Los Angeles herald., 1909-09-26
RY w. HERBERT BLAKE

BY w. HERBERT BLAKE
kkH ITCH your drama to a star"
is the slogan of our modern
II Emersons of transcendental
transportation. Play production with
them is merely star exploitation. The
quest is for vehicle and the star
must draw not only the Yehicie, but
the public too Truly he must needs
have a magnetic personality.
Choosing at random, our thoughts
turn to such veteran players as John
Drew, Nat Goodwin and Julia Mar
lowe. All have imbibed in varying
potions the poison of the commercial
lied star system. Mr.. Drew has
gracefully succumbed to it, adornlng
the conditions of his toll with the rare
beauty of an inner artistic compulslon
He is a star by managerial necessity
He is that more glorious thing,
player by birthright. Just how much
his personal protuberance as star
has cost him in possible achievement
for the drama we dare not conjecture.
His art survives, like a torn banner
floating braVely over beleaguered
fortress. For its gallant, but forlorn,
earnest of things that might have been
we must be grateful.
Mr. Goodwin is of a diametrically
different type. He has welcomed the
stellar crown for its material re-
wards and its assurance of present
day prominence. Yet one cannot but
feel that his finest work is of the
struggling past, and that his shining
talents have been all but buried in the
earth for lack of the friction that bur
nished them to brightness in the older
days of the dominant American stock
company. The public goes TO see Nat
Goodwin, true. Does it remember
single one of his Characterization of
l1C CT VIZ slC a al n M Y =
thing?
Miss MarloWe for years faithfully
adhered to the ideal of Shakespearean
drama the dogma that play is a
community of light; not a sun, with
score of satellites. As the old-fash-
ioned sort of actress she won her
spurs in fair and open field. Chicago
first acclaimed her, New York be-
latedly following some years after.
Then came the development Of the
star system. Miss Marlowe was
presented" in Barbara Freitche"
and other short-lived successes of pop
ularity Until within the last two
years that system handicapped her
confident and resourceful art. Then
suddenly she broke from its trammels
and returned to her earlier method.
Voluntarily and willingly she sur
rounded herself with companies which
honored her genius by measure bly,
Shakespearean drama, and today her
popuiar fame is greater than ever.
The New York Academy of Music pre-
sented her with E. H. Sothern last
summer and people crowded to see the
revivals of the classics which she ad-
Ventured Her choice, with that of
Mr. SOthern, to head the excellent
stock company which will open the
New theater in New York, marks the
climax of her faithful adherence to the
older tradition of acting-the counsel
so blithely set forth for all time in the
Directions to the Players from Ham
let" "The plays tn, thing"
l have chosen these three illustra-
tions of players affected by the method
of individual exploitation as broadly
typical of three ways of meeting that
pressure, not primarily for the praise
or blame of any player, or any man
ager. have assumed the viewpoint
that looks upon the drama as an art
1t is viewpoint that has marvelousIy
survived the attack Of modern eco
nomic conditions, and never 50 sur
prisingly as in the lives of such play
ers as Miss MarlOWe, Mrs. Fiske. Mr.
Sothern and Mr. Manten. 1t has also
curiously insistent vigor i'm the man
ageriaI career of Charles Frohman.
who willingly threw away several
thousands on mis- recent production Of
Joan of Arc" at the Harvard stadium
The prestige he gained thereby. of
course, was enormous but it was
artistic not commercial prestige. 1t
refreshed the personal glory of Miss
Maude Adams an indubitable star
but this was as a minor ray in the
luster which 1t cast on an heroic his
toric event and a noble character.
THE plays the thing" Yes, and art
is the thing, which is quite as slangy
as Shakespeare frequently was. The
star system has gripped the American
stage with iron talons 1t has proved
a Frankenstein to the very managers
who gave it birth for reasons of bust
ness advantage. 1t has forced our
playwrights to abandon every demo-
cratic instinct and to people their
script with dress suited dummies of
Immaculate imperturbability, who hob
and sway in lifeless ritual around the
throne of king or queen. It has ere
ated, not ministered to a public clamor
for personal ACKNOWLEDGMENT in the
drama. And it has made of many an
able player monstrous thing, avid
of laudation, grotesquely sensitive to
the slightest rivalry from any fellow
member of his company.
But Frankenstein may not live for
ever. The example of such as Miss
Marlowe and Mrs. Fiske in surrounds
ing themselves with artists who easily
have shared stellar honOrs with their
principals, has been strangely con-
tagious-strangc enough to those MAN.
ayers who look on the stage merely as
a convenient adjunct to a fat bank
account Today we have enough earn
est and capable actors to fill half
column of type who are infected with
this contagion. In such plays as "The
Climax, 1.-The Fighting Hope" Polly