New Show in Manhattan

Keep 'Em Laughing (produced by Clifford C. Fischer in association with the Shuberts). Just when vaudeville had been finally given up for dead, Producer Fischer put on Priorities of 1942 (TIME, March 23) and gave Broadway the only living thing it has seen in months. Last week, with Priorities an established hit, Fischer put out another vaudeville. On paper Keep 'Em Laughing looks like a better show, in performance proves a less enjoyable one. Chief reasons: it lacks high spirits, and almost all its headliners go into tailspins.

For Victor Moore to shortchange the customers is almost as if Tiffany's were to fake a hallmark; but by digging up a wormy act he appeared in 40 years ago, Moore has managed to do it. Billy Gaxton has a better skit, which is still not good enough. Hildegarde, the darling of the supper clubs, sings songs that badly need highballs and dim lights, and for a fully grown girl acts entirely too cute. Only headliners who deserve to be headlined are the Hartmans, whose take-offs on ball room dancing are familiar to many, but still funny to most.

Fortunately Keep 'Em Laughing isn't all headliners. Jack Cole and his dancers deftly combine Oriental gestures with jazz rhythms; Miriam La Velle does exciting acrobatic dances. But by far the best thing in the show is an animal act called The Bricklayers. The delightful trained dogs who dump loads of bricks, clamber up & down ladders, act tight, sham dead, ride around on scooters and perform on the trapeze deserve the rare compliment that they might have been invented by Walt Disney.

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