Whitewashing Broadway
January 12, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 259 medicine. Meanwhile sociology has seen the eugenic fancy die by inches. Of course, it still turns up here and there--for instance, in a large and imposing...
...Thus there is no such thing as a born poet, or a born artist, or a born musi- cian...
...But after all, most people are sooner or later honest with themselves: they drop all poses about art, beauty, and sophistica- tion...
...cunning in the Japanese...
...The popular idea that different races inherit marked emo- tional and cortical concepts such as sportsmanship and patriotism in the English...
...This must be said, even though one is conscious of what hard and brilliant efforts have been put forth by some actors and managers to raise the standard of the art...
...They have never been easy...
...Narcosan has been invented for the benefit of a similar group, and if we remember correctly, the "laws of supply and demand" did not suffice to calcimine the white-slave traffic...
...Unfortunately, New York is at present not a creative or a beneficent community...
...Elizabethan drama came into public favor very much in the same way as a criminal might be paroled into normalcy...
...His manner is aggressive, his un- derstanding of ensemble must be termed remarkable...
...The truth is that every child, when born, possesses nothing in the way of hereditary fac- tors beyond the sum of autonomic physiological, ana- tomical and neural correlations which ensure its de-velopment into a human being of a distinct type...
...He will be supported particularly by those who know how often in history theatres have been closed tight for offenses no more serious than those now visible on Broadway...
...And for his part, John Dryden was so well satisfied with official disapproval of the theatre that he loudly regretted his share in the merry bedlam, going so far as to castigate himself in the middle of a famous ode...
...No abstraction can be instinctive, for an instinct is inherited as a biological factor...
...This ultimately prevails against the theatre which is so immediately a creation of pub- lic taste...
...January 12, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 259 medicine...
...When one is old or tired, frolicsome relaxation under ques- tionable auspices is very tempting...
...but those were wrong...
...To say that the child of a burglar inherits a tendency to commit burglary is rubbish...
...The eugenist has been misled by bassing his hypothesis on the older biological concept that a mentality super- imposed on a network of instincts is as truly hereditary as the color of the skin, the shape of the face, the visceral processes...
...It arises through a confounding of these acquired abstract qualities with inherent instincts...
...Aristotle would have seen much to commend in these views of a distant scientific disciple...
...It has long since been no secret that New York play- houses are badly in need of moral criticism...
...Our time is gradually restoring equilibrium...
...As a matter of fact, the several attempts of the English people to rectify the stage always ended in what we today would term a row of padlocks...
...He had read Plato carefully enough to be quite certain that all resolutions to employ the state as a means toward the realization of "ideal man" repose on either too much or too little emphasis being put upon the material constituents of human nature...
...WHITEWASHING BROADWAY M AYOR WALKER of New York in the r61e of Jeremy Collier displays more than a little vigor and charm...
...and they quote a pretty straightforward defini-tion of immorality...
...There is no doubt that if the mayor of New York determines to run a certain variety of shows out of town, he can get all the support he needs or cares to have...
...Mentality is not hereditary," Dr...
...Athens brought forth and crowned Aeschylus and Aristophanes...
...The pity of it is, how little has been done to construct a theatre worthy of the best in America...
...He argued well from his premises...
...A~nd the lines...
...Even the later "morality plays" resisted improvement, so that the Archbishop of York finally despaired and put an end to them...
...They [the producers] were ad-monished by me that if they did not get together in some form for the control of their properties, and for the improvement of the character of theatrical performances, I would have to find a way to do it for them," is about as pat a monologue as one could hope to hear...
...Control and censorship of the theatre are difficult...
...And ultimately some form of control will be exercised, even if it is difficult to determine in advance what that form will be...
...cupidity in the Jews, is so much twaddle...
...If Mr...
...How.the advocate of "better breeding" was duped by a whole series of mechanistic assumptions is an in- structive spectacle...
...the metropolis of the United States has produced--well, what is the use of odious comparisons...
...Of course, it still turns up here and there--for instance, in a large and imposing volume we have just looked into--but it wears a spectral garb...
...parsimony in the Scots...
...It is not to them, but to the community, that the opportunity for improvement must come home...
...That vicious plays gratify a certain public has nothing to do with the matter...
...David Belasco can be honest enough to say that indecent shows are staged because they pay, it is possible that some jury may be honest enough to agree with him...
...Though it cannot be held responsible for the cheap vulgarity of many shows to which out-of-towners flock, it offers no basis for belief that it can insist upon positive quality and get what it wants...
...Nowhere has the stage risen to look beyond the day and its profits...
...George Ryley Scott wrote recently, "or at any rate its hereditary factor is so slight as to be negligible so far as any practical purpose is concerned...
...When one is young and inclined to be "satirical"--a condition widely prevalent in our day--the lure of anti-social literature is more magnetic than grave thinking...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 10
