The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1909-01-10

now is writing third to follow 1.-THE
ChaperOn." So l don't doubt that for
the Americanized version of ''The Blue
Mouse which l described two weeks
ago, he gets an ordinary playwright s
minimum royalty for original matter
at a quick estimate $500 a week, $4,000
for a sure season of forty weeks, and
likely a total of $4,000 for the whole
life of a play which he has merely
overhauled. 1 am not saying that he
is oveTpaid, either; for his work is
skilled, his name is a trademark and
his income in this instance depended
on his ability to take enough of the
nastiness out of a foreign farce to rem
der it agreeable to Americans without
removing also its humor. Like an
American. l have drifted from the
question of merit to that of money. So
does Fitch, too, else he wouldn't turn
aside from original composition for
fame and take to farce cleaning for
cash.
y X
With THE Blue Mouse" fresh in
memory, / went to see Die Blaue
Maus" performed by one of our German
stock companies in the original text.
The pith of the fun is that a railway
presidents secretary schemes to get
promotion by offering his own pretty
wife to his lecheTous boss: but he plays
a trick by hiring a wanton to imper-
senate his wife. Fitch transferred the
scenes to New York and took easy adj
vantage of the i'll repute of choTuses
here to make this Blue Mouse a show
girl. As created by the German au-
thOrs, Engel and Horst, she is a Paris
Outcast of the notorious Maxim's. and
they give no excUsing quality to her as
an example of her class. Fitch left her
wicked with a Temperament" that i'm
PEELED her to kiss the secretary fire.
quently while figuring at the Office as
his wife and tempting the president,
but made the secretary a faithful hus-
band who wouldn't permit any endear-
ment by his mock spouse. In the Ger
man farce of French adultery, her fire.
quent and slowly soulful kissing is
taken with as much satisfaction by him
as her bogus outbreaks Of affection are
by the president. That change by the
adapter qualified the play for American
audiences. who do not, in any consider
able degree, like to see literal aspects
of sexual feeling on the stage. Then,
too, tie president has a jealous young
vile, and to keep her out of his room
while the Blue Mouse is with him, the
secretary makes love to her with due
reciproNIy ~. Fitch kept her a decorous
wife, but here she is cage. for liaisOn.
and the first act of two-rOom, four-door
truly Partisan farce climaxes with only
a partition between one husband hug
ging and kissing the other husband
mock wife, while his own real wife is
similarly engaged with the other hus-
band While observing this gross illus
tration of foreign stage humoT, in a
play that is having a big vogue
Oh I 81 bot
paratively cleantminded Americans
ought to pat ourselves on our backs for
preferring THE Blue Mouse" to Die
Blaue Maus."
The second act may have held back
Fitchs Job day or two, for he had to
provide matter for much that 1 saw in
the performance of the original. 1t is
at the home of the Blue Mouse. Fitch
put in some of his own humor by max
ing the men who visited her types of
those silly beaus, young and old, who
get enthralled by snow girls; and he
made a careful selection of an actress,
Mabel Barrison, who would render the
girl irTesponsibly rather than delibeT-
ately vicious The Hermine Holman,
who plays the part in German, has a
more sensually handsome personality
anu SNlutAtlN HAS DStti lbiQ 10 cut
loose devilishly. Mabel had been re-
cruited from vaudeville, where she had
been singing and dancing; yet she was
not permitted to be so gay as that;
whereas HeTmine sings a ditty of reck-
less Irritation and dances with uplifts
of her skirts to her romping, humping,
misbehaving knees. That outbreak of
frisky activity charms the secretary s
father-in-law from the country, a char
acter eliminated by Fitch, but one of no
less than four men who visit Engel and
Horst's Blue Mouse in a single evening"
for in addition TO the railway president,
his secretary and this rural old chap,
there is a wretch who, living with her
on her earnings Of shame, was By
Fitch lifted to the comparative decency
of sutton. 1 can't politely tell how the
Blue Mouse hides the four men away
from each other in different rooms, to
be cOnsoled by her visits; nor may
give particulars of the cross-purposes
that are carried through a third act 10
a triumph of vice over virtue in the
final promotion of the secretary
3, - 80 "a