Word: lahr
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...Sylva). First show in four years to charge $7.70 on opening night (with seats being scalped at $50 and $75 a pair), Du Barry Was a Lady swept into Manhattan last week with a tremendous advance build-up and the virtually golden guarantees of Cole Porter, Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman...
...tunes. But as a splendiferous version of regulation musicomedy Du Barry Was a Lady is all there. Its costumes are gorgeous, its goings-on boisterous. Its wit is almost nil, but its wisecracks are raw as a cannibal sandwich, suggestive as a red light burning in the hall. Bert Lahr is at his best-which is good enough. Ethel Merman is at her best -which is tops...
...Bert Lahr is at his best when he goes royal, wrinkling his sub-Bourbon nose and speaking French as though afraid it might bounce back and hit him. As for Ethel Merman, if she is a little less than kin to Du Barry, she is more than kind-makes her, in fact, the most likable royal trollop that ever pranced behind footlights. More of an 18th-Century tomboy than a glamor girl, Merman booms and torches away in her train-announcer's contralto, jouncing her personality all over the stage, giving the King the oo-la-lahr, then...
...Advice for theatrical aspirants is pretty cheap," mused Lahr, "but there is no 'open sesame' which will produce success. A college education is by no means necessary for this success. Talent is a thing which you either have or you haven't, and that's what they pay off on. If you have it, your only problem is to find out what you can do best...
...Lahr's opinion the things that keep a long run musical from bogging down are changes of interpretation and ad libbing. Already he has ad libbed several lines which have been incorporated into the script. For instance, in that classic scene in the men's room of a small night club, where he is coaching his successor as washroom attendant and telling him the chance of promotion, he ad libbed, "Why, if you click in this joint, you may work up to some four-sinker like the 'Mayfair...