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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 1906)
46 TITE SUNDAY OREGOXIAN. PORTLAND, OCTOBER 21, 1906. , fa,- -. ;rjfeip. M?nly a Few Distinct Successes V feW , - V, . yMiC 2fee in the Outward " H X 'V 7 ; - 4:!u V f " w if-'1'--! If V,. UPr-:- r;.Jt:'jy - i tii'- - . fcvj'.'. 7'- :y I ? f -V- 7.';-. -UT .7'; r -1 rf.r" - 4 voBfCS'zr Fs--k J"1" v I 1 - A I 1 - ,V ' I TME PR1AICE6.5 PY A. If. BALIiARD. NEW YORK, Oct. 15. (Start Corre spondence of The Sunday Ore gonian.) Come with me in your mind's eye to the theaters of New York. Shall I paint the picture? It cannot be painted in words. I can give you an idea of the color, the at mosphere, the warmth, the wealth of display, the outward parade of magnifi cent sham. I can note the prominent furores over popular entertainments and Indicate the reasons, and I can narrate the story of the universal hubhuh. But the meaning of it all the underlying purpose, the iroal toward which all Is tending Is difficult to perceive and Im possible to express. The season Is now fairly beun. Openings follow openings fast and furious. I attended eight "shows' last week, and am In the midst of going to eight more the present waek. So it has been since my arrival here, and so it will continue to be until the list has been completed. And by that time there will be abundant new material to hurry me up In going over the scintillating phan tasmagoria again. There has been an unusual amount of activity on the part of all producers of theatrical events, and the race for pop- . ular favor is under full way. The run ning Is swift. The spirit of emulation Is Intense. The people with omnivorous amusement proclivities are overwhelm ing in numbers. The market will ab sorb any amount of good material. Yet the bulk of the offerings thus far have been below a high standard. The ma jority of pieces put on have been practi cal failures. Therefore the few successes seem greater than they would if the general average had been better. Several attrac tions have been about passable and have enjoyed a fair degree of patronage, but the largest number of successes, which are themselves the best successes also, have been prepared by Charlee Dilling ham and his forces. A Perfect Comic Opera. Before Frltzi 9chcff finished her splen did run m "Mile. Modiste" at the Knick erbocker, and then went on the road (don't overlook that exquisite little mas terpiece of a comic opera when you get the chance to hear It) It was in the air that Montgomery and Stone in the now musical comedy, "The Red Mill," also under Dillingham's management, would te the hummer of the hour. Well, that opened at the Knickerbocker the other week, and It will run on indefinitely. David Montgomery and Fred Stone are the Inimitable and well-remembered "tin man" and "woodman" of the famous "Wiiard of Oz." "The Red Mill" Is the very quintessence of all that Is latest and bust In musical comedy and burlesque combined. Fred Stone's abounding vitality and joy of liv ing permeate his work. His loose-joint dancing and his bubbling fun, the quick and bristling lines that are put into his mouth by Henry Mossom, who wrote the lyrics of the piece, the lovely oir of deviltry, the knightly humor, the up-to-the-minute dash, the perfect taste, the beautiful 6tagt settings, the quaint Dutch costuming, the big, finished, wondorfully drllled company, the ylphllke dancing and capering of Bthel Johnson, who played and sang "Tina." the barmaid (soubrette role), the really good music tl haven't heard anything in the bouffo line Tetter since Offenbach), if indeed it is reminiscent at certain places all go to make up what I should call a perfect en tertainment In so far as musical comedy, can go. It is sweet and tuneful and muaiclanly as to music. It is clean and excessively sprightly as to dialogue and story. It is graceful and beautiful in ac tion, coloring and stage accessories. It is full of engaging character bits, affording a phenomenal cast ample op portunities for the display of their best efforts. The dancing and the en sembles are dreams. It deserves all the praise that a theatrically weary brain can. utter. It will cheer up any sane being and please any person who has ears or eyes. Thus does Charles Dillingham with one theater In New York. And his other stars and enterprises are quite In the favorable limelight, on the road BCOCsAR' and in other cities. Many of them will reach Portland during the year. Therefore it Is worth while now to gain some knowledge of them In a bunch. I am giving you straight tips on the shows and you may Judge for yourself whether you want to attend them when they come to Portland or when you visit New York and they are running there. I met Mr. Felden heimer, the Portland Jeweler, on the street yesterday and he agreed with me as to Dillingham's "attractions." Among Dillingham's nine or ten star companies are some of the best known and most talented artists on the stage in various branches of the ntriral and musical art.' The magni tude of his undertaking as A whole, the organization which conducts his work, the mentality that completes the schedule, the necessary Judgment required, the knowledge of the pub lic's wants, the brilliance of the stage amusement achieved, the minutiae of technical skill and celerity of business and mechanical execution, all of which can be. seen and understood by watch ing his New York offices, scanning the record of his results and inspecting his stage presentations, will afford an Instructive lesson in the history of the modern stage and drama. Taste for Light Opera. His activities illustrate anew the gen eral tendency of the public taste. The character of the shows always tell the predominating trend of the public taste. They lean for the most part to musical comedy, with the heightened effect of special stars and their personalities, al ways with the reservation that what has been known as musical comedy is be ing supplanted by real comic opera. That Is to say, that although the public still wants graceful dancing, the bright col ors of a pretty picture and sweet music, and will gladly drink in the quips of the hour, the tricks of language, the pungent lines that hit off foibles of the day, and will also relish the antics of singularly and eccentrically talented men and wo men who catch the special popular eye, there must now be a story and a plot and a ralson d'etre for the opera. There must be more than a patch-quilt of music to charm the ear. Nearly every one who frequents the theater knows In at least a sub-conscious way nearly all the chief airs and the underlying themes of the bulk of the musical com edies that have had so long a vogue in America. Last year several of the mu sical comedies put on the road were simply echoes of the good ones that had been given the mark of approval in former seasons. Now It is undeniable that the public has not tired of this musical thing yet. But it wants and demands something with a reasonably artistic fabric In its foundation. This result has been attained signally In "The Red Mill." Henry Blossom has written some bully lyrics In it. They are not quite Gllbertlan in their per fections, . but they are quick, to the point, startllngly new, quaint, bright, stunning. Victor Herbert, who wrote the music, on his part has put up one of the most tuneful and fascinating con catenation of melodies and itchy foot-in-splrcrs that has been heard on Broadway for moons and moons. The opera Includes se-eral ready whistlers, which even now reverberate up and down the Great White way daily and nightly from the lips of the conglomerate throng, and, barring & little cribbing as to basic themes, the marches and the ensembles in the piece are un equivocally bewitching. The cast is probably the very best that could be procured. There Is absolutely nothing to be condemned In it. Cap the whole thing with the wonderful charm and captivating comicalities of the twin stars of the show, Montgomery and Stone, and you have what will win a fortune for Mr. Dillingham. Bunco Doesn't Go. I cite this as a specimen of what a good piece, a good cast and a good the ater will do in this city. It Is a sure thing. If a manager wants to attain such a re sult he must not Indulge In any bunco at all. In this Instance there is no bun co. In so far as other managements have permitted any element of their pro ductions to admit bunco, they fail. They can let down in any branch the piece, the cast, or the staging when they put the show on the road, and still bluff the thing through to success. But they must play square here on Broadway, or they do not get the publlo in sufficient t i r 7 V ' t?zsizjl numbers to justify the matter being con sidered a success. Any one of the big managers could ac complish this fine success any season if they stuck to their Intention to select the best of everything. The great dif ficulty they have is getting a play or getting good work ont of a few over worked composers of light music. There are plenty of players and singera to be had by snapping your fingers, or beck oning. In fact, there are enough en gageable people every day hanging around the big managers' offices to sink ten ocean-going ships. If I had a rela tive who contemplated coming to New York to go on the stage, I should feel like congratulating her if I heard that she had succeeded in obtaining a posi tion out to service as a housemaid. In the case of the actor and tb.e actress who come here seeking engage ments, many call, but few are chosen. There are many thousands who have won their spurs, and trade on their names as long as they can as long as their names will draw the public. There Is a large over-supply of unmistakably talented young people who should have first choice until the requirements of the stage labor market Is supplied. But this Just selection is not by any means fol lowed. It Is by many kinds of favor, other than actual merit, that parts are assigned. I should say that artistic merit is the least of the reasons that usually secure an engagement. It often enters Into the transaction as a sub sidiary consideration, and that is the most that can be said of it. Pathetic Poverty. Now what becomes of the thousands upon thousands of. hold-overs and left overs and misfits and poor deluded mor tals who fall to get work? They consti tute a tragedy that might occupy Shake speare's hand. The flotsam and jetsam of the stage that loiters on the Rlalto and knocks at the doors of the managers' knocks at. uie uoor. i w e j! J offices from day to tjay, asking the dls--4 mal question repeatedly and repeatedly. "Engaging any people today?" to receive again and again the answer. "No." or "Come around next Tuesday,", would break a heart of adamant. In the strange and melancholy crowd are to be seen often the shining light of the minute who catch on In various ways. A hopeful face may be encountered, a sparkling eye of determination may gleam, by the side of some hopeless wreck who radiates failure in each line of countenance. Bales of bleached hay dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, painted masses of wrinkled skin decked out with glowing clothes and high-heeled boots flash in and flash out of the offices artd up and down the street to prate of engagements that they have had and of plans they have and the Lord knows what they are actually doing. Later In the Autumn, when the cold winds blow and the snows come, you could do five thousand favors a day in that Rialto district by buying and present ing to the stage crowd 5000 ham sand wiches and 5000 cups of coffee on any clear cold noonday of the frosty Winter season. ' Yet with destitution staring them all in the face staring at. least eighty per centum of those who come here to find work (It Is conservatively estimated tha less than 20 per cent of the whole obtain employment) even the least prosperous of them, and the ones who are worst equip ped of all to get along here will answer your suggestion about going elsewhere by the regulation formula, "Oh, but that's so far away from Broadway." They are worse than gold miners and prospectors. They have the bug lire- I f ' I I Dillingham's Plans. " n ": . 'A I 7:7 -7' '; ' trieveably. They are hopeless. They want to do or die here get a chance on a Broadway stage, or die in the attempt. Some of them get the chance. Some of Remarkable Feats of Indian Fakers Of Course, All Are Illusions, Yet They Are None the Less Effective on the Astonished Beholders. ) Pearson's Weekly. THE Indian fakir Is the world's most wonderful Illusionist, It is easy to declare his feats are all humbug; it is easy to laugh at persons who, having seen his performances, re- gard iiim with awe and wonderment; yet it is a fact that no European juggler, illusionist, scientist or other person has successfully performed any of the Important feats accomplished by Indian fakirs. This article does not at tempt to show how the tricks are done. It merely gives the opinion of those best acquainted with the subject ex perts in occultism and hypnotism. Understand, in the first place, that everything in a fakir's' performance is lllusionary. Any attempt to photo graph it results in failure. The plate reveals nothing. Tou are simply made to see things which do not exist. And what things! This Is one trick which yon can see being performed in moments later up goes the fakir, until he, too. is lost to view. Suddenly from the sky you see and hear sec tions of the boy's body fall and strike the ground with a dull thud. Then the fakir reappears, descending the rope, first as a mere speck in the heavens, but gradually becoming larg er as he nears the ground. The fakir gathers the boy's head and limbs and body, sticks them together and behold the boy, all smiles and activity, runs once round the fakir, and then disap pears as mysteriously as he came. This, the favorite feat . of Indian fakirs, has been witnessed scores of times by officers and other Europeans whose word is indisputable. The of ficers of a British warship, having sev eral civil officials aboard, vouch for the India In many cities on the days of 01 them die in the attempt. Most of the attractive girls soon undergo a psycholo gical deterioration that renders them im pervious to the ignominy of self-sur general festivities. Round a fakir, a wiry little man, whose clothing con sists only of a loin cloth, are assembled a vast audience. The little fellow in the center gives a shrill whistle and throws up into the air what appears to be a rope. You wait for the rope to fail, but It doesn't. It straightens Itself out and looks Just as if it were hanging from the sky. The fakir claps his hands and gives vent to another whistle. Ap parently out of nowhere, for the crowd Is quite 15 feet from the fakir, a boy appears, clothed in the manner of his master. The fakir picks up the boy and flings him into the air, toward the dangling rope. ' Boy's Body Falls in Pieces. You hold your breath, while the boy clutches hold of the rope and shins up it, monkey fashion, till he disappears from sight in ftie clear sky. A few following particulars. Their ship had come to a halt in an East Indian port after a Journey ox many thousand miles, when the fakir made his ap pearance, swimming through the surf and scrambling to the deck by the anchor chains. Thus he had no con federate nor any means of assistance aboard. First he took from the hand of an officer the half of a eocoanut shell, from which when held aloft he caused twelve pallfuls of water to flow on the deck. A large earthenware dish was next borrowed from the pantry. The fakir poured Into it a gallon of water and held it on his outstretched left hand, placing the other hand on his fore head. As the crowd of officers and men stood watching in wonderment tho dish began to shrink in size until it entirely disappeared. They still stared as a brown object, like a grain of sand, render. Then they get the chance. A very few heroines succeed. Most of the heroines are never heard from. Mr. Dillingham alms to have at least one of his companies playing in New York the year 'round accomplishing this by routing them in here succeeding one another. Thus Blanch -Ring in "Dolly Dollars," by Victor Herbert and Harry B. Smith, now touring, will be here about the holi days. Kyrle Bel lew, in "Brigadier Gen ard," by Sir Conan Doyle, reaches Chi cago the present month, and afterwards will be here. Paula Edwards, in "The Princess Beggar." by Edward Paulton, and Alfred Robyn (the composer), will get to New York, just after the holi days. Then the is Mrs. Leslie Carter, whom Dillingham has signed for a term of years, and will reap the benefit of David Belasco's stupendous advertising of this notorious woman, and phenomenal exploiter of emotional stress. Montgom ery and Stone, absolutely unique in their comic personalities, are here now, as I have told you. Frltzi Sfeheff is visiting the larger cities of the East with "Mile. Modiste," and then will go to England with the same production. She opens in "Modiste" at the Aldwych Theater, Lon don. After Madame Scheff's opening, the Intrepid manager clans to send all his stars over. He intends to have Bellew, Scheff and Montgomery and Stone in Lon don at the same time. That is what will gradually grew larger and larger and assumed its normal dimensions and was found not to have spilled a drof of the water poured into it. Another performance of this same fakir was still more amazing. On first reaching the deck after leaving the water he had untied a large red cloth from the back of his neck, where It had efcvlously been stowed to keep It dry. This he passed round the company for Inspection. It was merely an ordinary cloth, of coarse tex ture. Spreading It flat upon the deck, the fakir walked around it several times, muttering In his throat and occasionally turning his eyes upward. All eyes were glued to the cloth, under which some thing was apparently growing In size. Suddenly out hopped a grinning and chattering monkey, which danced all round the deck; it was followed a minute later by an ugly and venomous-looking cobra, wriggling away from the cloth to the feet of the astounded beholders. Once again something far larger than the oth ers began .to stir beneath the cloth of mystery. Soon a girl of about 14 years of age emerged and stood smiling at all around her. While those tsturdy Jack Tars stood rubbing their eyes and pinch ing themselves to make sure that it was not a dream the fakir clapped his hands and monkey, cobra and girl vanished into the air. Then quickly folding up the cloth into a bundle and without sollctlng money from officers or crew the fakir leaped into the sea, swimming away with easy and graceful strokes. As an explanation of these marvelous feats it Is generally accepted that Indian fakirs, by long sojourns and meditation alone in the Jungle and by hereditary or some secret power, are enabled by merely forming pictures in their minds to produce illusions in the minds of those persons who crowd about them expecting to see some wonderful feat. The pictures the fakirs conjure up they mentally Impress upon the minds of their spectators. It is different from hypnotism in that not one person In 100 or 1000, willing or unwilling, become the victims of the fa kirs. The colJectlve hallucinations, as ex perts term it, is induced by fakirs by reason of their knowledge of the relations that exist between objective and subject ive states of existence. For Instance, if we conceive In our mind a picture of a thing we have seen before, an object form probably make a strong fresh American impression on Ihe typical Britisher. Bel lew holds to "Gerard" all this season. Montgomery and Stone ditto to "The Red Mill." Mtes Edwards is having written, for her a new comic opera for next sea sn, based on a classlo which Is not yet announced for fear of some one else ap propriating the idea. Frank Daniels, now n his second season with "Sergeant Brue," will come Into this city late in the Autumn, and later In the season will replace "Brue" by "Omar, a new comla opera suggested by the joyous lays of Omar Khayam. Robert Loraine, who had so long a run at the Hudson last season in Shaw's "Man and Superman," is wow traveling and will return here later. These are the present troubles and cares and joys of Charles Dillingham, and he is cutting a rather wWe swath In Gotham as well a throughout America, while at the same moment he Is preparing to invade theatrically the other known countries of civilization. I don't know a more polite or a more energetic or a more intelligent theatrical outfit in this large throbbing center of money-making, deceit and gorgeousnes9. Breaking away from the rest, and pad dling his own canoe, while still remaining advantageously allied with the ruling powers, his virility and business skill are fast bringing him fine results. Such an organization dominated by such a man is a fortunate thing for the theater-going public. He knows and follows the pre cept that bunco don't succeed in the long run. In so far as managers adhere to the truth of this fact, they make themselves stable and permanent factors wherever they may be. The majority, sad to say, devote most of their energies to rigging up new kinds of bunco. of that thing comes into existence within our owh mind and is composed of the substance of our own mind. If by continued practice we gain suf ficient power to hold on to that image and prevent its being driven away by other thoughts It will become compara tively dense and be projected upon the mental sphere of others, so that they may actually believe they see that which real ly exists only as an image within our own mind. On the other hand, if we can not hold on to that one thought that mental pic ture and control It at will we can not produce its reflection upon the minds of others. Europeans fall to reproduce the feats of fakirs through weakness of con. centratlon and of control of their own thoughts which faculties are extraordi nary strong even In the average Hindu. Just Once In Awhile. Leslie's Weekly. Just once In a while If we'd think to convey To those who walk with us llfe'e devious way. In glances or worde, half the Joys that abide la our hearts because loved ones are close by our side; If we'd think but to garb in words' tendereet dress A phrase that were sweet a a mother's oarese, Care's road would be shortened by many a mile; If we'd think to be thankful Just once in a while. l Just once in a while if we'd lay down our load Of worry and work by the side of the road. And a bit oe the love that we're feeling ex pend - On eieter or brother, on parent or friend. In words that would tell them their nearness makes Hg-ht The path which alone we would grope through the night; How oft we'd be blessed with an answering smile, If we'd think to be thoughtful Just once in a while. Just once In a while If a hand were but pressed, A shoulder but patted, a word but addressed That would thankfulness speak to the ones) by our side. Would not Joy spur the feet to a magical stride Am they wended their way down life's main traveled road T Would not griefs slip away and thus lighten the load? For ourselves and for others we'd shorten) each mite. If we'd think to be thankful Just once In m while.