The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-09-02
THE SALT LAKE HERALD. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 1906

pOltely to Mrs. =. Holmes, Detective"
because woman wrote it? Moreover,
the woman is Ruth Bryan Leavitt.
daughter of William Jennings Bryan;
and besides that, she gives it out in the
same week with the homecoming of
her father. 1t distinguishes him AS
having a daughter who won't. or can't
level her work down to the demands
Of vaudeville. Her comedietta has
twenty minutes time i'm a program OF
varieties. Just before it, two of the
late Paddy Rooney's daughters dance
with exceeding velocity and violence.
and the spectators are joyed 70 a point
of ecStacy. Just after it, a pair of dia-
logists send swirls of mirth through
the theater. mainly because one of
them has a real hare Lip and for that
reason can't help talking funnily But
during Mrs. Leavitt's play neither
laughter nor applause breaks the audi
ences respectful silence-eXcept at one
sentence A hard-up lady advertises as
q detective in way TO imply that she
is the widow of Sherlock Holmes The
footing OF a honk horn precedes the
entrance Of a client.
You came here in an automobile"
| she says. deductively. How do
| know Why. 1 detect an Odor Of gaso-
| line about you
! All says the client, but mine is
| an electric motor car"
| Mr.. Bryan's daughter has written a
/ Sravesty on Conan Doyle detective fic-
ton with good taste and diction. but
for theatrical use it is valueless.
Two song and dance plays of Ameri-
can make. THE Tourists and Marry
! ing Mary" are new in Broadway. One
is in the familiar fashion, safe and
sure; the other cuts a change of cloth
into unusual shapes, thus taking a risk.
| After / have told you that the tourists
who give title TO the first named piece
are d Yankee girl in Hindustan with a
! frisky governess, and a Yankee fellow
! who follows her with an antic tutor,
you should guess not only that the
| goVerneSs gets into a rajah'S harem,
and the tutor is carried off by brigands.
! r. II. Burnside the author. has been
! a stage director of so many musical
farces that I doubt if he could. if he
| tried. write a libretto without brigands
in it. And Gustave Kerker has led
orchestras and made tunes for Francis
Wilson, Frank Daniels, Jefferson Dan
geles and DeWolf Hopper so many
times that he would scarcely be able
to compose q score without songs for
| a comedian scared funny as a bogus
| oriental potentate.
Although THE Tourists" is as stale
as that in subject. it is freshened in
pie, is done by blindfolding the tutor
who is Richard Golden, funny in the
same ways that he was in "Old Jed
Prouty" but i'm far east instead of
merely down east guises-malxing him
balance along the edge of an imaginary
| precipice, leap across an unreal
chasm. crawl through a fancied cavern,
and all the while he is being led around
and around the doOryard of a tavern,
n no a n own
pupil. who emits the groans and shrieks
of a tortured captive, and at the same
! time talks for the bandit chief through
a megaphone.
The young lover and loverine from
Massachusetts are played by Alfred
| Hickman. who was a husband of
Blanche Walsh. with none but them
selves and a clergyman knowing it
until a divorce let the secret out, and
Julia Sanderson, an eXquisitely pretty
/ girl brought forward from the chorus
so unframed that, when on the opening
night she saw some real actresses beat
/ ing her. she became so nervous that
her voice gave out in a song. Then,
too. the machine that was TO project
her and others in an optical illusion,
while she posed and sang behind the
scenes, couldn't be made to work. Upon
her next appearance she had Wept the
| black off her eyelashes and ploughed
| burrows with tears through the red and
white Of her cheeks.
! The malleable nature of such shows
as The Tourists" is shown in the fact
that the principal disturbing competitor
of lovely Miss Sanderson was a Grace
Larue, whom the management came
/ across just in time to put into the play.
Her specialties were mimicry and agile
dancing. The role of a newspaper
kodaker was hastily provided in the
morning. she was rehearsed in the
afternoon. and In the evening she
missed cues. colided with other per-
! formers. and got hit by a descending
curtain but made the best single sue
cess Of the whole show.
The Mary of Marrying Mary" is
Marie Cahill, and she controls the show.
! too. 1t is one of her notions that a new
! lot of fresh young girls makes an ap-
peal to more and better people than
| the ill-famed beauties of the Thaw-
/ White class do. At the first look you
see a stageful of young strangers to
the Tenderloin, who suggest sweet girl
! graduates at a school commencement
rather than a ballet chorus. Miss Ca
! hill has dressed them in maidenly sim
plicity and kept them we'll hammered.
And ii is fact that no Thaw or White
| is permitted to take them away from
! the stage door. They have. to start
away decorously, and not go to any
notorious midnight estaurant-which
counts for good morals and good bust
| ness.
| The Mary of the play is so marrying
| that she has divorced three husbands
when we first know her, and pretty
/ soon she takes a fourth. The third is
| Willie, whose other name, but not his
| fame, is Drinkwater. "Ah." says Mary
! on meeting him. there's Willie on his
way to the ZOO" But he halts to join
numbers one and two in a song about
three men in boat with one wife.
"All the music. as well as the dane
! ing IS Interpolation. as the libretto IS
Edwin Milton Royle's farce. MY Wife's
| Husbands" which Nat Goodwin used
| a while The verses are by Benjamin
| Hapgood Burt, the tunes by SilviO Helm.
and In giving the job to them Miss Ca
| hill brought in new, young talent. The
| most infectious of Helms airs is the
! finale of an act. A usual sort of dra-
matte ensemble has employed the pow
erful voice OF Eugene Cowles. along
with that of William Courtleigh. hith-
erto heard only i'm legitimate acting.
and the highly trained one of Miss Ca
HILL Then, unexpectedly, Marrying
/ Mary who &c about m r11orrty co,,,.