NEWS THAT NEVER COMES

Northern Advocate, 8 April 1931, Page 5

NEWS THAT NEVER COMES

SOUTHERN CLOUD MYSTERY, DISTRAUGHT ACTRESS. (Received 0 a.m.) MELBOURNE, April 3. While playing in Melbourne on. Saturday night in “(Sons o’ ’Suns,” Miss Bertha Riecardo, whose husband, Clyde Hood, was one of the passengers in the Southern Cloud, collapsed. She was carried, hysterical, from the stage, but later went on again. Miss Riceardo is frantic with worry, and it is only because she wished to do something to occupy her mind that she decided to appear again on Friday night. At the aerodrome practically every day, she has had little sleep during the last seven days, and on several occasions has broken down under the terrible strain of waiting for news that never comes. She was so exhausted at the linal curtain last night that she had to bo taken home. In the third act of the show Miss Riceardo says to Alfred Frith, the comedian: “I cannot find my Jimmy. You don’t know where he is, do you? Nobody knows where my Jimmy is.” Mr Frith replies; “I don’t know where your Jimmy is. I hope you never find him.” “It is a scene,” said Mr Frith, “that is supposed to get a big laugh. I think that is the most tragic thing I have ever heard on the stage. I always feel that I will not be able to reply to Miss Riceardo. I know just what she is thinking when she speaks her lines.”