The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-10-11
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The actress who DOTTED the skirts OF
a Partisan cocotte, donned the uniform
of a German soldier and had risky
frisky fun with military officers in a
new Operetta last week was Lulu Ola
ser, as 1 described her to you. Louise
Cunning is doing the same thing this
week in a Franco-German disguise of
sex by a girl in "Marcelle;" and for a
further coincidence Louise's sweet
heart. like Lulu's. is an artist. although
she fools with soldiers. That suggests
plagiarism, Ell? Yet there isn't any.
The two stories have no further SIM
ilarity. Singing actresses are fond of
.strutting and striding as boys, and
authors are ready to help them do ii,
although all possible tricks of pretty
femininity in trousers were exhausted
so long g that ] dOn't believe n
has been invented since Lolita Crabtree
and Maggie Mitchell were young SOU
bretteS. 1t is almost as hard to devise
a new eason for the disguise, and the
creators of Marcelle haven't tried to.
She imposes herself as a barons son
because he needs one as an heir TO an
estate. That's an old, old motive in
stage fiction.
Louise gives no new piquancy to it
for she is no such Coincidence as
Lulu; but, o, how she sings. There is
no other c voice on the American
stage out of grand opera. Did you
hear her rise to the top notes of sweet
old Scotch ballads when she was new
enough in vaudeville to be stifT-Iegged
and naively awkward in heS kilties? I
wish, as I listen to her in "Marcelle"
thai 1 could compel her to toss that
voice airily again for the lassie who
got bussed when coming through the
rye. or that other one that something
similar happened to within a mile o
Edinboro' toon, or Annie Laurie, for
whom some laddies has for a hundred
years been willing TO lay him down
and die. I am told that she is in night
ly dread that some old duffer raise a
hue and cry for these Scotch notes.
Not that the LuderS tunes are not
~melOdious; for indeed they are; m
Louise Cummings and others singing
of them make success sure for Mar
Celle" as an Operetta in ~cOntradiStinc-
ton to the current comedies and farces
| with songs from any and every source.
Luders is able not only to provide suit
able music, but has vogue enough to
stipulate, as Victor Herbert and Reg
inald De Koven do, that none by my
one else shall be ~interpOlated. That
kept a frequently Objectionable ele-
ment out of the first audience. Some
times a musical play contains songs
from half a dozen COM oSers and as
many rival publishers. who muster
their friends for as many separate
bands of noisy rooterS as there are
brands of ballads. Gangs Of whistlers
have been placed in the galleries to
take up the airs in unison with the
singers in the choruses- The most con-
spicuous cIapper this time was Luders,
who sat in the conductors cha and
madly applauded Miss Cunning for her
way of singing his music
Both Luders with the score of Mar
celle'' n Pixley less happily with the
in THE Prince of Pilsen"-a safe and
sound model. of course, as that has
been a big moneymaker-and the same
German breaker of English who was
acted in that piece by John w Ran
some and Jess Dandy is duplicated in
this one by Dandy. Who can rid him
self of prejudice in stage personalities?
I don't merely dislike the kind of a
strenuous, arduous low comedian that
Ransome and Dandy are-I hate them
fercely; but I had to hear audiences
laugh at them in the earlier produc-
ton, and now / listen again to loud
and frequent proof that to most peo-
pie they are irresistibly amusing. And
what is the use of asking why Dandy
and Herbert Cawthorne, as German
characters assumedIy speaking their
native tongue among Germans, should
be the only mes to use broken Eng
lish? The easy answer is that it makes
folks laugh when straight English
would not; and it is done with all sorts
of ~oreignerS even in plays of a good
literary grade; in which the auditor is
asked to imagine that the talking is
being done in the born n bred Ian
NJ AIA--EA11
did not give a French accent to Baron
Chevrial. nor Irving TO Louis the Elev-
enth, although both are humorous
characters in their grim way. How
ever, let US not look a gifted horse in
the mouth to count his teeth critically
when something is funny enough to
make a horse laugh.
The latest S~alome-and, being Max
inc Elliott. much the most beautiful of
alliances just four steps before be-
ing stopped. 1t is not the police that
check her gyrations, however, but a
New England spinster. When Rachel
Crothers wrote "Myself-Bettina," Sa-
lone and the Herod family were rest
ing under the cover of the Bible, but
before the plays first performance in
New York. the sinuous daughter OF
Herodias became a bare and braZen
theatrical figure. So when Maxine APP
peared as Salome the illusion of drama
receded and sensational spectacle filled
, the first-nighters' view. A red clOak
covered the Oriental costume, but -one
could hear its spangles jingle as the
actress moved. She was supposed to
be a high-spirited New England girl,
who had devised a scene of Salomes
dance before Herod for a charity en-
tertainment and was conducting a re-
hearsal in a sedate homestead. She
had her sister struggling with Strauss
music on a tin-pan piano, and a girl
friend draped dramatically for Her
odias, in a trailing strip of rag carpet,
Herod was a comic sight in the prim
person of a precise New England
youth, while a young man of jollier as
pect lay on his stomach under the
piano calling up from below the words
of John the Baptist. When the new
est of the Salomes threw off her cloak
she was a vision of beauty in a robe
and headdress of yellow glittering
with gold spangles. M it was a com
fort to see that, with cold weather
coming on. she was no more bare than
a girl might be at a boarding schoo,
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