The evening world. Newspaper, August 30, 1913, Page 9

es'( | _THE EVENING WORLD, SATURDAY, AU “Trying It on the Dog” Good for the Actor lft Not for the Piay, Says Charles Frohman ReESstFue SUT IT? Then, .Too, It Quiets His “Own Nerves, and, What's * More, He Finds a First Out of “Night Town . “Bully,” for Then He Can Sit With the People in «hront Without Being :RRecagnized—And Some- times He Nudges His Neighbor and 1 alks About "the Play! By Charles Darnton. ‘6 D om the dog.” oG DAYs” to play with the “dog. trouble with this “dog” is that he ads many talls—and he wags them ‘al. In short, everybody from every- where goes to Atlantic City in a holiday mood and insists upon enjoy ly, this is ing everything. Natur: ‘tzl@ing bewildering to & producer; Mr. Frohman shal who is trying to get a direct verdict | 474 then goes on; bio play. Yet for the past five! ‘otf, may mean one thing to you and quite another to the Pics who Plays. Yet like you these da: Ctarles Frohman, for one, will take of hts hat and mop his brow at the mere mention of them. One way or another, we're all human! For the past week or so Mr. Froh- has been fairly busy First. of all, “The Doll ‘Giri” tiad to be taken to Atlantic City produces rying it The only years Atlantic City has been the pet “dag to’ tions. for Frohman produc- “@fuch as he might like to do so, no manager probably will ever entirely dis- earg the policy of trying @ play out of town, and this for a peculiarly Ameri- ean reason,” is Mr. Frohman's opinion, “The practice does not prevail in Eng- fan@, and this for a peculiarly British feagon., In London an audience ne @ finished production on opening night. Everybody ls given the benefit of the doubt; all sorts of al- Jawances are made. For example, on the opening night of ‘The Marriage Market’ n entracte that jn London there w lasted “exactly thirty. minutes while @ mast of solid timber was being ona btege yacht. Imagine the Mf @ New York audience were kept wait- ing @o tong!” Tt te quite easy to Imagine a London fn@ mormuri! Mt? Oh, quite tain low't impatience would probably find expres pion in the surmise, “The star must have “A€ropped dead; or, “Maybe, they're writ- ing the next act. ting before a lowered cur- "Very restful, But New York “There ie no firet-night disposition to ‘make allowances here—and there should not be, ma. “! " reflecta Mr, it 1» Inrgely the absence of pe "oh- thie tolerant spirit that causes man- agers to take their new plays out of town for first performances, Then, tov, ‘trying \t on the dog’ is good’ for the acter, net for the pi: hasbeen carefully ren A Play that sed ia likely to remain the same, though a musical pomedy often undergoes many changes, “especially If some of ita songs ure not favorably received. But any audience ‘ig better than no audience at all when ty producer is trying to (ind out what ‘the public thinks of his play. After ye audience. the ehief actor is My you getan augience acting with 4 play— As ‘ r| unknown to those about me in the thea- IW LOW DOW, triumph of the hero—you have lifted so many people out of thei ives, But in no two cities are audiences alike, and 80, perhaps, the real value of first per- formences out of New York is found In th: steadiness and self-command that actors galn from them.” So much for the “dog! not all, Mr, Frohman adds: Tn one respect at least John Drew's appearance in ‘Much Ado About Neth- ing’ on Monday night will be unique, It will be the firet important Ghakespear- @an production In over twenty years to be offered first of al! in New York City. Every other Shakespearean productton of the first grade within the last two decades has had its initial test in some smaller olty. Yet John Drew has never eted Benedick. Actors of hie import- ance almost Invariably ask for at least a few performance: but in New York ‘to get easy’ in their parts. In twenty years of play producing with John Drew—and there have been twenty- four plays in that time—twenty-two of the playa in which he appeared were given their first performances in New York. This ought to demonstrate that Mr. Drew and I are willing to start here.’ The “dog” ia called back, an@ Mr. Frohman quiokly turns to it with: “Although I more frequently give first Performances of my plays out of tow: 1 do so, frankly, to quiet my own nerve: ‘&s well as those of the actors, It is absolutely impossible for me to witness @ firet performance ‘from the éront’ in New York—that i e one of the audi- ence on an opening night. I cannot do it, To that extent I confess to physical cowardice, The reason for this is that I could not endure the glances of my {friends, Each look of approval to me would seem a eign of sympathy, I could not stand that." But that's off the thought “New York first-nighters are really jo Many stage producers—self-constl- tuted producers, Their great happiness {comes from detecting first-night mis: tence of @ thousand per- sons contains at least nine hundred stage managers, I feel their superiority j too keenly, wo I generaidy run away. A | firet-night out of town te @ bully thing for me, not #0 much for what it tells me about the play as for th I get in feeling that I am absolutely tre. I alt right among the people, and | often I nudge the man next me. Ihave jeven told my bors how good I thought thi And then I listen to what they say and elt back to enjoy the evening—knowing {t isn't a first- |night in New York. I even take the same pleasure in the actors’ mistakes as first-nighters do in: New York, “One night I sat ‘out front’ in Cleve land, and s00n become acquainted with the man on my right, He told me the | plot of the play, who the actors were {and what the orchestra would play. At jthe end of the third act, when. the | adaptor- manager appeared before ‘the curtain in response to a call—he waa in his shivtsleeves, grimy, and peered through large tortolse-shell giasses—my neighbor turned aad in- |tormed me, “That's Frohman! Charles Frohman, actor, doesn't say whether his performance in Cleveland ended there, Instead he pockets his wmile and assures you: “Playing in a new plece outside New York In no way changes the state of feelings of the real actor. All the euf- Zerings of the real first-night must be endured when New Yogk is finally faced, The actor may have won suc- | cems, yet there ls the ultimate tes | York. No aucce: l York | ndorsement ts ducers work Is over, It ts very dim- cult, for me at lel even to enter the | theatre in which @ play has been sue- pro- ard for the defeat of the villain, ' cessfully launched. For there is a heart Jet we ony, and equally bard for the in every plsy, and once it beats cogu- WAS WAYY - TAILS ANNO HE WAGS THEM ALLY near it Fear never quite theatre; ona night, A Sermon. gin, this olty, had a cott: made frequent trips to and reaching the ba age car. to hia greeting, _— larly one fears to tamper with It, to cut aves the it Is always there, Nothing could be more depressing than the stage It seems as if no re- ward could compensate for the agony of all concerned in the venture. One A few summers ago the Rev. George M. Christian, D. D., now rector emeri- tus of the Church of St. Mary the Vii along the line of a New Jersey railroad and from Man- hattan, He knew all of the train hands and one day when about to leave town he walked along the train sey- ing good morning to every one until Finding the baggage master very quiet in anewer he aske! what the London Divine Scores This City for Its Recklessness in Manners and Morals— Many Women Sell Them- selves for Clothes or Work Their Husbands to Death, Marguerite Mooers Marshall. “Mow York is fret of all a city ef clothes. ‘Walk down Brosd- way, the Groat White Way, and what do you ana to be salient characteristic? wine, alothea! women sor song — but ‘Phe feminine half of the ite most Weither population hag gone daffy on the Subject, and the situation is get- ting worse instead of better. Wa ome elit exist passes to-dsy undred will pase to-morrow. how the devil is enjoying himself.’ After this outburst the Rev. Dr. Len G. Broughton shook his sll minal ing a week of meetings at fa tall, slender, pleasantly gon, with Gecided opinions on account of the things ay we wear them, “but clothes as it exists to-day. head with a sad smile, Dr, Broughton is very much disturbed about the way we dress in this modern Babylon, He has come from Christ Church, London, to stir our souls dur- and ‘or crowned Tent Evan- 1 on One Hundred and Twenty-fourth street, near Amaterdam avenue He |e ascetic per and an in- clsive way of putting them. To him New York seems & awat ideal summer rewort for His Satanic Majesty, and all ‘wear and “It's not the slit skirt or the trans- feature of he told me, rather the whole question of ‘There never Was anytRing like it before and there In a Statement to Nixola Greeley-Smith Ferdinand Declares That Divorce Is feels like dashing through the stage door never to return. My greatest Pleasure in producing @ play Is to see it before an audience sees it, for then it seems to belong to me alone. Once it Is seen by the public it no longer seems mine.” trouble was. ‘Well, doctor,” the man replied, “I am in great trouble 1 have a little girl at home who we think will die to-day.” “What a doing here?" the doctor got to make my run asked to get off?’ sald the doctor, “Yes, but they won't let me off.” “Give me your cap,” said Dr. Christian, tak- ing off his coat. “Give me your way bill, T will make your run for you and 1 will see that you don't lone your job either; if you do I will get you an- other, You go home.” And go home the man did, and the good doctor handled bagwage for the trip, from and Wrong, One Wife Is Plenty—“ Once More | Must Be Hounded as a Scoundrel Due to the Old leputation Which I Can't hake Off.” Hear yo, hear ye, hear ye, Citisons of |New York, wanderers upon the primrose path of Broadway and ye who take the Straight and narrow way to Harlem 4 the Bronz, Ferdinand Pinney Earle, best known perhaps as “Affinity” Barie, has a message for you. Ferdinand of the long whiskers, Ferdinand of the three wives, he who invented the soul- mate and copyrighted the affinity, har repented of his evil life and recants herewith. If he were in our midst and there was a soapbox on the corner of Forty-second street and Broadway I am j sure he would mount upon it and preach us a little sermon. But as he is sow in London trying to persuade hie third wife, Dora, to abandon the idea of di- vorce proceedings, which she has threat- ened to institute, he has done the next j best thing and sent us a letter about it. Or rather, he sent it to Alexander Har- vey, author editor and next friend of the most kaleidoscopic husband of our times, to be given to me. Ferdinand has had three wives, you back to J y City again, on a hot summer's day. ample of the havoc it may create than in this very city. Almost all the other evils of the present me grow out from this root passion for dress. “Em some ways Now York streets are cleaner than those in London. @ne certainly sees fewer intozi- eated women here than ta the great Buglish metropolis. I believe that the copes manifeetations of the s0- otal evil are lose fagrant om Broad- way than in Leicester Square or the Gireus. Meally, I think one Gets into a pretty devent crowd on Broadway. But one never sees such extreme and sensational costumes im London as are to be beheld orywhere in Yoru.” ut how do you account for that?" I asked. “Do you really think the mora) wtandard is lower here than in Lon- don?” Dr. Broughton refused to admit that, to there some hope for us, @ \hough we do delight the devil's “1 shouldn't say that there was more immorality in New York,” he averred, “Rather, there is @ greater defiance. There is ap unruliness, @ lack of con- trol, an Independence of social conven- tion which see! to characterise the New York woman. Women in London remember, First Emily, then Julia, the l\Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Citizens of New York, “Affinity” Earle Has a Message for .You Dora, You must recall that when Eintiy found that Ferdinand loved Julia she tn- vited her rival to visit at the Karle country place at Monroe, N. § Later @he satied for France witb her child and fot @ @ivorce. Here Ferdinand, after doing @ lot of talking and writing about soul mates, aMnities, Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere, @&c., married Julia. It did not take him long to dis- cover that between a soulmate and a cellmate there ts only one step, and at- ter Ke had taken It the first thing we knew he was in the jail at Goshen, N. ¥., charged with beating Julia up. Then Julla bad her marriage annulled and took her child and went away from Ferdinand. The artist and poet—he really ls @ good artist and « reapectable poet, as weil as @ very rich man—just had to marry somebody else, And, be- little journey abroad, he picked odds and ends for atudio Dora of the Laughing Eyes, other- up and wise Dora Sidford, daughter of an Eng- Mish architect, who became Qira, Earle which destiny No. 3. Lately M Earle, third of the dyna ounced her intention of divorcing Ferdinand, saying that she had known nothing of his Bluebeard past. Yesterday Mr, Karle, who has been In London trying to dissuade her from the divorce, denied that she was marriages, and at unaware of hii the same time sent the recantation =. which follows thin article to New Yor: |htg mind, Hut Mr. Harvey says be Mr. Alexander Harvey, author and qq, describes the editor, who gave me the Earle docu-] “iarie, ike Shelley, has reached the ment, says thet the artist-poet hastpoint whore he wishes to make his reached point in his development Peace with society,” Mr, Harvey says. which reminds him very much of that “He knows now that theorles in regard) most interest of dhelley. Shelley, Ike the Earle of} to soul-mates, &c., are but the nebulous! 7 told Mr, tuat week, did not believe in marriage, | inbecilities of inexperience or the rises and I have never heard that he changed] of the sly old foxes who go arag women, jeeking whom they may de- © “trotting” @s omnivorously as New York. “KIL those sensational much less popular in capital,” he replied. “Not only ig it dimfcult to And a social function or even a restaurant in New York where the turkey-trot in absent, but it seems to me that the women talk of nothing else, When @ group of them, even middle-aged matrons and mothers, get together, all one hi la ‘Do you turkey? Does she turkey? He CAN turke: In all i varying moods and tenses, I'm ashamed of them. dances the British “Another difference of money that is spent here. It food and ex euch widespread extravagance on the are more subdued, more hedged about by restrictions,” “Especially the militants,” I mur- mured, “Oh, the fight for the vote ls an English manifestation of feminine de fiance,” Dr. Broughton admitted, “We've got to do away with that, “We don't want the vote for women. We want more sweet- wives.” see why @ woman rt, a wife and a voter, but It wasn't the time for a suf- frage argument. I had to lure Dr, Broughton back to a comparison of the gay life of New York and of Loados. 1 did it by asking bim if Londen was other eide, Of course, there are spend- \hrifte everywhere. But the classes of English who have comparatively little money do not pend !t all, and more, too, im the attempt to appear Mike millionaires. In England almost ali of the poorest servant girls have their little bank accounts, “Likewise, thia evil of freakish and extravagant dressing te confined to a comparatively 1 class in London Instead of permeating the whole popu- lation as it does here. “Devil Having a Fine Time in New York, ' While Women Wear Veils tor Dresses” —Rev. Dr. Len |. Broughton. | | whidh immedi: | York working «irl. trikes one between the life of | gold bracelet aurants and cufes in this city | tha London is the ridiculous amount | #1 in| madnens, almost literally pouret out for rich| her, and I believe she will lead us out naive wines, There is no| of the evil maze Into which we have vour,’ “But eurely you don't call three dit. forent sete of ohildren by the three iv. ing wives ‘the nebulous :mbewtlities of inexperience,’ 1 proteated. “I don't want to characterize Karle Mr. Harvey answered, “He te and in my opinion the gre American nen, blond god" or phrases which him, my frien cat living Anglo-Saxon, of the famous down with the strain of dressing [ins [oi't it otr: alumni them, it's because she’s made of | iniinaginative people should have pro-| However, I did cast irom and chinked with steel. [iucod tho Kreatest artist of all time- Many ® woman to get ey for salstler, and the greatest short story] tion than I had hoped, the clothes she considers essential writer-- Poe. Karle, who has the genius| have nothing to do with I ‘will sell herself or work her bus- band te death. of interesting women, is just as great n its way as Whistler or Poe. He has answered. put me in the “Not by any means al women are #0] ihe art of persuading any w. tha foolish,” Dr. Broughton was quick 'o] she ale faacinates him; that @ alone} and who wants amend. “Please don't give the im: |i» ntic Agure in his lide, and! understand Pression that I think that! I reverenve others are merely lay figures and admire many women from th: bottom of my soul. It has been sald that women go to extremes in fashion to attract the attention of men, But | don’t belleve their design works, 1 of his way think men hesitate to marry these |] fly, For months I haye been working to prevent divorce, which 16 fashion-plates, partly because the) ft erably wrong and sty id, dread the expense and partly becai they are afraid to come close to ire hurly-burly which surrounds a clothes crazy woman. “Persunally 1 vation of New York belleve that the sa! Hem In the New She doesn't wear on her ankie or a fa dress, Sie in th in the midst of the droms I have the highest respect for all ne thi divorcee, trouble, only bringing us closer together, and more opposed, seems to dog me. riage and should be abolished, fullen.’"” —_ Getting a Raise. When Col. John A, McCaull produced the comic opera “Falka" at Wallack's ‘Theatre Alfred Klein made a great hit In the character of a monk, Klein was Going scandals in connection with me. Ketting a salary of about $0. Into the Colonel's office one t he might ha row and stubborn and ‘righteous.’ her great tragedy more for among all Angio-Bazons he ip Harvey that Mr, Earle some years ago, and out, and that neither had he seemed to me to qualify as “He had not cut hts then, and you don't see o man ef MD best in jail,” Mr. Harvey reminded. , It was dificult to suggest to any so obviously an Marie fan that the of w man who has sincerely at he has econ the Statement by Ferdinand Earte to Nixola Greeley-Smith, “IT am so utterly ashamed of the turn things are taking in my ut I am powei.ss. A host of strictly. church-gaing, narrow unChristiike people have mixed themselves up in’ my affairs (due the old reputation, which I can't shake off), and although I lov more than I have ever loved any woman, and although | ask be left in peace with her, I must face more trouble, and my little must be everlastingly punished and Dora must go through life as Yesterday | saw her and tried to save my dear omes a “There did exist a slight misunderstanding, which, however, The divorce idea, to which F am It Is @ menace to every More and more | am for no divorée. “And yet, once more | must bo branded as a scoundrel, and, worse, my little ones and my wife must be victims, Y guilty of adultery to save innocent people from getting Involved im “Yesterday I did all in my power to save my wife from her ff stupid and narrow views—in vain. The English are phenomenally saat I am so thoroughly bowed, hi has contrived te pt the female pursues the scores of love letters every most burning character. he sailed for Burope a not know followed him to the begged him to elope with her,’ week of Ferdinand, and thea way women fel speak of him, After ail, be ia Greatest gentus of the Angio-Gazem rece, * “the gay young Mr. Harvey applied ! whiskers rather genuine conviction of ain might be 5 sponsible for the recantation the of three wives had sent it, and Mr. Harvey pudiated the theory with less nao? "The wi Me. “But | eve you are golag @> potion of making the New York pualle I had to N not do it,” ated and discouraged by my failure to hold Dora, whom | leve new ie SP" Mol" eald Mod than ever—you ought to see little Yvonne (the loveliest and eee 1 BEGET Nee not inant |] child that ever breathed)—that the future seems hopeless, I-em will McCaul, “Say — $31.257" to support not only my wife but her mother and sister. T am reg 4 “No! t do it." "Well, $20.76 do anything.and make any sacrifice to hold them, 6 BO poll sa Alfred. “All right,” answered the Cole- '] anything but that one desire.” ae? 5 * > Bel, Ho Mein got bis ealary increased. |. nn a wes > ’ ne ee 4 Ding 1 i tue une