Evening star., 1933-05-21

y NCE the Players Club proposes
- to revive Uncle Toms Cabin"
respectfully and with cap In
~ hand, old timers are worrying
about the attitude of the new
audiences. What will their reaction
be when Otis Skinner, as the sanity
serf, bares his sable back to the
rawhide of Thomas Chalmers Simon
Legree-who is now, the press agent
says, taking lessons on the knout
from an expert whipcracker? Will they
laugh or cry as little Eva st. Clair goes
to glory, accompanied by asphodel vio-
lining and the f1utter Of angels wings?
When Eliza Harris leaps from ice cake
pursued by bulldogs, will they be ex-
cited or not? Is there chance that
they will seriously appreciate the COM
edy of Marks the lawyer, the dramas
funniest shyster, excepting Portia? Or
that they will answer the humorous ap-
peal of Topsy and Miss Ophelia?
1t Is said that not tear save those
OF disappointment has been shed the
past season in the New York theater,
and that the only smiles have been
hard and cynical Perhaps the players
will give us warmth by their sincere
and dignified "Tom," show. We need
not be ashamed gravely to enjoy
the promised performance of Uncle
Toms Cabin" My histories tell me
that when William Cullen Bryant first
saw the ascension of Little Eva into
heaven he sobbed; and that Edwin For
rest, who loathed all performances save
mis- own, was impelled to covet the char
acter Of Simon Legree. Mark Twain
thought "Uncle Tom" a masterpiece,
and SO, the records indicate, did Whit
tier, Longfellow, Herman Melville and
Henry Ward Beecher. Senator Lyman
Trumbull, Lincoln's friend and rival
(and Walter Trumbull's grand-da), went
to see it with Stephen A. Douglas, in
Springfield, Ill, and they both pro-
nounced it powerful instrument of re-
volt, inspiring. as Mr.. zwieg says of
revolutions in his biography of Marie
Antoinette, born Of idealism among the
few and hatred among the many. Dis
missing all of that as comparatively in
consequential, "Uncle Toms Cabin" Is
important in that it gave Otis Skinner
to the stage, when as a transforming
child he began his career in the Tom
role, while I, aged II, lent my pet blood
hound, in exchange for a seat, to the
troupe that was performing the classic
in the op'ry house of my cradle vii
lage. T, at least among those attending
the premiere, VIII cross my hands and
feel comfortable in the hallowed quiets
and violences of the past.
w P. STEPHANS of Tides End, Bay
side, Long Island, questions my
borrowed report of the Astor Place riots
when 1t says that they occurred on the
site now occupied by John wanamaker.
He writes:
"Your account Of the Astor Place
mob Is most interesting In this day of
Buy American but I think that you
are wrong in locating the theater on the
present site Of Wanamaker's. My un-
derstanding is that 1t was on the tri-
angle just to the south. presume you
have heard the tradition that the
origin of the feud dates back to the
kissing of Macready by Forrest at a
performance of Hamlet in Edinburgh
when the former toyed with a cambria
handkerchief. My father was a great
admirer of Edwin Forrest and I still
have a collection of pictures and clip
pings with which he proposed to in
terweave a life of the great actor. I
have just retrieved from the remains of
my fathers library a copy of Cooley
Cibber's Apology for His Life London,