The San Francisco call., 1909-02-13
INDECENT PLAY
NOT IN FAVOR
WITH ACTORS
Players Blame Public Demand
for the Production of Inn
moral Shows
PIaywrights Deplore Tendency
and Managers Hope for
Change of Taste
Women Worse Than Men and
New York More Lax Than
San Francisco

Is the tendency toward immortality
growing In modern pIayss
Does the public demand indecency, sug-
gestiveness and immortality ON the
stage:
some kind succeed as well financially
as the sensational play!
If the tendency toward immortality is
growing, whose fault Is 1.-THE
authors, the actors, the managers
or the pubIic's.
These and host of similar questions
were discussed yesterday by people.
who, better possibly than any others in
San Francisco, are qualified to pass
| judgment on the problem which the
questions involve. Aroused by the utter
ances of Charles Burnham. Marc Klaw
and other New York theatrical man
ayers who have openly denounced i'm
moral plays, the people of the stage
actors, authors and managers-talked
freely, and their expressions turned the
foodlight on problem that is ever be-
fore them.
| Diversity of opinion found wide
range in the views given by a dozen
of the most representative theatrical
people in San Francisco. and on only
one or two phases of the subject was
there a unanimity of agreement. Few,
| it is true would discuss the merits of
the five plays particularly cited by the
New York managers as indecent, and
the subject consequently was treated
I in broader, more abstract way. There
was no defender among them all for
| the strictly indecent pays, though
opinions differed as to what consti-
tuted indecency and immortality.
David Belasco defends his own pro-
duction, "The Easiest Way" one of the
FIVE plays stigmatized by the manager
ial critics, on the ground that it is not
immoral others decry the problem
play as well as the openly vulgar class
! of musical comedies. Some say the
tendency toward immortality is grow
ing. others argue that the stage is as
clean today as it was a decade ago.
One thing they all agreed upon, and
that is that San Francisco will not
tolerate a degree of suggestiveness
upon the stage that New York well
comes
Ten years ago, when the very saucy.
.Frenchy play, "The Turtle" was the
sensation of the day, it came to the old
| California theater in San Francisco, and
a critic who witnessed the first night
performance said of it the next morn
ling. "I wouldn't take Little Egypt to
lsee The Turtle" That night the thea
ter was crowded to the doors, but the
play had been blue penciled meanwhile
under command of the lessons of the
building. Then the attendance imme-
diately fell off. Would that happen
today in San Francisco? Some nod,
while others shake their heads.
Listen, then, to the people of the
stage:
manager and producer; All this stir
has been created since 1 left New
! York, so I am not familiar with the
movement But L understand now
| they have withdrawn their criticism
of .',The Easiest Way" If they had
still persisted that it was an i'm
| moral play / would think that it was
simnly a move on the part of the
theatrical trust to attack me. AS it
| is, "The Easiest Way is moral, not
an immoral play. 1t concerns vital
problem of life, but that one should
! with a young girl who goes wrong,
who takes the easiest way of life
and goes down the great white way.
! as we call it in New York. The play
shows the unhappy consequences of
such step In it the author calls a
shade a spade, but there is nothing
salacious in it. / believe that it is
the most vital play ever written in
| America. 1t is a play to which a
Young man may take his sweetheart
or his mother or his wife. 1t shows
that all life is not a rose garden.
Life is what we are writing about
and it should be presented as it is.
I'm regard to Clyde Fitch's Blue
Mouse it is a sprightly comedy of a
class of many other successful plays
and is not wrong. ] have not seen
the other plays or musical shows that
are condemned.
"But New York is great city; it is
one of the great capitals of the
world, and there are people there
| who demand plays of a sort to which
objection might be made. There is
always call for salacious plays.
"In writing 'Du Barry 1 might have
made the character sweet and inno-
cent. but it then would not have been
true. The same is true in the case of