The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-11-03
AIDES New Play, Artie"
BY FRANKLIN FYLES.

a friend who has been kept a prisoner
until the last moment possible to res
cue. The tensity of that situation has
been strained till 1t is stretched to lax
ity, and no more can ii be made to pull
at an audiences heartstrings. Joseph
Arthur used it with fresh ingenuity in
Blue Jeans" twenty years later, by
having the villain bind the hero on a
machine which moved him along to-
wards a buzz-saw until the heroine
broke out of the mills office to save
him. Since that the playwrights have
let vice put virtue under cotton presses,
stone breakers, all manner of elevator
cars, until now you couldn't make an
audience hold its breath over any pos
sible peril of machinery. Too many
thousands of times have the endan-
gered chaps been rescued to permit of
doubt in any possible case.
X x x
I devoted a recent evening to a play
which stroVe in vain to arouse mob
of an audience by fastening a man in
an ore crusher. and another evening
went to waste at a play which endeav-
ored TO utilize the dramatic element of
suspense by shutting a girl In an out
house. with a bomb under it and fuse
sizzling it's way toward an explosion.
No sensations came to the assembly,
nor did anything TO write much about
come to me. Everybody knew there S
to be nobody hurt. A little more effec-
tual, though, is the arousal and sus-
pense of interest in Through Death
Valley" when good young man is
tied to- one stake, a bad young rattle
snake to another, and a fire is left to
burn away the seprent's cord, so that
ii seems sure to bite the poor fellow,
who then will be left to die miserably
of the poison. The RATHER is lifelike,
the fire is genuine, the man is an elo-
quent complainer, and the effect is
such that, no doubt, we shall have a
spell of venomous reptiles in melodra-
ma.
In the lack of any dramatic new
thing to respectfully take off my hat to,
/ have sought in the low-price English
theatres for oddities with no more sue
cess than the above paragraphs indi-
cate. / have visited one German and
two Yiddish houses with no better luck.
But in an Italian theatre / hit on
right-from-theg riddle melodramatie
pancake which, so to put il, proved
that the sphagetti of Italy may be quite
as hot stuff for the stage as the Yam
kee f1apjack. The Theatre Roma is
just around a corner from the BOwery
and has stock company hardened to
three or four changes of bill every
week, ranging from Shakespeare to
plays patched together from the rag
tags and bobtails of American melo-
dramas. The one which / encountered
bore a name in italian equivalent To
Loot the Loot" Let me digress to
tell that the half-dollar drama takes
its cues for titles from the two-dollar
drama. Girl has been q word To
conjure with ever since 1.-The Girl ]
Left Behind Me" was new.
u - X
May I be reminiscent for a few lines
l recall that, when the Belascan-pla
was ready to turn in for the opening
of Charles Frohman's first theatre the
authors had not christened it. Belasco
favored "A Romance of the Rockies, -
because the scenes were among our
highest mountains. His collaboration
stood out for 1.-The Yellow Plume" be-
it's soldiers were feathered in that
color.
MY brother Daniel has inspirations
in naming plays said Frohman. I'll
ask him for a suggestion"
So the manuscript was submitted TO
Daniel Frohman. In one of the dramas
scenes the troopers at an army post
sing the old soldiers song of 1.-The Girl
Left Behind Me" in the serenade of
visiting generals daughter That
sounds" says she. "as though each fell
low were singing his own love story
the girl he's left behind him." Now,
that bit of sentiment was extraneous:
yet Daniel Frohman seized on it for a
catchy title; and Charles Frohman,
when the authors demurred that it
wasn't pertinent, replied: MY dear
friends. the printing presses are al
ready running on posters with The
Girl 1 Left Behind Me- all over them.
What can 1 do?
The long vogue of that drama in
America and Europe fixed Girl in
the eyes of authors and managers to
work into the titles of hundred plays,
from extravaganzas to melodramas A
newer catchwOrd is Thief" because
The Thief is a conspicuous piece in
Broadway. So this week we have
Girl and Thief emblazoned on bill
boards for the rude meIodramas of
THE Thief and the Girl" The Girl,
the Banker and the Thief and "A Girl
Among Thieves" besides 1.-THE Burglar
and the Lady" From Sing Sing to
Liberty" kid the Bandit" and 1.-THE
Robber and the Maid The love of
in stage fiction that thieves become he
roes. All that by way of preface to
Loot the Loot
One day before / saw Loot the
Loot" at the Theatre Roma, when the
financial panic was at its height, mo-
tor car laden with bales of banknotes
was started from Wall street to the re-
lief of a bank in Brooklyn. Only the