Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/236

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN gather in the grill and say, "Let's get up a show a week from Tuesday night. Will Rogers can do his rope stuff; Dave Warfield might recite 'Good-by, Jim, Take Keer of Yerself'; Robert Mantell can do something from Shakespeare; Raymond Hitchcock imitate Elsie Janis imitating Eddie Foy; Giovanni Martinelli sing all six parts of the 'Lucia' sextette"; and Hopper recite 'Casey.'

That program, deleted of my "Casey", might do for a benefit, but it would be a cab-driver's vacation for The Lambs. Long ago the club demanded the new and the unusual in its theater and enforced the demand. The Collie and the members he drafts for the program are on their mettle, and as the membership includes famous artists, musicians, dramatists, novelists, cartoonists and the like, as well as the run of the stage, there is no lack of material. The programs run the gamut from farce and burlesque to tragedy.

More than one young man has won his first hearing on Broadway through his contributions to a Gambol. Hazzard Short is an example. Three famous plays grew out of sketches witten for our shows — Edward Milton Royle's "The Squaw Man", Augustus Thomas' "The