TRAGEDIES OF A "CURSE”

Shannon News, 26 January 1926, Page 4

TRAGEDIES OF A "CURSE”

EDGAR ALLEN POE. SEQUENCE OF MISFORTUNES. * After having for years run the gaunt of disaster, death and gloom, what the superstitious regard as the “Poe curse,” has just struck down three fresh victims, says an American paper. “Nonsense!” scolf the cynical. “This unfortunate trio passed on through perfectly natural causes. ’ “Well, it’s very strange that each of them was intimately connected with the production of a play based on the poet’s life!” is the reply. , What had happened was this: Several months ago plans for an elaborate presentation of Catherine Chisholm Cushing’s new drama “Edgar Allen Poe”, were announced. Money was freely spent on research, documentation, scenery, costumes, and east. let vvitruu two weens Lite, pmce, a coai* i-'-Cie uUscc, eonupseU. ’ uiiu pai'C e.vi.e. oi t,»e uu eriy Tneau'e, near Lroautvay, in*. •• iorii, was a guest at a auuday mgu. party the' day after the play van ished. The next morning he was dead, victim of a supposed heart attack. , Sydney Martin, assistant treasurei at the Liberty, although up to the last minute he had continued to function in his official capacity, was also claimed by the grade. To cap the triple dc om, a stage-hand, Martin Galvin fell to the floor of the stage, stricken in the very midst of his labours/ ’Weird as was this sequence of fatalities, it presented merely the climax of the “Poe curse,” which, despite the protests of the has run its course through the period whieh began with the great .lyrist’s terrifying death. Particularly has this malign influence been felt in the theatre, the motion picture and the art vvorld. Previous Incidents, Let us consider, for the moment, the events just prior to the deaths of Messrs Mayer, Galvin and Martin, which shook the theatrical centre of the country. Michael Strange, the beautiful and eccentric poetess, herself the crfeator of unearthly and terrifying verses, announced that she had written a play based on the life of Joe. John Barrymore, her husband, and perhaps the most acclaimed actor in the United States was to portray the title role in “The Dark Crown.”

But no sooner had the Barrymores returned from foreign travel than into the arena of contention sprang Miss Sophie Treadwell, author of “Gringo” “O Nightingale” and other plays, with the accusation that Michael Strange had pirated portions of Miss Treadwell’s own dramatic depiction of Poe! According to Miss Treadwell’s suit, she had submitted to Mr Barrymore a drama upon which he looked with a favourable eye. But, continued Miss Treadwell (in private life the wife of W. O. McGeehan) the authority on sports), delay followed in Barrymore’s acceptance or tile script. Time after time, she implored a decision, only to be put off. She was not, she asserted,' even able to get her manuscript back. One of the most flaming disputes rememberable broke out, with denials from Michael Strange, counter-char-ges by Miss Treadwell, and a general air of smouldering anger which involved both sides in the controversy. Miss Treadwell got out a writ, ask- [ ing the return of the play or £soou. ! Michael Strange filed a £40,000 damage action. It was a pretty mess! The Avenging Conscience. Another dominant dramatic personage to feel blight associated with the Poe name has been David Warlc Griffith. This motion picture director has always sensed the subtle fascination of the “dark angel” of Poe’s personal charm. It was way back in 1908 that Mr Griffith, then , just striking his stride as a national figure conceived the notion of putting Poe into a one-reel biograph photoplay. Either the public of ? the period was too routine or something mysteriously "went wrong” with the film. For “Edgar - Allan Poe” made no money, and was condemned by such metropolitan magazines as “The Dramatic Mirror.” Undeterred by ridicule, Mr Griffith nourished his hope of making a Poe production wijich should cast lustre on the unhappy poet’s name. In 1913—the year before “The ( Birth of a Nation,” his greatest triumph—he enlisted an all-star cast to present “The Avenging Conscience,” which was his own combined dramatisation of the poem, “Annabel Lee,” and the gruesome short story, “The Telltale Heart.” The venture was appallingly unlucky. Not only was the picture shudderingly condemned as “morbid,” ‘unwholesome,” and “deadly;” misfortunes began to pile up on the luckless heroine of the tale.

Blanche Sweet, then at the apex of her popularity as the screen’s most beautiful blonde, underwent a nervous breakdown and was forced to retire from a professional career that promisejd brightly;. Ill —some said morbidly unhappy—and with her beauty bearing traces of some misery, she withdrew, only to appear years later with her good looks restored, in picture plays far removed from the type of “The Avenging Conscience.” The case of other plays and pictures which suffered from the wierd Poe blight might be adduced —among them “The Cask of t Amontillado” and “The Pit and the Pendulum,” but an even niore striking instance of the “curse” is to be found in three personal disasters among poets and artists. Struck down in Youth. In the London of the Nineties there wese no more gifted aesthetes Hum

Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson The former a sensational black-and-white portrayer of fantastic scenes of horror, abnormality and death; the latter, a poet largely influenced by Poe, the pair were struck down at the highest of their powers and barely beyond their boyhood. Dowson died in his twenties, a victim of poverty, heartbreak and tuberculosis, a pathetic figure. Beardsley, at twenty-four, succumbed also to consumption. Poe’s French translator, Charles Baudelaire, was .another genius to be lashed by the whip of fate. Having' done over all of Poe’s “Stories ol‘ Imagination and Terror,” he passed through a terrible family existence and finally died. Just how far the ebony shadow that engulfed Edgar Poe himself threw its darkness ocer his successors is .an open question. Poe’s own life cutions ranging from the death of his was a series of torments and perse-child-wife, Virginia . Clemm, to the day when, wandering the streets of Baltimore, he was “railroaded” and perished from exposure and illtreatment.

From his very youth, he seemed marked for an unlucky destiny. The son of a lawyer and an actress, little Edgar, with his sister, Rosaline, and his brother, William, was left wholly destitute, in .1811, .by the parents’ sudden deaths. William likewise succumbed shortly. Edgar’s beloved Rosaline went mad. Fortune’s Hollow Liefer. If fortune seemed to smile on the tiny orphan when a rich tobacco merchant adopted him, it was but, a hollow leer; for when the well-meaning planted sent his ward to the University of Virginia, in 1826, the effects of an indulgent training on a temperament coloured by inherited neurotic tendencies sprang- to the fore. Fond of athletics, he was a strong and able swimmer; but, despite these Spartan recreations, the soul-bitten youth soon developed a passion for gambling and for “strong waters.” His excesses compelled the authorities to demand his removal. John Allan, his monied foster-father, sternly refused to pay the boy’s debts. The consequences were, for the passing moment, favourable to his spiritual and ethical growth. He enlisted in the United States Army, serving for two years and displaying what must have been conduct beyond reproach, for he was promoted from the ranks to a sergeant-major. Mr Allan, meanwhile, had procured his army discharge and had secured him a West Point nomination. The sad sequel was that, due to his inability to get on with the authorities and general laziness, he was courtmartialled and expelled. On his death Allan left his adopted son nothing. Adoration of Cousin. Poe’s subsequent money troubles were so painful and incessant that it is difficult to write of them even today. Despite his extraordinary genius (which the veriest fool should have perceived), he sold hig amazing tales of horror and poems of shadowy | souls for pittances the immortal "Raven” going for a paltry ten dollars.

His mad adoration of his cousin? Virginia Clemm; their marriage, and her subsequent passing on, after a protracted illness, are known to every man and woman who has ever faintly dabbled in literature. The parallel between Edgar and Virginia and Roderick and Madeline Usher in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is obvious.

Said one of Broadway’s best known theatrical producers: “Poe may be a fitting subject for tragedy, but the reputed ‘curse’ of his influence will probably- debar him from ever being successfully played on the stage. Like his immortal raven .actors, managers, and; even the humble 'grips' are inclined to say emphatically: ‘Nevermore 1' ”