Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1943-09-05
HOLLYWOOD.

| II L leave my child money! SAYS
Joan Davis, Uncle Sam gets it
That's all right, because I'll also
leave Beverly my comedy routines
and old joke books"
Seriously, Joan Davis is teach
ing her 9-year-old daughter Bever-
ly to follow in her footsteps. Joan.
thoroughly show-business sort of
person, Is training her daughter in
the fine points of timing laugh,
taking falls and putting over a
comedy song.
Comedy is good business, she
thinks, and the one thing she can
give her daughter that taxes and
| changes cannot take from her.
Circus, stage and vaudeville, in
the old days, had their royal fam
lilies, and Joan Davis thinks movies
and radio should be just as proud to
establish family traditions. She Is
the only comedienne in the film
colony who is avowedly training her
daughter to follow her in a comedy
career.
From the day she was born,
could see it coming" says Joan. Her
first word was Mamma and she said
1t in the same cracked voice 7 have.
oh, not another one like me?' I
said to her father. But it's true.
She likes to think she's like me.
Vaudeville Knockabout.
at was lucky for Beverly she got
born into the right family" she
just has to ham. She toured with
us in vaudeville Barbara STAN
wyck carried her on the stage when
she was 5 weeks old in Boston, in
sketch. She trouped with us Isl
Wills and Joan Davis were comedy
team for eight year in vaudeville,
married after the act played year,
until she was school age, when we
settled her down with mother in
Beverly Hills.
The last couple of years, she
worked as a sort of tag to our
act, initiating me. She had started
copying my routines from the time
she could walk, just by watching.
I'VE used to have to watch her
or she'd walk into some one else's
act. One night she went out on the
stage and messed up the nagician's
act, got into all his stuff and let
the pigeons and rabbits loose. The
audience went wild. but it was pretty
tough on the magician"
Beverly is now happy to be play
ing her mothers kid sister on her
air show. She puts her stuff over
like veteran. Every night her
father, who is the writer on the
show, and Joan go over the per-
| Torrance and give criticisms and
corrections. They bear down a lit
tie hard. because they don't want
her to get the idea she's good, and
| turn smart alec.
Croaking Rejoinder.
At home, fun is a constant COM
panion of the family. One night
when Beverly complained she
couldn't sleep, her mother said:
What do you want me to do
about it, sing you a lullaby?"
What, with that voice." Beverly
shot back.
Joan's facile Irish wit has served
her many time, off stage. She
bubbles with it; few things are ordi-
nary when she tells of them, for her
sense of humor gilds anything
1t was her wits that won her first
film job years ago. Mack Sennett
needed a coDnedienne for the last
film he made, a two-reel comic musi-
cal. Joan got together a group of
her vaudeville pals for an evening
when Sennett was coming over to
see her. Her pals gave her the big
hand on everything she did. SEN
nett was impressed, but his secre-
tary kept saying, mfr. Sennett
you'd never be able to use her, she's
too old"
Joan's friends tipped her off to the
secretary, and next day she skipped