COMEDIAN CHARGED

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 September 1924, Page 7

COMEDIAN CHARGED

FRANK TINNEY IN COURT.

Frank Tinney, the comedian, spent an uncomfortable hour in West Side Court, New York, while Miss Imogene Wilson, one of Flo Ziegfeld’s roof garden glorifications, gave Magistrate Levine and a crowd that packed the room a detailed account of her charge of assault against him.

When she finished (states a writer in the Nfew York “Evening Post”) Magistrate Levine denied a motion for dismissal. As he left the court, Tinney was served with papers in the suit for damages brought against him by Miss Carrie Sneed, Miss Wilson’s negro maid, Miss Wilson had previously filed a suit for 100,000 dol. dam ; ages.

Tinney’s attorney, Monroe M. Goldstein, tried to show that Miss Wilson had instituted the proceedings, first complaining to a newspaper instead of to the police, to “gain publicity.” He endeavoured to portray her as “ a nervous, hysterical and abnormal woman,” but Magistrate Levine blocked most of these attempts and Miss Wilson repulsed, the thrusts that the attorney was permitted to make.

In permitting the case to continue, Magistrate Levine gave a long lecture, lauding the stage profession and saying few from it ever are involved ’in criminal court proceedings.

“Such cases as this,” he said, “not only bring discredit on the stage but they are a justification to the many who are shouting that our stage is decadent and that those who are on it are immoral. If we had fewer young women who loved unwisely we would have less notoriety. But, above all else, if we have'fewer men on the top rung cf profession who tempt the young and struggling girls at the bottom of the ladder fve would have a cleaner profession.” Tinney came into coat light-heart-edly, but his jovial expression was turned into a wrinkled stare as Miss Wilson detailed her story. Miss Sneed who followed, corroborated it, and Dr. Herman Adler, who lias attended Miss Wilson, testified that she has injuries on her head, elbows, ankles, and knees.

After the alleged beating, Miss Wilson said she started to call a patrolman, but changed her mind and went five miles to a newspaper office. “Why?” asked Goldstein.

“Because I wanted the whole world to know what kind of a man Tinney was,” she answered. “I knew that print would hurt him more than an arrest- would.” Miss Wilson first said she was an “actress,” but later modified her statement by saying she was a “show girl with Ziegfeld’s* Follies.” She refused to answer a question whether she kicked a window out of a taxicab and had struck Tinney in the face “on the ground that it might tend to incriminate or degrade me.” She and Miss Sneed, in describing the alleged attack, said it was not the first time Tinney had beat Miss Wilson.

Tinney seemed to wince when Miss Wilson said he wrapped one of her pink silk kimonas about him and fastened a negro maid’s earrings into his own ears before starting to beat her.

Tinney was in the kitchen mixing a cocktail and called her to help him, she said, and when she got inside the door he struck her behind the ear, knocking her down. She naid he then dragged her by one arm into the living room, where he knelt on her, pummelling her on the back of the head and shoulderblades.

“He beat me until I began to bleed from the mouth,” said Miss Wilson, and then Miss Sneed dragged him off. I said to him, ‘Frank, I’m going to bleed to death,’ and he told me, ‘l’m going to finish you this time.’ ”