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PHOTOPLAY
DANCING
THEATRES
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AMUSEMENT SECTION
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"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
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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.