“ SING SING FOLLIES.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 660, 13 January 1933, Page 1

“ SING SING FOLLIES.”

American Convicts Stage Rollicking Revue. 1 MURDERERS AS COMEDIANS. NEW YORK, December 4. All over the world, from Paris to Pekin, tragedians are yearning to be comedians and comedians want to don the mask of 'tragedy; but they must have themselves sent to Sing Sing Prison to have their dreams come true. Last night Sing Sing had a dress ■ rehearsal of “ The Sing Sing Follies of 1932.” prior to a week's run beginning to-night, with a cast of 150 white and negro inmates. The latest feature of the American crime underworld is “ gun molls ” bright young women of the underworld who handle 1 revolvers with the same nonchalance as they handle lipsticks. The chief skit of the Sing Sing recue featured “gun molls”—prisoners dressed in red tarn o’ shanters, check shirts and flesh-coloured stockings—and three convicts realistically made up as toughs in striped sweaters, peg-top trousers and caps. A lanky blonde, with a Jack ITulbert chin (in real life Jack Carmen, a cat burglar), convulsed the convict audience. llowls of glee greeted Gordon Barrett (late of Pennsylvania University and later still a burglar), who, as a uniformed burglar, was knocked un- | conscious by a fruit pedlar. An eni core was demanded of this. Two tragedians in real life—one of them murdered a restaurant-keeper and the other so frightened a girl typist in an office hold-up that she dived eighty flights down a lift shaft to her death—were the light comedians, scoring heavily with a song and dance number. Other convicts, who had figured in the lighter forms of crime, had themselves cast for heavy parts in the revue. There was to have been a number with performers dressed as soldiers, handling real rifles with the vital parts removed, but the mess whistle blew, and this number was cut out.