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Show JACK DEMPSEY IKES DEBUT ON BROADWAY Audience Thrilled By Realistic Ring Battle In "The Big Fight"; Tex Rickard Watches and he Wonders! NEW YORK, Sept. 13 (UP) For 1 two hours and a half, "The Big I Fight," which brought Jack Demp- I sey back to Broadway last night, I was tiresome melodrama. B For. its last three minutes and a half, it was packed with thrills which brought the first night audience aud-ience whooping to its feet. Jack and Estelle All the glamour and drama and action of a heavyweight championship champion-ship fight were packed into the last few minutes of the otherwise sorry little play In which Jack and his wife, Estelle Taylor, are co-starring their first joint effort upon the legitimate stage. Dempsey, lithe and brown and grim, brought an appreciative yell of delight from the audience when he stripped off his familiar white sweater and flannel trousers and stepped fourth in the red and black trunks he wore in his last ring battles. bat-tles. And what Dempsey does to the unfortunate "FtnHlintr RaVcr" nr the play is a caution. The management manage-ment of "The Big Fight" advises us that this part will be played by relays re-lays of actors. It is quite likely that they will run out of actors sooner than of cash customers, for the knockout wallop which the ex-champion ex-champion shot over last night was closer to the real thing than many seen in the prize ring. It took Dempsey about half a minute of the second round of a truly stirring battle to drape the ponderous form of Ralph Smith, who plays the part of "Battling Baker," inert across the canvas. Smith lay there as though happy that it was all over. In his ring days, Jack of Manassa never learned learn-ed to pull a punch, and he apparently appar-ently hasn't learned the art since he turned actor. Play Ends In Knockout The play may not prove a knockout knock-out but it certainly ends in one, and those who have been disappointed disap-pointed over missing Dempsey's big fights can get all the thrills of the best of them in the last scene of "The Big Fight" at the Majestic theater. Chewing on an unlit cigar and leaning on his ffnlH-booo Tex Rickard surveyed the enthusiastic enthus-iastic audience last night. Men in stiff white shirt bosoms and women with ermine caressing their gleaming gleam-ing bare shoulders were standing and whooping like mad. "You know," young feller," said Tex, "I believe they'd pay another million to come and see that there Dempsey fight again." |