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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (July 11, 1920)
PLAYS OF OTHER DAYS "BOOED" BY LONDON AUDIENCES Marion Terry Once the Victim of "Hooligans" of the Galleries Arthur Pinero s Experience How Maurice Barrymore s Leading Lady Was Howled Down With Dispatch Under Rivals' Influence I s ' I'V, " ridiculed and Insulted at first- 4 - " ft iC V- VTr' 1 i1 Yi nlBht perform-nee of Murder-. -Vie , , , tt WJf-. V T Vrvf -'4f -li-i 3a i !' I !iX U - 'xeJti " Uoheme" at the. Royal Court " K"t;-. ,5 J 4 ! !l f' ' A Xt fl Theater In which .he took the part i i. ' . "V " W'.t V ,.f 'f,Vji" ' .'fPi - ' l- .3? ' 1? " -J 1 Maurice Barrrmore's play "Xadje.da" wa booed'' ly a. London audl- - X A. I v 'W -t ""V-2" cnce :mlfy wa Imported In the heroine', role, much to Laurette Taylor, who recently faced a London audience, when "jErollcry hoollean.' ntarted a disturbance. WHATEVER may have been the motive of the disgraceful manifestations that attended the initial performance of Hartley Manners' play, "One Night In Rome," In a London theater by Jliss Laurette Taylor and her company, that popular p.ctress is not the first favorite artist, cither American or native English born, to be subjected to such indig nities. The hostility of the eternal and infernal "hooligan" flourished no more than one first night during the Victorian era, provoked by various causes, ranging from distaste of the play, of performance to a cabl organ ized by professional rivalry or by resentment against the west end manger who had dared to abolish the historic pit and relegate the patrons of cheap and excellent places at the rear of the stalls or orchestra teats to the remote gallery. During 'the eighties there were a number of first performances in Lon don theaters which not even the vogue of favorite actors and actresses of that period could save from the "booing" of blackguards, and of these at least three occasions stand out in the memory as peculiarly flagrant. To show that this lack of chivalry and respect is not always duo to in sular prejudice, one has only to re? call the first night of the Royal Court theater, then under the man agement of the well-known London actors, John Clayton and Arthur Cecil, of a version of Murger's "Vie de Boheme," by Dion Boucicault, en titled "Mimi," which had already been acted in New York at Wallack's theater with as much success as a rather mature and artificial perform ance of the fragile heroine would allow. This perennial subject was revived on Broadway in later years at the Empire theater in the form of "Bohemia;" arranged by Clyde Fitch, and now flourishes, thanks to Puc cini's music, in operatic form as "Boheme." The Gallic sentimentality of the play may not have appealed to the pitltes at the Court theater, Sloane Square. Certainly they could have found no reason to quarrel with the acting. Miss Marion Terry, one of the accomplished sisters of .the more famous Ellen of that gifted family, was an ideal representative of the heroine. Mrs. Bernard Beere, essen tially a "London actress," afterward destined to rather distinguish herself at the Haymarket theater as Fedora in Sardou's great play, in which Sarah Bernhardt was none the less inimitable because of rare gifts and training instinct with the sacred fire, acted the worldly woman of Bouci- caulfs version with ease and dis tinction, and apart from John Clayton one of the Bohemians the hero was the accomplished Kyrle Bellew, then in his prime; and. yet the pathetic last act was drowned in euch tumult of coarse vituperation that the play ended in disaster. Accustomed to the courteous, be cause silent, disapprobation of our American audiences when a play or performance failed to' prease (the only exception being the merrymak ing that attended the apparitions of the grotesque self-styled Count Johannes at the academy of music and the Fourteenth street theater in his unconscious burlesque of Hamlet, punctuated by such facetious remarks frcm the gallery gods as. "It is rain ing, George'.", or by the admonitions ot a rival elocutionist in the orchestra eoats, "Emphasize! Ejaculate! Enun ciate!") my blood boiled at the rowdyism that assailed Murger dead Boucicault living and the admirable English artists concerned in the per f ormance. The resentment of the occupants of etalls, balcony and boxes and the decent men and women in the pi went as nothing against the howling hooligans of the minority. Chivalry indeed seemed dead when Marion Terry, trembling in every limb, essayed to finish Mimi's touch ing death scene. "Where were the police?" I thought. "Why didn't every mother's son rise in wratn ana give battle to these unmanly rowdies?" Clayton and the admirable actor who had won fame as the hero of "All For Her" and in Herman Meri vale's other fine play of "Forget Me Not," now revived under another title in New York, re-entered, bearing the muff poor Mimi craved and which was intended to warm her hands in h-.r last moments. At the sight of jf- ' !- J Olsn Nether.ole wn -well received here in play London booed. tl-K7fOTy- : ' .rv . -;r. G&fVyi&m Ada Rchan found. American audience. kinder to the play. the muff the rowdies set up a roar nd all was indeed over "but the shouting." The critics, Clement Scott nd kind, wise Joseph Knight, the all London of art and literature there to appreciate and applaud, were powerless against the mob. 'Who would be an actress?" said a great lady in the stalls as she stood with tear-dimmed eyes looking at Marion Terry, often applauded, but on this occasion, for no reason, ridi culed and Insulted. It was on another first night, at the Adelphia theater in the Strand, when a play faiied to please, that the already established playwright, now Sir Arthur Pinero, whose wife, Myra Holme (who had charmed in "The Colonel," presented at the Prince of Wales theater with Charles Coghlan as the hero), was subjected to Jeering, atose in the stalls and declared to those near him he could no longer endure the sight of his wife agonized before the footlights. Despite her talent; she retired from the stage. But It was on the occasion of the London production .of Maurice Barry- more's play of "Nadjezda," written for and successfully produced by Madam Modjeska in this country a thrilling drama, which the author declared fur nished Sardou with suggestions for 'La Tosca," afterward .written for Sarah Bernhardt by the master French dramatist that the hooligans of the gallery let themselves go with a vengeance. That ghastly night was rendered all the more painful to the writer because of his close friendship for the author and his witty and accomplished wife, Georgie Drew Bar- rymore, the parents of Ethel, Lionel and John Barrymore of today, as well as long acquaintance with Miss Emily Rigl, our favorite American-by-adoption actress, who had come over to assume the character of the heroine created by Modjeska. There was, of course, only one Helena Modjeska, and she had already duplicated her suc cess in this country pn the London stage, appearing in her exquisite con ception of Marguerite Ganthier in the English version of "Camille." known as "Heartsease," at that time consid ered such a daring subject in our lan guage in Victorian London that it was rigidly censored. The careful Knglish mother who took her rosebud daugh ter to Covent Garden to hear Adelina Patti or Christine Nilsson in "La Trlaviata" in inscrutable Italian is supposed to have censored the plot for the innocent child as follows: "In the first act a young gentleman meets a young lady at a ball. She has a cold. In the second act he calls to inquire how her cold is. In the third act the cold grows worse and the poor girl dies." Other days, other ways! Having followed "Heartsease" with "Mary Stuart" and Wills' play of "Juana," Modjeska subsequently appeared at the Haymarket theater as Odette in Sardou's play of that name, acted in this country by Ada Rehan at Daly's theater and by Clara Morris else where. Great as her success in Barrymore's "Nadjezda" had been in this country, complications arose that interfered with Modjeska introducing it to the London public, and Barrymore, who was well established as an actor at the Haymarket theater, had the idea of sending for Miss Emily Rigll This was an error of judgment, not because she was not a well-equipped actress, but because he ought not to have risked both a new play and an artiste new to London at the same time. Al though an Englishman, he had not quite grasped the wall of rivalry pre sented by the established London "leading ladies" and the!r cohorts. They were distinctly not inclined to extend the glad hand to a possible rival, born in Austria and consecrated by America. Moreover, the English language THE SUNDAY OREGOXIAJf, PORTLAND, spoken with an accent is not popular in London, and it took all of Modjes ka's talents to overcome that preju dice in "Mary Stuart." She was too well advised to essay a Shakespearean character, despite her rare skill in the realms of the Bard of Avon and Ellen Terry. The actresses who confronted Emily Rigl that trying night at the Hay market were not of the highest order. Had they been of the class of Mrs. Kendall, who, as Boucicault once said, could act anything, or Sarah Bern hardt, who put the English imitator as Fedora in her pocket the night when the audience literally rose at her as she revealed all the possibil ties of the character at the Gaiety theater, they would not have arrayed themselves like graven images In the stalls of the Haymarket to watch Miss Rlgl's every movement as Nadjezda like kitchen cats posing as Angoras. As the ever-sparkling Georgie Bar rymore observed, even in defeat they had "brought pitchers of ice water with them to douse the newcomers," and yet ice water in the literal'sense was unknown in London in the '80s. This glacial atmosphere in the or chestra stalls was too near the stage not directly to affect the performance. The attitude of the disengaged lead ing ladies of London said as plainly as could have words, "Why does Bar rymore Import this American actress when I am here, able, ready and will ing to create the character of Nad jezda on the London stage?" The same second-rate actresses, eclipsed by Ellen Terry and Madge Kendal, overshadowed by the fame of the departed Adelaide Neilson, owing their opportunities to intrigues and personal influence brought to bear on managers by noble patrons and "angels," saw in Emily Rlgl's debut another possibly successful rival; they were determined to freeze her, and they did it with neatness .and dis patch. The triumphs of Mary Anderson at the Lyceum theater were still rel atively recent. She owed her vogue, it was true, rather to rare natural gifts than to perfected art. to her realization of the Greek goddess type revealed, as Parthenia in "Ingomar' rather than the heights attained as Juliet by Adelaide Lee Neilson in her ideal performance and by Ellen Terry, ai ine same time a sonorous voice. vaiuaoie as Hermlone, and a girlish charm that enabled her to "double- that stately character with Perdita had conquered the London public. Our Mary was no longer the green girl from old Kentucky who had emerged as Pauline in "The Lady of Lyons" at the Fifth Avenue theater, but a student who had observed and profited by association with such coterie as that in which the Alma Tademas held sway. She could afford to Ignore the cyn ical sneer of the witty Labouchere in "Truth." "As for me, I would rather see a bad girl who can act Juliet than a good girl who cannot." ine same mings in effect were leveled at Mrs. Kendal's domestic vir tues as the typical British matron, although in her case only an idiot would have ventured to dispute her attainments as an artiste. Yet on the occasion of the first performance of a version of a Sardou play at the St. James' theater, then managed by her husband and John Hare, a "smart" party in a stage box so disturbed her principal scene by audible, com ments that during the entr'acte they were requested to either cease an- -PT A;"-iVW wv ) ' V tQ 4?r- ? R " i ' 'f 'Vt, ' Mym Holme, wife of Sir Arthur Hlnero. once jeered at the Adclphla Theater I S , rfv , "" V - Strand. nlf-?; ' ." f, ' v , I I "h had evidently been "dining out," iVv " a v J N v I I I not wisely, but too well as a matter Sir Arthur Pinero once denounced a London audience In hi. early career when at. wife was me noylng the artistes or leave the thea ter. It is true that they were not shown the door, as on the occasion when a New York chatterbox forced that un pleasant duty on Madame Nazimova's manager rather than have the tem peramental Alia persist in refusing to finish a performance at a Wash ington theater if the loud-spoken lady remained. The contract between Emily Rigl's debut as an actress under Augustin Daly-s management at the Fifth Avenue theater and that her first appearances in London was Indeed acute. On the former occasion the graceful Austrian, who had attained celebrity as a danseuse, was cordial ly greeted and indeed in the house of her friends. On the latter she was placed In pillory by stranger ene mies. The effect of this hostility was to paralyze her resources and cause her to lapse into a more pronounced foreign accent than had ever been the case In friendly America. "Nad jezda." however, was less well stage managed than at the Star theater In New York, In spite of the presence of the author-actor. The glare of light in the scene where the heroine kills the old libertine at supper, an episode on which Barrymore largely based his claim of plagiarism against Sardou in "La Tosca," was ill-advised, as that act should take place in shad ows illuminated only by candles. A storm of derision broke forth from the gallery ov the antagonis tic lower parts of the house r.s this act proceeded, and before its conclu sion the unnerved actress had com pletely broken' down. A desperate call for the author disclosed Emily Rigl convulsed with sobs, with head bowed before the insensate storm of ridicule. "Is this the way they treat women on the London stage when they fail to please or the play goes wrong? Me for home," said a young American actress, who, however, remained to charm at the Criterion theater. In this case a cabal against the imported actress, not the play, ruined the performance. There was nothing the matter with "Nadjezda." nor was there anything the matter with Emily Rigl, except, alas! the stage fright into, which her sensitive nature had been plunged by the hostility of the audience. Driven into hysteria and literally carried from the theater, she was the victim of cruel women and still more brutal men. The failure of "Nadjezda" drove Barrymore back to America, although he could have remained in London. The manifestation against the ex JULY 11, 1920 victim of rowdTl.m. pensively arrayed Mme. Sorel at the Comedie Francaise recently is nothing compared to the scene at the old Opera Comique on the night when poor little Marie Van Zandt was LANDLORD BEATEN BY GOING BACK TO PRIMITIVE LIVING Woman in Tent Enjoys First Holiday for Years English Town Council Rents Cells in Jail at Moderate Rates. HEN" Johan Handel, peasant or Westroosbeke, Flanders, re turned with his family of five to the shell-pocked and war-torn countryside from which they were forced by the German invasion to flee in 1914, they were in a greater pre dicament as regards shelter than many American tenants of apartment houses in some of our big cities would like to see their landlords involved. But Johan and his family solved the trouble by moving into a concrete pillbox that had been one of the chief defenses of Fritz In the fighting for Menin ridges. Within the battered structure, which stands today on a high point from which a view of the battlefields for miles may be ob tained, the Handel family sits on top of the world and smiles when they think of landlords and high rents. The case of Johan Handel is typiifed in practically every part of theworld. The war on profiteering landlords is not confined only to the large cities of the United States. Europe, Asia, Africa and South America are all con fronting the same difficult housing problems as are the people in this country. The game of outwitting the landlord is one that at present is be ing Indulged in all over the world. And because the problem is. one that has left its imprint the world over many Ingenious and curious places of abode, ranging down to the primitive stone dwelling of a pre-historic age have become human habitations re cently. City of Tent. Established. On the edge of Newark, N. J., not long ago. there was established a tent city which had been conceived by Mayor C. P. Glllen as about the best way to house the families who were this spring crowded out of tenements and apartments by the scarcity of houses. Away from the hubbub and noise of thickly packed humanity under canvas roofs in the quiet of suburban neighborhoods those who hooted when it was perceived that she had evidently been "dining out," not wisely, but too well as a matter of fact, had been so indiscreet as to take a little champagne on an empty stomach. Certainly the scene at the Gymnase theater, when a dramatiza tion of Daudet's "Sapho" was pro duced there, was very boisterous in deed, and when Madame Jane Had ing as the heroine threw out the lov er's trunk and told Jean, played by Damala, afterward the husband of the divine Sarah B., that he could follow It. this realistic Infraction of the traditions of "Our Ladies' thea ter," as the Gymnase was known, pro voked a storm of hisses. These were not duplicated in this country when Olga Nethersole savored the story (dedicated by Daudet to his sons when they attained their major ity) with a kiss that on the stage of Paris would have been debarred from a leading theater and confined were unable to find apartments have thus been made contented and happy. In fact, so happy are many of them that they considered the tent city, so suddenly Improvised, in the same category with such resorts as Palm Beach and Monte Carlo, although it . r ,,ave naa no irouDie in soli fact that this is rather a long the housins problem. In low Id! of the imagination, .number of ex-soldiers combined i stre It s the first real vacation I have had in years." said . one woman. "I can find absolutely nothing to worry about. There is no stuffy housework to do. There is no chance of the children getting run over Dy auto mobiles in the streets. It takes' me two minutes to sweep the house and hardly more to get a meal ready. The children do not get dirty, and there are to be shower baths If they do. I can't get over the feeling that our dreams have come true and that my family and I have done what we always threatened to do if times got too had desert the clan of the house dwellers, buy a wagon and a tent and turn gypsies. I have longed, when discouraged, to take to the long road, pitching our tent beside some way side brook under the shadow of great trees, where the light of the camp fire will fall cheerily upon the sleep ing children under the tent flap." The town council of Chemsford, in England, not so long ago got so put out about the excessive rents which were being charged that they did what would ordinarily be regarded as a very queer thing. They took re venge on the rent hogs of that town in a most peculiar manner, which was by putting many of the homeless flat hunters into prison. Sounds strange, does it not, but that's just what they've done. And, strange to say. this scheme has worked to the detri ment of the profiteering house own ers. The prison sentence, nowever, came not as a punishment but as a solution or the housing problem. The village Jail was thrown open to the publio to the merry r.ilais Royal and the Varieties buffoonery, if even allowed there at that period, even in Paris. A kiss on the lips on the French stage wa not introduced till George Ohnet's "Sergo Panino" appeared as the successor of the chaste "Maitre de Furpes." Of course, the days when Marie Seebach excelled in German tragedy plays, ranging from "Mary Stuart" to "Love and Intricue," and Wachtel sang "The Postillion of Lonjumeau" in German are not likely to be dupli cated for a long time to come. In general, with the exception of the French theater, our public is relying on either our own actors or those who are American by adoption. The stage has seldom been so rich in tal ent as of recent years, and our Amer ican stars and our Knglish visitors cultivate the gentle art of reciprocity. Obviously, the riot at "One Night in Rome" on one night in London "touches us not" as a nation. and it proved to be a haven of refuge to disgruntled and browbeaten ten ants. Duplex cells were leased to the respectable but homeless citizens of the community, the only difficulty be ing that no structural alterations were allowed. However, a nice cool cell at a reasonable rental proved more of an attraction than a dilapidat ed arid antiquated dwelling at an ex. orbitant one. The result was that, instead of there being a wild rush of the homeless to break from the prison, there was a wild rush to have the honor of being the occupants. Many foamer members " of the A. K. r. have had no trouble in solving a re cently and set out to defeat the hous ing profiteers by camping'out all the year round. Ther did not mind cold weather, as they had become used to that while striving to make the world safe for democracy. And as long as they went so rir they decided to go further, with the result that they now do all of their own laundry work, save quite a few dollars in this way, and incidentally kill two birds with one stone. Stockholm has hit upon a more ex pedient plan. With a population of about 200.000 at the beginning of the war, Stockholm now has 408,000 in habitants. A month ago there were 1056 applicants for six houses offered for rent. This has led a duly author ized committee to go over the city and find out exactly how many houses and rooms, occupied and unoccupied, there are in Stockholm. The results are- most encouraging for the home less, for Stockholm is planning to "ration" its rooms. In other places they are using other means. Berlin has shunted railway trains on to side tracks and is using them as community sleeping quarters. It has also erected a type of Adrian barracks on Tempelhof field, one of the largest army posts In the world, for temporary relief. In Vienna they double, or treble, up. London has put up portable bungalows in some of the city's open spaces. Iceland is plan ning to build a railroad the first on the island running 20 miles on either side of Reykjavik, "in order to get the people out in the country." This might be a good idea for many other nations to .work: upon.
