"Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "St. Elmo"

   Harriet Beecher Stowe and Augusta Jane Evans would blink their eyes in wonder if they could arise from their revered graves and see their famous Southern novels told with eloquence and pathos on either side of the glare and turbulence and clatter of Broadway. More than half a century has passed since "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was first published, and almost as many years since "St. Elmo" satisfied the taste of the times as much as "Woman Thou Gavest Me" and "The Salamander" nowadays: and it would be impossible to calculate the number of readers even the less famous of the old romances since has had. Then, too, there have been the countless dramatizations of both books. These are, in a way, more closely akin to the photo-plays newly made from the stories and shown in New York. On the other hand, the pictures come more directly from the books, for the almost unlimited possibilities of the screen make it feasible to rehearse an entire novel and in less time than the ordinary acted dramatization takes to touch on only its more salient points. It is that very vastness of opportunity that makes one critical of results that are no more than reasonably good, where something extraordinary might have been achieved. In the making of motion pictures imagination has not kept pace with the mechanics of art. The technical advance has been—and continues day by day to be—remarkable; what is needed is scenario-writers and producers with imagination in some proportion to the facilities at their hands. As it is, the effect is not unlike the Boston Symphony Orchestra reduced to accompanying a player on the jew's harp.

   No town in America is so small that it has not had its "Uncle Tom's Cabin," from the latest New York revival with William Lackaye and an "all-star cast" to the hamlet invaded by an Uncle Tom who "doubles in brass" and, perhaps, "Two Topsies—Count 'Em—Two!" The play has come to have sounds as traditional as its story—Topsy "with song," the baying of the bloodhounds, the plink-plink of the banjoes and the harmony of the singers in the cotton fields. On the other hand, in place of the canvas cakes of ice on which Eliza has escaped so many times across a stationary river, the pictures give us thrilling realism in an actually ice-clogged river, even though the bloodhounds show the emasculating influence of a highly cultured age by acting no more savage than a group of cocker-spaniels. But then, it is something to know that during the taking of these pictures, Irving Cummings, as George Harris, fell into the water and was nearly drowned. The newspaper stories added that he was carrying Little Eva at the time; but, as no such incident occurs in the play, we suspect that the publicity promoter lured Eva to the shore and pushed her in.

   The "Uncle Tom's Cabin" photo-play arranged by the World Film Corporation begins, at least at the New York theatre, with Little Eva in the flesh. Before the first picture, the child known as the Thanhouser Kid appears in front of a curtain and speaks a prologue designed to make a sort of Peter Pan of Little Eva. The little girl is rather pretty and engaging, and she speaks her few lines well. The exact analogy between a child who was incidental to a powerful arraignment of an infamous condition long ago abolished and the symbol of youth, in Barrie Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, is a little difficult to make out, but the prologue serves to introduce a child who has made many friends on the screen.

   There is nothing much to be said about the World Film Corporation's version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It rehearses Mrs. Stowe's story fairly lucidly, picturesquely and dramatically, with some humor and more pathos. The separate flights of Eliza and George Harris are so jumbled that only people familiar with the book (are there any who are not?) would suspect that the two negroes did not start and pursue most of their journey together. Then, too, more should have been made of the desperately daring crossing of the frozen river, second only in fame to the crossing of the Delaware by an earlier American—if indeed second; and with the market glutted with war pictures, less might well have been made of the guerrilla warfare between George Harris and the Quaker and the Haley agents in pursuit. Still, it is something to hear an orchestra placidly play "Down on the Suwanee River" as a suitable accompaniment of gun-play and destruction.

   On the whole, the World Film Corporation has done very well with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Its version will serve until the day (not far off, let us hope) when it will occur to photo-play producers that something more than scenery and competent actors and crowds of super-numeraries is needed to catch the spirit that made a classic novel. Augustus Thomas might do worse than try his expert hand at "Uncle Tom."

   It has been a good many years since I have read "St. Elmo," and no film firm in business can drive me to read it again; but my memory must be bad if the story's chief attraction was not its highly sentimental picture of the South before the war. The photo-play shown at the Strand Theatre (makers unnamed) pointedly mentions that the play has been "produced amidst the beautiful scenery of Long Beach, California." That insures some rather charming (if highly colored) views, even though they have little to do with Mrs. Evans-Wilson's story. That, I fear, is as out of fashion as hoop-skirts and daguerrotypes. On the long road traveled between the publication of the book, in 1866, and its "filmization" in 1914, "St. Elmo" has picked up "Oh, Promise Me." As a prelude, Caroline Cassels sings the verses written by the late Clement Scott and sent immediately by him as a personal tribute to twelve different women, who unfortunately compared notes before sundown; set to music, some time later, by Reginald de Koven, and sung for many years by Jessie Bartlett Davis in "Robin Hood," apropos of nothing in particular, but with complete success.

  The story of "St. Elmo" (I rely on my memory rather than the baffling mix-up on the screen) has to do with the wealthy owner of a Southern plantation. He is a hero of romance if ever one existed outside the pages of Ouida. On the very verge of marrying the girl he believes he loves, he discovers that her only interest is in his fortune. Thereupon he casts her off and takes to drink. Then a railway train is wrecked, and one Agnes, daughter of a blacksmith, or otherwise related to the lowly forge, is injured and is carried to St. Elmo's place—perchance to die, or yet, mayhap, to live. You will hardly be surprised to learn that Agnes decides on the latter course. Then St. Elmo falls in love with her. He would marry her. Unfortunately, he tells her the story of his life. He tells it several times. Indeed, he repeats it so often that Agnes is driven to refusing him, vast estates, jameshackettesque physique and all. Then he goes to sea. Whether he proposes jumping in or merely making sand-pies has not been made clear, when a vision comes to him. Answering it, he goes home and studies for the clergy. Finally, we see him delivering his first sermon. Agnes is in the front pew. The sermon is a very long one, and evidently Agnes concludes that, with a helpless congregation to address at will, St. Elmo will be less garrulous at home. In any case, she falls into his arms and all ends well.