unearths some literary gems.
From The Smart Set, 1910:
***Mr. Ade must have Slipped on the Banana Peel of humor when he Committed the Book of this play. [George Jean Nathan; I'm not sure of the reason for the initial caps]***Like a cracked bell, the fundamental idea and purpose [of the play] is there, but it does not ring true. [Nathan]***The rest of the cast was equally pathetic. Arthur Maude, as Mr. Daventry, committed suicide three acts too late. [Nathan]***Children of Destiny...was presented at the Savoy Theater for two weeks during Lent, and is now playing a long engagement in the storehouse. [Nathan]***Without Miss Holbrook, Bright Eyes would need glasses. [Nathan]***The humor of the first act is obtained through confusing an umbrella with a young woman named Mabel. [Nathan]***Miss Oza Waldrop acted the ingénue part in her usual saccharine, sputtering manner of a firecracker exploding in a can of maple syrup. [Nathan]***It contains a decidedly funny burlesque of the "you can't even hold that gun episode"...the revolver in this case, however, being a ham sandwich. [Nathan]***a pianist whose "artistic temperament" registers about one hundred and four degrees in the shade [Nathan]***[Bonus: a real book entitled Neither Do I]Notes on some of the attachments:1. That Angelus player-piano ad looks to me like it would be the cover of a pulp paperback novel about vampires in a bordello.
2. "[How to Be?] His Own Cyrano"
3. Nathan's "eternal frankfurter": a precursor (by only a few years, I see) to the Famous Coney Island Hots?
