Word: plainness
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Albert Henry O'Neil of Jamaica Plain...
Burlesque has a past, and a dark one it is. Twenty years ago the theatres which housed it were the rendezvous of gunmen, thieves and other representatives of knavery. Policemen watched their entrances and exits in order to trace the movements of "bad men"; "plain-clothes" officers mingled with the crowds on the inside, ready to "black-jack" the audience into order. On the stage nothing was too foul for utterance, no scene too low for presentation. Even in its exalted moments, the drama has tended to drag its feet in the mud, and the burlesque of twenty years...
...review the show at the opening night of the Columbia Theatre, New York's principal burlesque theatre. Broun and Benchley and Woolcott, and all the rest of them, occupied aisle seats at the performance, and printed their formal reviews in their publications. The meaning of the incident soon became plain: the authorities recognized the effort made by the better element in burslesque to clean house. The most prominent theatrical personages paid homage to the wagers of the bitterest war that the theatre has ever known...
...stand only for the teaching of plain Americanism," O'Brien said "This bill is anti nothing. The founders of the American Republic were great men, but I am not one of those who will not concede that they had their failings just as men of today...
...There are three kinds of lies," said Mark Twain, "plain lies, damn lies, and statistics." When the New York Times editorial, quoted in an adjacent column, shows by repeated examples that college graduates do not furnish nine out of every ten leaders in society, it is not to be inferred that this excellent journal has gone over to the opposition. It is safe to hazard the guess that if the New York Times had a son, it would send him to college. What the Times does assert is that Mr. Albert E. Wiggam has played with his figures...