New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-02-16

that crucial time when, in not un-
familiar phrase, the plot thickens and
the "big scenes" stir in their sleep. 1t
is then we find that after so much prep
aration there is to be no feast; the
table is elaborately set, but there is
nothing in the dishes.
Whoever thought of 1.-THE Silver
King" as a picture must have known,
must have remembered, without appa-
rently feeling called upon to point it
out, the powerful tide of feeling, of
fear and faith, regret and longing,
undercurrent beneath all this rigma
role. The undercurrent and not the
plot was the true story; the story,
merely and simply, of q man who in
spired and after many years requited
heroic love. This man, utterly unbal-
anced by the false conditions of luxuri-
Gus triviality, finds himself among the
sober truths of necessity and pain; the
same old dream of redemption, regen-
Grafton, seen by the light Of the un-
NucHCldUlo ldlup SIlAlIH6 III tuc plSdot
of the mans wife.
The story in its basic mood is not
his but hers; how she married her
prince, how she struggled against the
ruin of him by his court; how when
the play opens he is already wreck,
prince in the gutter, SO that, when
the murder overtakes him, it is only
the long threatening catastrophe which
now at least she can put a name to.
She has never succumbed to seeing
him with other peoples eyes, and when
the long arm of coincidence appears
to kill him on his way to America she
cannot succumb to that, either The
instinct for continuing to believe that
the prince she married will yet show
himself publicly q prince has become
essential, and in all the years of her
and her children's privation, during
which she receives (see machination OF
villain) no sign from the dead she
lives within some formless faith that
nothing so crushing can have happened
to the world as that it has really lost
him. SO that the story Of the hus.
bands bitter fight becomes even more
the story of the wife's long vigil and
of how, from the darkness into which
she looks, there does gradually and
finally evolve the face in which she has
all along believed. This is the envelope
of emotion which clothes the old play
with an atmosphere of almost Pro-
methean struggle and in which alone it
can draw breath
Now, if there is nothing in the manu-
script to guide the scenarioist to the
least hint of this emotion, where did
it come from in the play? The fact
that in the picture there is no emo
ton whatever except what Mr.. Faver-
sham seizes by the shoulders and drags
into it suggests the question. Was it,
perhaps, always SO? Not only are
plays, Mr.. Belasco, not written but
re-written; sometimes they are not
written but acted. Is it possible that
, "The Silver King" used to affect us
T as play of great emotional force
because it gave more scope than it's
predecessors for actors of great emo
5 tional force to crowd into it their
own warmth and power? We our
selves largely believe this, but we can't
e help thinking that this very scope
= that very hint, lay in the things which
n have been changed for, the sake OF
+ toning down, as if the producers have
r desired both to fy to melodrama anc
r to return to nature. Why did they
: see no loss in making Denver al
n irreproachable victim of wholly un
r merited misfortune? The play opens
t with Nellie in an agony Of anxiety
n seeking her husband amid the drink
r ing booths Of EPSON and gettin,
@ bawled at by him before sneerin,
q crowd. Why do they see no loss TO
the picture in her passing unperturb
ably lovely ladylike evening in he
= lovely ladylike home?
Though the ugliest melodramatic
are there, irrevocable AID cannot b
changed, there is a continual struggl
to tame situation after situation, an
where q cold hand can be laid on
warm feeling all is instantly tran
quilted, as when the old servant ia
cilitates Denver's escape by the offe
Of wallet with about the dramati
value of Offering him an umbrella, g.
that only memory tells us it contain
the savings of the servants life.
cloud of apology breathes from tn
whole production, as if it assured u
it were being as reasonable as 1t could
as if the producers had been at tn
pains to let loose the whirlwind merel
in order to say to it, Peace, be still.
! Denver himself is the sole exception
1 The picture may be given up to havin
no nonsense about it, but despite hi
cropping Of the benedictory curls Their
4 is plenty of nonsense about Mr.. Faver
4 sham, and it came as a pool in tn
q desert when we were about to gathe
q our wraps like the Arabs and as silent
ly steal away. He is not afraid to pla
melodrama, but the Famous Player
has sometimes a curious trick Of let
4 ting It's stars 60 their own way an
i then vigorously stage managing tn
rest OF the cast In the oppoRita HI rec