The Billboard 1923-09-29: Vol 35 Iss 5 (1923-09-29)

eT QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS T. V.—Lucille Stewart is older than her sister, Anita. I. K.—Because of so many queries the answer man is very late with many answ@s. Patience! Reader—The father of Pat Rooney was also an actor ond made his first stage appearance in England. P. P. N.—The address of the National A« sociation of Radio Broadcasters is 1265 Broadway, New York City. J. S. J.—Write Morris Nelson, Panl Cholet or Al Tint, in care of The Billboard, regarding yodeling songs. R. D.—The Texas State Fair, held at Dallas, js considered the biggest State fair held annually in this country. P. W. T.—Since you are only a short distance from our New York office call on Gordon Whyte, who can enlighten you regarding the submission of plass. P. S.—Vera Steadman, movie actress, was born at Monterey, Calif., in 1900. At one time she was a champion diving girl of the Pacific Coast and began her screen career in Kerstone comedies. M. S&S. W.—Egbert Austin (Bert) Williams was born in New Trovidence, British Bahamas, in 1876, and was taken to New York by his father, a papier mache maker, at the age of two sears. An answer to your other query will appear in the next issue. NEW THEATERS The Rainer Theater Company, headed by W. A. Peterson, has completed plans to erect a $15,000 picture theater at Georgetown, Wash. A $40,000, 50-seat picture theater is to be erected at LaFollette, Tenn., by the Palace Theater Company. A community picture theater will be erected at Twelfth street and Cleveland avenue, N. W., Canton, 0., according to a recent announcement by Charles Bowen. Markwood DPD. Harp has purchased property on West Patrick street, Frederick, Md., for $23,000, and has taken options on adjoining property, as a site for a moving picture theater. Work has started on the construction of a picture hose at Lake Placid, N. Y., by the Adirondack Theater Corporation, which is composed of Noel Feldstein, Raymond Prime, Henry Hiblein, Frank S. Leonard and William P. Ryan. On the night of September 18 the new Crocker Theater, Elgin, Il., owned and operated by Ralph Crocker, was opened. This house was erected at a cost of $250,000. It bas a seating capacity of 1.4 and a stage large enough to accommodate most road attractions. Crocker is operating it with a vaudeville and picture policy, the vaudeville being supplied by the Gus Sun Agency, of Springfield, O. DRAMATIC NOTES (Continued from pad 25) Middle West in this play before making his appearance in New York next month. Oliver Mbvrosco is about to unfold his production of “A Bit o° Duet’? in Chicago, with Taylor Holmes in the principal role. Included in the cast are Juliette Day and Grace Valentine. Morosco announces the New York premiere for some time after Thanksgiving Day. The title of ‘“‘Lowe and Forty’, the threeact comedy by Sidney Stone and Carlos de Navarro, has been changed to “A Love Scandal’. The rehearsale of the play to be produced shortly are under the direction of Samuel W, Rose. William A. Grew is credited with being the author of “The Wicked House of David", now current in Milwaukee. The play has to do with a religious colony somewhere in the Great Lakes district and is said to be meeting with a fair amount of success. Grew heretofore has been identified both as actor and manager. In the course of the coming season Sam Hi. Harris will introduce Chicago to bis attractions in identically the order they were presented in New York last season “lLeebound'’, now playing in Washington, D. C., will make its oppeararnce in the Middle West late in the automa, This will be followed by ‘‘Secrete™, Margaret Lawrence's starring vehicle of last gt re OOK SPOTLIGH #0 (Com ications to Our New York Offices) THE ORIGINAL “DON JUAN” OR the first time there is now available in English the true and original “Don Juan”. I doubt not that this statement will surprise many peo ple, just as it surprised me. Until I saw Love-Rogue and read its illuminating introduction I had never given the matter much thought. I had read Byron's “Don Juan” and had seen the Mozart opera, “Don Giovanni”, and I suppose if I ever thought about the legend it was that Byron had picked it up somewhere and by his genius made of it a mighty poem from which Mozart’s librettist in turn constructed his book. Now I find that it was written early in the seventeenth century by a Spanish priest, one Tirso de Molina. It was written as a play, and this play has been the source of all the Don Juan stories and dramas. By some queer stroke of circumstance the play has never before been translated into English until now, when Harry Kemp has done it, or, as he expresses it, “transmuted” it for us under the title of Love-Rogue. The story of how Kemp came to take on this job is quite interesting. He discovered a set of the collected works of Tirso de Molina in a bookshop, purchased it, became fired with the Don Juan drama, and determined to render it into English. Being a poet, and a good one, Kemp was not sitting up nights guarding his bankroll. To be exact, he had just fifteen dollars, and he figured if he could get a room rent free he could live for three months on that sum and translate the drama which obsessed him. He got the room from a friend. a decrepit ottoman, from S. Jay Kaufman, a dry-goods box for a desk, a stock of rye bread, cheese and coffee, and in the appointed three months finished his “transmutation”. If that is not a twentieth century romance, I don't know one when I hear about it. Now, is the result worth all the pains Harry Kemp went to in making Love-Rogue availible in English? My answer is an unqualified “Yes.” Here is a source drama which has been at the bottom of a hundred plays and stories and yet has never been within easy reach for study. It is an important work and well worth the effort of translation. As a play for production, Love-Rogue is no more worth putting on the modern stage than any of Tirso de Molina’s English contemporaries, such as Thomas Middleton, Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Otway or William Rowley, nor is it any better than some written by Phillip Massinger, Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. What dignifies it and makes it of prime importance is the first unfolding in it of the “Don Juan” character, since destined to become known the world over in one guise or another. That makes the play of value to all students of the drama. Harry Kemp has performed his part of the business magnificently. He points out in the introduction that a word-for-word translation of “Fl! Burlador de Sevilla” was what he least desired to make—but perhaps it would be better for Kemp to explain just what he did. He savs: “When it came to the actual work of translating Tirso de Molina’s ‘Burlador’ I found three methods open to me: First, the not-to-be-thought-of, wretched method of the Bohn Classical Library, and that of the Swanwick version of Faust—the way of the zoologist and taxidermist, where each bone, hair, scale, feather and articulation is carefully preserved, but where the result is a cadaver and not a living body of literature. Secondly, there was another method much better: the way of the great period of translators in England, when, with tolerable fidelity to the oviginal, much of the first fire is preserved—as Dryden, with Virgil; Pope, with Homer; Fairfax, with Tasso. . . . But the third, best and last method of translation was the one I chose—the method Fitzgerald used when he brought Omar Khayyam over into English from the Persian.” This means that Kemp sought for the spirit of the text rather than its letter and aimed to preserve the poetical flavor of the original. How far he has succeeded in doing this is not for me to say, but I do know that he has made a rendering of the play which is at once good poetry and delightful reading. I strongly recommend anyone with a taste for the drama, and particularly those who are interested in its sources, to get a copy of Love-Rogue. They will treasure it, I feel sure. THE PICTURES AND EDUCATION As far as my knowledge extends, Motion Pictures in Education, by Don Carlos and Laura Thornborough, is the first book to deal with teaching by the use of the movies. We have heard enough about the subject in the past, but this is the first time it has been formally presented and facts brought to bear on the situation in a comprehensive way. It is pleasant then to record that the book is written in a fair spirit, and no extravagant claims are made for the movies as an educational instrument. On the contrary. the authors are temperate in their statements and marshal the arguments of those opposed to the introduction of the motion picture into the little red school house as fairly as they do those who favor them. The objectors claim that the pictures will hurt the eyesight, make learning too easy, are expensive and the proper subjects are not available. It strikes me that somewhat the same objections might have been made to the introduction of books into schools when printing was in its infancy. A more formidable objection is that the proper method of teaching by means of motion pictures has not been worked out, tho that might have been said also about the earliest text books. The conservative has always objected to innovations, and I will wager that he wanted the book kept out of the school in exactly the same way as he now wants the movies kept out No one can doubt after reading Motion Pictures in Education that a field lies here, almost unscratched, for the rapid and accurate instruction of children. Who can doubt that geography may be taught with more interest, biology with greater simplicity and physics with finer demonstrations? The pictures must be combined with the text book, and nothing will replace the teacher, but it seems to me that the combination of all three is an ideal one. The question of supply is another matter entirely. It looks as tho a demand would first have to be created before the proper films will be forthcoming. There must be a big market if the commercial companies are to embark in the educational field and there must be quick and cheap methods of distribution if the schools are to use films. Books like Motion Pictures in Education will help bring these conditions about, for they spread knowledge where ignorance was before. IN THE MAGAZINES The Cosmopolitan for September has an interesting article by O. O. McIntyre, called Tin Pan Alley, which relates the method and history of the miuking of song hits In Asia for September will be found a verv informative survey of the Japanese theater, under the title of Stage Favorites in the Art of Old Japan. Be WANTED E Flat Alto Saxophone who can ouble Trumpet. Long || season, good salary. Write or wire quick. Signed THE LANDIS ATTRACTIONS 425 Clinton Building, Columbus, Ohio WARTED GOOD WOMAN OR FEMALE IMPERSONATOR To do Specialties and play Straight in Acts, with best Med. Show on the road. Work all the time. State all you do and salary in first letter. Do not misrepresent. DR. C. KIRO, The Billboard, Kansas City, Mo. year. As to “‘Rain’’, there are no indications that Jeanne Eagels and the play will leave for Chicago for a long time to come. Willard Mack promises to complete a new version of ‘‘Mission Mary’ before many days. A. H. Woods had contracted for this play, which is the work of Ethelbert Hales, but on looking over the script he decided that an experienced playwright like Mack should whip the drama into shape. Syracuse, N. Y., is to have a new theater to replace the one that was destroyed by fire more than a year ago. Robert M. Catts has been commissioned by a group of financiers from that city to erect a new legitimate playhouse, said to involve an investment of about $3,000,009. “Fires of Spring’, which Lawrence Weber tried out last spring with Josephine Victor, is to be revived this season by the author, Robert McLaughlin, who, incidentally, is the producer of Booth Tarkington's play, ‘“Tweedies”, at the Frazee Theater, New York. Mise Victor will again play the leading role. When Sam 8H. Garris starts rehearsals of “Tin Gods"', William Anthony McGuire’s new drama, which was tried out during the last two weeks and temporarily shelved, Francine Larrimore will not be seen in the east. Harris is planning to present “Tin Gods’ in New Yerk about the latter part of October. George Broadhurst has two plays to unfold thie season, of neither of which is he the author. Mrs. Lillian Trimble Bradley, his general stage director, will stage these prodnetions in the fall. Broadhurst, facidentally, will shortly present “‘Come Seven"’’ in Londen This black-face comedy, by Octavus Cohen, was seen in New York several seasons ago at the Broadburst Theater. With three plars successfully launched if Chicago the Selwyns are now -prepared to take up Somerset Maugham's latest play, “The Camel's Back"’’, as their next offering. Arch Selwyn remained in Chicago to witness the opening of Frederick Lonsdale’s “Spring (leaning’, as he did in the case of ‘The Fool’’ and “The Dancing Honeymoon’, the Selwyn musical comedy. A second company of “Give and Take*’, with Barney Ware and Nathaniel Sack in the leading roles, will open a tonr of the road at Pittsfield, Mass., on September 24 Max Marcin, Inc., have booked their production of Aaron Hoffman's m for a season in the New England and Middle Atlantic States. Others included in the company are: Vivian Hickerson, Howard Chenry, H. ©. Hodges, J. Woodford Ray and Jose Yovin. Richard G. Herndon has tendered the use of the Belmont Theater to John Cromwell for the New York presentation of the latter's production of ‘“‘Tarnish’’. This Gilbert Emery drama was tried out early in the eummer in Newport, R. I, with Fania Marinoff and Tom Powers in the leading roles. In addition to Ann Harding, the pair will again be seen in the cast” Herndon’s attraction of “‘You and I", the Philip Barry prize play, that played in New York last season, in the meantime has been ecnuecessfully launched at the Playhouse in Chiesgo, with H. B. Warner and Lacile Watson continuing in their respective parts. It is by W. G. Blaikie Murdoch and is splendidly illustrated LOVE-ROGUE, by Tirso de Molino, translated by Harry Kemp. Published by Lieber & Lewis, 19 Barrow street, New York City. $1.75 MOTION PICTURES IN EDUCATION, by Don Carlos Ellis and Laura Thornborongh. Published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 426 West Broadway, New York City. $2.50,