The Lauder Secret.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 April 1921, Page 4

The Lauder Secret.

(By Pollock Pollock.)

People are very decided about Sir Harry Lauder, the wonderful Scotsman who is filling the Palace Theatre W. with a new kind of one-man entertainment. Either they like him better than anyone else on the music-hall stage, or else they dislike him exceedingly. There are no half-measures where lie ’is concerned, fortunately—and 1 use the word with a full sense of its happy bias—the pro-Lauder jle's are in the majority. Otherwise we should not have Lauder where he is, and that would be a calamity.’ For this little man, with his deep quiet way of speaking' off the stage, is assuredly the greatest. actor of Scots types that we have. • His range is amazing, his observation remarkable. On the first night of his show at the Palace Theatre he sang a song new to London called “Somebody waiting for me.'"' A man standing beside me—evidently an anti-Lauflerite said impatiently: “Moody and Sankey stuff.” But the managing dire'e- ' tor of one of the biggest amusement . “combines” in the country said between the verses, “What wonderful observation.” He was right. Dressed as a bluejacket, Harry Lauder moved his hands exac fly as a sailor always does move j bis hands: stiffy, awkwardly; a little ! matter, but a vastly important one on .1 the stage. | A great many people, even among bis fervent admirers, regard Harry Lauder as a comic singer, a man who conies on with a crooked walking stick. , a kilt, and sings songs in Scots dialect about Mac-Someone drinking too much i whisky at a wedding. That is a pity ; j it shows that they miss all that is finest in him. Harry Lauder is the greatest character singer we have. His songs arc really vehicles for him to play character parts in. Even when his hack is turned to the audience he can “hold” it. He has the most expressive backon the stage. “I’m the saftest o’ the family” shows, you a perfect picture of a “softie” ; “When 1 was twenty-one” gives you an actual portrait of an old Scotsman of seventy-four caught by a cough and self-important about it. “Awa’ hamc wi’ ye, ye chronic old wheezler.” said the doctor. And he was right—the man is a chronic old wheezler. 1 The .human note is the'Lauder secret. 1-1 c knows that If he laughs at himself everybody else will start to laugh too. And so on the stage he comes, says something “daft,” hops about with funny little £tcps and bent, knees, takes a wee hit draw at his pipe—and skirls. It is a simple recipe—but, then, many remarkable things are very simple if only you analyse them. •Over an hour of one performer without pause—] think there is only one other person on the music-hall stage v, |io could hope to succeed in such nr experiment, and that is the greatest English performer, Mr George Robey.