The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-09-21
In New York
By PAUL HARRISON

v
 New York--If Charles Darwin were alive today he might have fun doing . treatise on the evolu- ton of the Broadway species. And I believe that in the course of such researches he would con- clude again that environment is the prime factor in development.
 Development and--in the case of Broadway retrogression. MT Darwin would find beaten men turning into mice, desperate men turning into rats, newspapermen becoming press agents. He'd see certain people developing wolfish tendencies, actors aping other ac- tors, women talking like parrots. The mooing of crooners might startle Mir Darwin, and SO might the serpentine posturings of dane. CTS. Around the fight clubs he'd find plenty of Neanderthals to study.
 -~-on the other hand, the scientist would discover 8 good many evi- dences of progressively higher life-forms. Plenty of amoeba-iike personalities nave crept out of the Broadway ooze. lodged themselves in creyices of the city's canyons, and developed into amazingly com plex organisms, with Rolls-Royces and staffs of secretaries.
 Crazy Quilt.
 However, in tracing pre-Broad- way histories. and trying to draw conclusions from them, MT Dar- win would be up against it.. No influence of environment there; it's a broad and crazy pattern which has drawn together the destinies of the people of the en- tertainment world.
 Paul Whiteman once was cab driver in Denver. Adolph Menjou was a waiter. Samuel Goldwyn sold gloves, and Adolph zukor sold furs. Alice Joyce was . telephone operator. Neil Hamilton posed for collar ads. Jesse Lasky once toot- ed the cornet in Honolulu or- chestra. William A. Brady. was a prize-fight manager. Earl Carroll.
 George M. Conan and Sam Harris all sold newspapers. Harry Riohman was dress
 salesman. Jack White, the comic, uSSu " DS PiaStSEGLs LyHu WIT man, actor, and Bobby Crawford, music publisher, once were jock eys. The Schenck brothers, Nick and Joe, ran a drugstore on the Bowery. Arthur Brown, the tenor, began singing while he was an ironworker. Lou Holtz first worked on a San Francisco ferryboat.
 Jack Dempsey mined coal in Utah. Marshall Nellan was chauffeur, and Carl Laemmle's first job in America was feeding hogs on an Iowa farm.
 Charles LeAfaire, now the best of theatrical costume designers, once peddled sketches for 50 cents. San Katz. who got to be president of the Publix theater chain, pre- viously played piano in a dance hall. William Fox was cloth isponger in his early days. Peggy Joyce was a manicurist. Charles Adler was singing waiter. Julius Tanner sold furniture. Lou Irwin, now q prominent theatrical agent, used to be bellhop. And George Metaxa, polished night-clubman, came to this country as an at- tache in the Rumanian diplomatic service.
 7 From Little Acor1ls Grow. From such beginnings, not even Darwin could have guessed their ultimate development. But look in on these people few years later and the Broadway trend is more pronounced:
 Laemmle stopped his last hog,
 sold haberdashcry in Oshkosh,
 then sank all his savings in a nick
 elodeon in Chicago, in 1906. Brady got into pictures with the daring proposal that movies be made of
 one of the prize fights he was pro-
 noting. Lou Hoitz quit his ferry
 job and sang in the Barbary Coast for coffee and cakes. Earl Carroll
 spent his s'newspaper earnings for
 gallery seats, and hung around | theaters so much that he, finally got a job as an usher.
 Harry Richman began singing to
 his customers in the garment
 business. Primo Camera became
 a strong man in a circus--at $3 q
 week. Irving Berlin became n singing waiter. And David Wark Griffith played in little one-reel Edison dramas-at $5 picture.
 Mae West appeared in dance act
 "A years ago at Keeney's Third Avenue theater. Will Rogers and his horse, lured away from Barnum and Bailey circus, were on the
 same stage. And Morris Gest started show business by blacking up his body and appearing in a ! cage as, a wild man.