Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/82

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN ' line. "Now you can play again for me that song you sang that night we first met under the elms of old Cambridge. You remember, When It's Stogy Time in Wheeling, West Vee Ay."

I exaggerate, but not so much as you may think. The musical-comedy success of last season was "No, No, Nanette." It contained one song number, "Tea for Two", that had traveled around the earth within sixty days after the show opened in Chicago. If you should happen to see "No, No, Nanette", observe how the song arrives as abruptly as a man falling through a skylight. Nanette and Tom are quarreling. They have not been to tea, they are not going to tea, they are in no mood for tea, but suddenly amidst their reproaches they burst into song about the delights of a tender, intimate tea. And having sung it and been encored until they are breathless, they return to their quarrel. I single this out only because the show still is a current success and the melody is familiar to all the world.

I have seen musical comedy fade away into the revue, glorified vaudeville where all pretense of plot has been scrapped and nakedness substituted for the story, and now I am seeing the return of light opera. I doubt that the