As Time Goes By

We're poor little lambs, who have lost

our way,

Baa, baa, baa.

Had Rudy Vallee, who made these words of Yale's Whiffenpoof Song nationally famous, lost his way? Last week he tried to find out.

In Chicago, the once adored Vagabond Lover took a flyer at a nightclub comeback, though he didn't call it that ("You can't come back from where you haven't been"). Unlike Oldtimer Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee hadn't learned that his future was in his past. Still looking like a college boy--but of the class of '25, Rudy said: "People have me returning from the zombie dead. I don't look or act 45. I try to keep my stuff up-to-date. Nostalgia doesn't mean much to me."

It meant plenty to many a middle-aged Vallee fan who had crammed into Chicago's Copacabana to hear him sing. Rudy's idea of up-to-date stuff was stale master-of-ceremonies patter and a try at ventriloquism. His routine was as wooden as his dummies (Ezry, Sally Ann and Linoleum). Only when he sang The Stein Song and As Time Goes By in his old nasal way did the crowd stop sitting on its hands.

Said Rudy: "This is a test case to see what people think of me now. If it's a clambake, I'll go back to Palm Springs and soak up the sun."

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