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Show IS DICK TULLY A GENIUS? DICK Tully is in town for a month's stay, and has already been discovered discov-ered by the lady's interviewers, says a writer in Town Talk of San Francisco. Fran-cisco. One of them extracted Dick's ideas about genius. Which causes me to put the question: Is Dick Tully a genius? Let us see! Dick Tully has three unusally successful plays to his credit, "The Rose of the Rancho," "The Bird of Paradise" and "Omar the Teritmaker. The first of these was not a financial sucobs, so far as Tully was concerned. In order to get it produced Dick had to turn it over to David Be-lasco Be-lasco who skilfully belascoized it and undoutbedly made money out of it. That play gave Frances Starr her great opportunity. It was a fortunate venture for David and Frances, but it didn't do Dick much good. While people peo-ple were enjoying "The Rose of the Rancho" and David Belasco was getting get-ting reports of capacity houses, Dick Tully was running in debt. But Dick was not discouraged. He set to work to master the craft and the business of dramatic authorship. Finally he had "The Bird of Paradise" in shape for production. It was a play redolent of Hawaiian atmosphere, but the Ntfw York producers couldn't see its possibilities. possi-bilities. Dick Tully had no money with which to produce it all he had was a stack of unpaid bills. In this emergency he went to James D. Phe-Ian. Phe-Ian. I don't know whether Phelan read the play, or whether he contented himself with reading Dick Tully's character. At any rate, he advanced the money necessary for the production produc-tion of "The Bird of Paradise." We all know what followed. It was a sensational success. It started that mad craze for Hawaiian music and Hawaiian dancing that spread from Broadway all over the country. In the midst of that craze theatrical men who had failed to see the merit of "The Bird of Paradise" were paying ridiculous ridicu-lous large sums to Doraldinas for wriggling wrig-gling a la Honolulu. By the time Dick Tully began to get financial returns from his big success, he was hard at work on another play, "Omar the Tent-maker" Tent-maker" was also very very successful. It brought Tully big returns. Now, what was the first thing Tully did when the money began to roll in? Ho paid his bills. Many of them were past due; I shouldn't be surprised if some of them were outlawed. But he paid them all, and that satisfaction of his creditors gave Dick Tully the keenest keen-est pleasure. Again I ask the question: ques-tion: Is Dick Tully a genius? And I can only answer by remarking that geniuses don't usually do what Tully did. Dick Tully may not be a genius, but Dick Tully is that noblest work of God, an honest man. |
