Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-20

A
Horizons were a cheering part of
any bill and almost invariably second only in
Importance to headliner like Friganza, Brice
or San Francisco.
There were Beatty Horton, whose patter was
as nmble as his soft-shoe dancing. Alicia
Horton, who could out-patter, but not out
dance her spouse, and. from the age of seven
on, Winstead Horton, who could fling himself
In bridge from maternal to paternal shoulders,
and sing in choir-soprano that had captivated
his audiences from the days he had toddled on
stage with lifted hands balancing unSure feet
An that was changed now. Winstead was
grown, his father Beatty had developed a
equity tendency and had been obliged to cut out
the soft-shoe work, and Alicia, while she still
made up to something of the old dazzling
blondness and was adorably cute in her flip
line of patter. nevertheless subject to the
relentless eye of her audience to the extent that
they simply did not want the young stuff"
from her any longer. Alicia, in rather severe
toys and a slight comedy makeup, was getting
around that, these days, by doing the young
matron sort of thing, and to a poine making
her audience like it. But the fat of the
matter was that by the time he was 49, and
his parents were in their forties, Winstead,
single-handed, was carrying the act.
AND carrying it brilliantly flying con-
tortionist, voice for comic, character and
shoe dancer who seldom failed to get his six
recalls, the Three Horton act practically rested
on his slim young shoulders.
Not that anything of the kind was ever
admitted in the confines of the Horton family,
however achingly Beatty or Alicia might long
since have realized it to themselves. Regu-
larry the Three Horizons held confab for the
refurbishing of their act; periodically rehearsals
were called, changes inserted, songs revamped
and costumes freshened for each and every
one of the three of them with emphasis on
the requirements of each. Beatty's audiences
wanted his sure-f1re bombardment of patter;
Alicia's wanted hers blonde and graceful; Win
stead's wanted him the flying, dancing, comic,
vocal young devil.
The Three Horizons. Up to the bitter end,
until Beatty's patter began to crack in his
throat and Alicias ankles to twist and turn
she danced. there no out-and-out adj
mission on the part Of the older Horizons that
they were finished.
The situation racked Winstead and tore at
the very withes of him. They were such a
gallant pair in his eyes; the dudish, rakish,
old Beatty who would limp to the wings from
his dressing room. with his face made up into
a grin and the darts of pain through his ankles
like fire; the prankish dear-beyond- the telling,
Alicia whose role in life to pamper every
one except herself, from her husband and
son down to the most obscure performer
the bill. To see them slowly disintegrate, to
see mercileSs public grow cold to them, TO
behold the hurt in the eyes of his father and
the bewilderment the face OF Alicia was
pathos beyond the telling.
MOT but what they gloried in the rising
success of their son, and stood back with
their faces perspiring and their hearts hurting
from exertion and something else. for him to
take the honors for the act but there came
the time when there was simply no easing the
fact. for the two of them, that they were
finished. Managers were clamoring for Win
stead, and for years had been tolerating the
presence of the older pair for the simple reason
that he would not book without them.
But the time had come when it appar-
cnt even to Winstead himself that there was
imposition in any longer asking for bookings
for The older pair. Beatty was winded almost
before he reached the stage; Alicia, poor dear,
had sta