New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1918-03-31
H0U to Show
Motherliness
On the Stage
Dran7utists Haze Moth
ers Like Mrs. Baxter
in "Seuenfeen''

Mothers place is in the home, not
on the stage has evidently been the
motto of most dramatists Not until
Stuart Walker transferred Booth Tark-
perhaps, have we had a play with such
a really, truly mother--the kind that
dramatists and the rest of us actually
have.
The STACEY kind Of mother has been
common enough; the kind that wears
snow white wig parted in the mid
die; black alpaca dress with spotless
turn over cuffs and low collar fastened
with large cameo pin; who combines
q brow furrowed with care and eyes
beaming with unwaverins faith, and
who prays publicly on all occasions.
This kind of mother has been con-
sidered necessary in melodramas ana
countless ballads to give the at
mospherc proper to sentiment.
There's the mother Of the Ibsen
type, the Nora of "a Dolls House." as
played by imported actresses, that be-
came fashionable few years ago.
This misunderstood mother usually
admits having one child, though said
child was usually a matter of hearsay.
There's the mother of Cast Lynne"
who sought cover in her home for the
sake of her child. And the fate of the
young "illegitimate" mother carried
many play through record runs. But
the real thing in mothers has been
kept in the background.
So Judith Lowry, who plays Mrs. Bax-
ter in Seventeen" must go down in
history as having created new type
the average mother, just a simple home
body, whose interests centre in her
husband and home, who is trying to
help her fapper boy into manhood and
to develop into presentable young
woman the troublesome, garrulous
Jane. So simply and naturally does she
play the part that audiences never
think of her as an actress. She is so
thoroughly domesticated they accept
her as Willie's mother; the pleasant
Seventeen" set seems actually her
home. Her sympathetic anxiety for
Willie, her little signs of resignation
at the persistence Of Jane, the little
prick of her pride that her boy should
be making a laughing stock of himself
these are all true mother phases.
When We asked Mrs. Lowry how she
thought of all the natural touches she
brings to the part she laughed and
said it must be because she was
mother con and off"
"Candidly. | merely transplant my
daily life," she said. II take with me
my darning basket, some of my own
sons socks-yes, / have a boy fifteen
years old, and it isn't any effort to sub
stitute Gregory Kelly for him for
few hours. The stage setting is not un-
like my own home in Houston, Tex;
the very clothes wear I have worn in
my own home. The troubles that are
Willie's and James 1 am meeting with
my own boy. How could l be anything
else but an everyday mother?
Really, l have to try very hard not
to take Willie Baxter too seriously.
Gregory Kelly makes him so real, es-
,pecially in the third act, when he says
III go. but I'll never forgive any
body that my voice gets all choked up
and l want to hurry after him and pat
him on the shoulder and tell him not
to mind"
AS to her commendable lack of stage
tricks, Mrs. Lowry confesses that she
doesn't know any. II have been on the
stage only three or four years and have
never worked under any direction ex-