The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-01-31
The Well-Behaved Members of the Profession
Scandalized by the Exploits of Partially
Dressed Comic Opera Actresses.
The Pleasant Side of joaquin Miller's
Variegated Matrimonial Life.
An italian Who Is Astonished to Learn that
Wife-Murder Is Illegal-The Yander-
bilt Public Art Gallery.
0NDREss ON THE STAGE.


Against Short Clothes and Tights.
Special to the Indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, Jan. 30-Sharp warfare has
broken out between art and burlesque in theatri-
calls. Not since the original "Back Crook"
shocked and entertained the New York public
has there been SO loud an outcry against stage
improprieties The managers of the three legit-
innate stock companies Wallack, Palmer and
Daily, have banded together in an onslaught
upon indecorously costumed burlesques and
comic operas, and the first battle is set down for
next Thursday afternoon. They have prepared
benefit matinee performances for the Actors
Fund, and from the entertainments, which will
be given in their own Observation-Disclosures, Daly's
and the Madison-square-unski actresses are
to be rigidly excluded. Engaged" 'The Rivals"
and Love on Clutches" will be performed, but
the companies will 20 the round of the three
houses, giving one act of their plays on each
stage, so that an audience will get third OF
every comedy. Between acts there will be sing
ing, but all in conventional clothes, and the
three leagued managers will make addresses in
which they are expected to define their posi-
sition as TO what they have already characterized
as pernicious amusement Palmer and Wallack
have in published interviews denounced the cur
rent taste for actresses in tights, and this pecu-
liar matinee is under the personal direction of
DAILY. That they have suffered from the compe-
titiop of the entertainments which they con-
denim is mentioned as a selfish animus of their
present proceedings; but circumstances have
combined to create much sentiment on their side
of the question. Exploits of q small but very
conspicuous minority of burlesaue and comic
opera actresses have lately scandalized the well
behaved majority, and the more notorious the
persons became the more they were forced for
ward, because their value as attractions to the
dudes was thereby enhanced At the annual
meeting of the Society for the Suppression of
Vice. which is Anthony Comstock's organization,
the subject of risky stage costuming was dis
cussed, and the heavy hackers of Comstock-
the element from which he gets his potent moral
and financial support--agreed to sustain him in
crusade against tights. He is, therefore, likely
to do something radical if not effective.
A diverting side-issue is the discussion Of
Henry Ward Beecher's pres ence at the Academy
of Music, last Monday afternoon, when mixed
show was given for the benefit of FL. A.
uOLudS, Oh 6ItaS1 1occcuoI Woo AAAohu
of the beneficiary. and he volunteered to
make an address introducing party of draughts-
men, who made sketches on the stage. He did
that service happily, and then took place in a
proscenium box, where two young ladies of his
family sat He seemed to enjoy the vocal and
acrobatic doipgs that ensued At length the
time came for an Amazon march by the chorus
from ''Eyangeline" 1t was out of this troop of
carefully selected pretty girls that Sadie Cortel
you recently retired into disgrace and death; and
it was with them that several hundred Produce
Exchange brokers lately had a famous guying
time after the manner of the historically humor-
Gus manner of the Count Joannes tragedies.
Beecher did not quit his box, but he retreated so
far behind the draperies that he was visible to
only small portion of the audience, and the
best obtainable evidence is that he turned his
back on the parade of the twenty unclad girls.
On the fall of the curtain he went into the corri-
dor, and stayed there talking with acquaintances
during the encore temperance of the bur-
lesquers. He declines to be drawn into talk on
the subject for publication, but intimstes that
he will soon define his position regarding theat-
ricals in sermon.