Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1911 — PARIS FREAK AD MAKES HIT [ARTICLE]

PARIS FREAK AD MAKES HIT

Curious Scheme to Attract Patrons to Music Hall in French Metropolis Is Success. Paris.—The story of “The Beautiful Lady,” by Booth Tarkington, has been recalled by the antics of a gentleman on the boulevards. He is dressed in severe mourning, top hat, and all, and would be quite inconspicuous were it not that he wears an American flag

fashioned into a waistcoat, and talks and sings to himself or gesticulates frantically as he walks along. “Drunk,” “lunatic,” “an Englishman,” “an American,” are some of the expressions heard in the gathering crowd that rapidly accumulates in his walk. After half an hour of promiscuous promenading the supposed lunatic makes his way to a well-known music hall. At the box office he staggers in more demonstratively eccentric than ever and buys a seat. Ten per cent of his followers, hoping for some fun, buy stats, too. Once inside the hall the lunatic Bobers down instantly, and the anticipated fun in the house does not come off, whatever there may be on the stage. The lunatic is only a walking advertisement for the music hall. He is the latest Improvement on the gentleman who used to sit quietly down at a case, and then shout suddenly at the top of his voice: ,f Go all of you at once to the Lutetia Case concert, if you have any sense or taste and really want to be amused;” or that other variant who would politely stop you in the street, bow, and instead of asking you, as you expected, for a light or his way, whispered courteously and earnestly in your ear: “Monsieur, I urge you to spend your evening at the Blue Windmill. It is the best show in the world.”