The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-01-27


Broadway simultaneously as Salome
and Salcmy; each wants man killed
Tor insulting her; in both cases the
girls kisses count for dramatic much.
One kiss saves a life, and the other
loses one. The play in which Miss Mar
lowe turns herself to theatrical &C
count is Hermann Sudermann's John
the Baptist" and she has appeared al
ready i'm II with r. II. SOthern in sew
eral cities. In this same week Oscar
Wilde's "Salome'' is introduced in
grand opera, with music by Richard
Strauss. So we have two HerodianS's
daughters dancing for cutoff heads
OF John. and kissing the dreadful
things after getting them. Salomy
James Kiss" as named long ago by
Bret Harte. and as now put into a
play by Paul Armstrong. does not
make a girls kiss a token OF bad love
turned 70 worse hate-as viciously set
forth by Sudermann and Wilde in their
perversions Of scripture. Salomy givts
hers TO a John nicknamed Jack. He
has Just had moose adjusted to his
neck by California pioneer lynchers,
and feels very badly at having no one
70 send goodbye message TO. Odd
coincidence! Yet the plays are almost
1000 years apart in time, and from
Galilee TO California in place.
Armstrong gets nearly half through
his play before he comes TO the kiss
that started the Harte story. The girl
from Kentucky. wooed by half the
men on California ranch, doesn't kiss
the condemned stranger merely be-
cause he is about 10 be hanged lone
somely. She says that is why; but it
is rather long and clinging to be mere
ly sympathetic. and the playwright
ms los
ing with him In the act before, when
the fellow was a fugitive for having
killed rutfian who had attacked her
in the woods. really gave the emotional
cue for the smack. The stranger es-
capped hanging. vaguely between acts,
and energies into the moonlight of the
third act, again a fugitive from JUS
tice. The girl effected his second es-
cape. After another 'twiXt acts kill
ing. a last scene. beautiful in it's vastly
expansive picture of a sunrise, brought
the play to a conclusion, which in its
final line gets nearer to the manner of
harte humor than anything that has
gone before. Salomy Jane is going
quit the ranch with her initially kissed
lover, who has come so suddenly into
her life. and about whom she doesn't
know anything. AS the sun rises upon
their impulsive happy union. she sinks
YEARLY and fondly into his arms, hest
family looks up into his eyes and muir
murs: Say, man. what's your name,
anyway" And so the romance ends.
%% y
Eleanor Robson has been letting her
marager say that she desires to get
bagful of good plays. like the roper
tories OF Mansfield. Irving, Mariowe
and Sothern. and so be able to travel
with refreshingiy frequent changes of
dramatic clothes. To that declared
purpose theatre was taken for sea-
son, and prior TO "Salomy Jane" she
acted in lightly serio-comic comedies
written for her by Israel ZangWill
Clyde Fitch, Jerome K. Jerome and
Go Graves. They are passably good
erough-for a repertory; and there are
others on hand; but / wonder If We
viii hear any more of them. now that
she has hit upon another character as
breezy, open-air and free-hearty as the
one with which she came forth from
cbscurity in Augustus Thomas "Ari-
IONA" II would be easy TO sit down
and cogently write reasons why ga
lomy Jane" isr't a success. and can't
be, for it is fragmentary, illogical and
rUdely melodramatic; but only a year
ago hypercritical persons misjudged
Armstrong; THE Heir of the HOOrah'
eDcy Is TO go too far In praising him as
the first dramatist to make effectuaI
use of Bret Harte material Salomy
James love affair with The Man. whose
name even she doesn't know-begin-
ming with the kiss at sight running
through her saving Of him from lynch
ers, and ending with the flight of both
TO wedlock, all within twenty-four
hours, is whimsical and unreasonab BILE
but il is wildly. primitively irresistibly
romantic. too (unless you set out re-
solutely TO resist iD. and the girl is the
kind of a girl that Eleanor Robson can
make a charmer. The whole of the
play is finely acted in all outdoor
scenes that make you swell your chest
at the climax with air which--to your
surprises that Of stuffy New York
theatre on a foggy night, ana not the
gloriously sunlit atmosphere of Cali
fornia redwood forest.
Miss Robson gives a distinct charac-
terization in accord with Harte's writ
ing-a Kentucky rustic girl, drawing
and lounging as mountaineer Kentuck-
ians DO still. but with a nature arous-
able TO flaming heat under sufficient
provocation, and behaving at such
times as though she had come from
Spanish Mexico rather than Kentucky.
although she favors a gun as a weapon
in preference to a stilletto. Can you
imagine a Carmen with a true heart
and a tender conscience? That is Miss
Robson's Salomy Jane.
Minor types are Salomy James Ken
lucky father, sub, with a resentful
hand ever on trigger in defense of his
honah, by CAD. There is a washerwo-
man with a worthless husband always
liable TO be lynched, and an admirer
who gets ez fur along in courtin her
ez preprierty permits, so as TO be ahead
OF rivals the moment she becomes a
widow. And, OF course, there is Bret
Hartes slow, cool gambler in a broad
cloth coat and a plug hat. David Be-
lasco Is better known than Bret Harte
to New Workers today. AS to the like
ness of this drama to THE Girl of the
Golden West" as much might be dis
covered between almost any two plays
of early California. Makers of stage
fiction OF that time and place turn to
Harte, some less frankly than Arm
strong; yet II was odd that a good halt
of a bright first-night audience &C.
cused Armstrong of having stolen from
Belasco the gambler Of a dozen Harte
stories. He was Jack Hamblin in "Sa-
lony James Kiss" he became Jack
l