COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20842, 8 April 1931, Page 10

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.

COLLAPSE OF AN ACTRESS. AUSTRALIAN AIR DISASTER. [.FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] MELBOURNE, April 2. While playing in Melbourne on Saturday night in "Sons o' Guns," Miss Bertha Riccardo, whose husband, Clyde Hood, was one of the passengers in the Southern Cloud, collapsed. She was carried, hysterical, from the stage, but later went oil again.

Miss Riccardo is frantic with worry, and it was 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 days, and on several occasions lias broken down under the terriblo strain of waiting for news that never comes. She was so exhausted at the final curtain last night that she had to be taken home.

In the third act of the show Miss Riccardo says to Alfred Frith, the comedian, " I cannot find my Jimmy. You don't know where he is, do you' Nohody 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 it is the most tragic thing I have ever heard on the stage. I always feel that ! will not be able to reply to Miss Riccardo. I know just what, sne U thinking when she speaks her lines."