The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 47

SECTION I 0( THI BROOKLYN SUNDAY, DECEMBER TREND i PLAYTHINGS .4 Benny Baker Began As Cut-Up in Vests Then Comedian of 'Let's Face Loud-Talked a Job in Burlesque Benny Baker Is coming up in the world. The boy, with the face that looks like a shining sun, was clowning in a Hollywood cellar cafe when Cole Porter hustled him off to Broadway to preside over the glorified washroom in "DuBarry Was a Lady." Now in Porter's newest musical, "Let's Face It!" at the Imperial Theater, bonnie Benny has been, promoted. He's peeling potatoes in the Army. But I'm right next to the 'HellzapoppinY Brother, 'Sons o' Fun Brings Out Sunday Clothes and Ermine Br ARTHUR POLLOCK "Sons o' Fun," being the latest masterwork of Olsen and John-ton, tu naturally the event of the past week In the theaters. When last these two gentlemen came to town that was, of course, In "HellzapopplnV now In Its fourth year they sneaked in, kind of.

There was nobody In evening clothes to greet them, for people dont dress up to meet what in prospect promises to be a turkey. Last Monday evening when they made their second debut, a large part of the audience came in its Sunday clothes and almost everywhere you looked there was that white stuff that looks like ermine and often is. The opening of "Sons o' Fun" was more important to more people than the opening of the Metropolitan. Probably a lot of wise folk, who are also frequently naive, were sure that Olsen and Johnson could never do It again, that the success of "Hellzapoppln' Just happened. And besides, It could have been supposed, they used up all their gags in the first show, would not be able to think up any more good ones for the second.

If such could have been supposed it was silly for any one to suppose it. Olsen and Johnson can never run out of good gags. Maybe in the course of time New York's theatergoers will tire of their particular kind of show, their particular kind of gags, but they can never run out of the gags. Haven't they the whole past of the theater to draw on 7 The past is full of gags. Gags never die.

They are put on the shelf for time, when they seem too old, and are then taken down again when it is time for them to seem new once more. OLsen and Johnson know this. They know very well and will tell you without hesitation that when a gag is 30 years old It is again as bright as if it were conceived yesterday. Most of those who see or hear it today never came In contact with It before. It has the same effect on them as it did when it was born.

And those who recognize it are made happy, too, merely by the recognition of something they laughed at a couple of decades ago. In fact, it Is rather good for a man's ego to laugh at the same things he laughed at as a boy. It gives him the feeling that a thing that convulsed him as a kid was good enough to endure and convulse a theater full of people now. He must have been a smart fellow in his youth I Had a fine sense of humor. Also it Is a pleasure for the old-tuner to sniff.

He saw it first) When he sees a barroom scene in "Sons o' Fun" in which the actors shoot their revolvers at a painting of a ship, the painted ship fires back, then sinks, the old-timer Is delighted. He has caught Olsen and Johnson using an old one. And he tells you happily Just when and where he saw that years ago and who did it that time. His face shines. He is happy.

He is for the moment a shrewd detective. But to those who know less about vaudeville's past, the antics of the painted ship seem a happy invention. What won't Olsen and Johnson think of next! It caught the attention of some of the critics, who mentioned It in their reviews. Must have looked good to them. And, since they had not seen it before, it was.

The odd thing about Olsen and Johnson Is not that they can find or invent gags enough to keep something happening every minute In a theater, but that they can make their gags click. They time them perfectly. Say, if it makes you feel better, that they themselves are not funny. It doesn't matter. They are masters in the thing they do.

Probably they will have to do considerable thinking as they go on producing. "Sons o' Fun" Is different from "Hellzapoppln'." It's handsomer, has more variety, has in its cast players who are riot exclusively gagsters. O. and J. know they cannot go on merely repeating themselves in the same style.

But what will they do to vary their own stuff? When the time comes, if ever it does, that they have to, they will find themselves in a field unfamiliar. But when will that time come? Certainly they ought to be able to go on for 20 years, and in 20 years everything they do will be new again. mess hall," says Baker. "Maybe they'll write In the food," he adds hopefully, raising his voice to a hoarse shout and looking around to see if an author is within earshot. "I say things like that out loud because you never know when somebody's around looking for an idea.

Look at me! Once I was scared of actors. Now I could eat them, only they're mostly all Just skin and bones. And it all happened because I finally talked up where somebody could hear me. Before that I was a shrinking violet. I was a retiring type!" "I just made up my mind what I wanted.

And sooner or later I went after it if it wasn't too much trouble." Benny started out in life actually as a cut-up, He was working in a Rochester clothing factory, slicing vests from huge bolts of cloth. Very I dull work, he opines, cutting out size-36 vests all day long, "Thin people never really inter-! ested me," he proclaimed. Benny was on the noon-hour baseball team of the factory and the sandlots were, much more attractive to him than the cutting tables. One day, an Important Inter-department game was scheduled and he had to beat the lunch-hour whistle if he wanted to hold down third base. "So I made 'em all size 26 that day.

I thought it would be faster," he explained. Benny bounced Into a clothing store on one of Rochester's main streets, where he strained his talents in the "as is" department. "You came in and you bought what you wanted as is, see?" Across the street was a burlesque house and Benny, hankering after the stage, would spend all his spare moments mooning over that delapi-dated citadel of the show world. "Finally, one day, I made up my mind I was going to get in that theater," he says. "I marched up to the box-office and bought a ticket.

That was one way of getting in. "But I wasn't fooling myself. I sat there in the house, mulling, thinking, scheming. Just then one of the candy butchers started down the aisle hawking 'Just as you like 'em, artists and I got an inspiration then and there. I shouted to the fellow.

He shouted and I shouted back. An usher came up and said 'what's the big I said I could yell louder than that guy. He said, 'Oh, yeah, come out I came. The manager came. I told him what I NEW RICHARD HALE, Uta Hogen and Mildred Dunnock of the Jose Ferrer, actor (most recently Charlie's Aunt), becomes cast of "The Admiral Had a producer next Wednesday Clifton Webb Became an Actor In an Original Way He Acted Donald Foster's First Stage Job Got Him Ducked in River thought.

He listened. 'He's rightl said the manager. "And he hired me! See what I mean? You gotta talk up!" Benny stayed with the burlesque Job for a while and would have stayed longer, but his second bout of standing up for what he wanted didn't turn out so well or ended up wonderfully, depending on how you look at It. He tried to get a job as a third comedian in the show, but no dice I "I'm glad they said 'no'," he exclaimed. "Or I'd probably still be a third comic up In Rochester." Instead, he joined a local stork company, operated by George Cukor, then a long way from fame as a Holrywcod director.

"I made my debut on the stage in a fast run," he said. "I dashed across the boards carrying a suitcase for $7 a week." Louis Calhern was a leading actor in that company and he listened to the youngster's dreams of a career before the footlights. It's a hard life and often an unsatisfying one, Calhern counselled him. But as long as he had the bee in his bonnet, Benny was advised to go ahead and try his luck. He'd have to find out for himself.

Getting accustomed to speaking up for what he wanted, Baker came to New York and annoyed Lou Holtz into giving him a Job. With Holtz, he toured the vaudeville circuits for five years. During that time he developed the character of H. Leopold Shawowsky arid did one spell in a musical comedy called "You Said It!" Eventually Baker wound up in Hollywood making shorts with Holtz, more shorts with Irwin S. Cobb and finally, under term contract to Paramount, not-so-short football comedies.

After three years of that, he landed in the Hollywood night club where Mr. Porter bagged him to play the sub-mental Dauphin in "DuBarry." Now "Let's Face It!" brings him back to Broadway. "I'm still getting up," he chortled. And then raising his voice: "But when do we eat?" Not an author was in sight. It Happens to Cadets Tomorrow With Iceland and Alaska as possible locales for their military training, 1,500 cadets at West Point will learn about ice skating tomorrow from the 65 skaters in "It Happens on Ice," who will demonstrate their skill in the huge hockey rink at the United States Military Academy.

PLAYS Went Straight From Carnegie (at 7) To Morosco, With Side Trips, of Course The most familiar cliche In an actor's autobiography is the admission that his stage career was sheer accident, an afterthought. The circumstances of this happy chance are familiar. There he was, hustling along toward a career in medicine, pricing scalpels, carrying on flirtations in prescription Latin, and developing a good seat on the ambulance. A a Wife," the play with which evening ot the Playhouse. sketch, "The Still Alarm." In it he played the same sort of light comedian his role of Charles Con-domine allows him to be in "Blitne Spirit." There were additional opportunities for his special sort of comedy in "Three's a Crowd," "Flying Colors" and "As Thousands Cheer." In that last-named revue he appeared in no fewer than nine sketches, his characterizations rang ing from John D.

Rockefeller to Mahatma Gandhi. He had a term in Hollywood, where, though mollified by a sizable weekly check, he did little but sit on a sonny patio and contemplate his neighbor. He returned to the stage in a play that offered no song cues, "And Stars Remain." Helen Gahagan was in it, and Webb played a man who went around dropping speeches from Noel Coward's successes. A final musical, "You Never Know." a tour in "The Importance of Being Earnest," and two years in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" engaged him in recent seasons. a natural aptness for it paid such excellent returns he prudently kept at it, in one musical comedy hit after another.

There was no call for dancing in his child roles, in "Oliver Twist," "Rags and Royalty," "King John" and "Huckleberry Finn." And certainly none in his alternate career In art, which transported him across his school years under the instruction of Robert Henri and William Chase. At seventeen, still filled with high including Foster, were ducked In the river. "Although I was uite green in the acting profession," Foster relates, "I knew ducking was something extraordinary. I couldn't swim a stroke at the time, but I took lessons the rest of the season just In case." Despite the fact he was the youngest member of the troupe, Foster played elderly roles. He says he used more wigs and beards that year than he has been called upon to use since.

Once his beard was pulled off in a stage scuffle. Result: the laughs forced the stage manager to ring down the curtain. The audience, however, was not to be denied. "We'll take him without whiskers," they shouted. So up went the curtain and Foster played the role beardless.

Unique among actors is Donald Foster, who has one of the leading roles In "My Sister Eileen" at the lit more Theater. Ask his whether there is a story in his stage career and he will frankly tell you: "I doubt it very much. I've had a most uneventful life." And yet, if you can start him talking, much in the way of story material emerges from his 27 years in the theater. For example, In 1915, when he was appearing in a Mississippi showboat production of "The Thief," the title disturbed the Women's Puritan League of a hamlet on the river's iage. The league members not only stopped, from attending the advertised performance, but dispersed the actors parading through the village.

Some, Monday "Golden Wings," a play by William Jay and Guy Bolton. At the Cort Theater. Cast includes Fay Wray, Owen Lamont, Signe Hasso Lloyd Gough, Hughie Green, Margot Stevenson and Gerald Savory. Wednesday "The Admiral Had a Wife," a comedy by Lowell Barrington. Presented at the Playhouse by Jose Ferrer.

In the company are Uta Hagen, Martha Hodge, Alfred Drake, Mildred Dunnock, Reynolds Denniston, Richard Hale, Don Shelton and E. J. Ballantine. Benefit "The Wookey," tonight, at the Plymouth Theater. For the Actors Fund.

Barrymores, Says One of Them, Are Just Like Other People purpose and, profiting by Victor Maurel's coaching, he sang with the Boston Opera Company. Life took to tampering with his charted course at this point, and soon he was dancing away for dear life in such musical plays as "Love o' Mike," "Listen Lester," "Very Oood, Eddie" and "As You Were." He danced in London for two years, under the management of Charles B. Cochran, and in Paris for a year. He came home to essay a little straight acting in "Meet the Wife," but presently he was dancing again never better in "Bunny," with Marilyn Miller and Jack Donahue. He attempted another non-dancing role with Francine Larrlmore in "Parasites" before aligning himself, for almost a decade, with several musical shows, all spectacularly successful.

"The Little Show," first of these, allowed Webb to achieve full stature as a comedian. George S. Kaufman helped him there by giving him a to be In New York, where the opportunities for plays are more abundant." She has never acted with her famous father, John, her mother, Michael Strange, but, she says, "When I was in Chicago with the 'Outward Bound' company I played in the theater next to where father was acting. She avoids family feuds by declaring, "I can't say which one of my relatives is my favorite actor or actress. I think they are all equally good in their own way and equally different The fourth generation of the talented fusion between the Drews and the Barrymores made a modest but successful debut on Broadway.

She appeared in a leading role in a play called "The Romantic Mr. Dickens," which opened on Dec. 2 and closed on Dec. 7 of the same year, after critics had given it the cold shoulder but had approved Miss Barrymores performance. "I would rather be a good player in a flop than be a flop in a good play," was Miss Barry more's comment on this experience.

This past Summer she donned a crinoline dress and played the leading feminine role in "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines," the Clyde Fitch comedy in which her aunt, Ethel, was awarded stardom some 40 years ago. In "Ihe Land Is Bright" she has a role which makes heavier demands upon her ability than any she has essayed to date. She is first seen as a wild and wayward debutante of 19 back In the early, fabulous "20s and then as a sober matron of 40 when the play comes up to the present day. -x 5t sudden triumph In college dramatics fetches him up short, and the first thing you know there he is bowing at you from across the footlights. Clifton Webb's story is unique, therefore, in that he always wanted to be an actor.

At the age of seven, after contempltalng the state of the world, he chose the stage. He has never wavered In his devotion to it. True, he dabbled in painting in his early 'teens, but that was merely an obeisance to culture, nothing to turn him a penny. He has pursued a line that led straight from Carnegie Hall, where he made his acting debut at seven, to the Morosco Theater, where, right now, he is one of the stars of Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit." In the Interest of accuracy, that straight line has been bent to permit detours to the 48 States and Europe, but the line was intended less as the crow files than as soars the metaphor. In "Blithe Spirit" Webb carries on as the comedian he started out to be at seven.

There was a time, a rather extended time, when another talent halted realiaation of his ambition. He happened to be too good a dancer. Dancing is an art he never set out to master, but Brooklyn Boys on Tour of Army Camps Richard Allen of 483 Montgomery St. and Paul Nevens of 825 Linden Boulevard, two young actors who have resided in Brooklyn for more than 20 years, are making a nation-wide tour of army camps in the first legitimate play to undertake such a tour. The play is the current Broadway hit, "My Sister Eileen," and the casff Is composed entirely of professional actors, an all-Equity company.

The U. S. O. is sponsoring the show, which is in the nature of a pioneer effort. It will no doubt be the forerunner of many such tours of legitimate plays.

In charge of production is Eddie Dowllng, the well-known Broadway actor-producer. Ronald Hammond directed the play. 'Aida' at Academy The regular Saturday evening popular-priced grand opera series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, under Alfredo Salmaggi's direction, continues next Saturday night with Verdi's "Aida," presented for the firts time during the current season. VP 1 (ft As modern as the newest streamlined bomber to leave the assembly line and as direct in method Is Diana Barrymore, who even offstage gives the impression of being the heir apparent, ready at a moment's notice to carry on "the royal family" tradition of the Barrymore dynasty. Local patrons of the theater may view another facet of the Barry-more technique which her "uncles, cousins and her aunts," as well as her father, have made famous In the American theater.

Diana plays a leading role in Max Gordon's production of "The Land Is Bright," by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, at the Music Box. Questioned about her distinguished ancestry, Miss Barrymore protests with the savoir faire of a veteran: "Why Is it that people always think there's something different about a Barrymore? We are human beings like other people. I went into the theater after thinking about it for a long time. Of course I'm glad to be a Barrymore, and the critics have been kind to me.

Possibly it's because they are glad that one of the Barrymore 'kids' can act and there will be some one left to carry on the family name. "As for what I wish to do," she explained, "I have the same objectives as any other young actress. I want to be a very good actress. Some time I'd like to appear in a revue and sing, as my voice has been trained. "Later, too, I'd like to play Juliet, which I did about two years ago in Summer stock, with Philip Faver-sham as Romeo.

I've taken screen tests, but they wanted me to wait in Hollywood too long and I wanted 1 "i PATRICIA COLLINGE, Minnie Dupree, Clinton Sundburg and Boris Karloff of the cast of the everblooming "Arsenic and Old Lace," which keeps the customers happy at the Fulton Theater. CAROL GOODNER ond Edmund Gwenn, visible and risible nightly amid the explosions of 'The Wookey" ot the Plymouth Theater..