoken word does not get in the way
very much, however, except in an over
long burlesque of "Salome." Like all
Winter Garden shows, the performance
is made up for the most part of spe-
c'alties. Willie Howard is the heaviest
contributor to the entertainment. There
is nothing subtle about Howard, but he
possesses certain drive and energy
which fairly leaps over the footlights.
He was at his best in limitations of
Jack Norworth and AL Jolson and in
an excellent burlesque operate num-
ber, "The CALI Curc Rag" in which
Violet Englefeld gave him yeowoman
aid, not forgetting the assistance of
Eugene Howard During the course of
the evening Willie was motion pict-
ure magnate, messenger boy, a chef
and young Christian, the last named
part contributing the one deep laugh
reused by "Salome"
III al evening iii WHICH Cnefe was an
abundance of good dancing Fred AS
taire stood out. He and his partner,
Adele Astaire, made the show pause
early in the evening with beautiful,
careless, loose limbed dance, in which
the right foot never seemed to know
just what the left foot was going to do,
or cared, either. 1t almost seemed as if
the two young persons had been poured
into the dance. 1t all ended up with a
glorious backward dive of an exit which
seemed to insure q broken neck for
that way, for they returned to do it
again. Lou Clayton and Sam White
were next to win dancing favor in sew
eral we'll teamed specialties, and Isabel
Rodriguez did more than justice to a
seven-veil dance for the Salome scene.
Of the songs perhaps the best was
Boots" sung by the Howards. "Sere-
made" was another good number which
fell to their lot. Arthur Albro, who
has an unusually good voice, although
not highly trained one, did we'll
unnamed assistants is blazing beauty
1t would be difficult to identify her
further, for she was now in one shade
and then in another. If we remember
correctly she ended in copper. How
ever, there should be no need Of finger
prints. Even in decidedly personable
chorus she shone like lighthouse on
rockbound coast. No chorus which
we ever saw did quite so much useful
labor as the one on view last night
Early in the evening they went up
the runway and the aisles to sell thrift
stamps in tune, and later they put up
a house for song and took it apart
again. 1t must be admitted that the
home wreckng seemed to be just a
little easier for them
George Hasell did not shine as much
as he will do later in the run. He is
to our way of thinking one of the
funniest men on the stage, but he did
not get much scope for his work last
night.
As usual the Winter Garden was pro-
digial in its use of players. Such an
excellent youngster as Charlie Ruggles
was in the cast and had little to do.
He was amusing, however, in brief
burlesque Of "The SQUAD Farm" Others
in the big cast were Olga Roller, Frank
Fay, who sang pleasingly; Isabel Lowe,
Virginia Fox Brooks, Louise Cont,
George Schiller, Nell Darlington, a fine
husky young person with a good voice
and presence; Florence Elmore and
Emily Miles And, Of course, this list
does not include them all The spectac-
ular feature of the entertainment was
an air raid on London, in which two
German planes were brought down.
This was greeted with applause, but it
was hardly as striking as some of the
other sets