Life — October 8, 1908 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

Revised The stars and stripes, by grafters ruled No more the patriot’s vision fooled. He saw a billion people bled “They should be prison stripe he said American Dramatists to the Fore STTING too close to Nature can not he set down as a fault of “ The Fight- ing Hope,” written by Mr. William J Hurlbut, and presented at the Stuyve- sant by Mr, Belasco, with Blanche Bates as the star. All through the play, up to its final scenes, we feel that we are in contact with the theatrical instead of the real. It will not further the cause of the American drama to coddle our beginning playwrights, nor will it do Mr, Hurlbut any future good to assure him that because he evi- dently has a material success in “The Fi ing Hope,"’ he has learned to distinguish be- tween the theatric and the dramatic. If, for instance, he will study his own play he should I see that in the minor character of Craven, * confiden’ er to the millionaire hero,” he has come nearer to humanity as it is than in either of his leading figures. It is not alone that Crav*n is admirably acted by Mr. Cope, but the author has given the actor a consistent something to comprehend and transmit to the audience. When the brusque Craven and the reserved Temple express their joy over sudden good news in a laughable bear-dance, the author has already provided a natural foundation for the action which makes it almost as effective as the little pats Craven gives Temple's shoulder to show his man’s sympathy for the man friend in trouble. To the true dramatist real bits like these should be of more value as accomplishment than any amount of ingenious construction which is not credible and which antagonizes the spectator’s sense of his own intelligence. The author's first premise, that an unknown woman could immediately slip by a man of affairs such as Temple is pic- tured, and a watch-dog like Craven, to a position where she is in direct touch with her employer's most important and i It makes us keen to several minor improbabilities asizes the inconsistencies in the drawing of the leading characters. Temple, for instance, hounded by the yellow press as a predatory malefactor, would hardly en- trust the combination of his safe and the custody of the letter which was to save him from prison to an understudy type- writist, when all he had to do was to walk across the room and put it in the safe himself. It is evidence of Blanche Bates’s ability that she was able to give credence to the conflicting emotions with which she was supplied. by the questionableness of the depiction allotted to her, but as the story progressed, her own command seemed to increase advi secret interests, provokes our skepticism in the very beginn of the play. that follow and emph In the early scenes she seemed herself affected *LIFE- Uplifters of the Drama THE LADY FROM VAUDEVILLE The sketch team artiste from the two-aday shows Has them stopped seven ways with her elegant clothes. She can crowd on more lugs all at once, so they say, Than a double sextet and a pony ballet. with the accumulating stress of the action, until, in the final act, she carried the audience with her in the revulsion which made this very womanly woman shower blows on the man who had been her husband and the father of her children. Mr. Charles Richman made his millionaire an attractive and ideal- ized type. Although we have ceased to insist that millionaires in business should be elderly illiterates, with chin-whiskers, corporosities and bad manners, we have not yet got the cy-smell entirely out of their clothes, and to that extent Richman was false to his original, making him just trifle too poctic and refined. As was to be expected, under Mr. Belasco’s direction, the play was well staged, and, as noted, well cast. This put the responsibility on the play itself, which despite its crudities is quite worth seeing. ach is so disordered shat it No better evi- The theatrical public's stoi must have its stage food highly seasoned.