RING UP THE CURTAIN

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 3, 1 September 1924, Page 31

RING UP THE CURTAIN

NOTES ON PLAYS

AND PLAYERS

\A/HAT a wonderful producer and creator of picture stars D. W. Griffith must be! By that I mean a "creator" in the literal sense of the term. Who doesn't remember the fine work of the Gish Sisters, the late Bobbie Harron, and May Marsh in two or three of the really worth-while pictures made under the direction of Griffith? The Gish girls (particularly Dorothy) occasionally appear before us on the silver sheet in more or less interesting pictures, but both these ladies appear to have forgotten lots of little subtleties of technique that Griffith seemed to instil into his principals. The reason is that they no longer have the guiding hand of the master with them, and being left, as it were, to their own devices, they do not achieve the results of the old Griffith days. Which is a pity. May Marsh is also appearing in pictures under other directors now, with the result that her work has deteriorated to an amazing extent. I saw her the other week in a film called "A Woman's Secret," and it would have been much better, I think, had the said woman kept it. "Brazen Banality" is a distressingly alliterative term, I know, but it expresses "A Woman's Secret" to a nicety. The motif of the affair is just crude sex, and it's a mystery to me how on earth it passed the censor. Practically the whole cast would give one the impression that they had never appeared in a film before, and the hefty chap who played villain oscillated his lower jaw and beetled his brows right throughout the dreary business, evidently intent on leaving no doubt • in the minds of his beholders that he was reely trooly bad. Altogether a shocking affair, and someone ought to write a sharp letter to Miss Marsh about it. o o o It is probable that we shall soon be seeing a Williamson Vaudeville Company over here, as J.C.W. have now entered the field against Fuller's to cater for lovers of Variety, and the Theatres Royal in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide have been converted into vaudeville houses. It is hard to know exactly whether this latest move of the Williamson firm is a sign of strength or weakness. On the one hand, J.C.W. Ltd. is having its prestige seriously assailed by Hugh J. Ward, and the excellent productions put on by that gentleman in three of the Australian capitals have left a very agreeable flavour in the mouths of musical comedy lovers in those places. Then again, Fuller's are undismayed at the thought of what ap-

pears to be tremendous opposition, perhaps because they are confident that their admission charges will have a more popular appeal than those of the Williamson firm. But, on the other hand, the fact that Musgrove is no longer to be considered as a vaudeville proposition (he having departed, and left Sol. Green, the bookmaker, to carry on for the time being) may have encouraged the enterprising Taits to go ahead with the idea which has been in their heads for about two years, and a merger with what is left of the Mus grove firm does not seem to be outside the bounds of possibility. o o o An Australian contemporary places the following to the credit of Gustave Slappoffski, but years ago I read somewhere of Sir W. S. Gilbert having perpetrated it. Anyway, it will bear re-telling. A budding soprano was anxious to give a voice trial, but modestly explained that she didn’t expect to become a Melba; the greatest she could wish for was to keep the wolf from the door. After hearing a few bars sung by the lady, Slap, took the song from the piano and handed it to her. “My dear,” he said kindly, “set your mind at rest about the wolf. You will always be able to keep it from the door by singing.” o o o All of us are familiar with the fable about the frog who tried to be so big that he puffed himself up till he burst with a bang. At the moment of writing this, the J. C. Williamson Company are running two vaudeville houses in Melbourne

(Tivoli and Royal) directly opposite each other in Bourke Street. Cui bon of o o o Let’s hope that the Hugh J. Ward Musical Company will play a New Zealand season, though at present it does not seem definite whether they will or not. If they do come this way, though, we are going to be treated to some of the brightest and most joyous musical comedies ever produced in these latitudes. One of the outstanding features of the shows is that everyone can dance, and dance mighty well, too. Up till the Hugh J. Ward regime, chorus gentlemen were merely required to stand upstage in pretty uniforms and sing hail to the princess, or, at most, to fall on one knee and ask a pretty maiden were there any more at home similar to her. But in this company all the young men dance like masculine Pavlovas, and what is more wonderful still, they sing while they are dancing! o o o Recently, at Covent Garden, Richard Strauss’s “Salome” was performed by a German opera company with a Swedish lady in the title role, yclept Gota Ljungberg. In order to pander to the “naice” people who were present, there was no head of John the Baptist used, so poor Salome had to address her delirious song to an empty plate with a serviette on it! A sense of humour, we are told, is a gift from the gods, so it is no wonder that even grave old musical critics were compelled to grin in their beards at the spectacle of Salome, who ought to have known better, writhing and addressing savage maledictions to an empty plate. The head is such a conventional stage “property” in “Salome,” that anybody going to a performance of this classic would expect to see it, so it is a matter for wonder that it should be cut out in this instance. o o o This is as true as true: Some years ago a. Costume Comedy Company, which shall be nameless, was playing a winter season in the Queen’s Hall, Adelaide, and being encouraged by the good business they were doing, decided to have a holiday matinee on King’s Birthday. The curtain was advertised to rise at 2.30, but when half-past two chimed there was one solitary person in the hall ... it was the sergeant of police, who had come to see that there was no overcrowding! So the Costume Comedy Company wiped off its grease-paint and went home.