Evening star., 1942-06-28
The Perfect Fool Fills Stage With Nostalgia Charm
Ed Wym Vaudeville Show Laugh Town. Laugh Richly
Of That Old Broadway of Way Back the
By Ira WoIferf.
NEW YORK.

Ed WNllH, VIII, 40 CNcly Douy
knows. is a fool of utter perfection
Is now back on Broadway running
a vaudeville show. He runs it and
runs 1t over and runs under it and
through it and around it and like
. sewing machine, keeping every
body in stitches.
The separate parts of the show
are. with the exceptions Of Ed Wynn
and Carmen Amaya, not raviShingly
good, being merely high class, still
they add up to sum greater than
any vaudeville show. I have ever
seen. 1t has a special quality, STIR
ring kind of homesickness. at least
among those whose home before the
war involved Broadway. So it was
in my case anyway. l came back
home" after being here and there
elsewhere for quite long while and
there Broadway was. all of it, as I
knew it before we got into the war.
Night club acts" movie palace
presentations. radio studio shows
with their curious atmosphere of
being a mechanism, vaudeville, bits
of flash and rapid-paced cleverneSs,
muscular skill, loud, brawling clown
ing and every so often, always sound
ing unexpected, the somber, COM
manding note of art. Ed Wynn
brought it all out on the stage one
hyy onl o1tHn,ink hnI
had any particular enthusiasm for
most of these things before, found
myself this time fond of all of them,
as if they were things taken out
of an old trunk in an attic.
Even the Title.
Even the title of the show is
along that line. 1t is called Laugh,
Town, Laugh and that is what
Jimmy Walker called the series of
magazine articles he had written
TO stir up sympathy for himself in
that gaudy time when he needed it.
This was the time when the law
was painting down his neck and he
skipped out of the Mayors office
with his girl to relax more or less
opulently in Europe.
The first act in the show are five
HerZog sisters. who bill themselves
As famous international aerialistS."
They are willing, daring and supple
girls, who have worked very hard
for many years to climb to the
dubious rank of standard opening
act" They are pure vaudeville and
next are The Volga Singers eight
men who are pure movie palace
"glee club"
After them comes Senor WenceS.
who describes himself as "a gentle
man of originality Actually he is
ventriloquist who juggles. No
doubt he is gentleman, too-or, at
least, has the urbane and we'll
clothed mannerisms of the gentle
manly entertainers in the expensive
night clubS-and certainly he is
original because he is not only clever,
but has a sense for character.
The Mechanical Technique.
Well. he takes you back to the SIP
a-bottle night clubs and the women
who sat there giggling or bored and
wearing dangerous looking evening
clothes, and then Jane Froman
comes along and sings some songs.
She is more radio than anything
else, having the atmosphere of an
automatic mechanism as she squirts
sweetness into the sweet notes and
blows heat into the hot ones and
pumps sorrow into the sad ones,
alternating loudness, softness, JOY
and melancholy in heartless, head
less and mechanical way. as If an
engineer we're manipulating her with
switches.
Crafty, Ed Wynn follows her
with Carmen Amaya, small woman
who dances like a fire. She is an
artist. violent to the core and COM
manding, foreign to everything
around her and making everything
over in her image. That's Broadway,
too. A man who runs around enough
can always find a moment Of art or
two on Broadway.
Even Badminton.
The Hermanos Williams trio take
you back to the expensive night
clubs, the cosmopolitan ones. with
their guitars and singing and rhyth-
mic acrobatics, and then, startlingly,
there is a badminton game between
Ken Davidson, a bald champion
exhibitionist" tsic) from Great Brit
ain, and Huge Forgie from Canada.
They're pure night club, too. at least
the Rainbow room and st. Regis
night clubs, where suburban people
who spent their Sundays athletically
on golf links or tennis courts were
made to feel at home during the
week.
In conclusion. there are Joe Smith
and Charles Dale, "the famous char
acter stars" reviving their DIR.
Kronkheit" skit which has been one
of the important reasons to lament
the passing of vaudeville. and 'Hec-
tor and His Pals" an amusing dog
act which, too, will take you back
to the days when movie theaters
found it desirable to ornament their
celluloid with flesh instead of b
grade of celluloid.
And" the program and Ed Wynn
state at the end. that's vaudeville" >"
But. of course, it isn't. It's some
thing better. It's Broadway or, at
least. Broadway as it was before we
got into the war.
Showmen. Not Zealots.
Andrew Rosenthal has written a
wide-eyed. unbelievable and rather
cheap alteration of the American
foreign correspondent in Broken
Journey I suppose there is no
serious harm in adoring foreign cor
respondents. but a man sensitive
enough to realize that most Of them
radio reporters particularly, they
being more showmen, and radio
reporters are Mr.. RosenthaIs
heroes-are not zealots cruSading to
affect the history of the world. but
instead are in the distasteful busi-
ness Of rushing off to watch other
people suffer and then coming back