Digital Debut

Cinemaudiences at Detroit's Michigan Theatre last week cocked their heads dubiously when a roly-poly character named Georges Andre Martin marched onto the stage as part of the additional entertainment. M. Martin amiably drew on a pair of black gloves whose first and second fingers were missing. Over his four bare fingers he pulled two pairs of little red pants, apologizing for "dressing in public." Thus costumed, M. Martin's agile fingers looked like bare legs, his hands became an incredibly realistic team of tiny dancers. The audience, fascinated by the childish spectacle, began to gurgle in appreciation.

With the right hand leading ("The left is lazy," explains M. Martin), the lively little duet twinkled through an intricate tango. Then the enterprising right fingers slipped into a pair of wee leather boots, flew into a Russian Kozatzki. After that; the astonishing finger-feet stepped into little silver slippers, the handiwork of a

Chicago jeweler, and with a doll's torso added to complete the illusion, M. Martin's nimble digits became the legs of a ballet dancer, whirled through the pirouettes and entrechats, leaped, dipped, crumpled amid enthusiastic applause.

Georges Martin appeared for several years with beauteous Lucienne Boyer at her Paris night club, did his "ringer dancing" in the U. S. early this year as part of Mile Boyer's second Continental Varieties. Last week's Detroit appearance was his U. S. solo debut. His tour of cinemansions will take him to Chicago and Hollywood.

Son of a French father, a U. S.-born mother. Georges Martin was born in Paris, orphaned by the War, raised and educated in France by a Philadelphian he has never seen. When his profession as an electrical engineer barely brought him bread, he commercialized his digital talent. "I make bread and butter and jam," he now can say, "soon I think there will be caviar, too."

Asked when he began finger dancing, moonfaced, ingenuous M. Martin answers: "I don't remember, but it was in my childhood--which I haven't finished."

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