Salt Lake Telegram | 1922-09-12 | Page 4 | Gallery Gods

try in 1884 and 35o people in the company. The gallery never forgot it. The old-time gallery was a symbol of democracy. de-mocracy. Elsewhere in the theatre a spectator felt uncomfortably out of place unless he had on his Sunday clothes and a starched collar as high as a spite fence. But In the gallery, even overalls were good enough. A big bruiser of a watchman, armed with a loaded cane and made doubly ferocious fero-cious by a walrus mustache, kept order.. "Hats off, boys!" Then the peanut munchers stamped their feet and whistled like a hurricane, as footlights went on and house lights off -and curtain rose on the first act. The gallery, with its vehement disapprovals dis-approvals of bad acting and delays in shifting scenery, with its caustic cat-calls that said more than a dramatic critic could get in a column, was the terror of actors. They dreaded it because the gallery was the supreme court of public opinion. The performer who couldn't please the gallery soon had to quit the profession.. Hence the expression, ex-pression, "Playing to the gallery." Big changes, such as the passing of the gallery, gal-lery, are dim reflections of sweeping and funda- mental readjustments in the actions and conditions condi-tions of the public. Some students of mob tendencies ten-dencies think the gallery Is disappearing because the "gallery gods" now go to the movies. That is only partly true, for the gallery collectively had keniacriminaliorv-ntiHirr-bolutetuitKn--for recognizing and appreciating "fine actin'." All this was on a plane that only the "legitimate" stage can satisfy. More probable is' the theory, that money is more plentiful among the people than years ago, and that the element that used to find it difficult to raise two-bits for gallery admission ad-mission now parks Its car and sits through the show with the elect. j Gallery God j I EE SHUBERT, prominent showman, predicts 1 that In a few years there will not be any "peanut galleries" left in New York City theatres except in grand opera houses. The passing of this famous institution, the gallery, has become a noticeable tendency in the architecture of new theatres. And, w ith its passing, another phase of glamor goes ouf of life. For what modern thrill equals the Saturday night stampede into the gallery, years ago, to see such favorites as "Prim-ruse "Prim-ruse and West Minstrels," "Eight Bells." "Lotta," .Mrs. Leslie Carter. "The Black Crook." or Rich-arJ Rich-arJ Mansfield in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr.. Hyde?" Most spectacular of the old-time extravaganza was Kiralfy's "Excelsior," which toured the coun- t . '