New-York tribune., 1919-06-29
BY Virginia Tracy

We wonder if people in general have
forgotten it as the play In which Helen
Ware and Wallace Eddinger made sem
sational hitse A play about pleas
antly worthless young gentleman, the
heir to great wealth and position, whose
first name we remember as Howard
and who married Annie Sands, wait
ress, who was afterward supposed,
even by himself, to have committed
a murder. but was coInforted, protected
and saved by his waitress wife; the
wife, for her part, unarmed by any par
ticular good looks, by a dollar in her
pocket or by so much as grammar in
her mouth winning or. against the
world and Howard's family, and even
Howard, by nothing whatever except
the strength and the stnbbornness of
her love-
We remember having been worked
up by the third degree scene to a
d=grse far beyond any third; to a
point, IN fact, where we had to wrench
our game from the stage and lower it
to our programme lest we should rise
and ask the audience whether it in
tended to stand for the police treat
ing that boy that way or whether it
would follow us to the rescue We
had, besides, recently read an article
On third degree methods which stated
that a common form of extracting a
To shut him IN a room with rat until
he confessed Now the young gentle
nrAn on the stage being obviously a
highly neIrous person and we being
same class, we could not shed the idea
OF rat presently climbing intp some
hndy-s lap most Ekely ours Fort
urndsly. the tension on the stage
hruka just before ours did or no one
might have been able To stop us from
cnufEsslng OUT whole black past
A Play Which Wears Well
We cannot pretend tha. Fitagraph s
picture of The Third Degree" affects
us in these more callous days TO the
same pitch We realize what a mu-
sician, in a brass band way, Klein
must have been when- after so many
years, We so much miss the contrast
and conflict Of varied voices-even in
scenario which keeps such complete
good faith with its original and moves
so interestingly and dramatically from
beginning to end But we realize also
how good IT is To get hold Of the much
scDfed al well made" play again and
feel how taut and reliable rope it
makes through that rather sloppy and
weak but treacherous surf where so
many up-so- date dramas III enough
made To suit the moat twenty hrst-cen-
tury critic, too frequently struggle
and drown After all, one does not
write Redemption merely by writ
ieg without FORM and to see THE
Third Degree" after stretch of the
usual shoddy is to feel as you might
about house with q sound snug roof
to 1t after you have been living under
leak But we were even more crate
fd because the picture discovered to
Us that we were moi, as we have some
times feared, the victim of fixed idea,
1t may be that in the past those
hordss Of devoted readers whom our
fancy loves TO picture bent every Sun
Gay IL rap1 attention above these col
uuns have observed in them a ten
dency-the tendency to proclaim that
good acting is forever being offered ur
ss burnt sacrifice to bad parts. We
had continually presented the career
OF The actor as one long vigilance of
arnst1r devotion, pouring jewels into
bags made OF materials too aimsv In
hold them, wan with longing for the
opportunity to give US the depth. the
Truth, the emotion, the variety and ac-
eumpllshment Of his souls endeavoy
but forever martyred by the meagre
falseness of his part to make a movie
holiday Well, now we have sometime
else to proclaim
The Actor Not Always Martyred
Here in Annie Sands is girl all bu
mliify, temper and slang, all wistful
ness, p-ide, humor, clumsiness and pas
SION and humanity; here is the yer,
part strong enough and deep enough
to hold all the jewels which the actres.
can pour into it, and this time it is the
part which is sacrificed to Miss Jovce',
preference for quiet elegance and tt
ner apparent sense that when all else j,
lost one may al least behave with pro
priety.
We are perfectly aware that Mis-;
Joyce has the cold chill Of logic on he,
side There is no reason why Ami,
should not behave with propriety. 1
Is true, too, that in America very small
wage earners wear up-to-date ant
fetching suits, even if these are not
70 lar az We can observe, suits breath
ng the last word of cut and of Gun
Hing simplicity, such as Miss Joyce
Annie has had the discretion to pro
gide herself with. Howard would sure
y have far more reason to fall in Low,
WITH we'll groomed, distinguished-lo look
ing, distinguished hammered girl VIII
eeass the ladies' of his class all hollov
AZ their own game than with mer
TeBh h-l0okinE bouncing and merriam