New Britain herald., 1920-03-13
JACK O'LANTERN AT
 PARSONS THEATER
Fred Stone Will Be Entertainer
 There Next Week

If you ask Fred Stone what his motto is he will answer at once and very vigorously ''worl1.''
 From the time he was a boy he has worked--and worked every day and a whole lot of nights. He doesn't call what lie does OH the stage work. in his meaning of the word. While the stunts he does on the stage would be very hard work for any other man, they are really play for him, for the ability to do these things all came in years of working before the public saw them. If you spend a night back on the stage with him as he is going through his performance
 of Jack O Lantern you can see how fast man can so. Changes of costume and nationality in half ea
 minute, riding a bicycle through window with a somersa ult, diving
 through hoop, acrobatic dancing,
 eccentric dancing and more dancing,
 and then an exhibition of fancy ice
 skating. It all happens in less than
 two hours but it has taken him twen-
 ty years to learn how to do it.
 When Fred Stone was a lad with
 the circus, he decided he would be a leaping clown. So he worked and worked and worked until he was a leaping clown. He went on working and went on the stage. And then he worked all the harder. He decided
 that he would do a rope spinning act
 and some rope dancing in ''The Old
 Town," so he spent one summer
 practicing eight hours a day That
 was the hardest trick he ever learned.
 as no two ropes are alike and no
 rope is the same two days in a row.
 It was awful. And to be sure that
 he will not lose his cunning he car
 ries with him today a wooden horse
 fourteen hands high and puts a sad
 dle on it every morning and spins his
 rope for an hour on the stage.
 The next summer he spent bare
 back riding and this was the feature
 of 'Chin Chin.' Then he started to
 learn to skate on ice. He hadn't done
 this since a young boy, but he bought
 a pair of skates and worked every
 day on the road where he could find
 a rink and the summer, before Jack
 O Lantern was produced in New
 York he went to the city every day
 from his Long Island home to a rink
 rented for his private use and he
 worked some more. He wore a foot
 ball suit at the beginning of his
 skating experience, and fell time and
 time again. AS ne said once, '1 fell
 more times in my first week than
 Charlotte ever fell in her life, but
 gradually improved. I sometimes fall
 yet. but not so often"
 He fell for the lure of the picture
 man one summer and spent three
 months in learning to balance 8 chair
 on it's back legs while swinging in a
 trapeZe. Three months to do a trick
 that was filmed in fifteen minutes and shown in three. He rigged 8 trapeze on his front porch and learned to
 read the morning paper in the chair. Along with that he learned 8 slack wire stunt and then decided he would go back to his leaping again. So he began practicing that and when he was finally ready for the camera he was going over seven horses with a somerSault in midair
 Last summer he made two pie lures and while doing so he entered the famous annual Cheyenne round up and spent a week bull-dogging steers and riding tlaws-with 20,- 900 people looking at him beside the camera. Incidentally. he has hunted all over America, lassoed polar bears in the Arctic, and mountain lions in the Rockies. 1T never tried to lasso 1 sl grizzly he said, 1T don't want to get my rope on anything I cant let go of."
 There are two chances that F'rcd l Stone won't take. One is a, game of l chance for he is no gambler He doesn't mind spending money and l he has been known to give it away, 1 but just 10 lose it is too much for , him. And he doesn't like to win any ! mans money Without giving him , value received. The other chance he will not take is skating on roller
 skates. He tried it one time, and he
 says they are dangerous. MT. Stone
 will be seen in Jack O Lantern" at
 Parsons theater, Hartford, all next