The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-01-17


 in a racy Rial to emporium, because Adra and her pets have to make 8 living. But she has a burning ambition.
 One day Adra would like to see her snakes appreciated from the concert stage, like the one at Carnegie Hall, perhaps.
 Adra is not the first snake dancer I've met, but she is the first to hold reptilian terpsichore in such high esteem. And she suffers many social wounds, even ostracism, for her admiration of her crawling and hissing pets.
 For example, sine has been ex- pelled from a variety of hotels when bellboy discovered what constituted her luggage; and once, when one of Adra's impatient snakes bobbed his head out of the box in a hotel lobby, she wasn't asked merely to check out, but also to get out of town.
 The woes Of . professional snake-dancer are manifold. Be- sides bites, of which she has a hundred proofs in scars about her person. Adra must contend with the venom of her fellow-men. At theaters they are wary of per- mitting her to use 8 dressing room, for fear she may leave one of her wards behind.
 So, many's the time Adra has been compelled to seek out se- clusion in the stage-alley and slip into costume. Once frighten- ed mother who had the temerity to bring her child to perform ance clamored for Adra's arrest, to no avail.
 How does maid first become entranced in such occupation? Well, in Adra's case, 1t began in St. Louis, her home town. Taken to the ZOO in her girlhood, the reptile inhabitants so terrified her that she was obsessed by the wis., ion for several years.
 A friend of the Cooper family, Marlin Perkins, an erstwhile cur- ator of the geological gardens, un- dertook to abate Adra's morbid fright of the snake. And out of her reconciliation with the cobra and the rattle-less rattler grew the affinity she now shares with them.
 PRIZE NIGHTS
 AT THE MOVIES ''
 It may be that you are getting your share of neighborhood movie premiums in your own town. And New Workers, am pleased to say, are getting theirs. Almost obsolete as business snarers are- Bingo and Bank Nights, which have palled on the public fancy. Dishes, crockery and silverware have been dispensed in such ter- rife quantity that few filmgoers seem to have use for them any more. And the entrepreneurs have been reduced to using their in- genuity.
 One East Side cinema owner is now giving away months free rent to the holder of the lucky number. Another celluloid ex- hibitor, of a more cultural bent, distributes the years best-sellers as rewards, with a thick en- cyclopedia as the grand prize.
 Another gave away baby car- riage the other evening as 8 con- solation prize for attending the double-feature. It is too early to say where it all will stop. Any way, few pay any more merely to see movie.
 sTENOS' ANNUAL
 SLOGAN
 Many of the stenographers of New York are going to have their annual Ball soon and have adopt ed their yearly slogan for the occasion, which they Haunt open ly before their bosses. It, is: "That's the Night We Take Dicta- tion From No one"
 SCREEN STAR
 FIORELLO?
 Mayor LaGuardia would have made a alarmed good actor, If he had not decided upon politics as 8 permanent career. The other day he vowed the N. Y. Film Critics at their annual party with a swell comedy performance.
 Sam Goldwyn was there, too. They could team up and clean up.
 Our Fiorello said he had to find his other specs to make out @ name in the movie roll of honor. Then he came up with it, pro- nouncing hesitantly the hallowed name of G-A-R-B-O. Got quite a laugh '''
 The Little Flower is pressing for motion pictures to be pro- duced around New York. Chances are that, if he succeeds, he will, with characteristic, well-intened tyranny, insist upon directing them, if not actually takt.g the leading role. In @ half-serious, off-the-table remark he made to a movie figure the other day he said that he would be glad to dart in and out of the cameras way for the first film, just to make 1t official"
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