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GREENVILLE
ICE & FUEL
PLANT
(Of Southern Ice Co.)
ICE and COAL
Main Office: River Street
Phone 83
Greenville, S. C.
SCHLITZ BEER
DISTRIBUTORS
NEHI
Bottling Company
Exclusive Bottlers of Quality
NEHI Beverages
ireenville,
s. c.
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j James Chevrolet j
Company
' hevrolet Automobiles
and Trucks
WATCH THE LEADER”
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Greenville,
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; ™ERN ISRAELITE ★
THE BUFFOON OF BROADWAY
(Continued from page 8)
not exclusively ask for brush salesmen,
happened a long time ago. And it did.
for Willie was only fourteen then. The
salary was to be only three dollars a
week, but which one of us can deny that
he would not prefer those three full-
blooded simoleons to ten or fifteen of the
new "blended” greenbacks? Master Willie
made good at his new job. He did so
well that his stipend was raised to five
dollars and the water boy s uniform he
wore in the vaudeville act in which he
appeared was given a dry cleaning and a
new set of shiny buttons. In that for
gotten era good luck came in bunches;
Dame Opportunity, that forgotten lady,
knocked, kicked, pinched and yowled to
bring success to her favorite sons. One day
she appeared before Willie Howard in the
charming person of Anna Held, the toast
of the town. Prima donna Held selected
him for the chorus of ‘‘Little Duchess,”
a new musical comedy.
With ga-ga eyes and wide open mouth
Willie watched the preparations and re
hearsals for his first appearance in a legiti
mate show. The mysteries of the world of
backstage fascinated him and one day he
swore to rise to stardom. But the fuzz
of incipient manhood was already darken
ing his chin, and tremors of impending
change gripped his vocal chords. One
morning in Washington, where the new
musical was to play a pre-New York en
gagement, our hero awoke with a start to
discover that the shrill voice with which
he was wont to squelch the rude alarm
clock sounded ominously strange. Willie
swore again, but again his clear, bell-like
soprano sounded like a cough over the
radio. Overnight his voice had changed
and now there was nothing left for him
to do but to quit the ‘‘Little Duchess"
cast. It was a sad day for our Willie,
but undismayed he returned to New York
and very soon got himself a job in the
once famous Hubert's Museum and Flea
Circus on 14th Street. Here his innate
talent for mimicry served him in good
stead, for he was hired to impersonate the
famous stars of that period for the edifica
tion of those persons who might weary of
watching the fleas. In the meantime, Sam.
who could not be tempted to forego a
business career by the indifferent success
of his brothers, entered the fur business.
But the brothers Willie and Eugene
plodded on for the next few years until
their rising star weaned Sam away from
his furs to join them in a vaudeville act
that was entitled ‘‘The Three Messenger
Boys,” a title that did not have the pi
quant ring of a similar act in which the
Marx Brothers were engaged at that time,
known as "The Four Nightingales.
Across the country, up and down the At
lantic and Pacific Coasts, the "Three Mes
senger Boys” traveled on their errand of
entertainment. And with considerable suc
cess. But Sammy was a restless fellow and
it did not take much to cause him to
drift into burlesque. So Willie and Eu
gene got themselves some unknown gen
tleman by the name of Dunn to pinch-
hit for him and continued their pilgrim
ages on the vaudeville circuits. Finally,
when Dunn dropped out. the Howards
just neglected to get somebody else tn his
place and, changing the name of their
skit to “The Messenger Boy and the
Thespian,” resumed their barnstorming.
Every vaudevillian’s dream of turning
his back on the two and three-a-day and
going legitimate, burned in the hearts or
the Howards, until, in 1912, the Shu-
berts. who arc the producers of the 1934
Zicgfcld Follies, hired them to act in the
first Passing Show. Here was launched a
stage career that was to make the Howard
brothers familiar figures in the musical
comedy field for the next twenty years.
Of course, now and then, when Broad
way would not offer them a vehicle, they
would return to vaudeville, but only as
topnotchcrs.
The success of Willie Howard is the
success that comes with intensive study
and hard work. Even today this gentle
man takes the business of comedy very
seriously. For example, in the current Fol
lies he performs imitations that require a
genuine mastery of half a dozen accents
and costumes. Being a student of his art,
he does not attempt to fake a Cuban
accent, or a Greek dialect, nor docs he
rely on other men of the profession to
determine his style. Instead, he sits at
home for hours on end listening to broad
casts from the smaller radio stations,
where a Spanish or Greek, or Italian an
nouncer is doing the double duty of
broadcasting in English as well as in his
native tongue. In this way Howard is able
to acquire an accent and cadence rich in
genuine forcignisms. The same is true of
his costumes and make-up. He takes the
greatest pains with his costumes, making
every effort to duplicate thq actual garb of
the characters he is to enact. He is so
successful in this that very often several
minutes elapse before the audience will
recognize him as Willie Howard.
But Willie Howard is not a funny man
twenty-four hours a day. There is a phase
to his stage history that is yet unwritten
—a chapter that may establish him as a
dramatic actor of a reputation comparable
to his prominence as a wearer of the sock
of comedy. For some time. Mr. Howard
has been considering trading his sock for
the buskin and traveling the path that led
to the glories of David Warfield. As a
matter of fact, he told me as he tried to
push a comb through his extremely bushy
head of black hair, that he had seriously
thought of acting in a play of Russian
life iust about the time the Shuberts laid
the Ziegfeld contract before him. He has
not given up the idea of a serious play,
and it will not surprise this reporter if
Willie Howard follows in the footsteps
of Warfield as a great dramatic player.
The unique caricatures and satires that
he has created for the Ziegfeld Follies of
1934 have raised him to the uppermost
rung of comedy achievement. Who knows
but that some day in the distant future
Willie Howard will be remembered as hav
ing been President of Cuba longer than
any other man. even though he had the
advantage of executing his official func
tions in the safety of the stage of the
Winter Garden instead of in Havana? Nor
is that the only superb characterization
that Howard gives. But our duty here is
to record our chat behind the scenes: we
should not like to intrude on the precincts
of the critics who. you will agree, are
more practiced in the art of boosting.
“Life.” said Mr. Howard, somewhat
philosophically, “Is just a lot of make
up-putting on and taking off wigs and
beards.”
“But what about mustaches, the Hitler
mustache, for instance?” we interjected.
Howard paused. "There is iust one diffi
culty with impersonating that guy. No
body can be as funny as the original.”
NAZIS WAR ON AMERICAN ]EWS
ffrom oaae 10)
T. McFadden of Pennsylvania said
is certain that "millions of Ameri-
vill join with me in voicing opposi-
o any attempted boycott of German
in this free country of ours.”
ir telegrams were received from other
izations in many parts of the country,
c principal address was made by
e Sylvester Viereck. friend of the ex-
• and Nazi apologist. Denying that
„ a member of the DAWA. V,creek,
t was possible to sympathize with
m without embracing anti-Semitism.
Warning that the boycott is a double-edged
sword and pointing out that he is equally
opposed to all boycotts, including the boy
cott of Jews by Germans, Viereck asserted
that it was his hope that when “complete
stability is established, the German people
will differentiate Jews who are interna
tional plotters and Jews who are Germans
before they are Jews. I hope that even
tually a concordat will be established that
will grant to the Jews in Germany the
largest measure of justice possible in this
imperfect world."
SEWELL
MANUFACTURING
COMPANY
Manufacturers of
CLOTHING
Bremen, Georgia
Established 1896
RICHMOND
HOSIERY
MILLS
New York Office
271 Church Street
Soddy, Tenn.
Plant
Ladies’ and Children's Ribs—Coif Hose
Daisy, Tenn.
Plant
Men's Half Hose—Infants’ Hosiery
Ladies’ Seamless Hosiery
Plant at
Rossville, Ga.
1171