San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

M May 5, 1900 And in his ravings by mistake, A solemn truth the madman spake. "Say, old man, rumor has it that you are going to leave Daly next season. What's the matter ? I thought you were a fixture." "Yes, so did I, but you see I've grown tired of pushing chairs for Ada Rehan and announcing John Drew." This bit of dialogue, overheard in the lobby of the Baldwin some years ago, is recalled every now and again as I watch the comings and goings of "the chief person." Not that chairs are really pushed or his coming verbally announced, but there is always a pushing aside of individual thought, an arrangement of mental attitude in the company that unmistakably herald his (or her) coming. It is really merrily pathetic, this obedient grouping about a central figure, (by no means close enough to crowd.) It is all as though they were told to stand aside and stare— stare hard and let it be felt that they are staring. To live up to so much consideration would be to live breathlessly, and most of these "chief persons" respire very evenly. Slow music, please. I'm tired of riding straight, so I've been looking all the week for white stones to shy at. The streets of culture and calcium are filled with them. A tight hold at the rein of hope is all that keeps you from breaking your heart over them. Gesture — that is one of them. Now, gesture to be communicative should precede speech — should begin at the heart and slip off the finger tips to its destination. But does it ? Watch through a night of upper cuts and side slings — of wavings and windings and grope for the reasons. If you find them, come and tell me. I should be glad to know. Most gesture seems done automatically in obedience to the beautiful dramatic theory that action is the essential half of drama. If I were to give any advice on the subject it would be Punch's advice to people about to marry — "Don't." Don't unless you simply can't help it, for gesture like prayer can be done with greater frequency than fervor and miss the point. If there is any intellectual significance to the greater part of gesture one sees, it is caviare to the general. * * » Why do the soloists in opera — comic and grand alike — always walk straight out of their characters down to the foot-lights and tell their troubles to the audience as though they were part of the ensemble. Is this tradition? I suppose it is. Why respect every old hand-down ? Could anything be more thoroughly inartistic and ridiculous. That dram of wisdom that teaches the artist to avoid the ornamental business and the horrid vice of counting the orchestra is lacking somewhere. Where ? The town is longing for continuous melodrama — the real surry sort, and I'm one of the town. There are times when our sympathies can be reached only by the explosion of an arsenal and at such times the good old days when Mr. Morosco catered directly to these needs pass mournfully in review. The characteristic inability of melodrama to leave anything unsaid — anything to the imagination is very restful to the brain after a season of dramatic epigram. You can always calculate to a hair who is to make the next entrance, and why — you feel the shadows before they cast them. Nothing in the action of life is cut that can be slowly and painfully untied, the unaccustomed side of fact or fancy is never presented, the most impossible things happen, the most unlikely people hobnob, and yet if you let yourself go with the action hither and yon, you are sure to come out happy and hungry. The crowd Mr. Morosco cast adrift some seasons ago, is still floating about, a lamentable odyssey in fruitless search for a hospitable shore. Who will harbor us ? The chief office of melodrama is to get as many people into the 'ouse as the 'ouse will 'old. Then why not produce it? Begin with "Sweeny Tod." * * * ETTA BUTLER We woolly ones out West are a little out of sympathy with the Nethersoles, the Carters, the Fiskes and the Aliens of the profession — the Saphos, the Zazas, the Becky Sharps and the real Glorys I mean and hence we cannot quite appreciate Etta Butler. But if all her imitations are as true and as clever as her imitations of Fougere, then hers is no surface reputation. Many years ago, (this is no fairy tale) when Dixey gave us imitations of Irving's Hamlet, we all laughed and were happy though we didn't in the least know why. We had not seen Irving. By and by he came to us and we thought, " My! how like Dixey he is," and Dixey went up ten in my estimation and has not come down since. Just so with Miss Butler. Seven years hence we shall be giving her her dues. (May I safely say seven ? Give this a melancholy but resigned inflection.) But we may all come under the spell of her charms — and they are many. We may all predict a great future without feeling that the burden of proof will one day be upon us. Freshness and wholesomeness — not to possess these, at least in reflection, is a heavy handicap in the Madison Square and Empire set, but in vaudeville it "ain't so worse." Tradition says so and so do the gallery and half the lower house. And never shall they pass through a period of awakening. The temptation to be blatant, to be cock sure, to be noisily clever is very great, for the house gives such a one her head, and applauds every sign of ultimate hurricane, and like Oliver Twist asks for more. Miss Butler and such as she minister directly to the rest of us and "There's a happiness in our hearts, mamma." Between her and the usual vaudeville there is a dividing chasm as wide as the one that yawns between taste and style. Just sleep over that speech and you'll know what I mean. Briefly she has been curbed to the yoke of social refinement and it tells in every move. This is her last season in vaudeville, for David Belasco, with his usual keen judgment, has induced her to sign with him for star parts. He talks of writing a play around her. Well, and why not ? Young ? I should say so. I know whereof I speak, for in her kitten days I taught her a minuet or rather made a feint at it, for she read one's mind, and the thing was done in the beginning. "I was always a poor scholar," she said, "for head and heart were full of longings. I took no interest in anything else. I knew some day the chance must come and I pushed everything aside for that chance. My first recognition ? Modjeska. I had done other imitations but not of people with sounding names and they scarce made a ripple. Peter Robertson saw merit in my copy of Modjeska and that gave me courage to speak to Mr. Morrisey. He gave me the circuit to pay my way to New York, for there was a field to prospect and there I must go. Her eyes light up with the ambition and the seriousness that is behind them. They are like the eyes of an ox — in yearning but naught else. "Oh, but I was a poor little thing doing three shows a day, with Proctor and others, and always blue. Grau saw me and told Mr. Brady it would be wise to look me up." "That was my chance though I did not know it, and the surprise and joy of my reception at Mr. Brady's house filled my eyes with tears — till they overflowed and ran down my cheeks as I bowed. I was so tired, too, when I began. It was eleven o'clock and I went on merely as an extra — my fourth perfoimance that night. How do I work with my subjects? I see them twice, not more, and then after a night of thought, that inspiration may be harnessed, I am sure of all but the voice. That comes back to me in echo — rings in my ears, sings in my heart for days before I speak. At last it is mine, and the imitation is ready." "No, I will not speak until I am sure. It is not well to listen to false notes It destroys the ear for truth." Ah me, she has the artist soul. And what is that? It is to be in close insulation with what matters most in the world. It is the one thing unexplai nable. "Yes, Mr. Fiske heard my imitation of Becky twice, and told me I was a wizard. He said that more than once he closed his eyes and knew that Mrs. Fiske was on the