Octavus Roy Cohen,
The Mixed Quartette
(1917)
“ The way Mae's patrician nose curled up you'd of thought she didn't care a snap of her fingers for Johnny. Linette's a fool." "She sure is," I says. "There ain't a man in the world will fall for that sort of stuff. A man likes to pursue the woman," I says, having read all that out of a book. "He don't care nothing about having the woman throw herself at him." ”
Octavus Roy Cohen,
The Mixed Quartette
(1917)
“ Class is the word, Dan, an' I'm the one to give 'em class. You got me all wrong, Dan. I did like Mae Morrison's looks, but principally I like her soprano singing— an' Linette Larue's contralto. She has a swell contralto, Dan; perfectly swell. Why, say,—we'll eat that Rigoletto Quartette alive,—just eat it alive." "Ye-es. Maybe so. Just about that I guess when a man's got a bug the best way to do is to let him chase it. You're a good vaudeville man, Johnny—a corking good one—when you stick to your sort of work. But when you butt in on the Caruso stuff you're way off. ”
Octavus Roy Cohen,
The Mixed Quartette
(1917)
“ Never been a vaudeville actor, have you? Then you won't understand this—but there's a certain sort of vaudeville turn that gets applause because the audience thinks it ought to clap. That was us. We'd screech out the Rigoletto Quartette as hard as we could go it an' the poor audience wouldn't know what it was—except them that had phonographs. An' when we'd finish everybody would look at everybody else as much as to say, "That's classical stuff an' I'm the guy to appreciate real art." Then they'd applaud—just to show their neighbors that they didn't have nothing on them in the way of culture. ”
