The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-06-02

New York, May 31.-Theatrical
smusements are going outdoors for the
warm season. Next week the sum-
mer's singularities at Coney Island will
begin to be describable This week the
earliest of the Broadway roof theatres
opens in way that this letter shall
tell about. But first let il be said that
Nama itself is never in the years
round so odd as at summers outset;
ana to prove that it is so this year,
am going to give an account of His
terrible Secret; or, The Man Monkey"
rms play is performed at a theatre in
brooklyn borough; yet ii seems to be
Inc most absurdly impressive melo-
Drama, the most ridiculously engross-
lrS, that l ever saw. / have laughed
outright in thinking of it; and l have
haq several nightmares, also, in men,
DRY of it.
In spectacular play, or Christmas
pantomime." brought from London
two years ago, an African gorilla dis
Ported at first in monkey fashion, but
gradually his gibbering became articu-
late speech, his behavior grew human
he put on the manners and clothes of
fashion, and at the end of the evening
he was a Piccadilly dandy. The carl
cature had been intended az a satire of
Darwinism by putting forth the Lon
dPn haw-haw swell as the missing
INK" between monkey and man in the
process OF human development: I don't
Know how the creature had been acted
over there-but here he was given in
earnest by William II. Turner, and so
efTectually-at least to me-that he has
Deen an acquaintance whom l would
be glad TO get rid of. I described him
IN this correspondence at the time; and
then Mr.. Turner came to me with the
a-.T III
ter in a. serious drama. But l said:
Where on earth is there a manager
with the means and the nerve to put
play OF such d monster on the stage?'
and the last l knew of the actor-untiI
L read an advertisement of His Ter
rible Secret; or. The Man Monkey'-he
was still in quest Of an able and will
ing producer. Charles E. Blaney. writer
and exploiter of a hundred plays for
the populaee, is the man; and that fact
renders the experiment all the bolder
because the uncertainty of such a study
IN anthropolOgy before a two-dollar
Especial audience of high-browed scien-
lists was bound to be an extra-hazaTd-
Gus risk before a half-dollar assem-
blage of people who, Il they tried. could
rot distinguish Darwin from Dowie
both being long-bearded if not hair
Drained.
or course, there was the Or Jekyll
and Mr.. Hyde" of Robert Louis Stew
enson's creative genius for Turner and
Blaney to tie their hope to; and they
did 1t by making their man-monkey no
monkey at all, but, ike Jekyll- Hyde a
wholly human being with the good and
the evil in his nature in alternating and
ccntesting control. They hadn't dared
-and L don't wonder-to give to their
Melmoth a gorilla for a father and
woman drau ffzfz,
that dreadful piece of statuary which
SHOWS beast more horrible than any
faun or satyr, carrying a girl away to
the forest. 1t is told at the beginning
OF the lay that. before Melmoth's
birth, his mother was so frightened by
a gorilla that her child was marked
oy a facial resemblance TO monkey
not only. but was also abnormalIy. un-
humanity ferOciOusly british whenever
ms monkey nature overpowered his
contrastingly exalted human nature
He Is a grown man at an African bun
saloW when the audience first sees
him. an assistant to savant collect
ing specimens n natural history for the
Smithsonian Institute at washington,
He has been educated, and ordinarily
ne IS polite, although he says he hears
the call OF the wild" and feels an al
most irresistible desire to fly to the
jungle in response to it His face has
Ike a monkeys, and ne might be a
gigantic monkey dressed like a man for
exhibition in museum. He loves his
employers dainty daughter. devotedIv
and hOpelessly; ii is with difficulty that
he restraints himself when he sees her
heart go TO a worthy wooer: and on
witnessing the insolent kiss of a de-
bauehee he does not stop at wrestling
her from the arms of her assailant, but
twists and wrenches him with a
strength that has been described as
Sufficient to tear tiger to pieces, and
gnaws him savagely like beast
Then and there, in the first scene, the
status of Melmoth, the Man Monkey,
4eccmes fixed and unalterable with
Nhat portion Of the public for which the
Pay has been written. He is a NIL
scum freak of nature a physical mon-
strosity. to be shuddered at vet
laughed at for any manifestation OF
Inonkeyism, and not considered at all
as presenting the phenomena of a SEN
sitive human soul embodied with the
savage instincts of a beast. I wonder
tf the authoritative Mansfield from
whom our cultured people accepted the
dual Jekyll and Hyde, could have gone
safely further and triumphed with the
warning entities Of man and monkey in
MelmOth. Bianey, the author-nanaser
atres, and. while Turner the author
actor, may have aspired to bring out a
Darwinian study in the monkey origin
Of man, II is no doubt better business
10 make a very usual melodrama of
STOLEN papers and misappropriated
Ixoperty, with crude Characterization.
and the Man Monkey for q merely eve
opening feature. At the end, MeImoth
tqies the girl into the jungle, to save
her from murderous yillainy There he
lets his Simian head. and face go I'M
shorn and unshaven, till in his rem
nants- of clothing he looks more like a
gorilla than before. He becomes so
bestial that, after pounding, breaking
and biting the maiden's two assassins
to death In single encounter he de-
ltvers her to her worthy lover. hears
again and louder the call of the
Wild" and runs away from mankind
tb live and die with the gorillas
On the way back from Brooklyn and
that hideous play TO the Jardin de