SNAPSHOTS

...It must always be wiser than the characters who were caught in the mesh of circumstances...

...Electric walnut dehydration is a distinct step forward...

...Academic definitions never mean much, in the advertisements, however, for all forms of theatrical entertainment have now characteristics acquired from all the various types: most plays are thus hybrid in essence...

...A moment's thought will show that all the great classic dramatists always kept the audience clear as to the reason for the action...

...Whitney, 1-1,502 feet...

...One play last winter beat any crossword puzzle as to what it was about, and no actor of the cast knew one single reason why things were done...

...Further, I have attempted, for the first time, I believe, to write a melodrama of this type without detectives or officers of, the law...

...Near me, as I write, curiously enough, I happen to have an original letter which Balzac wrote to his friend Pixerecourt, the father of modern melodrama, and it bespeaks the fascination which this form of play has always had over the French public...

...SNAPSHOTS By George Middle ton ONLY recently, while passing the night in a French village, where I had gone to see an old church, I came across one of those travelling theaters so integrally a part of every French Fair...

...With this in mind I have endeavored to venture on a new type of mystery play in "Blood Money," recently produced at the Hudson theater...

...Close at hand are hot springs, the water from which is piped through the city to heat homes and other buildings during the winter...

...Perhaps I may be pardoned a personal reference since I happened to have dramatized Meredith Nicholson's famous mystery novel, "The House of a Thousand Candles," which antedated "The Bat" and such similar engaging compositions...

...But out of the past a new type has come, with a new technical manner of handling old material: I refer to the so-called melodramatic mystery play...

...I was interested in making the motive for what happens a mystery and then revealing the truth to the audience by means of a murder and other crimes...

...And even the milling process is now largely electrical...

...Minnesota, with ten thousand lakes, is entitled to call itself "the lake state" of America...

...Altho Kansas is generally known as a great wheat and corn state, her soil also yields half the zinc produced in U. S. and around Salina are the largest veins of salt known to the world...

...I recall one observation' "Ah, 'Monsieur, during the week we give them comedies and social dramas...

...Ethylene gas is used to ripen fruit and other commodities are made ready for use more rapidly by similar scientific wiles...

...Electric motors then pull the forest giants to the trains and other motors carefully Tift them aboard waiting flat cars for transport to the mill...

...Naturally, being a youngster, I followed the tradition and wrote my play with the secret revealed at once to the audience...

...Among the latest food-ripening schemes is that of artificial walnut dehydration...

...The public's reaction already to this fair playing with, them convinces me that they are satisfied to be fooled and amused and thrilled if, at the same time, their intelligences are not insulted when the cards are all on the table...

...Near it is Hallett's glacier, a moving river of ice and snow, even in the summer...

...but readers resent the story which does not finally give PLAUSIBLE explanations for what has happened...

...and situation rather than psychology is inevitably the mainspring of the plot...

...Quite a different process from the lumbering of the late last century...

...But I was troubled even then by the technical restrictions and I remember a charming response I had from a veteran dramatist...

...the fact is that ->ut of those pioneer plays a new technic developed until now the greatest game in the world is "to fool them every minute and keep them guessing...

...Walnuts are grown principally in California, where a good crop means more than ten millions to California farmers...

...In some of these lakes, the fierce pike grows to a weight of 25 pounds...

...Colorado is by no means a cold state, yet Chasm lake in (Rocky mountain peaks, remains frozen eleven months in the year...

...He urged me to play safe and follow the traditional pathway...

...But the hold persists: for the great theater-going public loves a story, and story rather than character is its essential ingredient...

...Isa lake is a small, lily covered pond near Craig Pass, in Wyoming, which has two creeks flowing from it...

...The new drier ripens the nuts at just the time they are wanted for shipment, and, in several other respects, has a decided advantage over the natural drying method...

...But this structural habit was wrecked in our own theater by Roi Cooper Megrue in "Under Cover, and by George Cohan in "Seven Keys to Baldpate...

...And again the technic does not demand that the plot be a preposterous one, full of gross exaggerations...

...But recently dehydration has become of definite value and now several walnut growers have electric equipment for drying the nuts as soon as they are picked...

...It was thought to conceal was to confuse...

...Boise, Idaho, is lucky...

...Curiously, the highest spot is only 75 miles away, Mt...

...even though, of course, the audience may be kept guessing...

...DEHYORATING WALNUTS One of the modern features of science is the artificial preparation of food for market...

...In the average mystery melodrama the whole aim is only to fool and bewilder...

...Further, this particular play really drew audiences simply because the reaction of the audience amused itself...

...but on Saturday and Sunday we always give them melodramas, because the working people like them more...

...I made friends with the rotund buraliste who sold tickets, and when I told her I scribbled a bit she readily answered all my inquiries about her- theater except how much these forains (actors) were paid...

...the other flows westerly and lands in the Pacific ocean...

...In many modern logging camps the entire process of timber getting is electrical...

...The big scenery-laden meio of our childhood has been shot away by the movie camera which does it so much better...

...One creek flows eastward and finally mingles with the Atlantic waters...

...So that, from the time of the ax-man's "Timber" to the piling of the finished lumber in the mill yard, electricity does a major portion of the work...

...for, electric motors are now doing the work of the little engine which, for many years, was of vital importance to every lumberman...

...Portable electric saws shear down the mightiest trees, and smaller ones trim them...

...It managed, in spite of this, to become one of the great successes of that flecade, solely, I think, because, in other respects, it was in a way, a forerunner of the present type of mystery play...

...Nobody, except in France, attempts the Sardou formula previously designed to exploit the personality of some star like Bernhardt...

...And so persistent has this combination of farce and melodrama become that it seemed the only formula...

...Then, too—here borrowing from the old school of melodrama— "comic relief" has been supplied by scared housemaids and grotesque characters without the slightest semblance to reality...

...Originality of plot, skill of treatment, are, of course, essential...

...anything for the passing effect and thrill—a hasty explanation that never explains and a quick curtain that gives them no time to think...

...It is a far cry, though, from his rapid scene-shifting technic, through the famous Drury Lane Line which assimilated it, to melodrama as it has become today...

...In defense of my method I can only say that there is not one episode in the play which hasn't a rational explanation before the final situation is solved and that the actors themselves, at every moment of the action, know exactly what their real motives are...

...As an habitual reader of detective stories where the solving of a mystery was of course the dominant motive, I have noticed that those books which appealed most to the intelligence of the reader had the best popular sale...

...The situations, too, must be highly colored and accentuated so that their very swiftness does not give the audience time from rumination...

...Possibly others, too, had previously taken a hand...

...Bronson Howard, when I appealed to him for advice...

...Death Valley in California is 275 feet below sea level, the lowest spot in the United States...

...In those days no dramatist had ever violated the sacred rule that the audience must not be fooled...

...There is no time for subtleties: the human motives which the dramatist pretends to use are those large umbrella emotions of hate, revenge, love of money, etc., which cover a multitude of dramatic sins...

...Where the theme is a social one it more often masks its obvious melodrama under a more high-falutin designation...

...The prevalent type today has simmered down to one dealing with crooks and crime, with lots of gunplay and the like...

...ELECTRIC LUMBERING THE once-familiar snort and whistle of the "donkey engine" is a thing of the past in modern lumber camps...

...For long the nuts have been dried as nature dictated...

...My own personal objection to this is that I think the public is beginning to resent the absurd .tricks to which we dramatists have subjected audiences...

...Most mystery plays have a crime committed and the rest of the time is spent fooling the audience as to WHO did it...

...to solve the mystery entirely from within and not from without...

...It is life made into theater not by the use of unrealities, but by the unreal accumulation of realities...