The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-09-23
How Annie Russell Was Fooled
BY FRANKLIN FYLEs.

the thing changes, but the soul OF it
remains the same. The faithful Adam of
"As You Like tt reappears on the
stage, but he no longer offers to his
suddenly impoverished master the
boarded wages of a lifetime, with such
eloquent words as:
1.-THE thrifty hire saved under your
father,
Which did store, to be my foster
nurse
When service should in my old limbs
lie lame"
The Adamly faithful Lucinda in 1.-The
Girl and the Gambler" says nothing
like that when she comes to the aid of
the beggared heroine who has been her
gentle mistress. She comes to the point
straight and quick. Hal Reid gives us
action where Will Shakespeare gave us
language. Lucinda is the devoted old
negro servant in a family that a pair OF
villains, assorted male and female, dis
rupt by making the head of it throw
his wife and daughters out of doors.
The younger daughter is beloved of her
audiences because she is their pet Flor
ence Girl-with- the-diamond-dres Bind
ley. besides possessing in the fiction all
the virtue and vivacity of the soubrette
heroine, who comes to her fathers door
TO beg food for her starving mother,
and help to keep her fallen sister from
death by black-cloakitis. Her father
would soften, but the adventures con-
geals him with siren gaze, so that he
gives a bunch Of mine shares to her
and nothing but inedible scorn to his
child. Thereupon, the bad one peels a
single bill off the most insultingly big
green roll that ever saw on the stage.
Here, my GIRL she cries. you used
to try to sing. Amuse me and you
may have that for your starving moth
err"
And how she did sneer. Amuse her?
She would have been harder to enter
tain than the Sphinx, or a Broadway
first-nighter. You may think that the
virtuous maiden refused the sinners
tanned money, but bear in mind that
she was singing soubrette, also, and
mustn't let q song remain overdue to
the audience. SO Florence Bindley
sang Annie Laurie" in a way that
made the SIRENS two dollars seem too
low a price, and the audiences quarter
and half dollars positive insults. That
was the ballad with which her mother
had won her fathers heart, and now
the adventures was put to her stumps
} to keep him from falling to it again.
But she was wise to the enchantment
racket, and able to double-cross the
tender memory kibosh. Those are
phrases of criticism which may puzzle
, you, but would be full of meaning to
that audience.
Just here the Afric-faced but Adam
hearted Lucinda got into action. do
you see that hump" she asked, pulling
up her skirts to show two stockings
one Of which had a big lump. Oats
ma honest money. an it am youahs,
honey, all youah's."
| Annie Russell expected to be in New
York's theatrical spotlight last Mon
day evening, and all the other actresses
on view TO be dim in her shadow; for
sweet Annie, gentle Annie, of the nun
face, who had never so much as
switched her skirts on the stage, was
ready to throw them off and play Puck
i'm "a Midsummer Nights Dream"
Nothing else competed for dramatic in
terest in Broadway. Other disclosures
were put over till later in the week
Not a seat in the new theatre named
after the AstOrs had been buyable
within a fortnight The performance
had been timed for s o'clock promptly,
but half an hour later man with the
scared face of an apologist came before
the curtain Had Annie been unable,
after all, to screw her courage TO the
stripping point? No. There was
pump lacking in the outfit of the stage,
and the fire commissioner insisted that
the audience be dismissed.
people TO shift to any of the many full
length plays that were under way in
the vicinity. But the front of a vaude-
vile theatre on the next block was
placarded THE Futurity Winner"
which looked sporty to the FOUNDERS
and one or two hundred went in to see
a horse race drama that was small in
duration but big in realism. Why does
nobody ever write a turf play without a
crooked Jockey imperiling a race and
straight jockey saving it? Perhaps
it would be futile. What other plot
would give interest to the action? Ger
; tainly Edward Day hadn't tried to put
any other motive into THE Futurity
Winner" But he had made an Ibsen-
ish experiment which was a bold risk
to take in vaudeville. Two Jockeys are
the important characters. One has
; been ruled off the course for foul rid
ing, but the stewards have forgiven
him, and he is striving in vain to get
a mount. The other has been fair but
now he yields to a rich bride, and
agrees that the horse able to win shall
lose.
All of which is natural and human.
but the audience is puzzled to pick the
hero or the villain. and when the two
jockeys have a desperate fight to de-
eide which shall ride the horse. the ap-
plause and the kissing defy harmonious
appointment. The upshot is, though.
that both fellows turn loyal to the pref
ty Keneucky girl who owns the racer
and would be ruined in fortune if he
were to be beaten.
The great hurrah over 1.-The Futurity
Winner is gained by paying Neil Bur
CESS $105 week, not as an actor, but
as an inventor. He is the same Neil
Burgess who began as a negro min
strel, changed to the humOr of Yankee
old maids, and patented the treadmiil
as a means of making a horse trot
without moving out of the audiences
sight. 1t was no more Abigail Prue
than her mare Cold Molasses that
brought a fortune to Burgess in 1.-THE
County Fair" Subsequently, he lost
all his money in THE Year one" a
play of ancient Rome with a chariot
race for spectacular excitement. He
planned an all alive copy Of Gerome's
famous painting. with two four-horse
teams dashing madly head on toward
the spectators. The horses had been
trained to run on the treadmills, but