Judge — January 27, 1923 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

Aristocrats and Amours “My Years on the Stage.” By John Drew. E. P. Dutton & Co. HERE is a popular superstition that we have no aristocri in America. I am as good ure, if not Of course, wi an aristoc- its le y has written a The book is called, “My Years on the Stage,” and the author is John Drew. John Drew was the son of actors, his mother especially being a brilliant artist. His sister, Louisa Drew, married Maurice Barrymore. Their children were named Lionel, John and Ethel. It would take rather a bold man to stand on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second street and ‘aim in a loud voice that the third generation of Drews isn’t still of the blood royal! Curiously, too, John Barrymore looks like his uncle. You don’t believe it? 34 of this book, or better The young Drew, when he was first appearing on the stage, in the ‘70's, was uncannily like the beautiful Barrymore of to-day. John Drew was born in Philadelph where his mother m 1 a th A He first acted in Ne ork in 1875, at Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theater, playing the lover to Fa nport in “The Big Bonanza.” Since 1875, he has continued to play in New York, until 1892 as a member of Daly’s company, after that as a Frohman star as long as Frohman lived. For almost fifty s, then, people have debated the question, “Is John Drew an actor?”—and gone to see him act. I never had much patience, myself, with the people who called him no actor, “because he always plays himself.” Of course, he was onc of the most polished and skillful actors of my generation, and he is most polished and skillful of the present generation. ‘The ease i with which he could project a charac and propel a play were beyond cavil. Because he was wise enough to select characters of gentlemanly charm, thus reinforcing them with his own qualities, people who know no more about the actor’s art than a sheep (or the pres- ent writer) about differential calculus, accused him of “playing himself.” He could have done worse than play himself, at that His book is like his art in its ease, sim- Walter Prichard Eaton plicity and unfailing taste and tact. It Is an agreeable and at times humorous record of his professional career. But it is chronological and incisive, lacking the random charm of Joe Jefferson’s auto- biography (another American aristocrat), or the y anecdote of old Sol Smith’s reminiscences. It will never be a classic for those odd beings who revel in the- al anecdotage; but they will give it rome, just the same. Do you remember Drew and A Rehan in “The Taming of the Shrew Of course you don't, you poor young You probably don’t even remem- The Mummy and the Humming Bird,” with Lionel Barrymore as the organ grinder. Those casts f characters, names of Rosemary Phe Liars’—a the use? Besides, you still have Ethel and John and Li Odd, John Drew went from Shakespeare to Maugham. John Barry- more has gone from Maugh ke- speare. Behold him now as Dane! These aristocrats of the theater must return to their high purposes, or they perish. It is the law. “The Maturity of James Whitcomb Riley.” By Marcus Dickey. Bobbs, Merrill Co. Bout the same \ John Drew first appeared with Daly in New York, a young aristocrat of the playhouse, an un- couth country lad in a small Iowa town filled in for the actor who was have played the station agent in a trave production of Daly’s “Under the Gu light.” Apparently he did it pretty well, but fate was against him, and he never hecame a professional actor. But later, after many years of grind on hick news- papers and many attempts Lo get ing for his poems, he became a famous platform reciter, giving programs made up from his own verses. His name was James Whitcomb Riley, and he was an on Wall, Rile ke that, only he impersonated th characters supposed to be speaking his poems. Gradually, folks began to believe the poems were as good as the acting of them, and Riley became extraordinarily famous. 19 But they never were as good as the acting of them—though we be branded heretic for saying so. There was always a bit too much frost on the pumpkin, too much fodder in the shock. Rile Ss one reason for Sinclair Lewis and ‘*Babbitt.” His dialect was all right, but he was Pollyanna’s papa. In * Maturity of James Whitcomb Riley,” by Marcus Dickey, we have a detailed story of Riley’s life, from the days when he tried to act, to his peaceful end in 1915. The early struggles make an interesting story, but when the faithful Boswell gets down to the years of fame on Lockerbie street, he loses all perspective in his excitement, and every time Riley had a birthday and the nation celebrated, Mr. Dickey had no doubt that the tribute meant his idol was at least a second Shelley Well, he has in this and an carlier volume on Riley’s boyhood, provided the facts needed for a real life and esti lovable, interesting and significant re, whose significance, howeve' what Mr. Dickey supposes. yan American Strachey will come along and write an “Eminent Indian- ians,” which will set Riley in his proper niche in’ American life and_ literature. Dickey is too close to the lovable little man. He opened too many of those birth- day telegrams for him, “Casanova's Homecoming.” By Arthur Schnitzler. Thomas Seltzer. I" THE modern critic dared be as frank as the authors of certain famous and morous memoirs, he would probably confess that the people who read these memoirs for the historical picture are ly no more numerous than the s who read Guy de Maupassant “for styl People read them for the ious enjoyment of erotic adventure. Our friend Brother Sumner highly dis- approves of the vicarious enjoyment of erotic adventure, and does all in his power to prevent it. Thomas Seltzer, however, has triumphed over him, and you ma buy “Casanova’s Homecoming, ie by Arthur Schnitzler (in a somewhat stiff translation), for less than the price of a seat to the Greenwich Village Foll Casanova’s own memoirs, in a dozen vol- umes, cease before the old reprobate, in the