Indianapolis Times, Volume 44, Number 108, Indianapolis, Marion County, 14 September 1932 — Page 5

SEPT. 14, 1032

FIGHT FURTHER CUTS IN CITY'S HEALTH FUNUS Scheme to Slash 20 Per Cent More Perils Community, Says Morgan. This U Ih* third of of five | xlorlr* showing effect of reduced 1933 city budget on the individual citizen. BV JAMES A. GARVIN Undernourished, pale and 111, a child of a poverty-stricken family in Indianapolis may die next year j for lack of medical attention, in order that the 1933 tax levy may be j reduced three-quarters of a cent. Or a mother may carry her un- ! born child to the grave because 20 i per cent was slashed from the food and medical supply item of the board of health. Dr. Herman G. Morgan, secretary of the city board of health, said today that the proposal of tax reduction organizations to slash 20 per cent from all appropriation requests for supplies would result in the health agencies of the city actually having to refuse immunization to school children against scarlet fever and diphtheria. Must Guard Against Epidemics “On the basis of the proposed reduction in our supply item, one out of five children now treated with preventive measures against contagious disease would be forced to take his chance next year without benefit of medical aid,” Dr. Morgan said. 'To determine which of five chil- j dren shall be refused is a- responsibility no city official should be forced to bear. “At the time the 1933 health board ! budget was under consideration, it was suggested that $68,000 could be saved by throwing out medical inspection and the school nursing corps. I replied that to do so would give us np control against the spread of epidemics. “Our records show that only one j death occurred from typhoid fever in the first eight months of thjs year. Without our school health program, the death rate would be fifteen or twenty in that period. Near Danger Line Now 'As it now rests with the council, the board of health budget has been 1 1-pduced $87,843.44, bringing us to the danger line. Our supply item ! for medicine, food and milk totals j $190,639, barely enough to carry us through the year. “With that item reduced by more than $38,000, less than 10 cents per capita, we would be unable to carry out the program which has made Indianapolis one of the healthiest Cities in the middle west. Dr. Morgan said that there ‘‘is no reason to believe that, in time of depression and with hundreds of families unable to purchase medical care, our need for supplies will be less. “It Is at times like these that epidemics make their greatest inroads into the population,” he said. ‘"Children and adults are undernourished, living standards are lower and resistance is weaker. Now is the worst time to curtail a health program. Penny Wise, Pound Foolish “In 1931 we had the lowest mortality rate for infants under 1 year of -age that we have had for years. It was only forty-three in each 1,000, compared with 105 to 115 a thousand in other years. ‘ Our infant welfare stations, field nurses and available pure milk supply, coupled with our prenatal training courses directly are responsible. Milk for these infants is purchased from our supply fund, already pared to the bone and now threatened with another 20 per cent reduction. “There Is no clearer case of being penny wise and pound foolish than to curtail the function of a health department. Yet, $1,500 was cut from the fund used to buy street ear tokens in order that public health nurses can take children to the city dispensary for preventive treatment. Don't Neglect Human Side “We are asked to save 28 cents in carfare, and perhaps spend $2.80 a day at the city hosiptal to care for the child after his condition reaches a serious stage. That is the financial end of it. to say nothing of perhaps costing the child's life, because of neglect. It is—The telephone bell rang. After listening Intently, Morgan turned from the phone. “There is a young girl lying in a comatose condition at her home on Central family has no money. A doctor repo*- s that insulin is absolutely essential in her treatment. We have it at the city hospital for free distribution—now’. “Next year we may not have the money to buy it. And there are hundreds of cases similar to hers.” SEEK COURT BAN ON CITY ASSESSMENT ROLL 123 File Suit for Injunction, Charging Works Board Acted Illegally. Henry Harding and 122 other plaintiffs today sought an injunction in circuit court to prevent the city from collecting assessments for improvement of West Michigan street, from Tibbs avenue to Luett avenue. The suit, filed Tuesday, named J. N. Morgan & Son, contractors, and William D. Vogel, assignee, as other defendants besides the city. The contract price was $20,705.37. Charging the works board acted illegally by changing the original improvement resolution, the complaint states this was done because the first resolution called for an improvement wider than other sections of the street. PLEASED BY MAINE VOTE State Democratic Chairman Views Victory as Good Omen. Jubilation over Democratic election successes in Maine was expressed today in a statement issued by R. Earl Peters, state Democratic chairman. Peters declared: "Victory for the Democratic candidate for Governor and two of the three candidates for congress can be interpreted only as an unmistakable evidence of the sweeping victory that awaits Governor Roosevelt and Speaker Garner.”

50 YEARS OF WEBER & FIELDS

The Boys 'Arrive'and Noted Stars Join Their Troupe

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At the opening performance of “Hoity-Toity’* in 1901, left to right, Sam Bernard, Fay Templeton, Joe Weber, Lillian Russell, and Lew Fields.

A banquet at the Hotel Astor on the night of September 25 will mark the golden lubilee of a theatrical institution—the famous comedy team of Weber and Fields In a series of articles, of which the following is the third. A. J. Ltebline tells the romantic story of the rise of two East Side fcovs whose ioint career forms one of the most eni retaining chapters in the history of the theater.

BY A. J. LIEBLING Timm Staff Writer i Copyright, 1932 bv the New York WorldTeleßram Corp) “Oh. dem kins ob de railroad downed em all •'An' dat Newport aocl'ty'x iot to crawl. “Ev'ry coon worth a million. “In a de ragtime cotillion “At de Pullman Porter’* Ball.” (Irish reel—exi*t to repeat of refrain of coon song; eight girls of brass band followed hv eighteen girls in high hats, long-tailed raglan coals, etc., as minstrel parade, and Fritz Williams.) tt tt tt THE late Fritz Williams, before and after Music hall days a fine dramatic actor, brought down the house with this early Pleistocene jazz ditty, and before the applause had died down Lillian Russell, as Lady Grafter, was on the stage archly persiflaging with De Wolf Hopper as General Steele. "Yes , General. I come here every season. I adore Monte Carlo. So much life here—the crowds—the dresses ” “Yes, you have some gorgeous gowns yourself. Are your stays long?” “Sir!” Screams of laughter. Double entendre, of course, .almost vulgar, but at the Music hall, my dear And then enter the genii of the house, Joe Weber, tiny, frail chap stuffed out in front with pillows, as Philip Sauerbraten; Lew Fields, lean, red-whiskered, as Herman Kaffeekuchen; Sam Bernard, the apoplectic, as Friedrich Schnitzel, a worthy ally of the predacious Fields. “You look like a bureau drawer with the bottom drawer pulled out,” Schnitzel bellows at Sauerbraten. “You are right,” agrees Fields, “just see the way the clothes hang on him.” “It's a good fit,” Sauerbraten defends himself weakly. “Fit,” sneers Fields. “It's almost a convulsion.” tt tt tt IT was the opening night, Sept. 6. 1901, of "Hoity-Toity” at the Weber and Fields Music hall on Broadway, near Twenty-ninth street, next to the theater then known as Daly’s, which still exists as the alternately darkened and burlesque-infested Fifth avenue. Joe and Lew, the kids who had listened to the Germans in Simon's saloon, who had begged dime museum managers for a chance to work for $3 a week, who had deemed it glorious triumph to tour w'ith Gus Hill s show and do three acts at every performance, had arrived. They had arrived at a point

THEY TILL MI JW

The Pound of Flesh Evansville, ind., sept. 14.— it now is apparent that the Republican campaign this year will be one in which postmasters will form the shock troops. Those cognizant of the manner in which the wires were pulled at the G. O. P. national convention realized that it was a show in which the postmasters played the principal role. They led in the cheering for Hoover, under the lash of Postmaster General Brown, and it was they, also, who voted, to adopt the majority straddle plank on prohibition. instead of the minority declaration for repeal, known as the Indiana plank. It also has been the postmasters who contributed to Chairman Ivan Morgan's campaign to lift the $30,000 deficit of the state committee. It has been the postmasters, the highway department and industrial board employes who have been taxed for incidental expenses of the campaign. But rarely has there been such a brazen attempt to make the jobholders come through as that which occurred here at a Republican rally, where Joseph Kyle, G. O. P. nominee for Lieutenant -Governor, did the Simon Legree act. a a a “Every man on the pay roll because of the present Hoover-Les-lie administrations should be checked as to campaign activity. “I refer particularly to postmasters. “We expect and will demand a strict accounting of employes’ activities. We expect each such employe to lend every aid to the ticket and to carry his precinct election day. “There are 12,000 to 15,000 per-

never before reached by any comedy team, with the possible exception of Harrigan and Hart, and never since reached by anybody at all. “As well known as corned beef and cabbage, or ham and eggs,” a contemporary described them, though there was no ham in the combination. k The demands earned in California had functioned in inducing other actors to follow their banner as independent road show producers, and had gone in- and out of hock several times to keep their first show going. Success had grown like a snowball until they had three companies on the road, including such famous comics as Bernard and the Russell Brothers. Then in 1896 they had acquired the Music Hall, in the heart of the Tenderloin, and from then on they had made theatrical history. The formula for their entertainments was dual. Each show comprised a lavishly costumed and astrorioimaclly cast musical comedy and a travesty of some current legitimate hit. # tt tt i~SIRST to sense the full import of the star system, they had secured for their 665-seat theater “name casts.” Instead of one or two stars in a show, they gave the public a dozen, and the public came to see what the stars would do, even before the critics had assured it the Music Hall harbored another success. They had the most beautiful women of the day in their ensembles—Bonnie Maginn, Frankie Bailey, Mabel Barrison. They were the most beautiful because Archie Gunn and Charles Dana Gibson, the popular illustrator, said so. In after years, one critic said that the chief contribution of Weber and Fields to the American drama was the Weber and Fields chorus. They were not beefy and statuesque, like the Black Crook beauties or the Lydia Thompson British Blondes, who had preceded them in fame, nor unappareled like the Ziegfeld and Carroll damsels who were to follow them. They w'ere lively and individual, and played to their audience in a manner only possible in an intimate theater. Joe and Lew, who had as kids stolen music from one act and added words garnered from another now had their own personal writer, Edgar B. Smith, on regular salary, and their house composer. John Stromberg. tt a tt Y r EAR after year they had built the prestige of the house of the tenderloin, and this was about the apogee. On this opening night of “Hoity

sons in Indiana who owe their jobs to the Republican administrations, and we are going to see the dawn of anew era in strict accountability t'o the organzation,” said Kyle. In such terms he demanded his pound of flesh from those on the public pay roll—and who is better qualified to do this than Kyle, who. if records are to be believed, knows no little about the loan shark business? Not content with so open a demand, Benjamin Huffman, Eighth district chairman, called upon every postmaster in the audience to stand. No one stood. He then called upon every federal or state employe in the audience to stand, with the same results. a tr b Visibly irate by the evident nonattendance at the rally by jobholders, Huffman shouted the threat ; “AH I want to say is that if the men and the women drawing salaries from jobs providea by the Republican party are not taking an interest in the election, the organization is going to take an interest in seeing that the salary is drawn by someone else who will take an interest.” “There are plenty of men and women working for the ticket not on the pay roll who can fill jobs of absentees,” said Huffman. And this apparently was the only remark which brought applause from the 500 gathered to hear words of encouragement. Promise of jobs was the necessaryencouragement. for although they had exhibited little enthusiasm during the speechmaking, this struck the real and vital chord. They applauded. And of such, my masters, is the kingdom of politics.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

Toity” they played to $10,500, an average of sls a seat. The seats for the opening night had been sold at auction a week earlier, according to the annual customs of the house. Jesse Lewisohn, the acknowledged head man among “AiryFairy Lillian's” admirers, had bid for boxes against sufch competitors as Stanford White, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Herman Oelrichs, Louis Sherry, J. B. Martin of blessed gastronomic memory; Richard Croker, William Randolph Hearst, Abe Hummel, the lawyer; James R. Keene and Clyde Fitch, the exquisite. The boys could meet their enormous salary list only by selling their choice tickets for subsequent performances through an official house speculator, Louis Cohen. Even with all these subterfuges they gained little money at the Music Hall. Prestige was their chief profit. Then each spring, when they led their company forth to the road, where they played all large houses and packed them in at every stand, the former east siders made their money. In this twenty-fifth year of their career as a team the partners w'ere still young men in their early thirties. tt tt tt BESIDES Miss Russeii, Hopper, Bernard and Williams, their company included Lee Harrison, a great straight man, who had been Dave Warfield's vaudeville partner; John T. Kelly, an Irish comedy idol, and Fay Templeton, acknowledged to be the leading farce comedienne of her time. Miss Templeton played only in the travesty which made up the second half of the bill. “There is only one dull moment

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in ‘Hoity Toity,’ ” Robert Edgren wrote the next day, “that being the interval in which you step out to puff a cigaret, take a deep breath and get ready for another scene.” The theatergoing public was not unanimous on the subject of Miss Russell, as the paragraph written by a feminine critic and published under the caption, “As Sweet as Molasses,” will testify. n a MISS LILLIAN RUSSELL continues to fulfill her mission in life, which is to be as lovely, amiable and uninteresting as a big wax doll fresh from the shop, all new and shiny and pink and white, with not a curl out of place nor a grain of sawdust missing. "The only respect in which the mechanism is a little out of plumb is that Miss Russell pulls her mouth down sideways when she emits a high note.” But one Hippolyte Schneider, who had admired her ,only from the balcony, thought enough of her charms to shoot himself on Goat island and leap into the rapids, which carried him over Niagara Falls, all because of the hopelessness of his infatuation. Shi was 39 years old at the time and a Sunday magazine article tells of the severe diet by which she reduced from 186 to 156 pounds to regain a perfect 1901 figure. Liked or detested, her name was synonymous with female beauty, and when Joe and Lew speak of her even today it is almost with awe, to think that two boys from east of the Bowery could have employed so regal a personage. Next—Weber and Fields discuss their biggest hits.

CHILD HEALTH DISCUSSED AT PARLEY WINDUP Education of Public About Tuberculosis Stressed by Dr. Fishbein. Sessions of the Mississippi Valley Conference on Tuberculosis and it;; sister organization, the Mississippi Valley Sanatorium Association, were concluded today in the Claypool with a discussion of child health education. Development of health education in the public school system featured the talk of Dr. C. C. Wilson, director of physical education in Evaiisville schools. Other speakers were: Mrs. Arlene Van Cleave, Logan, la.; D. Oberteuffer, professor at Ohio university; Dr. W. W. Patty of Indiana university; Dr. J. A. Myers of Minneapolis, and Martha Van Meter of the Indiana State Tuberculosis Association. Officers Are Elected Officers of the Mississippi Valley conference elected Tuesday are Dr. E. B. Mariette of Minneapolis, president; Miss Helen Katen, Bismark, N. D., vice-president, and A. W. Jones of St. Louis, Mo., secretarytreasurer. Dr. Henry C. Sweany of Chicago was named head of the Sanatorium Association. Dr. Merlin Draper of Ft. Wayne was elected vice president and Dr. A. A. Pleyte of Milwaukee, secretary. At the annual banquet the organizations were told that complete prevention of tuberculosis is an ultimate possibility by Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and Indianapolis Times columnist, at the Claypool Tuesday night. Stresses Education of Public “Somebody has given out some misleading propaganda saying that the depression has been favorable to tuberculosis and this should be counteracted,’’ Dr. Fishbein said. “Tuberculosis records are not written in a day and the results of this era will not be evident for several years. But we know that where poverty is, there tuberculosis flourishes.” Control of the disease among children in the present apartment house age is slow, Dr. Fishbein said. He told how scientists were busy studying the. germ. “These men of science must be aided by the education of an uninformed public as to the part it must play in securing the prevention of the disease," he said. CHARGES VETERAN IS KNIFED 18 Dollar Bills Found Bak of Billboard by Deputies. Slight wound on the neck, inflicted with a knife, was early today by Stanley Cochran, 34, of 702 Lord street, who said ne w . attacked when he charged that part of his S6O soldier 'compensation money had been stolen. John Smith, 33, of 718 Fletcher avenue, accused of attacking Cochran, is held on a charge of assault and battery with intent to kill. The attack is alleged to have occurred at the home of Pearl Harper and Elizabeth Horton, 818 Ingomar avenue. Eighteen $1 bills were found back of a billboard by deputy sheriffs, who investigated the case.

Best Is Right By United Pr*j* KULPMONT. Pa . Sept. 14— Theodore Worhtz, Ralpfio township farmer, has been best man at thirty-seven weddings, father of fourteen children and godfather of 100 more. When he served as groomsman for *the thirty-seventh time, the bride was a girl for whom he had stood as godfather seventeen years before.

DENIES INN IS PART OF CITY’S BOOZE ROW 2000 Madison Avenue Operators Declare No Law Violation Is Allowed. Description of liquor selling resorts on Madison avenue contained in The Times Saturday, should not include the Bungalow Inn. 2900 Madison avenue, according to Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Lancaster, who have operated the place for two years of the nine since it was opened. No law violations are permitted in the place, Mrs. Lancaster declared Tuesday. The place was not included in The Times survey of the district.

•\ I " . ' SCHOOL • A OXFORDS 5 2 Mail Orders Filled A Add 15c Postage $1.49 £ 4 West Washington Street

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B’NAI R'RITH TO 1 HOLD CONCLAVE State Officers to Be Installed at Parley Sunday. State officers will be installed Sunday at the annual state convention of B'nai B'rith with Isadora Feibleman, Indianapolis, past president of district grand lodge No. 1, presiding. The convention will open at Iff Sunday at the Kirshbaum center, business sessions continuing through, the day with election of officers at 4. Delegates and members of sixteen lodges then will attend the annual state banquet at the Lincoln. Preceding installation, the delegates will hear an address by Joseph Cohen. Kansas City, first vicepresident of the grand lodge. Richard Gudstadt, Cincinnati, will speak at the banquet and Harry Levin. Terre Haute, state president, will preside. Amethyst, cairngorm, chalcedony, opal, agate and some other precious stones are forms of quartz.