Judge — March 8, 1919 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

TAGERS of Romance are wont to betake their plays far from the madding subway and seek out some clime where adding machines Locale Options: The Show Shop By Lawton Mackall it is so smooth that cigar- ettes have to be rolled of sandpaper to keep it from slipping out. Hams are mel- lowed there in smokehouses until the aroma from them is are unknown and all activities outside of the heart are re- duced to a picturesque minimum. long proved a convenient locale. Silent wildernesses and Rocky Mountain sunsets and Navajo blankets do not clutter up your story at all if you know how to exploit them. Just give your hero a seven-pound pistol, a pair of bare elbows and a loose coat of dust, and he can shade his eyes and gaze off into the vast canyon where the stage-hands are getting the moon ready, and murmur manfully, “Yes, Wheatena, little rose of the gulch, we are alone with nature. We have bade farewell to all that is artificial.” “Oh, I am afraid!” the half-breed maiden squawls. The open collar of his flannel shirt curls proud] “Twill protect you. See, the moon has risen. Let us go down to our teepee.”” And loverlike he supports her down behind a sheltering rock into the trapdoor valley below. Such was the Romantic West ere the chambers of commerce got busy. Now we know that the population of Lone Bear, Nevada, has increased three hundred and eight per cent. in ten years; that Medicine Creek, Wyoming, has eleven banks, forty-seven movie theatres, five quince canneries, thirteen high schools, nine low schools and four schools of mod- erate height; that the inkstand industry of Landslide, Colorado, would amaze you; that im Gully, Montana, manufactures enough soup ladles to dip out the Gulf of Mexico in a week; and that not a nook or peak or crag or cranny west of the Mis- sissippi but is booming with the Romance of Business. Why, when full reports of “A Little Journey” reach the West and people out there learn that the characters in that play are sup- posed to be trainwrecked on the wild mountain shoulder—the Greater Bald Hump Association will inform us that the wreckees landed in the midst of tour and a half miles of brick streets. Thus boomed out of the once-wild, Romance must look for other heartquarters. The most propitious place now avail- able is the sunny, moony South, particularly Virgin where— if we are to believe what we read in books and billboards— the chief industry is mellowness Tobacco is mellowed there until — “Afidni Wheto by ADDe ¢ Quinnetessenc t Whirl? so intoxicating that every egg within a radius of ten miles feels its yolk palpitate with a mad desire to fry. There old Southern mansions grow mellow with mortgages. There conversation mellows into a dreamy drawl. Amid all this mellowness, Romance ate & in security. In “Toby’s Bow” Blake, novelist and man-about-to-go- to-the-bow-wows, flees from the sordid modernity of Greenwich Village and goes to board and be regenerated at Fairlawn, Virginia, where Uncle Toby, the old negro butler, is chief executive. By almost inexplicable good fortune there is a daughter in the household. In that languorous Southern atmosphere it takes three acts and six months of constant association before they can ad- mit they are in love with each other. But that is the way a refined lady does when good breeding and dra- matic suspense require it. And besides, she has one of those proud, impractical, real lace mamas, whose hand colonels bend to kiss when they come to break the news about the bank account. But don’t be unduly alarmed. Eugenie doesn’t have to save the family finances by marrying the young plug-tobacco king. No, the novel- ist helps her write a book which brings a big publisher posthaste from sordid New York with a resuscitating checkbook, and Old Toby gives Blake the bow reserved for members of the family. And to our way of thinking Toby’s bow was certainly worth the adventure; for Toby is the whole show. Played by George Marion, he is the most amusing, lovable old darkey imaginable. Frank Bacon’s Lightnin’ Bill Jones is the only other charac- ter part in town to compare with In “The Melting of Molly,” a play within music, we have a similar Southern mansion, equipped with haughty, im- practical mama, anxious daugh- ter, and loquaciously faithful ne- gro as servant and commentator As the family fortune wanes with frivolity, Molly waxes with obesity; till Judge Wade (in the South Judges and Colo- nels are interchangeable) comes to give the Old Friend’s Warn ing. Hence tears and a boarder a successful young doctor who specializes in banting. And. what do you think? Well, aren’t you clever! You must know the South wonderfully, or else you have been to the theatre a great deal! Posed espectally for “Judge.” comicbooks.com