Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 3, No. 25, October, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and FilosophyVarious
General
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 3, No. 25, October, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
American wit and humor -- Periodicals
The courts recently gave the lady the right to change her legal name
from Theodosia Goodman, with which she was born, to her stage name Theda
Bara; so she replied with dignity, “My real name is Theda Bara.” And
annihilated the lawyer with a look. The examination had proceeded when
she suddenly shrieked, “Oh, no. Excuse me. I forgot. I am Mrs. Charles
Braban.”
The deeply regretted death of Caruso will be followed by a musical
revolution.
It is an admitted fact that no good American name goes in musical
circles. If you were not born on the other side, you have to pretend
you were and apologize and take a foreign moniker; or you will not be
accepted in your own, your native land.
The way things are now, no American singer can possibly break in without
going to Europe for a long and expensive course of study—just to get the
European stamp of approval.
Some of the bitterest tragedies of this world have been those of American
girls who found the doors closed to them in their own country by foreign
impressarios and who struggled their way to Europe in order to work for
German or Italian permission to follow their own professions in their own
country. A good many found heart-aches, poverty and other worse tragedies
over there.
And now coming to the point: it looks as though the logical successor of
Caruso might be a young California boy of good old American stock—Mario
Chamley. He is a regular young “he” American who talks baseball; goes to
all the fights and is “regular” from the basement up. He has a glorious
golden voice and has gone to the front in the Metropolitan more rapidly
than any other young tenor in the history of American opera. The future
seems to have boundless possibilities for him.
Chamley is a charming young fellow to meet. Opera singing is just a
job—like any other—to him. He tells some outrageously funny stories
about life in an opera company. Among other adventures, the first time
he appeared in a grand role in the Metropolitan, he burst the waist band
that held up his pants.
When the curtain went down and the applause began, the excited
impressario tried to drag him out in front of the curtain.
The young tenor tried to tell him his pants were coming down, but he
couldn’t remember how to say it in Italian. The impressario thought it
was just shyness and modesty that kept him back and tried to drag him
along. Just in time, one of the other singers, explained the situation
and the Metropolitan audience lost a chance for a comic thrill.
And now, brethren, that will be about all for today, except that
the press agent of the Ziegfield Follies has announced with heat of
excitement that the girls have formed a club to prosecute and reply to
those who say they go to rough parties and live wild lives. Cross my
heart, I have always believed that the Ziegfield girls spent all their
spare time reading dictionaries and doing tatting work and helping mother
with the dishes. So they can’t get anything on me, b’ gosh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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