Life — March 6, 1919 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

Shaking the Temple's Pillars LL things considered, there seems to be no more reason for Mr. Bernard Shaw to claim to be a bigger man than Shake: speare than there is for Mr. George M. Cohan to make the same claim. Mr. Shaw is clever So is Mr. Cohan, and in more ways. Mr. Shaw is witty. Mr. Cohan is not only witty but humorous, and has a far wider command of contemporary slang than Mr. Shaw. Mr. Shaw is a master of paradox, but no more so than several other writers Mr. Cohan is alone in the mastery of the American flag as a stage prop. Mr. Shaw has amassed a fortune from his play Mr. Cohan has given away in charity a fortune and still has a fortune. Both geniuses are of Irish blood, living away from Ireland. Mr. Shaw has gained fame from ridiculing the country of his adoption, and Mr. Cohan perhaps equal fame from glori fying the nation under whose flag he lives and prospers. ETURNING to the Shakespearian claim, there seems to be little basis for Mr. Shaw in anything that he has done to revolu- tionize or advance the the- atre and the drama in any definite direction. He has a great gift for self-adver- tising. He has compelled his audiences to listen to more talk than they were accustomed to, but this is a matter of degree, not a revolution. Mr. Cohan, on the other hand, has really started something. He has actually given a jolt to the girl-and-music show, than which no other institution was so firmly foundationed in the estimation of the tired business man of America, Not of personal knowledge but of credible in- formation, “A Royal originally produced outside of New York as a girl-and-music show of the usual type. Everyone knows what that is. At least every t. b, m. does, for he has seen and heard scores of them, all different and yet all the same. In some the songs are better than in others, and ladies of the chorus not quite so pretty or shapely. In others the pretti- ness and shapeliness are superlative, but the comedians are bush-leaguers. Others Vagabond” was “aE “TWENTY YEARS ELAPSE BETWEEN ACT 11 AND ACT IL surprise with a real plot, but no airs that can be even re- membered, except as being like some other music. The t. b. m. is expert enough to pick out the excellencies of some, but apparently never tires of the general sameness of them all. A Royal Vagabond,” according to information, originally belonged in the usual catalogue of monotonous mediocrity. It had its good spots and bad spots. It might have come into New York and achieved the usual success which the tired busi- ness man and his fatuous following will give to any girl-and- music show which is not atrociously bad in every particular. Mr. Cohan, however, got hold of “A Royal Vagabond” before it came into New York and did something to it. In fact, he a lot of things to it. He put in the mysterious quality of pep” from the first note sung to the last kick of the end chorus-girl in the back row at the final curtain, He made the chorus-men work as well as dress and make up, and the chorus- girls sing as well as undress and ogle. He even made the principals apparently realize that they were interpreting a whole ad of simply getting away with their individual numbers. Royal V isn’t a wonder textually or musically, but the way in which it is done marks a real innovation in the girl-and-music show industry. And the man who could vivify the girl-and-music show is as much entitled as Mr. Shaw to rip the laurel from Shakespeare's brow. ee O one ever goes to sleep in the beds of the bedroom farces that now occupy so many New York stages. No one could. They are such wonderful creations, and the bedrooms are so thunderously draped, colored and furnished that in them even a hibernating ground-hog would suffer from insomnia All this seems a waste of material emphasis. The plots of these choice dramatic morsels never leave a moment's doubt in the mind of the audience that the bed is a bed and the room is a bedroom A Sleepless Night" the bed not only occupies most of