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Show I HERE ARE THRILLERS f I rxcmro ieeloptut.tv nr vnncn m mo- L " I TI02TS OP TTTTf' WO HZ 21 AX3 VIOLTSTLY J I ' STTTVTtTT) - CSTB OF TH3 PLZASUXT3 07 rOYHTY THERE is a class of plays thriving and flourishing in the densely populated popu-lated East that we of the West know nothing of. There is a population popu-lation and a clientele so deeply serious that they demand their the-' the-' atiical pabulum be In keeping; with their lives. .It makes no difference whether the plays have merit, coherency, methods, manners or morals. They simply must have intensity, emotion and violence. There must be a hero, and he must be a workingman. There must be a heroine, and she must be a working girl, and she must refuse money, large amounts, from the villain, who must wear a frock coat and large diamond scarf pin. She must tell him that he is "puftectly terrible." and when this villain vil-lain hisses through his black mustache thai he has got the hero in a hole, she, the working girl, must cry out Til not marry you, but I'll give me life to save me love." It is at the playhouses where these sort of dramas are given that you sea the real enjoyment. At our correct Broadway, with Us cynical, superior and rather blase auditors, audi-tors, the pleasure of a performance, no matter how fine, compares not at all with the millions east of the Great Lakes who go to see dramatic plays having enough meat in them for a score of polite and delicately-worded current comedies. come-dies. The fact that our great common people in the East want their entertainment entertain-ment very highly, seasoned is nothing against them, of course. It may be a matter of education or want of it, a question of environment and taste, but It does seem singular that the hundreds of regular play-goers of the West know little about the taste of the thousands, even millions, of working people in New York. New England, Pennsylvania with their teeming tenements, their giant factories, who look at life and its reflex, the stage, through spectacles very different dif-ferent from ours. Stories of One or Two Stage Thrillers, Here, for example, is a list of. the popular and successful plays that are this, season delighting many thousands in the cities and the towns east of Chicago. Chi-cago. I take them from this week's dramatic papers. Tou or I perhaps never heard of them, and yet they are. known and liked by multitudes who live over again the strenuous careers of the hero and hrolne, who despise the villain to the extent almost of doing him bodily harm, and who rejoice beyond words in the crude graces that make virtue triumphant and' vice a failure: "A Child of the Slums.V "The Price of Honor." "No Wedding Bells for Her." "Her Midnight Vow." "Why He Deserted Her." ! , "The Flaming Arrow." "A Working Girl's Wrongs.""';' : "A Desperate Chance." "When Women Sin." ' ' "A Fight for Love." "The Stain of Guilt." "Slaves of the Mine." "For Her Sake." "Only a Shop GirL" "The Factory Foundling." "Thf Little Mother." "Her Heart Was Adrifti . "Her Fatal Step." "The Factory Girl." "Dealers in White Women." "For Mother's Sake." "More to Be Pitied Than Scorned." "Alone in the World." "Wedded but No Wife." "Her Marriage Vow." "Deserted at the Altar." "Her First False Step." "The White Tigress." "Her Brother's Crime." "Too Proud to Beg." "How He Won Her." "For Her Children's Sake." "Her Fight for Love." "Her Mad Marriage." "The Child Slaves of New York." "When Women iLove." "Why Women Sin." "A Girl of the Streets." , "Driven from Home." "A Break for Liberty." - . "What Women Will Do." "A Subway Secret." "Why Girls Leave Home." "An the Bridge at Midnight." "She's Out or the Fold." "The Curse of Drink." You nuy observe that these plays treat largely of the eternal feminine. It is the woman that is the point of Interest always. Her trials and tribulations, tribula-tions, her virtues and her successes entertain and thrill. She Is the one the aditors follow with keen zest, and her tirumph, which always takes place, excites ex-cites the factory, foundry and shop public to the very highest degree. They do not care the toss of a copper for observance of the unities. What they want is excitement and broad, strong lines. In one tf the plays I mentioned above the good hero and the equally good heroine have had a particularly hard time during four acts. The villain not only still pursued her, but at the opening of the fifth act he had the hero in a particularly tight place. It was In a gorge, where the bad man, possessing a pistol and a dirk, a shotgun and other dangerous things, met the hero unarmed and said to him: "Now, Joe Jennings, yur time has comer The hero shouts back defiance, and as he does so a storm arises, the stage grows dark, and two men fight, the hero, much the slighter of the two, takes away from the villain the shotgun, the dirk, two or three knives after a mighty combat and proposes that "the duel shall be fought fair." His foot slips, however,, and he drops to the ground. Then the villain gloatingly stands over him with a cocked pistol. At this moment lightning flashes and you see the heroine standing upon one of the crags. She shouts down: "Hold there, Jim Dunpfcy! Remember that me and Gawd is lookin'." This, of course, settles the villain, who crouches away, and the curtain falls amid the wild applause of the enthusiastic audience. Another of these plays was recently given at the factory town of Fall River. For a whole week the houses were packed to suffocation, and there was more real enjoyment, salty tears and emotional applause than is possible at any high-priced house where the audience is correct and pleasure drags along' slowly. 1 think this particular play was called "The Factory Girl." Perhaps it was "Her Fatal Step," or maybe it was "No Wedding Bells for Her." The prices, however, nowhere exceeded a quarter. Ten and 20 cents was the prevailing admission, ad-mission, and the public had plenty tor their money. The scene opens in the poor girl's cottage; the villain comes in and offers a hundred thousand dollars in stage money, of course, but you think it's real if she'll marry him You gather from the conversation that some lime ago the two had gotten. busy and he had left her, but. love being very strong with him, he came back, wanted to marry her and she "wouldn't stand for it." Meanwhile she has been falling in love with a poor young laboring man, who is going to lead a strike, and when the villain twits her with this and says the strike is going to fail and the poor laboring man will be out of a job, and that she had better take the hundred thousand, she replies haughtily; "You bave struck a game girl who defies you. Police! Police:" The villain is arrested and virtue triumphs In the end. PULLING THE STRINGS OJf Hlr "Throgglns, isn't that little flirtation between you and Miss Pompeydure beginning be-ginning to look serious?" "It is, Rugglee; more serious than I thought. She told nielatt sight I musn't take her out to the OeiS or bring her costly bouquets arfy m"-that u wa time for me to begin to save money." |