The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-08-05

West" and The King .. DIAMONDS
hire the sooners, and they are boomers,
too. Tleir two theatefs afe crowded
by the noisiest people ever seen. at a
play. A spell OF rest from theatrie Cx-
citement has made them eager for 1T,
yet their hullaballoe Is due largely to
their satisfaction With The entertain
ments. Therefore the pieces are wefth
consideration as examples Sc what the
populace likes in drama.
The episode In ''The GambieF of the
West" that agiat Eighth avenue es-
pecially is practically the same that
makes for the success Of ''The Girl Of
the Golden West I'M Broadway. Yet
Owen Davis copies 1t closely from Ar
thur Jones' THE Masqueraders," while
David Belasco, although cTediting its
originality to Jones, put Il into new
circumstances, and made It valuable in
the play which he bought from Clay NJ.
Greene as a basic to build on. This
episode Is life and death gan1e of
cards. Jones made Il d!ssolute noble
man stake his wife against the wealth
CT the honorable oOmmoner who loves
her. on three cuts Of the cards, Belas-
co.'s game was poker girl to lose her
self to a passionate sheriff or win her
outlaw lover from the moose. Davis
heroine has been kidnapped by scoun-
drel and Ia hidden IN q gambling house
The lover hero of the mower play and
the inevitable comic jew come TO the
'rescue. The villain and his assistant
stride down one side Of the stage, the
invaders down tue. other, and each par
" keeps its antagonists covered with
pistols. Then the adventures IN the
case says that lives may be saved by
gambling for the girl instead Of Shoot
tnU Tho h0d Woman &c worry drp9SV!
evidently has Travelled much, and
doubtless has seen tao Jones and Be
lasco plays. BelascO permitted his her
oine to reach INTO Ter stocking for q
cold hand, but Davis, probably realiz-
Z ing that, while audiences like to see a
Blanche Bates girl of the west" win
that way, they wouldn't stand for 1t
In man gambler Of the west" So
this hero plays square, wins fair and
for climax the stakes-that is, the
heroine-faints picturesquely.
The author of THE Gambler of the
West" meant TO do as we'll with an
other transfer-that of Ramsay Nor
\ ris' forest fire In "The Ninety and
Nine" The villain is determined that
the heroine shall not stay lost to him.
He will steal her back. He masks
himself and holds up a stagecoach, but
robs 1t of nothing except the girl he
Covets This time she is rescued by a
boy supposed to- be an Indian, but when
he and the girl talk about themselves
they find that they are brother and sis
ter, he having tanned cODDery in his
life with the savages.
The villain has been shot before he
escaped, by the boy, but has used some
sort OF sure cure oil or his wound, and
is able to sneak back to where night
has fallen on the brother and sister.
If he can't have and hold her, he would
destroy her. and so he sets fire to the
dry stuff of the forest all around her.
Unlike the feminine villain, he has not
made himself acquainted with up-to-
date melodrama; else he would have
seen that nowadays stage fire must
look like blazeS. The one in THE
Ninety and Nine" is made by attaching
strips of cloth to gratings, and illu-
minating them also from below, by the
same device that the serpentine dancers
use. Instead, this incendiary merely
started a moving picture machine to
throwing flames on gauze curtain.
1t was not Elusive. The hero rode In
on an unsinged white horse, picked his
way clear OF the reflections on the
gaUZe, lifted the herOine-nOw quite
rescue-broken and Dgettily limp-and
rode away with her beyond the reach of
the stereoscOOe.
The first Of the old acquaintances to
be welcomed In 1.-THE King of Dia-
monds" was the sinful siren. She Was
as red as the devil, with a satin that
shimmered as though she were di-
rectly from the Internal fires, and her
surface gave forth glints from SPAN
giles, as though spots of helliSh mean
descence were not cooled in the calm
atmosphere of the church into which
she dashed herself She 5trOlled down
to the edge Of the stage, and as l sat
I'm the front row, I could have touched
her with a wet finger. as a laundress
does a 1atiron, TO see If she would
siSs But the audience decided that
she was hot stuff so quickly that no
test was necessary. The people didn't
wait for her to tell the gentlemanly vii
lain. who came with her, thai she
meant to kill the bride of a marriage
ceremony about to be performed, but
hOoted, jeeTed, Kissed and catcalled her
at first sight, instead Of waiting until
she should By evil deeds earn such
demonstration.
Not much attention was given to the
pale pink, yellow and white heroine
during the ceremony which made her
the wife of a rich old man while she
loved a poor young one, and which.
IN some hazy way or other, saved her
fathers honor. 1t was not until the
bad brunette undertook to jab a knife
into her that the good blonde threw
herself into the activities Of that we'd
ding. She pulled out daggerish pin
that fastened her bridal veil. and 1t was
red devil against white angel. Finley
Fauley, the author, knew better than 70
let goodness triumph over. badness so
early in the play so the bride had to
be worsted-and then saved.
Peace in this holy place, my chill
dren." said a priest
The white one knelt in obedience and
piously kissed the crosS-handle of her
veil pin. The red one saw a chance for
an impiously foul blow OF the knife
But, ahai and nay, no, The priest
threw off his wig. whiskers and robe,
gripped the assassinatory hand and his
closed himself as the comic man of the
play.
No words need to be wasted to tell
how the chump-honest cowboy hero
was convicted of the gentlemanly vii
Iain's murder of the old husband on
an Arizona ranch. But the Tucson
prison TO which he was sentenced must
have paragraph. Yet 1 hate to write
anything that may hinder a territory