SHE LIKES SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1473, 18 July 1918, Page 35

SHE LIKES SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

MISS WINIFRED LA FRANCE. A single turn that takes 30 minutes in the showing means there must be something in it out of the ordinary, even in these days of glorified vaudeville. Miss Winifred La France furnishes a case in point, her act which is delighting Opera House audiences in Auckland being a tribute to her ability and ingenuity to entertain. Miss La France was in New Zealand four years ago under the Fuller management with a somewhat similar turn that established her reputation for originality. Since then she has improved and elaborated it out of all conception, working into it many new ideas and presenting it in New York and over a wide circuit in America with continuous success. She returned to Australia a few months ago, under special engagement to J. and N. Tait to play principal boy in their pantomime “Aladdin,” her charm and shapeliness making her a happy choice. At the conclusion of the season she accepted a lucrative engagement on the Fuller circuit with her big spectacular novelty “The Siren of the Deep,” the praises of which have already been acclaimed in the southern cities. Miss La France is an artist of personality and original ideas, as one may easily imagine after seeing her entertainment. She gets her audience first of all in a vivacious song or two, which she handles most cutely, then she serves up a number of amusing show-signs, and finally astounds them with her transformation novelty. And not the least of all her successful methods to arrest the eye and the senses is her faculty for dressing, which she possesses facile princeps. Her costumes bear this out. And no orthodox frocking either! They all strike a freakish note —and a pretty costly one, too, coming as they do from one of Broadway’s most famous couturieres. “I believe in novelty and originality,” says the piquant Winifred, “and I like something different from any one else.”

Says “Sylvius” in the “Dominion”: The oft-reiterated report that Miss Isabel Wilford, of Wellington, is about to go on the professional stage is not correct.