wwtppwqwi-'iiijjiiii-J1 4UJww"f t" r- . tomting Ifrdger -J PHOTOPLAY DANCING THEATRES and MUSIC AMUSEMENT SECTION . 7! J ft . fv X t- 1 f - ? w r "HOW AMERICA HAS PUT IDEALISM f , INTO ITS NATIVE FUN-MAKING A Comedian and Playwright of the True Yankee School Analyzes the Most Distinctly American of American Arts By WILLIAM HODGE THERE is a distinctive brand of Amer- I tutcs a unique trio of this type. Extrava ican humor, and It ran be recognized I &" jf also a necessary element of the by one peculiar feature.. American hu mor, more than the humor of any other nation, is a Unking of earthly shrewd , ness and worldly wisdom with high ideal ism. This may not be always apparent to those who- sec only the Incongruous And ludicrous' aspects of this humor. Nevertheless. I' believe this clement of truth behind laughter exists In all genu ine, American humor from Benjamin q rranKiin, jonaman irumouu ana vvasa Ington Irving down to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Bret Ilarte and Mark Twain.. II will also Include George Ade and Mr. Dooley. Booth Tarklngton exemplified It in my now-famous character of Daniel Voorhees Pike in "The Man from Home." It Is the essential feature of Jim Whlt ,. roan" In "The .Road to Happiness." In fact; Whitman always makes me thlnV "of-the youthful Abraham Lincoln In his mingled humofand honesty. It was a greajt American hulQorlst, Josh DilUnas a man that tried. to sim plify American spelling -before Andrew. "Carnegie who said: '"Humor must be , based on truth." It la because a thing is ludicrous and at the same time true to nature that people laugh at It." And this cheerful humorist declared, in his own peculiar language: "Anatomlkally J konsidered. laffing Iz the sensation ov r phceling good all ov-er, and showing It principally In one spot. Morally konsld- j cred. it Iz the next-best thing tew the Ten Commandments."- Some of 'his (Henry W. Shaw's) own sayings are fine j examples of his definition, as when he J remarks, "Flattery Is "k kolone water, ' tew be smelt ov,' not swallowed," or I "There Is a grate deal ov what Is called virtew that "is nothing more than vice tired out." From the days of Benjamin Franklin with his "Poor Richard's Almanac," begun In 1731, down to my present foot light character of Jim Whitman, the American laugh-maker who puts his wisdom In the form of wit seems to ex hibit a knack for making proverbs. Lin coln had this faculty as much as Frank lin. Lincoln's great rival. Douglas, de clared of Lincoln: "Abe Is full of droll, dry jokes, but he is as honest as he Is shrewd." It Is this honesty and shrewd ness In American humor that Imparts Its i peculiar national tang. Whitman's droll sayings are as humanly Inspiring as the old maxims of "Mrs. Wlggs of the Cab base Patch." That old lady of Alice Hegan Rice's creation represented. In' deed, the very spirit of American optlm Ism a spirit which Daniel Pike also represented In a lesser and Jim Whitman now represents in a greater degree. Cheerfulness Is the keynote of the best American humor as well as Its essential . .i...t..nn. H'n.hlndtnn Tr'n. tfllil iruuiiuiic-. " w ..... .. ....n . about the ne'er-do-well or the Catskllls. 1 Rip Van Winkle, and also of Ichabod . Crane in this spirit ofkindly cheerfulness. J thus making both- of them delightful figures. Franklin thus wrote his famous "Autobiography Artemus Ward is a striking example of the typical American character as exem plified In odd. dialect or queerly spelt humor and with Josh Billings and Petro leum V. Nasby (David Locke) he constl- VERBAL PEBBLES ON "ROAD TO HAPPINESS" Von ran't fight trouble with tears; tram help trouble just the way water helps flowers. V Let em roast While they're roastln me, they're letting somebody else cool off. You know our postmaster carried a letter of mine around with him for tno weeks once. lie believe that what you don't know won't worry jou. If a Klrl Is bad you don't hate to tell people. They'll find It out before the girl does. If anybody in this town ran a silver In their Anger, old JJen HardcrWIe will accuse him of stealing a boardwalk. Old Father Time Is the only sure-fire detective In the world. Squeeze your mind and press on your heart and see what your tongue will do. PHILADELPHIA, SATURDAY t nival citurauieruuc Jiauyc iiumor, a inui particularly met with in the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. His debates are filled full of these peculiar examples of extrav agances, as when be described the argu ment of an opponent, as "being as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by WHErF THE STARS WERE YOUNG H HHHK BHiiLHLHLILMLILH 1 BC bbbbbbbbHbbbbbbLsbbK' sBWasBBBaHssiaBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBi sH M bMbBBbHTOTIBK"' ;&sKaBBBBBBBBBBBBsM'V fit KtSIUS&jjl fv $9rBBBNrB.BBBHBBBBBBHBBH tM NiisHf ssfsi. -v sffil.H'' bbisIH , .JiHv. sHHBtil.wkH f aTasTasTK. .slTasTasTasTaK :aTasTaMtSsTaVaslTaBiakaisTasTasTal BsisHtafr siiHl HBP'PsB9PiIW 1 lisisHB ' 'JbIIIB. mBbIbsHN? jHH bbbbH JSEEBto&dMmtiBKKm P3&? 1W ' mm jmKnExzr mamM-?-- 's-'HbsTbbu IBBBBBBB HlHUHi KCHIH v 'VBBBBbB H bHbBbK ISbHb1bbKs.; "GSm i ' bHD BHBHBBjBBtHIBHBKibbBlsB -i When Ruth Chatterton was six years old she thought the operatic stage her destination. And she was also precocious enough to have a hand-made signature. boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death." Sam Slick and other typical Yankee characters all possess this sort of extreme humor. We have heard of one orator who said of another po litical stump speaker: "He may have a conscience, but he can blow It through the quill of a humming bird into the eye of a mosquito." Jim Whitman In "The Road to Happiness" has the same sort of humor when he says: "If anybody in this town runs a slivei in theii finger, old Ben Hardcastle will accuse him of stealing a boardwalk." EVENING, OCTOBER ARE THE MOVIES DANGEROUS TRASH OR A GREAT ART IN ITS INFANCY? 7alter Prichard Eaton Attacks the Photoplay, While the Evening Ledger's Critic Comes to Its Defense TRASH, says Walter Prichard Eaton, that's all the photoplay amounts to. The foremost dramatic critic of America goes farther. Writing In the Boston Transcript, he says? "I refuse to Admit that a diet of trash for W.OOO.Mtf Ameri cans dally Is in any sense a blessing. Personally, I believe that the movies are much more a menace than a. blessing, and that when we boast that their manufac ture Is the fourth industry in the United States, we ought to boast -with a blush." Mr. Eaton, you see. had been looking pon Cyril Maude ln"Peer GtT He bad reckoned up as true photoplay art that Ill-begotten parody, with Its stuffed rein deer on rockers; he hadn't waited for such a film as Farrar's "Carmen" to take as a point of departure. If he had. the answer might have been different. Bat only "might have." For deep down Inside. Mr. Eaton admits that it may be a case ot & "blind spot." "I want to enjoy 23, 1915 the movies." he writes, "I don't want to feel that something: in my make-up -(or something not in my make-up) prevents me from enjoying- that which gives I don't know how many millions of my fellow countrymen infinite satisfaction. Stm am I bored by the movies. Alas! there ts. something the matter with -me." Mr. Eaton's disgust with Jj moviea. the honest distaste of dozens of intelll-' gent people. Is undoubtedly a matter of physical and meatat disposition. You like the nrovles or you don't. Mechanism re pels soma people, just as sorely as It entrances others. You Uke the miraculous marvel of the cinema. Yon thrill each time at the fascination ot life drawn oat of -a. white screen and a blade box. Added to that primary and eteraal miracle, you like th secondary miracles that ths movies accomplish; you Ilka the physical presence of other lands, of strange seas, of tremendous wrecks and disasters as backgrounds to the human. You like the plain, unvarnished "thrills f the movies. You like their beantiefc. And to dig into high-brow matters of esthetics yon like the play of the di rectors and actors and paotoplaywrlghts technique within the limits and possi bilities or a new art-form. Or you don't. Mr. Eaton doesn't. Even that esthetic problem can't touch him. Indeed, the big, trouble behind this Question of dispo sition lies right there. Mr. Eaton and his friends haven't sought the thing- that the movies can give a purely esthetic; unm tellectual pleasure. They are looking for what they seek In the drama, meaning, content, the Apollonian. And they are looking for tt in the movies a thousand times harder than they ever looked for ltin the American drama. "The rank and file of pictures." says Mr. Eaton, "are the cheapest and most conventional sort of farcical or melodramatic or senti mental trash, exactly on a par with the stories in such papers as the old Fireside Companion." When. I may be pardoned for asking, has Mr. Eaton ever found more than "farcical or melodramatic or sentimental trash" in the plots of the majority of the big American successes of the last 19 years? Occasionally a little characterization or the pleasure of acting has vitalized them. But has it vitalized them any more than the esthetic quali ties of the film have vitalized the movie plots? Mr. Eaton is making the mistake of many photoplay producers. He is look ng In the movies for the Intellectual qualities of the drama; thy are try ing to put Into an alien medium dramas that have only the advertising value of thtlr names to commend them as screen vehicles. The managers should make up their minds once and for all that they are handling a new, romantic narrative. art. and give up aH this filching from the stage And Mr. Baton should learn to look for the remarkable new estbetfe ele ments of the photoplay art. Farrar's ""Carmen" show, clenfltf enough what the movies can do. Flrsttof all they can render pantomime action on their great screens as the stage never can. Continued on Tag Eight. "THE FOLLIES OF 480 B, C" I sometimes wonder It Sophoek really drew big heme Tn th Dlonjulan Theatre at the foot of the Acropolis. Since the theatre In Athem was some thing in the nature of a religious ImM. tution, I assume that the attendance was very much what it is In the churches to day, (ay one-fifth capacity. And these solemn hieratic dance-Ognrra which Isa dora Dunes a has copied from the vase most have boredtthe young people Im mensely. I suspect that the younger set at Athens preferred the new l'erslaa dances as Introduced by the waiters la the wine shops of the Piraeus. I suspect that the audiences at the theatre of mbnysos eonsixteo' ' mataly of sightseeing visitors from BecotU. and ot high seho. pupils whose descendant now g to see Robert SlaatelL I suspect there were empty seats at the "Oedipus Hex" aki the "Medea. when "The Curl frost Nineveh" eane te tewa. Slaieea Stnmsky.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers