The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1910-02-06

Harrison Hunter, and granddaughter
of the famous Kate Bateman, is only
Il. But caIciums and grease paint are
great Jewellers. IF they help the aging
to look young, they also minimize the
value of real youth. Painted and PEN
cilled, and necessarily gOwned in
black, Miss Bateman-Hunter might as
we'll be 28 or 80 as well as seventeen.
And without the advantage of a dozen
or ten years in looks, she has the dis
advantage of the lack of them in ex-
| perience.
Two trails to success have been
blazed through UnbrOl1en stage forests
/ by pioneer American playwrights. One
way is occult with telepathy, hyp-
nOtism and all the other known kinds
of abnormal mentality. That's the
dramatic elevator going up. The other
1 way is materialistic, commercial and
| sordidly stingy with plays that can
get along with short casts. 1t came to
Il drama enacted by four persons.
| Think Of it. \ really fine piece was
taken all over the country with forty
eight aCtOTs-or about the number re-
quired in a well-equipped eXtTava-
ganza-but divided into a dozen COM
panies for dozen separate routes.
Scheme Of "The Watcher"
The scheme Of THE Watcher" is to
go up high in the dramatic lift with
much cult, and come down in il with
little cost. The psychic weight is spir-
itualism. The stingy lightness is a
cast of six characters only. And they
appear in a scene requiring no stage
I hands to make shifts. And a seventh
/ important parsonage is kept off the
Z l. I
and inaudible. becomes a spOOk. Cora
Maynard, writer Of THE Watcher, 4"
meant that creature to be potent, but
impalpable. During the first act she
! is a mentally stricken woman in an off
stage bedroom. Her daughter is so
closely connected with her mentally
that, when she dies suddenly alone, the
younger woman knows it telepathic-
ally.
Therefore the drama is haunted by
the watchful spOok; and there is a
plenty for this monitor to do. Her
daughter-in-law used to be her daugh-
ter'S fiancee's mistress. The fiance is
a millionaire wholly devoted to the
good daughter; but his former sweet
heart tells him he must get off with
the new love and get on again with the
old. The son is a drunkard, gambler
and blackleg, who CRAFTS on his pros
pective brOther-in-law, yet hates him
jealousy on account of the vicious
wife. The daughter, too, is made
miserable by doubt Of her really true
lover. So the spook mother is a very
busy watcher of a complex family af-
fair. Pause to think it over.
To put the spook mother-in-law on
view specaculariy might be worth a
of
scenery; for THE Watcher" owing to
lack of genius in the making, fails to
realize the promise of its scheme; and
as the audience filters, anyway, at the
most serious passages, the risk of
laughter outright at the apCtheosis Of
a ghostly mOther-in-law austerely con-
fronting her sons wicked wife, might
like a risky surgical operation, save
the life Of a stricken drama.
Billy Burke Fits Part.
It is q fat old communicating bachelor
who fights off the slim young maiden
in Mrs. Dot" He is a droll London
comedian, Fred Kerry, and she is the
notably pretty Billie Burke, who has
been star-going in this country several
years. In 1.-THE Watcher" the young
woman who pleads for endearment is
sensual about 1t; her behavior is gross;
she suggests a feminine Baron Scarpin
assailing the heroine in la Tosca;"
but Billies widow is as pure of i'm
pulse as any maiden, and her object is
anything but carnal. She chooses a
man to be her second husband and
knowing him to be more than willing
she declares her love for him, tells
him there's no use in his denying that
he adores her, and asks why not mar
ry. one reason is his poveTtys con-
trast with her wealth. How sensitively
aveTse poor men are to marrying
heiresses sometimes-on the stage.
In this fiction, however, the man in
herits unexpectedly an English estate
and title. Mrs. Dot all but sends out
wedding cards; but he says wait to
hear the still more positive reason why
they can't mate. In an hour Of mawi5-
ish moonshine, as he now recollects, he
engaged to marry a girl he doesn't care
for and who is careless Of him. That
knot will fall loose without untying,
Billie thinks; but 1t won't, for the
mans sudden wealth renders him de-
sirable to his fancee; and the play is
made up of Billies cuts and slashes at
that pesky knot, her tricks to undo It
and devices to break It; and the en-