You've got talent. Your style's bum; but you've got the genius.
You let me manage it. I'm from the West Side myself, and I'd rather see
one of the same gang win out before I would an East-Sider, or any of the
Flatbush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-iners. I'll see that Junius
Rollins is present on your Friday night; and if he don't climb over the
footlights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I'll let you draw
it down from my own salary every Monday night. Now, am I talking on the
level or am I not?"
Amateur night at Creary's Eighth Avenue Theatre is cut by the same
pattern as amateur nights elsewhere. After the regular performance the
humblest talent may, by previous arrangement with the management, make
its debut upon the public stage. Ambitious non-professionals, mostly
self-instructed, display their skill and powers of entertainment along
the broadest lines. They may sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort,
recite, or disport themselves along any of the ragged boundary lines of
Art. From the ranks of these anxious tyros are chosen the professionals
that adorn or otherwise make conspicuous the full-blown stage.
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