The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-03-17

New York, March 15.-Tainted money
IS the subject of three plays put forth
| here this week. In the case of "The
Spoilers" the theme exactly stated is
greed for gold. not coined into money,
but as yet ore in an Alaskan mine.
one OF the recent fictional writings of
Iact was Rex Beach's story of govern
mental wrongs in our territory of Alas
ka-hoW the first courts there were
utilized to take mines away from their
owners and turn them over to author
lZed looters-how vigilantes thereupon
displaced the formal processes of ad-
Indication. and how a young man and
young woman, mutual lovers. had
their hearts caught and crushed be-
tween the opposed forces. l remember
TO have read that Mr.. Beech evolved
the book from his own personal OBJ
serVatlon, so far as its exposure of po-
l1tical dishCnor was concerned, after
returning from Alaska. where he had
lost mine to the spoilers; but book
publishers nowadays are like theatrical
managers in employing agents to lie
TO the newspapers; so no one needed to
believe that Mr.. Beach had lost a gold
mine in Nome. any more than that
some actress had been robbed of a pint
OF diamonds in the TenderlOin. How
ever, Mr. Beach stood before a Broad
way audience, wriggling and twisting
in the agOnies of curtain-called trans
ports of delight-he didn't look like a
man who wOuld-at least not under the
stress of that moment of pleasurable
torture-undertake to tell a lie. 1
should say that he would have told his
real name, and all his aliases, if asked,
and confessed to the hatcheting of a
whole grove of cherry trees, if accused.
He said that truth was back of the
play which he and James Macarthur
had made out of his novel. So 1.-The
Spoilers" i'm the stage version may be
accepted as realistic drama OF Amer
lean life in our northwestern corner.
Am l right in locating Rex Beach as
resident of Chicago? Anyway, The
Spoilers" was first produced there at
the ArtSake's Fiasco theatre The di-
rector, Mr.. Mapes, tells me that 1.-The
Great Galesto." the diZzily high-art
play which, of the whole repertory,
pleased the seasons subscribers most
as carrying out the uplifting design of
the enterprise best, drew in less than
hundred dollars of the general pub
lies money in an entire week, and that
1.-The Spoilers" which the subscribers
disliked for being merely an American
melodrama, came nearer than any 9TH
er of the productions to commercial
prosperity. Daniel Frohman, the liter
airy and artistic one of the FTohman
brothers, has taken up THE Spoilers"
as a reasonable theatrical venture, Civ
en- an uncommonly fine outfit to it. and
bravely offered il in melodrama- scorn-
ing Broadway. The look of it is that
it will thrive. But / don't predicate
that judgment on the enthusiasm of
the first-night audience. Author
BeaCh's friends rallied numerously So
did those of his collaboration, MacAr-
thur. Most of those in the parquet who
were not mOdiSh were BOhemianistic.
don't think that any other edge-of-civ-
ilization play has ever gathered such an
audience of height in foreheads and
fashions.
Ralph Stuart is the actor of Roy
Glenister, the stalwart fellow who be-
gins by saying there's never a law of
God or man that runs north of fifty
three" and so believing, begins to WOO
an Alaskan girl tourist brutishly. like
a bulldog hunting quail" and I was
amused to watch the audiences discov-
cry of Stuart. He had been an idolized
leading man of a stock company in
Lexington avenue, also one in Eighth
avenue, and he had toured starringly,
yet Broadway felt itself critically acute
to find i'm HIM an accomplished actor
He was called out with an enthusiasm
that had a patronizing manner-an l.
"a W dSStl WHICH,
the actor bowed quite as though APP
plause was a new and surprising de-
light to him. instead of being a twice
a-day experience for years. Not since
Hackett thrust and slashed his way to
popularity with a sword in THE Pris-
oner of Zenda.' not even when Bellew
welded a blade for love in "A Gentle |
man of France" had that sort of a |
New York audience been so excited by |
a stage fight as this one was when |
Stuart thrashed the villain. And that |
was but one of many lively incidents |
transferred from the book to the play.
/ haven't gone wrong if 1 have i'm !
parted the idea that The Spoilers is a |
whoop-yow, tough-stuff. mining-camp /
melodrama- Many plays of that char |
acter have been aimed west and south /
west but this is the first to point to |
the far northwest. and it hit the BULLS |
eye at the opening fire in New York |
with sharp ding of the bell. because |
it had an emotional soul in its brawny |
body.
The houses indicated by George Ber-
nard Shaw, i'm giving the mock scrip /
tural title of "Widowers' Houses to
the first play he ever wrote, and the
twelfth to be performed in this city, are
unsanitary tenements, such
as LOndon law uSeO 10 permit fdpdc1OuS
landlords to pen squalid tenants in like
pigs in stys. Their owner is a Peck
sniffian church warden whom Dickens
might have made a reformatory exam
ple but whom Shaw, with an over
weening desire to exploit himself,
wastes in a drama of heartless cynic-
ism. This accumulation of tainted
played by Charles Hawtrey's
elder brother, William. has a daughter
prettily embodied by Effie Shannon,
who enjoyes the luxuries which the
money brings, with no thought of the
shame of it. She has a lover, whom
Henry Kohler renders manly OF man.
1er. and who at first breaks the be-