Show The Spoilers Makes Tremendous Hit In New York BY FRANKLIN FES FAES I New York March 15 Tainted money Is I the subject of three plays pl ys put forth here this week In the case of The Spoilers the theme exactly stated is a agreed agreed agreed greed for tor gold not coined into money mone but as yet ore in an Alaskan mine One of the recent fictional writings of fact was Rex Beachs story of govern governmental governmental governmental mental wrongs in our territory of Alas Alaska ka how the first courts there were utilized to take mines away from their owners and turn them over to author authorized auth authorized r looters how vigilantes thereupon displaced the formal processes of ad adjudication adjudication j and how a young oung man and anda a young oung woman mutual lovers had their hearts taught caught and crushed be between between tween the opposed forces I remember to have hae read that Mr 11 Beech evolved the book from his own personal ob observation so far as Its Us exposure of po political political political dishonor was concerned after atter returning from Alaska where he had lost a mine to the spoilers but book publishers nowadays are like theatrical managers in employing agents to lie He Heto lieto lieto to the newspapers so no one needed to believe that Mr Beach had lost a gold goldmine goldmine goldmine mine In Nome any more m re than that some actress a tre s had been robbed of at a pint of ot diamonds In the Tenderloin How However However However ever Mr Beach stood before a Broad Broadway Broadway way audience wriggling and twisting in the agonies of ot trans transports transports transports ports of ot o delight he look like a 3 aman man tuan who would at least not under the stress of that moment of pleasurable torture k e to tell teU a lie I should say that he lie would have told t ld his real name and till ull 11 his aliases if II asked and confessed to the h of ot a whole grove of cherry trees if iC accused d dHe He said that truth Was as back of the play which he and James McArthur had made out of ot his novel noel So The Tiie Spoilers in the stage version may be accepted as a realistic drama of Amer American AmerIcan American ican life in our northwestern corner Am I right in locating Rex flex Beach as asa asa s sa a resident of Chicago Anyway The Spoilers was first produced there at atthe atthe atthe the Fiasco theatre The di Ii director rector Mr Mapes tells me that The Great the dizzily play which of the whole repertory rep pleased the seasons subscribers most as carrying out the uplifting design of the enterprise best drew in less than thana a hundred dollars of the general pub publics lies money in an entire week and that The Spoilers which the subscribers disliked for being merely an American melodrama came nearer than any an oth other other other er of the productions to commercial prosperity Daniel Frohman the liter literary literary ary and artistic one of or the Frohman brothers has taken up The Spoilers as aR a reasonable theatrical venture given given given en an uncommonly fine outfit to it and bravely offered It Jt In ing Broadway The look of it Is 15 that it will thrive But I dont predicate that jUdgment on the enthusiasm of the audience Author Beachs friends rallied numerously So did those of his collaborator MacAr lacAr MacArthur MacArthur thur Most ost of those in the parquet who were not modish were I dont think that any other play has ever gathered such an audience of or height in foreheads and fashions Ralph Stuart is the actor of Roy Glenister the stalwart fellow who be saying therea theres ther s never a Il law lav of o God or man that rims runs north of fifty three and so believing begins to woo an Alaskan girl tourist brutishly like g hunting quail and I was amused amuse lt to watch the audiences discovery discovery discovery ery of Stuart He had been an idolized leading man nan of a stock company in Lexington avenue also one in Eighth avenue and he had toured t yet et Broadway felt itself critically acute to find in him an accomplished actor He was called out with an enthusiasm that had hild a patronizing manner an I 1 assertiveness to which Ith the actor bowed quite as though ap applause applause was a new and surprising de delight delight light to him instead of being a twice thice aday experience for years Not since ince Hackett thrust and slashed his way to popularity with a sword In The Pris Prisoner Prisoner Prisoner oner of Zenda not even when Bellew wielded a blade for loVe In A Gentle Gentleman Gentleman Gentleman man of ot France had that sort of a aNew aNew aNew New York Tork audience been so so excited by bya bya a stage fight as this one was when Stuart thrashed the villain And that was was but one of many lively incidents transferred from the book to the play I gone wrong If I have im imparted Imparted imparted parted the tho idea that The Spoilers is a melodrama Many plays of that char character character character acter have been aimed west wet and south southwest southwest southwest west but this is the first to point to the far northwest and it hit bit the bulls bullseye bullseye eye at the opening fire In New York with a sharp ding of the bell because it had an emotional soul in its brawny body bod 4 The houses indicated by George Ber Bet Bernard Bernard nard Shaw in giving the mock mO k scrip scriptural scriptural tural title of Widowers Houses HOUs Ho sOs s to the first play pIa he ever wrote Tote nd the twelfth to be performed in this city are ramshackle unsanitary tenements such as London law used to permit rapacious landlords to pen squalid tenants in like pigs In Jn Their owner is a Peck church warden whom Dickens might have made a reformatory exam example example pie but whom Shaw with an over overweening overweening overweening desire to exploit himself wastes castes in a drama of heartless h artless cynic cynicism ism lam This accumulator of tainted money played by Charles elder brother William has a daughter prettily embodied by b Effie Shannon who the luxuries which the money brings with no thought of ot the shame of it She has a lover whom Henry Kohler renders manly of man manner manner ner ncr and who at first breaks the be betrothal betroth betrothal troth 1 because the girl gid wont decline delIne an allowance from her father but when he learns that his own income is doubled by an usurious mortgage on his prospective dis clis disgraceful disgraceful graceful property he foregoes scruples and takes the revenue Herbert Kel Kelcey Kelcey Kelcey cey delineates a thoroughly soulless friend and adviser of Kohler and Fer Per Ferdinand Ferdinand dinand Gottschalk has a part I give gie the actors names to show that there is isan isn an nn n ably expository cast This country has been talking about Rockefellers money so tainted by Its trust sources that perhaps It ought not to be accepted In pious ben benefactions benefactions This city has Just been told fold again that tha Trinity church derives rev revenue r v nue from the ownership of Just such bad houses for bad tenants as Shaw denounces General Booth of the Sal Salvation Salvation Army Anny arrived here re a few days ago to raise rei a fund fona fort fOri a a humanity college collese to train workers for the whole worlds slums sl ms and he says no money is Is too dirty for cli tears to wash clean If U Shaws play were but as convincing as M It Is timely But Bul It is not Permit me a paragraph to convict Shaw of insincerity He Hc wrote the first two acts of Widowers Houses and lowered his second curtain on the high minded declaration of the lover that he marry his sweetheart un unless unlESS less she refused to take any of ot her fa ta fathers fathers the s n wealth Getting no encouragement to go goon on the author aU put the manuscript aside for eight years Then a London manager vho yh had raised some ado with Ghosts was In need of a disputatious play to follow toll ow Shaw completed Widowers Houses to supply what was wanted Instead of keeping his hero steadfast as aa a loather of tainted money mone he made him Join hIS sordid In m a scheme sc me to get more and nastier money mone The authors change of purpose in his work ork Is shown more plainly still in the character of ot a dismissed rent collector a poor old fellow closely resembling during the first and second acts Dick Dickens ens pitiable old in The Cricket on the Hearth and Ferdinand Gottschalk delineates him as as Joseph Jefferson ever did Caleb Plummer but in the next act this old man reappears not cringing in tatters as before but assertive in fine clothes and gaury gaUl jewelry for he has gone Into despicable d on his own account and now he has an abominable real estate scheme In which he is joined by his former employer and the hitherto honorably inclined lover So the play ends without one of its indi individuals individuals on the side of or morality In Shaws other drama of the week Mrs Warrens Profession the taint tainted tainted tainted ed money comes from houses vile lIe with vice The New York police stopped this play last year a court now no lets it go goon goon on and we have proof positive public hanker for a nauseous dish Once nace cooled and then warmed over oer For the first New York representation with Un a t promise of official Interference the sidewalk price for a seat went up to 25 FOr F r the second when there thereas was as to be no hindrance the venders ran the rate ate down to a dollar for a ticket that had cost them two Yet that talented Shawnee and actress Mary Shaw was to be the Mrs Shaw as before and whatever appetite had been whetted for the mess remained ungratified An uncertain business that of ot the showman Perhaps in the meanwhile the published play had been read generally and had thus become a astory astory astory story whose staleness stank Here as asin asIn asIn in Widowers Houses there Is a daughter for a lover to reject on ac account account account count of ot her parents method of making money and again the author throws away aay an opportunity to derive derie a good lesson leson from a bad theme but instead of that he makes the young oung fellow nothing but selfish the girl cold In her purIty and the unashamed Mrs Irs Warren warmly emotional in her plea for sexual depravity as a permissible permissible permissible sible profession for women God help the world she says at the tag when everybody every ody tries to do right Three of Joseph Jeffersons sons Thomas Joseph and William went Into their fathers profession beginning mall in his company and preparing to take up his roles when he should lay them down Thomas chose Rip Van Winkle Tinkle practiced It a little before his fathers death and undertook a tour with it afterward Bob Acres was al allotted allotted to William That left no famous Jefferson role for Joseph JO eph Jefferson the second but he was to have Sir Lucius and he played it a few times when the father presented The Rivals ls and nd Joseph Josph started start d doutt outcast Y r g b cI d stopped before long aVald S ld Thomas Thom s with Rip Even if Thomas and William bad had possessed their fathers ability to tobe be exquisitely humorous with wit the two rogues of Irving and Sheridan It is doubtful if it the public would have be believed belIeve believed lIeve 1 it IL So it is ii that Tom Jefferson no more enacts the Catskills village who w exasperated his by mendacity and inebriety escaped from her to carouse with strange revel revelers revelers revelers ers and got so singularly drunk that ho he slept twenty years and William no longer depicts the English rustic who went to London town for a variation of sport and got into a duel But William has shifted himself to a anew anew anew new play which is like Rip Van Win Winkle Winkle Winkle kle to the extent of having a husband who leaves leaven his wife to go o 0 nights with ungodly persons and with William in inthis inthis this his piece pie is his brother Joseph also a son of ot the Dion wh who wrote for Jefferson the actable version of Washington Irvings legend of Rip Van Winkle inkle Good stage material may have been as scarce then as It is now but when found it was cheaper Jef Jet Jefferson Jefferson ferson paid and that was ras all for the play that lasted half a century and yielded a fortune Irving get one one theatrical dollar because dramatic rights in printed matter were not nor was there an In International International copyright law Jaw that had pre prevented prevented prevented vented Irving from plagiarizing the tale from a German original orl But lets rome pome back to date dat Play ing the th Game with which William and the second Joseph Jefferson are striking out from what people regard with Uh hats doffed as the Jeffersonian high comedy standard is the thou thousandth thousandth thousandth Frenchy farce In mockery of marriage The authors are American journalists to be sure Cleveland Mat fett and Hartley Davis and the ho char characters characters characters are Americans active I In n New Yorks Tenderloin Te but there is an Ananias husband with a Sap Sapphira Sapphira Sapphira friend in the everlasting Parisian manner William Jefferson was In Paris once and I infer that he was an observer of life there In its swiftest velocities My inference rests upon a story for which I cant vouch It goes that the young Dung J ster telegraphed home borne for a thousand in haste The father wired back What for tor The son answered For Willie And a money order was ca cabled cabled cabled bled But Willie buy Parisian bad habits with it He e came back and married the delicious little Christie Mc McDonald McDonald McDonald Donald What a charming Meenie she would have made in the last portions of 01 Rip Van WinkLe Winkl And I am told that the father was exceedingly fond of her herBut herBut herBut But a goodenough Meenie was to be hired at 25 a week while Christie could get in singing roles and so soshe soshe soshe she is wintering In the Belle of May Mayfair Mayfair fair while Willie acts a t in tn Playing the Game Gam the conventional young man of conventional farce conventionally Nor does Aubrey AUbre t v her heritage tInge e of graphic deviltry from his no notoriously notoriously audacious tater fattier But there Is a saving saing of the new farce by Joe Jefferson the second to whom fell nel nei the Rip Van Winkle ncr the Bob Acres of Joe Jefferson Jerte lJ the tle first firt At the t edrop drop of the curtain on the th initial act act the knack of Moffett and Hartley to ring any change on the cracked cr ck d chime of marital infidelity is unproven but when the curtain goes up again a man manfrom manfrom from Mississippi arrives sat at the Wal and thereafter the four tour doors of or French farce open and shut to new purposes of fun The American authors have hae infused American spirit into the incidents but their work would be futile if that Mississippian were not acted by a good humorist Beverly Clay Chiy the truly southern gen gentleman gentleman gentleman suh auh being ln caught with a love iove lovely ly iy bogus widow and confronted by her bogus husband skulk k l v and sneak as a stage Frenchman does In Ina ina ina a similar predicament but disarmed the fierce fl avenger in a jiffy dominated the situation situ lon and made the i audience laugh Dont misread me to t say sa that old Joe Jeffersons Rip flip and Bob are equaled by young Joe Jeffersons Beverly Clay I Iam Iam Iam am merely telling that New York Y rk re rejected rejected rejected Rip Van Yan an Winkle from one Jefferson son and heir and The Ri Ill Rivals Rials vals als from a second but accepts Play Playing PlayIng ing lag the t e Game not critically but hi hl hilariously hilariously a third What do you Jou imagine that the dead Jefferson Is thinking If he knows what two of his sons are doing Well I once came upon him as s he was looking through a apall pair pall of Into a box Take a peep he herald said saidI I did so and saw sw an |