Judge — June 5, 1920 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

Drown by Hesse Patseen The Day of Resurrection By Perriton Maxweut HERE is no longer need to journcy tediously to the alleged mystic East for a class A demonstration of reincarnation; nor is there the slightest excuse for hiring a certified Yogi to transmogrify a “frost” into a “riot”—not while the John Goldenglades and the Al Woods are full of the magical, if slightly tarnished material out of which the storehouse dead are rehabilitated. and the mortal remains of flivvers take on the garb of hoped for immortality. In the cold, stiff forms of dead plays and defunct musical shows the hot breath of managerial enterprise has recently been breathed; largely due to the H. C. of Produc tion some half a dozen wise birds of the theater have donne the figured robes of the alchemist, chanted their lusty incanta tions and stirred their smoking crucibles in an effort to trans. mute the baser metal of previous failures into glittering box- office gold. But unlike the wizards of old, these modern Cag- liostros are actually “getting away with murder.” In the bright lexicon of spoof the American public doesn’t give a hoot about the genesis of any show they like The managers banking on this indifference play it to the limit The business of entertaining the crowd is full of financial pitfalls, so you can’t blame the managers for utilizing by-products and resorting to play-ghosts when more substantial things strain their pocketbooks. But nd there is always a but—what is to become of the stage if we are to be given a rehash of all the productions of former years; if we are to be served with dead crow camouflaged as roast duckling? Somebody has to fish up the facts when a raft of play-producers undertake to palm off on an innocent public a string of ancient “offerings” under new titles while hoping to good- ness no one will uncover the trick to theater-goers. If somebody has to do the job, it might as well be me 7 Akins’ old ree be Of course there is of that Loe adaptation good, frank about the revival of Herman Merivale’s melodrama But nobody is shouting about “Page Mr. Cupid,” which was ly called “A Week-End Marriage”; no one is eager for you to know that “His Chinese Wife” was a one-time flivver known as “The Unwanted One,” and nobody is doing any megaphoning over the fact that “Howdy Folks’’ (now in Bos. ton and preparing for New York) was the play “Thunder” which came a cropper at the Criterion last year. How many people remember that “ The Girl from Home dapta tion” of Richard Harding Davis’ play origi is The Dictator”. so thoroughly “adapted” as to be unrecognizable, though an —and infinitely less amusing than its parent production. There is “Lassie,” too, the one-time “Kitty MacKay,” and “Honey Girl” made out of Henry Blossom’s famous, long-run “Check ers.” In “The Hottentot” we have the result of two old pro- ductions, “The Aviator” and “Going Uf in fact “The Hottentot” has passed through four metamorphoses, but it is too long a story to tell here. And there are half a dozen other recent dramatic and musical resurrections. You will say, of course: “But some of these were straight plays turned into. musical shows.” All right, but what is the reason for it; why this delving into the theatric scrapbag when so many clever musicians and librettists are knocking about? Men who are not amateurs, who know the requirements and limitations of the stage, who can do as good work, and as profitable, as any of the old-timers. ‘The answer is probably cheapness—less royalties less bother, less wearing down of gray matter and—chief reason of all—the prejudice of producers in favor of something with which they are fa miliar, something they have seen actually on the stage, even if it was hustled into limbo after a three weeks’ With plays valuable both as money-makers and as sterling drama kicking about managerial offices it seems criminal for unimaginative loss. s 24 whiskered play “Forget-Me-Not.” “Figg, pace Thay Mowe There was no attempt to conceal ; : pk . Avere Rowtaxn, this reincarnation. The Green- wrapped atte wich Village Theater folk were derbilt Theater producers to exhume the cadavers of departed productions which, in every instance, have to be rebuilt to meet modern requirements in evening in of the Van. comicbooks.com