New-York tribune., 1919-08-17
By Virginia Tracy

BY Virginia Tracy
1T you were a plainsman, cherishing a
romantic devotion to the wife of a
futile old naturalist and letting this
devotion find an outlet mainly through
your love for their child, if the wife
sent you into the forest TO bring the
old naturalist home before the break
ing OF a threatened storm. and if, when
you had got him back to the cabin. vou
discovered that during your absence
Indians had stolen the child and mur-
dered the mother, would your first
thought be for the old naturalist? If
IN that moment he ever so much as
crossed your mind wouldn't you be
Just about ready to kill him, because
while here the Indians were wrcaking
death unchallenged you were away
looking for him, who literally hadn't
sense enough to come in when it
rained?
In "Thc Wcstcrncrs" no such un-
sccmly and ill-rcguated emotion has
disturbed the directors mind When
the plainsman, with the naturalist at
hls heels, goes searching and calling
through the horror OF emptiness which
should be in that little house and
comes at last upon the body Of his
lady no hastA movement toward her,
even to see ii she still brcathcs, in
terferes with his proper feeling that
the first thing to do is to find the hus-
band seat. Next comes to sit him
down on it and to stand patting him
on the shoulder, gazing through long
closeup into vacancy.
The closeup fades away fifteen
years. but in that time no necessity
for haste in crisis has dawned upon
anybody. The plainsman and the
young hero stand in the doorway Of a
dance hall leisurely cXpounding the
plot and lnterchanging advice, while in
the same room an infuriatcd mob is
held at bay by revolver in the hand
of the stolen child, now grown to a
rough diamond young lady. There has
long been a school of acting which
holds that to be slow is to be natural.
but to be slow in front of an infuriated
mob doesn't come so awfully natural
at least, not to us.
Settings Challenge Play
1t is this sort of fumbling with the
clean cut violence of emotion which
takes the somewhat burly virlity out
of "Thc Westorners" when its some
what burly vrility is all it has Ex-
ccpt, of course, its scenery. And the
last thing which can stand up before
the awesome challenge of such scenery
is any sort of fumbling with clean cut
ness, with violence and emotion.
The face of nature may be equalled
by nothing whatever in the way of IN
dividual incident. You may heap Ossa
on Pelion in 'stolen checks, runaway
horses, dance-hall fights and fathers
recognizing long lost daughters and
you will not have buildcd so high as
the foothill of one mountain But it
may be equalled, subordinated and--to
say it as we'll as. we can-fulfilled bv
any emotion so expressed as to make
us believe that it entirely fills a single
heart; such is the self-centrcdness of
the human race that the whole range
of the Himalayas, with Sahara and an
ocean or SO thrown in. may serve nicely
as background for pause, while the
problem of their relation to ETERNITY
and why God made the world may be
solved in one kiss. No such kiss occurs
in "Thc Westerners."
Action No Substitute for Emotion
The picture appears to be con-
structed on the theory-.a theory we
have heard championed in very high
places-that if only you set down suf-
ficient incident emotion will look out
for itself Let any one who believes
this observe the difference in effect
between the scene Of the attack by the
Indians and the scene where little
boy believes that his dog has been
killed. The little t2y's scene walks
away with the picture, not because the |
killing of the dog is really as much |
more importan. than the killing of the |
woman and the theft of her baby. but
because the little boy is allowed to
show us his heart about it-also be- |
cause his feeling for the dog has been
built up through many little scenes |
which had nothing at all to do with