The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-09-13
FRANKLIN FILES WRITES
 OFLATESTM THEA TRICALS

dramatic endeavor. Carlotta is the fifth salesgiri to turn in for the night. She is grouchy. The bondage of service in the Dobson store has made her rebel lious. As to her disrobing. it takes off no more than the waist of her frock: for something happens that keeps the girls from saying their pray ers-if indeed they have the praying
 habit-and tucking themselves away to
 sleep. Diana gets letter saying that she has inherited an English sum equal to Sl,500, and she declares that she will be a luxurious lady as long as the legacy lasts. A boss woman comes
 in to order the lights out at eleven, as the rule is at Dobson's, Diano cries
 Damn Dobson," and the curtain shuts in the salesgirls ere more than one of
 them has her petticoats off
 Of all the writers of New York
 slang for the stage: not excepting Ade,
 Conan, rorbers and Hobart, none has
 been so originative as John J. Mo
 Nally in Fluffy Ruffles." Not a sem tence spoken by Noggie Noggles, and he does a deal of talking. too. Is good diction: all of 1t is aptly expressive col- loquialism; yet from beginning to end not one phrase of old slang is heard. for all of 1t is original. As a. fresh supply of familiar quotations for New 1OTkt DCdlo tAS LNOh0Sh ASNNt A l1of Hamlet" This stuff, as delivered | by a Bert Leslie, enables him to stand
 next up to the star actress in success Among the listeners on the opening night were such facile utterers as Nat | Goodwin. Willie Collier and Tommy
 Ross; besides experts from vaudeville
 I wonder if there was any envy under their laughter. Jealousy isn't quite extinct among actors.
 Margaret Ellington. Mary Mannering
 and Lillian Russell can't have more | than paragraph apiece, because they | have taken their new plays on tours 1 before beginning here this week. Mrs | Ellington Frohman isn't to be felici- l tated professionally without reserve for being the wife of resourceful | manager. Daniel Frohman has placed | her in a powerful play, "The Thief" | to be sure; but don't you See that | criticism. by audiences. if not by news l paper reviewers, is apt for that reason | to be exacting? She faces the problem, | too, of how to win sympathy for thief. Her role is that of wife. who steals money with which to buy finery | to wear. Her primal motive isn't | vanity, though. but a desire to retain | her husbands admiring love: and of course that takes away the sordid ] taint; yet nothing less than intense l eTlOllOndllSulF CRITICS In6 dClTGSS lO | success. It is a cheering fact, too, that 1 ''The Thief" is but one of four plays current in New York that have misbe- having heroines. Yet none of them a Camille or a Lady Isabel The top layers of the theatrical public are ac- quiring dramatic culture.
 I doubt if any American dramatist has overlooked Betsy Patterson, the Baltimore bride of Napoleon Bona parte's brother Jerome. in the quest for his historical material for the stage Betsy was a coldly, sordidly ambitious creature in fact however, who made a most unromantic row over her divorce by the Frenchman, at the command of his imperial master. Rida Johnson Young. in Glorious Betsy" for Mary Mannering. dodges the dilemma by
 stopping the story before the wedding, l Instead of having Betsy set her cap for Jerome, she has her yield to his wooing in the guise of an humble French tutor; and the play ends abruptly with Jerome defying the Napoleonic mandate by resolving to
 wed Betsy, leaving out his abandon
 ment of her to become King of Wur- temburg. The first New York per- formance of the drama was at a mati- nee, with an audience of women in a ratio of a dozen to one man. These women gasped and ejaculated their ad-
 miration of Mary's Betsy. They got scared. almost to a panic too. by fog
 that they mistook for smoke. In a
 scene where Napoleon goes aboard
 French frigate to take Jerome ashore.
 and Betsy back to America, she stands woe begone to gaze after her departing
 lover. An apparatus was installed for
 the New York production to dim the
 scene with steam that should look like an enveloping mist; but 1t resembled uvaa ]lgA tnA
 ed barely by voice crying: Sit down
 and shut up. It is a stage effect!"
 The remainder of the play shows how
 Diana spends the $1.500 in the guise
 of wealthy widow at an Alpine re-
 sort. where she has the time of her
 life; and, when her money Is gone, her
 return to London, where she sinks
 through illness to the depths of pow
 erty. Meanwhile, toppy young idler
 has become her beloved lover. The
 finish Is on London Bridge in a night
 three months later with the former
 idler lodging like a tramp on a bench,
 because the girls taunt-that he
 couldn't earn a living-.bas melted him
 to test the question in vain; and she
 topping on the same hard boards, too.
 hungry and forlorn from lack of work.
 They compare notes of misery. agree
 to join their misfortunes in possibly aheviating wedlock and the curtain
 falls finally on their breakfast of cof-
 fee and cakes bought with shilling
 borrowed from a kindly policeman.
 Diana of Dobson's" has been recom-
 mended highly to London by the au-
 thoritative Lena Asrwell, but here
 Cariotta Nilsson doesn't carry the play
 along.
 The opening disclosure in Fluffy Rufnes' is a row of the chorus ballet