Merry New Tenants Take Over the Historic Old Dwelling—and O, What a Change in Topsy!

  UNCLE TOM'S CABIN is rented again. The Duncan Sisters, Rosetta and Vivian, are keeping house in it each evening as they sing and dance and frolic their way through Topsy and Eva, a musical parody on Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which appeared on March 20, 1852. The old shack had been deserted for some time, you know. All the original "Little Evas" had really gone to Heaven, or were celebrating their golden wedding anniversaries. And the first and only Topsies (they were as numerous as the folks who came over on the Mayflower) had long since grown rheumatic. Or they had reformed. So the quaint old cabin was a relic without a tenant.

  But on June 8, 1923, the Duncan Sisters, those vivid, urgent, and ever so intelligent comediennes, moved into the antique homestead. First they did a lot of housecleaning.

  They tossed out the old furniture and put in an ornamental garden swing and stone benches about the plantation. They waxed the floor, and hired an expert modiste to see to it that the ladies of 1852 had their pantalettes hung just right.

  They engaged a chorus of beautiful girls who may, or may not, have been south of the Mason-Dixon line. They sold the old melodeon and bought a saxophone. They taught Uncle Tom how to take his part in close harmony.

  As for themselves, they taught Little Eva and black Topsy a few new ways.

  Vivian Duncan, cast for the role of Eva, is still the pink and white little girl with the yellow and gold little curl. But she doesn't drip sugary sweetness. Instead, she knows the latest ragtime and she steps the newest steps. Rosetta, as Topsy, is still the little black imp who "just growed," but she's "growed" a lot beyond that Topsy of abolition days. She struts about to the most modern of jazz tunes; and she cracks 1924 wheezes against an 1852 background.

  How did they happen to pick on Uncle Tom's Cabin? One day the Duncans, the same young ladies who taught the Prince of Wales how to toddle, wanted a new home across the footlights.

  "Guess I'll have to make you black-face," suggested their manager.

  Vivian jumped up and waved her arms in the air.

  "Topsy and Eva," she shrieked, "I've got it."

  And she had.

THE END