THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE A MAGAZINE OF THE PASSING SHOW CONTENTS FOR MAY, 1913 Copyright, 1913, by the Story-Press Corporation. Copyright, 1913, by the Story-Press Corporation, in Great Britain and the Colonies. PORTRAIT COVER, HAZEL DAWN. Photograph by Moffett Studio, Chicago. Frontispiece, a portrait study of John Mason, drawn by Grant T. Reynard. THE CONSPIRACY ee Baker and John Emer- Advice to ont am aie fora stage career, by an eminent actor. Tilustrated with photographs. A TONIC FOR sapee ACTRESSES laide Thurston A well Mabie roe tells of her vacation days. Illustrated with photographs. A DRAMA FOR MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS.. Charles William Collins A vivacious discussion of “The Blindness of Virtue.”’ Illustrated with photographs. WILLIAM OOLLIg® fe AND OFF’ nold Wolf An intimate oo 3 of an interesting player- personality. Illustrated with photographs. WHEN ESME ag i Oye “RAW STUFF” Channing Pollock An informative critique of the month's new plays. With cartoons by Herb Roth. IF YOU WOULD war FOR VAUDEVILLE... William C. Lengel Valuable facts about ‘sketch -writing, by one who knows. AT THE “HOW-MANY”’ WINDOW Alma Martin Estabrook. A box-office girl receives two proposals in one evening. PLAYING THE PART OF THE «naga voce 83 Pauline Frederick Miss Frederick discusses her réle of Zuleika, in ‘Joseph and His Brethren.” Illustrated with photographs. AN OCEAN LINER AS A STAGE FOR ‘‘MOVIES”’ 831 Louis DeFo How moving pictures were taken of a steam- ship’s transatlantic voyage. Illustrated with photographs. POPULAR NOVELS AND THE STAGE George Bronson Howard A successful young playwright and dramatist voices some pertinent opinions. Illustrated with photographs. ome NATHAN’S CASUAL CHRONICLES OF APTIOUS CRITIC Ore latest Spociriesi gossip by a Broadway critic and raconteur. WHY I AM LBavine THE STAGE orge M. Cohan An aicthaclniave statement by “Mr. Cohan of his new plans. MY EXPERIENCES IN GETTING ON THE STAGE 855 By a Well-Known Actress The first of a Ahr of confessions wherein a prominent player relates the real incidents of her career. With illustrations by Robert A. Graef. “HONEY” AND THE STING Gertrude Brooke Hamilton The romance of a matinée idol and a “sweet young thing.” THE MOST NOVEL PLAY OF THE SEASON.....868 Excerpts from ‘‘The Yellow Jacket.” BEAUTY Lillian Russell . An actress famous for her enduring. beauty tells howit may be achieved and retaine Illustrated with photographs. AN EASY TASK erton Braley...... A Broadway ballad. THE MOST ontriyas ARpeenOE .. Marguerite Clar A delightful interpreter of ry ildcen's “réles writes of her work. Illustrated with photographs. AS THE THEATRE GREW UP Frank Parker Stockbridge.. A oe. study of the evolution of the pla I liustrated with photographs. THE DANCING MAN W. Carey Wonderl A short story of an aristocrat an LITTLE STORIES OF THE NEW PLAYS Brief synopses of recent productions. THE “EPIDEMIC” OF CHILDREN’S PLAYS Magda Frances West An illuminating consideration of the present vogue for juvenile drama. an actor. TERMS: $1. 50a year in advance ; 15 cents a number. by all and b or may be sent direct to the Publishers. ase Letter, or by Postage Stamps of 2-cent denomination, and not by Foreign postage $1.00 additional. Canadian postage 50c. Subscriptions are received Remittances must be made by Postoffice or Express Money Order, by becaust of exchange charges against the latter. check or drait, TANT NO’ — Do not subscribe to THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE through agents unknown to you personally, or you may find yourself d Many never reaches this office. are received from people who have paid cash to some swindler, in which event, of course, the subscription THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE is issued on the twelfth of the month preceding its date, and be .s sale ok all newsdealers after that time. In the event of failure to obtain copies at news-stands, or on railway trains, a notification to the F Advertising rates on application. Advertising forms close three weeks prior to the time of issue. Publich. THE STORY-PRESS CORPORATION, Publishers, North American Bldg., CHICAGO LOUIS ECKSTEIN President CHARLES M. RICHTER, Business Manager R. M. PURVEs, New England R RALPH K. STRASSMAN, Advertising Manager, 1172 Fifth Avenue Bldg., New York ost LONDON OFFICES, 5 Henrietta St., Covent Garden, London, W. C, Stes or Entered as second-class matter October 15, 1912, at the postoffice at Chicago, Illinois, under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. 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D oe : acess ee ee et ee ee ee ee ee ee ee eee ee ee ee ee eee ee ee eT + Or ene-e-8 ees Oe ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee | Pee oe eee | ae * ©: e-ep-e oe wm wwe Pee + RH OHO Oren O © OO OO O58 © OO OF Pn Ou a Omprens- 00-45% © 6 6 4e eae e Pe ee er tart Se ewes Oe HOw eee © 8 © 0-8 6-0-6 w- 0-0-8 * ‘ OO Om ROO ~ 06 EH OH Oo + OHO HOH Oe OH OH OH O~ OOH OH OH 6-0 HOH HO HO— O- 8 O- 02 OH OH OHO HOH OH OHO © -O -0-8-0- 0-0 Owe This and the picture on the fol show a scene from Act IV of “The Master Mind:"” EDWARD CILLESPIE ae Mr. Marshall MOREAK ¢ COMAN as Walter Blount, EDMUND BREESE as Andrew, LIOTT DEXTER as Courtland Wainwrigl.t, WALTER O50 + Oe Oo Oren Owes 6 20+ O 0+ O- O- 0+ 0-0 0-0 O=O- 8-8 -O- OM OH e~ mse 060-0 - 0 6-0-0 -6 0-0-0: 0 00-6 b- 0 band bres On Oat = 0H Om 8 OH OOH 8-0 8-0-0 -8- w ja: hath aati tale BS it: OO 0-0 0-8 © © 5H © © © & & O-8 +8 OO © 88 8-8 Fe & © OH8HR-e1Eme © HO OR OOO we Hee 08 oF OL O-O- 0-8 0-8 0-0 B-OHe 810-6 6 0-0 0-0-0 ON 00.0. 0-6-0 0-0-0 - 0-02 0- 0-0 -0-0-8- 6 0-0-0-0-0-0-8-8-6 2-02 Cee eeees &-0 Or °. : >) : : ° ; ; ; . ; H ' : i t + 3 ' : ° . e oe 2-0-8 0-0. 0-0-8-8 ae OOOO HOH OOOH OH OHO SHO HOH 8 OF OH OH OHS mH Se OHO © O-8 8H OHO HOH O-O-@ O<e- © -0 0+ 0+ 0-0- e+e « ene ALLEN as Pantera’ Fockoe BA he § SALLE as Lucene A gg RILEY HATCH - John Blount, NEVILLE as and DOROTHY ROSSMORE as Mrs. Blount. Photograph by White, “New York. See page 804 of this issue. ex -OrO OOo OOO Oo 0-8, O-O-O-0- 0-8-8 © 8-08 OHO - PH O- 4-0-8 +0 O88 . ° - -. eo © @ 0-8 O-8 © © © + OHe 0 0 8 eH Oe @ & oO e888 ie OOO OH Oe OH OHO OH8 OH OH OH OHO OHO Heme OH 8 OH Om em ome HO -O -0- 0 - 0-0-0 -0-0- O~ See page 0+ 0+ 0 Ob Ores, oO n 00-0 0-0-8 0-8-8 Omtene e-e . Photograph by White, New York. 804 of this issue. i : ; ' ° i ; : ' 4 t ae ° ; i : : eee © w-e 6 e-e-e-e-e- Te meat cnt ae pntaniniee elt Ce ee ee ee eee ee ee ee ee er eee EDMUND BREESE in the title rdle of “The Master Mind.” t+ © e-e-* Peres Bae ORR Ore O-e-e- O-e-0-8- . © e-e-« aes O-e-B-0-0-8 © © © e+e OO © Oe 0-8 w O-8 e 00-8 6 Oreo O- . : PO OOOO 0-0 o-0- 2 0-8-2 0-8 © FS © ©0:88-6-6 © © OH ee eo He Ceres ee ee ee er ee ee ee ee ee BAP OHO ORS O OH OH OW OOH On. 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Cop’ (CaP er Pe ee eee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee eee ee ee ere oe -ene ee nme-e- ens OH OO) 0566 010+ Os On bn tn Owes OH 0-8 am 8-05 O+0+ 6 ° ee ee ee ee ee eee : oH ; ’ : a @O-0- © -0- 0 ©: Oo C0 0-0-0 0-0- 0-0-0-0 -0-0-0-0-0 0-0 0-8-6 ©: 8 © 0-0 © 0-0-6 <2 OOO wee SO © +O - 0:0 8- Omeme— Oe“ 8-0-8 -2 O&O O-8 O-8 OF F 0 -8-0-89-0-0~@ © See © 0-0 -0-0-0-0- 0-0 © 0-2 0-0-0 2-0-2 2 6-0 © 0-0-0-0-8 ; : o-0 ©-0-0-0-@ 0-026 © @-@ 0-0 Oe MOO Oe ee O-O-e - 8-8 O-8-O O-S © F-O-O-O-O-O-O-8-8 8-8 OSS FHSS & © © +0-0- 05" < 5 oe F s : .) & eo £ & rf 3 <= = <= 3 2 3] g a a 15) Zz < & uw : % <= $ Ss a = : a 4 ) 7 4 Be A Portrait Study of JOHN MASON drawn for THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE by GRANT T. REYNARD ae hee OR. oe, OE) SC - Ma 1913 Vol.1x Nes NAGAZINE \¢ Th : Me GREEN BOOK Oo you want to be an actor? Star in “The Attack” ~~ |(T. various times last month | eight young wdémen and five i. _=_J] young men came to me asking for advice. They wanted to go on the stage. Because they looked like serious young people, and because I felt like it, I gave them the best advice I had. I told them all the same thing. “Go to the New York Hippodrome,”’ I said, in substance, ‘‘and begin your stage ‘career with a_ six-dollar-a-week job. They always are in need of people to walk on and off their great scenic pro- ductions; I’m sure the chance will be yours for the asking. It requires no ex- perience; all you have to do is act like one of a big crowd. Stay there at least three or four months. The experience you get. will prove: invaluable. It will teach you repose. You will learn how to - use your: body. If you have a dramatic” instinct this should develop it. In short, in the Hippodrome you will get your ‘stage legs.’”’ - And:that was all there was to it; yet I realized that my new young friends, one by one, found this a bit tame. They acted as if they expected something different, at any rate—something with a relish of mystery in it. As it is, I believe the real secret of dramatic art is to be discovered among the simple things; that it is neither heavy nor complex, as one.would expect. I do not say this lightly, but as one who reverences a great art, as one man to another. So, as they came and went, these young adventurers of mine, each after his own fashion, I felt—as I often have felt—that it was a delicate responsi- bility, an awful responsibility—this of advising. But what could I do? Cer- tainly I could not send them home, lightly dismissing them to sit by the fire for the rest of their days, like normal, rational people, and let it go’ at that, ’ could 1? What.if among a thousand such applicants is one with the true dramatic fire, the gift of expression in which this young man or young woman would find ‘his happiness, a gift which would brighten and enrich a world! Of course there are those good people: who say it perhaps is the most prudent thing to refrain from giving advice, because in the end the young idea will neither heed nor profit, but make hash of it anyway. Now that may be true enough, but I think there is a smack of selfishness in such prudence, that perhaps, after all, 761 it is better to tell the young aspirants what they may expect, and then leave the decision to their own reason and their respective Photograph .« by White, New Copyright, 1913, by Charles Frohman ONE OF THE LOVE-MAKING SCENES BETWEEN feat 6 OO) oe Oe gx RE guardian angels. It is perfectly natural that they should desire to act, that they should want to go on the stage. The dra- matic instinct is inherent through- out the great pageant of man. . Watch the small boy in kilts. If you would delight him, fold a piece of paper in the shape of a cocked hat, pop it on his head, then give him a stick, and in a jiffy the little fel- low will straighten up and march about the room. He is pretend- ing that he is a soldier.“ If you give him a little shovel and a wheelbarrow you will see him trudge off, joining others of his own age who are building embankments and little canals, especially after the street has been flooded with a heavy rain. They call one another by names that do not belong to them, acting and pretending that they are some one else doing something of great importance. A group of little girls will not have been in the room fifteen minutes before one of them will play lady, as if she had just called, and another pretend that she is the hostess; and the smallest of them all will act mother, and:-nurse her doll with most loving care. After a little while, the grown people in the room will draw one another’s attention to the little drama, and, not wish- ing to disturb the play, they will quietly nudge their neighbors and nod approvingly. Here, doubt- less, originated the phrase: ‘‘She’s a born actress!” eo And so it is not strange © that when these children have grown up, after the . interesting professions of pirate, policeman, and taxi ee we § driver, afewsurviveto seek —— en, ee ail the stage. And so, serious- York wee 8 : ly, of those who do come to us, I say advise them, encourage them, and show them where to begin, for the stage JOHN MASON AND MARTHA HEDMAN IN “THE ATTACK”’ 762 -_ = ss lle Oe et ee ate. et te a ee a ee ee, a eee) y Pe Oe ee ee eee te ee aD oe ee ee < has never, been in such peculiar need of young talent as-it is to-day. The truth is there are not enough good young actors to go around. The trouble is we have to take just what we can get. I believe the crux of the situa- tion lies in the more or less embarrassing fact that the theatre has not taken time to train its recruits. f But this takes me ahead of we my story. Let us look ats ee into the condi- tions vy confront the novice after, say, three months in the ranks at the New York Hippo- drome. He is naturally a little anxious to try his stage legs. It is easy enough to say that the world is his oyster and all that, but I think the bravest man in the world was the man who ate the first Syster. It is so with the be- ginner. The first step is the hard- est. In my mind, the first thing to do—especially in New York—is to make the rounds of the theatres. Examine the dramatic columns of the newspapers and get a line on new plays in preparation. Some- body is always dropping out of the new casts. It is not hard to see the managers if one has sufficient con- trol of one’s upper lip. The most grim of office boys shall not dismay the brave. Go up bravely and come down in good order. Talk to every manager that will see you. Otherwise write. But, given an audience, put heart in your voice. The manager is watching you all the time. You are even now acting a part. And if you speak your lines to his satisfaction you are reasonably sure of a chance of some kind. It all de- pends upon yourself and the impression you make. Whatever he offers, accept. The stage needs you as a barren woman a child. Managers are beginning to realize that youth must be served if the box office would continue solvent. The chance the manager offers may only be that of a supernumerary. This Photograph by Hall, ew York JOHN MASON IN “AS A MAN THINKS”’ 763 means you will walk on and off very much as did at the Hippodrome. But there is you a difference. Your salary should be about eighteen dol- lars a week— with trans- portation paid when the company travels. Stick to it. Even in your low de- gree the prac- tice will be varied, espe- cially in a répertoire company. After having posed a month as an in- nocent English rustic, you may, in the next play, have an opportunity of being a noble Ro- man. It all hinges on your own de- portment, how you carry your- self, how ‘your work ~ flatters you. Do'the little you have to do as well as you can; if you are in earnest the stage manager will soon notice it and your advance- ‘ment will begin. You now have made A RECENT PORTRAIT OF JOHN MASON the plunge; the ice is broken, and the. water is never so cold as it looks—after you once get in. For a while you doubtless will feel your advancement is unneces- sarily slow. If you must kick, do it to yourself. Dramatic instinct is so implanted in humanity that it sometimes misleads us, fostering the idea that because we have the natu- ral talent within, we are equally en- dowed with the power of bringing it out. This is a common error, the rock upon which the _ histrionic aspirant is oftenest wrecked. But figure it out this way: you are not the only one who has trod this path. Many of the shining lights who now occupy the highest positions on the stage, and whom the public delights to praise, have often appeared in the dreaded character of “‘omnes”’ in the early days, marched in pro- cessions, sung out of tune in choruses, and shouted themselves hoarse for Brutus and Marc Antony. The thing narrows down to this: necessity may be the mother of invention, but she also is foster- mother to the arts. The greatest actors that ever lived have drawn their early inspirations from her breast. We learn our profession by Fes Pee the mortifications we are compelled Photograph by White, New York d Copyright, 1913, by Charles Frohman MARTHA HEDMAN AS Renée, AND JOHN MASON AS - “LONG SPEECH,” 764 to go through in order to get a living. This is not as it should be, perhaps, but [|] «6the way it is. But whether 7 = you are rich or poor, if you would be an actor, begin at the beginning. This is the old con- ventional advice, but it is as good now in its old age as it was in its youth. The next thing to come the way of the beginner, after privation and worry, is the small part—and lines! The salary outlook, too, changes. From the eighteen dollars he re- ceived in the ranks, the twenty-five or thirty dollars that goes with the small part is a big jump. And if the young actor has learned repose and confidence, there is no reason why he shouldn’t keep right on going up. All good young actors have learned this to their own satisfaction. Others will never learn, and that is the dif- ference between the good young actor and the bad young actor. The first night in an important small part is usually a nightmare for the young beginner. Everything he has learned in his apprenticeship seems to slip away from him. My own experience, I remember, was like that. But I bolstered my quak- ing heart with a reminder of a story that I had heard about Edmund Kean on his first: appearance in London. They say that on that night he was a greater actor than ever before. He had been having a hard time of it. He was half-starved and threadbare; his companions sneered at him in rehearsal, and his wife and child lived in a mean little garret. Everything depended on his work that memorable night. Success was a large matter of bread and butter. His situation was desperate, but in the end it aroused the slum- bering genius within him. The whole history of that eventful night im- presses one with the idea that he himself. was surprised at what he did. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald, in his _ admirable ‘‘ Romance of the English Stage,” says that “Kean had a Copyright, 1913, by Charles Frohman Merital, DURING THE DELIVERY OF Merital’s FAMOUS IN “THE ATTACK” 765 Photograph by White, New York Copyright, 1913, by Charles Frohman gallant confidence in himself all through.” There is nothing in the story that implies this. - Fitzgerald himself quotes Kean’s last words. Kean said as he left his house for the theatre: “T kissed my wife and little son, and muttered, ‘I wish that I were going to be shot!’ ” There is no confidence in these ter- rible words. But they show the brave nature of the man because he was not confident. Who can say how fervently he prayed as he trudged up the dark, wet London streets, with a beating MARTHA HEDMAN AND JOHN MASON, IN ‘‘THE ATTACK”’ heart and a nervous fore- boding of disas- ter in the approach- ing trials. Asit happened, his hit was tremendous, and, when the. manager effusively congratulated him on his wonderful success, Kean said in his own description of the event: “The pit rose at me, and all I did was to act it down.” This sounds confident, I admit; but the remark nevertheless was made after the battle was won. The whole picture is more interesting and truthful when we view the man as being fully alive to the danger of the situation, and apprehen- sive lest the invisible genius within him should fail to appear. Many great actors 766 ee me Che Pes Gere ee, eee A A Th eh Kt 4 a: ie eb! oe ae eee CO ft eH OQ Mhn Q.8S Ss oer Ho et dg oO gd DO YOU WANT TO BE AN ACTOR? will bear this out. When this mysterious influence, which comes unbidden, burst forth at the London theatre that night, the public was amazed, the critics stunned, and Kean himself surprised. No intellectual effort could have created this effect. The source of genius is in the soul; it seldom aims at the brains of the audience, but oftener shoots at their hearts through its own. Many is the time, to get back to our knitting, that I have heard young actors complain that ane cannot exhibit genius in a small part, however important it is to the technique of the play itself. They repeat that they have no lines or mo- ments. I say there is something to act- ing beyond the actual speaking part. Some people call it “‘listening.’’ Others, “‘nantomimic action;” but pantomimic action, unless it is in perfect harmony with the scene, is fatal to the effect of a delicate point. This means that every- one on the stage at the time, down to the smallest part, must do much more than to stand still and listen. Each actor must watch himself. To exemplify my meaning, let us take a point where the audience is called upon, not for enthusiastic applause, but for rapt attention—where the situation is so subtle that the head bowed slowly down, or.a movement of the eye, will re- veal the meaning. Now at this critical point, if one of the actors (and it usually is one of the young actors!) should even remove his hat, or unmeaningly shift his position, he will instantly destroy the effect. The finer the acting, the more easily the effect is destroyed, just as a scratch which would disfigure a beauti- fully polished surface would not show on the rough face of a cobblestone. Of course these things are bad enough when’ done out of ignorance, but I fly off the handle when I see them done with intention. The American stage has many good young actors and plenty >f bad ones. It does not take much to inter- rupt a scene, and the bad young actor is full of such tricks. His favorite resort, I find, is to say something under his breath to the actor nearest him—and it nearly always happens in a crucial mo- ment. Something like this: ‘‘Lamp the doll in the first box, left. I got her 767 number in the first act. Aint her hus- band the sad little bird?” As for the intelligent young beginner, I warn him that the audience cannot look in two places at once. That is one of the first things he must learn. The actor in the small part does his best work when he subordinates his attitude to the scene. The intrinsic value of such repose is so great that it cannot be estimated. As the traveler thanks the truthful sign- post, but never forgives the rascal who misdirected him, so the audience appre- ciates a colorful silence and is irritated at its lack. A good stage manager will soon make this plain to the beginner, else he will get rid of him altogether. But at first at rehearsal the novice should invariably ask the stage manager what he should do next. As a rule, the answer is that as soon as he ceases to be the interesting figure in the scene, he should observe the action of the other characters; this is the most natural by-play and the least likely to do harm. It acts like distance in a picture, which, by being subdued, gives a distinct strength to the fore- ground. But the young tyro is generally fearful that he will fail to attract atten- tion, whereas obscurity instead of prominence may at that time be the most desirable. To do nothing on the stage seems quite simple, yet some people never acquire this simply nega- tive capacity. In the green room they call it “‘listen- ing,” or sometimes, as I have said in the foregoing, ‘‘pantomimic action.” To the stage it is as inseparable as a pair of pants. With it, the actor foreshortens the perspective of life to that of the the- atre. Its study should be the early apprenticeship of the beginner. I began mine by making faces at myself in a mirror. As for the bad young actor, its lack is his principal crime. Without it, an actor practically is invisible except when he speaks his lines. If it were pos- sible, the pantomime and action of a play should reveal its meaning without the aid of dialogue; an audience, I mean, should understand what the actors are doing if it does not catch all that they are saying. It is eager to do this, and quite 768 competent, if we would only give it a fair chance; but as it is, careless panto- mime and inarticulate delivery will not suffice. The dgamatic value of sugges- tion is a great thing. But the beginner must not mistake vagueness for sug- gestion. He must not imagine that be- cause he understands a thing he is neces- sarily conveying it to others. Sheridan, in his extravaganza of ‘‘The Critic, or a Tragedy Reversed,” gives a sort of humorous illustration of this error. During the mock rehearsal of Mr. Puff’s play, the character of Lord Bur- leigh enters, walking slowly and majes- tically down to the footlights. There the knight folds his arms, shakes his head very solemnly and then makes his exit without having said a word! - “What does he mean by shaking his head like that?” asks Mr. Dangle, a dramatic critic. To which Mr. Puff replies: ‘Don’t you know? Why, by that shake of the head he gave you to understand that even though they had more justice in their cause and more wisdom in their measures, yet if there was not a greater spirit shown on the part of the people, the country would at last fall a sacrifice to the hostile ambition of the Spanish monarchy.” “Did he mean all that by just shak- ing his head?” cries Mr. Dangle. To which Mr. Puf replies: ‘‘ Yes, sir— if he shook it the way I told him.” As this satire was penned nearly two hundred years ago, it is quite evident that the vanity of vagueness is hardly a _ new histrionic development. But, for myself, I do not believe in vagueness in acting. The suggestion should be unmis- takable; it must be leveled at the whole audience, and reach with unerring aim the newsboy in the gallery and the high brow who domes it in his two-dollar seat. Such acting is more a gift than an art. I have seen a child impress an audience by its natural grace and magnetism. The little creature was too young to know what art meant, but it had the gift of acting. And so, the beginner, when he no longer can be called a beginner, but a full-fledged young actor, will see the difference I have striven for in this THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE little story. Of course, he will be enjoy- ing other differences—the difference be- tween poverty and affluence; for from six dollars a. week his salary will have jumped to seventy-five or more; the great difference between a shout in the angry mob and a comfortable speaking part, with a chance—a chance, you ur- derstand—at a ‘‘lead”’ next season. But it will be easier for him to see the differ- ence I mean then: He will have to ask himself: ‘Is my acting a gift, or have I merely learned the rudiments of a fine art?” I believe this is the difference between good actors and bad; there are many of us who mistake the result of persistence and hard work for genius; there are many of us who will have to be apprentices all our lives. For the rules that would seem to pro- mote success upon the stage are so shifting and at times so inscrutable that the most diligent and experienced actors often stand amazed at the disappoint- ing results which have attended honest - and intelligent labor. I have known members of the theatrical profession who, though possessed of great ability and untiring industry, have never met with one cheering success, and I have seen novices come upon the stage know- ing nothing of dramatic art and pos- sessed of no talent whatever, startle the public and command its attention at once; and all this from the mere exhibi- tion of youth, beauty and confidence. So, with acting, no master hand can prescribe rules for the head of another school. If then, I appear bold in putting forth my suggestions, I desire it to be clearly understood that I do not present them to original or experienced artists who have formed their method, but to the young student who may have a temperament akin to my own, and who could blend my methods with his own preconceived ideas. ’ One great trouble in taking instruc- tion in the dramatic art is that many teachers fall into the error of teaching too much. The beginner should first be allowed to exhibit his quality, and. so teach the teacher what to teach. This course would answer the double purpose of first revealing how much the novice is capable of learning, and, what is still Photograph by Hall, New York more impor- tant, of permit- ting him to display his powers untrammeled. Whereas, if the master begins by pounding his dogmas into the student, the latter becomes environed bya foreign influence which may smother his ability. It is necessary to be cautious in studying elocution and gesticulation, lest they become our masters instead of our servants. These necessary but dangerous ingredients must be ad- ministered and taken in homeopathic doses, or the patient may die by being over stimulated. But even at the risk of being artificial, it is better to have studied these arbitrary rules than to JOHN MASON AND_ JENNIE EUSTACE IN “THE WITCH- ING HOUR” enter a profession with no knowl- edge whatever of its mechanism. I hold that all these things must in time mean something even on our haphazard stage. I am sorry to see the breaking up of the old stock company system in this country; really, we have no adequate training schools for young actors—that is, schools where one could earn one’s living and learn how to act. at the same time. In the stock companies that have broken up and those that are in the process of breaking up, the actors of the past generation served their apprentice- ship, and the cessation of them discloses that some kind of dramatic training 769 770 THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE on a similarly wide basis is demanded to bridge the great artistic gap between the ‘veterans and the recruits. But it is almost impossible to set down all the qualifications and adjuncts the beginner needs for success in the theatre. For instance, to a young woman who asked her for the best natural equipment for a stage career, Sarah Bernhardt replied: ‘First of all, a voice!” And if there be one actress above all others whose career has proved the truth of this theory, it is this gifted Frenchwoman. It was by means of the voice that Clara Morris won her great success the first night she played in New York. It was by the use of the voice alone that Mrs. Carter made her hysterical and moving appeal in “Zaza,” and the last act of “Dubarry.” It was through her voice and in a medium even less under- stood than that of Bernhardt, that Duse conquered a cynical and hard- 3 ened New York audience in a single night. It is the tear-compelling quality in David Warfield’s voice more often than anything else that has made his Music Master and his Auctioneer such sym- pathetic, appealing stage figures. It is the pathetic, tremulous little voice of Peter Pan that haunts the memory and draws us back to the theatre, that we may place ourselves once more under the enduring spell of Miss Adams. I tell you, a good stage voice is above the ran- som of kings. Another prime asset for the young actor, as I have brought out in,the case of Edmund Kean, is the ability of call- ing up a reserve force of nerve. It is particularly effective in arguments with managers. Among the well remembered characters of my early dramatic life was an actor we will call Mellish. Nerve was Mr. Mellish’s forte. It is related of him that he once sent a letter to Charles Frohman applying for an engagement. He received this answer: “‘I would not engage you if you would come for nothing ;’’ to which Mellish replied, with characteristic abandon: ‘‘Terms ac- cepted. Will be with you to-morrow.” As I recall it, the man’s memory was so wonderful that it was almost im- possible to ask him a question without getting a Shakespearean quotation in re- ply. It was also said of him that he was generous to a fault; and I think he must have been, for he never paid his washer- woman. One morning the poor old laundress was dunning him for her hard earnings. He was standing at the stage door, in a circle of admirers; and turning furiously on the old woman, he para- phrased Macbeth’s speech to the ghost of Banquo in the following words: ‘‘ Avaunt and quit my sight! Thy tubs are mar- rowless; there is no starch in my fine shirts that thou jdidst glare withal! Approach thou like the Russian mana- ger, the Hyrcan critic, or the ‘Old Rye Whisky-us;’ or, be alive again, and make it salary day. If, trembling then, I do inhibit thee, confess me a babe of a Mellish!’’ The laundress fled in despair, with a wild throwing up of her hands, only too glad to escape unpaid from this supposed lunatic. I have to smile when I think of it, because the instance peculiarly resem- bles the exit of the eight young women and five young men who came to _ me at various times last month asking for advice. If you remem- ber, they wanted to eee go on the stage. I woceenialas told them all the HOUR” same thing: “Go to the New York Hippodrome and begin your stage career with a six-dollar job.” At this point, without exception, my young friends threw up their hands and left me like the old washerwoman did Mellish—left me looking after them with something between a smile and a sigh. For that’s the -way the younger generation ‘goes through life, through everything. So I sighed again at the fallacy of giving advice. MR. MASON The recipe for f overcoming : the gruelling fatigue of the theatre found by a successful actress } photographs of Miss Thurston on her farm, Fatt ky es," at Murray Hill, N. Y. A. FTONtTOC FOR JADED ACTRESSES By ADELAIDE THURSTON IGS, chickens, | P cows, horses, pigeons, mules, =] ducks and geese afford the greatest possible tonic to theatre-tired nerves. Counting one’s chickens before they are hatched gives plenty of diver- sion even for a rainy day. Selling young pigs, lambs, puppies, colts and squabs, to say nothing at all of settings of choice duck and goose eggs, as well as juicy broilers, if judiciously managed will give one a nice green-backed um- brella to tuck away as a shelter against fortune’s vicissitudes. All in all, live stock can show decided points over the much lauded gardening tasks, for bring- ing back to the fundamentals of real life nervous or mentally tense individ- uals, and for putting them in tune with the harmonics of the universe. Show me a man or woman of to-day, particularly a professional man or sheep, dogs, woman, who lacks physical poise, and I will show you a commercial and an artistic failure. Show me a successful individual and I will show you one who is guarding nerve control as his or her most needed asset, and striving to keep the thin spots from wearing through. The best sanitarium for such folk is the old-fashioned farm. Go to the animals in the barnyard to learn to forget your nerves. Animals after all are such a helpless yet human lot that they can fairly drag you out of yourself. They are so de- pendent on human beings for much of their comfort, since civilization has plucked even the pig away from its native haunts and set it-down within hailing distance of Broadway. There is no satisfaction in the world so great as making others comfortable, particularly when this comfort and well-being can 771 772 THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE be turned to your own financial gain. Of all farm animals I like best pigs and chickens. They pay best, too. One summer I[ had 150 young pigs on my farm, and I never had more fun in my life than I did watching those young pigs. From the time they were born until they were six months old and I began to sell them, they were the delight of my soul. I defy even George M. Cohan to make you laugh as those pigs could. There were sixty black ones, ten pure white, and the rest spotted. One of them used to grunt like a belated Broadway taxi- cab. There was another who was always getting caught in the rail fence and emitting a high note that would have won for her a chance to warble “Celeste Aida” from almost any impre- sario. From those pigs I learned to be a connoisseur in double chins. Every piggié on the place had a double chin. It took miles “*GO TO THE ANIMALS IN THE BARNYARD TO LEARN TO FORGET YOUR NERVES.” | \ of sweet and sour milk \ to feed them. It seemed \ 5 e to me that all the milk Wig went into their chins. | Wins formed the awful habit, though, of comparing what I learned from double chins NW on piggies with double chins on men and women—and the result hag been quite edifying. Sometimes I’m tempted to think that Circe didn’t send those friends of Ulysses that she turned into swine across such an awful chasm after all. Another thing those pigs taught me is that pigs like to be clean, if you give them half a chance. Perhaps it was be- cause my pigs were kept right next door to a broad green meadow, all frosted with huge-headed nodding white daisies, and sweet with the morning song of meadow larks; but I do know, anyway, that in spite of all the laughs my friends give me, I had extremely immacu- late pigs. All in all, pigs do give vou a fine side- ee eee ie le ee ee tee ee tm. tad. ee Be Sle CHERRY PICKING TIME AT ADELAIDE THURSTONS’ COUN- TRY PLACE, ‘‘ FAIR EVE.’’—‘‘ THE BEST SANITARIUM,” SAYS MISS THURSTON, ‘‘IS THE OLD-FASHIONED FARM.” light on humanitarian principles, and the best of it is that they pay. That summer I cleared nearly $300 on my pigs, and I kept them in the finest fashion at that. Mind you, I say, cleared. Of course, the gross proceeds from those pigs were more, but that is what they actually netted me. They were expensive in one way, too, and the worst of it is that since that summer I’ve never been able to endure bacon. It is too reminiscent— _ particularly of one little white pig with an extremely coquettish curl in its tail i that actually got to know Mother and / me and used to come running to meet ; us whenever it broke loose from its pen, which was too often for the good of the ; garden. Next to pigs, my vote for favorite goes to chickens. At one time I was particularly fond of the black Langshan varieties, but they are a sensitive breed and while they lay well—producing a large sweet egg—they are troublesome 773 to manage, are inordinate eaters and apt to die in extremes of weather, either hot or cold. As a beautiful ornament to poultry yard the Langshans cannot be equaled. Their glossy black plumage, . flashing to al- ~<4/) ss most “ «Ss aN hg " 12>, purple and bronze blue in the sunlight or deep shadow, is wonderfully effective. They do like to root in the dirt, though, and can outscratch anything I ever saw. As a compromise between the Langshans and the scrub chickens, I like the Plymouth Rocks with a few Buff Cochins scattered in for variety. The Plymouth Rocks are good layers, fine brooders and have a peculiarly tender flaky meat that stands stewing, grilling or broiling most palatably. Young chicks are the dearest things in the world, barring, of course, young babies. My young Buff Cochins always put me in mind of a bit of the fabled * Golden Fleece come to earth, though my- little sister always calls them butter- balls. Some of the experiences I have had with young chicks have been the ' 774 fascinating but pitiful. This spring I reared ten of them by hand. Their mother got stepped on by a horse when the chicks were scarcely an hour old. It was a damp cold day. I took the little darlings into the“kitchen, fitted up an old basket with cotton batting and soft, warm flannel and tucked them in. Then every two hours I fed them with the mashed, yolks of hard boiled eggs. Pretty soon, from being listless, be- draggled lumps of sprawly fuzz, they began to peep, and at the end of the second day they were running all over the kitchen. I had them put into a spe- cial coop just outside the kitchen win- dow. They have developed into the finest chickens on the farm, and the odd part of it is that they are all pullets. Such likely looking young birds are they that I am going to TES, ais] ‘ THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE of raising money for missionary boxes, I am going to take each of these hens and put her out to flourish among the far- mer’s wives of the vicinity. Each egg that each hen lays will be carefully kept sep- arate, and the proceeds from those sold will go into a little tin box to aid the cause of suffrage. When the pullets are old enough to brood, each hatching of chick- ens will be devoted to the cause in the same way. The income from these ten pullets ought to be considerable, and what in the world is more fitting than that latter day hens should work for the emancipation of latter-day women? The only animal on the farm that I’m | afraid of is a cow. And if there is one four-footed beast that can make me gooseflesh from heels to head it is a cow. I think the horns are responsible. The mildest of bovine eyes, even Jersey eyes, looking pensively at me can’t dispel the fear that trembles in my heart as a re- sult of those leveled horns. Last spring I had the new milk fad for my com- plexion. A creole woman whom I met in AND ARCADIAN... I CAME TO THE COW.” dedicate them all to careers. This summer has brought me keen interest in suffrage. Now, while I have borrowed the idea from a well-known church plan Louisiana told me that all her daughters owed their perfect complexions—and_ | they were perfect, too, | the regular magnolia leaf | variety—to the fact that | daily at daybreak they | rose, ran through the } = +2 > F MPR SOG 8 \ “IN ALL THESE VARIED IN- TERESTS, THE RIVALRIES AND WORRIES AND CARES OF EVEN THE BEST SHOW ON EARTH CAN BE FORGOTTEN,” dew and milked a cow. I tried that one morn- ing. I went out fully equipped with a nice blue and white enamel milking pail, a mission \ style oak milking stool, and a big white apron over a pretty blue print dress. I felt ro- mantic and picturesque and lovely and Arcadian and all the rest, until I came to the cow. And then— Well, if I told you what really hap- pened, you wouldn’t believe it. I can hardly believe it myself. In pieces and altogether it was just the same old story of the novice who tries to milk a cow. The comic papers have told it all long ago in verse and joke and illustration. I can run a thirty horse- power automobile; I can sail a skittish yacht; I can drive a four-in-hand or a tandem—but I cannot milk a cow. And I am not going to try to do it again either. But itt is just such experiences and experiments that hold the real value of farm life for any one, particularly for Sa Bete is Caieadll SS = ba J °“@~ & Se - — ge, rp ress. There = is so much buz- zing, humming, unquenchable life. all around, life that reckons only nature’s laws and behests, that she finds the arti- ficial world all crowded out. And in wondering whether six chicks of twelve will come out of old Nancy’s setting of eggs, whether the little ducks will live, whether sour or sweet milk after all has choice as piggie diet—in these varied interests, all the rivalries and wor- ries and cares of even the very best show on earth can be forgotten. And, after all, forgetfulness is a rare human virtue. There is little Lethe among us any more, undeniable panacea and inspiration though it be. an act+ 775 A Drama for Mothers and Cosmo Hamilton Cautions The Foolish Virgin in a Play ERE is a novelty in H the drama of sex problems: a piece to which mothers take their daughters, saying: ‘Give good heed, for this is what I ought to have told you last spring.” It is called “The Blindness of Virtue;” it came with London’s approval, to be neglected by New York, where its frankness was too innocent to excite Broadway, and to be welcomed in Chicago, where the foolish virgin is still con- sidered in relation to the home rather than to the night-life café and the bachelor apart- ment. “The Blindness of Virtue” is unusual in several aspects: in its theme, first of all; in its authorship, in its origin, and in its interpretation. It dis- cusses the dangers of ardent maidenhood when love first arouses.an interest in the in- evitable young man; it was written by Cosmo Hamilton, a Briton with a long literary record; it was produced at the Little Theatre of London, and is presented in this country by an organization identified with that playhouse. For all of which reasons it -deserves treatment in a full-sized GREEN Boox article, where many a better but less dis- tinctive play, contemporaneous with it, needs and receives at- tention only in the newspaper half-column. Little Theatre art does not usually stir the ‘business in- typ rrst MEETING OF THE CURATE’S DAUGHTER AND THE PEER’S stinct of the importing mana- THAT THEY ARE GOING ger, and “The Blindness of 776 Their Daughters By CHARLES W. COLLINS . Effie (DORIS LYTTON) AND Archie (BASIL IKE ONE ANOTHER HALLAM) DECIDE 777 Virtue”? might have been over- looked as a possibility for the American stage, in spite of the fact that four troupes were taking it on tour through the English “provinces,” while the parent company remained in London, if it had not been for Harry Lauder. This Scotch en- tertainer is almost the last person in the world to be suspected of a leaning toward the serious dra- ma; but under his braw Caledo- nian exterior such a weakness exists, nevertheless, and he is partly responsible for the pres- ence of ‘‘The Blindness of Vir- tue’’ in America. It came about in this way: Last summer Harry Lauder was among those “‘commanded’”’ to appear at a music-hall per- formance before the King of England; and William Morris, manager of Lauder’s American tours, went to London to attend this gala affair, out of courtesy to his lucrative star. In their exchange of theatrical shop-talk, Lauder advised Morris to see “The Blindness of Virtue,” then being played in London, with a view toward getting the Ameri- can rights. Morris accordingly paid the Little Theatre a visit, and liked the piece, but ex- pressed an opinion that its locale —the quiet home of a curate in an English village— was remote from the lives and interest of American play-goers, and, that importation, therefore, would be risky. To this, Lauder made the splendid retort: “Tt’s na the place that counts, Weelum; it’s the heart, and the soul, and the goods.” While admitting the soundness of #”- -™™ Lauder’s extempore maxim, Morris still reserved judgment. He was afraid that American parents might not relish the theme. As a test, he asked an American woman, of cul- § ture and home-loving tempera- ment, to see the play and give him her honest opinion. Her report was: “T am going again to-morrow night, and I shall take my daughter with me.” That settled it. Morris immedi- ately ‘made arrangements to bring the play to America, and an all-winter run in Chicago has satisfied him that Harry Lauder was right in the very beginning. “The Blindness of Vir- tue” discusses that phase of the great mystery of sex which has been , most avoided in life and letters — the period of adolescence, when the mating in- stinct runs riot in young blood. Frank Wedekind, a leader of the modern Ger- man stage, has treated it in a play called “The Rn wart of Spring,” which shocked his public with sanitary effect; and Cosmo Hamilton has followed his example, in a more limited way and idyllic mood. Wedekind is grim and almost repellent; Hamilton endows the topic with bland British charm. The German dramatist devoted most of his attention to the psychology of school- boys; but a girl also figures in his strange series of dialogues, and on her dying lips he places the words: ‘‘ Mother, why didn’t you tell me?” There is the starting point of “The Blindness of Vir- tue,”’ which is a girl’s play. A bishop was responsible for its writ- ing. He told Cosmo Hamilton a pathetic story of a girl whose seduction was accomplished because she was so igno- rant that she herself supplied the COSMO HAMILTON —BE Is A HIGHLY DEVELOPED TYPE OF WRITING MAN—THE VERSATILE AND FECUND TYPE FOUND ONLY IN EUROPE temptation; and he claimed to have personal knowledge of many similar cases among the working classes of Lon- don. The responsibility, he added, rested upon the parents, particularly upon the mothers. “A good theme,” said Hamilton, who is always in search of literary material. “Tt will make a novel worth while.” “Why not a play?” asked the bishop. “This lesson should be preached from the house-tops.”’ “It might be too shocking,’’ observed Hamilton, ‘‘What about the censor?” “T will endorse it,’ answered the bishop. And so “The Blindness of Virtue” came into being, to be accepted by the Little Theatre of London and staged under brave episcopal approval. 778 \ \ \ WHAT Effie’s FATHER SAW ON OPENING THE DOOR Archie TRIES TACTFULLY TO PERSUADE Effie TO LEAVE HIS BEDROOM Hamil- ton begins with a daughter —the fair, full- blooded child of a village curate, seventeen years old, tranquilly reared in a gentle environment. Hers has been asecluded life; she has had no companions of her own age and class, and little enough society of any kind. So, although well beloved by her parents, she is unhap- py, without knowing ex- actly why; and she com- plains with girlish petulance: “I’m seventeen, and I’ve done nothing, seen nothing. I’m seventeen, and I’m treated like a child. I am a child. If I go on living here I shall always be a child. I’m always asking myself what’s the matter, what’s happened. I 779 780 used to be so happy, and I can’t find out. No girl living has got such a father and mother or such a home, but sometimes in the middle of the night, or suddenly, when I am reading here, I want to get up and go out and find what life means. I’m always inside these walls, always. I don’t go anywhere. I don’t know any- one except old people. I’ve no one to say things to, no one beginning every- thing as I am. I’ve never been to school. I’ve never suffered. almost every just exactly ma )=6. Nothing ever @ There’s noth- ent. I’ve been a cage like a canary, and I want to break Every day, hour, is the same. happens. ing differ- 3 kept in tee. THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE the bars and fly. All day long I’ve been going about with a great, constant—I don’t know what. It makes me feel restless and miserable and dissatisfied. Isn’t it awful? I ask myself questions I can’t answer. I go and stand at the gates and listen for something that never comes. I try to peer through space to see what’s beyond it. Oh, what does it all mean?” Enter the young man. He is the sul- len, misunderstood son of a peer, packed off to rusticate in the cu- rate’s home and to brush up in his “BLINDNESS” PAYS “ VIRTUE” A SURPRISING MORNING VISIT studies with the curate as a tutor. He too is in the storm and stress of adoles- cence; and as a result he is cynical, sus- picious, and world-weary. He has been given up as a hopeless, headstrong “rotter’’ by his father, and feels as if the world were against him— the very mood to send a clean-cut young fellow to the devil post-haste, taking a nice girl with him. But the Reverend Harry Pem- THE CURATE AND THE GIRL WHO WENT WRONG — ‘POOR LITTLE MARY ANN!”’ his type and how to handle it; and they get on famously from the start. For the first time in his life, the Honorable berton, a manly, open-air Archibald clergyman, wun- Graham derstands : ' feels con- : tented with his lot, and so he be- gins to win back his self-respect and his ideals. ‘SALA Archie Gra- ham wants,” the curate tells his wife, ‘‘is to be trusted. Why, if I hadn’t been trusted and put on my honor, I would have gone hopeless- ly to the devil.” Of course Effie Pemberton falls in love with Archie; and what is more, she tells him so. They have played golf and _ ten- nis and taken long walks : ‘ : a togeth- SOCCER EE . er; and a Archie too is in love with her; but they are only good, Effie CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY SHE OUGHT NOT TO BE THERE 781 unsentimental “pals” until theimpulsive Effie, hurt because Archie is going away to spend a day in London, blurts out that she loves him, almost? under her father’s nose. About this time, Mary Ann en- ters into the story. She is a girl of the parish, the prettiest and nicest of her sort—or had been, until she ran away from home with a lover who could not marry her. She returns at last, a sad, be- draggled little creature, deserted by her man, with the time of her motherhood close at hand; and she is brought to the curate for comforting advice. “Mother didn’t say in her note what I’d done, did she?”’ she asks. “She said that you were in trouble, Mary Ann,” the curate answers. “Yes, that there’s the way it’s always put,” she says wearily. “It wouldn’t be called trouble if I was married though, would it? And there’d been orange blossoms and rice and old shoes!” She tells her story to the curate without bitterness, and it suggests ideas heretofore undreamed of in his paternal philosophy. She refers to her lover’s disclaiming responsibility for her downfall, and defends it: “Me knowing nothing, he says, and what it all meant, brought it about. If I’d been told when I was old enough to understand, I should have sent him away, he says, double quick, and saved him and me and the little one from this here. The man aint built for thinking, Jack says. He knows, but he aint perfect, and he wont let himself think. He says as how if we was taught to think and knew as much as the man, there’d be very. little of this here trouble for us. It’s the mother first, he says, and then us, whois to blame—never the man.” As Mary Ann leaves the room, to face the ugly problem of her life with the quiet courage of despair, the curate hears his own daugh- ter calling out to Archie—a challenge to a game of tennis or golf; and then it strikes him that Effie is as unenlightened as Mary Ann was, before her adventure, and just as apt to make Mary Ann’s mistake. He calls in his wife for a conference; and in- structs her in her maternal duty: Photograph by Moffett Studio, Chicago Effie’s FATHER CATCHES Archie “Why do we turn sniggering or shamefaced,” he asks, ‘from youthful questions prompted by an unconscious awakening of the maternal instinct? Why do we drive our ignorant children to such tragedies as poor little Mary Ann will suffer under all her life? God has made the world incredibly beautiful, but we do nothing to put 782 beauty into the lives of His children. Every day His young things ask their parents the meaning of life. Why don’t we tell them? Why don’t you tell Effie?” _ The wife is the usual mother, re- - served and over-delicate about such matters, and she shrinks from the task. She had never been told, she argues; she had to find out these things for her- self; and all well-bred daughters should do likewise. The curate startles her with the blunt declaration that their Effie might easily have been Mary Ann, and that with Archie in the house it was more than a possibility. He tells her: “Here and there, of course, there are poor girls to whom morality and innocence mean nothing under the stress of nature. But to ninety-nine out of a hundred, vir- tue means everything. I say it now—and I wish with all my heart I’d said it sooner —that a woman who lets her daughter struggle blindly through the awakening years of her womanhood is not fit to be a mother!” Mrs. Pemberton is at last persuaded; and she promises to warn Effie imniediately. If she had carried out that promise to the ‘letter, there would have been no third act to Hamilton’s play, but she postponed the painful duty, and the next morning the crisis came. Archie returned from London in the dawn; his reunion with an old classmate had caused him to miss trains. He proceeds to sort out his new neck- ties and go through his morning calisthenics with the gusto of a healthy young British male. To turn in for a sleep is out of the question, because he has promised Effie to go golfing with her before break- fast. Suddenly that blooming maiden comes skipping into his room, her hair down, a kimono over her night-dress, just as if she belongs there. She wants to hear all about his trip to London, and to know if he had missed her as much as she had missed him during their twelve hours’ separation. Archie is worried by this inviting intimacy; he advises her to go back and get dressed, but she doesn’t heed; he orders her to leave the room, and only causes her to moan, with tears, that he doesn’t love her. Of course at this he protests that he does; embracing follows, and a kiss—when the father appears. _ The events which follow may be dismissed briefly; they deal with Archie and the father rather than Effie, who doesn’t understand why she should be sharply ordered to her own room, simply because she had kissed Archie. 783 IN A SUICIDAL MOOD The curate refuses to accept Archie’s word of honor that there had been nothing wrong. The latter tells him the simple facts; and blames Effie’s parents for not having opened her eyes to the possibilities of her forward conduct. The curate declares that she has been told, whereupon Archie, in horror, declares that there was only one other explanation—she had been tempting him. He gets a blow in the face for his logic. A fourth act clears up the situation; Effie’s own artless and unashamed story of her actions cor- roborates Archie; and the penitent wife explains to her husband’ that she had not instructed their daughter, after all. Apologies are made to Archie just in time to save him from committing suicide; and the young people receive parental blessings, looking forward to marriage after a decent period of bethrothal. The question of how much the Effies of the world know, and how much they are to be told, is left by Cosmo Hamilton to the parents who attend the play. He has gone on record, in an interview, to the effect that young girls should be told “everything.” It may be argued that Effie’s conduct in the play does not show her as ignorant; to which Hamilton can an- swer effective- ly that she was half-ignorant and wholly unwarned. Basil Hal- Fi lam, who plays Archie, states = the two essential facts of om OX the piece with humor- a, ma ous exactness. Re- ferring , 7 "eee to the meaning of the title, & me hesays: “I am Virtue and Effie is Phot py a [ae Blindness.” The young man who is Moffett / i Sj often the means of inflicting al a4 heart-break upon parents in this . = mm case protects them against their | own stupidity toward their daugh- ter; and so the piece — =a - | | ft ABOVE, IS SHOWN THE.MOMENT WHEN Effie EXPLAINS TO HER FATHER. BELOW, AN EARLIER SCENE: ROMANCE BEGINS TO INTERFERE WITH STUDIES 784 develops a secondary theme of chivalry in the predatory male. Cosmo Hamilton came to America - with his play; and his always active intellectual machine busied itself, dur- ing his visit, upon American life. He professed himself fascinated and amazed; but when a London editor asked him for a series of articles, giving his impressions of the United States in the manner of Arnold Bennett, he de- clined, saying that a stay of four years, instead of four months, was necessary. He is a highly developed type of writ- ing man—the versatile and fecund type known only in Europe. In this country a newspaper man is always a news- paper man; a magazine writer is always a magazine writer; the editor always edits; the librettist confines himself to the sphere of words and music; the playwright is always in his shop; the novelist forever stays within the realm of fiction; the critic contents himself with making or murdering other repu- tations. In England, and also in France, men like Hamilton do all of these things, and yet manage to find plenty of time to enjoy life in the bargain. Hence we regard it as amazing, though in London it is commonplace, to find that Cosmo Hamilton has written shoals of plays and shelves of novels, that he has edited The World, that he has helped in the making of musical comedies. In odd moments he adapts pieces from the French for London and American managers. An earnest, pur- poseful play like “The Blindness of Virtue,” is a far cry from a song-show like ‘The Belle of Mayfair,” but they are included in his long list of titles. He has not yet scored a resounding hit of international proportions, either in the drama or the novel, but all this work is hardly anything more than the begin- ning of a career, for he is still under forty. Personally, he is like a type out of an English drawing-room comedy. He has the savoir faire and the debonair man- ner of the London gentleman; and he talks with the precise phrasing of one of A DRAMA FOR MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS 785 Pinero’s sapient club-fellows. He is always occupied with ideas, always getting a new thought out of the present moment, even in the trivialities of a morning walk; and under a mask of British calm and well-being he conceals a constant cerebral ferment. Whether his attention is occupied with American sky-scrapers or the propaganda of eugenics—one of his pet theories—he is always contributing the thrill of a lively mind to the topic. Until “The Blindness of Virtue” came to this country, the Little Theatre of London meant nothing here; but now it deserves a foot-note. It is located in a building which was formerly the bank of Baroness Burdette-Coutts; and where Queen Victoria once took dinner with the baroness, the business manager now checks up on the night’s “‘takings.”’ The house is under the direction of Gertrude Kingston, an actress-manager who has had a distinguished career on the English stage. Miss Kingston opened the Little The- atre October 11, 1910, with a revival of Aristophanes’ ‘“Lysistrata,’”’ in which she played the title réle. Her second pro- duction there was George Bernard Shaw’s ‘‘Fanny’s First Play,” which is now one of the successes of the current American season. “The Blindness of Virtue” followed, and a staging of Shaw’s ‘Captain Brassbound’s Con- version ”’-brings the history of this play- house up to date. The company which left the Little Theatre of London to play “‘The Blind- ness of Virtue” in America contains an interesting array of personalities. Basil Hallam, cast as Archie, has been ac- cepted as an admirable young leading man; Arthur Holmes-Gore, the father in the piece, is an excellent character actor of wide experience; Doris Lytton, as Effie, is attractive and clever; and Madge Murray, who appears in the brief réle of Mary Ann, may be identi- fied as a niece of J. M. Barrie. The au- thor’s brother is also a member of the cast, in a minor réle, appearing under the name of A. Hamilton-Gibbs. “4 | WILLIAM COLLIER Off” By RENNOLD WOLF and ——w || M. COHAN. || HIS CLOSEST ‘‘ PAL’’ IS GEORGE COHAN ADMIRES 1 COLLIER BECAUSE COLLIER IS A || SOURCE OF CONSTANT LAUGHTER. ! FOR WEEKS AT A TIME THEY || ARE INSEPARABLE | O | necessary to make an appoint- ment with William Collier, and, knowing something of his habits, I hesitated to suggest a meeting in the morning. After reflection I called him on the telephone, and spoke as follows: “Willie, I should very much like to see you to-morrow, and ten o’clock in the morning would be the time most convenient to me; but I can scarcely ex- pect you to keep an appointment at that hour.” “That will do,’ replied Mr. Collier, to my great surprise. “‘I’ll meet you at ten.”’ “Tt seems too bad to make you get up at that hour,” I said apologetically. “Oh, that’s all right,” replied Collier. “I’m not going to get up; I'll sit up.” Which very thing Mr. Collier did, and which very thing Mr. Collier frequently does. For William Collier is the most curi- ous combination of the domestic man and the nighthawk that I have ever | NE day recently I. found it encountered: Having won on his merits the reputation of being a ‘‘rounder”’ in the sense of late hours and frivolous conviviality, he is also as fine a type of home-lover as one is likely to find in the theatrical profession. He is essentially a man’s man, with the single qualification. that devotion to his wife and child makes his life with Paula Marr Collier a model of domestic happiness to which other married couples among players point with envy. In my opinion, William Collier is the best comedian on and off the stage in America. This is not intended to. mean that. he is the funniest man either on or off, but refers to his general average as both professional and private comedian. ‘Augustus Thomas and. Wilton Lackaye are noted wits in professional circles, and the late Maurice Barrymore’s repartee was world-famous. Their satire and quips are restricted to the grill room and banquet hall; Collier’s knows no geographical limitations. His wittiest sally may be uttered 786 while he hands a cigarette to a friend, or while he is in the midst of one of the few serious scenes that fall to his lot on the stage. Time and place neither retard nor hasten the flow of his humor. One of Collier’s remarks which goes the rounds of the clubs and restaurants is as likely to have been spoken over the telephone or during an exchange of greetings on the street as across the dinner table. His fun is not strained or far-fetched: It simply oozes forth as his alert mind constantly directs his thoughts to the amusing phase of any situation. The probability is that William Col- lier was born laughing, instead of cry- ing, as is usually the case. His mother— Henrietta Engle, a dancer of repute— was celebrated for her wit in her own immediate circle, and it is authentically recorded that while she lay in her bed dying, she ‘“‘made up” grotesquely in order to incite her doctor to laugh. But of Collier’s wit, more later. He should first be introduced and explained as the man who perhaps is less under- stood than any stage idol now before the public. Because the layman never hears him speak a serious line, and because to all outward appearances life to Collier is one long, gladsome song of fun and frivolity, he is regarded as a happy-go- lucky, gay blade, with never a thought of the important, solemn affairs of life. The truth is that Mr. Collier is im- pelled by serious motives, is guided by a definite purpose and a rigid code of morals, places his home even above his personal ambition and refrains from most of the shortcomings and peccadil- loes associated with: the successful Broadway actor. ; There is not a more clean-minded ma on the stage to-day than this same Wil- liam Collier. Since he first became a star—and that period covers nearly his entire professional career—he has rigidly opposed the introduction of any line in his plays which the most prudish might construe to be risqué. Also he is the only actor within my range of observation who has consistently declined to speak the word ‘‘damn” upon the stage. The word has been written in frequently by authors who have constructed plays for him, but invariably he has eliminated it. WILLIAM COLLIER—“ON AND OFF” 787 That Mr. Collier has a tremendous love for night air there is no gainsaying. His play-spell begins with the fall of the final curtain at night, but it never be- gins before then. Before he inaugurates one of those all-night sessions, which usually take place at a club or in the home of one of his friends, he first sees that Mrs. Collier’s midnight: supper is prepared and that “Buster” is tucked snugly away in bed. And then Mr. Col- lier plays, and Mr. Collier plays hard. It may be poker that he is playing— and it frequently is; or it may simply be a bout at refreshments and repartee with his closest pals, but, whatever the pas- time, it is conducted within a certain restriction and with subservience to a definite code which permits no more than a rollicking night of wholesome fun. Earlier in his career William Collier gambled more than was good for him. At that particular stage of his life his home affairs were notoriously unhappy, and the young comedian sought forget- fulness and consolation at the faro table and roulette wheel. Doubtless the experience cost him many thousands of dollars, and doubtless he considered the brief respite from his troubles worth the price. At any rate, the release from this unfortunate domestic condition and his subsequent marriage to Paula Marr marked the end of his heavy gambling, and his post-pe:formance speculations now take the form of only friendly and moderate games of chance wherein the stakes are merely large enough to give ‘ the sport zest. Collier’s playfulness never interferes with his work. He is one of the most industrious actors on the stage, and is eternally engaged upon improving a scene or working out some advertising scheme which may enhance the general coffers. He is the press-agent’s greatest friend, for he will co-operate in any publicity enterprise. His long training with the late Augustin Daly—for seven years he was call-boy at Daly’s—has made him a strict disciplinarian, and in his company he insists upon a hard and fast adherence to rules of deportment which are more and more being regarded. as obsolete by contemporary managers. For instance, Mr. Collier enforces the “half-hour” rule. Thirty minutes before the time for the rise of the curtain every member of his company must be on the stage and made up for the perform- ance. The “half-hour” invariably finds Mr. Collier himself ready to face his audience. Long before that time, he usual- ly is to be seen in the box-office, for Mr. Collier has commercial in- stincts, and since by his arrange- ment he frequently is financially in- terested in the gross receipts, he maintains a strict vigilance upon the “front of the house.’ He is the only star I ever knew to step into a box- office and sell tickets. Mr. Col- lier frequently does this. His capacity for work is £4 exceeded only by George 4] M. Cohan’s. One time, # during a tour of ‘The Pa- (a triot,”’ he was at the same time writing, rehearsing and supervising the produc- tion of “A Lucky Star.” | On one Saturday night he brought his engagement in “The Patriot” to an end, and the following Monday gave the first performance | of the new piece. He has written several “PROBABLY. COL- LIER’S BIGGEST IN- TEREST IN LIFE IS plays, and has collabo- papal pee i fis: Abowtin rated in the writing of ie dont sae SON, ‘BUSTER.’ HE various others. There - , Aieo WISHES THE BOY TO BECOME A GREAT ACTOR, AND AL- READY, UNDER THE ELDER’S TUTE- LAGE, THE BOY HAS DEVELOPED INTO A COMEDIAN WHO WINS FAVORABLE NOTICE” seldom is ‘a time when “BUSTER” he is not engaged either upon a manuscript of a play, or upon some booklet or story to be used for publicity purposes. His greatest achievement in the way of publicity was his publication of Collier’s, The Irrational Weakly, in obvious travesty of Collier’s Weekly. It was while he was playing ‘‘A Lucky Star” at the Hudson Theatre that New Yorkers were mystified one day by observing this new edition of Collier’s Weakly on the stands. 788 Photograph by Hall, New York Photograph by Hall, New York PAULA MARR COLLIER AND “‘ BUSTER’’—‘‘ WILLIAM COLLIER IS THE MOST CURIOUS COMBINATION OF DOMESTIC MAN AND NIGHTHAWK I HAVE EVER SEEN. HAVING. WON ON HIS MERITS THE REPUTATION OF BEING A ‘ROUNDER,’ HE IS ALSO A FINE TYPE OF HOME-LOVER”’ In size, type and general form it followed closely the estab- lished Weekly, and since its contents are so typical of William +«a, Collier’s wit, excerpts therefrom may be illuminating. al The cover design showed Collier in the costume of his ®.., character in “A Lucky Star.” Underneath the sketch *, appeared the line, ‘‘Not drawn by Maxfield Parrish.” In “sexe bolder type was the statement, “The American Stage Boe" ase? Exposed.” = : \ Among the articles announced were ‘‘The Umlaut and ‘eee the New Theatre,” by John Corbin; “How Fast I Came ep os from Hartford,” by Charles Dillingham; ‘“‘The Rise and PPA, se) Fall of Bellows Falls;’’ “‘On the Best of Terms with Every- 2 \ body,” by A. L. Erlanger; ‘‘The South and the Book- “ae ~ worm,” by William Shakespeare; and ‘‘Wine, Wife and &, 789 Photograph by Gould & Marsden, New York entitled *‘Depraved Confession of William Gillette, Actor.” In commenting upon the “Confession,” the editor remarks, ‘“‘Wil- liam Gillette is hoist by his own safety spiit infinitive.” Underneath a half-tone picture of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building in the Weakly was the line, “House built by tragedian one year after entering vaudeville.” In the Weakly, Mr. Collier also con- ducted a prize play contest. The first prize of $50,000 was awarded to a dra- ma, entitled ‘“The Broken Sewer Pipe,” written by “‘Bertie Nut.” One of the news items in the Weakly told ‘‘How Francis Wilson Spent $4 in Several Years.” There appeared also ‘‘The Home Life of an Actor,” alleged to be an accu- rate account of Mr. » ColX%er’s activities % off the stage. The article was pro- fusely illustrated, a picture of the Palais Royal being labeled “The Snug- gery, William Collier’s shoot- ing box on Long Island.” Another illustration was that of a huge snake, described as -“G ua r.d, oD, oe ‘ 7 “HE HAS WRITTEN SEVERAL PLAYS, AND HAS COLLABORATED IN THE WRITING OF SEVERAL OTHERS”’ Wallet,” by x Frederic McKay. Among the smaller advertise- ments were these: \e ¥ Learn Plumbing — You could not make your boy happier than by giving him a set of burglar’s tools. One Dollar a Year, for a million years, will buy you a house on Broadway. It will Photograph by save you money. Gould & Marsden ae The leading editorial was an attack upon commercialism in the theatre, wherein Mr. Collier advocated free tickets. “We are possessed of information,” states the editorial, ‘‘which warrants us in saying that Billie Burke, Billie Crane, Billie Gillette and Billie Collier, RE- CEIVE MONEY for their services. Even John Drew acts for money. Have we no gentlemen on the stage?” One of the leading articles was 9 ’ MR. COLLIER AND PAULA MARR COLLIER IN “NEVER SAY DIE” 790 : William Collier’s tame rattlesnake which twice has frightened away burglars with his rattle.” A picture of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, was designated: |, “A fairly successful actor’s town house. ~ Residence of William Col- lier. near Eighty-fifth street and Fifth avenue.” In ‘‘A Book on Eti- quette,’”’ published by Collier, the intro- . duction contains this account of his life, by himself: “Every member of the family had an argument against my enter- ing the profession. Father, gaily lean- ing on his plough as he spoke, (Father always had his plough with him when he addressed the fam- ily) with one foot in one furrow and the ; other in his Letepes ores “SINCE BY HIS ARRANGEMENT 4. HE FREQUENTLY IS FINANCIALLY hand, said: no momen IN THE GROSS RE “iM son : y ’ CEIPTS, HE MAINTAINS A STRICT how can you hope to succeed upon the stage? Your father was not a Confeder- Phowograph VIGILANCE UPON THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE. Go 4 & HE IS THE ONLY STAR I HAVE EVER KNOWN ser TO STEP INTO THE BOX-OFFICE AND SELL TICKETS ate general; your mother was not a Russian countess; and you were not born at sea. These are the three essentials of success upon the stage. Don’t take my word for it; ask any press-agent. They invented the business; I didn’t.’ ” Among the paragraphs of advice in this work were these: “Don’t think that because a play reads well it will act well. The Declaration of Independence reads well, but it doesn’t act as well as a prize fight.” “Don’t wear all your good clothes on the stage; you may be asked out to dinner.” “Remember, a three-sheet never made Photograph an actor; a third shirt may.” y tau, poate New York ““Remember that, when you are sitting in the theatre with another man’s wife, there are ladies in the cast.” “Don’t get discouraged if you fail at your IN HIS PRESENT PLAY, ‘‘'NEVER SAY DIE”’ 791 MR. COLLIER IN THE RING WITH JERFRIES AT RENO, WITH JAMES J. CORBETT AS REFEREE, JUST BEFORE THE JEFFRIES-JOHNSON FIGHT trade—plumbing or go on the real manicuring ; stage.”’ “Don’t forget that, al- though Cleveland was a great President, it’s a bad show town.” That final paragraph re- veals Mr. Collier’s unre- lenting dislike of Cleve- land. He never visits that city, and, strangely enough, declines to give the reason for this evasion. The Lambs Club theory is that when Mr. Collier earlier in his career appeared there the audiences were conspicuous chiefly by their absence. At any rate, one of the stipu- lations in his contracts is that he shall not be booked in Cleveland, and he persist- ently makes that city the butt of his jokes, quite as George M. Cohan ridicules Providence, R. I. As a matter of fact, Mr. Collier is far better known in New York than in the outlying cities, although he has made a number of successful tours. He is, however, primarily a Broadway favorite, much of his comedy turning on the latest metropolitan ex- pression or condition. In con- sequence, he remains in New York months at a stretch, See, and never endeavors to ex- “ae haust the outlying territory which might prove profit- able to him, preferring to return to the metropolis each year, where he is regarded as a favorite son. It has been > five years since either Ee or WILLIAM COLLIER AND ‘‘ BUSTER’’ COLLIER, IN ‘‘ TAKE 792 MY ADVICE” out - Chicago or Boston theatre-goers have been privileged to laugh with Collier, and he hasn’t visited Philadelphia in four years. The last time he appeared in the Quaker City his engagement was limited to Christmas and New Year’s weeks. About that time numerous New York managers were advertising widely the length of runs which their respective attractions had attained—and not al- ways computing the number of per- formances correctly. This discrepancy inspired Collier to insert a half-page advertisement in the Philadelphia news- papers on New Year’s morning, reading, “Second year in Philadelphia.” But if Mr. Collier doesn’t annually journey to the larger cities outside of New York, he has visited Australia and London, and I believe that he scored the biggest success in that city of any of our contemporary American players. No one but Charles Frohman, his manager at that time, seemed sanguine of the outcome. Collier’s friends pro- nounced the proposed London invasion suicidal, arguing that the comedian’s glib, smart thethods would be lost on the traditionally stupid British public. Nevertheless, the Comedy Theatre was crowded for months with Englishmen eager to see and hear Collier in ‘‘The Dictator,” and he became the vogue of the town. On the opening night both he and Mr. Frohman awaited eagerly the out- burst at the conclusion of the perform- ance, which was to tell them the audi- ence’s opinion. In London an audience sits through a performance under re- straint, but at the final curtain it either ““Boo-es,” or cheers and calls for the author and star. Fortunately for Col- lier, who was almost panic-stricken, cheers greeted the final curtain. Then many persons in the audience began to call out his name. “You must respond,” whispered Mr. Frohman, who stood in an entrance. “Tf I have to face that bunch, I'll die,” replied Collier. “You simply must, over here,” de- ' Clared Mr. Frohman, “or they will never forgive you, and you are lost.” Nervously Collier stepped before the curtain‘ and bowed. He was about to mutter his thanks, when a man in the pit, evidently intending to silence others who were still calling Collier’s name, shouted “Shut up!” “All right, I will,’”’ said Collier quick- ly, and left the stage. According to Mr. Frohman, who knows his London as well as his New York, that retort of Collier’s ‘“‘made” him. The few words were quoted in every club and restaurant of the city; the newspapers told how Collier had “spoofed” the audience; and over-night he became a loeal idol. No less famous was Mr. Collier’s retort to the Duchess of Sutherland, during his stay in London. Outside of the royal family, no titled woman in London possessed the social prestige of the Duchess, and invitations to her receptions were eagerly sought by all persons ambitious to be numbered among the smartest set. Mr. Collier, however, was not overjoyed when Ethel Barrymore, one of the Duchess’ favor- ites, told him she had obtained for him an invitation to one of the Duchess’ most elaborate affairs. Mr. Collier promised to attend, but expressed a fear that he might be over- come by laughter at what he would see. Also he manifested anxiety over his attire. On the appointed day Mr. Collier was on hand, under the escort of Miss Barry- more. The flower of English society was present, and it was several minutes before Miss Barrymore could conduct her charge through the crowd to the Duchess’ side. ‘Permit me, Duchess,’’ she said, “to present Mr. William Collier.” “Ah, yes,” said the Duchess gracious- ly, “I have heard much about him.” “You have,’ exclaimed Collier, “Then how did I get in here?” Miss Barrymore was about to faint from mortification when she noticed the twinkle in the Duchess’ eye. The ' twinkle grew into a smile, and the smile into a laugh. Five minutes later the Duchess was repeating to her guests the amusing retort of the American actor, and that night the comedian was again town talk. Collier’s American brand of kumor - did not, however, always fall upon such sympathetic ears. His efforts to “‘spoof” London tradesmen, cabbies and bobbies frequently resulted in disaster. At the establishment of a Bond Street tailor one day, the proprietor, thinking to be affable, said to Collier: “Did you play ‘The Dictator’ before the King?” “Long before,” replied Collier. “I’m the original.” The tailor failed utterly to grasp Collier’s idea, and went about London the next day, repeating the conversation and declaring that the joke was on the comedian. Mention of the tailor reminds me that one of Collier’s most persistent weak- nesses is his clothing. To quote Mr. Collier himself, clothes are his “bug.” He dresses according to the prevailing mode, with perhaps just a suggestion of exaggeration in pattern and lines. Time was when he was but a plaything in the hands of a tailor. He would buy every- thing that was shown him, and only by turning his back and running out of a tailor shop did he succeed in main- taining his solvency. Greater maturity has brought greater moderation in this regard, although Collier is still one of the well dressed men along Broadway. He is the essence of neatness, and his clothes hang on him like the proverbial wall paper. His pet aversions are the handkerchief in the cuff, the monocle, the bracelet- watch and English actors. No one really knows just how capable an actor William Collier is. He has been starring so long and been acting just Willie Collier so long, that many of his admirers have forgotten that he once promised to be a character actor of exceptional attainments. Born down in Varick’ street, New York, young Collier pointed for the stage as soon as he was old enough to know the location of the neighborhood theatre. At an extremely early age he _ fan away from home and joined Haver- ley’s celebrated juvenile “Pinafore” company, from which graduated such - notables as Mrs. Fiske, Julia Marlowe, Harry Woodruff, and Grace Filkins. Next he was drafted by Augustin — Daly as call boy, and, with the excep- tion of being given on rare occasions a minor part in a Shakespeareani play, his opportunity for advancement was limit- ed. It was Agnes Booth who obtained for him his first chance. She recom- mended him to David Henderson, the producer of extravaganza, and Collier blandly informed that experienced man- ager that he could sing, dance and act any sort of a dialect part. He was en- gaged for “Bluebeard, Jr.,” and gave satisfaction. His next engagement was with John Russell’s famous “City Di- rectory’ company, an organization that boasted of Charles Reed, May Irwin, Flo Irwin, Ignatio Martinetti, Burt Haverley, Julius Witmark, Josie Sadler and Alf Hampton. Nine months after leaving Daly’s Theatre as call-boy, Collier was back on Broadway—at the Bijou, one block from Daly’s—a star. Also, in a spirit of revenge, he presented an impersonation of Mr. Daly, which pleased the popu- lace, but which annoyed that worthy gentleman exceedingly. Then came Collier’s co-starring asso- ciation with Charles Reed at the age of twenty-two, to be followed by his in- dividual starring ventures with ‘The Man from Mexico,” ‘‘On the Quiet,” and a dozen other light, pleasing farces. It is a constant source of regret to Mr. Collier that he never yet has been blessed with a play of substance. He is uniformly successful, but his plays have been constructed for laughing purposes only and with small regard to an im- pressive story. However, he is hopeful. , From his large earnings Mr. Collier has saved enough to purchase a fine summer home and a few gilt-edged bonds. The major portion of his income has been expended in having fun. Any pretext for a “party” or a gathering of congenial companions he welcomes, en- courages and pays for. Only recently, for no especial reason save that it formed the basis for a night of gaiety, he and George M. Cohan organized the American Actors’ Club, to which they invited every available friend, regardless of nationality or calling. At the Hotel Algonquin, the American Actors’ Club held its first and only meeting, supped sumptuously, drank plentifully and adjourned at nine o’clock the following morning. Its mis- sion had been fulfilled. To show the earnestness of Collier in an enterprise of that kind, I have only to state that he and Cohan on that occasion sent themselves a gigantic floral horseshoe, standing ten feet high and costing two hundred dollars, and bearing a card wishing themselves luck. From the above it may be inferred that Messrs. Collier and Cohan are friends. They are far more—they are boon companions. “Pals” is the way they refer to each other. Collier is fond of Cohan for numerous reasons, among them being conspicuously that Cohan is his most responsive audience. Cohan, on the other hand, admires Collier because the latter is a source of constant laughter. For periods of weeks at a stretch the pair are inseparable except when actual- ly engaged at their respective theatres. The bond of sympathy and good-fellow- ship between them is strong. To enable them to appear together on the stage as much as possible, they have arranged a “talking act,” and accept every invita- tion to present it at benefit perform- ances. There is scarcely a Sunday night when Messrs. Cohan and Collier do not suffer all the inconveniences of these testimonial performances in order to enjoy themselves in each other’s com- pany. ; In the “‘act,”’ as in private conversa- tion, Collier chiefly talks, and Cohan chiefly laughs. Cohan’s speeches are merely for the purpose of ‘‘feeding” and inspiring Collier, who is forever making unexpected retorts and thereby convulsing Cohan, The adjustment of the thing is quite as much Cohan’s as Collier’s; both comedians are satisfied, and the audience enjoys the spectacle. On numerous occasions Mr. Cohan has informed me that Collier is the finest fellow in the world. Collier, on his part, tells me that he would rather make George Cohan laugh than please an audience of two-dollar patrons. This happy communion of souls renders their all-night sessions mutually agreeable. Once at a benefit performance the in- trepid pair dared to present a sketch in which Mrs. Cohan was berating Mr, - Collier, and Mrs. Collier was berating Mr. Cohan, each for keeping the other’s husband away from the fireside. That sketch in its only performance never really reached its dénouement, for the two wives occupied a stage box, and their frowns, as the dialogue progressed, : somewhat dampened the comedians’ enthusiasm, and caused the omission of numerous especially significant lines. Once, when the Friars had planned to give a dinner to Collier, Cohan played a mean trick on him. Collier, strangely enough, in the face of his long stage experience, is extremely nerv=- ous when he faces an audience. As the Friars’ principal guest it was necessary for him to respond to the speech intro- ducing him, and the dread of this post- prandial effort nearly brought about his collapse. : Two weeks before the date of the dinner Collier began the preparation of his address, and day and night, as the event approached, he rehearsed his remarks as if his entire professional reputation were at stake.. Meanwhile, Cohan and other companions were doing their best to augment this fear. The night preceding the dinner Collier and Cohan spent together. They said “‘Good-night,”” or rather ‘‘Good morn- ing,” about daybreak, and each went to his home to sleep until the dinner at the Hotel Astor. But before retiring Cohan arranged to have a message de- livered to Mr. Collier. It was in effect that the Hotel Astor had burned to the ground, and that, therefore, the’ pro- posed dinner had been postponed. Col- lier was so greatly relieved by this news when it was told him upon awakening, that every vestige of his carefully re- . hearsed speech left his mind. Conse- quently, it was a terrible shock when only thirty minutes before the dinner ‘hour, Cohan called him on the telephone and informed him that the previous message had been a mistake. Mr. Collier struggled through the ordeal that evening in some manner, but he has told me since that it was the most trying situation of his life. ‘THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE Out at St. James, L. I., Collier owns a beautiful home. The house is a com- modious one of twenty rooms, and the grounds are spacious enough to admit of a@ baseball diamond and tennis court. Collier—again like Cohan—is a rabid baseball “fan.” Also he is a skillful player, and an altogether worthy all- round athlete. In his younger days, A. E. Anson, the captain of the Chicago baseball team, proposed to Collier that he join his recruits as a professional player. In the position of pitcher, Collier once played a creditable game with a club, called the Five A’s, against the New York Brotherhood professional nine. Probably Collier’s biggest interest in life is centered in ‘‘ Buster,” or William Collier, Jr., his adopted son. ‘‘ Buster” is his father’s close companion, and under the elder Collier’s tutelage has developed into a comedian who annually wins favorable notices from the metro- politan critics. His father wishes him to become a great actor, and to this end is not neglecting any side of his education. He is one of the most polished, best be- haved youngsters it has ever been my ure to meet. Out at St. James, ‘‘Buster” is the organizer and captain of a juvenile base- ball team which his father finances. Only among Collier’s intimate friends fs his fear of thunder and lightning known. A flash of lightning fills him with terror. At the first sound of an approach- ing thunderstorm, Collier always with- draws from society, and usually is to be found hiding in a cellar or similarly se- cluded and dark place of vantage. He has tried in many ways to overcome this fear—not an unusual one, by the way— because he suffers much when it over- takes him. The list of superstitions to which he pays reverence includes every one known to actor folk and several of a special Collier brand. He knocks wood until his knuckles are raw, and one watching him on the street may observe him touching his fingers against every wood- en object he passes. Frequently at the J delivery of his cue he has caused stage waits by rushing about among the sce: to find a piece of wood to rap before making his entrance. Once when I asked him how he was employing his time, he replied, “Acting and warding off hard luck.” Collier embraces every new supersti- tion that is brought to his attention. He doesn’t quite believe all the ominous possibilities credited to them, but says he thinks it as well not to take any chances. Because of his respect for these super- stitions, he will not permit whistling on the stage, and forbids the use of round- top trunks by members of his company. He will not appear in a play of four acts, and once, when a particularly good one of that length was submitted to him, he announced it as a farce in three and one- half acts. Whenever it is possible, he in- troduces a dog as a character in his plays. One is conspicuous in his current production of ‘‘ Never Say Die.” He is a Catholic and fairly devout in his religious observance. One concession to his creed is his abstinence from all alcoholic beverages during Lent. William Collier has none of the airs of the theatrical star. He revels in work, and prefers a season lasting fifty-two weeks. One-night ‘‘stands” hold no terrors for him, and he is always willing to appear at extra matinées. He was in the St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, the night of the big earthquake, and when in his pajamas he was dragged into the street, his only complaint was that he had left his cigarettes behind. William Collier is a credit to his pro- fession. He is a most agreeable, sympa- thetic companion, is a devoted husband and father, a friend to his fellow beings, and, in my opinion, the best comedian ‘on and off” in this country. One day I asked him what he considered his test achievement. “About three years ago,” he replied, ‘I played pool continuously for fifteen hours, and didn’t soil a cuff.” When Esme Understood By : BAILLEY LANE (OWN at “Sam- about him.” For once D vibe it sow THE WONDERFUL ext ou — had een one o ielded to an infatuation. the gospels that the = de = fs heh the reason was that beautiful Esmé had SEGULAR AT he himself had remained something in store. “SAMMY'S” absolutely - passive to- With her luminous ward her, absolutely in- cloud of fine-spun gold- en hair and eyes that were veritably a spring song in blue, not a person in “Sammy’s” but was positive Esmé would sooner or later come into her own. But, unshakable though they were in this conviction, probably not a single one of them anticipated the outcome would prove sc brilliant. Not one dreamed it would have as its background one of the historic en- tertainments of The Knickerbockers. The Knickerbockers were an exclu- sive clan of New York millionaires, leagued together to give dinners at which they would gather the most beau- tiful women in the world. They mys- teriously drew their guests from all corners of the social earth. Wherever a Knickerbocker in his travels discov- ered a new “beauty” of really interna- tional caliber, she always appeared eventually at the semi-annual assembly. Somehow they had reduced their in- vitation list to a science. Famous men like De Witt Verplanck, who directed the last Cup Defender committeé, and men of that stamp were members. Esmé got her first impression of The Knickerbockers from Noel Haughton. And judging them by this representa- tive, Esmé became enthusiastic. And naturally, for, in the parlance of “Sam- my’s,” Noel Haughton had her “dippy 797 different. Which was a distinct shock to Esmé. Not that she was running after him; heavens, no. Not Esmé! And not that Haughton did not seek her out. Again, no. On the other hand, he was devoting himself to her night and day. Not till she had met Haugh- ton had Esmé once imagined how com- petent a man’s courting of a girl could be. And yet, as said before, it was not courting. There was every outward and visible sign—thé orchids, the din- mers, the notes, the drives, and the charming little offhand remembrances that count even more—but not the in- - ward and spiritual grace. There was everything, save the heroic touch o madness. Haughton -was fascinated— and passionless. He seemed to place Esmé before any girl in the world, and. loved her—like a sister. Esmé could not understand. From the very beginningi the affair had been unusual. Haughton had first seen Esmé at dinner at the Whitestone. He was sitting a few tables away, din- ing, as it happened, with no other than De Witt Verplanck himseli—a man” quite a bit older than he. Esmé had never looked better, though it was only a simple little crépe meteor she had made herself. For that matter, she made — most of her things. Her skill in matters of dress amounted to genius, < Haughton, in ingenious fashion, . found out the name of Esmé’s escort from the maitre de hdétel within an hour, and learning it was young Lan- nion, sub-head of his father’s bond firm, what did Haughton do but breeze in there the following day to buy some bonds! Now it is notoriously easy to chum with a man if one wishes to buy his bonds. He is more than willing to “show you ‘Sammy’s,’” introduce you to even the lady of his heart, lay the whole world, in fact, at your feet—to- gether with the bonds. Thus it was that Haughton met Esmé, if truth must be told. And it only cost him ten Cuban 6's, which, in view of the security, is by no means throwing money away. “And from that day Noel began the industrious campaign to ingratiate him- self in her favor, which seemed to have for its objective—nothing at all. Weeks of this went by, weeks hap- pier than any Esmé had ever known. She had never met a fellow who pleased her more, who fitted her better, who compelled her more. He talked won- derfully, was up on everything, was the last word in culture—was a regular Donald-Brian works in a John-Drew tase. He seemed to have a ready entrée into some notably fashionable families, and Esmé deeply appreciated his thoughtfulness in >rocuring her cards from hostesses she h.d thought never in the world would it be her lot to meet. Esmé quite liked Noel for this subtle tribute. And had he not kept himself so ever- lastingly at a distance, she would have liked him immeasurably more. "One of the invitations for_ which Noel was responsible took them up to a week-end at Lake Geneva for a house- opening at the Havenor villa. Esmé was a decided hit, and Mrs. Havenor made a special pet of her. The impression she made seemed to please Haughton immensely. She was, however, most unprepared —in fact, overwhelmed—when in the course of a drive he asked her point- _ blank to attend the approaching festiv- ity of The Knickerbockers. It was an invitation that hundreds of women THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE. “would have jumped at. It meant the making of a girl who was in the show business, just to be invited there. An invitation conferred in itself a blue rib- bon distinction. It was like opening the Golden Gate to the distinctly favored— and few. And he concluded: “A number of our men have heard about you, and are very anxious to know you.” She did not know what a truth he was imparting—not until later. “You really mean me?” she exclaimed like an ingenuous child. “Of course.” “But, Noel, those women are always such celebrated women.’ She was thinking particularly of noted women of the French stage and the French opera of whom she had read in the newspaper accounts of these functions. “They worked for their celebrity. You were born with yours.” “Isn't that sweet of you! But what on earth shall I wear?” He laughed. “With the genius you’ve got for clothes, that should worry you a lot!” And then he added, again thoughtful of her: “A Mrs. Coutts will be passing through the city on her re- turn from Japan. She is a sort of mother io all of us. And it will be ar- ranged that you will be under her wing. I can count on her, because she is Ver- planck’s aunt. And so you needn’t fret that things wont be perfectly simple— and nice.” On Mrs. Havenor’s advice, Esmé ac- cepted. That night, they had repaired to a little place on the crest of a bluff. Out in the darkness of the lake, tiny lantern lights here and there marked the masts of various yachts. Across the water far music came softly from the lighted villas along the opposite shore. Save for the wind-gusts fraternizing infor- mally with the top tips of the overhead branches—there was solemn stillness. Noel for an hour had been strangely silent. Then—despite all the weeks of aloofness — despite all his carefully planned indifference—and startling by its very unexpectedness—Esmeé felt his hand close itself upon hers in the dark. His hand trembled. With a tenderness, utterly gentle and somehow even wistful, he lifted her hand halfway to his bow- ing lips, and pressed his hot lips pas- sionately upon ner fingers. Instantly he released them. “This once at least, Esmé.” His voice was inexplicably strained. He was man- ifestly undergoing strong feeling. “Oh, love is a terrible thing!” A mast light moved out of the sta- tionary phantom fleet, and fared forth into a blackness of its own down the lake. A dog barked on the far shore, the sound seeming at their very feet, so still it was. A tiny village of leaves overhead began to stir noisily, but seemed to stop at once when they heard what a commotion they made in the si- lence. Noel led Esmé back to the house. A month later a happy party gathered on the twenty-hour train for New York. There was gentle, motherly Mrs. Coutts; her nephew, De Witt Ver- planck, an impressive man in the forties; and several other prominent New York- ers. To Esmé’s distress, Noel had failed them; business had called him West at the last minute. He had given her a train letter that would explain. Verplanck was to be her escort to the festa of The Knickerbockers. He im- pressed her as both forceful and pleas- ing—but she wished most for Noel. When she finally had a chance to read the train letter, with the telegraph poles flickering by the windows, what was her shock to read: Esmé: I am a mere employee of The Knicker- bockers. When one of our fellows sees a beautiful woman with whom he is not acquainted, I ‘‘meet’’ her in the proper way. Then he can be presented. Verplanck saw you that night at the Whitestone and has been mad about you ever since, He is. a prince—this, on my honor. I never minded the job till I met you. Now I’m both broken-hearted and dis- gusted. I’m through. Good-by. Love is a terrible thing. NoEL HAUGHTON. And then Esmé began to understand. The night of the festa of The Knick- erbockers, Esmé stepped out of a silk upholstered elevator, with Verplauck’s tender, aid—and beheld a fairyland. Through a bewitching pergola she caught a glimpse of a massive terrace. She scented the warm, exotic odor of ferns, flowers, and seductive, warm, damp earth. A celebrated architect, himself a Knickerbocker, had produced a reproduction of an Italian garden that was a startling illusion. Following through and coming out upon the terrace, the first person Esmé recognized was a Belasco actress of re- nowned beauty who leaned upon the marble balustrade and smiled down im- ~ partially upon a group of admirers in the graveled path below, all boxed with alyssum, Swift songbirds were darting through the dwarf trees, rooted in genuine sod, whose tops touched the roof of stained glass, softly illumined from without. A noted Parisienne, a soprano at the Metropolitan, wonderfully gowned, rested upon an Empire staff and chatted to her escort. They were midway on a miniature bridge across a miniature la- goon, whose bosom of lilies rose and fell in sensuous respiraton. So carried away was Esmé by the sumptuousness of the architect’s skill that she remembered hardly anything Verplanck had been whispering down to her so graciously. From off somewhere a gong punng’d softly. Leisurely the guests began to wander up an inclined plane of real turf, whence they soon issued into the open air: And there, on the roof of the sky- scraper, open to the stars, they be- held another array of gardens worthy the hanging miracles of the maharajahs. Here were loftier trees, their gnarled roots knuckling through long grasses - down into the genuine sod. Scattered about were quaint campfires, burnin merrily in the shadows with perfum woods. Around them were rich, luxu- rious pallets upon which the guests couched themselves Roman-fashion, téte-d-téte in twos. Such was the en- vironment provided for the dinner. And the first thing served, as was The Knickerbocker custom, was their own 800 ‘THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE mystic gourmetic symbol: an olive cooked in a quail, which in turn had been cooked in a young chicken, the chicken in a duck, the duck in a goose, the goose in a turkey—and, when done, all thrown away but the olive. The newspapers the next morning were full of the gown, which Esmé had contrived for her “presentation” dress. A word is possibly due it, for the vast amount of pains she took. It was her masterpiece. For several years Esmé had studied dress as a fine art. She had haunted art rooms for plates showing the garb of women of all ages and climes. She had always been struck by the robe of ihe Hindu woman —the graceful Saree. Esmé’s Saree-gown was infinitely be- coming. The exquisitely shawled brow ve a mystic, nunlike sweetness to er face. The waist was a simple, single width of the one-piece fabric which, continuous with the skirting, was thrown upward across the bust from the hip to the other shoulder, carried from the neck up and over the hair, and then trailed down loosely from the head upon the bare arm. Her nubile figure bore marvelously the simple drapery: a soft, rich material in ivory, set off by a wide border encrusted with gold worked in a stunning arabesque. She seemed veritably some mythic Ves- tal from out the past. De Witt Verplanck—in Noel Haugh- ton’s own word—was mad about her. The spectacle of absolute infatuation in this man, who had challenged woman- hood with his celibacy for far too many years for that womanhood’s con- tentment, attracted widespread atten- tion among The Knickerbockers. _Esmé and Verplanck now appeared always together in public, with, of course, the presence of Mrs. Coutts in the capacity of duenna. Esmé had de- murred at lingering so long at Mrs. Coutt’s Fifth Avenue home, but both the aunt and the nephew were so sincere that she had to yield to their demand that she stay. At length Esmé said to him: “Oh, you mustn’t do so much for me. I feel—” “Uncomfortable,” he supplied at once. He looked at her rwefully, then said reassuringly: “I hadn’t counted on that. Aunt and I must remedy it.” Esmé did not understand. A few days later Mrs. Coutts made Esmé an offer which quite overjoyed her. She had heard of Esmé’s skill in gowns, knew of the sensation caused by the Saree-gown—in fact, had often heard Esmé express her interest in the profession of gowns and modes. So Mrs, Coutts suggested that she establish Esmé in such an enterprise. Esmé had to depend upon herself, and in this way she not only would have independence but also a chance of materially enriching herseif. Mrs. Coutts would put up the money, and could insure an_ initial patronage from among her friends. They would organize as a stock com- pany, the shares issued two-thirds to Esmé and one-third to herself, and when Esmé made enough she could buy in the outstanding third. People had always said Esmé would have made another Mrs. Osborn or a Lucille. Esmé plunged into the enterprise with enthusiasm. It meant so much: dignity, work she would willingly bury herself in, and the chance for a great deal of honorably earned money. She got out again her water colors, res- urrected many sketches she had made in idle hours, little thinking she would ever use them. Mrs. Coutts selected a site on upper Fifth Avenue, and there established rooms which, shrewdly, copied mildly a luxurious nook in the zenana of an Eastern maharajah. The fame of the Saree-gown was to be made use of. The enterprise “paid”—paid hugely. As had been so freely predicted, once Esmé just had a chance in this line, she was certain of success. Her ingenuity, her knowledge of fabrics, her fine eye for color, her stamp of style on every- thing she designed became a rage with the fashionable New York women. In three months Esmé had been able. to buy in Mrs. Cofttts’ third of the stock. Now the business so firmly established and widely heralded under the name of “Esmé” was all hers. She was indepen- = | A ta a Ss aa Ss @ en ne ‘eae ~*~ ft m~ dent of anybody and everybody in the world. She had money—had position. And her styles began to appear regu- larly in the fashion journals at home and abroad. She had come into her own. It was not till the fourth month that Esmé learned the whole thing had been De Witt Verplanck’s doing. Mrs. Coutts, save for her nephew’s bounty, was penniless. He had conceived the en- terprise. And keeping steadfastly in the background, he had kept it from her completely. Esmé said to him in distress: “Oh, I can’t let You do all these things. Because you and I can’t ever—” She stopped at the almost pathetic entreaty in his eyes that she would not say what she was about to say. “Esmé, I wish you could understand. What you were just about to say, there is no need to say. Once, you remember, we were talking about people marrying. I was about to ask you, I believe. You saw it coming, it seemed, and warned me you were not suited. And when I asked why, you said: ‘I don’t like so old aman.’ Your very words, Esmé. It was honest in you—yes, honorable. I saw then. I was unmasked to myself. I saw that that tremendous youthfulness in my heart had been tricked. Fate had put an old man’s head on it.” He was speaking rather tensely. “Esmé, you can't like so old a man. It never can be. Never in all this world. And I am resigned to it. But yet I want to do for you. Provide boundlessly—as a boy would, the boy I am at heart. You need never see me. Never. I shall stay away from you, save when you wish to have luncheon with me or something. You are independent of the whole world now. But just let me do things from afar. I want nothing—no thanks, nothing. Just to make things a little easier for you, a little more complete.” But Esmé was as yet too recently come from a profession in which the in- trigue and guile of shrewd rich men was attested too often in the histories of countless girls. Esmé was still a trifle suspicious. She did not understand. However, Verplanck kept his word. He never came near her any more, save "WHEN ESME UNDERSTOOD when she asked him to dinner, or tele- phoned him to meet her for luncheon. Nevertheless, every morning a Broad- way florist executed Verplanck’s stand- ing commission and delivered flowers— the rarest, and these the best in taste— to do Esmé for the day. When abroad he sent her wonderful presents. Always there was some little remembrance, And then Esmé, little by little, began to understand. Though now a lady of high renown, yet Esmé had never lost her loyalty to the chorus girls. Never had she waxed so prosperous that she ceased to sym- pathize with their arduous makeshifts, with their plucky, saucy nonchalance in the face of a life in which there was no telling what the morrow would bring forth. Coney Island therefore always ap- pealed to Esmé, more than any spot in New York. Not for its stucco and staff, its horseplay or its commonness, but because it was a great refuge for the chorus girls in the lean days of idle summer, The world thinks the hard- ness of the girls’ faces, or the harshness of their laughs, or their callousness as they face the ranks of coarse male faces © below is inborn—innate—characteristic. But Esmé knew. This was one thing she understood. She knew the hardness of those faces was not vicious—but world-beaten. Sadness and despair and pain had rained their blows upon them, till there was this. She knew the harshness of the laugh meant they were laughing by sheer strength of will, so that they should not give up right then and there and suc- cumb to the tears after which there was no hope. She knew the callousness, the cyni- cism of those faces. And for its cause, had but to turn to the disgusting bestial- — ity which, seat after seat, held up its varied masculine mask of flesh. To Coney Island Esmé loved to have Verplanck or some other trusted escort take her oftenest. Her heart yearned for the girls on the stages of the “free shows.” She would have them come down and sit with her, and chat, and “reminisce.” Once Verplanck had discovered her ion 802 slipping a ten-dollar bill into some little dancer’s hand, whom she had had sit- ting at their table. “You'll never get it back,” he com- mented with a pretense of cynicism aiter the girl was gone. “I don’t want it back!” answered _ Esmé spiritedly. “It’s enough to feel one is doifig it.” His face lighted with a warm, grate- ful light. “Then possibly you may some- day understand—some other people.” On one such expedition, this time not escorted by Verplanck but by some other one of her many admirers, Esmé encountered a strangely familiar figure. He was walking just ahead of them down the walk to Dreamland. Some- thing in the slim, lancelike straight- ness, something in the patrician bearing despite the slightly out-of-style clothes, unlocked a fiood of memories and started Esmé’s heart to fluttering at a tate that really surprised herself. The man turned. It was Noel Haugh- ton—but a new Noel Haughton, a man of bronzed face, firm chin, and stern self-confidence, a man who had been living the life of the out-of-doors, a man who had been doing things. On see- ing Esimé, his hand instinctively shot to his hat ; then he seemed to lose courage. Without speaking, he turned and walked quickly away. “Go! quick!” she asked her escort. Celia man I want to speak to him. ick !” After a half-block’s pursuit her good- natured companion overtook Haughton and brought him back. Subsequently it developed that he had heard of her suecess, but had not the courage to seek her again. He himself had become part of an entirely different life—one his old New York friends would laugh at. He had gone to the coast and gone into farming. Little by little he had built up a reasonable suc- cess, though badly handicaped by lack of capital. But that would come in time. At any rate he was happy, contented, and felt he had vindicated himself. Esmé, by sheer physical strength al- THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE most, forced Noel to stay three weths over the time he had planned on. Some- how his old hold over her was more powerful than ever—especially since his manly fight to restore himself out West. She imagined what a_ tremendous amount of nerve it must have taken; he, who had always been the esthete, the silk-stocking. His gameness thrilled her. And she saw that he cared for her with a devotion she never had dreamed of. Her fingers tingled, ached for the touch of his lips—like the kiss, the one kiss, he had given that night at Geneva. But now, as then, he held. stubbornly aloof. He implied ‘the reason. She was ideally situated, and he had nothing to offer her in its stead. He was mak- ing a good living, but not for ten years would he have the capital to do the big things he meant to do. At length she could endure this practiealism of his no longer. “But I don’t care what you have or what you haven’t. I don’t care. I don’t care! Can’t you see that nothing means anything to me—only you?” Unable to contain himself-any longer, he caught her in his arms, and then and there they began to draw up the list of those entitled to announcements. Knowing Verplanck’s blind devotion to her, Esmé hesitated to tell him. She felt he would be human after all, and a beautiful friendship would be wrecked. She feared he would disap- point her. But Verplanck humbled her, made her feel pitiably small for so misjudg- ing him, created a new admiration for him he never had had. Verplanck said: “T have always told Mrs. Coutts that if you married the right fellow I would start him up in business. I have just had a talk with Noel. After what he has done I would trust him even with you.” Verplanck had advanced him a hun- dred thousand for the development of his farm enterprises in Oregon. Bi ton’s fortune was assured. And then Esmé understood. aR Ts La SEEN SPS RRO ES i Na BO 2 74 ba ; af a “4 Fhe SE ee BS Son Pee ape ees are eee 2 ‘‘ WHEN HUNTING FOR HIDDEN ASSASSINS IN A DARK ROOM, ALWAYS CARRY A LANTERN” CHANNING POLLOCK’S REVIEW Se A er OO NS B Y Me Roe RO: a j EAD more R closely, dear heart. This is not an account of a meeting between insurrectos and government troops in Mexico. It is a list of the casual- ties in two plays which were pro- duced last THE DEAD Don Rosepo. Soldier of fortune. Shot in the second act of ‘‘The Ghost Breaker.’’ “Bui”? OrMISTON. Pirate. Stabbed in second act of “‘The Painted Woman.” “PORTUGUESE Jog.’’ Pirate. Stabbed two acts later in the same performance. Unknown Man. Dropped through trap door intoa river under stage of the Lyceum. THE WOUNDED Rusty Snow. Colored. Knife wound. Joun Barton. Mate of the Thanks- iving. Shot and seriously injured in the fret act of ‘‘The Painted Woman.” month March came in like a lion. To the dozen or more dramas of crime and vi- olence already within our midst were added three riotous deliriums of blood, on Broadway. 803 thunder and sud- den death. In comparison with the mildest and sanest of the trio, “The Conspiracy” is a gentle pastoral, and “The Argyle Case” a_ tea-cup comedy written in the perfumed ink of W. Somerset Maugham. This year stage life is just one damned thing after another, “And,” as Philippe Dondidier used to sing in “The Pink Lady,” “the worst of it is they like it.” If managers have "THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE __ e mad, so has the public. “How’s the play?” I asked an actor about to open in a piece that had just been tried on the road. “Raw stuff!” he answered, candidly. “Any other season it wouldn’t have a chance, but now—I don’t know!” “Raw stuff” it proved to be. I came away from the performance, about the middle of the third act, without a mem- orandum, convinced that the engage- ment hardly would last longen than the following Saturday. Three weeks later, with considerable difficulty, I suc- ceeded in getting seats from which to make a more careful inspection of this same play, then settling down to a long and profitable run. However reprehen- sible my original carelessness, the pun- ishment fitted the crime. George Bronson Howard once gave meé his explanation of the “best-seller.” “The people who used to read dime novels have grown older and more rosperous,” he said. “They pay a dol- ar for their dime novels now.” Some- thing of the sort must account for the vogue on Broadway of thrillers that used to delight Eighth Avenue and the Bowery. Curiosity is an elemental in- stinct. Monkeys possess it in the great- est degree. Next come children. Per- sons of puerile mentality naturally are most interested in what most surely rouses that instinct—in highly colored and broadly treated narrative that cre- ates suspense. They read for story, not for style. Wit, subtlety, plausibility, insight into human nature, the expres- sion of a philosophy, the graceful phrase and the well-formed chapter or scene make no appeal. New communi- ‘ties always foster melodrama. London, whose theatre-goers are greatly more cultured than our own, does not care for it—or, at least, cares for it only in diluted form—and that is why so few American plays succeed in Lon- don. “The Master Mind,” “The Ghost Breaker,” “The Painted Woman,” are -. more than melodrama—and everyone _ knows what follows mellowness. There is a difference between Nick Carter and Gaboriau. “Within the Law,” whatever it may not be, is amazingly ingenious. The two pieces first men- ~ tioned in this paragraph employ the _ most intricate and complicated machin- ery to murder a mouse. Andrew, in the play at the Harris, plots laborious- ly, enlisting the aid of half a dozen persons in an appallingly complex con- spiracy, to ruin the life of his enemy, Courtland Wainwright. Mine is not a master mind, but I venture to suggest that two ruffians and a bottle of vitriol would have done the work quite as well. Trap doors, secret compartments behind paintings, cut-throats concealed in stands of armor, as in “The Ghost Breaker,” are not necessary to the de- struction of gentlemen who go with a lighted lantern to hunt hidden assas- sins in a dark room. An infant in arms could see through the scoundrels~in these plays. They are perfect X-ray photographs of villains. Andrew is a master mind and Warren Jarvis is clev- er and courageous wholly on the say- so of their authors. In combination they contrive nothing as cunning as the clock in “Raffles” or the sand-papered fingers in “Alias Jimmy Valentine.” We are founding a school of dra- matic literature that is neither dramatic nor literary. Because one or two clever melodramas have made that type of entertainment popular, we are deluged with the drivel of men who imitate the melodrama without being able to emulate the cleverness. This would not _be important save for the significance of public approval. And this approval, happily, hardly can represent more than a mental phase. “THE MASTER MIND” “He sent the Master Mind’s brother to the chair,” says Diamond Willie, who, with a proper sense of shame, strenuously objects to being addressed by that pseudonym. In consequence of which the Master Mind, otherwise Richard Allen, other- wise Andrew, a valet, starts out to “get” the former district attorney, Courtland Wainwright. His scheme, to say the least of it, is somewhat laby- rinthine—somewhat reminiscent of the’ famous trap that was to kill flies by e Am \ (EU Pra? ro ~~ Pra DGG ~w D> > ‘STAGE LIFE IS JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER” 805 ‘806 + © ‘THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE luring them up a ladder whose missing tung was to cause them to fall and dash out their brains against a cement floor. Five years ago, Wainwright was in- jured in an automobile accident. A girl saved his life. “And then,” as Andrew puts it to her, “for a few brief moments you looked into each other’s eyes. .. . Small chance that you would ever meet again—you the little waif and he the man of the world.” But Courtland Wainwright had painted the girl’s portrait from mem- ory, and the Master Mind, stealing into his house while the district at- torney was away, picked the picture from a number of others, naturally concluded that the artist was in love _— its subject, and went in search of er. Then he sent the “little waif” abroad and had her educated. When she re- turned, he provided her with a ready- made family, consisting of Diamond Willie, who was to pose as her broth- er, and of a father and mother with nice, long police records. These people were in his power, and had to do as he bade them. Of course, the girl, Maggie Flint, alias Lucene Blount, suspected nothing. Neither did Courtland Wainwright, who married her two weeks after meeting her through a_ trumped-up street fight in which her supposed brother saved his life. The following day, with truly masterly ingenuity, the Master Mind had “some one who wouldn’t give his name” call up on the telephone to tell Wainwright the name and address of his preserver. Meanwhile, Andrew had written a little note to say that Wainwright would receive white cards to indicate that his enemy had not forgotten, a ted card in token that said enemy was drawing nearer, and a black card to say that the end was at hand. Then, as valet to Diamond Willie, now Wal- ter Blount, he installed himself with the fictitious relatives in the mansion of his intended victim. A word would have sufficed to ap- prise our young hero of the true char- acter of his guests. Did the valet speak that word? No! That would have been © too simple, and not the least master- — mindly. Instead, he sent to Chicago for .a burglar named Jim Creegan. Jim was to break into the house, and, when discovered, was to follow the example of a certain gentleman who recently played the same trick in real life with- out conspicuous success, and declare that he had come to meet Mrs. Wain- wright. Mrs. Wainwright was to swear that she had meant to go away with Creegan. That was the only way to save her husband from disgrace, An- drew said, and, with touching maiden- ly ingenuousness, she believed him. However, in a lucid interval, Wain- wright saw through the scheme. Whereupon, Andrew threatened to dis- close to the world the identity of the district attorney’s wife and her sup- posed family. It would seem that any- one who could “stand for’ Mrs. Blount’s manners could “stand for” her morals, but Courtland was consid- erably upset. He tried hard to have the valet confined in a madhouse, but Andrew, still master-minded, escaped by the artful device of showing that he wasn’t mad. And then, through ten- der feeling for the girl, he gave up his scheme of retribution, and left un- avenged the brother on whose account he had been put to so much trouble and inconvenience. This clumsy and highly improbable story is told soggily in dialogue of the most archaic description. Fancy a “crook,” masquerading as a servant, warning his associates “if through jealousy and bickerings you fail to act a your parts, so that my plans miscarry, it will count against you far more than disobedience.” The little melodramatic tricks of the ely are equally heavy and fatuous. Creating a family for a heroine is an original idea, and not bad for purposes of farce, while the author of the piece does succeed in creating curiosity as to what will happen next, and these rather insufficient merits are the only possible explanation of the fact that “The Master Mind” is doing well at the Harris. The principal rdle is realized by Ed- mund Breese, who plays quite in the a rr Sage © AS re Ve Oe on, oy ab ee ee, he ee Pe spirit of the piece. His performance recalls, without affecting, our admira- tion of E. M. Holland’s valet in “A Social Highwayman.” Mr. Breese’s as- ' sociates take their tone from him, con- tributing portrayals broadly drawn but not ineffective. “The Master Mind” bears the same relation to drama that sign painting bears to mural decoration. “THE GHOST BREAKER” I pon’t know the whereabouts of Segura, Spain, in which Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard have laid the last two acts of “The Ghost Breaker,” current at the Lyceum, but, whatever its location, Segura is no place for a nervous man. Segura may be great for rheumatism, or dyspepsia, or house- maid’s knee, but if you are in search of peace and quiet you had better go to the Balkans. There is only one spot in the world less restful, according to Messrs. Dickey and Goddard, and that is the Hotel Manhattan in New ¥ork. To the Manhattan comes Warren Jarvis, of Kentucky, bringing with him a feud, a low comedy colored servant, RAW STUFF and a complete armament of rapid fire guns. When one of these goes off ad- jacent to the anatomy of an opposi- tion feudist, Mr. Jarvis, instantly re- calling the example of “The Chocolate Soldier,” breaks into the room of a sleeping beauty, in this case known as the Princess Maria Teresa of Aragon, Thinking the intruder a burglar, the Princess arises and arrays herself sim- ply but tastefully in a sky-blue kimono with iridescent pailettes and a garni- ture of shadow lace. Then she promises to help him escape if he will come to Segura and rid her castle of ghosts and such-like vermin. ‘* THE PIRATES MAINTAINED A WELL-TRAINED QUARTETTE”’ Mr. Jarvis climbs into a trunk and has himself handled with care onto the Lusitania, where the Princess presently is joined by Carlos, Duke D’Alva, whose nature is as obviously false as his mustache. It appears that the haunted building is supposed to be the hiding place of a million dollars, con- cealed there by a remote ancestor with little faith in savings banks. Persons who go into the castle in search of the million never come out alive. The con- nection between the money and the ghost doesn’t seem to have struck any- body—not even the chief of police of Segura, who has never raided the cas- B ss 07 - 808 4 THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE _ tle or even stationed a man in plain _ clothes at the front door. Act three finds us in the town, at an inn with mandolin and guitar accom- “paniment. Mr. Jarvis has advertised widely his forthcoming tour of ex- spectre-ation. Carlos engages a soldier of fortune, Don Robledo, to do a little target shooting. Once again, his knowl- edge of dramatic literature preserves Wr. Jarvis. George Bernard Shaw saved his life in the Hotel Manhattan; William Gillette performs the same service for him in. Segura. The Ameri- can comes down the stairs whistling _ “Dixie,” sees the waiting assassin, smashes the lamp, fires into the dark- ness, receives a return fire, and, just as you are wondering which man fell, exits whistling “Dixie.” Thus, at 10:15 O'clock, one gets one’s first thrill at “The Gost Breaker.” The second and last thrill is regis- tered a few moments later, in the heart of the haunted castle, when a figure in armor comes to life, and our hero nar- rowly escapes being parted in the mid- dle. Instead, Mr, Jarvis is mixing things up with this protected cruiser of an enemy, when suddenly said en- emy steps upon a trap door and does an Annette Kellerman into the moat Delow. After which, Mr. Jarvis wan- ders about with the lighted lantern al- ready mentioned, courting instant death and leaving the center of the stage to the low comedy colored servant, who has been brought along for laughing purposes only. At 11 o'clock Carlos steps from behind an ancestral portrait, through which he might have shot our hero any time the spirit moved him, and confesses. The Princess declares her intention of taking the next boat for Kentucky, and the play is over. H. B. Warner, as Warren Jarvis, is as Kentuckian as Katharine Emmet, who plays Maria Teresa, is Spanish —or as Lew Fields is Irish. Mr. War- ner’s ease of manner, however, adds much to a performance generally with- out repose. Frank H. Westerton’s Car- * los recalls what a Western critic once _ wrote of somebody who played Shy- - dock—“his whiskers prove that the buf- - falo is not yet extinct, and his acting is not much better.” Frank Campeau takes Don Robledo very seriously, which is a great deal more than any- body else succeeds in doing. “The Ghost. Breaker” is just foolish, “THE PAINTED WOMAN” IN THE matter of battle, rapine and assassination, however, nobody has ahything on Frederic: Arnold Kummer, who succeeded in getting more con- centrated villainy into four acts of “The Painted Woman,” at the Playhouse, than all our authors combined have crowded into the whole season. Had the piece lasted long enough, Manager William A. Brady might have adver- tised “a murder a minute.” Unfortu- nately, it didn’t. ; Mr. Kummer’s locale was Port Royal, Jamaica, in the seventeenth century, when this island: was the headquarters of the buccaneers who roved the Spanish Main with an eye to the Spanish Main Chance. His story was “The Easiest Way.” Bull Ormiston, called The Firebrand, had captured a young person, named Ramona. John Barton, a Puritan, mate of the Thanks- giving, saw her, loved her, and was shot. The pirates maintained a well- trained quartette, which warbled sweet- ly while Ormiston searched for the body and failed to find it. So he sailed away —while Ramona acted as day nurse to Barton—and returned just as they were leaving together. Barton was locked in the next room. Ormiston smashed the door, and Pedro the hunchback killed him, and the quartette was about to hang Ramona, when Portuguese Joe bought her, and then Ramona -was going to kill Portuguese Joe, who tied her in a chair to oversee his murder of Barton, who finally got the better of him and stabbed him in the back just as the curtain fell on the last act. The pirates in “The Painted Woman” were quite as amusing as those in “Peter Pan,” but one missed the inci- dental music. THE PRINCESS THEATRE Tue Grand Guignol was a long time coming to America, but its counterpart Sepak pee et 4S meen em a ee SS Be has reached here at last in the Princess, a charming toy playhouse, even smaller than the Little Theatre, that opened the middle of March. Here, in an environ- ment of gray and old ivory, will be settled-the mooted question whether we, on this side the water, are ready for concentrated drama, half the bulk and double the strength, one teaspoonful guaranteed to take the place of a full meal. These plays are the very antithesis of “raw stuff’—the last word in polish and cunning and craftsmanship. Their ap- peal is to the sophisticated and the satiated. To their full enjoyment is necessary not only intelligence but ex- perience; less that the auditor shall have thought deeply than that he shall have lived widely. They are truffles and terrapin for a public that has outgrown beefsteak. Writing fifteen years ago in the Washington Times, I pleaded for the one-act play that should bear the same relation to the drama that the short story bears to the novel. Others had voiced the plea before, and have done so since. London always has had the curtain raiser, produced to keep the pit quiet while the stalls were finishing dinner, yet far above the level of the short pieces offered us in vaudeville; but what we hoped for was the tabloid offering of Paris. Sporadic efforts in this direction were made by Frank Keenan, and, considerably later, by Arnold Daly. The time was not ripe, however, and these pioneers did not find an ideal ground for their experi- ment in the Berkely Lyceum. The pretty Princess Theatre disposes of this latter trouble, and now it re- mains only to be seen whether there is a patronage large enough to support this form of entertainment. Certainly, there could be no more auspicious open- ing than the present performance, com- posed of four plays. “The Switch- board,” a ten-minute novelty by Edgar Wallace with which the evening begins, has the advantage of a most original idea. The only figure on the stage, a telephone operator, pleasantly played by Georgia O’Ramey, is seen at work. From behind a black curtain back of her, supposedly out of the night and the vastness. of the city, come the voices she hears on the ’phone. There is some capital comedy, derived from the girl’s pertness and from “somebody else on the wire’ who persistently interrupts romance to inquire for a lost dog. The dramatic incident is reached when a faithless husband, phoning to his lawyer that his wife has found him out and will obtain a divorce unless he “beats her to it,” suddenly hears a flash of conversation between the woman and a man who loves her. “Who was that?” he demands of the operator. “I’ll give you five hundred dollars for her name —a thousand for evidence! Who was she?” “Long distance from Chicago,” re- plies the operator. “Fear,” which is said to have had three hundred nights at the Grand Guignol, is not quite so fearful as it sounds, though some heroic cutting will make it a very interesting melodrama. The story deals with the suffering of two engineers in charge of a section of railway being built in India. The heat and solitude of the desert are graphic- ally shown. Cholera breaks out in camp. One of the men is innoculated; the other, in an agony of dread, shoots the victim to avoid nursing him, and several days later, in turn is shot by command of an officer who knows of the murder and who, ordered to exterminate those who might spread the plague, sees him in the grip of a fugitive sufferer. First honors in the acting of this piece go to Harrison Ford, whose cries as he is pursued into the house of the engineer inject into the tragedy most of its horror. “Fancy Free,” by Stanley Houghton, author of “Hindle Wakes,” is a brilliant comedietta, strongly suggestive of Leonard Merrick’s “The Suicide of the Rue Sombre.” A gentleman running away with another gentleman’s wife meets the other gentleman, himself ac- companied by a lady, at a seaside hotel. The humor of the little farce arises from the grotesquely unusual view of the situation taken by its participants. Holbrook Blinn is delightful in this play. 809° 810 The most talked-of feature of the bill will be Edward Ellis’ “Any Night,” which was done originally at a recent gambol of the Lambs. This is the most terrible thing I have ever seen in a theatre—the seamiest, most sordid, most sickening cross section of under- world life. Its agony is heightened by Willette Kershaw’s clinically searching performance of a consumptive street walker. This woman drags a drunken “THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE returning to the blazing room, calls ~ through the window: “Anybody else?” The father claps his hand over the mouth of his daughter, and, holding her close, stands silently awaiting their doom as the curtain falls. “THE FIVE FRANKFORTERS” Arter all the excitement of the month 7 it was with something like a grateful 7 ‘(MAY IRWIN IS A HOST IN HERSELF” old man into one of those hotels which lend their luster to the name of the lawmaker who created them. To the same hotel comes the man’s daughter, lured there by a scoundrel who seduces her. The hotel catches fire. The young people, seeking an escape, rush into the shame. Father and daughter meet. A room in which the sobered sexagenarian has just discovered the depth of his fireman carries the cad and the street walker down a ladder to safety, and, sense of relief that one witnessed “The Five Frankforters,”’ a placid, slow- moving comedy from the German of Carl Rossler, produced at the Thirty- ninth Street -Theatre. This play, which has been a conspicuous success in Germany, and which is supposed to deal with the founders of the house of Rothschild, is utterly devoid of dra- matic clash or suspense, depending upon homely domestic sentiment, some good character drawing, and a simple and rather conventional love story. Ma- thilde Cottrelly’s quaintly charming and sweetly maternal portrait of the first Baroness Rothschild, here called Frau Gudula, seconded by the capital work of Edward Emery, Frank Losee, John Sainpolis, Frank Goldsmith and Pedro de Cordoba, as her four sons and her grandson, develop in the fullest meas- ure the human quality of the piece. “The Five Frankforters” begins with a family council, to which the finan- ciers have come from all parts of Europe. The objects of the meeting are twofold. First, the brothers are to receive patents of nobility conferred upon the house by the Emperor of Austria, and, second, they are to hear Solomon’s. plan for marrying his daughter Charlotte to the impecunious Duke of Taunus, who has applied for’ a considerable loan. This project is op- posed by Frau Gudula, who wisely ob- jects to the proposed mixture of races and classes as well.as to jeopardizing the happiness of her granddaughter. Nevertheless, Solomon, in the second act, suggests this marriage as a condi- tion to lending the money, and the Duke, rather amused at his naiveté, promptly proposes to Charlotte. The young lady, however, has fallen in love with her cousin Jacob, and, stoutly re- sisting the commands of her father, finally succeeds in gaining his consent to wed the man of her choice. There are times when “The Five Frankforters,” with all its agreeable sentiment and directness, seems a trifle tedious and empty, but in the main it is a pleasant enough entertainment. One wishes that there were not so much talk about the getting of money, so much stress laid upon the superiority of persons who have got it, This, how- ever, probably is. unavoidable in writ- ing the biography of a family of finan- ciers. No one need regret missing, or will regret seeing “The Five Frank- forters.” ‘LIBERTY HALL” Quite unexpectedly, the great de- light of the month proved to be the re- vival of R. C. Carton’s “Liberty Hall,” _ made by Charles Frohman to celebrate RAW STUFF. the twentieth anniversary of the Em- pire Theatre. Most of us had forgotten this comedy, which was produced orig- inally in August, 1893, with a cast that—happily for folk who find facts dry—I seem to have mislaid. It will turn up two or three days after this article goes to press, but that needn’t bother you. “Liberty. Hall” is really a play—not a mere curiosity of the theatre; a pep- per-pot, devoid of nourishment, de- signed only to pique dull or jaded sen- sibilities. Towering in sharp contrast with the little entertainments of a little season, the piece reminds us that once there was dignity in our drama, breed- ing and education, mature reflection, sober observation of life, a viewpoint that took cognizance of ideals, illusions, and standards, and, last but not least, some knowledge of English. Grandilo- quent and copy-book-like are many of the speeches in “Liberty Hall,” but, oh, the relief of encountering a vocabulary, of hearing a prettily turned sentence or a polished and rounded bit of rhetoric! With one possible exception there isn’t a playwright in America who could have written that third act soliloquy of Mr. Owen's! Moreover, in spite of its old- fashioned motives, “Liberty Hall” has a good, honest story, told with much whimsical, playful humor, and many little tender, delicate, wistful flashes of sentiment. It has, too, in the old book- seller, William Todman, an engaging and genuinely humorous character— one that often suggests Mr. Todman’s much-admired friend, Mr. Dickens. Mr. Todman “had the presumption” to marry the sister of the woman who married Sir Norman Chilworth. When . _ Sir Norman dies, leaving his daughters penniless, Mr. Todman takes the girls into his humble home back of the book shop. Thither, as lodger in “the second story back” goes the much-hated cousin of the Misses Chilworth, posing as Mr. Owen, a gentleman “in soap,” resolved to be loved for himself alone, and most romantically and heart-warmingly enabléd to play the good fairy when financial misfortune comes to Mr. Tod- man. Also, he interferes at a critical moment in the elopement of the younger Miss Chilworth, and is caught at it by the lady of his heart, who supposes him to have been acting fast and loose with her sister. This mistake is cleared up, of course, and the piece ends very sweetly and charmingly in the conventional manner. Too much cannot be said in praise of the performance at the Empire. ohn Mason is a trifle older than Henry iller was when he appeared as Mr. Owen, but no one except Mr. Miller could approach the mellowness and the skillfulness of his portraiture. Lennox Pawle, always to be remembered for his butler in “Pomander Walk,” may be remembered, too, hereafter, for his exquisite delineation of Mr. Todman. Martha Hedman is girlish and lovely as the “toplofty” Miss Chilworth, and one finds her slight accent very pretty. ~The remainder of the cast leaves nothing to be desired. “Liberty Hall” is solid, substantial, dignified drama. Its laughter leaves you self-respect and its tears leave you un- ashamed. Who witnesses the perform- ance at this time will feel as though he had got out of prison and into a cultured company. ‘WIDOW BY PROXY” Is it merely coincidence that all funny women have first names begin- ming with an M? There are Marie Tempest, Marie Dressler, and Marie Cahill, and there is May Irwin, who moved into George M. Cohan’s Theatre not long ago with a farce by Catherine Chisolm Cushing, entitled “Widow by Proxy.” If anybody tells you that “they can’t come back,” refer him to Miss Irwin, who on this occasion came back with a bounce and a buoyancy that baffle description. May Irwin is a host in her- self. She can get more out of a line or a look than most comediennes get out of an entire string of complications, The best that can be said, and the most that need be said, of her present vehicle is that it gives her ample opportunity to make much of her talents and he personality. ' THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE “Widow by Proxy” is rather old- fashioned farce, with a conventional story and a pivotal situation that dates back to the days of “Turned Up.” Dolores Pennington has been badly treated by the relatives of her dead husband, Jack, and so what more nat- ural, at the appearance of a solicitor with a will providing that she shall go in person to these relatives to take possession of her estate, than that she should refuse to do anything of the sort? And what more natural than that her friend Gloria Grey should then pretend to be Dolores Pennington? “Those aunts of Jack’s never laid eyes on you,” says- Gloria, What would be- come of farce if anybody had ever “laid eyes” on anybody else? Of course the report of Jack’s death, like the report of Mark Twain’s, proves to have been exaggerated, and of course Jack comes back, to the despair of Gloria, who was about to marry Captain Pennington. Meanwhile, Miss Irwin has rollicked about like a plump and very unctuous bull in a dramatic china shop. She sings only once in the course of the performance, and her songs do not cause us to forget “T’m Looking for a Bully” or “When I Walk That Levee Round,” but there isn’t a dull moment while she is on the stage. If laughs are worth a penny apiece you get your money’s worth in “Widow by Proxy.” THE IRISH PLAYERS Just as our dramatic critics were pre- paring to make up lost sleep and get acquainted with their families, into Wallack’s Theatre came the Irish Players, with a répertoire of eleven thousand plays. The event proved note- worthy chiefly in that it afforded an opportunity of observing the astonish- ing development of Sara Allgood, who has grown fast since first she appeared as leading woman with these Celts at Maxine Elliott’s. Miss Allgood’s method is of the most modern, and her versatility is nothing short of wonder- ful. American managers are more foolish than I think them if they per- mit Miss Allgood to leave America. PERT Po Se RR The best of the new pieces presented by the Irish Players are St. John G. Ervine’s one-act comedy, “The Mag- nanimous Lover,” an amusing study of piety, with a story suggestive of “Hindle Wakes,” and Lennox Robin- son’s “Patriots,” an almost-too-dread- ful tragedy of the commonplace. “The Building Fund,” in which Miss Allgood presents a convincing portrait of a very old woman, was repeated, as were “Blanco Posnet” and “The Playboy of the Western World.” This latter re- vival was effected without casualties. “THE AMERICAN MAID” ForTUNATELY, John Philip Sousa’s “The American Maid,” at the Broad- way, requires no more than the little space left at my disposal. Billed as a “new comic opera,” it is not new, or comic, or opera. The book, by Leonard Liebling, is a loosely put together example of the old school of musical comedy, in which no story was too RAW STUFF 813 — — to be possible. Mr. Lieb- ing’s account of the gentleman who loses $5,000,000 during the finale of Act 1, tries to borrow it offhand-like from a friend, and, failing to do so, lets his daughter go to work in a mu- sical glass works, wouldn’t be important even if it could be true. The exposition of this tale includes only three or four funny lines and nothing whatever in the way of situations. Mr, Sousa’s score isn’t the least operatic, being nothing more nor less than band music. He con- cludes his second act, as in “El Capi- tan” and “The Bride Elect,” with a march, but this particular march proves to be noisy rather than inspired, and, despite the best efforts of the trom- bones, elicits little enthusiasm. There is tune to a waltz, “The Crystal Lute,” and to a song called “Sweethearts,” but nothing in the score lifts it above the average. The book, as_ before stated, doesn’t belong on a stage, but in a museum of antiquities. fo] [a0] [6] [caer] [6] WRONG WHEN THEY'RE RIGHT ELSIE DE WOLFE, often called the best dressed woman in America, was talking about the draped skirts of the new fashions. ‘“‘A bride who was spending her honeymooning period at the Marlborough- Blenheim at Atlantic City early in September, appeared before her husband in a draped suit of biscuit-colored ratine, ready for a parade on the boardwalk. ‘* ‘How do I look, James?’ she queried. “ ‘Great,’ replied the admiring man. “Now tell me, James,’ she said, anxiously, ‘does my skirt hang even all around? Look sharp, now.’ “« * Ves,’ replied James, after a close inspection, ‘it certainly hangs quite even, dear.’ ‘Oh, pshaw!’ she cried, ‘then I’ll have to go upstairs again, for there’s some- thing the matter with it. if they hang even.’ ” These new draped skirts, you know, don’t hang right fe You Would Write For Vaudeville By WILLIAM C. LENGEL Author of the oneact plays, “ The Game” and “The Come-Back,” HAT am I going iW to do with this i vaudevillé sketch, now that I have it writ- ten?” is the first question asked by the writer of one THIS ARTICLE IN THE SERIES BY MR. LENGEL DEALS WITH “GETTING YOUR ACT ON THE BOARDS.” and it should not be a hard matter to get in touch with the person you want to see. An actor, on the look-out for some- thing new, is generally of these condensed plays. willing to read what- It is perfectly logical, toa, It not only occurs to the more or less unknown writer, but I have been asked that by many writers whose names are familiar under the titles of magazine stories. There is no clearing house which serves for vaudeville sketches as do the magazines for short stories. In the offices of theatrical managers there are play readers who consider plays that are submitted, but up to the present time, there has been no real substantial institution formed where the aspiring author of vaudeville sketches may have an opportunity of learning whether he has written a worth-while sketch. A company is now being formed in Chi- cago, however, under the direction of Charles E. Kohl, general manager of the Western Vaudeville Managers’ Association, and Mort H. Singer, the Chicago producer, which will work along this line. More of that later. There are two safe ways of market- ing or producing a vaudeville act. The first is to sell your act to an actor who is now playing in vaudeville. Most of them are anxious to get new acts and it is a sorry place nowadays where there is not a vaudeville theatre. The bill each week has at least one sketch, 814 ever is submitted to him, One of the best known actors in the country, who is going’ into vaudeville next season, has read more than a hun- dred playlets, and has yet to find a suit- able vehicle. And that fact brings forth this caution: If you are going to ask an actor to consider the purchase of your sketch, be sufe that your act is written to fit that particular actor, just as you would consider the material used by the various magazines before you would submit a short story. (Few writers do this, however.) For instance, you would not think of taking Frank Keenan a sketch written for a light comedian, or submitting a playlet to May Irwin, which had as its central figure a slim ingénue. The fore- going statement seems rather obvious, but when I happened to see a sketch given to Claud Gillingwater, which called for a breezy young juvenile, and many others that were as impossible, I feel that it is almost necessary. Vaudeville sketches are sold for ten dollars and up. There are wagon loads of them written which can be bought for ten dollars each, and these are worth twenty cents per hundred pounds, the current rate paid for waste paper. The supply of vaudeville sketches he es is unlimited, but the demand is even greater. In.a talk with Mr. Koht re- cently, he told me that the significant playlets in vaudeville could almost be counted on the fingers of one’s hands. If you have a worth-while playlet - you will be able to get a very fair price for it. Most actors, when they run across something good, prefer to buy the sketch outright and take the chances of its proving a success or a failure. Some of them, however, are willing to take an act on a royalty basis, paying the author a certain per cent of the income of the act as it plays. Established authors rarely let their playlets go except in this manner. Royalties average around ten per cent. Another manner of disposing of your playlet is through the manager of the local vaudeville theatre. Actors playing their houses generally make known their wants in the way of new acts and some of the managers are glad to help them find something suitable. The more energetic and wide-awake man- ager, too, is on the look-out for some- thing new, and if he uncovers anything startling, of course that helps him a great deal at the main office. A great, big-hearted manager of one vaudeville theatre read my first amateurish effort. It was awful. Still he read it, but in- stead of telling me to find a way to turn about and try to make an honest living he lent encouragement, and— Well, maybe one of them will do as much for you. To produce the act yourself—that is, engage the actors, hold rehearsals, get a “try-out” and then if the act is good, get booking, is perhaps the most re- munerative way of handling your play- let. Of course practically the only logical places in which an act can be produced are New York, Chicago and perhaps San Francisco. It is in these cities that the booking offices are, and there will be found the agents who can give or withhold the nourishment that will make your act a go—“time.” Booth De Morgan lived in a small town in Iowa. The following is a chronicle of how he wrote and pro- duced a vaudeville act, and as his ex- periences were practical they will serve IF YOU WOULD WRITE FOR VAUDEVILLE ~ 815 better as an illustration as to the manner in which an unknown writer can get a vaudeville act on the stage than any theories. Booth not only had an idea that he could write vaudeville sketches, and wrote them, but he had a pretty good opinion of himself as an actor. He. managed to get a couple of hundred dollars together and took a course in a dramatic school. Then with a vaude- ville sketch in his pocket he went to New York. For three weeks he visited the offices of the various theatrical agents, looking for an engagement in a “production.” Now Booth De Morgan was by no means prepossessing in appearance. He was the kind of chap who will look around if you call “Rube!” No manager or agent could “see” him as an actor, so finally it came to a point where the vaudeville sketch was _ his only hope. On the directory of the Put- nam building he read “Orpheum Cir- - cuit, sixth floor.” Except that he knew that the Or- pheum circuit was a string of vaude- ville houses, he had no idea about producing his vaudeville act. Still, he had heard of “play-readers.” So he got in the elevator, rode to the sixth floor, and got off. Here he was confronted by a majestic figure in a special police- man’s uniform. That gentleman was talking interestedly to a very pretty girl, and when Booth asked to be directed to the “play-reader of the Orpheum circuit” he jerked his thumb over his left shoulder in no direction at all and Booth started down the hall. He entered the first open door. A little short man with white hair was at a desk. “What do you want?” the little man growled. “I have a sketch I want to read to you,” stammered Booth. “Read a sketch to me!” shouted the little man. “Why, I wouldn’t let: Otis Skinner or William Jennings Bryan ‘read a sketch to me. Give it here.” He read the act through. He saw it was crude, but back of it all was a — really good idea. There was originality and humor in it, and he laughed from THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE time to time. He read it not only once, but twice. When he finished he told Booth to get “people” for the act and he would see that it got a try-out. Of course this was the result of an accident that could only happen once in many years. The “little man” was @ very big man inthe offices of the vaudeville syndicate. As a -rule he could only be seen by special appoint- ment. “Get the people for your act.” En- gaging your actors, then, if you are going to produce your act, is the first thing to do, as the advice given to Booth De Morgan is good on every sketch: < Booth left the office and instead of being an actor seeking employment became a manager seeking talent. His Manner now upon entering an agency was changed. He told of the “types” he wanted for.his sketch; he talked with the various actors and actresses about playing in his act. Booth had little money, but lots of nerve. It took him a few days to get on to the game, and at first when he talked with an actor who said he would have to have one hundred dollars a week, and half salary for lay-offs and rehearsals, he became frightened; but he soon learned that these were merely set speeches. Here is a somewhat faith- ful reproduction of a typical conver- sation: “Looking for an Booth would ask. “Well, hardly that,” would be the reply. “I’m just resting now, and if I don’t sign with Charlie Frohman to go out in his next production, I might take something temporarily. But you understand, Charlie has first call on my services.” “What is your salary?” “One hundred dollars a week. What is it—vaudeville?”’ “Ves “Try-out act?” this with a rising inflection and the suggestion of a sneer. “Ves.” “Got to have half salary while re- hearsing then. Got any booking?” “Not yet. Going to try out the engagement ?” Circle a week from next Tuesday. The~ United people are going to look it over and if it goes we will get some time. Do you want this part at thirty dollars over the small time and an increase when we get the big time?” “Well—well—I like you, young fel- low, and I’ll go you on that. Say, by the way, let me have two dollars, old top. I’ve got to grease the landlady’s palm. Thanks! What time did you call rehearsal for?” You will not find it hard to get peo- ple for your act, although the greater number of the acts tried out are failures, and actors are becoming wary. There is no reason why they should not be. They spend their time rehearsing for two weeks, give a performance, and if the act does not “get across,” they are back where they started two weeks before. You engage an actor as you would a cook or a maid at an employment office. The offices of agents are very similar to the intelligence offices. Actors register, giving their special line of work, and when an agent has a call for a particular type he gives a note to that particular actor to the producer. Or they sit around waiting for some- thing to turn up. While you will find it a comparatively easy matter to get actors, whether they will prove the ones you want is an important consideration. De Morgan, as you will learn later, made a bad selection the first time, which almost and by all the rules should have proved fatal to his act. De Morgan had perhaps a dozen different actors and actresses come and read his act and rehearse once or twice before he got in touch with Sam May- berry and his wife Mae Mayberry. They were looking for an act such as he had, and he made a working agree- ment with them whereby the act was to go out on a royalty basis. Two other people were engaged and rehearsals began in earnest. De Morgan started to direct the re- hearsals himself, but things seemed stilted, so he employed an old-time stage manager for about ten dollars to attend to rehearsals. This was a wise move, as considerable “business” and ao eile ' action were put in which he, inex- perienced as he was, had not seen. It was during these rehearsals that De Morgan also began to learn that vaudeville sketches as well as plays are un-written and rewritten rather than written. His best and cleverest speeches had to be revised. They sounded book- ish and unnatural. Other speeches had to be condensed—some left out. It seemed as if he had changed every speech in the act, but later he found that he had not even begun to make changes. The whole thing amused him greatly. He sat and watched the final rehearsals that were held in the theatre and de- cided that he had written a very good act. He knew that the audience would get as much pleasure out of it as he did. It was a poor prophecy. The last rehearsal was held the morning of the try-out. It went off without a slip—an unfailing sign, say the learned ones of the theatrical world, that the first per- formance will be a fizzle. The learned ones in this case were about right. The Circle Theatre, in which the try- out was to be held, is one of a number of vaudeville and picture houses in New York where “professional try- outs” are given one or two nights a week. This is an outgrowth of the “amateur nights” of the past. To view most of the acts put on, one is inclined to believe that “professional” is a mis- nomer, and merely used as a more dig- nified term than “amateur.” At the same time, many a really good act playing the big time to-day was started in these try-out houses, developed over the small time, and then sent over the more important circuits. Vaudeville acts, like plays, are tried out on the “dogs.” That is, they are sent to the smaller houses, or to the theatres in small towns surrounding New York and given a few weeks in which to round out before being brought in to the city. Frank Keenan, in “The Oath,” which was told about in the first article of this series, played, as I remember it, three nights in Perth Amboy, and the rest of the week in an- other small town—or perhaps it was two weeks before he was brought to the IF YOU WOULD WRITE FOR VAUDEVILLE 817. Fifth Avenue to make the biggest sen- sation of that season. Gus Edwards’ “Song Révue,” one of the biggest and most spectacular acts in vaudeville, which is now in its third season, played for a couple of weeks at some of the seashore houses before opening at Hammerstein’s Victoria for a “run” of several weeks. This is necessary and a part of the game. Of course, these two acts were al- most sure-fire from the start, and were not compelled to stay on the small time as long as the ordinary act or the play- let of the unknown writer. The name and reputation of the actor has a great deal to do with this. Still, a long list of failures could be given where poor sketches could not be bolstered up by the past reputation of the “star” in it. A prominent actor can often hold up and make a poor playlet a fair success; and on the other hand a poor actor, or a good actor miscast, can ruin a really good act. Representatives of the various book- ing offices are delegated to attend these try-outs. Some of them really do attend. While they are looking for something new and startling, they have grown so accustomed to being disappointed that it is a question if they really go in a spirit that will allow them to judge of an act’s worth. Their attitude is: “You’ve got to show me, and I don’t believe you can; and I’m not really in- terested anyway.” The audiences you face in these try- out houses are receptive. While they are not prejudiced, they are going to take every opportunity to find some- thing to laugh at that they shouldn’t; it is their self-given privilege to be hypercritical. There is no complaint at this. They have a right to assume this attitude. It is essentially fairer than the attitude of an audience composed of your friends would be. You would cer- tainly have no true index as to the worth of your sketch as viewed by an audience that would feel constrained te offer nothing but praise and applause. How much greater is your success if you can force applause from a “go- ahead-and-show-me” audience! It is an audience of this kind that 818 Booth De Morgan’s little company faced on the night of the try-out of his act. They got great enjoyment out of “panning” a juggler, who became so nervous he missed half of the imple- ments he threw in the air. Then came a “Spanish” daacer, who danced to the accompaniment of an accordeon which she manipulated herself. Following this was a monologist who was kindly per- mitted to sing one song and start one of those terrible things that by the stringing together of the titles of songs Or plays a story is told. He got half-way through when from the gallery came: “Get the hook.” Before things had really become quiet, the curtain rose on Booth De Morgan’s act. Booth himself sat high up in the gallery, his face white and his hands cold. The audience started to laugh “at” his act, not “with” it. Lines were forgotten, business left out ; éverything to him seemed to go wrong. Mayberry and his wife did well, but the other people in the playlet were ter- ribly miscast. De Morgan recovered sufficiently to make notes of changes of speeches, of additional business, and he really saw that the act had good pros- pects. When the curtain went down there were three or four curtain calls, but he felt that the thing had been a failure. He had seen several representatives from booking offices in the audience, but he wished they had not been there. As soon as possible he went back and saw Mayberry. Mayberry was not near- ly as discouraged as De Morgan was. He had been through the same thing before. De Morgan took the manu- Script of the play and with a blue pen- cil cut out speech after speech; others he re-wrote. He also made notes of the few business. Mayberry’s hopefulness Tent him a bit of courage. It was nearly morning wheh the two of them had changed the act to’ what they thought it should be; and except for the central idea there was little left of the orig- inal play. The next morning De Morgan, after walking by the Putnam building half ~a dozen times, finally entered and went up to see his friend. When he presented THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE _ his card the boy told him to go in at once. The little man greeted him pleasant- ly. “Your act didn’t get over very well, did it?” he asked, reading from a slip of paper which contained the report he had been handed, “It seems you did not have the right people. The thing will work out all right, though. You get some new people for those two parts, rehearse for a week and I will give you three days up in Auburn and the last of the week at the One Hun- dred and Twenty-fifth Street house.” So that was the start of De Morgan’s first playlet. His second act, produced in Chicago, was done along the same lines. There was very little money in- volved in the production of either act. The main reason was that at that time he had none, or next to none. What De Morgan did can be done by others with the same amount of hustle. In the week’s “time” that De Morgan had been given, the playlet began to smooth down and it took on the sem- blance of a well-balanced act. Now, how- ever, it was out of the hands of his friend in the United Booking Office, in so far as getting additional booking was concerned. It was up to De Morgan to place his act to the best advantage. This did not prove an easy matter, and the troubles and trials of getting a vaude- ville sketch, written by an unknown author, produced by him, with a com- pany of unknown actors, established on a substantial basis, where there is a certainty and not a chance of playing the next week, will have to be left out of this article, and possibly be told in another. The company—mentioned in the first part of this article—which is now being organized in Chicago with Charles E. Kohl at its head, will do a great deal toward giving writers of sketches a fairer chance to get a new playlet over. This company plans to start a bureau to consider vaudeville acts as theatric- al managers consider plays for pro- duction. Competent play readers will be employed to read the acts submitted, and those worthy of production will be staged and tried out in an adequate manner. | “How- ALMA T HE Criterion, famous play- house that it had # been, lifted its head in- : congruously in the May night there among the At The Many’ Window By THE STORY “OF A GIRL WHO HAD TWO PROPOSALS IN ONE EVENING MARTIN ESTABROOK curiously, regarded him in silence. The steady clarity of little Mae Blyer’s glance was often disconcerting, but Mr. Westfield did not seem to find it so. smaller amusement places and the lobster palaces and the cigar stands of the town’s “fun-spot.” In the good old days it had lorded over them all, but the same vari-colored lights now flashed from its arched en- trance as from theirs; there was the same glitter of plate glass and polished brass rails, the same echoes of an in- different orchestra, the same tide of pleasure-seeking humanity pouring in upon it, the same good-natured push and rush: it had been given over to the “movies.” To-night the tide had not yet set in. The doors were just being opened. A rather startlingly individualistic girl with red hair and brown eyes entered the little glass ticket cage, arranged things to her satisfaction in the change drawer, mounted the stool and adjust- ing her black broadcloth skirt so as not to make knees in it, gave a re-estab- lishing touch to her hair, and threw up the “how-many” window. Two minutes later Mr. Bert West- field, “entertainer de luxe,’ playing an engagement at the. vaudeville house next door, sauntered up and leaning against the rail eyed the end of his cigarette with tentative gaze. “Been thinkin’ of you all day, Miss Mae,” he observed. “Couldn’t get you out of my mind.” She leaned on her elbow, and, smiling 819 His silk hose were a trifle insistent in color, and the angle at which his hat rested over his right eye was a bit exaggerated, but the right eye. itself—as well as the left one—looked out with unquestioning satisfaction upon the world at large. Except for a lurking briskness,—a kind of practical impracticality,—you would have said that he lived merely to select his hose and to keep his ciga- rettes lighted. In reality he was ex- traordinarily nimble in pursuit of fame and money. “Life didn’t give you an even break, did it, Miss Mae?” he queried, still regarding the end of his cigarette. “Had plenty of rough stuff handed out to you, haven’t you?” “Anybody heard me whining?” she retorted with spirit. “You bet your life they haven't!” he exclaimed, flecking the ash from the cigarette with a strangely beringed finger, and glancing at her admiringly. “That’s what makes you such a brick. How long have you been on your own?” “Not so long that I’m worrying about it. You needn't, either. I get along all right, all right.” She glanced: sig- nificantly at a group of early-comers, and he made way for them. Then he sauntered back again. d “It’s a rotten shame for a girl with your looks—” he began, but she cut him short. Ps 2 “We'll leave my looks out of it, please. When I’m ready to have them discussed I'll go inside,’—with a little backward tip of the head toward the Stage. “You ought to be on the road,” con- tinued he, imperturbably. “Take it from me, you don’t know yourself, or you wouldn’t be here. Now I’ve got a rattlin’ good thing I’m goin’ to put on next season, and I need a partner. Gracie De Remer’s crazy over the part, but everybody knows that Gracie’s lazy. She goes on the fact that she’s been in legit. I want somebody with a reputation to make—somebody with push and cleverness. You’ve got both, Miss Mae. D’ye follow me?” “I’m no budding star,” she laughed. All up and down the long, white, glittering street there was not another laugh like hers, so natural and spon- taneous and infectious. Perhaps, for the matter of that, there was not another girl like her. She was only nineteen or twenty, but she must have been a thousand years old the day she was born, so much of the world she had always known, so much of life she had always borne. Her father, a stage carpenter, had died when she was a little thing. Her mother, who had broken her health in “tank” com- panies, journeying from one end of the country to the other, kept on a few years after the husband’s death, then gave up and followed him, leaving the girl and a brother several: years older. One set of urgencies after another had driven the two since then. They had brought her to the Criterion and they kept her there now. They never kept her brother any- where long. He lived by his wits. He Was a promoter of questionable ven- tures, a confidence man, a—what -you will. A handsome, attractive fellow, he considered his presence his fortune, but she, in her bitterness, knew it to be his deplorable misfortune. His adventures broke her honest -dittle heart. They rarely saw each other. Sometimes he drifted into town on the crest of the wave and took her to din- mer at a fashionable hotel and tried un- successfully to shower her with THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE presents. Oftener he telegraphed her™ for money. Lately he had been more than ordinarily successful in one of his “promotions.” His infrequent letters were full of high finance. She had not seen him for more than a year. She had never spoken of him to any- one but The Boy From The Country. She did that to save The Boy. He had come to town devoured by a spirit of restlessness and adventure, a driving desire for “big things.” The symptoms were exactly those of her brother in his younger days. The Boy had a mother at home who had tried in- effectually to keep him there where he belonged. Her heart had gone out to’ this other woman who must suffer as she had suffered. It had gone out to The Boy himself. So she had told him simply and plainly about her brother, But to no one else had she ever men- tioned him. “Well,” questioned Mr. Bert West- field earnestly, “what d’ye say?” “Nothing doing here. You've knocked at the wrong house,” she de- clared, and shook her red head with emphasis. “My dear girl, you could do a nif- tier rag than anybody on the boards,” he scclalinad movingly. “Tt’s a copper-riveted cinch I’ll never try it!” said she. “Oh, kick off, child, kick off!’ he ad- jured. “There’s no bee in my bonnet that buzzes of rags and trots, nor any of this cabaret business,” she insisted. The wise little face had shadowed. Some- thing came into the yellow-brown eyes and gave them depth. For an instant her soul flashed there, eager and hungry and tremulous. But he was not seeking souls. His interest lay in a very different direction. “See here,” he cried, his voice fall- ing to a more caressing inflection, “if it’s a home you mean you want, why =| not? The fact that a girl is on the stage ~ aint any reason she can’t have a home, =| is it? This playlet of mine is goin’ to ~ be a winner. It'll take the coin; there’s ~ no question about that. Now I started out to make you a proposition, but by | George, I'll change it to a proposal! You'll be playin’ safe if you accept it. I hope I’d know how to treat a wife like you.. There’d be no ditchin’. We'd trot right along in double harness to the end. Don’t answer me now,”—with a glance over his shoulder at the gathering crowd. “I’ll be back later.” And humming a catchy little air, he whisked the stub of his cigarette across the curb and entered the vaudeville house next door. She stiffened as she stared after him, and the white light streaming down on her from hundreds of electric bulbs touched her color-flooded cheeks. An unholy smile tugged for an instant at the corners of her mouth; then she be- came merely an automaton as the night’s tide of humanity flowed by the window, face after face appearing there in flashing succession. She was mechanically pushing out tickets when she became aware of a taxi at the curb. The Boy From The Country sprang out, glanced impa- tiently at the line before the window, then took his unwilling place in it. Something in his manner, or in his handsome, likable face, gave her a start of anxiety. He had been away for a week, on business in a neighboring city. A few hurried lines from him had spoken of -“a big thing” that was offered him—a partnership with the most wonderful fellow in the world in a project that would double his mother’s money a dozen times in as many months! Her wise little head had im- mediately told her that such returns were too good to be true. She had been worrying about him ever since. “I’m off for the East to-night,” he said to her hastily and in an undertone as he threw down a bill and bought a ticket as an excuse for his presence in the line: “I just got back this after- noon and I’ve been busy shaping things to get away to-night, or I'd have hunted you up. I couldn’t go without seeing you. My train is due in less than an hour. Sebastian takes it at mid- night.” “Sebastian! You’re joining forces with Pierson Sebastian?’ breathed little Mae Blyer. “You’ve heard of him, I see. He’s AT THE “HOW-MANY” WINDOW 821 making a great reputation. It’s the chance of a lifetime! He’s a prince of good fellows, as well as a prince of finance. I hate leaving like this,”—as the crowd pressed impatiently forward. “T’'ll write. Good-by, and good luck!” The man directly back of him pushed forward, and the line bore him past the window. From the curb he turned and waved at her. Elation was in the high car- riage of his dark head and in the squareness of his fine shoulders. He sprang into the taxi, and the traffic of the street bore him away. She became again the automaton. — But this time she did what she had not done in months—she handed a man the wrong change. Three times she did it; then she pressed the electric bell at her elbow and one of the employees of the house came in response. “Tell Shraeder he'll have to send somebody out here to take my place for twenty or thirty minutes,” she said. “And get me a taxi, right away.” She waited at the station beside the gate that led to his train, and presently The Boy came swinging along, a bag in either hand, his fresh young face alight with thoughts of the future that beckoned so alluringly. At sight of her he gave a whistle of surprise. “Came down to see me off, did you?” he exclaimed. “That’s good.” “You musn’t go,” she whispered tensely. “You can’t!” “T don’t understand. I’ve got to go, you know.” He set down his bags for the instant, staring at her question- ingly. “Not to meet him,” she pleaded. “Sebastian? Why to be suge! What have you got against him? Oh, I see! You think all promoters are like— like—” He hesitated in embarrassment. “Like my brother,” abe supplied un- steadily. He nodded and catching her ‘little ungloved hand gave it a grateful pressure. “It was mighty good of you to be interested enough to come down here,” he said, much moved; “TI’ll never for- get it. But don’t you worry your good "THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZIN little head over that part of it. Pierson Sebastian is all right. He’s great. He’s another sort altogether. He is—” “He is my brother,’ she breathed. “Sebastian—but how—” “Under an assumed name. It’s—it’s as bad as that.” She turned and went swiftly through the depot, and he stood as one stunned, and let her go. But as she settled in the taxi she saw him coming across the Waiting room, his bags in his hand. The train crier was just calling his train for the last time. “Back to the Criterion, as fast as you can go without being arrested,” she said to the driver. She was crying, and her big black velvet picture-hat had slipped and was on one side. The second crowd of the evening filled the house, and only a few late- comers were straggling in when The Boy appeared at the window again. He looked pale and tired and she felt in some inexplicable way that to- night—now—was the crisis of his life. For weeks he had been in town look- ing for something to do—something that appealed to him more than the hardware business which his father had laboriously established in the home- town The Boy had so often described to her in true affection, but always half humorously: the thriving county-seat, With its five or six thousand people, its old houses among old trees, and its new houses among new trees, with meadows and pastures and green fields closing in about it. He was not different from other boys his age. He had the making of a de- pendable citizen in him, once he found ‘himself and his life’s work. Mean- while, many things beckoned him, among them the Orpheum Circuit. He ‘played the violin with considerable skill and feeling, and he had several novelties he introduced in what he __ ¢alled a violin-logue. “Well, the promoting business is queered. What now? The Circuit?’ he queried, sharply. “Femburg told me to-day he’d give me a chance.” Femburg Was the manager next door. “A chance to what—play violin-logues=m all the rest of your life?” she cried, a 7 strange look of maturity in her eyes. 7 “To teed yourself piecemeal to show- crazy folks that are already glutted?” = He began to speak defensively, but 4 she cut him short with an impatient exclamation. ; “It’s make-believe! Why don’t you q choose life?” He looked off down the long, glitter- ing ‘street, his face moody and full of unrest. “See the grooves in that pavement,” she exclaimed suddenly. “They’re worn by the feet that come trotting past here every night. They’re deep enough to make you feel there’s not a single family in town that sits down at home after dinner and reads the evening paper and plays the piano and eats a plate of apples and goes to bed. Yet this street’s no different from thousands of others all over the world. The Streets of Light. It’s on those streets you want to spend your life, is it?” He made a gesture of annoyed im- patience. “How do I know what I want?” it said. “Why don’t you go home? Every- thing’s waiting for you—your mother, and the house that’s too big for her and that she and your father always meant for you and your family, and . the business, and your friends. You'd be a pillar in the community,” she urged, crinkling up her nose in a comic way she had under amusement. “That will be a distinction after awhile, since nobody stays long enough in one place nowadays to turn into a pillar. Mebbe that’s why everything seems kind 0’ tumbling down and falling in, like a circus tent when half the poles are gone.” He was staring strangely at her, thinking that all the world over mothers were sheltering daughters not a whit more delicate and worth cherishing and protecting than she—girls who had seen life only around the shoulder of a chaperon or through the glass door of a limousine. Yet how squarely she had looked it in the face, and what lessons it had already taught her! Something in his look made her t/t FA — — st len 2 a -+ i. a a ay bend quickly over the money drawer and speak nervously to fill the queer pause: “My, but it must smell good there in the country to-night, of gar- dens and things! Gee, aint you sick to death of smelling gasoline?” “T’m sick of the whole business,” he declared. “I believe I'll do as you say and go home.” She looked up swiftly and nodded her eagerness, “It’s what you’ve been trying to get me to do ever since I struck town, isn’t it?’ he commented. “I haven’t said much, but I’ve seen what you were driving at right along.” She smiled, and her eyes said, “Oh, to have a home to go back to!” “Tll go to-morrow,” he said, with decision. He laughed a little, not very steadily. “Lord, but Mother will be sur- prised! I’ll tell her it’s all your doing. It’s a slow, monotonous life, but on my word, I believe I'll be glad to get back to it. Do you think you could stand that sort of_thing?” “Me! Me stand it! I’d just like to see myself get a chance!” “Come home with me then,” he said startlingly. “Will you do it?” She stared at him in amazement. Fleetingly the soul of her looked forth, aioe 4 tremulous, starved. The Boy saw it and felt blinded, as one who stumbles into a holy of holies. “Everything is waiting, just as you said awhile ago,” he urged. “Wont you come, Mae? I believe I can make you happy.” Gratitude and tenderness and appre- ciation and sincere affection were in his face, but not love. Seeking that with her quick, penetrating glance, she missed it, and was not deceived. She pulled herself together with a little mental shake and smiled her old ready smile with its suggestion of im- pudence and mischief. “You haven’t got a picture of me, have you, going to church with your mother, a prayer-book under my arm, and paying calls with her on week days —I never paid a call in my life!—and making conversation with the top- lofties who dine so often at your house? No thanks. It’s more than my AT THE “HOW-MANY” WINDOW 823 sense of humor would let me fall for. I don’t fit in.” “They would all love you, once they knew you.” “They'll never know me,” she de- clared with emphasis. ““Now run along and let me get ready to shut up shop. We can say good-by to-morrow.” He was not so easily dismissed. The handsome, boyish face had never been so winning, so full of earnestness, as when he tried to override her objec- tions, to persuade her of the wisdom and the desirability of the plan. The light from above, and behind, and from all about, beat on the glass cage and on the small black-gowned figure perching stiffly on the stool. It fell on.the gallant red head and on the freckled hands locking each other tightly. It touched to their depths the yellow-brown eyes—the eyes with their longing veiled, and their far dream. “Tt’s no good arguing,” she said with a carelessly dismissing gesture. “Any- body would tell you that it’d be as foolhardy of you to make such a marriage as it would have been to have gone off to-night with—with Pierson Sebastian. You go home and take up the things that are waiting for you, and marry a girl that belongs there. I don’t.” “You are letting what people might say stand in the way of your happi- ness!” he exclaimed. She laughed, a shaky little laugh. “Tt seems to me you're taking a lot for granted,” she remarked. “Aint there such a thing as friendship, I’d like to know? Just friendship?” “There’s oftener such a thing as love—just love,” he said gently. “You must love me or you wouldn’t care so much what becomes of me. You wouldn’t have done all you’ve done for me. Don’t you suppose I realize what it must have cost you to tell me about your brother ?” : She slid from the stool with an ex- clamation of impatience and began preparations for closing. With her back to him she observed testily: “The cool- ness of a fellow who wont believe you don’t care for him!” “Why do you turn your eyes away _ ‘THE GREEN BOOK if you don’t love me?’ he asked. “Look at me.” “What’s the matter with you any- how?” she cried, and switching off the light of the cage went out and locked the door. Over her shoulder she said good-night, and then went into the theatre. When the show was over and the house had emptied itself, she stood in . the entrance for an instant talking with the manager. She had on a long fawn-colored coat with vivid green totiches, and her big be-plumed hat; and The Boy, hastening from the curb where he had been awaiting her, thought. unconsciously of how her clothes would impress his home town. Fortunately, he argued, his mother would know how to persuade her to modify them. “You!” she breathed as he eagerly hurried up to her. “Don’t you believe me yet?” -“No, I don’t believe you, dear,” he whispered. Her hands flew apart in a wild little gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know how I'll ever prove it!” she said, but - on the instant her eyes lighted and she gave an exclamation of relief: Mr. Bert Westfield was coming in search of her —coming for his answer. He nodded and smiled and made a jaunty gesture which said: “Just a second,” then stopped to light his cigarette. “Take your time, honey,” she an- swered, and smiled at him—that smile which a woman has only for the man she loves, The Boy drew a sharp breath with whistling intake. His hand dropped | from her arm. “So that’s the way it is!’ he mur- | mured. ’ Mutely she nodded. The color was furiously splashing her cheeks and 7 brow. ; “Lord, what an ass you must have % thought me for believing you cared § for me! Good-by, I’m going home. | We'll say it now, not to-morrow. ” And | he went hurrying off in the pavement 7 crowd. ‘ “My dearest girlie, I knew you'd see 7 the wisdom of that little partnership,” | cried the “entertainer de luxe,” saunter- | ing over, debonair and unhurried and | most smugly satisfied. “Let’s go and | have a bite to eat, and a bottle to its success.” The yellow-brown eyes blazed at him. The little red head went high. “Oh, beat it! Don’t you know when you're being used?” she snapped, and turning to a girl who joined them at | the moment, she put her hand through 7 her arm. “Come on, Ethel, let’s go | home,” she said. REHEARSAL SCENE OF “JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN,”’ AT THE CENTURY THEATRE, Photograph by White, New York FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: JAMES O'NEILL, PAULINE FREDERICK, BRANDON TYNAN, LOUIS N. PARKER, (AUTHOR) AND FREDERICK STANHOPE, STAGE MANAGER. PLAYING the part of THE TEMPTRESS By PAULINE FREDERICK’ Editor’s Note: Pauline Frederick, in playing Potiphar’s wife, in Louis N. Parker’s spectacular drama, “‘Joseph and His Brethren,” has made the biggest im- pression of anyone who has taken the réle of a siren in recent years. In the play, which is founded upon the Biblical story of Joseph, the youth Joseph is rescued from the well, where he has been cast by his jealous brothers, by Zuleika. She falls in love with him, but he rejects her advances. She plots his downfall, and succeeds in having Joseph thrown into a dungeon by convincing Potiphar that Joseph tried to win her from Potiphar. |e ||VERY woman in the world EF, considers herself a born and effective, though perhaps in- active, Cleopatra. Every woman considers herself irre- sistible when she wishes to be. Here lies the secret of all the sociological troubles of to-day, the venomous part of which is that few feminines are sufficiently honest to make an open confession of this. Such reticence, though, may be held as a sign of health among women. Nor- dau has cited—with wisdom, at that, to my thinking—that a rapacity for con- fession betokens a weakened mind. And with this idea before me, I’ve always gloated in the knowledge that most of us women are wise enough to hold our tongues on topics of vital import—on all subjects that really matter. Hold our tongues or loose them, there is always a fourth estate that reads us well. There is always one probe we can never deflect, one eye we can never hope to pass by; and this is the subtle insight of other women. Playing the temptress before an audience composed largely of women is one of the most difficult tasks ever faced by any actress. With an audience.of men, it is differ- ent. A man always can find some excuse for another man making a high grade 825 826 THE GREEN imbecile of himself over some toy of the moment. Few women ever find any excuses fora man mak- ing a plain fool of himself over any other woman. Women instinctively turn from women whose standards of morals are subverted to their standards of appetency, such as were those of Zuleika. Scoff though the world may, there is such a thing as honor among women, and the greatest, most rigidly inexorable unwritten law of the fe- male, to put it bluntly but with force, reads: “Mesdames, you let my alone!” So the actress who comes out in front of a large audience prepared to tempt a righteous and sanctified youth from the thorny path of strict virtue has at the very outset to overcome a psychological condition that hangs man BOOK MAGAZINE around the auditorium with the persist- ency of a bella- donna plas- ter. In the first ey place, » nobody “‘hopes she gets him.” On the contrary, everybody “hopes she doesn’t!” (Mark the differ- ence in the fem- inine reception of the tempting si- ren and the in- nocent-girl-, pursued-by- the-villain.) Women for ages p a.s‘t Photograph by White, New York TWO VIEWS OF PAULINE FREDERICK As Zuleika have resented their lack of right to make advances to a member of the male sex who happens to catch their fancy. So they doubly resent seeing any other woman, even if she is behind the foot- lights, start such a proposition and fol- low it up with a successful demonstra- tion. Tribal instinct maintains. Then let the actress overplay by the slightest atom the réle of temptress, and observe what happens. Her moral sus- ceptibilities will promptly be guillotined, and that in the mercilessness of the prints. And every good woman, every hard worker in any profession who ever has had this Photograph by White, New York PLAYING THE PART OF THE 'TEMPTRESS 827 stigma put upon her, either justly or unjustly, knows what a horrible conse- quence entails, There’s never any after relief. Forever the society such as she needs and wants is denied her. Forever the society that seeks her she cannot stoop to. And if she underplays? Hark, from the pit a sarcastic sound: “T don’t blame him for not falling; do you? Who would for that?” Playing a Biblical temptress, particu- larly such a seductive lady as was this wife of Potiphar, is dangerous to a de- cided degree. Poor Mrs. Potiphar! Dur- ing the centuries that have elapsed since her amorous eye desired the Hebrew youth for her own, she has been an object of con- tumely among the right thinking of her own sex, and an object of mockery from the opposite sex. The women are against Mrs. Potiphar be- cause she failed to act in ac- cordance - with conventional tenets. The men spurn Zuleika because they are as sheep and hence follow in the tracks of the dis- carding Hebrew lover. Joseph I vene- rate BRANDON TYNAN AS Joseph AND PAULINE FREDERICK AS Zuleika as one of the most beautiful _ characters in all Scriptural history. Because of this, I revel in Louis Parker’s con- tention that there is a startling analogy in the course of events of Joseph’s life and those later in the life of the Savior. With this in mind, the woman who sets out publicly to play the embodiment of that defiled in- stinct that would have led Joseph astray from his destiny—to be one of his tempta- tions—finds herself confronted with a task that is as repulsive to her own better Photograph by White, New York . self as she knows it will be to the ma- =~ jority of the women who sit out in front. When I really had got into the part of Zuleika, I was fearfully afraid of it. I felt I couldn’t play Zuleika and keep my sanity—that I would be imagining myself some evil thing, noisome as a bat, unclean as a viper, loath- some as a leper. It seemed to me irreverence, sacrilege! Only the bli beauty of the settings of ~ the scene, and that -aureate poetry of . Mr. Parker’s lines . availed me to complete the task. I must con-- fess that when I went to the Scriptures for aid I was ap- BELOW, PAULINE FREDERICK IN HER NEW YORK HOME; ABOVE, SHE IS SHOWN IN STREET COSTUME 3 # Photographs by White, New York PAULINE FREDERICK AS Zuleika, IN THE CRYSTAL- GAZING SCENE: TION,’’ WROTE CHANNING PO “IN THE PICTURE CONSULTING A CRYSTAL SET BRAZEN SER palled. Zuleika seemed more and more a coarse, ™ an unspeakable tragedy. Every bit of feminism / \ within. me revolted at (fm, the task of portraying such a woman as she seemed to me. I stud- ied ‘more and more. And as a result of my labors, I of Y “ABBEY MIGHT HAVE FOUND INSPIRA- SHE MAKES, IN THE SECOND ACT, y . discov- ered, in the course of time, extenuating — cir- cumstances . ex- istent in Zulei- ka’s household. Gradually I came to see the whole picture clearly. The fig- ures resolved themselves into symbols. I regarded Zuleika only as a thread in the whole pattern, as a splotch of scarlet that was needéd to make the limpid white of Joseph’s purity stand out the more distinctly. I saw how Zuleika nec- essarily would be compelled to be the possessor of an unusually fine-grained nature to be attracted to a youth of Joseph’s sanctity, for sanctity among LLOCK OF THIS SCENE, IN THE HEAD OF A PENT” 829 men is a quality that utters no call to hot-blooded - or coarse women. Photographs by White, New York AFTER Joseph RESISTS Zuleika’s TEMPTATION SHE DE- No, I don't NOUNCES HIM TO Potiphar, ASSERTING THAT_Joseph except Salome yap insuLTED HER. Joseph 1S IMPRISONED. EVENTU- and John the atty, However, Zuleika is FOUND OUT AND PUNISHED. Baptist, for Sa- THESE PICTURES SHOW HER IN THE LATER SCENES lome was only a young girl. I began to feel sorry for Zuleika. And with pity and sympathy, there came of course, as always, understanding. I hunted around to find what fem- ininities would the best encourage such a timid youth. At last I decided that only delicacy, that only the ultima thule of, refinement, masking the sharpest of desires, could hope to make an impres- sion on the heart of that godly youth. That, I have made my text for my Zuleika. She has taught me a great lesson. From her I have learned that it iseasier & to be a_ successful temptress within the con- fines of your own imagina- tion than it is to get out on the stage and play one. 830 AN OCEAN LINER as the STAGE For a “MOVIE: PLA, By LOUIS V. DEFOE ; |HE motion pic- Et ture camera, like boastful Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” has “put a gifdle ‘round about the earth.” But not in Shakespeare’s record time of forty minutes. AN ACCOUNT BY AN EMINENT CRITIC OF THE TURNING INTO A THEATRE OF AN ENTIRE SHIP CROSS- ING THE ATLANTIC lie in photographic authen- ticity of “Bunny All At Sea,” as the first moving picture drama laid on board an ocean steam- ship is called. But testi- mony to its truth will the portraits, among its scores of ac- Having spread upon its canvas screens every near and remote corner of the land, from the jungles of dense city population to the morasses of the African wild, it has at last even appropriated the sea. The demand of the picture play audience for novelty is as insistent as that of the older regular forms of stage entertainment. So, in order to: preserve their grip upon public interest the makers of silent drama have contrived finally to turn an ocean steamship into a stage setting, enrolling officers, crew and passengers as actors, and trans- forming the incidents of a transatlantic voyage from New York to Plymouth, England, into a nautical comedy which soon will be dancing before the vision of countless moving pictures devotees throughout America. Then will the broad Atlantic and the daily life aboard one of its giant liners become almost an actuality even for inlanders who have never felt the exhilaration of the salt sea air or beheld the matchless beauty of the ocean’s limitless expanse of tossing, foam-crested waves. Some may ' be of the skeptical 831 tors, of men and women who are prominent in the social and business affairs of a dozen cities scat- tered throughout the United States. And not a few will wonder what induced these people to come out of private life and become characters in a moving picture show. It was accident and not design that brought about the first moving photo- graphic record of actual experiences aboard a steamship during a voyage to a European port. Last summer, when the tide of transatlantic travel was at its full, the American Vitagraphic Com- pany arranged to send a corps of opera- tors abroad to picture unawares the roving swarms of American tourists in their favorite foreign haunts. All the big events of the season, such as the English Derby and the not less celebrated Paris Grand-Prix, were to be caught upon the ribbon-like films, to be spread later upon the screens for the interest of the less fortunate stay-at-homes. To lend a familiar and humorous touch to the pictures, John Bunny was sent along to appear in all the scenes. Everyone who patronizes the moving | Travelers accustomed to the sea leoked for ward to the voyage as the usual moneotonots experience. But not so in Bunny’s case, for he was making his first trip. The lethargy of the ocean could not claim him as one of its victims. The new life that unfolded itself about him offered only novelty, The gently rolling ship as it plunged through the seas filled him with delight, and Neptune generously refrained from exacting his customary toll. There was no one on board the Berlin more supremely happy than Bunny. Before Sandy Hook was left a day BUNNY ON THE BRIDGE OF THE Berlin GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH CAPTAIN HARASSOWITZ, WITH THE MOTIVE OF AFTERWARDS STEALING HIS UNIFORM picture theatres must be ac- quainted with Bunny. If, per- chance, there be some who are not, it needs only be said that he is the original Seth Holcomb of the famous old rural melo- drama, ‘“‘Way Down East,” who deserted the legitimate stage a few years ago to follow the unique profession othe films and be- come even more widely known as a moving picture star. In charge of the expedition was Lawrence Trimble, to whose keen sense of humor and alert eye for novel effects the growth of the moving picture craze everywhere in this country is largely due. It happened that the American Vita- graph Company’s commission sailed from New York on the North German Lloyd Company’s big liner, Berlin. . Every stateroom of the giant ship was filled with people representative of nearly all the walks of American life. There were bankers, brokers, merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, actors, grand opera singers—the typically cosmo- politan throng on.business or pleasure bent which is the happy, care-free cargo of every liner that ploughs its way out of New York harbor during the summer. BUNNY, HAVING STOLEN THE CAPTAIN’S UNIFORM, BEGINS TO GIVE ORDERS TO THE CREW. THE PICTURE IS BOATSWAIN THIEL, OF THE Berlin THE OTHER FIGURE IN behind, everybody knew Bunny. His jovial personality and ruddy, - smiling face soon made him a favorite among the passengers. So it happened that the afternoon of the second day found him the center of a group of new-found, con- genial cronies who had gathered in a sheltered corner of the promenade deck to listen to his humorous reminisences of actor life. “Yes, one can have a pretty good time traveling ashore,” said he, turning to Trimble, “but if the people back where we came from knew what the ocean is like, why, they’d all go to sea!” “It’s lucky they don’t,” retorted Trimble. “If they did, you moving pic- ture actors would soon be looking for new jobs. Where would your audiences be then?” This chance remark suggested an idea to Bunny. “Suppose we make a moving picture 832 OCEAN LINER AS STAGE FOR “MOVIE” PLAY 833° of this trip just to show them?”’ said he. “Well, Herr Bunny, why not?” Captain Albert Harassowitz, the commander of the Berlin, asked the question. He had strolled up to the group on the deck in time to overhear Bunny’s remark. The Captain had seen himself in the moving pictures which were taken to record the incidents of Cardinal Farley’s voyage back from Genoa on the Berlin, after the prelate’s elevation by the Church of Rome. The novelty of the experience had pleased him and in Bunny’s suggestion he saw a chance to become an actor again. Already Mr. Trimble was scenting business possibilities. ‘“‘Why couldn’t we turn the whole voyage into a play?” he ventured. “Tf we could get the Captain to con- sent,’ added Bunny tactfully. “On only one condition,” laughed Captain Harassowitz. “Which is—?” “That I may be one of the leading actors,” replied the bronzed German Bunny observed the incident. “Why, there’s our plot!’’ he exclaimed. “It’s right here beside us, ready-made. Let’s base our story on the magic of brass buttons. It’s as old as the sea itself, I know, but it is always new, neverthe- less.” Two hours later, with the help of many collaborators and under the in- spiration of steins of foaming Muen- schener, the first moving picture nauti- cal comedy, “Bunny All At Sea,” in sixteen scenes of humor and. pathos— one for each morning and afternoon of the voyage—had been evolved in its scenario form. And here’s the story! If the reader doesn’t believe it, let him see for himself at the nearest moving picture theatre. Bunny, of course, is the hero, and it is his first sea voyage. Bunny is also fat, and nobody loves a fat man, as Maclyn Arbuckle used to say mournfully in “The Round Up.” So, as his fellow passengers gather in little social groups or stroll on the deck, he finds himself Ww ignored and left to flock by himself. But Bunny finally observes the attractions which brass buttons hold for feminine eyes. It suggests a means of escape from his loneliness. If only he could wear a uniform with brass buttons, his con- BUNNY RUNS AWAY WITH THE TWO PRETTY GIRLS, MUCH TO THE DISGUST OF THE FAT WOMAN, WHO IS LEFT BEHIND salt with a twinkle in his eye. “But, Bunny,” interrupted one of the others in the group, “how would it be possible to act a play aboard a ship? There can’t be a play without a plot, you know.” Meanwhile a party of tourists had gathered, talking and laughing, close by at the rail. As the question was put to Bunny one of the ship’s officers passed along the deck. His stripes and buttons in- stantly caught the eyes of the women in the party. The men found themselves ignored. BUNNY, IN STOLEN UNIFORM, APPEARS AMONG THE PASSENGERS AND MAKES A HIT WITH THE GIRLS. IN THE CHAIR IS MRS. J. J. HALL, OF BOSTON. THE GIRLS ON BUNNY’S ARMS ARE MISS ALLENE GENTRY AND MISS VANDEVER, OF ATLANTA 834 THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE quest of the ladies would be the easiest thing in the world. Why not get hold of the Captain’s and enjoy one little hour of triumph? So it happens that Bunny contrives to cultivate the captain’s friendship and conspires to get himself invited to the official’s stateroom. Once inside, he binds and gags his host, helps himself to the coveted uniform and slips away, locking the door behind him. Presently, in all the glory of his stolen plumage, Bunny reappears among the people on the decks. The ladies who ignored him before are now eager to make his acquaintance. The members of the crew jump to obey his commands.’ To Bunny’s amazement his word has suddenly become law. Such a quick rise to glory and power deserves to be celebrated. So he straightway orders out the band and announces that there will be a grand ball. Meanwhile the Captain has made his escape from his cabin; and Bunny, at- the height of his glory finds himself pounced upon and placed under arrest. As a punishment for his treachery he is then ordered to perform every kind of menial’ and obnoxious duty that falls to a sailor’s lot. The punishments inflicted on the frightened and protesting Bunny then follow in all their amusing realism. He is made to scrub the steerage decks, dressed as a sailor and spurred to his disagreeable BUNNY’S FALSE FRIENDS ASK THE BOATSWAIN TO SET HIM AT WORK ON MENIAL JOBS task by a rope’s end jn the hands of a stalwart German boatswain. Rigged out as a cook and rebellious at his deg- radation, he is set to peeling onions in the ship’s kitchen. Stripped to the waist, he is compelled to toil among the stokers before the furnace BUNNY, BEING ARRESTED, APPEALS TO HIS FRIENDS TO KEEP HIM, BUT THEY ARE DISGUSTED WITH HIM AND “THROW HIM DOWN.’’ AMONG THE MEN ARE H. DAVIS AND FRED HORNBY, OF NEW YORK, AND MR. DE FOE doors in the fire room. In the livery of a steward, he clumsily serves coffee and sandwiches to the passengérs on the decks. He waits on table in the dining room, polishes and scrubs and hauls on ropes, and learns to his misery all the ins and outs of a German sailor’s life. In vain does Bunny implore the other passengers to aid him. He receives only jeers and mockery in return. But at last, when his lot seems no longer bearable, his misery touches the heart of a little girl who has been following him about, and she goes to the Captain and pleads for his pardon. The good-natured Captain, remem- bering his own little girls back in the Fatherland, listens and relents. So he calls the now thoroughly repentant Bunny before him and, after admonishing him thoroughly for his presumption, orders his release from arrest and restores him to his former standing as a passenger. There is also an epilogue to this tale of Bunny’s presumption on the high seas. It OCEAN LINER AS STAGE FOR “MOVIE” PLAY 835 takes the form of a dinner which the culprit gives in celebration of his forgive- ness. When the guests assemble, the ship is: floundering in a storm. The merry-making commences in lively fash- ion but soon the diners begin to grow un- ‘ comfortable and sad. One after another they succumb and are carried away. Finally only the Captain and Bunny remain. The latter lifts his glass and begins a toast but it is interrupted as Neptune decrees the penalty that all landlubbers must sooner or later pay to the sea. The Captain is left alone, and “Bunny All At Sea”’ comes to an end as the jolly old salt, with a sly wink, tosses . off the contents of his glass and signals for another. Does the story of “Bunny All At Sea”’ sound a bit primitive? Undoubted- ly it does. But the circumstances under which it was evolved must be con- sidered, and also the fact that moving picture dramas must be played in pantomime. It is intended to serve, after all, only as an excuse to introduce the camera. His orders turned the big Berlin into a vast floating stage, from the for- bidden precincts of the “‘bridge”’ to the torrid and inaccessible regions of the stokehold. The passengers took an eager interest in the unusual proceedings. A few im- mediately entered into the spirit of the game and gradually the number of volunteers grew until there were more than one hundred people among the moving picture actors. Two of the very best were Miss Allene Gentry and Miss Nina Gentry, of Atlanta, Ga., who im- personated the victims who first suc- cumbed to Bunny’s stolen uniform. Mrs. J. J. Hall, of Boston, overcame a natural feminine pride and consented to become the lady of uncertain age and certain ayoirdupois who clung to Bunny throughout his punishment and dis- grace. There were plenty of others whose portraits will be recognized by their friends when “Bunny All At Sea” reaches their native cities. Only a few of them are Mr. and Mrs. R. T. Watts, Jr., of Lynchburg, Va.; Miss Alice Vandever, of Atlanta, Ga.; J. E. Edmonds, of Chicago; Frank Lloyd, of New Orleans; Howard Davis, of New York; Putnam Gris- wold, the eminent baritone of the Metropolitan Grand BUNNY IS PUT IN SAILOR’S TOGS AND SENT INTO THE STEERAGE TO SWAB DECKS WITH A GER- MAN SAILOR AS TASK MASTER typical shipboard incidents, the general life on an ocean liner, that form its back- ground. The play could not have been acted at all if it had not been for the lively in- terest which Captain Harassowitz took in its creation. He supplied the necessary uniforms, cleared the decks for the actors and practically placed the big ship at the disposal of the moving picture men. When- ever his official duties did not demand his attention he was one of the most enthusiastic of the actors in front of the moving picture BUNNY IS MADE A DECK STEWARD AND SPILLS BOUILLON AND BISCUIT OVER THE PASSENGERS WHILE SERVING THEM. FRED HORNBY IN FOREGROUND. PEOPLE IN BACK- GROUND ARE PASSENGERS WHO TOOK PART IN THE PLAY Opera Company, and Fred. Hornby, who was especially useful as a member of the im- promptu company on account of his stage experience as the director of some of De Wolf Hopper’s musical comedy produc- tions. And no professional could have been more effective and appealing than little Dorothy Norton, of Louisville, Ky., who acted the réle of the sympa- thetic child that won the Captain’s compassion for Bunny in his distress. At the risk-of being hoisted on his own petard, one of the New York dramatic critics played a character in the cast. LITTLE DOROTHY NORTON, DAUGHTER OF MRS. GEORGE W. NORTON, OF LOUISVILLE, KY., SEEING BUNNY’S PLIGHT, SYMPATHIZES WITH HIM AND PROMISES TO APPEAL TO THE CAPTAIN IN HIS BEHALF It was curious to observe the mystification among the steerage swarms when Bunny, in the none too gentle custody porRoTHY LEADS BUNNY TO THE BRIDGE OF THE SHIP, of Boatswain Theil and two WHERE SHE ASKS CAPTAIN HARASSOWITZ TO FORGIVE broad-shouldered sailors, de- HIM AND RESTORE HIM TO GOOD STANDING scended among them to swab and scrub the deck. But the surprise among the stokers was even greater when, stripped to the waist and whimpering at his fate, he was sent down to shovel coal in the blistering heat before the furnace doors. While impersonating a clumsy steward in one of the deck scenes, Bunny gave the play its most extreme touch of realism when he accidentally stumbled over a steamer chair and broke twenty bouillon cups which he was carrying on a tray. Even the tourists over whose clothing the contents were spilled showed no inclination to raise objections. However great will be the entertain- ment afforded by “‘ Bunny All At Sea” for the patrons of the moving picture the- atres, it will never quite equal the fun which the making of it supplied for the travelers onthe Berlin. For once an ocean trip was relieved of its deadly monotony, and Captain Harassowitz declared that in his career of more than a quarter of a cen- tury as a seafaring man he had never experi- enced so novel a voyage across the Atlantic. He said his own co-operation in the making of the play was not without a purpose, for he had long been interested in moving picture photography. 836 RECONCILIATION OF BUNNY AND SOME OF HIS FRIENDS AFTER HE HAS BEEN FORGIVEN BY THE CAPTAIN. FRIENDS ARE FRED HORNBY, H. DAVIS (ADV. MANAGER OF THE AMERICAN) AND MR. DE FOE, ALL OF NEW YORK HE play- going public is supe- rior to the book-reading public. That fact has just been borne home to me and, since you doubt it, I am pre- pared to prove the same. Where are the hits of yesterday?— besides being on the lists of the Messrs. Burt and Grosset & Dunlop, who arrogantly assert that they do not find it worth while to reprint at fifty cents any save those works that have exhausted an edition of ten-thousand copies in the original! (Thus eliminating such nonentities as George Moore, Henry James, Bernard Shaw, Wells, Bennett, et al.) Where are the heroes of those paragon creations of the Messrs. Chambers, last year ’s snows: McCutcheon, Mc- Grath, and of Stratton-Porter? They are on the circuit where the “ventleman- POPULAR NOVELS on the STAGE By GEORGE BRONSON-HOWARD friend” takes _his “perfect lady” for the price of fifty- cent orchestra- chairs. .That’s where they are — in the popular- price houses. This information, thus rudely inflicted, will be a severe blow to that ready-made criticism of the masses which judges “class” by “‘price.” To illustrate: The public has two stand- ards. Does it sell for $1.50, or for $1.40 or $1.20, net? Then it is first-class. Is it produced at $2 or $1.50 for the best orchestra-chairs? Then it is first-class? But what of those novels that sell at the equivalent of $1.50 SRO and are produced at seventy-five er and fifty cents? This will present, I hope, a vexatious problem. It a knocks ready-made criticism into a cocked-hat; and the public will not thank me for pro- pounding it; but, grim and resolute, and regardless of “SNOBS”” AND A HOWARD AS HE IS A SCENE FROM PHOTOGRAPH OF MR. v TODAY. HE IS TWENTY- NINE YEARS OF AGE, ISLIBRETTISTFORTHE WINTER GARDEN AND AUTHOR OF FOUR BOOKS PUBLISHED AND FIVE PLAYS PRODUCED 837 838 my personal popularity, I shall do more than propound: I shall expatiate; for I mean to prove that, careless as are the verdicts of the play-going public, they are, nevertheless, God-like when com- pared with the verdicts of those who read books. IT Let us take, for example, the most popular of all those classics that tempo- rarily fill uncritical and untrained minds with enthusiasm: THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE at-a-stroke heroes. His receipts picked up so much at these tentative concessions to the popular taste, that he forthwith planned to do something that would be one immense concession. One can imagine him saying: ‘‘ Here I am, a first-rate literary craftsman, in my fifteenth writing year, brim-full of information and with the knack of clever dialogue; yet my books do not sell one-twentieth as well as those by un- traveled, uneducated men who possess no literary cunning at all,—merelythe abil- ity to tell a gross “The Common sort of popular Law.”. This is from the pen of a HIS is the first article of dra- yarn—books with- out characteriza- man of letters who, having had a try at art, wrote stories concern- ing artists, stories full of affectations but, also, full of exquisite point- lace literary ef- fects. For instance (as many remem- ber), the tale of “Rue Barrée’’* and the drunken youth who forced himself into the room of a girl, a room all white. These stories showed immense matic criticism ever printed over the name of this dramatist and novelist, who as author of the plays: “Snobs,” “The Passing Show of 1912,” “Broadway to Paris,” “The Only Law,” etc., and the novels: “Nor- roy, Diplomatic Agent,” “Sears on the Southern Seas,” “An Enemy to Soci- ety,” etc., has been a well-known figure in American letters for many years. Hitherto, when writing as a dramatic critic. Mr. Bronson-Howard used the nom-de-plume of “Howard Fitzalan.” Mr. Bronson-Howard’s work will be a regular feature of THE GREEN BooK MAGAZINE in future. Next month he will contribute a critically entertaining essay on “American play- wright8 of to-day: why we have no dramatic literature worth. mentioning.” tion, technique, or any real informa- tion about the up- per-class they pur- port ‘to explain. Shall I permit this?” He decided in the negative, pro- ducing the first of his great society squibs, “The Fighting Chance,” which contained an intimate ac- count of gun- rooms, motors, porte-cochéres, country-houses, “shootings,” and promise and sold as little as Arnold Bennett’s first novel, which, Bennett tells us, about paid for his paper. Chambers next did “Zenda” over with gorgeous comic-opera feeling—‘‘A King and a Few Dukes”—and with the same lack of financial results. With a few intervals of remarkable ‘‘horror”’ stories—com- binations of Wells and Poe: “The Maker of Moons,” ‘‘The Mystery of Choice,’ ete.—he took up the historical novel and wrote the first few very creditably; but, still a man of small in- come, he wrote the last few in popular vein, with Christy chromos instead of flesh-and-blood heroines, and with seven- * «The King in Yellow,” Mr. Chambers’ first book. F. Tennyson Neely, publisher, 1894. Sherry cotillions— a dramatization of ‘‘good form” built around one of those commonplaces which the public instinctively recognizes as a “great situation.” Its success justified him in his de- cision. He went further in his next book; finally, in ‘‘The Common Law” he was in apogee. He may write forever, but will never produce a more popular novel. It contained everything that had made his previous concessions profit- able, together with a situation that gave his public the sensation of reading a risqué French yellow-back, yet the serene knowledge that their favorite author would not permit the threatened “‘indecency”’ (according to their lights) MR. BRONSON-HOWARD AT TWENTY, IN MANCHURIA AS CORRESPONDENT OF THE LONDON Daily Chronicle IN THE RUSSO- JAPANESE WAR. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: ERNEST BRENDLE, Daily Mail; DOUGLAS STORY, NEW YORK American; MR. BRON- SON-HOWARD; H. J. WHIGHAM, NOW AN AMERICAN MAGAZINE EDITOR to eventuate. Moreover, the girl was of the people and the hero of the privileged classes. And, again, the public was tricked into believing that while enjoying itself, it was getting an inside view of “highbrows” and their modes of thought. There was elaborate machinery to prove, also, that eminently proper and respectable views had been proven the only practicable ones “‘after all;’’ “‘all” indicating long polemical discussions wrought out in fake psychology. By these various technical trickeries Mr. Chambers actually made his public approve the conduct of a foolish girl who, decrying mar- riage between people of different classes, invests the ‘‘giving of herself”’ with more solemnity and pish-tush than any forty marriages. To the right- minded person it was positively inde- cent, the long course of preparation and discussion ante-dating this “‘holy”’ (sic!) occasion; but then, when the time came, you may be sure she gave in to the insistent appeals of the manly, god- like hero for ‘“The Voice that Breathed o’er Eden” and gentlemanly ushers in 839 kg GEES fe me , \ Photograph by White, New York BELOW, A SCENE FROM “‘SNOBS.’”’? ABOVE, MR, BRONSON= HOWARD IS SHOWN AT THE AGE OF TWENTY, WHEN HE WROTE THE FIRST Yorke Norroy STORIES, WHICH BECAME POPULAR BOTH AS SERIALS AND AS BOOKS. ‘‘ CHEAP THINGS,” HE SAYS TO-DAY, “‘THE VERY KIND OF BOOKS I AM NOW DENOUNCING.” THE FIRST SERIES NETTED HIM $25,000. “IN THE SECOND SERIES, WRITTEN YEARS LATER, I MADE THE CHARACTERS HUMAN, THE INCIDENTS POSSI- BLE, THE STYLE GOOD—AND WAS IMMEDIATELY REWARDED WITH DIMINISHED POPULARITY” 840 frock-coats and white gloves. There is the story, the whole story. Told suc- cintly, it doesn’t amount to much, does it? Also, it invites the snicker, or, at best, the lurking grin. For these two good and sufficient reasons, it could not . succeed on the first-class stage; by which one somewhat euphemistically denotes the theatres of Broadway and of Lon- don’s West End. In such theatres—except in the case THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE meant to do another. Stage characters | are judged by what they do, just as we judge our fellow-beings—not by | what the author tells us they would | have preferred to do had circum- 7 stances been different. III The “big” scene of “The Common ] MR. BRONSON-HOWARD’S TERRE,’ AT PORT JEF- of exceptionally popular favorites—the bare story must be a good one and, serious drama being intended, laughter-proof. In “The Common Law,” Mr. Chambers covers up_ sophistries with clever descriptions and—so good a crafts- man is he, such a fair imitator of the multi- farious small things of COUNTRY STUDIO, ‘‘BELLE , FERSON, LONG ISLAND Law” takes place at Louis Martin’s Restau- rant one Christmas Eve. The text is supplemented by a double-page Gibson picture showing Martin Dionysians—young women of the Broad- way type—making themselves cheap for the amusement ~ of cynical rounders. “Most men know this type of young life—the senses of the unctitical are lulled and they are persuaded to be- lieve what they want to believe. On the English-speaking stage, one has only time to show the characters in action. There is no Greek Chorus, no Compere, to tell the audience that a girl who has just done one thing really MR. BRONSON-HOWARD IN 1903 AT THE AGE OF NINETEEN AS AN OFFICER OF THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT women, whose _ society may be bought for a dinner, a supper, or a quart of champagne. Most men know that though such women often talk pathetic- ally of homes in Kansas City, convent- schools attended, and ‘‘Oh, if Mother could only see me now,”’ these pathetic turns are generally superinduced by the quality or quantity of refreshment—al- though often (and this most men do not and never will know) they spring from a laudable desire to check demon- strations of affection from male com- panions whom they view strictly as meal purchasers and providers of gayety. But, generally speaking, men of the world realize that if such a life appeals to a young woman, she is not a safe one to choose for the amenities of child- raising and home-making. The sort likely to be a success at these domestic duties prefers, instinctively, her own fireside, a book, and some fancy-work to the society of hectic men whose one idea at the sight of a pretty face is con- quest—a fact well known to women who accept their dinners. The marrying kind may plunge once or twice, from feminine curiosity; but what she learns will make the book and the fancy-work doubly attractive. Most men, I have said, know this, not from logic but from instinct. There- fore, they refuse to accept as a real lover of domesticity and a safe preceptor of children a young woman who has just stood on a table, her arm around a man, throwing flowers about or baptising somebody in champagne. So a true Dionysian must remain true to her environment and have many sweet- hearts but (though married) never a real husband. Knowing this instinctively, then, the better educated and better informed type of people who go to “first-class” theatres would refuse as untrue the “big”? scene in ‘‘The Common Law’”’ when presented as what Valerie actually did and not what the author said there was in her to do. In the book, lest there be any feminine doubters (the home woman being the strictest critic of Valerie’s kind), the au- thor compels them to come over to Valerie’s side by making generalities in which his women readers are in- cluded, generalities so highly flattering to the American woman (greedy and expectant of praise) that she wants to believe them, and believing, must support the heroine of ‘‘The Common Law.” For instance: POPULAR NOVELS ON THE STAGE co “After all, what does a man give a girl that compares with what she gives him?” Mr. Chambers does not dare leave a man about to answer this. Otherwise, that hardened creature might reply, in the case of Valerie and Neville: “He gives her food, clothes, a comfortable home, servants, motor-cars, trips to Europe, social position, fame as the wife of a famousman, intelligent sympathetic companionship, a better-education by being with him, and—himself. What does she give him? Only herself. That equalizes his giving himself. Then she is his debtor for food, clothes, a comfort- able home . . .” Or again: “That man would go on living... and going to bed to sleep while you lay dead in your grave. But the day he died, you would die though your body might live on.” Now, I ask you, would any Broadway or West-End dramatist dare allow a character to say that unfair thing, the house half-full of men? I trust not—re- membering also that most dramatic critics wear trousers. So, stripped of sophistries, Valerie’s deeds can stand only in houses where audiences trouble little about human nature so long as they are shown some- thing outside their own ken which momentarily replaces their own dull lives. Some go home and beat their wives just the same, no doubt; but, while in the theatre, all have the most scrupulous chivalry. Among them ‘‘ The Common Law’s” ‘‘big’’ scene passes as “big” and the final marriage of Valerie to Neville pleases that instinct that tells them Neville (representing society) gets the worst of it at the hands of a “poor working gurrl.” In case there should be among my readers some quidnuncs to suggest that perhaps the fault of dramatic presenta- tions of popular novels lies not with the popular novelist but with the hack dramatizer, I shall be kind enough to inform such carpers that the person who prepared “‘The Common Law” for the stage was no less than the author of 1912’s one reigning New York success, “Within the Law,” Mr. Bayard Veiller. The job was farmed out upon him by THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE a manager, it is only just to say; he had no desire for it. IV No, it is seldom the fault of the dramatizer. As a matter of fact, these unfortunate individuals generally handi- cap themselves by too strict an atten- tion to the book. Most successful drama- tizations along Broadway have been made by totally disregarding any but the few dramatic points of the story. And, when the reputation of playwright is equal or superior to that of the au- thor, a first-class substitute for a play is sometimes (rarely) achieved. Take the case of ‘‘The Prisoner of Zenda,” for instance, when the noted eighteenth- century expert, Edward Rose (not to be confused with the American journey- man E. E. Rose, who attempted similar feats) was given the commission. I wish, however, to go on record as differentiating the “Zenda” story from the ‘‘best-seller” type. It was almost pure fantasy, deserving a place on the same shelf with Hans Christian An- derson and De La Motte Foque of “Undine,” “‘Sintram,”’ and “Thiodolf”’ fame; and, save for the concluding chapters, where its author took his de- lightful Gilbertian characters seriously, literature. But, alas! it was for those same chapters that the public loved it and able Mr. Rumsey, agent for the play, bows to this misdirection of the emotions and, in the pamphlet wherein the play is offered for stock, takes as its keynote: ‘If love were all.’”’ That the “if love were all’”’ passages are the load- stone is abundantly proven by the popu- larity of a whole school of neo-romanti- cism founded on Hope (whose work in turn was founded on the Stevenson of “Prince Otto”); a school possessing none of Hope’s airy grace, nothing of Stevensonian whimsy, no trace of Gil- bertian satire—only stark narrative ability without the slightest claim to literary merit. To return to Edward Rose: that he ‘possessed undoubted talent for this kind of work is proven in his making of a successful “first-class” play of ‘‘ Under the Red Robe.” This was by the same method—viz: reading the book and then telling its story his own way. The duel of Gil de Berault is his own version, just as the prologue of ‘‘Zenda”’ is concocted out of Rose, not Hope. And in the ‘‘ Red Robe” he had not the same advantage as in “Zenda:” that of working upon something approaching a work of art. “The Red Robe” belongs distinctly to a school of imitation Dumas+Scott, a fashion, a vogue—novels worked out by formula, a school long passed; yet the play is frequently acted in stock. As much and more may be said of “Soldiers of Fortune:’ Augustus Thomas out of Richard Harding Davis — the play that laid the foundation of the Henry B. Harris estate and of Robert Edeson’s fortune, a play constructed as a ‘play with small regard to what R. H. Davis thought was due his immensely popular novel; for Henry B. Harris refused to produce it unless Davis al- lowed Thomas to write drama instead of dramatization. But ‘‘Trilby’”—more popular as book and as play than any- thing Mr. Davis or Mr. Thomas have done together or separately—being a mere reliquary, a sacred preserving of a few Du Maurierisms, has lost most of its interest with the public’s forgetfulness of the book. Occasions might be multiplied with- out number, reducing this article to a mere Congressional Library catalogue. The sum total of managers’ experience has finally simmered down to an aphorism: ‘‘Book-plays are no good.” By this they mean that faithful drama- tizations of current successes are out of place in Broadway and West-End houses. Two striking instances of this are sorrowiully remembered, instances that are only dramatic yesterdays, in- stances in which vast sums of money were expended and enormous royalties paid to playwrights as well as to novel- ists. For the playwrights who prepared “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” and “The Ne’er Do Well” were leaders of their respective schools, Eugene Walter being unquestionably the best dram- atist and Charies Klein fully as un- questionably the best melodramatist of America. POPULAR NOVELS ON THE STAGE — Yet both the John Fox and the Rex Beach novel made sorry plays. Still, if one wishes dramatization, no fault rests with Messrs, Walter and Klein. In their versions they gave pre- cisely the stories that had charmed a million Americans, more or less, into buying the books. With neithe: play- wright was it (in the literary sense) a labor of love. It was precisely that for Walter in the literal sense, for he pre- pared the play at the request of his wife, who wished to appear in the leading réle and who was dissatisfied with the hack version made for the second-class houses by a man already successful there with other dramatized novels. Mr. Klein worked on ‘‘The Ne’er Do Well” for similar, if less sentimental, reasons, the managerial firm in which he has a financial interest having acquired the dramatic rights of the book, and, being determined to use them, Mr. Klein saw less chance of failure if a skillful hand did the work? But that skillful hand in neither Klein’s case nor Walter’s was supple- mented by a skillful brain. The brain rested. The hand presented only what the book author’s brain had evolved. And, as both stories became popular be- cause of elementary sentiment and melodrama of the crudest kind, the two- dollar-a-seat theatre-going public felt that it had been taken to Eighth Avenue without permission and resented it by warning others of the enforced trip. And so both ‘‘The Trail of the Lone- some Pine” and “‘The Ne’er Do Well” failed ignobly, despite two of the most magnificent scenic presentations seen in New York since Mr. Belasco gave up staging melodrama of the colossal type. Good melodrama will be popular so long as the world lasts. Good melo- drama can be as artistic as any other literary form. Let me be put down as no decrier of good melodrama, for it has provided some of my happiest ex- periences in the theatre: “If I Were King,” ‘The Darling of the Gods,” many others. Robert Louis Stevenson was a master of melodrama. Whenever there arises one who approximates even slightly in the theatre what he did in fiction, there will be found thou- "as sands of educated and artistic persons who will respect and enjoy his work. Bernard Shaw wrote melodrama in “The Devil’s Disciple” and melodra- matic comedy in “Arms and the Man,” ‘Cesar and Cleopatra,” and ‘‘Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.” In fact, there are few of his plays without melo- dramatic flashes; even his as yet unpub- lished, and (in America) unproduced play ““Misalliance” has an entrance for its hero that Drury Lane never surpassed: his aéroplane drops into the heroine’s greenhouse. And this in a play styled humbly ‘‘a conversation!”’ No, there is no fault to find with melodrama. But the melodrama of the “best-sellers,” generally speaking, is the melodrama of Hoxton, Clapham Junction, “Al” Woods, G R. Sims, and Corse Payton. V Looking backward, it seems that, while I have given you many reasons why best-sellers should figure on Stair and Havlin time, you may reply: ‘Yes, and no doubt many best-sellers should be published between paper covers, and sold at no more than was asked for the novels of Archibald Clavering Gunter ~ and Richard Henry Savage, authors who if they flourished to-day would have eager publishers competing for the right to have them illustrated by the most expensive glorifiers of American youth and beauty. ... But they are not so published nor at such prices sold. Therefore, prove your assertions by being concrete.” Well, first we have, besides that im- mensely popular Chambers novel which served as our text, his “‘Firing Line.” The Messrs. Appleton, retrieved from bankruptcy by the sale of the Chambers novels, inform us proudly that these novels sold over a million copies at $1.50 apiece. It costs a third of that to see them acted. Undoubtedly Mr. Chambers’ only real rival in the affections of this same public is George Barr McCutcheon, and the books that put this erstwhile coun- try schoolmaster in the front ranks of the sellers were the ‘‘Graustark”’ books, S44 in which kings and princesses converse in pure Chicagoese. Both “Graustark” and “Beverly of Graustark” are peren- nial favorites in the houses once sacred to “The Chinatown Murders” and “Queen of the White Slaves;” and I am given to understand their producer holds the dramatic rights to all the McCutcheon books. Mr. McCutcheon’s own efforts at playwriting knock around unheeded from playreader to play- reader along the Broadway line (I have rejected one of them in that capac- ity), and no doubt he has long perceived the futility of hoping for serious atten- tion there. And that, in spite of the fact that a dramatization of ‘“ Brewster’s Millions” was successful on Broadway; but it was another case of an original dramatist (the playwright of that most popular of recent American plays, ‘‘The Fortune-Hunter”’?) throwing the author overboard and altering the course of his ship. For Brewster was a very serious young man in the book, and in the play very comic. In other words, Winchell Smith made capital fun out of Mr. Mc- Cutcheon’s drama; you will find fierce fighting in the book, a murderous Arab kidnaping the heroine who has en- raptured him. To proceed with our popular-priced attractions: Messrs. Doubleday and Page, who publish my own work and who ' have every reason to reduce an author’s sales in my hearing, inform me that “Freckles” is the best selling book in their big list (which includes the com- plete works of Kipling and O. Henry), its sales approaching the million mark; yet “Freckles” had its New York premiére in a dollar house on Eighth Avenue, a week-stand only , its dramatic form being the work of some unknown, a Neil Twomey—just as the “Grau- stark” books were entrusted to one whose name is equally foreign to Broad- way ears, one George Baker, not the genial George Barr of that ilk and of the Ridgway clan. So our list grows and, un- less rumor lies again, ‘‘The Ne’er Do Well” will be presented over the same circuit that approved of that same au- thor’s “Spoilers” after it had failed as signally under Mr. Frohman’s manage- ment. THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE From the management of Daniel Frohman, the most erudite producer Broadway has ever known, to that of Charley Blaney, the least erudite and in most violent opposition to the classics, author (producer at least) of ‘Young Buffalo, King of the Wild West” and many another similar classic—that was the fate of ‘“‘The Spoilers.” Rex Beach caught the public when it was shouting itself hoarse for Jack Lon- don, when London’s little classic ‘‘The Call of the Wild” made anything Alas- kan salable. A prominent magazine serialized his first novel because that magazine had come to the front with no less a sensationalist than Lawson of Boston and, to keep its sensation-lusting public, must provide at least one thriller in its well-edited pages. And ‘‘The Spoilers” had for plot a real and mon- strous injustice done to every American in Alaska. Beach had the advertising advantage of what was then the largest circulation in America. An 6ld and well- established publishing house was be- coming unsuccessful because it con- tinued to maintain classic traditions. It also needed sensations and so ‘‘The Spoilers” got its imprint. With so creditable a magazine and so classic a house behind this new book, small won- der it appealed to an unthinking public as great literature; and Daniel Froh- man, likewise on the down-grade be- cause of classic traditions, also needed a sensation. The dramatization was done by Harper’s own literary advisor, a man well established in the dramatic world by similar work in the case of “The Bonnie Brier Bush,’’ a success. Yet, despite magazine circulation and advertising, publishing-house prestige, skilled literary collaboration, the name of D. F.as producer—this alone sufficient to give it respectful consideration,— the reckless expenditure that marked its scenic investure, and the uniform excellence of its Broadway cast, it took just a week to expose the nature of its melodrama, just a week to overcome every known advertising assistance in the world, every possible dignified ac- cessory, the fact that it was impossible for anyone of the reading public in the United States, even though he had not POPULAR NOVELS ON THE STAGE actually perused the book, to be un- familiar with the story. And three or four weeks later this great work, unchanged save for cast and producer’s name, was arousing wild enthusiasm at Blaney’s Theatre in Baltimore, a town in which it had tri- umphantly opened at prices three times as great only a short while before. A similar fate met a third play manu- factured from a Rex Beach book of great popularity, ‘‘The Barrier,’ dram- atized by the author of “ Raffles,” and produced with much pomp and cere- mony by America’s best-known man- agerial firm at America’s most expensive theatre. Only a few weeks were required to reveal what the author had hidden from a majority of his readers. It seems that enough concrete ex- amples now have been quoted to satisfy the most prejudiced that the initial as- sertion of this article is well rooted in fact; but a few more confirmations, without any particularly interesting dramatic history, may be quoted: ‘‘The House of a Thousand Candles,’”’ which tempted the well-known banker and sportsman, Edward Randolph Thomas, to expend vast sums in the name of James K. Hackett, and to give that ac- tor a theatre rechristened with his name. This play was a dire failure at this same theatre, but is still, I believe, a success- ful popular-price attraction. This was , another book of the ‘million-copy”’ species, though it is only fair to Meredith Nicholson, its author, to concede him a charming prose style which he is put- ting to good advantage now that he has made a fortune out of under writing. Another Nicholson book, ‘Rosalind at Red Gate,” shared the same fate as his brightly illuminated maison. Both dramatic versions of Nicholson were by one whose published plays prove him a craftsman, George Middleton. Then there are “The Goose Girl” of Harold MacGrath and “Satan Sanderson’”’ of Hallie Erminie Rives, neither of which were dignified by more pretentious playhouses than those whose easily- pleased patrons they still entertain; all the dramatizations of Thomas Dixon, the virulent author of anti-negro novels; 845 “By Right of Sword” and other violent combinations of Anthony Hope and Richard Henry Savage bearing the name of Arthur W. Marchmont; and “The Red Mouse”’ a best-seller by Wil- liam Hamilton Osborne, tried tentative- ly out of New York with a metropolitan cast but soon abandoned to a type of mummers better suited to the houses where, since its transference, it has en- joyed some popularity and still is to be found. Space and the patience of the reader alone prevent a more extended list; but enough has been shown to prove that literature is avenged by its sister, the drama. To those who frankly avow that they write for the public it must be dis- concerting indeed to have their public turn from them scornfully as soon as it discovers just the sort of stuff they actually write; and it should mightily alarm those who are not making the best use of their talents, since it pre- sages an increasing sentiency as the public becomes better educated. With those who are doing their best, one can have no possible quarrel if their sincere imaginings please. But those deliberate- ly “writing down” had better beware, had best remember that the present popularity of ill-conceived and worse- executed romances is due, not to a decrease in education but an increase. The public that makes them popular to-day read nothing yesterday, and to- morrow, if general education progresses with the same speed, they will demand a far superior brand of fiction from that they enjoy to-day. And then those scrupulous writers who never figure in best-selling lists will be taken down from dusty shelves and become semi-classics; while the prominent fictionist, unless he has already a snug fortune, will be laughed out of publishers’ offices just as to-day the perpetrators of “home and mother” ballads are starving before music printer’s shop-fronts — music printers of whose fortunes they laid the corner-stones only a decade ago with songs that stand in the same relation to the popular music of to-day that to- day’s best-sellers may to those of to- morrow. George Nathan's Casual Chronicles of a Captious Critic By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN flare tLt LIAM J. B | W BURNS, the de- A NEW DEPART- is the || MENT THAT TAKES YOU “BEHIND THE SCENES’’ BROADWAY tective, George Bernard Shaw of America. (Derisive laugh- ter, cat-calls, one egg and two bricks.) William J. he had plenty of interest- ing and vital material wherewith to hold the rapt attention of any audience in the country, he would have to learn the theatricals of public speaking if he hoped to ON Burns, the detective, is the Theodore Roosevelt of the American theatre. (Hisses, groans, tWo tomatoes and five bricks.) “How can anyone figure it out that way?” indignantly yells the gallery. “Burns isn’t a writer or a ruler, a Shaw or a Roosevelt!” But he is—both a Shaw and a Roosevelt. Burns, that is, is the greatest and most effective self-advertiser in the United States to- day. That he really has the talent and ability necessary to the complete back- ing up of this advertising is a fact that has no more place in these theatrical chronicles than has a new, vital and genuinely dramatic idea in a play by Caillavet and De Filers. When Burns started out a year or so ago to get a lot of valuable free ad- vertising for his detective bureau, he began first with the magazines, with which he contracted for the narratives of his most celebrated copings with crime; second, with book-publishers, for a history of his exploits with the Los Angeles dynamiters; and third, with innumerable clubs, banquets, po- litical rallies, societies, camp meetings and any rooms that° might by any chance hold an audience, for addresses. Burns was shrewd enough, however, to realize that in spite of the fact that accomplish results that would be really poignant. It so happened that one day his work took him to Kansas City. While in that town, having an evening to spare, he thought he would like to go to the theatre. He did. The play happened to be “kindling,” the leading actress, Margaret Illington. In the play there was a character supposed to represent a detective. Now although Burns liked the play immensely, the actions of the make-believe detective got on _ his nerves to a samuelgompers degree. After the performance was over, he met in the lobby with E. J. Bowes, the manager-owner of the attraction. as well as the husband of its star. Burns and Bowes had met on the Pacific Coast in the previous year. In two ex- pressive minutes Burns had told Bowes what he thought of the sleuth in the play. “Well,” said Bowes, “if you don’t like what he does, why not help us change what he does?” Bowes was joking. But Burns wasn’t. “All right, Ed,” said he, “I will.” And he did. In return for this favor, Miss Illing- ton gave Burns a series of lessons in the melodramatics of public speaking— 846 and Burns was ready for the third point in his great advertising campaign. After point number three, however, came point number four—and point number four was and is Burns’ biggest advertising coup. He conceived the idea of advertising himself and his big detec- tive agency..from the stage. He sought out George Cohan in the Rec- tor’s grill room one night and, coming directly to the issue, got Cohan to change the reference to the Pinkertons in “Get Rich Quick Wallingford” to a reference to the Burns men. He followed this up by signing a contract to do in collaboration a detec- tive play (“The Argyle Case’) for Klaw and Erlanger. The contract specifies that Burns’ name must appear on all advertising matter connected with the play. At the opening perfor- mances, Burns made the speeches. When “The Conspiracy” was di- vulged in New York, four complimen- tary references to the Burns bureau were listened to by its audiences. In almost every detective-crook play of the last year, Burns has managed in one way or another (often merely by his wonderfully friendly, ingratiating man- ner or faculty for witty retort) to have an allusion to himself and his agency included. Even in the farce “Stop Thief,” the Burns name appears. While in Chicago a couple of months ago, some one told Burns that there was a detective sketch being done in vaudeville under Daniel Frohman’s management. Its name was “Detective Keen.” It was playing at the moment in Chicago. “Why don’t you get ’em to use your CASUAL CHRONICLES OF A CAPTICtS CRITIC ‘847 name in it?” suggested his informant, smiling. Burns misinterpreted the smile. “Good idea!” he exclaimed. “Who’s the manager ?” The man told him. “Why,” ejaculated Burns, “he’s a friend of mine! I’ll call him up and get him to turn the trick for me.” Burns called the manager up the.next morning. The latter agreed to Burns’ request with an alacrity that was sur- prising—even to Burns, his good friend. “If you’re at liberty to-night, come around and see the sketch,” he added. “T'll have your name put in at this afternoon’s performance.” “How will you use the name?” in- — quired Burns. “Oh,” replied the manager gra- ciously, “I'll have the detective say he’s a Burns man, and I'll have the other characters in the piece refer to him twice as one of your operatives.” Burns thanked his obliging friend, and, going to the nearest cigar store, sent him a box of expensive gigars. That night Burns went to see the sketch. It didn’t take him long to realize why his friend had been so eager to favor him. For the detective in the sketch, contrary to most stage detectives, was a boob of the first and most elegant water. He was the butt of | the crooks, an all-around joke, a com- plete dub, a lunk-headed ninny and more. And the second time he referred to himself as a “Burns man,” Burns dug out his hat, sneaked up the aisle, went to the nearest drug store and sent the manager a box of the worst pharmaceutical cigars he could find. ELCSte JANES AN D HER MOTHE@ HE theatrical world has a lot of favorite jokes that it relishes fell- ing and retelling. Most of these jokes are of an “inside” or intimate nature and are of interest for the major part only to theatrical people. Many of these stock yarns of theatrical folk are built upon the person and foibles of Mrs. Janis, mother to the celebrated Elsie. Our theatrical journalists rarely let a month during the season pass without etching some of the Mrs. Janis jests into print, with the result that one month we hear how the jewel-bedecked Mrs. Janis is distressingly caught by one of her daughter’s numerous 848 wealthy and socially distinguished suit- ors in the act of buying cabbages from a huckster at the stage entrance of the Globe Theatre, and the next month that Mrs. Janis, attired in a mauve and scar- let peignoir, decorated with artificial geraniums, has told Alan Dale (who came to interview Elsie) that she (Mrs.) admires Rubens’ “Judgment of Paris” so much more than Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut,’ and Chauvannes’ “Sommeil” so very, very, very much more than Beethoven’s “Fifth Sym- phony.” Whether or not Mrs. Janis is actually possessed of) the risible quali- ties that have been and are attributed to her is not given me (a complete stranger to the lady) to say, but there is another phase to her character, of which the public has not heard. Elsie Janis’ success on the native stage has been due wholly and entirely to her mother—or at least as wholly and entirely as any individual’s success can be due to another. Mrs. Janis’ in- tricate campaignings on her talented daughter’s behalf, the spankings ad- ministered when daughter was little and wouldn’t study, and all that, do not belong to this page. Suffice it to indi- cate one way (a way of which few have ever heard) in which Mrs. assisted Miss past the early encounters with hostile public and not less show-me show men, when Elsie Janis was billed as “Little Elsie” and when this Little Elsie first sought to win the hand-claps of the Ohio theatre-going populace. In those days (a phrase that is always odious to me!) Little Elsie was, naturally, a very nervous little girl. When she would attempt on the stage to give an imitation of the mannerisms THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE and voice of a musical comedy star, it was very difficult for her to think of both at the same time. She could man- age the mannerisms all right ; she could negotiate an imitation of the star’s vocal pyrotechnics all right ; but she had the very deuce of a time combining the two into one composite imitation. Mrs. Janis appreciated her child’s temporary shortcomings but—wise gen- eral that she was—Mrs. Janis kept the fact of such shortcomings to herself and away from the public and the man- agers; and she set about to arrive at a manner in which she could fool the public (who thinks it knows every- thing) and the managers (who think they know everything and then a little bit more). Mrs. Janis, be it known, was in her younger days a mimic and a singer. Her own talents, she bethought herself, would she use to help her. Elsie. And here was her scheme—worked success- fully for two years, or until Elsie could achieve her imitations single-handed: While Elsie would be on the stage imitating the physical antics of some well-known singing comedienne, Mrs. Janis would station herself in the first entrance (i. e., in the wings) and while Elsie would keep her whole mind on the perfecting of the imitation of the actress’ walk, gestures, et cetera, the meanwhile (this is important) keeping her lips moving in time to the melody, mother would do the singing portion of the imitation. As mother had a power- ful, carrying voice, the public was fooled to a T—and as a stage hand will even kill his father for a dollar, the theatre managers never discovered Mrs. Janis’ stratagem. M R. Soe L.A S603 ORO BOA AAS N the third Tuesday of every other month there meets on gum-shoes for luncheon, at a certain unique out-of-the-way restaurant in New York, a group of men whose life labor touches in one form or other and more or less directly upon the domain of the drama. In the group are included, along with several of our more talented play- wrights, three famous editors, a novel- ist whose fictions have on two occasions seen the footlights, four magazine writers of the ten-cent-a-word species, and nine noted dramatic critics. It is a rule of the group that no guest shall under any circumstance at any time be invited to the luncheons; and the verbal happenings at these lunch- eons are kept as quiet as if they had never taken linguistic form. A week before the date of the gathering of The Clan, as the group knows itself, the secretary of the holy order (one of the three editors) sends to each of the brothers the name of the theatrical topic to be discussed during the gour- met orgy. Thus, a week before the last battle, a post-card with the solitary word “Belasco” arrived at the desk of each of the comrades. Although I am not privileged to disclose much of the gun- play that took place at this last rally, permission has been granted to me to give to the anxious world what must needs be an exceedingly fragmentary record of one phase of the dastardly proceedings. The particular Belaseo subject that was brought up for discus- sion at this particular point of the bac- chanal was: the question of “realism” via “details.” One of the visiting’ critics, the first orator of the afternoon, read to the as- sembled varlets the following delicious broadside, a Belasco press-agent “real- ism” record corraled with a fine sense of humor for the Philadelphia North American by its keen-eyed and accom- plished critic, H. T. Craven: “The property man of ‘The Gover- nor’s Lady’ has made an astounding statement. ‘There are in the Childs’ restaurant scene of this play,’ says he, ‘5000 separate articles.’ That sounds of course like a wild exaggeration. But consider the ‘props’ on each table, the knives, forks, spoons, plates, bills of fare, the pepper, salt, napkins, sugar bowls, and you will begin to realize the truth of my assertion. Don’t forget the fruit in the window, the boxes of shredded wheat, the griddles, the coffee urn, the clock, the charity boxes at the door. “The amount of detail in this setting is really unbelievable. To cap the cli- max, Mr. Belasco filled the charity ‘banks,’ which one always finds in these cafes, with ‘bum’ coins, a couple of good CASUAL CHRONICLES OF A CAPTIOUS CRITIC 849 pennies, and he even ‘plugged’ the slot with a piece of chewing gum. The pub- lic cannot be expected to be aware of all this scrupulous care. It doesn’t know that in an early act of the play the visit- ing cards of Senator Strickland and Mrs. Wesley Merritt actually bear their stage names and that the editor’s wife’s card states that the lady is ‘at home on Thursdays.’ “In the first act of ‘Peter Grimm’ the - desk of the old florist was filled with letters to customers, written in re- sponse to complaints and orders. These documents were not even referred to in the course of the drama. Mr. Belasco, ~ however, believes that their very pres- ence has a psychological effect on the minds of the players. It helps to put them in the proper mood for the play.” After this superb recital, one of the New York critics read the following additional Belasco “realism” record re- cently spread in the metropolitan pub- lic prints for the due impressing of the theatre-going masses: “There are several features con- nected with ‘Years of Discretion’—and in fact all Belasco productions—which, although considered important by pro- ducer and actors, seldom get over the footlights. For instance, in ‘Years of Discretion’ the stationery used by Mar- _garet Brinton—the character assumed by Alice Putnam—and the cigarettes she smokes, bear the monogram “M. B.,” while the tea service used in her apartments is of solid silver, engraved with the same initials. And, of course, the tea is real. Then in the ‘Governor’s Lady,’ when Emmett Corrigan is sup- posed to eat lamb stew, he does it. All the scoffer need do to become con- vinced is to take a seat-in the front row during a performance of this play— there will come floating over-to him a delicious aroma from the steaming tureen which Mary Slade places in front of her husband in their old home. And in the Childs’ Restaurant scene the genuineness of the various dishes in course of preparation reaches the audience in the commingling of odors that slowly creep out over the audi- torium. The white-capped cook deftly flips the wheat cakes and ‘sinkers;’ the 850 steam from the coffee urn rises merrily ; customers seated at the marble-topped tables consume ‘beef and,’ with a lot of other quick lunch delicacies, while on the counter may be seen stacks of pies, mountains of crullers, oranges, apples, loaves of bread, cup custards and all the other things so dear to the heart of the quick-lunch devotee.” After one of the editor brothers had suggested that the only detail that Mr. Belasco seems ever to overlook in one of his productions is the play itself, one of the critics (a Westerner): made an eloquent speech to the assembled mob with a mouth full of escarole salad, as a climax to which he presented to each vile scoundrel present a printed slip. This slip was headed: “Sample News- paper Criticism of a New Belasco Play.” Here is the “criticism :” “The Wizard outdid himself again last -night. The Wizard triumphed where every other producer in America would have failed. Before an audience of the most representative individuals in all the most representative lines of activity, the peerless Wizard, by the Sheer exercise of his incontestable genius, by the most gorgeous scenery ever shown on the American stage (one J Ss "THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE scene alone must have cost at least $5000), achieved the dramatic master- piece of the decade. Who else but the Wizard could have thought of throwing a baby spotlight on the heroine’s face just as she was about to wipe her nose in Act III, and who else but the Wizard would have thought of the transcendently beautiful idea of having her at this crisis use a rose leaf instead of a handkerchief. And an American Beauty rose leaf at that! Details such as the latter, indicating the masterly grip that the Wizard has on life, are abundant in this, his greatest master- piece. The Wizard is a marvel. To be sure, the play, if one stops to think of it at all, doesn’t amount to anything, but the $5000 scene alone succeeds in making it the greatest drama of the century. After the second act, the ‘bravos’ echoed through the house, and the Wizard was compelled to come out and make a speech. It was a night of triumph for the Wizard. The Wizard, when all is said and done, is the great- est man in the world.” The subject for the next session is “The Worst Actor on the American Stage.” Each member, however, will be limited to eight hundred choices. WHIMS AND FOIBLES OF THE “STARS: ANY of the so-termed “stars” in the world of the playhouse are possessed of whims, foibles or what- ever you care to name them that, while not so very different from your or my whims, foibles or whatever you care to name them, yet seem slightly more statistically valid because, in a way, they shed a light on acting as he is done, play-making as she is done, theatrical things in America as they is flone—and the public as he, she, they and, chiefly, it is done. The emphasis being, of course, on the done. (If you wonder why I have employed what may seem to you a weird grammatical con- struction, let me explain that it was merely a passing whim and, as such, en- tirely as sensible and justifiable as the whim of any “star.”) Speaking of whims at the handsome rate a word specified in my contract with the even more handsome editor, do you know that Miss Julia Marlowe, at the begin- ning of an engagement, almost regu- larly causes to be posted on the call- board a paper inscribed about as fol- lows: MEMBERS OF THE COMPANY WILL PLEASE BE SO GOOD AS NOT TO SPEAK TO MISS MARLOWE IN THE THEATRE. Will Miss Marlowe’s manager, when he sends me his letter of contradiction, be so good as to enclose a stamped en- velope? It is said that Miss Eleanor Robson used also to indulge herself in this ' democratic pastime. This practice is evidently based on the same principle that Sarah Bernhardt (an actress of some small ability, so it is vaguely rumored) is always on the friendliest personal terms with the members of her company, even to the humblest actor; that George Bernard Shaw and Max Beerbohm, when they were writing for the Saturday Review, used to call the typesetters who set up their criticisms for them by their first names. Speaking of foibles (still at the hand- some rate a word), Mrs. Leslie Carter, during her various spectacular negotia- tions with playwrights after she left the Belasco management and began manag- ing herself, used to insist to them (gracefully, to be sure, but insist it was just the same) that in any play they hoped to write for her use, they must incorporate a reference to her (in the leading rédle) as “the daughter of a thousand kings.” Somewhere in the play, she wanted at least one of the CASUAL CHRONICLES OF A CAPTIOUS CRITIC 851 other characters to refer to her in that way. Probably this is why Mrs. Leslie Carter is still playing “Zaza” and “Camille.” Speaking of personal peculiarities (still at that same elegant rate), there has been told recently a pertinent little story about Mrs, Fiske and her niece, Miss Emily Stevens. Mrs. Fiske, so the tale -goes, was helping Miss Stevens with her part in “Within the Law.” Arriving at a certain critical scene in the manuscript, Mrs. Fiske took Miss Stevens by the hand: “In this scene,” she said, “your fea- tures must show a curious mixture of hate, rebellion, lingering hope, flaming passion, stubborn resolve, immovable determination and ferocious intensity, relieved only by a vague, hidden ray of love; all these feelings you must re- veal clearly, poignantly, vividly, in your features—and, Emily dear, be sure to turn your face away from the audi- ence!” WHEN THEY TURNED DOWN THE PLAY HE complete and thoroughly de- served success of Eleanor Gates’ play, “The Poor Little Rich Girl,” pro- duced by Arthur Hopkins, a newcomer into the field of theatrical management, has brought with it much speculation as to how it came about that a piece so very worthy had not been snapped up by one of the established managerial firms. Although I am not in possession of the facts wherewith to answer this seemingly legitimate question, there has come to my working-chamber, via Hilo- bagus, my giant negro bodyguard, a re- port that casts on the problem. When the play was announced for a try-out performance at New Haven, Conn., a leading firm of producers who had been offered an interest in the piece bethought themselves that it would be a very good idea to have a look at it and decide whether it was worth taking an interest in. Accordingly, the managers sent one of their stenographers to make a report on the play. The stenographer showed up at the office next morning. “Well, how is the show?” asked the firm. “N. G.,” replied the stenog- rapher with firm finality. “In the first act, laid in a rich family’s house, the little daughter is neglected and abused by her governess and by one of the maids. I’-e been in several rich people’s houses and no rich child is ever treated like that.” So the matter of taking an interest in the play was dismissed on the spot! From this it will be seen that Pi- nero’s “The Thunderbolt” is absolutely no good because in the first act, laid in the early afternoon, all the window shades are pulled down (clearly this shows that Pinero knows nothing about how well-to-do families run _ their houses) and also that Galsworthy’s “Strife” doesn’t amount to much be- cause certainly no wealthy business firm would allow a workman to come into its expensively furnished office without first instructing him to wipe off his dirty shoes so he wouldn’t make tracks on the carpet. Why 1 Am leaving the Stage By GEORGE M. COHAN Editor’s Note: George M. Cohan announces herewith over his own signature his determination to quit the stage as an actor and devote himself to “farming, thinking and writing.” for twenty-five years. Mr. Cohan has occupied a unique position on the American stage Perhaps no other American actor has ever come so near to the heart of so great a proportion of our population. Mr. Cohan ‘has compelled the critics of his profession, who viewed him at first merely as an old-fashioned “song-and-dance artist,” to admit his possibilities as a writer of clear-cut, characteristic American comedies. When “ Broadway Jones” first was staged in the autumn of 1912 it revealed a new George M. Cohan. Not only did the author-actor display himself in a réle which called for neither cantatory nor terpsichorean efforts, but he showed tendencies towards the same unsophisticated delineation of American middle-class life that made a classic of “Way Down East.” As an actor Mr. Cohan is successful. His statement, which follows, of his reasons for retiring as interesting possibility. an actor is characteristic of the man. T the flood tide of my finan- | A cial success on Broadway, I | have decided that it is best for me to retire from the acting game. Long ago I learned the truth of the adage that “the way to go gracefully is to go at once.” I never have been an advocate of farewell tours on the “con- tinuous” plan. I never have cared for the acting end of the -game. It was never my ambition to shine as an actor; my ambition is and has been to be known as an author and composer. Now that I have harnessed up a small piece of change—at least sufficient to guarantee me coffee and rolls for a few weeks ahead—I am going to stick to my determination and try to become a farmer. ’ Of course, I am not going actually to till the soil, or anything of that sort, but it is my intention to take a As a playwright he is at least a highly fairly good-size piece of property near Providence, R. I., and transform it into a home that I have had in my mind’s eye since boyhood. I want a place where I can read and write and think, and one that will be alluring enough to make it attractive to my growing family and myself for the year round, if need be. Of course, I do not intend to eschew Broadway; the dear old street has been very good to me; in fact, it has been my inspiration for many plays, beginning with “Johnny Jones” and ending with “Broadway Jones.” I have sung its praises in song and story, and tried to get even with the most wonderful street in the world. I do not want to moralize. Perhaps it would not be just the right thing for a man of thirty-five to do, but I’ve seen them all come and go, up and down the big white street, and if 852 they play it long enough, they are sure to get tired. If not that, their money gives out. As for myself, I have really never played the Broadway game; rather I have been an interested spectator, and now in my years of discretion I am going to say “good-by’”—at least for a while. , It is my ambition to read a whole lot, and every once in a while when I feel WHY I AM LEAVING THE STAGE 853 an inspiration, I will grind out a play— for instance, next year I am going to do an original play for Raymond Hitch- ‘cock. This, of course, wiil be musical, more or less, Just at present, I am getting ready to dramatize Earl Derr Biggers’ novel, “The Seven Keys to Baldpate,” and in the spring of 1914, I shall say my real “good-by” to the stage as a player. GEORGE M. COHAN’S CAREER AT A GLANCE George M. Cohan was born in Provi- dence, R. I, July 4, 1878. In 1887 and 1888 he toured the New England states with his father, mother and sister in an entertainment called “Four of a Kind.” 1888-89—Played _ variety ments with his family. 1890-91—Appeared in the title rdle of the farce-comedy, “Peck’s Bad Boy.” 1891-92—Played with his family in a stock company in Buffalo, N. Y., for the entire season. 1893-94—With Gus Williams’ com- pany, playing the silly boy in the farce, “April Fool.” It was during this season he first became known as a song writer. 1894-95—With Lydia Yeamans Titus, company, and later with Charles A. Loder, the German comedian. . 1895-96—With Hyde’s Comedians, a big vaudeville company, of which Helen Mora was the star. Played first Pacific Coast engagement that summer. 1896-98—With Weber and Fields’ “Vesta Tilley” company,. the greatest vaudeville troupe ever organized in this or any other country. It was about this time he became known as a writer of one-act plays. 1897-98—With Harry Williams’ All- Star Vaudeville company, the four Cohans being the star attraction. 1898-99—-Signed a three-years’ con- tract with Hyde and Behman, vaude- ville managers, and appeared with the Four Cohans as the chief attraction of what was known as the Behman Show. engage- 1899-1900—The Four Cohans ap- peared in his first three-act musical play, “The Governor’s Son,”and played their first Broadway engagement at the Savoy Theatre, 1900-01—Toured the country in “The Governor’s Son.” 1901-02—Elaborated into three acts his one-act play, “Running for Office,” and played a successful engagement at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, New York. 1902-03—Toured the country from Maine to California in “Running for - Office.” 1903-04—With Sam H. Harris formed the firm of Cohan and Harris and appeared for the first time as an individual star in “Little Johnny Jones.” _1904-05—Wrote and composed “Forty-five Minutes from Broadway,” in which he starred Fay Templeton. Four companies presented the play at the same time. This little comedy with four songs is said to have made profit and royalties of more than a million dollars. 1905-06—Appeared in “George Washington, Jr.” Appeared with his company that summer at the New Amsterdam Theatre Roof Garden in a revival of his first playlet, “The Gover- nor’s Son.” 1906-07—Composed and _ produced “Fifty Miles from Boston.” Four com- panies presented this play. 1907-08—Composed and _ produced “The Talk of New York,” presenting Victor Moore as a star for the first 854 time. Mr. Moore appeared in this play for three seasons. 1908—Wrote and composed “The Yankee Prince,” and played the spring and summer seasons at the Knicker- bocker Theatre, and then moved it to the Gaiety Theatre, of which he became one of the owners. Mr. Cohan appeared in this play for three seasons. At this time Cohan and Harris also took control of the Grand Opera House in New York City. 1908-09—Wrote and composed a musical comedy called “The American Idea,” which toured the country for two years. Organized and sent on tour the “Cohan & Harris Minstrel Com- any.” - 1909-10—Wrote, composed and pro- duced “The Man Who Owns Broad- way,’ with Raymond Hitchcock as the star. Mr. Hitchcock appeared in this play for over two years. At this time Cohan and Harris took control of the George M. Cohan Theatre in New York City. THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE 1910-11—Dramatized the Chester stories, “Get Rich Quick Wallingford,” and scored the biggest author’s success ever known in this country. Four com- panies presented this play on tour, while the New York and Chicago com- panies, in their respective cities, enjoyed runs each of which lasted over a year. 1911-12—Wrote, composed and pro- duced “The Little Millionaire,” in which he appeared for the entire season in his own theatre in New York City. At this time Cohan and Harris took control of the Grand Opera House in Chicago. Season of 1912-1913—Appeared for the first time as a light comedian in his first straight comedy, playing the title role in “Broadway Jones.” Cohan and Harris have this season taken control of the Astor Theatre, New York City, and are building the new Bronx Opera House, which is to be_located in New York City, on One Hundred and Forty- ninth Street. a) A BIRD THEY tell a story on a certain “good-fellow” who was a constant visitor at the stage door of the American Music Hall, in Chicago during the engagement of the ‘‘ Barnyard Romeo.” Numerous convivial after-theatre parties were held while the show was there, but the crowning event was an especially hilarious affair planned as a send-off after the final performance. After the celebration had reached a point where several of the celebrants were draped languidly upon the furniture, some one, who had nefariously ‘‘borrowed”’ one of the costumes used in the barnyard scene, took the gentleman of whom we speak to a room in the hotel, and, with the assistance of two others, dressed him in the barnyard costume, tied him in a chair before a large mirror, turned on all the heat, and went away. Later they returned, switched on the lights, swathed themselves in sheets and with numerous vicious pokes finally awakened their victim. He blinked at his reflection in the mirror, and tried to lift one arm; as he did so the wing which was at- tached to it flapped; he tried the other arm with the same result. He nodded his head, and the feathered head-dress with its long beak did likewise; then, after trying in vain to rise, he sank back gasping with the heat, and exclaimed: ‘‘Gosh! In hell!—And a bird!” —and the stage. mY EAPERICN © Eee In getting on the stage staying As told by an actress to FRANCES PECK SMITH EDITOR’S NOTE:— This is the first of a series of articles, each complete in itself, in which a well known actress tells the story of just how she got on She has told frankly of the experiences that have been hers — experiences that have pathos and humor — and iragedy. If you know your stage and the people on it, we have no doubt but that before this amazing series has ended, you will have at least surmised the writer’s name. there ELEN!” H I looked up from the maga- zine I had been reading, to discover in the doorway my mother dressed for a reception, to which I had been supposed to accompany her. I, tardy, negligent I, was in my kimono, my hair hanging down my back and my eyes shadowy with thoughts of the story in which I had been so absorbed as to forget the passage of time. Her expres- sion brought me to my senses like a shock of cold water, I jumped up and stood uncertainly, stammering: “I’m awfully sorry, Mother, but I for- got. I was reading and—I forgot! Could you wait? I'll hurry.” Mother said nothing for a moment, and I knew that she was curbing her tongue. When she did speak, it was to say, very, very quietly: “You know I cannot wait. I am late as it is. Go back to your reading.” Then without another word she turned, and walked away. I went back to my chair, but not to 855 read. I was thoroughly uncomfortable— ashamed, impatient, regretful. Things were always like this between Mother and me. We saw things through such different lenses. She wanted and ex- pected the natural, conventional kind of daughter—the sort that usually falls to the lot of such mothers as mine—a party-loving, dress-adoring amenable sort of girl, intelligent without being intellectual, one to whom doing the ex- ° pected things came natural. Instead, she had had bestowed upon her the exact opposite, in the person of my- self—omitting the intellectual. ' As a child I had been a tomboy, a wild, unrestrained creature. built of moods and impulses. My school days were stormy, for I could not be pre- vailed on to become “a nice little girl.” Even a couple of years at a sedate boarding school failed to turn me outa typical young lady. I continued to hate my party clothes, and be either bored or diabolically amused by afternoon teas. I was hopeless. Mother acknowl- I LOOKED UP FROM THE MAGAZINE I HAD BEEN READING, TO DISCOVER IN THE DOORWAY MI 856 ANNAN) 0) Mt} " is rel ||| net : | a Jyh JU li ; i: i Oy Mo |. MOTHER, DRESSED FOR A RECEPTION, TO WHICH I HAD BEEN SUPPOSED TO ACCOMPANY HER 857 858 edged as much. But she did not give up hope, finally, until the afternoon of the day I have told you about. You see, I wanted to be an actress. In a burst of confidence I-had once told Mother as much. As I remember, she had neither looked nor acted surprised. In fact I think she had yawned a bit be- hind her pretty hand. Over the hand her eyes had twinkled, as if she might have been laughing. “Helen,” she had said, “your skin looks bad. Have you had your walk to- day? Never neglect that. One’s circula- tion is so important. And I wouldn’t read so much, dear, if I were you. Your eyes are dull.” With that, the conver- sation had ended. All of which leads back to the day when I didn’t go to the reception with - Mother. ; Right after luncheon I had gone to my room, supposedly to rest a bit, and then dress slowly. One of Mother’s maxims was that one should never dress in a hurry. “It fags one to rush; and when one feels fagged one looks it,” she declared. So, on this particular afternoon I was to take my time. I proceeded to do so. I had slipped into my kimono and taken down my braids. Then, picking up a theatrical magazine, I had lain back in an easy chair to enjoy a few minutes of respite before the hated dressing. For several months I had been fascinated by a story running in this particular pe- riodical, and the final installment was in the number I held in my hand. And, as I had read on, eager for the finish, the hands of the saucy little clock on my dresser had chased each other around its face until Mother’s voice had roused me. After she had gone I dressed and wandered aimlessly about, anxious for, and yet dreading, her return. What could I do to make it right with her! The moment she entered the door, she called me, and by her voice I knew that something portentous was about to take place. I followed her to her room, where I helped her take off her wraps. When they were removed, she sat down and motioned me to a chair. It was charac- teristic of my mother that she always THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE did what had to be done without waiting. “Mother,” I said quickly, “I’m aw- fully sorry. Really Iam. I haven’t any excuse to offer. It was pure careless- ness. I was reading and I forgot all about the time.” “What were you reading?” I flushed. But I told the truth. She nodded. “I thought so. Helen, you are obsessed with this idea of the theatre. Aren’t you?” I traced myself. “Yes, Mother, I am,” I said. “I never see a play but that I am thrilled to the—oh, to the very tips of me! Some- thing in me seems to just answer back as—as it doesn’t to other things.” Mother remarked coldly: “To the things I care about.” I nodded miserably. She leaned back in her chair to look at me intently. Just so, I think she might have viewed the antics of some new and surprising pet. And I looked back, uncomfortably but stubbornly. Finally she said: “Suppose I should say you might go on the stage. What then?” I reminded her gently: “I’m of age, Mother. I could go— or try to go at any time. That is, if I weren’t disposed to consider your wishes. But I’m your only child and I have honestly tried and will try to please you. I wish you’d understand how really hard I do try.” Over her face there flitted a strange expression. I think it was tenderness. At least it was something that showed an understanding I had never seen in her before. She leaned toward me and laid her warm, smooth fingers for an instant ‘on my clasped hands. “T called you here to give you an awful scolding, Helen,” she said whimsically, “but you do have a way with you. I’ll admit that. So, instead, I’m going to tell you that if you like and if you can you may go on the stage—with my full consent. Who knows,”—and in the quiet voice I felt the little shade of contempt,—“who knows but that some day I may be- come famous as the mother of one of our greatest actresses!” “Dg you mean it, Mother? But of course you’re only fooling!” MY EXPERIENCES ON THE STAGE “I do mean it. Better anything than a discontented, disappointed old maid. That’s what you'll develop into, I’m afraid, if I keep you around with me. So it’s settled. Now I must see what my influence can do toward getting you the attention of some first-class manager.” “But Mother,” I exclaimed, “I don’t know a thing! No manager would look at me. I'll have to go to some dramatic school first.” “That’s right!” Mother said. “Well, which one shall it be?” Now, in my day-dreams I had al- ways imagined that there might be just such a conversation as this. And here it was, come true. Of course I knew what school I wanted to enter. I’d had it picked out for ages. Mother nodded when I mentioned it. “Go ahead,” she said. “But you must go alone. I, of course, will take care of the expense, but aside from that I can- not help you. If there’s any histrionic ability in you it will show, now that you're giving it a chance. If not, I hope you'll be content to stay at home and do things like other girls.” I went over and kissed her fervently. “Oh, Mother, I will, I will,” I told her. “If I fail, I'll never mention stage to you again and [’ll think I was really made for—for—” “Teas and things!” Mother finished for me dryly. “All right, dear. Now run out. I want to lie down for a while before dinner.” How that night ever passed I haven’t an idea. I was so excited that I couldn’t eat, let alone sleep! At two o’clock in the morning I hopped out of bed, slipped into bathrobe and slippers, and sitting down in front of my _ mirror, studied myself. I was trying to find out just what I was best fitted for. Comedy or tragedy? A tragic expres- sion, I figured, looked pretty well from a front view, but would never do in profile. Not with a nose, which, with- out being pug, still has a decided tendency in that direction. So I de- cided I would be a famous comedienne. My mission in life should be to make the world laugh. Sometimes, though— with a regretful thought for the tragedy 859 which could not be—the laughter should be that which is akin to tears, and those who had laughed the hardest should say as they filed out of the theatre: “Yes, she is a wonderful comedienne and yet somehow, I feel that she has suffered. There is something infinitely pathetic behind her laugh.” »And with tears in my eyes as I looked at myself in the glass I quoted a verse from a little poem I had* read somewhere: Have you never heard in her ringing laugh The echoing breath of a sigh? Have you never detected the unshed tear That brightens the smile in her eye? Have you never noticed the downward droop Of her lips? No? . Then you are blind, For you have not seen, as I have seen, The face of the woman behind. I sat and I watched her the other night And her laughter rang time and again, But I knew that the wanton merriment Was an echo of hidden pain. And as she sang an old home song, ’Twas apparent to my mind That the song was not sung by the woman there But was moaned by the woman behind. And then, still facing myself with the tragic look that was good from a front view, I let a little smile break through the tears. Slowly it grew until my whole face was transformed into something elfish and mischievous. Then: “Rubber face!” I muttered to myself in belated reproach, turned out the light and went back to bed. The following morning before Mother was up—she voustly break- fasted in bed—I was on my way to the dramatic school which was to receive me into its arms. I wondered if the people there would see anything unusu- al in me to began with. Would they question me closely, perhaps, and then go away and have little private confabs and come back and tell me that I seemed to be just the one for a cextain part they were having trouble in “lling? Would I mind—not going to scht. >but just going on the stage immediate “But I don’t know a thing—*1 wou say deprecatingly, at which they would. wave their hands and declare it didn’t matter? Perhaps then a world-famous manager would enter. They would go | “Tl 7 rm To it arin a AND THEN, STILL FACING MYSELF IN THE MIRROR WITH THE TRAGIC LOOK THAT WAS GOOD FROM A 3 FACE WAS TRANSFORMED INTO SOME- a 860 FRONT VIEW, I LET A LITTLE SMILE BREAK THROUGH THE TEARS. SLOWLY IT GREW UNTIL MY WHOLE THING ELFISH AND MISCHIEVOUS 861 THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE to him for his advice. Would he come over to me and say. perhaps: “My dear girl, before you is a chance of a lifetime. Take it. You are capable. You have the personality. Some day your name will be over the world’s greatest theatres in electric lights.” Would he? He didn’t. The elevator man of the building where the school was located told me that the offices were on the third floor. So up I went. The offices were comfortable and homey: Yet they fairly buzzed with business. Several girls were writing at typewriters. One of these, awfully attractive in her tailored skirt and waist, with her hair all soft and fluffy, asked me whom I had come to see. “I want to study to be an actress,” I told her. “Whom shall I see?” She smiled and led the way to the door of a sunny office in which sat a short, stout man with glasses and a gray mustache. “T want to be an actress,” I said after I had introduced myself and we had sat down. “All my life I’ve. wanted to and I never had the chance until now.” “Oh, wasted life!” he said merrily. “You are, I’m_ thinking, perhaps eighteen years old?” “Eighteen and a half,” I told him. “Mother living?” he inquired. “Yes indeed,” I said. ‘“Father’s dead, though. But I know he would have wanted me to be anything I cared to be. He was terribly fond of me and spoiled me, Mother said.” After he’d asked me all about every- thing without seeming to be particu- larly impressed with anything, he led me into another office where a man at a desk took my name and my money, as well as my address and my telephone number. I was to be at school every morning except Saturday, for study and recita- tion. Between two and three o'clock on Wednesdays and Saturdays I was to take dancing. Fencing came between nine and ten o'clock on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Then we went up to a big classroom on the fifth floor. A pompous looking man was teaching some people there. When the man with me called his name, he came out and we were introduced. He was the head of the dramatic school. His name was Mr. Gibson. Years ago he was a splendid actor. I recognized his name and, believe me, I was all in a flutter when I discovered he was to teach me. Then they gave me a list of books to get, including “Macbeth,” “King Lear” and several popular novels that had been dramatized, and a list of things for make-up. Cold creams, rouge, carmine, eyebrow pencils, grease paints, all of which I could get at a certain place put up in a tin box for five dol- lars. That tin box has come in handy since those days, I can tell you. It has held many things beside make-up—let- ters, roses, bits of ribbon and oh, all sorts of things. But that’s going ahead of the story, isn’t it? I was to go for my first lesson the following morning, so all the things had to be purchased that day. I hadn’t enough money with me. So I hurried home for the wherewithal. Mother was at home and I could see that she had been waiting eagerly to hear of my experiences. Being the mother of a great actress might not be so bad after all. And without a word she handed me the money I needed. As I left the house I looked back and saw her standing at the win- dow and somehow it brought tears to my eyes and a queer little lump into my throat. I waved to her and she waved back. As I went on my way I thought: “Dear darling, I'll just show you that I’m not such a failure after all.” SCHOOL. THE NEXT STORY, IN THE JUNE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE, WILL DEAL WITH THIS ACTRESS’ BONA FIDE EXPERIENCES IN A DRAMATIC IF YOU HAVE EVER ATTENDED ONE, EVER BEEN INTERESTED IN ONE OR EVER HOPE TO BECOME A PUPIL, READ THIS STORY. “Honey — And The Sting By GERTRUDE BROOKE HAMILTON HORNTON was | singing his melt- | | | ing “Honey” song to a hushed audience, and a thrilled girl in an upper right-hand box. | THE SHORT STORY OF A MATINEE IDOL’S LOVE AFFAIR now booked for “New York, indefinite.” He had, therefore, at the musicale, and at any other place where he deigned to ap- pear, his pick of girls— He was singing softly, haughty girls or naughty imploringly, rapturously, ‘ pouring his heart into the golden notes. The song was just a little waltz melody in the middle of the second act of a popular comic opera; but it managed to catch a note of perfection, as Thorn- ton sang it, because with “Honey” he was making real love to the girl in the upper right-hand box, and telling her that with her coming the sun had risen in his life. It was evident that the girl in the box was quite overwhelmed by all this wealth of passion. She clasped her white gloved hands and drew her breath with quivering sighs. Her name was Rosie, She was dressed in pearly pink, with roses pinned to her gown, and a rose-encircled hat. It had been just two weeks since Thornton had met Rosie at a musicale, and Rosie had slipped from under the piercing eye of her aunt, Miss Hornet, who lived uptown in an apartment house, and who had brought Rosie, an orphan, up under a ramrod rule. At the musicale, Rosie had sipped a cup of picturesque punch, and fallen a vic- tim to the instant and I’ve-found-the- girl-of-my-dreams fashion of Thorn- ton’s instantaneous love-making. Thornton, much sought by the man- agers because of his handsome form and tenor voice, had just scored a hit with his “Honey” song in a new .opera, girls, pretty girls or witty girls, willy girls or silly girls; but it had taken him just five minutes to de- cide that Rosie, with her rosebud of a mouth and innocent eyes and womanly expression, was the one girl before whom he might consent to appear morn- ing, noon, and night. It had, in fact, been a case of love at first glimpse. ; Rosie’s aunt, Miss Hornet, had seemed to recognize this fact. Without pausing to inquire where Thornton had hailed from, or what his profession was, she had whisked Rosie away from the musicale, and sternly admonished her to behave herself. Whereupon, Rosie, outwardly as yielding as a rosebush swayed by the wind and inwardly as rebellious as the most willful little blos- som that had ever pricked an unwary finger, had promptly purchased a mat- inée ticket for the opera in which Thornton sang. From this point, love, as enacted by ~ Thornton and Rosie, had swung for- ward at a reckless pace. Rosie had per- suaded Miss Hornet, without daring to admit that Thornton was anything 90 wicked as an actor, to allow him to call !—which opportunity Thornton had embraced every afternoon except when he played a matinée. Then Rosie had be- come jealous of the matinée girls who adored Thornton from palpitating dis- tances, and had quarreled with him, — 863 864 and had flung into a fascinating tem- per, and had sent him off in an equally fascinating rage; and both of them had pronounced the world a failure, and she had gone to church with her aunt, and he had contemplated a downward path along which cocktails flow. To-day Thornton was proposing to Rosie with his song, proposing to her after a fashion no woman under thirty —or over it—could resist. And Rosié was giving him her answer by flinging him one of the flowers that had found paradise in blooming against the sweet- ness of her gown. It took Thornton three minutes. after the performance to rub off his make-up and don his outdoor clothes. Rosie was waiting for him in the lobby of the theatre. Thornton looked eagerly at Rosie, and said something about it be- ing almost unbelievable that she should wait for him. Rosie smiled; blushed, and dropped her eyes. And their fate, so far as confession and admission, was sealed forever more. Within a block of the apartment house in which Rosie and Miss Hornet lived, Rosie spoke fearfully of her aunt’s *unbending personality, and asked Thornton how he was going to get by it. “Oh, I'll win out.” Thornton spoke airily. He subdued countless feminine hearts six nights in the week and two - matinées, and with Rosie at his side, - the high height, high brow, and high temper of Miss Hornet seemed merely a little mist before the sun. In the parlor of Miss Hornet’s apart- ment, however, he found her a person- ality to be reckoned with. She was sit- ting by a front window ‘knitting red worsted mittens for heathen in a far- off land, when Thornton and Rosie en- tered; and she seemed to know instinc- tively that a climax had been reached between them, for she towered up, laid the mittens in a work basket, rang for tea, and fastened an indomitable eye on the dashing Thornton, who immediately wished he had his cane to twirl, and made an inane remark about the weather. The conversation trailed along lamely until after the tea had been brought in; then, because Miss Hornet had concen- ‘THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE trated her attention on a plate of nut sandwiches, Thornton accepted three cups of tea in rapid succession from the anxious Rosie, swallowed a macaroon at one gulp, and told Miss Hornet that he had asked Rosie to marry him. Miss Hornet poised a partly con- sumed nut sandwich in mid-air, “TI love Rosie,” said Thornton, put- ting aside his cup and rising to take Rosie’s hand. “I have loved her from the first minute I laid eyes on her.” Miss Hornet bored him with her gim- let gaze, and said with even more than her usual tartness: “Fiddlesticks! You’re a fool.” “Oh, Auntie!” Rosie clung adoringly to Thornton’s hand. Miss Hornet turned her attention to her niece. ““You’re a fool too,” she re- marked; and then, with her usual con fident incivility, she swerved back to Thornton, scrutinized him from head to foot, pierced his eyes with hers, set her thin lips into obstinate lines, shook her head, and said with finality: “You wont do.” Tears overpowered, Rosie. Auntie !—” she began. Miss Hornet interrupted. “Speak when you’re spoken to, do as you're bid, shut the door after you, and you'll never be a child.” Thus admonished, Rosie hung her head and clung closer to Thornton, who gave Miss Hornet a look of gath- ering wrath. “Don’t glare at me, young man,” com- manded that cranky lady. “I know what I’m talking about, and I’m talking about what I know. Rosie’s a fool. Don’t tell me you've fallen in love with her; all the fools fall in love with her, one on the average of every twenty-four hours. You wont do. Rosie’s husband must’ suit my taste. And you don’t suit it. Why? Ask me why the wind blows from the north!” She took the mittens from*her work basket, glared at Thorn- ton, shook her head, and fiercely at- tacked her knitting. Now Thornton, being of a somewhat vain‘ nature, might have flouted this rudeness by straightway departing from Miss Hornet’s dour presence; but Thornton was too keenly alive to the “Oh, Oe ee eT sweetness and softness of Rosie to do anything of the kind. He focused the entire wealth of his winning person- ality on Miss Hornet, saying, “Let me try to do, Miss Hornet. I mean,”—as she started to shake her head again— “let me see if I can’t make myself at- tractive to you. I’m not a half bad fel- low, as fellows go. Put me on proba- tion.” She regarded him with distrust. “Let me try for a week, or two weeks, to fit myself to the rdle of what you think Rosie’s husband should be,” he continued eagerly. “I’ve an idea, Miss Hornet, that I can play up to the part.” Still eying him suspiciously, she fired a question at him: “Do you smoke?” “Cigarettes,” admitted Thornton. «Do you drink?” “Sometimes.” “Do you get unsteady,on your legs and disgrace yourself by holding onto lamp posts ?” “Never.” “Do you flirt?” “Not apt to.” “Fiddlesticks! You flirted with Rosie at the musicale.” “I fell in love with Rosie.” “How many times in your life have you fallen in love?” “Once, really—with Rosie.” “You flatter yourself that Rosie has fallen in love with you?” Ves,” Miss Hornet brought the examina- tion to a sudden end by putting a red mitten back into her work basket and getting to her feet. “I'll go to my room and think it over—putting you on pro- bation,” she said. “I can’t come to a sane conclusion in a parlor full of fools.” Then to the delighted amazement of Thornton and Rosie, Miss’ Hornet ac- tually left them alone! Thornton caught Rosie about the waist and waltzed her around the room. “I’m going to win over that hornet,” he triumphed. “I’m going to buy mission- ary tracts; I’m going to part my hair in the middle. Behold!” He smoothed his hair, folded his hands in mock meek- ness, drew down the corners of his mouth, and seated himself on the edge “HONEY” AND THE STING 865 of the stiffest chair in the room with all the manner of a missionary plead- ing for poor Indian children. But Rosie, more intimate with Miss Hornet’s erratic character, parted Thornton’s hair in its old becoming fashion, unfolded his hands, and kissed up the corners of his mouth, while perched upon his knee. “You don’t know Auntie,” she insist- ed, over and over again. “Of course, you can try to win her over; you’re so wonderful and so clever. But Auntie’s awfully unexpected; nobody has~ever — able to find out what she really ikes. “Well, if I can’t find out—and I think I can—we’ll elope,” Thornton comforted. “All the hornets in heaven or earth can’t render this hour unhappy —you’re here, and I’m here, and the theatre’s nearly a mile away—and, oh, honey, honey, honey, there’s nobody in the world like you, and nothing in the world like love!” All this was very fascinating and en- tirely calculated to raise Thornton’s hopes of winning over Miss Hornet to a confident certainty. But in the days that followed, his enthusiasm received dash after dash of mental ice water. In vain did he buy missionary tracts, and start the knitter of red worsted mittens on heathenistic subjects; in vain did he sit on the edge of his chair and draw down the corners of his mouth; in vain did he carefully avoid any men- tion of his theatrical profession, and painstakingly converse on such sub- jects as Cannibalism, and Paganism. The end of every interview found Miss Hornet implacable. And Thornton realized that he was not progressing. Having, by this time, taxed his not over-patient disposition to its utmost, he mentally took Miss Hornet by her high nose and threw her out of the window of his calculations. He told Rosie, in a note dashed off in his fascinating hand from his dressing room in the theatre, that they had better elope that day. He directed her to come to the theatre be- fore the matinée and wait in his dress- ing room until after the performance, and then fly with him to the Little Church around the Corner, where a 866 preacher, by pre-arrangement, would be waiting. The idea of this rash action carried Rosie up to the seventh heaven of de- light, wherein she had her hair sham- pooed and her nails manicured and a bill of her aunt’s at a downtown de- partment store swelled by several col- umns. Thornton had enclosed a card in- structing the stage doorkeeper to con- duct Rosie to his, Thornton’s, dressing room. Rosie hung onto the card care- fully, but forgetfully left the note that the card had accompanied in full sight on her dressing table when she slipped, with rapidly. beating heart, from the apartment to make her way to the the- atre. Inside the stage entrancé she sud- denly missed the note, and realized in a panic what the consequences might be if Miss Hornet should by any chance go into her, Rosie’s, room, find the note, and learn of the proposed elopement. Almost on the verge of hysterics, she told Thornton that it would be just like her aunt .to follow post-haste to the theatre and put her, Rosie, in a con- vent and never let her see another man! Thornton was obliged, the first act being called, to leave Rosie in a wing. But he made comforting love to her with his eyes as he ardently played his ardent part. And he was quite too hand- some to resist; so Rosie wiped away her tears and comforted him by dazzled little smiles whenever his melting notes floated out and captured the audience. But toward the middle of the second act, shortly before the advent of the famous “Honey” song, Rosie’s smiles suddenly froze. Standing in the wing, she had happened to glance around to- ward the stage entrance, and who had she seen excitedly pounding up the short flight of stairs leading to the re- gion called “behind the scenes” but her ramrod aunt, Miss Hornet! Rosie trembled in her little shoes and hid herself in the shadows of the wing. The impression created by Miss Hor- net was not soothing; in one hand she carried a tightly rolled silk sunshade, in the other an open letter. Rosie, breathing watched her aunt. At the top of the stairs Miss Hornet apprehensively, THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE _ ran squarely into a stage hand trans- porting a gate covered with artificial flowers ; some of the flowers caught in the buttons of Miss Hornet’s coat; the stage hand said awful words; Miss Hornet excitedly commanded him to tell her where Mr. Thornton was, After a violent controversy, carried on in fierce undertones by the. stage hand be- cause the second act was swinging mer- rily along in the brilliant patch of light forming the stage, and in unsuppressed vehemence by Miss Hornet, she -was wrathfully waved toward a row of dressing-room doors. Rosie wanted, yearned even, to run after her aunt and stop her; but unaid- ed by the strengthening presence of Thornton, now dashing through a be- witching love scene with the leading lady, she was afraid. So Miss Hornet stumbled on, jerked open a door, brought to view a fat comedian in trousers and: undershirt, slammed the door in what appeared to be an excess of horror, and stepped with apparent deliberateness on the train of the stout contralto, just emerging from her dress- ing room in the full glory of a red vel- vet gown. ‘ The contralto, commanding a fierce temper and a high salary, was more openly vindictive than the stage hand or the fat comedian. She accused Miss Hornet of being a hussy, and of step- ping on her, the contralto’s, train on, purpose to spoil her entrance. Miss Hornet shot back with equal temper. A war began to wage. The stage man- ager rushed up, refused to listen to either side, demanded silence, and rushed off again to berate the elec- trician, who was absent-mindedly allow- ing the spotlight to rest upon a spright- ly chorus girl of whom he was en- amored. Accompanied by a maid tenderly pro- tecting the torn train, the contralto re- tired to her dressing room. Miss Hor- net, in no way subdued by her misad- ventures, shook her sunshade at the de- parting contralto, gave the letter in her hand several wild waves; and suddenly. stiffened with the air of one who has at last discovered the object of her search. ae But Miss Hornet’s eyes had fastened themselves. on the brilliant patch of light wherein the handsome Thornton, surrounded by the chorus, was prepar- ing to begin the strains of “Honey.” With a word to no one, to the horror of the paralyzed Rosie, Miss Hornet sped straight toward Thornton! A minute later a tall spinster garbed in black, with a tightly rolled silk sun- shade in one hand and a letter in the other, appeared in the midst of the chorus—on the stage. Fortunately, the spotlight concen- trated the attention of the audience on Thornton, beginning, in all uncon- sciousness, to warble: Oh, my girlie has a form Like a moonbeam swayed by winds— The chorus rose nobly to the occa- sion. First one and then another seized the indignant Miss Hornet and twirled her through their ranks, hissing frantic- ally, as she passed from hand to hand: “Get off! Get off! You're on the stage!” It was into Rosie’s arms that Miss Hornet was whirled. Her bonnet was cocked dissipatedly over one ear, though sunshade and letter were still valiantly grasped. It was Rosie whom she shook by the shoulders; while Thornton, spurred on to high endeavor by the knowledge that something unusual had taken place behind him, but still bliss- fully ignorant of the real cause of the commotion, sang to the strains of the lilting waltz refrain: Honey, you are like the starshine, Soft above; Honey, you are like the moonshine, Warm with love— The song floated to an end. Applause thundered down from the gallery, sounded enthusiastically from the bal- conies, and politely from the orchestra chairs. Thornton refused frantic en- cores with an entrancing bow and smile. Miss Hornet recovered sufficiently from her brief appearance in public to let go of .Rosie’s shoulders, and shake the letter in Rosie’s face. Feeling that her aunt was threatening to have the theatre, audience, cast and all burned down because she had. found “HONEY” AND THE STING 867 out, through Thornton’s letter propos- ing an elopement, that he belonged to the theatrical profession, Rosie stam- mered : “Oh, auntie, he can’t help it—he’s just as lovely as if he were a missionary —oh, auntie, please, please, please, don’t be angry with him—he’s—” At this point, Thornton enacted an effective exit from the stage. When he saw Miss Hornet in the wing, with Rosie endeavoring to pacify her, he grabbed his head with his hands, and groaned, “The deuce! Now we're in for it! She’s found me out!” Miss Hornet pounced upon him with one of her rapid-fire examinations: “Are you an actor?” Thornton admitted his guilt. “Do you act all the time?” “Whenever I can,” confessed Thorn- ton. “Is that how you earn your living —just by acting ?” “Tt is, Miss Hornet; but—” “Oh, Auntie!” Rosie’s interruption was tremulous. “He has to be an actor, because—because— But he’d lots rather beamissionary—wouldn’t you, Thorn?” “T would!” vowed Thornton. “Fiddlesticks!” Miss Hornet’s bonnet took on an even more rakish angle, “I don’t believe you.” Thornton began an eager explanation of how he detested the glare of publicity and the plaudits of the mob, when he realized, wildly, that his cue was draw- ing near, and that when he took it, and take it he must, Miss Hornet might whisk Rosie through the stage door, straight to her apartment uptown and from there to some grim-walled con- vent where she would be doomed to knit fifty pairs of red mittens for twenty-. five little heathen, every day. But Miss Hornet laid this apprehen- sion low by scrutinizing him from head to foot, piercing his eyes with hers, in- dulging im a short and cranky laugh, nodding her head, and saying with grim finality: “Missionary, _ fiddlesticks! You've been a fool.” Then she suddenly flung erratic arms about his neck, con- fessing: “You’re just what I want for Rosie. I’ve been stage-struck all my life!” The Most Novel Play of the Season Excerpts from ‘‘The Yellow Jacket,’’ by George C. Hazelton and J. Harry Benrimo, which was produced by Harris & Selwin, Inc., at the Fulton Theatre, New York City HE YELLOW JACKE T,” described by its authows, J. Harry Benrimo and George C. ‘Hazelton, as “A Chinese Play, Presented in the Chinese Manner,” and by the New York critics POETICAL LINES FROM THE NOW- FAMOUS CHINESE PLAY, PRINTED BY is ESPECIAL PERMISSION OF THE AUTHORS AND PRODUCERS lines have scarcely been equaled in any recent modern drama, “The Yellow Jacket” divided into three parts: I—The Mother’s Parting. II.—The Story of Love. III.—The Con- flict. In the first, Chee as the “one real dramat- ic novelty of the season,” quaintly un- folds the Oriental idea of Kismet. The counsel of Git Hok Gar, philoso- pher and scholar, to Wu Hoo Git, the young hero of the Wu family, “Each man must look into the garden of his soul alone,” epitomizes the story of the play, which is an Oriental ex- position of the axiom that the individ- ual must work out his own salvation. The scene of the play, unchanged through the three acts, is modeled after the old Jackson Street Theatre, San Francisco. By the aid of a Chorus (Signor Perugini), who announces what scenery the audience is to imagine has been set before them, and a Prop- erty Man (Arthur Shaw), who directs the changes of scene, and does other devious duties,—such as holding aloft a straight bamboo pole which the Chorus announces is “a weeping wil- low tree,”—the simplicity of the primi- tive settings becomes Belascoesquely detailed. Benrimo, for years right-hand man to David Belasco, staged the play, and with Hazelton, wrote the book. The poetry and beauty of many of the Moo, first wife of Wu. Sin Yin, ruler of the province, commits suicide and leaves her baby, Wu Hoo Git, to the foster-mothering of her maid, Suey Sin Fah, and departs to the home of her ancestors. Chee Moo does this at the command of the Spirit of her ancestors, after Lee Sin, farmer and husband of Suey Sin Fah, has deceived Wu Sin Yin, who has commanded Lee Sin to behead Chee Moo. Wu Sin Yin wishes to be rid of Chee Moo that he may take as first wife in a3 place the second wife, Due Jung Fah. Now Tso, maid to Due Jung Fah, who is an evil little wretch, has con- spired to cast crass lights in the eyes of Wu Sin Yin, so that he shall suppose the baby Wu Hoo Git to be “crablike and spider-formed.” Lee Sin beheads Tso, instead of Chee Moo, and takes her disfigured head to Wu Sin Yin and Due Jung Fah’s father, Tai Fah Min, But the Spirit of the ancestors insists that Chee Moo shall die anyway, so she bites the veins in her hands till the 868 blood runs, and, using her finger as:a pen, traces Wu Hoo Git's ancestry on his tiny shirt. In the second part, “The Story of Love,” Wu Hoo Git, now a handsome youth, leaves the home of his foster parents to go forth and seek his ances- tors. Daffodil, the son of Wu Sin Yin and Due Jung Fah, is jealous of his half- brother and aids in keeping the lad in ignorance of his rightful station as ruler of the province. Daffodil bargains with Yin Suey Gong, a hideous hunchback and purveyer of hearts, to lead Wu Hoo Git along the paths of dissipation. Wu Hoo Git is waylaid and falls a victim to the lures of the “porcelains” of Yin Suey Gong—four lovely but love- wise young women. Eventually his choice, Chow Wan, deserts him (when he has gone to get her more gold) for another lover. Wu Hoo Git returns home, counseled by the philosopher, Git Hok Gar, meets and loves a right- eous maiden, Moy Fah Loy, but is for- bidden by her father to wed her until his ancestry is proven. So the foster parents reveal the secret of Wu Hoo Git’s birth. In the third part—“The Conflict”— the conflict of Wu Hoo Git in conquer- ing his own soul is displayed. This done, he returns to his native province, de- thrones the exquisite Daffodil and rules long and righteously with Moy Fah Loy by his side. Perhaps the most exquisite scene of the entire play is the now famous “Love Market Scene,” where Wu Hoo Git falls into the clutches of Vin Suey Gong, who traffics in the sweets of love and the fall of youth. The dialogue of this scene is typical of the trend of the entire drama. When Wu Hoo Git has told the hunchback that he is traversing the world to dis- cover the tablets of his ancestors, the conversation runs as follows: Yin Suey Gong: There are only a few things to please the taste of an august man like you. Some will tell you in deceit that there are many things to please, but there are only two. Wu Hoo Git: Only two in the broad world, to people my pleasure? THE MOST NOVEL PLAY OF THE SEASON _ 869 Yin Suey Gong: Only two. You may travel, you may study, you may know, but pearly wine and luscious women are all that you will find. To know wine and woman is rarer far than to know class- ics, The great scholars know this, but . praise not my honesty. Wu Hoo Git: I have learned philoso- phy, but you make me wonder. It con- cerns me not in my search for my an- cestors. Yin Suey Gong (speaking mysteri- ously) : Be tutored by glorious women, the rims of whose rice wine cups are crystalized with kisses. Wu Hoo Git: What are kisses? Yin Suey Gong: The meeting of the pollen of two flowers that float to each other on a_heaven-breeze. (Music, during which Wu Hoo Git crosses to left, listening.) Love-birds, flowers of happiness, come to garden your pleas- ure. They will teach you life, rarer than philosophy, richer than classics. (Enter four flower girls who mount stools and stand with fans before faces. See Quoe Fah [Four Season Flower], Mow Dan Fah [Peony], Yong Soo Kow [Hydrangea], and Chow Wan, {Autumn Cloud] ). Wu Hoo Git: How modest they are! Fans before their rose faces! I am glad. I came to this world. It makes smiling in my heart. wh Yin Suey Gong: It has pleased many. Wu Hoo Git: .By what charm do women hold us enchanted? Yin Suey Gong: Wise men have won- , dered. Wu Hoo Git: May I approach them with my voice? Yin Suey Gong: And get strange an- swers. Wu Hoo Git: Who are you? Mow Dan Fah: I am a peony flower. Wu Hoo Git: Then you will fade. Mow Dan Fah: Pick me while my perfume lasts. Wu Hoo Git: You are as dainty as the embroidery on an empress’ gown. (She puts fan over face. Wu Hoo Git moves to Yin Suey Gong.) Wu Hoo Git: May I speak to the next one? i Yin Suey Gong: The gods painted many, that man might choose one. 870 Wu Hoo Git: Let me go back to philosophy and my ancestors. Yin Suey Gong: And never know life. (Girl lowers fan.) Wu Hoo Git: She tipped her fan to me, I saw her eyes. I will wait and talk to her. She has the color of plum-tree buds. Are you just like the other? Yong Soo Kow: I was kissed by a more southern sun. Yin Suey Gong: You should have been the sunbeam. She invites you. _ Wu Hoo Git: How much there is to learn? (Chow Wan coughs.) Wu Hoo Git: That one coughed. I suffer to see her suffer. Yin Suey Gong: Her cough is a gen- tle salutation. She fears you may go astray if you talk too long to her sister. Wu Hoo Git: Does she think so much of me? I like her. She has a mother’s heart. Yin Suey Gong: They all have mother-hearts. Wu Hoo Git: I never had a mother. Now I have four. (The four girls sing.) Wu Hoo Git (at end of song dance) : She sings with lips that part like opening roses. My foster mother never sang like that. The blood runs faster in my veins. I feel something here, that beats. ’ Yin Suey Gong: That is your heart. Philosophy knows nothing of it. Wu Hoo Git: I like her: she is so sweetly made, round and soft and deli- cate, like a vase you would embrace for fear it might fall and shatter its loveliness. Yin Suey Gong: You may hold her and embrace her beauties. Wu Hoo Git: But my arms may not be strong enough. Yin Suey Gong: Hers were made to help you. (Wu Hoo Git embraces Chow Wan. Crosses back to Yin Suey Gong.) Wu Hoo Git: It is easier than I thought. She grows more delicately beautiful. She is sweeter than the rarest vase. I like the holding of her. Her breath is incense. Yin Suey Gong: You may taste her lips. THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE Wu Hoo Git: Sweetmeats rare! (Starts to kiss her again.) Yin Suey Gong: I will sell her to you. Wu Hoo Git: Is she for sale? Yin Suey Gong: Everything I possess is for sale. Wu Hoo Git: Would you keep none for yourself? Yin Suey Gong: I would be selfish to retain such delicate wares. All perfumed flowers may be cut by a golden knife. They wait upon the market for your desire. Wu Hoo Git: I will buy them all. Yin Suey Gong: Like most men, you would have them all, but if you pur- chased four maids, you would sell three, or present them to your friends, Wu Hoo Git: Then I will buy her who coughed. Why, they dropped their fans and looked at me. I never felt such a delicate shock. May they do it again! Yin Suey Gong: Not-till you pur- chase. Wu Hoo Git: And what must I pay? Yin Suey Gong: All you have in your chased gold purse. Wu Hoo Git: But I have nine thou- sand taels. What shall I do when I give it all to you? Yin Suey Gong: Send home for more - like every august son who would see the world. Wu Hoo Git: for a mother! Chow Wan: I am worth more. You will find it so. Wu Hoo Git: Take my purse, most gracious Yin Suey Gong. (Goes to Chow Wan:) Lee Sin will send me more. She would suffer so alone. (Exit Yin Suey Gong and the girls, leavin Wu Hoo Git and Chow Wan soba By what sweet name are you called? Chow Wan: Chow Wan, Autumn Cloud. Wu Hoo Git: That is augustly pretty. What shall I do with you now I have you? Chow Wan: I will teach you. Wu Hoo Git: Your voice is like an honorable zephyr. Bring it closer, Chow Wan: You are learning. Wu Hoo Git: But you have not taught me a thing I could behold.. Chow Wan: When you have said Nine thousand taels % ot) © g farewell to me, you will be a wiser philosopher. Wu Hoo Git: Ah, must we so soon part? Chow Wan: Not for many perfumed days. And they go sailing on the love boat! When the first realization of love comes upon him, poor Wu Hoo Git cries out: “The silver sails fill with the summer breeze, Wild bells tinkle in my august veins. I never heard them there before.” But Chow Wan turns away from him and says: “See the lotus lanterns on the water wafting their candle-lights to us. A love boat passes us in the moonlight.” And then she lures him to her home, declaring, “I have more to teach you.” All of which is very sweet at the time, but decidedly disconcerting later on, when Wu Hoo Git, finding at last his real love in Moy Fah Loy, turns to her and says: Wu Hoo Git: I should walk into your eyes and lips. Moy Fah Loy: Then I could not use them. Wu Hoo Git: There is a way. I have learned it, Moy Fah Loy: From another maid- en? I do not know augustly why, but I do not like that. Wu Hoo Git: I will teach you. Moy Fah Loy: Then I shall have traveled just as far the flowery paths as you. When Moy Fah Loy is torn from his arms by her angered chaperon, Wu Hoo Git tries to hang himself, but is cut down from the weeping willow and brought back to earth by the hand and the advice of Git Hok Gar, the philoso- pher, who informs the rash youth of his folly. Wu Hoo Git: Who are you that would take from me the joy of com- pelling the world to miss me. Git Hok Gar: The world laughs when there is one less mouth to feed. If you would make the world respect you, stay and fight it. THE MOST NOVEL PLAY OF THE SEASON = 871 Wu Hoo Git (removing the noose) : I prefer my celestial breath. Git Hok Gar: Dying hurts unneces- sarily. Wu Hoo Git explains his lack of ancestors and his resultant grief, and the philosopher advises him to “Make yourself great in right living and your ancestors will find you.” When Wu Hoo Git greets again his foster parents he explains his remem- brance of even the details of the little home. Wu Hoo Git: I am learning to re- member, for memory comes with love. I have met one who lit the enchant- ing candle in my heart. Her lips are flower buds that open with delight at the warmth of my superb kisses, but even as my day broke with a roseate dawn, a despair cloud struck the sky and death hovered in my path. I have no ancestors. Suey Sin Fah: My poor boy! Wu Hoo Git: Pity me not. Manli- ness sneers at pity. Open the door of knowledge to me. Who are my ances- tors? No more enchanting personage flits through the play than Wu Fah Sin or Daffodil, child of Due Jung Fah, the second wife, and half-brother of Wu Hoo Git. : His soliloquy of himself is wonder- ful in its conceits. Wu Fah Sin: I advise this honor- able audience that I am a man, though I possess a-daffodil nature. I go to look upon delightful embroideries, but re- tard my footsteps that you may ob- serve my charm. I was born great.-Wu Sin Yin was my father, and Due Jung Fah, the second wife, my mother. A wonderful alliance, as I am the superb result. I am therefore a rival of Wu Hoo Git, who dwells, it is whispered, in an humble mountain home, whencé he will go forth to seek his world place. I am not happy while he dwells any- where, so he must not dwell. He is © simply, vulgarly manly, while I have feminine qualities of great luxuriance. 872 I would contend with him, man to daffodil, but it might break my finger- nails and establish a bad precedent. You may think the match unequal be- cause of my delicacy in a contest with brawn, but I advise you that it is not so. Craft, guided by cruelty, outweighs vulgar manliness. I must contrive to de- stroy his honesty and cleanness of life. I will call to my aid Yin Suey Gong, whom you will meet and know by the hump on his back. I will have him present porcelains to the unsus- pecting Wu Hoo Git. He deals deli- ciously in porcelains. He will drop flowers of pleasure in Wu Hoo Git’s path, that my rival may inhale their odors of vice. Observe how I contend with brawn. Cut the flowers in my path that I may walk. Ah, Wu Hoo Git approaches. Yin Suey Gong, en- mesh him. Tarnish him. It must be done with perfume, and gently. There is a clever introductory mon- ologue descriptive of himself by the hunchback trader in women. Yin Suey Gong: I am Yin Suey Gong of the monkey form. A dragon yawned and belched me forth. A tooth caught me and I was born cramped of back. I give those who were born straight (chuckles) and august of face the world’s pleasures. Then to avenge myself on Mother Nature who distorted me, I pluck down their star and glee in its fall. (Chuckles.) Then I laugh, for they are crooked in soul, flat of purse and without love. I flatter them till I have them in my grasp. THE GREEN BOOK MAGAZINE Then I mock at them, for they are fools. I deal with the fair, and they become crooked-brained. I juggle hearts. I toss them in the air and cross them and dance them on my finger-tips and catch them on my upturned nose. Sometimes one falls and leaves a blood spot where it fell. Then I gurgle and juggle on, for hearts are my currency, and a few marred and broken ones are easily replaced. The exquisite Daffodil holds to his perfect egotism until the last. When Wu Hoo Git has broken into the palace and carried all before him, Daffodil retires to the throne of his ancestors and sits there in poised arrogance. Then, remarking that if he may be permitted to abdicate in gentleness he will give over the throne, Daffodil ma- jestically descends. Wu Hoo Git de- mands the robe of office, “The Yellow Jacket,” and as he dons it, he com- mands Daffodil to bump his head. Prostrate, the still proud Daffodil hits the floor thrice with his forehead, re- marking evenly: “T am thankful that I have a head to bump!” “Bump it again!” Hoo Git. But when he receives the peacock feather, the last bit of regal insignia, Wu Hoo Git graciously permits his half-brother the privilege of choosing his own prison. “A garden of flowers,” replies the gentle but cunning Daffodil, and backs gracefully away to bask in his per- fumes and flowers. comments Wu WHY BOX-OFFICE MEN GO MAD BOTH in attire and speech he was a typical rustic, and as he stepped up to the