• U.S.

The Theatre: Bird Fancier

2 minute read
TIME

Eight times a day weekdays, ten times on Sundays and holidays for the past two months, Rosita Royce has confronted sightseers at the White Way Casino of the New York World’s Fair. They ogled her while she strip-teased to the point where her costume consisted mainly of seven doves or alternately of a cockatoo called “Silly Billy” and a macaw named “Red.” One day last week she was asked to give an eleventh performance. She indignantly refused. Said she: “The doves are worn out. I care more for their health than for my own.”

So Miss Royce was fired and replaced by Miss Tirza, who bathes in wine. Thereupon Rosita Royce entered suit against the White Way Casino. Indignantly she pointed out that, besides asking her to work too much, the Casino had failed to protect her doves from an unknown bird fancier, who took pot shots at the doves with a BB gun while they were protecting strategic points. At last, she said, she had appealed to Fair Chairman Harvey D. Gibson, who gave her a game warden to protect her fowl. At week’s end Rosita had appealed to the American Guild of Variety Artists to settle her troubles, was still turning up at the Casino, ready to strut her pigeons if the Casino would pay her salary and the poachers would be kinder to her stock.

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