The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 2, 1903, Page 46

ANCHE : %knu.\'_firon : SAND .pardons,” 14 c and Jlackaye . held -out y as he -thus et day. Mr , but imno- ne of those awful momen: to the best regulat- d of scribes found mysel! suddenly un- which of the numerous ; uaintance was the &t jength, “I'm confess I don't yet know how efer yourself pronounced.” = - mused+Mr. Lackaye's sense of humor may be banked on—and sympathetic, the actor laughingly replieq y way but tely heard. I ~the accent on lable long “a"—"but the nanie are sundry— particularly joys 1 he was’ seated at 1 table that held back yard, 1 from our principal hed on, Mr. Lack- ritically upon he architectr 1 the salt and astors—for the table was.*“set”— pepper G i cted a new city hall, shorn left ‘wings, an alteration would better the propor- ding and its Mghting fa- i make possible something ap- 7 d view of the place, arket street. talk architecture?” I suggested when, tru to tell, the archi- jral myS$teries were getting over- for me. “May we talk about your ur to come? You are to star story, 1 understand. amatized it? The architect rather reluctantly de- molished” his left wing (the pepper) and replied: *“Oh, Channing Pollock, 2 Wash ington newspaper man—dramatic critic. I believe it is going to be very good forecasting a play's future is an nirably uncertain sort of prophecy.” ‘But with & dramatic critic, Mr. Lack- eye, why knows about playmaking, surely you are safe!”” I protest; then ask: “But seriously, now, why is it, do you think, that so Yew of US write good plays?” “Don’t know, but you don't.” laughed the actor. I find him deliciously frank, utterly fearless. “It's rather astonishing, that fact, isn't it?” he went on, thought- fully smoothing out the ground plan of his City Hall with a plump forefinger. “You remember Nym. Crinkle?—an excel- lent critic. He wrote absolutely Kremer- like melofifama,” “But how can such things be?" Mr. Lackaye “rose to explain.” I got then -my.-first good private view of the firet Svengall, the splendid Rabbi 8f “The Children of the Ghetto,” a classic Uncle Tom, the Indian prince in “The Great Ruby,”” the admirable’ coward, Richard Sterling of-“The Climbers,” the hero of numberiess soclety dramas. Off stage he is distinctly of the bon vivant type, a tall, plump, cheerful person, with a cherubic éimple in his chin that contrasts comically with the satiric emile above, withi the keen, sagient blue-eye. Humor is plainly st home with Mr. Lackaye. Even uis mustache—that he wears a size smell—has & gleck, droll twist. For the rest the actor is faclle and eloguent in gesture, affects clothes of a discreetly cheertul stripe, a summery sailor hat and an imposing opal and diamond scarf pin. He stuck his hands in his pockets as he walked and ‘talked “Perhaps tHe cri ficulty in thinking “It is ic finds peculiar aif- e thing into action,” ot singular to bim. To 1 you see it—on paper— is one of the most difficult of problems. I've heard plays read myself, been charmed with * them—but found myself listening with my eyes on the fiocr. The eye and ear must be equally appealed to in the good. play. * * * I remember Sydney Rosenfeld showing me a play— said it had been written for me—in which the hero was the most extraordinary sort of person. He was like the. parrot, said little, thought a lot. “But how am I to get all these mental -herolci over the foot- lights®' 1 asked Rosenfeld. - “What is the dramatic -expression of them? ‘Personal magnetism,” he said. But it ‘can't be done.” : 0B “Do you kpow that play of, Echegaray's, where he ‘sets out to -paint all the mil- lions of minute waves of influence—a siranger's glance in a restairant, a cold note in a friend’s voiee, a stray verse— that color and mold life every moment 'El Grau Galeoto” Yes. I remember st. He gives it up, doesn’t he? * o o Actors are loth to admit it, but acting is purely a matter of muscles. You may have the whole psychology of the thing correctly, but ‘it is the physical registry on the muscles that alone reaches the au- dience; the lift or lowering of an eyelid, a clenched or outstretched hand.” “That is the way acting is taught in the Paris Conservatoire,” I recall. “Pllar Merin told me a lot about it. But she was overconscious of her muscles in any- thing but pantomime,” : “Pantomimists frequently are, Mr. Lackaye decided, sitting down again. “So is the ‘character’ actor. Paul Potter wouldn't have a “‘character’ actor for Svengali, for example. He insisted that he would make Svengalli a busy carica- ture, very dirty, very Jew, instead of an embodiment of sordid genius. * * * ¥ven Possart now. Shakespeare made Shylock an incarnation of hate. Possart paints him as a hateful Jew, with all sorts of trick Jewish gestures—a kind of Julian Rose expanded.” “And scting is simply a matter of MRGE R Bt e £ ME 0 il PN AR B Wilton Lackaye Shows What the City Hall Ought to Be, Becomes a Critic of Dramatic Critics and Tells Some Stories — - X i B s R O W ST R B T e e truthful and expressive gesture?” “Exactly,” the actor confirmed. “The bigger player has a bigger arc of physical expression, that is all. Of course, one ‘wrastles’ with the psychology of a part behind one's own door, but all of the ‘wrastling’ comes out only as more or less truthful gesture. When I find a eritic digging up this and that abstruse psycho- logical theory concerning a part, I always suspect he has been supping with the actor—who has been explaining what he meant!"” “But all this is not why the critic can’t write plays—7" “If one knew that one would know how to write a play,” Mr. Lackaye laughed. “Why the critics can’t—don’t—write criti- cism, is a much more vital question. If the giants of the press only knew their power, 1 think they would be more - ful. This proposition of the new critl- cism—in which one ruins a career to get a laugh, wrecks a reputation to point a period, is doubtless sport to the critic. It is not so pleasant to the actor, whose livelihood and ideals are at stake.” “Do you think that kind of thing com- mon?" “There is not a one-night stand from here to New York that has not felt the effect of it,” the critics’ critic maintained. * “Star’ journalism is, of course, respon- sible, the signed articles. When the critique might have been doné by the city editor no one cared to do that sort of thing. But the man now tries to give you himself, not the play, and the public says: ‘Did you see what So-and-So has to say? Or again: ‘So-and-So must be a good critic—he roasts everything!' * Then w:th his characteristic “Can you beat that?” Mr. Lackaye instanced the case of a prominent critic who had never strayed from his own fireside, making a rechauffe of some New York thunder with local allusions, and with some, ““cold potatoes” and “cheese crusts” of his own. Afterward he testified handsomely to the worth of critics like Willlam Win- ter, James Huneker—who is a delight to read’—Mr. Towse, and others such. Naturally then the talk turned on the connection between newspaper men and actors. “I find,” Mr. Lackaye laughed, lifting that quizzieal left eyebrow of his, “that nine times out of ten the newspaper man who knows you is twice as severe when it comes to criticism. It's the human thing. He feels friendly to you, yet wants to be honest, and he bends over back- ward in trying to be straight!” z “I know exactty how he feels,” Mr, Lackaye went on, “for the moment I get with a newspaper person my quills in- stinctively go out and T begin to wonder ‘Does the fellow think I want to *‘con’ him? Then I begin to ‘guy.’ Then the manager perhaps says, ‘You mustn't guy the press.’ You know people talk about newspaper folk as If they were a race apart, just as they talk abdut actors. You can imagine that restaurant keeper there, for instance, if an actor made a row here, saying that he would never let any more actors into his house?—for the sins of the soubrette shall descend upon the tragedian and so on! You never hear mine host say that he won't allow any more doctors in his place, theugh win- dows do occasionally break under the medical fist. But actors and newspaper men don't change their spots when they choose to act and write. There are as many different kinds of newspaper men as there are men. And certainly they don’t lost their sense of humor when they enter the craft. Not generally, that is,” he added after a pause. Then he got up, and pacing cheerfully round his cor- ner told the following with much enjoy- ment: “There was a fellow who did dra- matic criticism for—above everything— the Police Gazette. Got big money for it, too. One morning after a first night I met him on the street. He had a very sardonic expression, and he asked, as if he'd roasted me his best: ‘See what I put about you in the paper this morning? I said: ‘No, I shaved myself to-day!” Oh, but he was raging! I thought he'd take it as a joke. But he left word at the office—I got it from a sporting reporter of the Gazette at a prize fight months afterward— Whenever that fellow shows his head, bit it!"” “You were the first Svengall, weren't you, Mr. Lackaye?”’ I queried when I had done laughing at my confrere of the Gazette. “The first,” he replied, ‘“though they told me that my nose was too small to attempt it,” he added, whimsically. *‘Can you beat that?” The artist here testified to the lasting impression the weird impersonation had made upon him, I saying that Mr. Lack- s rabbi in ‘“The Children of the Ghet- to” was to me his master work. “I'm glad you liked that,” the actor said, impulsively, to the rabbl's cham- pion. “I liked it myself better than any other part that I have played.” More talk of Svengall, and then his ‘‘ereator” asked me if I remembered Ig- nacio Martinetti, the original Zou-zou. 1, of course, did. . “* ‘Nash” was a great fellow,” Mr. Lack- aye began, chuckling. ‘“He had been on the stage ever since he was 5 years old— about thirty-five years—and we used to treat him as if he were about 3000 years old. We'd ask him on the train, ‘Papa, can we have this, that and the other? before the waiters. He didn’t like it. But when we were out here a fellow named Nanklvell came to sketch and interview me. I introduced ‘Nash' to him as the ‘dean’ of the company, told of the tender- ness and regard with which the company all treated the poor old gentleman. And, by George, Nankivell took it all in. Next day ‘there came out a picture of ‘Nash' all G strings here,” and the actor plucked unconvincingly at his coming double chin, “and with feeble old limbs and a thou- sand wrinkles, and an account under it of the fine old veteran of the ‘Trilby’ com- pany. I had to send him a present for that.” “Who?" I queried. “‘Oh, ‘Nash,’” Mr. Lackaye bubbled. “And that wasn't the only time that he got it in San Francisco. One day I was Wwith him in the red room at the Bohe- mian Club, strumming on the piano. Ama- dee Joullin, whom I knew, came in. T spoke to him of ‘Nash,’ and he said he had seen him twenty-six years ago some. where or other. ‘You'd better tell him that,” T said, ‘he loves to talk of the old days.’ They were Alphonsing and Gaston- ing all over the place the next moment, and then Joullin said: ‘I was just telling Lackaye that I had seen you twenty-six years ago at—' ‘Nash’ just looked at me then, white with rage, and bolted out into the street without his hat.” “If I hadn’'t seen you on the stage I should be tempted to ask if you ever found time for your art,” I laughed. “‘A little,” the actor owned. “Now, I think—talking of art, and the French spell it with a big ‘A’—that it is bétter for art to be more famillar with it. There is a tremendous lot of affectation in art talk. Sometimes some one will say to me: ‘What do you do when there is something you know to be inartistic that will please the public, that it is possible to introduce into your part?” ‘I amuse myself,’ I reply. ‘You mean that you live up to youg ideals? No, more sincerely, I say I amuse myself. At least some one Wwill be pleased, It's taking chances, try- ing pleasing an audience. Of cpurse.” and Lackaye's left eyebrow lifted again, “it is well to have a good standard.” “I saw,” he resumed, after a moment’ pause, “a certain Shylock a short time ago. T won't tell who—"" “I won't ask,” I said, “I know."” “T had said to myself that here would be either a marvelous mimicry of his ideal Shylock, or an outrageously modern Lackaye pursued. “But it was nei- ther. It simply wobbled. The actor was in a state of semi-hysterfa from the un- favorable criticisms, got rattled, simply knocked out. Didn't know what he, the public, the poet, the critics or any one else wanted. He didn't even please him- self.v “It is only in pleasing oneself that the new things get done,” I venture, “that Shaws, Wildes and Maeterlincks happen.” “Miller is going to do ‘The Devil's Dis- ciple’ here, I see. 1'd like to see it,”” the actor avowed. “And I should lke tre- mendously to see ‘You Never Can Tell." Fancy Shaw making his hero a dentist! Shaw and Wilde both see their world through prisms.” “We all have our prisms—of a sort,” the actor continued. ‘“Roserifeld here in America, by the way, preceded Wilde in his peculiar atmosphere and in his inver- sion of old saws—I remembér one of them: ‘To the pure all things are im- proper.” Then as time was rapidly going I asked Mr. Lackaye where he stood on the ques- tion of the National Theater. He told me then of his devoted adherence to the plan and of what he hoped it would mean to dramatic art in America. “If it means anything at all, the Na- tlonal Theater, it means brick up the box office,”” he said. “Play a play because it should be played, because it is good, and not because it pays. Herr Conrled at a late meeting of those interested in the movement advocated the wholesale bring- ing over of foreign plays. Gus Thomas opposed him in favor of the American drama. I advocated the good play from anywhere."” He then told me of much practical work that has been already done in furtherance of the movement, and I said that at least a Natlonal Theater should have a whole- some effect on the diction of the day. “We don't want quite the Comedie Francaise sort of thing though,” the actor said; “it would please a college pro- fessor dreadfully, but I don’t lke to hear the wheels go round quite so plaintly. Still—Well, for example, our Mme. Vin- ard in ‘Tribly’ here—I should have enjoyed myself better if she hadn't said ‘Vollay ung dapdchay’ when she handed me a dispatch. And it would have rid me of the unpleasing necessity of asking the manager for her to give it us in English, and of hearing her hurt reply: ‘I speak French as well as any one not born to the business!" C you beat that?” PR ST Plays and the Players. The Herald’s Paris edition publishes the following from its correspondent: Amer- icans are to have another opportunity of seeing the great Italian actor, Tommaso Salvini, who will sail for the United States early in the spring next year to make a tour under the management of George C. Tyler of New York. Signor Salvini will appear in “King Lear,” “Othello,” “Ingomar” and “The Civil Death,” and in the first three of these plays Miss Eleanor Robson will be the Cordelia, Desdemona and Parthenia, re- spectively. This combination of the leonine Salvini and the young American star is one from which Mr. Tyler expects great things. The engagement will run through April and May next. and pro- vides for twenty-five or thirty perform- ances, at the manager's option. Two weeks will be given to New York, where Salvini will appear four nights each week, Miss Robson playing in her classical rep- ertoire on the other two nights of the theatrical week. With the exception of Salvipi, who will, of course, play in Ital- ian, ‘all the company will be English- speaking. For Miss Robson's regular sea- son, which will open in October, Mr. Ty- ler has obtained two attractive novelties. One is the dramatization by the author himself of Israel Zangwill's story, “Mere- ly Mary Ann.” “Merely Mary Ann" will be followed by the production of either “La Valliere,” by M. Henri Bataille, the adapter of Tolstol's “Resurrection,” or “Agatha,” an original play by Mrs. Humphry Ward and Louis N. Parker. “Agatha™ presents phase of the question treated in Mrs. Ward's novel, “Lady Rose's D_m:h.ur.." Louis James and Frederick [Warde, Richard Mansfleld and James K. ‘ncnn. all announce for production next season plays based on the life of Alexander the Great, but the only play of this name about which any definite M‘ HE first gun of the coming musi- cal season has sounded, and a very big gun it Is. Perhaps nothing more musicilly fortunate than the engagement of Herr Fritz Schecl to lead a serles of symphony conc ; here could have been locally hoped for Ierr Scheel is too well known here to need any” advertisement in these columns His auspiclous introduction to us at the Midwinter Fair, his several serfes of symphony concerts in San Francisco, are all matters of the city’s most prized his- tory. The conductor, since his departure from here, has been occupled in making symphony history for Philadelphia. After his first—or secord season there, was it?— the symphony society of the Quaker City faced a deficit of 370,000 for the season, but its directors had such eminent faith in their conductor's genius that they moved all heaven and Philadelphia to put the organization on its feet again, Since then the fame of Philad: 's symphony society has gone abroad even unto Gotham, and is now competing with that of Boston itself. The Beethoven cycle, with which Herr Scheel closed his last season, and whereat all of the nine sym- phonies were performed, is unique in American history, and one of the most famous of contemporary achievements. The conductor, alas! will not have that famous Philadelphia orchestra with him, ‘but from its work last season we can hope for excellent things from our own local material. It would be the part of wis- dom, if such did not conflict with the rather comic opera conditions existent in the local musical union. for S:zh ot ¢ bring 2 fow of Li. 7 with him howe ¢ tor v « The i whor and the engin grap wher bring ) . Stra - wOrk they aic now having cycles In London, whose compositions are upon every civil- ized programme, and who is as great a stranger here as the Suiltan of Sulu. I should not venture even to whisper the possibility, bad I not heard that “what Mr, Scheel does not bring will be sent for.” Surely in this Strauss epoch, that must mean at least “Ein Heldenleben," “Till Eulenspiegel.” and the “Tod und Verklarung”—all old stories in the happy East. The conductor started yesterday for San Francisco, and his first concert will be &iven (D. V.) on the 14th of August, at the Grand Opera-house. Meantime there is everything to be done. Those desiring membership in'the San Francisco Sym- phony Society should send in immedia application to Mr. Shafter Howard, at room 91, Crocker building. The privileges of membership are many, not least the obtaining of season tickets for the con- certs at two-third of the single seat ad- mission price. The choice seats of course is among the many advantages, and a warm consciowsness of doing the abs: lutely best thing that can be done for good music in San Francisco should not be counted least. And now, to work! @ e i seems to be forthcoming is that in which Warde and James are to appear. The tour for the play has been entirely booked and their managers Wagenhals and Kemper, have a sceplc production, which is to be on a“very elaborate scale, well nigh completed. . Nat M. Wills, who will star next season in “A Son of Rest,” is best known as the happy tramp of vaudeville. This is not, however, Mr. Wills' maiden effort at holding the center of the stage for three hours at a stretch. He starred for three seasons in “A Prodigal Father,” was fea- tured for four seasons with the “tank drama,” “Lost in New York." He also played the leading comedy roles for a season at Morosco's Grand Opera-house, San Francisco, in 1897. 0N & has been engaged #y Broaahurst & Cur. rie to play the pa® of Baron ven Hinkel- witzer in “A Fool and His Money."” . . Axel Brunn, thejo(ed character actor, John C. Fisher's New York production and company of “The Silver Slipper,” the charming musical comedy by the authors of “Florodora,” with a company of over 100 people, will be seen here during the coming season. No expense has been . spared by Mr. Fisher in producing “The Silver Slipper,” that will be the same gor- geously staged and elaborately costumed production that crowded the Broadway Theater, New York, for six months last season. & o “The Storks,” a musical attraction of note, is announced to visit San Francisco on its next season's tour. The piece re- celved its Initial production at Chicago and it is very highly spoken of. ————— Lauded the Wrong Man. The Rev. Joseph Twitchell, Mark Twain's friend, was called upon at short notice to officiate at the funeral services of a man who lived in Glastonbury, a suburb of Hartford. Barely reaching the church in time for the service, he could only learn that the name of the deceased was the same as that of a person with whom he had been acquainted some years ago. In his eulogy he told a surprised congregation of the virtues, the fatherly tenderness and the felicities of the mar- ried life of his lamented friend. 3 After the service was over, Mr. Twitch- ell met the sexton and asked: “Well, John, how did you like my eu- logy " “Fine. sir, in its place.” “What do you mean, John, by ‘In its place? “Why, Dr. Twitchell, this man was a bachelor.”—~New York Times. High Price for Eggs. ‘The supply of roc eggs is apparently not yet exhausted in Madagascar, for a fresh specimen was brought over recently from Antananarivo to Johannesburg, its finde. doubtless regarding the Rand capital as the most likely market in the South AN rican quarter. The egg was put up for sale by auction, “between the chains/ - the other day, and after some spiritsd bidding was sold for $10. Being, compar- atively speaking, a fresh egg, the price paid for it is probably a fair one, but ax ter it passes through few more auctions its figure reach the regular market standard. has P been lately weil over