Word: melodramas
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Apollo--"Harlem". A melodrama that sets a fast pace from start to finish...
...pins for seats at plays in his cellar, made $3.75 by playing the harmonica in a public hall at prices of 15 and 25 cents. With a recommendation from Phineas Taylor Barnum, a family friend, he secured his first regular part, that of an aged Negro, in a melodrama at the old Philadelphia Museum (1877). He has since appeared in 325 plays, directing 33 of them. He was leading man for Mme. Modjeska (see p. 44), once supported Edwin Booth. His daughter, Cornelia Otis Skinner, is a famed monologist. One of Actor Skinner's chief rivals in the impersonation...
...applaud in, when every situation was suggested, built up, and reached with a mechanical inevitability--the day of the "well-made play." Fortunately, that rigidity doesn't hold these days. In a period of nine-act dramas, of comedies taking place in a character's mind, of slangy racketeer melodrama the obvious mechanisms of Harry B. Smith's farce strike one as outdated, rusty, but serviceable...
...seemed absurd to modern playgoers, these Hoboken theatricals became a fad. Audiences which were always rowdy, however fashionable, hissed the villains, cheered the heroes. Mr. Morley's latest attempt to make money exploits Joan Lowell, touted literary hoax-mistress (The Cradle of the Deep). It is a maritime melodrama, written by her husband, which permits her to maneuver in the shrouds and employ the nautical idiom. But it is not funny, either in itself, or in the manner of its predecessors...
...melodrama is by Clyde North, Albert C. Fuller, Jack T. Nelson. With its loudspeakers in the audience, mechanically realistic set and smart cast, it should succeed...