Djever Get Fooled?
A gay young bird is the Flapper, too,
If you aren’t very careful she will surely get you.
She is pretty and hungry, with a vampire’s thirst,
Hot Dog! Near Beer! April First!
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On my way to the Pacific coast last month I traded a Whiz Bang to a kid at the depot in Fresno for a package of raisins which the boy was selling on the depot platform. On the way back I saw the same kid.
“Say, kid, those raisins were punk.”
“So was the book” he replied.
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Now, Fellow Soaks, we’ll touch a few high spots in this grand and glorious continent as we ramble about with wry faces in pursuit of the elusive Scotch and Bubbon. San Diego and its fashionable suburb, Coronado, were tough spots for a thirsty Minnesota farmer. Nothing but a concoction commonly called “sympathy” gin to be had by a meek and lowly stranger. But, glory be to Mexico, Tiajuana with its old time western bar-rooms and music halls, is but an hour away.
We spent one grand and glorious afternoon and evening in this unique village. It reminded me of slumming expeditions of a quarter century ago. Visions of Omaha’s famous Arcade at Capitol Avenue and Ninth Street, and of Duluth’s “Minnesota Point” in its palmy days, not to mention the cribs of Dupont Street in Frisco, went flitting through my frappe’d brain.
In one solace of joy we sat at a table for Haig and Haig “service,” said service being delivered by jaded janes who divided their time between waiting on customers and jazz dancing to the tinny tunes of a tin pan orchestra. It was a wild place and a wild night. Later we dined at the Sunset Inn. The inn was flanked by rooms filled with scores of roulette wheels and faro tables. My sporting blood surged hither and thither but to no avail, for the Mexican government had placed a temporary ban on this style of gambling.
Alcatraz Island, that silent citadel that illumines the skyline of Frisco’s bay like a bleak battleship, is the temporary home of about five hundred United States soldiers who have become ensnarled in the tough and tedious red tape of Uncle Sam’s court martial system. Prisons and morgues are two places I abhor, but it fell my lot to visit both in one night in San Francisco.
It happened like this: While entertaining some new found Frisco friends in my room in the St. Francis Hotel, I was pleasantly surprised by the head director of the Jewish Welfare Board, Shea Swartz by name, who requested on behalf of the Board, that my pedigreed bunk be spread on the rocky soil of Alcatraz. The five hundred boys gathered in the barrack auditorium and gave the Whiz Bang a grand and glorious welcome. It was one of the bright lights of a very enjoyable tour of the coast.
Later in the evening, accompanied by George Duffy and G. W. DeLano of the district attorney’s office, we inspected the famous San Francisco morgue. It was a gruesome visit, I’ll admit, but some of the curse was removed by the marvelous furniture and apparatus used in the handling of the unfortunate.
From the morgue we glimpsed a view of the city jail, through the kind offices of Walter C. Schiller, who is bond and warrant clerk in the Hall of Justice.
It was next to Chinatown where we were met by the sergeant in charge of the Chinatown vice squad. Two of his operatives conducted our party through a score or more of Chink gambling and hop joints that had recently been raided. We sincerely thank the squad, but regret not having seen one or two places that had not been raided.
It is the hour of dusk that Chinatown pads to and fro noiselessly. In the little tangle of crooked streets, blue lozenges of lights, sitting gods and queer smells that babble of Oriental talk is incessant at this hour. Women parade in gaudy headdress and beads of jade. The men wear their gaudiest silken robes. There are dried-up men whose faces are old with the age of eastern lore, young women who walk with mincing steps and Oriental grace, cherry-cheeked babies tottering uncertainly.
We passed up Honolulu until later in the year and made a transcontinental jump to New York to try and “Get Gertie’s Garter.” Don’t believe I’ll ever be contented “down on the farm” after all the wonderful people and wonderful sights of the past two months. But here goes for Lil’ Ol’ New Yawk, as seen through the eyes of a farmer.
Blistering Broadway
In the old days we used to hear startling tales of the decadence of the Paris theatre. It is no longer necessary to cross the pond to have one’s aesthetic (?) senses stirred. The New York stage will do it for you this season. Right behind the Broadway footlights you can see everything done in the name of Art from witnessing a young lady actually climb in a bed already occupied by a male to observing a squad of girls play strip poker until—
But let us go back to the beginning. They say that it is a dull season in New York and that no one is spending money—at least for theatre tickets. Hence the frantic effort to whet the jaded appetites of the elusive theatre-goers.
Let us list some of the more sprightly attractions. Bear in mind that some of them have excellent qualities. There is, for instance, Somerset Maugham’s “The Circle,” telling of an old couple who have broken all the conventions and of a younger couple about to follow in their footsteps. It is told with lively cleverness. No, indeed, the young people do not find a moral in the experiences of their elders. At the end they dash away to investigate the illicit love-in-a-cottage stuff themselves and Mr. Maugham points out that in life it doesn’t matter “what you do as much as what you are.” And also that “you can do anything in this world if you’re prepared to take the consequences and consequences depend on character.” All of which is excellent mental food for the 1921 flapper.
Then there is Cosmo Hamilton’s “The Silver Fox,” a little epic of a philandering wife with a penchant for young men and abbreviated socks. Clever, too, but decadent.
Also we might note “Ambush,” the opus of a young woman who likes pretty things and who is aided and abetted by her mother. Papa is a poor commuter who wakes up when daughter introduces a flip and married gentleman friend. When he protests, daughter slaps his face and snaps “Damn you!” Still, there is some excuse for “Ambush.” At least it is well written.
Here we turn to the plain every day efforts to be insolently sensational at any price.
“Getting Gertie’s Garter” (note the chaste title), was one of the earliest of the sexly stimulants. But garters have lost their vogue and, anyway, the short skirts have ruined their novelty. So the piece did not seriously upset New York.
Then there’s “Lilies of the Field,” for instance, a demi-mondaine treatise anent certain lilies who “toil not neither do they spin,” or however it was that the Good Book let down the gold diggers of the old days. This is especially recommended for the eighteen-year-old flapper.
With which we arrive at the real blush producers of the year. Consider “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife.” Here a young woman, newly married, invites her old sweetheart to her boudoir at midnight, gets him squiffy and persuades him to undress and climb into bed. And undress he does, right down to his B. V. D.’s in front of the footlights, the appreciative heroine and the audience. Said heroine then clambers in—and friend husband appears. Yes, it’s all to teach hubby a lesson (one must make some concession to the police) and the B. V. D. person gets the air.
Broadway had been busily getting out its shekels to see Bluebeard and the B. V. D. youth when along came Avery Hopwood’s “The Demi-Virgin.” Now, Mr. Hopwood’s demi-virgin is not the demi-vierge of the French, from whom the noun comes. Since this is a family paper, we will explain demi-vierge as a young and ambitious lady who is broadminded up to a certain point. Mr. Hopwood’s heroine, however, is a movie queen who deserts her husband, another movie idol, on their wedding night. Although the husband finally succeeds in capturing his demi-wife in her boudoir and thereupon starts out to—well—anyway the real incident of the piece is the aforementioned strip poker party, where a half dozen film fillies discard garment after garment in a game designed to be thrilling. It isn’t a mere strip poker party but a “strip cupid” affair, the first to arrive at the cupid state to be the winner—or loser. The game progresses until it is a mere matter of a card’s turn who is to be cupid when, of course, the thing is ended.
This, then, is the state of the New York stage at this moment. Meanwhile, film fans see life on the screen through the eyes of little Rollo while, just around the corner, six young women are in the act of taking off their pink envelope thing-ums while an appreciative audience applauds. Not, of course, that we’re for censorship anywhere. But the New York stage producer seems to be able to get away with anything.
It is making it awfully hard for the musical comedy producer. Years ago he reached a certain limit in bare revelations and now the drama comes along and wins away the tired business man. Of course, the musical comedy maker isn’t giving up without a fight. Now and then he has an inspiration, as when, in the new Greenwich Village Follies, he reveals a lady to personify Art dressed exclusively in three golden leaves, each placed with fine discernment and discretion.
The next step on the New York stage will probably come when the musical comedy producer raises—or lowers—his limit. Despite our youth, we can recall—vividly—when he made the step from tights and stockings to bare legs, the only thing left is for him to ape the Parisian producer and have costumes stop their upward trend at the waist. We shall see, we shall see!
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