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172 MELODRAMA
homicidal lunatic. Walter Melville's A GirVs Cross Roads, after opening at the Standard two or three months before, was brought to Terriss's for the Christmas of 1903. This is the drama of a drunken wife — lightened by the antics of a comic character in a bottle-smashing scene — and a faithful juvenile who turns flower-seller until death after death at last permits the course of true love to run smooth.
Frederick Melville's masterpiece, which opened at the Terriss in the November of 1904, was The Ugliest Woman On Earth. She is a mysterious veiled figure, assistant of a doctor engaged in perilous research, who attracts Jack Merriman on a voyage home from Naples, where he escaped from a charge of murder. Knowing that illness has destroyed her beauty (though it may, says the doctor, be restored by another illness), she hides her love for him until the villains of the piece throw lime in his eyes and he is blind. They marry. His sight is restored. Illness restores her beauty.
Melodrama-according-to-the-Melvilles was in demand all over the country. Bert Hammond, who managed the Lyceum, directed their extensive touring enterprises. Rehearsals were held in the Standard. In various parts of this theatre twenty-five companies would be mastering at the same time twenty-five different plays. Corridors, bars, foyer and auditorium would all be put to this use, while the stage would be partitioned off by canvas walls into a number of separate stages. What the provincial public wanted was either The Girl Who . . . (drama) or The Girl From . . . (musical comedy), and the lists of what was then on tour, in the theatrical journals, proved that the Melvilles had a bigger following than George Edwardes.
Each of the brothers was now a hardened playwright. Walter brought out The Girl Who Wrecked His Home at the Standard in 1907. He knew what kind of title was liked and chose this even though it did not fit the tale of a wife lured from home and luckily forgiven years after by a husband promoted to the peerage. Walter was also the author of The Beggar Girl's Wedding at the Elephant and Castle in 1908. In this Jack Cunningham, suddenly realizing he must marry at once or lose a fortune, takes Bess from the Embankment and marries her. Both are kidnapped and caged in the private asylum of a mad doctor : all ends well. Frederick was the author of The Bad Girl Of The Family, at the Elephant and Castle in the October of 1909, followed by a Christmas season at the Aldwych. This is a particularly good specimen of their workmanship. Bess, seduced by Harry, her employer's son, goes to " Lord Erskine's " with a dress for Gladys Erskine, who loves a sailor, Dick Marsh. Being on the brink of financial ruin, Lord Erskine is forcing his daughter to marry Harry. The wedding is arranged, but