Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/237

Rh Hour" and "The Copperhead". That uproarious skit, "The Lady in Red", made famous by Clark and McCullough, and pretending to be the opening performance of an English melodrama by a stock company in Winniepasooga, Wisconsin, was part of one Gambol, Walter Catlett playing Mahomet Mahoney, the eminent detective with his "Damned clever, these Chinese!" If there ever has been anything funnier, it was the sketch entitled "At the Grand Guignol" — in which Frank McCormack, as the guide-interpreter, sat in a stage box and explained in broken and ecstatic English the story of a typical Guignol comedy to two male American tourists — which has twice been on a Gambol program, the only act, I believe, that ever was repeated and that by vociferous demand. Both of these skits, while convulsive to any audience, were peculiarly hilarious to actors, but the latter was too broad in its situations for the commercial stage. Other sketches that have made particular Gambols memorable never have passed beyond the club stage because they were too professional in their appeal or otherwise unsuited for box-office patronage.

Because women never are admitted to the club — there never has been a Ladies' Day —