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Show - pi Sfikimumd By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN. TEIAT one of the most greatly depreciated literary artists in the United .States is George Ade is a fact to which the nation is gradually very gradually booming privy. It being an ineradicable custom of the co'un- try to view a man ct humor, whatever what-ever the magnitude of his talent. fiO a cross between a circus clown D the one hand and, on the other, a fellow who is wastlne: his God-civen God-civen competence in fllppanev. it follows not unnaturally thai Ade has suffered sorely in the critical estimate esti-mate of hirn and that the crown of merely antic hanswu: st which has been conferred upon him is as paltry and lop-sided an award as the judgment judg-ment of the conferring is unimaginative, unimagina-tive, unseeing and stupid. The truth about Ade Is that he is one of the very few tirst-rate artists that America has produced in the last twenty years; that, beneath his ap-- ap-- parently simple cajoleries and vaude- ville vernacular, there roils a swift V 1 and sure appraisal of America and its people; and that, in the matter of ob-. ob-. prvation. in the matter of wit and imrae sirring into crisp sentences of the iocal viewpoints and philosophies, his r writings rank him alongside the, late Mark Twain as a literary artist in the humorous oils. Critics Are Confused. Never has a writer suffered more than Adr from ignorant critical estimate. esti-mate. The manner of his writing has completely confused the professional profes-sional asses who preach the American Ameri-can esthetic in the world of letters and h;is so brought them to look upon him as a sort of compound of Eddie Koy and the late Ezra Kendal a mountebank, amiable enough, but a mountebank still. These Hazlitts of the forum, who ?on found polysyllables with pertinacity perti-nacity and long-winded dullness with scholarly approach, have foozled Ade as. on the other side, they have foozled the true appraisals of such ntediocr-3 craftsmen as Hamlin Garland Gar-land and Ernest Poole and the rest of the deities of the New York Times Hook Supplement. But time is setting set-ting its worms to work upon their t parchments and the holes are getting many and these holes are daily becoming be-coming mi -re and more plainly vis- ihlft to the maps of their readers. And through the holes the considerable genius of Ad is poking out its head i further and further. v ' Matter of Regret. That this comedian de luxe should , have abandoned the American theater thea-ter when he did and when it stood most in need of his talents is a matter mat-ter for large regret. It was Ade, probably more j,hnn any other man, to whom the theater looked to carry on the flag of Charles Hoyt. "The r ' " Colleee Widow" and "The County rhairiTKin" promised that the native dramatic iterating was to be further fur-ther adorned and further enriched by a writer who, unlike the majority of his then trical compatriots, was will-4 will-4 ing to forget Sardou, Sydney Grun dy and Mrs. l,esiie Carter and set himself Instead to a first-hand observation ob-servation and first-hand recording of 00 American traits, customs and other m humors. As peculiarly and unmistakably American as Josephus Daniels or Hires' root beer. Ade. with his syringe syr-inge of facile wit and sharp commentary, com-mentary, was on the way to Inject a dash of life into the American drama when, suddenly, something happened, jk, What this something was one does ' 'i not know, but whatever it was it caused Ade, after a brace of less happy hap-py efforts, to cold-shoulder the theater. thea-ter. And since that time he has remained re-mained stead fa stly nloof. The thea-tr thea-tr of the United States has suffered from his going. When he left it he took with him the hope of his own a- , peculiar tonic, a tonic of rare humor X j: , against the chill nf the cheap barber- ' r shop jocosities that were then, and are still, being unloaded upon theater-goers by his fellow writers for the stage. Play Is Made Over. j The call for theso remarks is the employment ' of Ade's "College Widow" as a basic structure for a ! 2 new music show by the Messrs. Bol- j v ton, "Wodehouse and Kern given the title "Leave It to Jane," produced I under the hand of the Messrs. Com- ! .stock. Elliott and Gest in the Long-acra Long-acra theater. Although, of necessity, a verv great deal of Ade's manuscript has had to go by the wayside in the manufacture of the exhibit, there Is ' Mill 6iifftcient left, to remind us of :ho genuine loss that Is ours since he retired to his farm In Indiana- A sporadic glint of the old charm, a flash of the old fun, a glimpse of the old character appraisal they are still 1 here. And in these fleeting glimpses j wp sense, as we haven't sensed re- i cen t!y, how very much better Ade could do these things tha n any of his descendants, than any of his iml-lators. iml-lators. The selection of his play as libretto libret-to material was a shrewd move, It gives impetus, dash, vigor. And the result is a music show that one may listen to; before which, indeed, one may ev-n now and then forget that the limbs of the chorus ladies are not quite so symmetrical as the connoisseur connois-seur micnt wish them. Mis.--. EJith llallor sings the role originally played by Dorothy Tenn?.nt. The piece as a whole Is somewhat unduly drawn out, but may be recommended for a di-erting di-erting evening in the showshop. Ore Redeeming Feature. "The Inner Man" is a play dealing with the reform of criminals, and is set down as the labor of one Monsieur Mon-sieur A. Schomer. The one redeeming feature of the exhibition is the performance per-formance of Wilton Kackaye in the central role. As for the manuscript, it is a mere clumsy rechauffe of several sev-eral equally bad plays of other seasons, sea-sons, crammed to the rails with red . melodra ma and pink sentimentality. At the Lyceum one may envisage a work by Vicior Mapes night "The Lassoo," denominated upon the ph-iy-bill "a modern society comedy." Th most comic -(hing about the comedy is the author's conception of what constitutes con-stitutes a play that may be called a society comedy. "The Lassoo" contains con-tains approximately as much "society "so-ciety as West One Hundred and Thirty-sixth street. The characters include in-clude a Broadway actor, a slangy Broadway cabotin, a moving picture man and others of this gentry. The plot is of a hack writer whose extravagant ex-travagant wife leads him into financial finan-cial difficulties and who, to recoup his losses, turns to the lowly cinema. The lines are witless,, the situations rheumatic. Of smartness, of air, not a trace. The exhibit is widely advertised adver-tised as being the work of "the coauthor co-author of 'The Boomerang.' ". It is now evident that in the manufacture of the latter Winchell Smith was the author and Mr. Mapes the co. Miss Phoebe Foster has the role of the wife and shows no improvement over her work in "The Cinderella Man." Miss Foster belongs to that curious genre of actress that may be described as the school of emotional soubrette. i Shelly Hull is the husband and is agreeable. The balance of the com- ; pany is distinctly mediocre. I "The Deluge" Is Failure. j The commercial failure of Hennins I Borger's "The Delusre." presented bv Arthur Hopkins and described in thfse pages a couple of Sundays a?o, recalls re-calls once again to our notice the steady decline in the metropolitan tneatergoing taste. This taste, more and more each year, sinks lower and lower. Today there is small succesj awa-iting a play of genuine merit on Broadway. George ler's assertion that never has the local taste been more depraved than in recent seasons sea-sons seems to gain verity with each successive year. This taste at the present time is chiefly for vaudeville farces, for ic shows and for shilling-shockers Vs time goes on, it becomes more and more clearly apparent that it is to the thitherward cities and not to New lork that the respectable drama must look for its health, its life and its good fortune. WHEN Felix Bernard and Eddie Janis, pianist and violinist, respectively, re-spectively, begin their Orphenm tour this week Bernard will probably still be doctoring the scar on his leg that he got during the last of three rescues' he made in one day during dur-ing their recent vacation at Atlantic City. Half a dozen people were caught at one time by the undertow. The life guards' boats were overturned by the heavy surf, and Bernard, attracted from the beach by their cries swam out about one hundred yards and brought in two men at "once, although he weighs but 120 pounds. The life guards saved the others. An hour later, when he was going home with his bathing suit tinder his arm, he saw a woman on a runaway horse. He leaped on its back and stopped it. Then he called it a day ;s work. S HER WOOD M'DOXALD, Balboa Bal-boa director, was staging a cock fight. Either there was that in the elements of a warm day that pacified or there was no fighting blood in the game fowls. Half a hundred extra men sat on the bleachers waiting. Spurning all invitations for a scrap, one set of birds flew over the garden wall, and all efforts to recapture, them proved futile. Director Macdonald is a I resourceful man. however, and he pro- duced a pair of bantam cocks that had I a fightincr record. These birds also were pacifists, and had no fight in them. "Those are not chickens!" said Charles Dudley, character man. disgustedly. disgust-edly. "They are peace doves!" ; t - . for - - . ! ; & - ? . y"- '" , w' ' v 1 j yr- - i ?! ' Merl LaVoy, who took the pictures for "Heroic France," eight-reel special feature to be shown at Salt Lake theater Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next. |