San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

4 THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC REVIEW January 6th, 1900 DRAMATIC REVIEW (Sixteen Pages ) San Francisco, Jan. 6, 1900 DRAMATIC REVIEW PUBL ISHING COMPANY, Publishers 22^ Geary Street Telephone Grant 158 CHAS. H. FARRELL C. H. LOMBARD Business Manager Secretary and Treasurer EASTERN EDITOR ROB ROY 1840 Seventh Avenue Drive. NEW YORK CITY; To whom all Eastern News Matter for the Review should be addressed. Ten Cents a Copy — $3.00 per Year For Sale at all News Stands The Review has the largest circulation of any theatrical paper in the United States outside of New York. The Dramatic Review is entered at the postoffice at San Francisco as second-class matter and is supplied to the tride by the San Francisco News Company, 312 deary Street. Scork another successfor the dramatized novel. Quo Vadis is simply coining money in Chicago for its promoters. Ai.gkria Barrios, widow of the murdered President of Guatemala, and formerly of this city, is progressing wonderfully well in her stage aspirations in New York. She has signed a contract with Arthur Rehan to appear in several roles of Ada Rehan's repertoire. In behalf of the players, if for no other reason, we must enter a protest against the illbred men and women who, five minutes before the final curtain fall, shnffletheir feet, put on their coats and wraps and hats and rise ready to run. By such rude conduct, the climax of many a strong finale scene is utterly ruined to those who would sit quietly and who have paid to see the whole show. These people never stop to consider other people's rights. None but a most selfish woman will put her hat on until the curtain goes down. Through some spiteful motive, no doubt, we have received a note asking who and what is a daily newspaper's dramatic critic. The question had evidently been broken off in the middle, so we can give only half an answer. The critic is the man or woman who accepts a manager's hospitality in free seats every week, and sees a hundred good things in every performance, but one thing perhaps strikes him as a little out of place, which gives him an opportunity to magnify the few faults and never say a word about the hundred good things. Such is the way of the man who puffeth up over a wrong assumption of his own importance. Again we have scored. Not many months ago the REVIEW gave a few reasons why Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto couldn't live long. Now comes the information that its failure in London is more pronounced than it was in New York. Thus we are also recorded among the I-told-you-so's. There are only two reasons for the failure of the play — its utter dullness and the smallness of the coin that passed through the box-office wicket. Seriously, we deplore the failure of any high-standard play, for the number does not seem to be increasing very rapidly. But we sincerely hope that Zangwill will not repeat his most recent failure. Schools for the Chorus The following throws some light on a practice that has never yet got a foothold in this country : L. S. Sire of Sire Brothers, a firm dealing in the chorus industry, said that sometimes girls are hired from masters and brought over to this country in numbers. "In England," he said, "there are schools for chorus and ballet girls, and these girls are bound to the masters for certain periods. The masters give the girls enough to live on and get all of the money. They practically own the girls for the time. The girls get some advantage, as they are poor girls, and in this way are able to get an education. The system is common in England, and the hiring of girls from these masters for the purpose of bringing them to the United States does not conflict with any contract labor law, as it comes under the artists' law. ♦ * Barnabee' s Perpetual Youth Henry Clay Barnabee, the veteran head-center of the Bostonians, is the youngest man of his age in the theatrical profession. For forty-five years he has been actively engaged in stage work, and now, at the age of 68, he is as active, lively and vigorous as the majority of men who have scarcely reached the meridian of life. His voice, particularly in the upper tones, which usually are the first to decay, is full and resonant as it was ten years ago, and his activity in stage work shows no evidence of any weight of years. The other day when asked for the secret, in which so few seem to share, of this perpetual youthfulness, his answer was that he had always taken good care of himself. "One cannot burn the candle at both ends," he said, "and that is what too many members of the profession undertake to do, with disistrous results. Any one familiar with stage history can recall many singers and actors who have fallen by the way simply because they did not keep in training. Singers are particularly susceptible to the injurious effects of liquor, cigarettes and tobacco, and I have known many promising careers cut short by overindulgence in these particulars." No doubt Mr. Barnabee' s theory, which is supported by every dictate of common sense, will not appeal favorably to many members of the profession who are inclined to prefer fast living to permanent artistic success. But a temperate life is the only possible means of insureing a long and honorable career. Patti, who will celebrate some time next year an extraordinarily long period on the operatic stage, and is still ranked as one of the greatest singers in the world, attributes her achievements to the most temperate living and a strenuous regard for all the laws of health. Joseph Jefferson, now approaching the seventieth anniversary of his birth, is another example of correct living which the younger members of the profession would do well to imitate. Late suppers and a convivial life may be very alluring, but they are dangerous to all and impossible to such as aspire to a long artistic career. Possibly this sounds like a sermon, but at all events there can be no doubt in regard to either the facts or the philosophy, and that is more than can be said of all sermons. Big Receipts p has. P. Hall of the Victory Theater, San Jose, and the Yo Semite, Stockton, was a caller at the Review office last week, feeling pretty good over the showing made by the Yictory the past year. San Jose, as well as other interior cities, showed an increased theatrical attendance, and Stock well, in My Friend From India, played to $700 one night, and the Old Kentucky engagement amounted to $1,066, while the Hotel Topsy Turvey people were enabled to pay their hotel bills, after $1,100 was counted out, the result of their funmaking; and all this convinces Chas. P. that there are worse towns than San Jose. Zaza and Other Plays It has always been maintained by *■ great dramatists and important literary critics that any theme in which the problems of life are illustrated in a serious and impressive manner may properly be made use of in a play. This seems to me rather an extreme doctrine, and I have never been able to feel that the best interests of the theater or of society can be conserved by dramatic discussions of the social evil in any of its phases. At the same time, if we must choose between an ably drawn and brilliantly acted play of this nature and the inanity of cheap farce-comedy or the indecency of the so-called current reviews, I must frankly confess a preference for the former. At least they do not make vice alluring. Their incidental teaching is thetruth, proclaimed every week in the pulpit, that punishment follows sin, and thus depravity receives no encouragement from the Camilles, Zazas and Tanquerays as it does from such vicious degeneracy as we find exploited in The Turtle, The Rounders, and all other examples of nauseous pudency. It is well enough to bear these distinctions in mind, for the reason that dramatists and historians alike always have found their most vivid illustrations of dramatic themes in the relation of the sexes. Love, pure or impure, has been the moving cause in innumerable events that fill the pages of history, and since it is the central motive of all life, involving every element of society, it is evident that this theme always must be pre dominant in the drama as it is in general literature. For more than a hundred years the treatment of this subject by the dramatists has gradually improved in delicacy and finesse. The brutal vulgarity of the restoration period, which had not disappeared when Peg Woffington and David Garrick reached the dramatic throne, was long since banished from the responsible theater, but while we may hope for still greater delicacy in the future, there is no reason to expect that the grand passion in its most vivid manifestation will ever be outgrown by the dramatic writer or discarded by the exceptional artist. For this reason I repeat that lovers of the drama should learn to distinguish the legitimate play upon this subject from that intolerable abasement of the drama for which reckless speculators, indecent women and depraved men are responsible. — Lyman B. Glover. A Valuable treatise The Essentials of Elocution, by Alfred Ayres, an exhaustive treatise on the art of acting, has been received bv the Review. The comedians, Charles Boyle and Carrie Graham, will make their appearance shortly at the New Alhambra in that comical comedy, His Better Half, one of the greatest road successes of the season. The company of twenty which surrounds the stars includes many very clever people and warm favorites here. Lady Windemere's Fan will be produced at the Alcazar the week of Jan. 15th, at which time the Alcazar's new leading lady, Miss May Blaney, direct from London, will make her American debut. Howard Scott will make his reappearance at the Alcazar on that date.