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Scene 11 - Art Curtain
Song - "Wall Street Blues"
Marcella Hardie, Melvin Sisters, Hazel Gaudreau (Bull), Edgar Gardiner (Bear) and Ensemble Scene 12 - Wall Street
Richman Come in to Wall St.
Beauty And am I to be crushed like a
fly in
this monstrous web?
Richman Who knows? If you lose, you
lose;
if you win I shall share in the profits. It's a thrill either way.
Beauty You tempt me.
Richman The stake I am playing for is you, - - you beautiful doll. Are you listening? Beauty Yes.
Richman Here Morgan, buy me a
thousand
shares of oil.
Beauty What kind of oil?
Richman Hair oil, salad oil, any kind
of
oil.
Beauty What's all the shooting?
Richman Just another victim.
Beauty Terrible!
Richman Gambling gets into the blood.
Beauty Like drink.
Richman First the thrill of cards.
Penny
Antie.
Beauty Harmless stakes and pennies
roll
your way.
Richman Sometimes. Next the rattle of
the
bones, - - come seven. Dice, - - shoot you a nickle.
Beauty From coppers to nickles.
Richman Next the thrill of the
ponies.
They're off. At the quarter - - come on you one legged race horse. At
the half - - come baby.
Beauty The finish!
Richman She wins!
Beauty Silver winnings.
Richman Next roulette. The spinning
wheel
with the ivory ball. Dancing over the devil's colors, red and black.
Beauty Playing for gold.
Richman Then comes the big game, - -
Wall
St.
Beauty The metallic click of the
soulless
ticker.
Richman Gambler's heaven and hell.
Beauty Within it lurks an evil
spirit.
Greed for gold.
Richman With gold comes wine, women,
song.
Easy come, easy go.
Beauty Ah, but with the spending gold
takes
flight and flies away.
Richman When gold
takes flight you build again, from copper to nickle, from silver to
gold. Then back to you come the web, the spider, and the fly. Watch,
victims will come but they can't beat the game.
The Gambler Harry Walters The Fairy Mary Melvin Cards Gertrude Cole Penny Muriel Greel Dice Mildred Joy Dime Jeane Green Racing Florence Thorpe Dollar Mary Carney Roulette Jane Hurd Gold Coin Gene Spencer The Greed of Gold
Silver Ballet
The Lure of
Gambling
Scene 13 - The Plaything of Wall StreetIntermission |
Marcella Hardie
Alexander Woollcott loved Harpo but he certainly didn't care much for anything else. About the introductory song, he wrote: "...a touching number called "Wall Street Blues" which is sung, for some reason, by a small, shrill young woman wearing blue sateen overalls. It is not known why. Nor greatly cared". After the "touching number", Beauty and Richman enter Wall Street, which is presented in a futuristic design in black and white. Centre stage, in the background, is a giant tickertape machine, with figures representing a bull and a bear in opposite corners. A fairy (Florence Hedges in early shows, Mary Melvin in later) appeared from within the tickertape machine and presented the four thrills of Wall Street. In the review of I'll Say She Is from Life magazine 5 June 1924, critic Robert Benchley saw this scene as a "palpable and inexcusable" steal from Walt Kuhn's Lillies of the Field ballet. The Tragedy of Gambling had
members of the
chorus dressed as The Gambler, Cards, Penny, Dice, Dime, Racing, Dollar
and Roulette while The Greed of Gold was symbolized
as a Gold Coin, in this case adiscus player in gold. Woollcott
sarcastically mentioned "litheyoung gentlemen covered with
gold or bluing", an obvious reference to Ledru
Stiffler who played the Gold Man in this scene and the Blue Tartar in
the Broadway-finale. The two last thrills of Wall Street was enacted by
The Silver Ballet and The Lure of
Gambling. |