Stage-and-screen bill at the Fox Theatre, Brooklyn: feature film "Marriage by Contract" (Tiffany Pictures, dir. James Flood, starring Patsy Ruth Miller and Lawrence Gray, released 1928-11-09) paired with a vaudeville stage program headlined by the Stroud Twins, Amerique and Neville, and John Maxwell, plus a Movietone newsreel and an orchestral segment led by Frederick Fradkin.
Date (happened)
between 30 December 1928 and 31 December 1928
unresolved
between 30 December 1928 and 31 December 1928
estimated · probable · preferred
Why
OCR does not itself print the city; venue city (Brooklyn) taken from coolwisdombooks.com's identification of this booking, not stated in the clip.
Reasoning
The clipping is a contemporaneous theater-page program notice, not a retrospective: 'the management at the Fox Theater announces that its offering this week is one of the most pretentious since the house opened' — describing the CURRENT week's bill. This fixes the event to whichever week the Fox played 'Marriage by Contract', which coolwisdombooks.com's independent chronology (compiled from the same clipping corpus but with a specific day range) places at Dec 30-31, 1928 at the Fox Theatre, Brooklyn — consistent with the film's Nov 9, 1928 national release and the Brooklyn Fox's Aug 31, 1928 opening.
between November 1928 and December 1928
estimated · probable
Why
The specific city's 'Fox Theatre' (a chain name used in many US cities in this era) is not identifiable from the legible OCR, so no location is set here rather than guessing a city.
Reasoning
This is a contemporaneous theatre program advertisement for a gala midnight opening performance — about as tight a contemporaneous marker as this corpus offers — pairing a Fox Theatre stage revue (including Amerique & Neville) with the screen premiere of 'Marriage by Contract'. The corpus's existing field_clip_date note for this media cited a January 1928 release for the film, but that is incorrect: the film's actual, externally verified release date is 1928-11-09 (Tiffany Pictures). This engagement is dated to that premiere window instead.
c. December 1928
estimated · probable
Reasoning
This is a contemporaneous 'tonight' theatre-bill ad naming the screen feature and a Fox Movietone News program, so it dates a real, specific engagement. The film's own Nov 1928 release sets a firm lower bound, and an independent secondary source (Cool Wisdom Books' own dedicated research into this act) names December 1928 specifically, which this worker adopts as circa (exact day not recoverable from the clipping).
c. December 1928
estimated · probable
Reasoning
Independent corroborating clipping of the identical booking; recorded as a second claim from a different source entity rather than folded silently into the first, per this corpus's append-only/corroboration convention.
31 December 1928
stated · doubtful
Why
pm-actor-533: pm-actor-533: Typed stated but rests on a modern research article, not a printed date (decision 3B); the engagement is dated from its own clippings (1928-12-30..31).
22 March 1931
stated · doubtful
Why
pm-actor-533: pm-actor-533: names a different venue (Loew's Metropolitan) and year; not evidence for this Fox Theatre Dec 1928 booking; kept per Rudi's 2026-07-23 ruling but out of this packet's scope.
Told / reported
31 December 1928
stated · doubtful
Why
pm-actor-533: pm-actor-533: A research article is not a telling: this 'told' date repeats the article's engagement date.
22 March 1931
stated · doubtful
Why
pm-actor-533: pm-actor-533: A research article is not a telling; the date belongs to a Loew's circuit bill of March 1931, not this engagement.
![Amerique and Neville — CWB source ephemera [1ce9c51d7b]](/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/media/images/neville-source-ingest/2026-08/1ce9c51d7b1b022e8a35b804061504d27a921b62323cc70aa76a39436ef15cd1.webp?itok=NvJbExsi)