Mr. Green & Mr. Bean

In Georgia this month an all-Negro troupe pitched its tent for a ten-month road tour. As familiar throughout the South as a statue of Robert E. Lee, Silas Green from New Orleans claims that this is its 51st year on the road; oldtimers can remember it for at least 38. Part revue, part musicomedy, part minstrel show, it tells, season after season, of the adventures of two Negroes, short, coal-black Silas Green and tall, tannish Lilas Bean. For years the show never bothered to change its plot. When the public finally started to yawn, Silas and Lilas found they had better vary their mishaps each season.

This year their troubles start when they go to a hospital with suitcases labeled M.D. (Mule Drivers), are mistaken for two medicos, end in jail. The show is garnished with such slapstick as putting a patient to sleep by letting him smell an old shoe, such gags as "Your head sets on one end of your spine and you set on the other." Silas gets broad at times, but never really dirty. What keeps it moving are its dances and specialty acts, its gold-toothed but good-looking chorus.

Only white man in the company of 76 is the press agent. Softspoken, sharp-eyed Negro Owner Charles Collier has bossed the show for 18 years, recently refused to sell it for $20,000. Collier moves his troupers from town to town in a private car named after his mother, feeds their bellies, watches their morals.

After marching through Georgia, Silas Green will circle the South, winding up in Florida next February. His big tent, holding 1,400 people, is usually filled at prices up to a dollar. Negroes in the audience outnumber whites about three to one. If the show has any trouble with whites, it never plays that town again.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.