Just as we have entertained ourselves during the Corona Pandemic the people of 1941 were very good at entertaining themselves. In that January 75 people of Farmer City put on a show for their friends that must have been a really raucous time!
Cleo Reeser was channeling Sophie Tucker, a beloved radio singer and comedienne who sang comical and risqué songs. Did Cleo go for the comedy or the bawdy??
Dr. C.M. Duff and Marshall Jones danced a fine fandango in the follies -- perhaps their stage names were Fontella and Felipe? I wonder if Mrs. Duff consented to her piano scarf being draped over her husband??
The Hill Billy Kollege was a quartet of mustachioed men and two hooded babies in suits? (Ray Smith, Ray Meliza, Ray Roberson and George Turner)
The Oomph Girls! A farmer, lumberman, barber and high school teacher. You could put the men into women's clothing, but they invariably wore their own shoes! Don Rueger, Carl Glardon, Jake Young, and Homer Hendricks.
These lovely ladies wanted to just be themselves and put on their very best dresses: Madeline Trenkle, Evelyn Hurley, Margaret Ropp, and Parolee Meyers. (And you thought "Apple" was a strange name for a child."
The High School Principal got into the act with two ventriloquist's dummies. Raymond Wells, Oscar Wisthuff and Tom Tucker. (He NEVER got teased for his name!!!)
Baby Snooks was a popular radio personality first played by Fanny Brice. Only Elaine Thomassen was identified in the paper, but I suspect that the spanker is none other than Oscar Wisthuff???
The show was organized by the Modern Crusaders of the Methodist Church in Farmer City, and it was the first production of its kind there.
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