Vintage Comedians
S the a.- of comic and light entertaining somethin: which, like wine and cheese, improves with age-in this case, the age of the performer? The (continued on next page)
(continued from previous page) younger comedians of Variety Bandbox and some of the American progta:nmes seem to me to lack both vig.our and individuality. Save for an oc casional phenomenon, such as Danny Kaye, I find that the most dynamic and satisfying entertainers are old-timers like Jimmy -Durante, Cicely Courtneidge, Fred Allen, Jack Buchanan, and the rest. Has, perhaps, the tradition of the kind of personal entertainment in which these people were raised, been killed by the gag-spouting artifices of ‘the Bob Hopes? Such reflections were prompted by hearing Maurice Chevalier for the first time in a decade, reborn in new recordings ‘n which, as he talked his way tantalisingly-through gay cabaret pieces, his voice sounded as young, exuberant ar- infectious as it did when I first heard hin. (how many years ago?) in The Innocents of Paris. So long as such Peter Pans are with us, the radio is unlikely for some time to suffer the same fate as the movies have suffered since the disappearance of the great
somedians of the silent films * -_
J.C.
R.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 546, 9 December 1949, Page 10
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208Vintage Comedians New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 546, 9 December 1949, Page 10
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