Judge — January 25, 1919 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

By Lawton Mackall HERE is more drama to a play than may be guessed from a seat in the audi- ence. The lightest farce according to whether it York Monday night. he is packing the house. This episode in the career of Broadway's most pictur- esque personality is in it- self so interesting a comedy drama that the made-up Now succeeds or not, a tragedy or triumph for somebody. To © star it means, “Will this increase my popularity, the capital I have been so long building up, or will it give mea setbac » the young actor it means, * last!” To the inexperienced girl who has been three lines to speak because she is good-looking, or never!” To the seedy old player who has been given a bit because the star knew him in his prosperous days, “Will this keep me employed all season or shall I be back at the lodging-house next week To the fatalist chewing his cigar in the stuffy office upstairs, “What will I get out of the $12,000 I have staked on this show To the author it means everything. And more than sixty per cent. of the plays produced in New York fail. Usually the person in the audience can only guess at this drama-about-the-drama. But, recently, in the case of “A Prince There Was” there occurred an episode so picturesque, a situation with so much “punch,” that all Broadway has been agog with it. Robert Hilliard, the well-known actor who achieved enviable success through having his life wrecked by a vampire in “A Fool There Was,” selected as his vehicle for this season a dramatization of #novel. In rehearsal the piece proved flabby. George M. Cohan, of Cohan & Harris and “Over There” & “V/hen You Come Back,” being called in for advice (though a rival manager), under- took to rewrite the play, which he did with characteristic speed. Accordingly “A Prince There Was” opened in New York—and flivvered. Hilliard wrestled with it only a few performances and then chucked it. That was Fri day night. “Oh, very well,” said Cohan, or words to that effect; bought in the rights to the play at a bargain, and at the matinee next day appeared himself in the leading réle, in spite of the fact that he had not acted in a play in ten years or ever attempted any- thing but a snappy-youth part, and in spite of having his hands full with new productions that were under way. At any rate, he bluffed through the two Saturday performances, took the night train to Baltimore, and rehearsed a new show for fifteen hours until 5 A.M. Mon- day and was back on the job Prince There Was-ing in New Proto by Mare tei Renée Bouguet, of Monsieur Copeaw's French Theatre, ing commercialism the cold shoulder. “Prince There Was” seems but a play within a play. As such it is hard to judge it dispassionately. You are so tickled to see Cohan “get away with it” that Charles Martin holds your sympathy whether he actually deserves it or not. In the fiction play this Martin is a rich “has- been.” The son of a millionaire, things had always been too easy for him, so that when he suddenly lost wife and child, he had no stamina to save him from losing all interest in life and becoming an aim- less dawdler. A friend, who is editor of a successful magazine, tells him his trouble is that he never “ bumped the bumps.” This thought sticks in his mind. Forsak- ing his sumptuous quarters at the Plaza, he goes to a cheap boarding-house “Mr. Prince” and tries “bumping the bumps. here he finds a struggling young authoress, whom he “discovers” for the mag: zine—only to “discover” in the end that she is a well- known writer in quest of story material. The upshot is that he acquires a half interest in the magazine anda matrimonial interest in the famous authoress and a tre- mendous interest in things in general. The last act crystallizes Cohan’s philosophy of Suc- cess Through Pep. Gone is Martin's languorous dress- ing gown. Wearing a trig business suit, he bursts into the office with the Cohan stride, arms swinging out like those of a hurdler clearing a difficult obstacle. The “strug- gling authoress”’ wears gorgeous furs, and she has brought with her the downtrodden child of the boarding-house, now all dolled up and hair-dressed. A poor lawyer is hastily awarded a post in Washington by long-distance tele- phone. Prosperity reigns. Want and suffering are abolished. The old-fashioned style of happy ending, where the lady, in a simple frock, pressed her cheek against the hero’s homespun lapel, was good enough for the impractical Victorian era, but today we want something more specifically reassuring. Plays like “Wallingford” and “Turn to the Right,” where in the last act the former hard-ups appear in dress suits, their shirt bosoms bulging with affluence, have given us a flair for Prosperity’s price marks. When Cohan’s characters suc- ceed, gosh! how they do succeed! And, for that matter, how he does! comicbooks.com