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Show II WHO'S NEWS I THIS WEEK... By Lemuel F. Part on fffffff?ff??fff?ffff?ff? NEW YORK. The Mclntyre and Heath partnership of 63 years is at an end with the death of James Mclntyre, seventy-nine, at his home ,at Southampton, Burnt-Cork N Y As Mclntyre Troubadours died, Thomas K. Stepped High Heath, eighty-four LiHf o years old, lay suf- fering from paralysis unaware of his partner's demise. "Under the Gas Light." "Ingomar the Barbari-- Barbari-- an" and "The Black Crook" were played straight and never burlesqued bur-lesqued in the flourishing days of Mclntyre and Heath's "Georgia Minstrels." as were Chester A. Arthur's Ar-thur's sideburns and Benjamin Harrison's fuzzy plug hat Boys in short pants who tagged the parade, somewhere out on the kerosene circuit, cir-cuit, have grown old and died since the 40 burnt-cork troubadours, stepping step-ping high in linen dusters, stirred new life in remote towns. Their 63 years was not a record. Fox and Ward of Philadelphia were together, I believe, something over, 70 years. Mclntyre and Heath, however, had a record in their 12,500 performances. per-formances. They never missed a show, and gave 17 performances daily at the Omaha State fair in 1876. Appearing for the last time in New York in 1929, they said stage humor hadn't changed much. All they did in refurbishing their old jokes, said Mclntyre, was to put in words like "airplane" and "prohibition" "prohi-bition" and "radio." To such oldsters, much that seems glaringly modern was really old , stuff. The first au-'Raboit au-'Raboit Song thentic syncopa-Learned syncopa-Learned From tion on the Ameri-Former Ameri-Former Slave can stage was "The Rabbit Song." of jerky measure, with an accompanying hitch-kick, sung and danced by Mclntyre in 1879. He said he got it from a forrner slave. They appeared in dance halls, music mu-sic halls, concert halls, variety theaters, the-aters, vaudeville, burlesque, musical musi-cal comedy, light opera, revues, extravaganzas, ex-travaganzas, pantomime, comedies, drama and motion pictures. They teamed up in San Antonio, Texas, May 12, 1874. They were in separate blackface song and dance acts on a vaudeville bill. Heath's partner became ill and they merged their acts. Their first show was stranded in Louisville. They paid no salaries, but gave Riley, the bandmaster, the bass drum. Mclntyre Mc-lntyre got a Job in a livery stable. They pulled the partnership together togeth-er again and out of it came the Georgia minstrels. "Hennery, and Alexander" of "The Ham Tree'"' will be remembered until all who saw them have gone. THIS administration helped many Harvard men to "rise and shine." Unhappily, two others come to grief at about the same time. Francis O. French, father-in-law of . John Jacob Astor, Relates How who conf esses Harvard Pais bankruptcy, was Came to Grief a r v a r d class-mate class-mate and buddy of Ernst Hanfstaengl, former piano player to Adolf Hitler. Herr Hanfstaengl Hanf-staengl ducked his nazi captors in Spain, as they were planning to drop him out of an airplane, and is now studying Germany in absentia. The brief stock market slump of 1921 wrecked Mr. French, son of Amos Tuck French. When, trying for a comeback in 1923, he drove a taxicab, the papers spoofed him in- stead of giving him credit for his ! courage. All in all, he got a pretty rough deal. The other taxi-drivers liked him. One of them showed me a copy of the "Taxi News," to which Mr. French had contributed an essay on democracy which wasn't half bad. But he made only $17 in about a month of driving. Thereafter he sold overcoats on commission and now, at forty-eight, eases down into bankruptcy, owing a Chinese laundryman $1.48, this being be-ing one of several small liabilities. CIR ROBERT CRAIGIE stopped several weeks in this country and visited Washington, en route to Japan as the newly appointed Brit-, Brit-, . ish ambassador. Naval Expert He is Britain's na-of na-of Britain val expert. His Pays Us Call previous visits have touched off much newspaper conjecture, In which his trip has been interpreted as a move by England to get America Amer-ica to police her interests in the Pacific and the Far East. All this. Sir Robert has suavely waved aside. He served 14 years in the foreign office and three years ago became assistant secretary of state. lie is the son of the late Admiral R. W. Craigie. He was chief naval expert ex-pert of the foreign office, knighted in 193G. Mrs. Craigie, who accompanies him, is an American. She was Pleasant Stovall, daughter of the late Pleasant A. Stovall, who was editor of the Savannah, Ga., Evening Eve-ning Press and minister to Switzerland. Switzer-land. l Con4oltd,ited News Feature. WNU Service. |