THEATRE ROYAL.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19731, 23 September 1929, Page 4

THEATRE ROYAL.

Living in sparsely-furnished plasterporous rooms, doing washing in the handbowl. cooking eggs or coffee on an inverted electric flat iron or open gas jet, and putting on a ' "front" when their pockets contain nnry a penny—such are thd expedients of the small time vaudevilliana, some of whom appear in "The Broadway Melody," the a!l----talking, all-singing/ all-dancing dramatic sensation produced by Metro-Gold wyn-Mayer, featuring Bessie Love, Charles King, and Anita rage, which is now playing at the Theatre Royal. The genus vaudevillian is a member of a little world apart from the re: t of creation. His joys and sorrows, his "smart cracks" that hide tragedy in many instances, and his incessant groping for the Ultima Thole of vaudeville—a "Bpot" on the bill at the Palace in • New York—are all inferred from the party scene in "Hank s" apartment where she entertains some of her former vaudeville friends. The average small-time vaudeville entertainer—and from the ranks of theae eventually rise the "bigtimers' —often gets his start in some lodge show or amateur theatrical affair. His friends tell him his act is good, and he starts off on the road of starvation that may (if he's lucky) lead him to "big-time" fame. A 1 Jolson, greatest of headliners in the varie ties, once was a cigar clerk, and Will M Cressy, once a printer's devil. Charles Wither'a act. "For Pity's Sake," resounded round the world; but be was once a stereotyper on a Kansas City newspaper. "The Broadway Melody' is a story, vivid ly real in its drama, heartaches, and humour of the vaudevillian's life. It tells the story of two sisters fr«m the small time, who bring their act to New tork. There it fails and with its failure come other complications! One sister loses her life's romance; the other finds hers.