The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-09-20

| ers who had no scruples against en-
| joying a funny play merely because it
| dealt with the mistake made by a
young wife who, to get even with her
seemingly neglectful husband went out
i with a friend of his to make night
! OF it, thronged to see it, and then sent
| their friends. The newspaper writers
! said all the good things they could find
in their ink bottles about the play, and
! then set themselves the task of weav-
! ing garlands for the author.
| But who was he? Why wasn't his
name on the programme? What over
! shadowing modesty had taken posses
! sion of the new drama-building guild
that one of them could achieve a sue
cess like this and still lie hidden in
! the tall shrubbery of anonymity?
/ Never before had one of their number
failed to come forward to claim his
/ due or more than his due if he thought
he could get it.
Remembering that many American
playwrights had not hesitated previous
to this to place large labels inscribed
with their own names on plays that
undeniably belonged to others, the
wonder grew when it became positively
known that the author of The Gay
Parisians" had decided to remain in
his hole and refused to be coaxed or
hunted out.
The critics hated to see such a good
play wasted on the desert air of au-
thorlessness, so they pitched around
to find an author to fit it. One of them
insisted that Augustus Thomas of
Alabama" fame had written it. He
thought he discerned some of the new
mOWn-hayedneSS of Mr. Thomas
quaint breeziness in the piece, and be-
sides that, Elizabeth Marbury, the Ma
hatma representative of a score or
more of European dramatists, had
guessed Thomas to be the author and
stopped long enough in getting on
cable car to tell the critic So Thus it
was this gentleman of keen discern
ment would have it that nobody but
Gus Thomas had brought THE Gay
Parisians" into existence.
Another critic held to the belief that
Clay NJ. Greene, who is Mr. Thomas
associate frolicker in the Lambs club
had written the comedy A third laid
it at the door of Charles Klein, who,
in addition to reading 3S9 plays for
Charles Frohman this season, has writ
ten two successful plays and a sue
cessful comic opera. A fourth found
distinct and positive traces of Clyde
Fitch's graceful pen in it. A fifth was
willing to bet his life that William
Gillette, who turned lie Plantation
Tomassin' into Too Much Johnson"
had G1lletleG the french original INTO
THE Gay Parisians.' A sixth said
it was Charles Hoyt's work A seventh
attributed it to a st. Louis journalist,
who has been in New York for some
years. And so they kept guessing.
Charles Frohman refused to reveal the
author. At first he set up the only
defense that the author was the
Frenchman who wrote the farce ''Ho-
tel de Libre Exchange" from
which THE Gay Parisians" was
taken, and that the New York
version was almost literal
translation, not more than ten
lines of the French piece having been
changed Then he yielded to pressure
and said he was under bond not TO
make public the adapter of the play,
having bound himself in heavy pecu-
mary penalty to keep his name a Sc
cret for two years, or at least until