The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-14

tortin8--confessions by prisoners e crimes they have not committed. The case given is lifted out of or dinary builyragging and buildossns by domineerine police oficer to . plane of mental phenomena. I wish I could impress the second portion of The Third Degrees" first aot upon you as. 1t impressed itself on me when acted by Ralph Delmore and Wallace Eddinger. Deimore is the square jawed, grater-voieed actor who has played toughest runians these many years. It doesa't seem long ago that Eddinger was the yellow -haired lad in Little Lord Fauntieroy" and "The Girl I Left Behind Me" He stiif is blondly boyish. Doimore personatee a police captain who believes that the young profiigate. embodied by Eddin- ger: murdered the fellow who killed himself. The room is dark except for single lamp hansing over desk, at which the policeman sits and the prisoner stands. The man is loud. as- sertive. mandatory. brutish. The boy Is weak, scared. fuddled by drink and exhaustive by hours Of "the third de- gree" ordeal. Klein endows the strong man with hypnotic power and makes the boy . naturally submissive sub iect. Scientists fn their demonstra- tions of hypnotism always make their object
 "You quarreiled with your friend over his refusal to give you money" says the captain. @and you shot him with this pistol"
 All night long such questions have been answered with deniais. but now the boy is nervousiy prostrated while the inquisitor lifts the pistol that has been used by the seif-murdsrsr 50 that the glint of the gas light reflects from its polished metal Into the eyes of the yielding pfisoner.The man doesn't know that he is . hyppotist: he att attributes his success in obtaining con fesssons to his persistent common sense; but the audience is aware that his te- stant by the pistols bright spots. in- finence on the submissive boy. causes "a false confession.
 "I quarrelled with my friend over his refusal to give me money" he re- peats slowly. quivelingiy, abtectiy af- ter his obdurate inquisitor. land shot him with that pistol. |"
 The man thinks 1t Is . job wel1 done. The boy is too daxed to comprahentd. The audience Ia swayed emotionally by the occuuit example of thought suggestion in the police working of "the third degree"
 It would be braveiy iogicaI to end "The Third Degree" with the death of its innocent young fellow in mur- derer's electric chair. Eursly. that ment of the police. He ia not ready. thoush to 70 against his audience's desire like that. So he saves the ac- cused one by bringing out q love let- ter from the suicidal fellow to an- other mans wife. asserting hia deter imitation to take his own, life. That let's the play toboggen down from . level NeyedtheIess. there is q skilled and measurably effectuai effort to keep the action above . disastrous slump. That is done with two fneiy-drawn characters, the mill-girl whom the young profiigate has married and the old lawyer whom she induces to de- fend her husband. Kere Is one Of those coincldehces that give rise to charges of plagiarism. The third act of "The Third Degress." although ex- actly what Klein might write under the circumstances of hts play. ia surprisingly close repetition of the scene that Boucicauit transferred from a novel to "The Long Strike"
 Tn that play Of forty years ago. an innocent man was accused of murder and his sweetheart coaxed and teased,
 
 kindly old lawyer until he took up the case and acquitted the prisoner. That was a famous WalIackian pro- duction, with the late T. H. Stodaart making a record as the lawyer and Rose Eytings, just now retired to the Actors' Home. as the persistent girl. The lawyer In 'The Third Degree" as written by Klein and acted by Edmund Breeze, is not much Of e variant from Bouoicault's and Gtoddart'B. The new wife, though. Is en extension of the old sweetheart into a very original heronie to be aeted by Helen Ware in s way to mark her seemingly for fame. This millhand who marries q milton aires son is untutored. but her un- grammatical lips utter no nonsense, and her heart Is true to her weakling husband. Very much as Klein's mouse maiden defeated the Rockefeller Hon 1 in "The Lion and the Mouse." this girl wins over her millionaire father in-law; and besides that she gently | though confidently dominates the old lawyer to make him save her husband. |
 Franklin Fyles.