Crane in "His Wife's Father"

1895

William H. Crane scored another success in New York on Monday in his production at the Fifth Avenue Theatre of "His Wife's Father," the latest comedy from the pen of Martha Morton. There never was an instant when the fate of the play was in question, and in it Mr. Crane is seen in another of his most characteristic representations — characteristic, because it shows not only the quality of his humor but the gravity of his mind, the depth of his feeling and the ample resources of his felicitous art.

This character is that of a lovingly meddlesome father, whose kindly meant interferences with personal affairs of his daughter and her husband, made him a nuisance. He is not like the traditional mother-in-law in acerbity of faultfinding, he is far too good natured to scold any body, or to purposely raise a row about anything, but he is meddlesome nevertheless, and thereby causes as much domestic trouble as any mother-in-law ever did.

All of the critics were unanimous in their praise of the play. The Sun said "It was markedly successful." The World calls it "A pronounced success." The Tribune said "Mr. Crane and his company were received with the heartiest favor. Mr. Crane made an unequivocal hit with his audience." The Times had to say: "In this manifestly congenial part Mr. Crane was constantly amusing. He played it with appreciation of all its possibilities, forced none of its peculiarities into the grotesque, and was always alive and possible." The Press said "The Play seemed to have achieved a success before the conclusion of the first act." The Journal said "It was a tale of family complications, that is full of humor well presented, and the Mercury said it was a great success. The other papers were equally strong in praise of the work and its stay in New York promises to add to Mr. Crane's reputation and popularity.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 8, 1895, p. 2.

New York Theatres

New York, 1895

Three Melodramas Which are Delighting the Public.

Melodrama has New York in its spell now. "The Fatal Card," which is a play of modern life full of all the pulsing issues and flesh and blood of the big world around us, has now been running at Palmer's theatre for three weeks to thronging fashionable audiences and is one of the three enormous successes now holding the attention of metropolitan theatre goers, the other two being "The Masqueraders" at the Empire theatre, and William Gillette's new farce "Too Much Johnson," at the Standard theatre. Singularly enough, too, these three great successes all belong to Charles Frohman, who has given New York all the big dramatic and comedy hits of this and last season.

"The Fatal Card" belongs to the sturdiest and most wholesome class of melodramas. It is stirring and full of thrills like all plays that sharply contrast vice and virtue and whose mission it is to strongly picture the punishment which follows sin and the reward that awaits the virtuous and upright, but its fascinating story is told in a novel and delightful manner, and no better acted play was ever put before the New York public. The great critic, Nym Crinkle, says that Mr. Frohman has again given to the stage "the tumultuous romanticism of intense action and once more planted melodrama squarely and successfully in the teeth of dilettanteism and prominent humor." And of the play he writes that it is "an intensely interesting story of a struggle. It tells it by action more so than by dialogue and it moves logically and directly to a crisis, carrying the sympathies with it. The actors as if enfranchised spring to their work with a vital impulse. It brings back masculinity to the stage and the manager insists on having it to the full possibility of a splendid company." This splendid company is the finest ever seen in melodrama. Manager A. N. Palmer who produced "The Two Orphans" and "The Lights of London" says it surpasses any of the great casts of olden days and the public has been most enthusiastic in endorsing all the loudest praise that has been written and spoken about the performances.

Four of the greatest character actors of the day, W. H. Thompson, W. J. Ferguson, J. H. Stoddard and J. O. Barrows are in the cast, while May Robson, Agnes Miller of the Empire theatre stock company have agreeable roles, and E J. Ratcliff, late hero of Shenandoah has romantic prominence as the lover whose life is saved at a horrible and critical moment by the father of his sweetheart. All the exciting action revolves around and then centres itself in this love story, Ratcliffe saves the girl's father's life from lynchers in the Rocky mountains and the father gives him one half of the ace of clubs for future identification. A band of robbers afterwards kill Ratcliffe's father and the son having tracked and discovered them is himself caught in their rendezvous and sentenced to a terrible death. He has but a minute or two to live when his executor finds the half of the ace of clubs. Ratcliffe is released and the chief robber, his sweetheart's father perishes in his stead. All this story is told in seven realistic and thrilling scenes. Amy Busby who was Richard Mansfield's leading lady plays the sweetheart.

The "Masqueraders" is another magnificent production. It cost Manager Frohman $40,000 to put it on the Empire theatre stage. There are fifty beautiful imported dresses in it that cost $20,000. Mr. Frohman's stock company gives a polished and brilliant performance of the play and Mr. Henry Miller and Miss Viola Allen, the leading man and woman of the organization, were never seen to better advantage histrionically. There is a great gamble scene in which Miller stakes $1,000,000 on the turn of a card against the wife and child of his successful rival and wins. Great crowds flock to the Empire to see this wonderful play.

"Too Much Johnson" is William Gillette's new farce in which Mr. Gillette appears as an exquisite liar from Yonkers and the most artful mother- in-law bamboosler that the funny men have yet produced. This hero is almost caught in an interesting flirtation and carts his household off to Cuba, where he borrows a stranger's plantation and fools everybody in the friskiest and most cold blooded way imaginable. "Too Much Johnson" is even a greater success than "Charley's Aunt" was last season. Fashionable audiences fill the Standard theatre at every performance and hundreds who come late are turned away.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 8, 1895, p. 2.

The Universal Art

1910

In a splendid series of matinees extending over two weeks, Prof. William P. Jones danced the whole of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

The first two colonies were danced in slow time, to the accompaniment of two flutes and a lyre. The poses were statuesque rather than graceful, and the gestures had to them a great deal of the oratorical.

But, beginning with the story of the barbarian invasions in the third volume, Professor Jones' interpretation took on a fury that was almost bacchantic. The sack of Rome by the Vandals in the year 451 was pictured in a veritable tempest of gyrations, leaps and somersaults. The subtle and hidden meanings of the text called for all the resources of the professor's eloquent legs, arms, shoulders, lips and eyes.

A certain obscure passage in life of Attila the Hun, which had long puzzled the scholars, was for the first time made clear to the average man when Professor Jones, standing on one foot, whirled around rapidly in one direction for five minutes, and then instantly reversing himself spun around for ten minutes in the opposite direction.

In the ballroom of the Hotel Taftoftia, during Christmas week, William K. Spriggs, Ph. D., held a number of fashionable audiences spellbound with his marvelous lucid dances in euclid and algebra up to quadratics. Perhaps the very acme of the terpsichorean art was attained in the masterly fluency of body and limbs with which Mr. Spriggs demonstrated that the sum of the angles in any triangle is equal to two right angles. — Simeon Strunsky, in Harper's Weekly.

Wagner As a Humorist

1903

How the Master Responded to a London Critic's Suggestion

Richard Wagner was not a man to whom one would naturally ascribe the faculty of ready joking. It is not from the creator of the serious, somber "Flying Dutchman" or the composer of the half mystical, half religious, opera "Parsifal" that one would expect cheerful pranks at the expense of other people. Nevertheless an instance is on record of how the great tone painter of Baireuth played a very funny trick on a newspaper and probably a good many of the readers accustomed to relying on what it said. It was in the fifties. Wagner, then still climbing the ladder of fame, was conducting the Philharmonic concerts in the British metropolis for a season.

Being, as he remained to the end, a very ardent admirer of Beethoven and, in fact, knowing that master's nine symphonies by heart, he selected several of them for performance in the said series of concerts. The first time, then, that Wagner conducted a Beethoven symphony in London the public received the rendition kindly enough, but the next morning a certain newspaper with a very large circulation came out with a rather severe criticism. The author of "Lohengrin" was in cold print but in unreserved terms scolded for directing a symphony by the immortal Beethoven without the score in front of him. Such a proceeding, to which London was unaccustomed, was sheer presumption, so ran the criticism, and, after further uncomplimentary remarks, the great and influential journal advised young Heir Wagner to use a score when he conducted a Beethoven symphony again.

Well, soon Herr Wagner did, this time with a book of music before him on the desk. He was seen to turn over the leaves with a certain amount of regularity too. His reward came the next day in the form of a commendatory article in the aforesaid newspaper which praised him for a very much better interpretation of Beethoven than his last, due, of course, to the suggested use of the score, whereupon Wagner announced the fact that the score in front of him the previous evening was that of Rossini's opera, "The Barber of Seville," turned upside down. — Collier's Weekly.

Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, in "Maytime" (1937)

1937

The ad for the film is from The Ogden Standard-Examiner, Ogden City, Utah, May 9, 1937, page 13-B.

If you click it, it comes up bigger.

My review (2007):

I just got this movie on VHS tape at Goodwill a few days ago. I'm usually real reluctant to buy any more VHS tapes, but it seemed like a good thing to do in this case, for once. And I'm glad I did, because for the most part I liked the film.

I read a blurb about it somewhere on the internet, in which the writer said it was originally meant to be in color. But one of the main promoters died and the head of the studio, Louis B. Mayer, cut the budget in half and so it ended up in black and white. That is the worst thing about the film. There are so many flowers, so many beautiful scenes that are just crying out for color. Not to mention the beautiful female star, Jeanette MacDonald. And you simply know there is no artistic reason, no pressing need for this movie to be in black and white. A lot of movies, that's exactly OK, the way it should be. Casablanca, something like that. But not this one; it's a crying shame.

OK, the biggest complaint out of the way for now. The film is set up to be a tragedy from the start. Marsha Mornay is living in a small town under a different name, Morrison, and has not told her story to anyone. As Mornay she is extremely famous, a world known opera singer. But something has happened to change all that, and today it happens to be May Day, and she's a little down in the mouth, to say the least.

I won't step through the entire story, but she helps a young lady who has a choice of going to New York to pursue a singing career or staying here and making a life with her boyfriend. "Let me tell you my story, child," she says, or words to that effect. And with that we dissolve into flashback mode for most of the rest of the movie.

It's the 1800s, France, and Marsha Mornay is the toast of the world. Lots of great opera scenes and songs abound through this section. Also in France is Paul Allison, played by Nelson Eddy. We have a lot of different customs in the romance stuff than we're used to today. But Marsha makes a commitment to her not-so-evil manager, played by John Barrymore, that she will marry him, so she will. And mostly she feels she owes him because of all he's done for her. He has her solidly under his thumb, but she goes out to clear her head and ends up in a little nightspot where Paul is singing with the drunken common folk. All this is very nice. He presses to see her again and again, and she reluctantly gives in.

I must cut to their one big day of love. They're in the country somewhere. They've been to a big May Day festival. Then they're alone, the two of them, for some serious love. It would be beautiful in color. They sing the overall theme song to each other, known as "Sweetheart, Sweetheart, Sweetheart," and it's all very glorious. They have one big kiss (and a smaller one), she remembers her commitment to her increasingly-evil manager, so she must leave. They will marry. They do marry.

The years pass, and there's some excellent dissolving images marking this. The movie does a lot of quirky, oddball, novelty camera work, which I like.

The big climax is coming, in which, by a fluke of fate, they will perform together in New York, Paul and Marsha. Naturally when they express their emotions on stage in one another's arms, to them it's all real. And the folks think they're just good actors. So they get good reviews. But her now entirely-evil manager, and husband (you have to give him that, we are rooting for adultery), also notices the sparks between them. As to what happens next, you can probably guess. But, hey, they'll always have that day in May...

Then, back in the present day, back in the small town, the full tragedy plays out to the bitter end, which becomes a sweet ending for all concerned.

The flowers for the film must have cost a fortune, because they definitely have them everywhere. And what a shame that it wasn't in color. (Shaking fist at Louis B. Mayer).

Pat Priest of Munsters Fame Turns Glamorous in Elvis Film

1967

MUNSTER TURNS GLAMOROUS
Bikini Changes Pat Priest's Film Career

By ALI SAR

Changing an already established "image" has been a problem for many performers, unless they prefer to excel only as "character" players.

"Once you're type cast, you're in trouble. If you don't think so, just ask any actor." So believes Pat Priest, who is out to capture a new image for herself in her first motion picture, "Easy Come, Easy Go."

Stands Out

Many viewers will remember Pat from her role as Marilyn Munster in the popular television show "The Munsters." She says, "I'm the only normal one in the cast."

After nearly 80 episodes of "Munsters" Pat found out that it could be pretty hard to convince moviemakers that she could play roles other than Marilyn Munster.

Finally she got her break from veteran producer Hal Wallis, who, after having Pat read to him a few lines from a script, signed her to play opposite Elvis Presley in "Easy Come, Easy Go."

The Presley movie, currently in citywide release, provided Miss Priest with an opportunity to get away from the spell of Marilyn Munster.

Outlook Improves

Unlike the appearance of her television counterpart, the part, like in all Elvis productions, called for the actress to make her debut on the big screen clad in a bikini.

After viewing the finished product, Miss Priest is convinced that she no longer resembles Marilyn and from now on she won't have so difficult a time.

However, she admits the video series has provided her a training ground in addition to supplying her with sizable checks. In fact, she will be collecting residuals from those 80 episodes for a long time.

Of Elvis, with whom she worked with about six weeks, Miss Priest says, "He deserves everything he has ... Success hasn't gone to his head."

In addition to being a television and screen personality, Pat is also a different kind of celebrity. Her mother is former U.S. Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest, who is now the state treasurer.

The actress says that being Mrs. Priest's daughter has helped her career.

"...Having a famous mother only can open the door for you. After that you must prove yourself," she says.

Now that she has broken into movies after being a successful video star, will she concentrate on films?

"I prefer movies," she admits, adding, "but I have to keep busy ... And television allows you to broaden your whole scope of acting."


Capsule Reviews of Current Movies
By WAYNE WILSON

Like a cat with nine lives, Paramount producer Hal Wallis parlayed the limited talents of Elvis Presley into eight money-making movies. His latest, "Easy Come, Easy Go," doesn't seem likely to turn the tide.

It's attractively mounted in a nautical setting which makes for plenty of opportunities to ogle the pretty, bikini- clad girls that have become a trademark of Presley pictures.

Two especially appealing young ladies dress up the proceedings in this production, leggy Dodie Marshall, a bit-part player in Elvis' "Spinout," and Pat Priest, a healthy blonde who made her entertainment mark as Marilyn in "The Munsters" television series.

Presley plays an underwater demolition expert who discovers on his last assignment as a U.S. Navy frogman what appears to be a sunken treasure.

When he gets his separation papers, he raises enough money to dive for the treasure chest, but is thwarted, temporarily, by a beautiful playgirl (Miss Priest) and her money-grubbing traveling companion (Skip Ward).

Best tune is sung by Elsa Lancaster, an eccentric yoga instructor named Madame Neherina.

—The Valley News, Van Nuys, California, March 23, 1967, page 41, maybe. The page has five different page numbers depending on which edition it is.

My Comments (2007): I got this DVD a few months ago and watched it then. I wasn't taking notes to write a "review" but just going by memory now, I thought it was pretty good. Pat Priest's role is in opposition to Elvis getting whatever treasure is supposed to be down there in the wreck. He's just about out of the service, doing bomb-defusing work underwater. He's down there and finds a treasure. He arranges to go back and investigate, and Pat Priest and this "money-grubbing traveling companion" are competing for the loot.

The whole bit with Elsa Lancaster, the yoga class, is pretty funny, but very heavy-handed as a satire on the groovy youth culture of the time. The young people say a lot of far-out, groovy things, deadpanned, profound and pretentious, and of course of no consequence. Elvis looks like he has his doubts about the whole scene, man.

The absolute worst song on the soundtrack album, "Yoga Is As Yoga Does," is actually quite cute in the movie. It's one to skip on the CD, but colorful, funny, and a keeper in the movie. There's some very colorful stuff with this one cat who crazily takes apart Elvis' whole car and has the parts lying around. But he has another crazy car that they're able to go out in.

There's a very humorous sea-captain who runs a scuba-diving shop and is afraid of the sea, and must be a former children's show host because he also does that, pretending, in the back room of his shop. Very crazy stuff.

Then, going way back earlier in the film, when Elvis is with his Navy buddies, there's an excellent number, "The Love Machine," in which they spin a wheel that has girls and their phone numbers on it. They don't exactly know who the wheel will land on, but they can tell the choices are all good. I love this song.

The colors are great, Elvis is excellent, the youth culture stuff is sappy but pleasant, Elvis' love interest is very a perky do-gooder that you're rooting for. The only down thing about the film I can think of is the extended underwater scene toward the beginning. Too much of that.