The Theatre: Loudest and Funniest

The Comedians Are Coming

The musical comedy and revue season in Manhattan is fast becoming a laughing matter. No matter where you go, you run into a lot of crazy comedians. Long ago, it used to be the girls that sold the singing shows; later, it became the music, even the singing itself now and then; for the past few years, it has been the dancing. Currently, Broadway is flawed with wise cracks, opening everywhere to emit their little jests of joy. With the few inevitable exceptions, every great comedian we have will be winter-quartered in Manhattan.

At the risk of receiving infernal machines by mail, this department nominates Al Jolson as the big pet of joy, in fact as the geyser of gaiety. After an endless wandering in Bombo, he is preparing to go into action in Big Boy at approximately 9 p. m. every evening of the winter except Sunday.

Ed Wynn and Eddie Cantor emit almost as much cubic laughter per evening. Wynn exploded last week in The Grab Bag. Cantor will function most of the year in Kid Boots.

Lest your correspondent fail to mention the Marx Brothers in the same breath and thereby commit critical suicide, be it noted that they continue in I’ll Say She Is. Joe Cook and James Barton, further favorites of the erudite commentators, are with us in the Vanities and The Passing Show. W. C. Fields, last year’s most ribald recruit for the comedian championship, returns later in a show of his own writing, The Old Army Game. Most everyone knows that Will Rogers is in the Follies.

Raymond Hitchcock, after a period of metropolitan inactivity, is in eruption with the Ritz Revue. Associated with him is the elongated Charlotte Greenwood, than whom there is no more foolish female unless it be Fanny Brice, who is among the natural phenomena of the forthcoming Music Box Revue. In the same Box are Robert Benchley and the ridiculous Clark and McCullough. In Dutch is the Gallagher and Shean trademark. Leon Errol will fall on his face as Louis in Louis, the Fourteenth.

Fred Stone, commanding exponent of clean fun, is just leaving. Jack Hazzard entangled himself with a failure called Bye, Bye, Barbara, but will probably be back. Other vacant niches are labeled: Sam Bernard, Lew Fields, Frank Tinney. Yet their absence cannot discourage the general jet of joy. It seems that louder and funnier theatricals are inevitable. In fact, loudest and funniest.