The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-14
THEATRICAL LETTER
 OF FRANKLIN FILES

reminds me of David Belasco's Japa
 nese sentry whose head was inside {
 lantern with the light shInning bright
 iy in his face. That would, Of course
 blind hts eyes to an approaching enem-
 while exposing him to missile.
 Why. David" said e friend. ''h'
 couldn't see thinR."
 He be bfowed," was the dramatil
 trickster's answer; "he's there for tn,
 audience to see him"
 Cooper told us boys long ago tha
 Uncas's best-ioved suuaw was Colder
 Arrow: now Louis Werba shows u
 that she tried to prevent his hopeless
 encounter with the wraiths of the Mo
 hicans from beyond. She converse. I
 has been said that . Frenchman oi
 Jew would be struck dumb If f,il
 hands were tied. The dialogue il which Golden Arrow begs Uncas not
 to fight couldn't go on without theii
 legs as well as arms free for motions
 Wrigglers and twisters. leapers ant
 sprawiers are they indeed, for ths chief is Gertie Mover, of the Mover Sis ters, one of whom danced herself t death at Weber ana Fieldss and ths
 squaw is May Leslie, another dancing celebrity. Were not the aborigina
 savages stolld stoics7 Did the old, time tobacco store images misinforn
 us? Was Ned Buntiine q liar. Ger
 tie and May make Uneas and Colder
 Arrow like jumping. jacks shaken 1T q big Kaleidoscope. Now they looi
 like combined boxers and wrestlers
 in bout and now again they seem t
 be In transports of mad love.
 This uuspoken play has beautiful shifts of forest scenes and at times they are filled from the ground up to . height of six feet or so with the lit- tie bodies and Timber limbs of girls in various symbolic dances; and I get the Idea that the grim braves turn in death Into graceful girls. that savage rites give place to sensuous exercises and that the influence of the Tender lofn 'Indiansr are potent with the ghosts of the Mohicans.
 Cbauncey Olcott and Andrew Mack bring each a new play into New York, but not far enough in to be nearer than four miles from that Broadway which won't welcome Irish comedians. Mack with Sergeant Devil May Care is In Brooklyn borough and oicott with
 Ragged Robin" is in the Bronx. As both have travelled half a season with those plays, you may know what it cost me subway trip to learn--that Mack'e devif-may-c hero, though Irish, is not heroic in Ireland. but in Canada. and that the character was in- troduced last autumn by Cyril Scott at the centre of the town The sor- geant is in mounted police service. away up in British Columbia, and he has rousing adventures in brave1y captur- inE and still more bravely releasing . fugitive from justice. Mack sings iIi the midst of perils and recommends the daredevil to his ardent and most ly feminine admirers.
 olcott is kept in Old Erin by his wife. for 1t is she who wrote an Irish legend Into Ragged Robin,a for him to warble and blarney in. Robin Ia n wandering minstrel of long ago ana unwittingly he drinks at a fairy well tt the one minute of the year when. as sure as fate, that draft win wed him to the girl who next slakes her thirst there. Likely as not he has roamed your way before slouohing Into an edge of Gotham. As his edre is eight to ten nliles away from the edre where Mack has strolIed in, there's no danger of such riot of partisans as took several lives in the famous fight over Forrest and Macready.
 Never than now have American makers Of theatrical entertainment gone higher or lower to exaft or de- grade stage literature. PsychoIo9fcai plays follow one another and SO do shows of cafnality. The exfreu1es were never further apart
 ChArlaS Klein. after writing a good living with any sort of respectable matter that was marketable. struck into fopieel popularity with an attack on Rockefeller millionairism that will make him . quarter of a millionaire. That Is not exaggerative. After that success he turned out two failures Yet manager was eager to pay &3,o00 Tor an, option on the unwrittan next. no matter what is might be. I know Klein we'll He believes all he writes In his problem plays becuse he won't write what he uoesn't believe He was convinced that wrongs were done by policemen to persons under arrest by the working of '9he third degree' and that in. some cases hypnotism enabled lnquisitors to extract confessions of guilt from innocent prisoners who chanced to be easy mesEneric subjects Klein's illustration of his theme makes % engrossing a first act for "The Third Degree's that. ie the rest of the drama were not a dfmuendo in interest and pecuIfarity, the composition might be tagged "excelsis." A boyish profli- gate, disowne5 and impoverished by his wealthy father. goes at night when tipsy to a former college mate. who has owed him $500 since their student days, and asks for loan of e2.000. It chances that the debtor is in mo con aition to become a creditor. as he has gone bankrupt and will be arrested for forgery next morning-if he is alive. But he decides to be dead and kills himself with a pistols bullet. The young profiigate has gone to drunken sleep on lounge asfd is not awakened by the suicidal shot. So there is the ayout for q raelodrama Of circumstaTi- Hal evidence like hundreds that have been acted in the low-price theatres, What justifies 1t in high-price house4 It's exposition of the possible. even and Klein ayers surely exist mt evil of the police's third degree" process of extracting-Klein says ex-