Hebrew hand fell across the stage were a few artists who had received their training under the Gentile school—Julia Marlowe, Tyrone Power, R. D. McLean, and, a little later, Richard Mansfield, Robert Mantell, E. H. Sothern. Two of this group remain, and with Maude Adams they constitute the last flashings of an era that has gone—an era that apparently leaves no great exemp¬ lars to perpetuate it.
The present-day average of intelligence appealed to in the American Theater does not rise above 13 to 18 years. “The tired business man” stuff (another Jew¬ ish expression) has treated the theatergoing public as if it were composed of morons. The appeal is frankly to a juvenile type of mind which can be easily molded to the ideals of the Hebraic theatrical monopoly. Clean, wholesome plays—the few that remain—are supported mainly by the rapidly vanishing race of theatergoers who survive from an earlier day; the present generation has been educated by the narrowed compass of modern dramatic themes to support plays of an entirely different type. Tragedy is taboo; the ^ play of character, with a deeper significance than would delight the mind of a child, is out of favor; the comic opera has degenerated into a flash of color and movement—a combination of salacious farce and jazz * music, usually supplied by a Jewish song-writer (the great purveyors of jazz!) and the rage is for extrava¬ ganza and burlesque.