Word: jolson
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Died. Frank Tinney, 62, star of oldtime Ziegfeld and Earl Carroll revues, during the early '20s one of Broadway's three leading blackface comedians (the other two: Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor); in poverty, at Northport...
...GOOSE IS COOKED-Emmett Hogarth-Simon & Schuster ($2). Extravaganza in an electrical engineer's laboratory: the first corpse is only charred around the wrists; the second "looks like Al Jolson singing 'Mammy.' " The solution is by Marty Cohen, a law-school cop who knows no watts but is a hard, bright New Yorker going places...
...star known as the Lone Rider is enticed to a Western dude ranch, confronted with real bandits who scare the chaps off him until just before the finale, when he gets the drop on them all. Jaunty at 54, still tops at putting over a song or a story, Jolson gallops triumphantly through the part of the Lone Rider, accompanied by a whole rodeo of able talent...
...Raye; hilarious the portrayals of Concho, the Lone Rider's Indian chum, by flap-eared, long-nosed Bert Gordon (Radio's "Mad Russian"), whose accent is as thick as borsch with sour cream. Filling in for Ruby Keeler, who left the company in Chicago when ex-Husband Jolson's ad-libbing got in her hair, neatly turned Eunice Healey steps with precision through a show-stopping...
Elegantly costumed by Raoul Pene du Bois, Hold On to Your Hats has plenty of fine dancing, if few memorable tunes. Best of the lot: There's a Great Day Coming, Manana, The World Is In My Arms. To wind up his show, Jolson abandons Composer Lane's score, whips into Mammy, Sonny Boy, Swanee, April Showers, many another ballad that he plugged in the '203. Kneeling, rolling his eyes, bleating the old speakeasy classics, Jolson manages by curtain time to draw a warm bath of Broadway nostalgia that would drown even Billy Rose...