Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-05-10
CAN'T KILL THE DRAMA,
NOTED CRITIC DECLARES
Movies Have Made InrOads, but Famous
Author Points Way Out for
Legitimate Theater.
Continued From Third Page.l

dinner table In such a state of preser-
walton that only a sensitive and cult
waited ear can distinguish them firm
music. Do the opera companies and
symphony orchestraS begin to concen-
trate on Wagner and Beethoven and
other composers whose products can
not be thus delivered2 They do not!
Instead. they meet the new competition
by doing more and more Of the stuff
that can be delivered by taking
over the repertoires of the defeated
dance halls and giving programs in
which there is q bit Of Bach, but a
good deal more of Buddy" de Silva
and Irving Berlin.
When patronage falls of, because the
people who want to hear Berlin can
hear him, with trimmings and greater
economy, at their dinner tables, b.
danzky and Toscanini and Mengelberg
quit in disgust and announce that
music is defunct, and Carnegie Hall will
be turned into garage.
Just What Happened.
This is exactly what has happened
in the theater. The newborn movie"
quickly swallowed everything that was
asSimilable melodrama, farce and
comedy of physical action; variety and
burlesque. The "popular-priced cir
cults" called it day; vaudeville took
in the invader, and burlesque became
something it would be better not to
describe in a family newspaper And
then, as indicated in my story of
Dangers Of Working Girls" and THE
theaters entered into competition by
concentrating on the very stuff that
had been driven out of the others.
Managers bought and produced plays
because, afterward, they would make
good and salable movie" material.
Hook, line and sinker the Drama went
into Show Business. At one time-and
1t might have been almost any time
up to now-Broadway's 81 stages were
divided between 81 musical comedies,
plays dealing with crime, 10 reeking
with sex, IA about nothing at all, and
exactly aimed at anything more than
2 inches above the collar button.
Obviously, the theater was doing its
best, but against heavy odds. Early in
the struggle most of the people who
wanted to hear Bach retired to their
libraries and forgot Broadway. Not for
the first time in history, nor for the
last, but as always Just before the
drama begins dying, "the stage existed
in a world apart from that of culture"
Many years ago went to resort in
Baltimore that for two decades had
been "the home of polite vaudeville"
Over night it had been turned into a
weapon against "the Theatrical Trust"
and an astonished and unwarned
throng of its regular patrons found
themselves watching not jugglerS and
acrobatic comedians, but Mrs. Fiske in
'Rosmersholm AS the curtain was
falling, a gentleman on my right re-
marked, THE guy that booked this
show can have the satisfaction OF
knowing that he's put me of the the
ayter for lifel" A good many gentle
men and gentlewomen Of different
sort have said the same thing during
the last few seasons.
Contest Grows Unequal.
With this clientele lost, the contest
became shckingly unequal. What the
other and undeniably larger crowd
wanted the movies" could and did
supply with unapproachable generosity.
FleSh-and-blood musical comedy man
aged 40 glorified girls" the pictures
threw In another 900, and at some
thing less than half price. Flesh-and-
blood millionaires staggered about cam
vas drawing rooms, but cinema society
lived in the Grand Central Station.
The Balkan Princess Of F1lmdom
might be short on court etiquette and
English, but it took 500 feet Of cellu-
stairs leading to her elevated station.
The best Of the regular shows" could
boast only a couple Of murders, where
the worst movies" provided massacre.
Why pay 50 to see a gentleman shot
in the library when for fraction OF
the money you could watch him fan
over a cliff, and follow him down, or
listen to the pipe organ while tender
hands were picking his remains from
a heap Of ten-tl1ousand-dollar motor
cars whose thrilling and expensive col
lision you had just witnessed with your
own eyes?
And love {. But this is family
paper.
say these things were all the movies"
gave us They brought back the car
nival spirit. Outside the big cities,
most regular theaters were dingy and
dirty and falling to pieces. Even IN
New York seats we're narrow and stiff
backed and so close together that If
the man behind happened to be tall
you wore his kneecaps all evening on
the back Of your coat. Music has dis
appeared, and in the houses devoted to
drama the orchestra pit was concealed
beneath a tasteful slope Of Autumn
leaves suggestive OF late November in
country cemetery.
The film magnates built movie
esthetically beautiful you've heard of
the man who looked at one Of the most
ornate and remarked that Harry Thaw
had shot the wrong archetecD. but
most of them are comfortable. A noted
surgeon Of my acquaintance says he can
sleep better in a motion picture theater
than In his own home. There are few
finer orchestras than In these places of
amusement, and they are spreading
understanding and appreciation Of good
music.
The film magnates also kept faith.
Every production was the original"
-. with few cuts, perhaps, but
nothing more serious.
The Race Economically.
Economically. Of course the race has
been like that Of a man with an
antelope: the longer the man runs the
farther behind he gets. 1t Is the age
old conflict between wholesaler and re-
taller, between the machine-made and
the handmade. The movies" require
actors for what in the theater is the
period Of rehearsals. When the show is
produced and ready for its premiere
the actors are through" So are the
stage hands, and =. outside the big
supplementary orchestras in the "cathe-
drals" the musicians. A first rate
stage production tours in two 60-foot
cars; a movie" travels in tin can.
And the cost Of actors and stage hands
and musicians and railway travel and
baggage transfer and everything has
been mounting higher and higher. A