AMERICA 1900-1910 -- 'SHOW TIME' (Part 2)

SEIFERT

Posted By: David (email)
Date: 3/11/2004 at 11:35:46

'AMERICA 1900-1910'

'Show Time'

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CONSTELLATION OF LEADING LADIES

Some shown with a crackling brilliance and others with a mysterious glow, but together these stars filled the American legitimate stage with an array of talent rarely excelled in any age.

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MAXINE ELLIOTT -- She conquered audiences with her beauty, which sometimes overshadowed her acting skill. The painter Whistler proclaimed her "the Girl with the Midnight Eyes," and Ethel Barrymore said she was "the Venus de Milo -- with arms."

MINNI MADDERN FISKE -- Great actors, she once said, "have, in a sense, always played themselves." Revealingly, she chose to act in serious, intelligent plays, and she popularized Ibsen. Her genius was to convey emotion with a minimum of voice and gesture.

JULIA MARLOWE -- Spurning modern drama, she played Shakespearean heroines with the authority of a scholar - which, in fact, she was. Of her performance in "Romeo and Juliet," an awed critic wrote that she "was not only lovely as Juliet, she was Juliet."

ETHEL BARRYMORE -- Strong yet sensitive, she was the steady center of a tempestuous theater family. When she scored her first hit in 1901 ("the newest princess of our footlit realm," said a critic), countless girls began to try to imitate her warm, throaty voice.

MAUDE ADAMS -- The most popular actress of the day, she captured the hearts of playgoers with a wistful, fragile manner. When, as Peter Pan, she asked in a small voice, "Do you believe in fairies?" the enchanted audience never failed to cry, "Yes!"

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A WORD FROM THE CRITICS

The annual display of limbs, lungs and lingerie which Florence Ziegfeld brings to town under the title of "The Parisian Model," with his wife Anna Held as the star feature of the exhibition, packed the Illinois Theater to the roof last night. It is billed to remain for four weeks and the management looks forward to a solid month of financial joy, furnished by the class of theater-goers who happen to like that sort of thing and feel assured that Miss Held's organization of "show girls" under the astute management of young Mr. Ziegfeld, will give them just what they like. An enterprising laundry solicitor might do a good stroke of business by getting around to the Illinois Theater early today. Some of the lingerie that was so generously and abundantly displayed by the energetic young women is sadly in need of the tub.

-- Chicago Examiner, February 10, 1909

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With the force of the hurricanes and mighty storms on the hills comes a slum romance by Edward Sheldon, "Salvation Nell," and a crowded house sat breathless or in profound sympathy either with the scarlet sort of bitter humor, the tender moments or big palpitating tragedies which rage in brief fierceness like chain lightning. Mrs. Fiske, in the manner of a slender ribbon of pale, sweet light, brings to the part of Nell, the saved girl of the slums, a little strange face with a look of dawn upon it and a voice of spring. The drama is a big splashing crash of brute entanglements, a study in anger and poverty, in vice, ignorance, and the terrible truths of snarled, vagrant, untutored, Godless life. Its gravities are accusatory and threatening, its realism is vivid, its homor broad and thoroughly American and its pathos deep as the snows upon the Alpine passes. It is the most interesting melodrama in all time.

-- Chicago Daily News, February 16, 1909

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The dramatization of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" is almost fairylike in its daintiness and imaginative charm. Once in a great while, only, does one encounter such delightful simplicity in events, dialogue and character interpretation as are found in this play. There is sunshine and sweetness in this play that is never overdrawn.

-- Vogue, November 15, 1910

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Booth Tarkington has done the miracle. He has put new wine in old bottles without bursting the bottles or spoiling the wine. His play "A Man From Home" is served, to be sure, in a framework of melodrama which has done duty for a century, but the threadbare plot serves well enough as a foundation for Mr. Tarkington's message of the superiority of honest homespun American ways and of the home folks to the sort of Europeans whom young Americans going abroad with too much money are likely to find themselves surrounded by.

-- Brooklyn Eagle, November 16, 1909

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The Journal calls the attention of the police to the play "Sapho" given here last night at Wallack's Theater by Miss Olga Nethersole. It is with regret that the Journal does this, but there is a public duty to be performed here -- it is the duty of the authorities to call a halt. A great many improper plays have been given in New York recently. "Sapho" is the limit -- it should not be performed again. If the police do not interfere no man or woman who values his or her good name should ever go to a performance. A large audience, apparently incapable of understanding what they said, applauded vehemently as Miss Nethersole grovelled in the dust at the feet of her youthful, caddish lover! "Sapho" is, after all, a cold-blooded bid for the sensual approval of foolish people.

-- New York Journal, February 6, 1909

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Picture with caption:

Anna Held, the coquettish French star of musical comedy, was once accused by a blue-nosed critic of causing sexual unrest with her lovely legs and 18-inch waist.

To Be Continued . . .'Medley for an Epoch'

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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
March 8, 2004