Alexander & Hennery

One of the funniest scenes in the current Broadway hit, Room Service, is that in which three starving actors leap wolfishly upon a well-laden table, snap at everything in sight, including their own fingers. Thirty years ago U. S. audiences roared with delight at a similar scene, in which two hungry Negroes, yearning for a mythical farm where ham trees and biscuit bushes grow, come upon a picnic basket; one of them seizes a banana, peels it, stutteringly devours the skin. That was the sure-fire climax of The Ham Tree, one of the most famous musical shows that ever toured the U. S.

Last week 80-year-old James McIntyre (Alexander Hambletonian of The Ham Tree) died at his home near Southampton, L. I. As he lay dying he wondered querulously why his old partner Tom Heath (Hennery Jones of their act) had failed to send his usual telegram of birthday greeting. But old Tom Heath, 84, a few miles away at Setauket, was beyond such amenities. He has been paralyzed since last year.

McIntyre & Heath were famed among stage folk not only as great troupers but as great pals. When young Jim McIntyre met young Tom Heath in San Antonio in 1874, both had the dust of several trouping years in their nostrils. McIntyre had specialized in buck-&-wing. Heath sang. They were both in need of a partner. They hit it off from the start, learned to settle occasional differences by flipping a coin. By 1880 they had reached Manhattan, did so well on the Bowery that they moved uptown to Tony Pastor's at the unheard-of figure of $150 a week. In The Georgia Minstrels, McIntyre & Heath lasted some 30 years, gave 12,000 performances. They made their last professional appearance at Philadelphia in 1934 in America Sings, a flop.

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