in
Theatrical
THEATRE.
attractions.
Eternal.
men.
e Law.
THEATRE
res.
,!
7:00 to 10:00.
of program daily.
T ETERNAL
ller, the Celebrated Actor-
', Discusses the Spectacular
Now in Its Fifth Year.
sier to produce twenty tnod-
as than one play of an
xiod, where we must dig into
Ad misty past for the correct
essential to a perfect per-
says Henry Miller, the as-
manager, and stage director
the big spectacular drama,
it Eternal," its initial pre-
in New York some five seas-
"One anachronism will at-
eye quicker than one hun-
atical errors in the author's
is highly important that
il be absolutely correct, and
director is entitled to credit
oportion to his faithful ob-
of the requirements of his
gather the necessary infor-
the idea of once more utilizing. re-
ligious themes had lodged in the dra-
matic mind, and in 1894 "Hannele"
was first attempted in New York City,
though it met with no very gratifying
reception. Five years later Ben-Hur
burst upon the public ,view with a
shaft of light to represent the deity,
and about the same time Wilson Bar-
ret's "Sign of the Cross" was accepted
by a certain class. Then in 1902
"Everyman," sheltered by a sort of
educational mantle, gave us the voice
of Adonai summoning the hero to the
judgment seat. In the same year Mrs.
Fiske played "Mary of Magdalen,"
which was pervaded by a divine omni-'
presence. Following this came two
plays in which the Savior appeared in
disguise and shaped the destiny of
those He came in contact with-"The
Passing of the Third Floor Back" and
"The Servant in the House"-and,
though the disguise deceived nobody,
remonstrance was somewhat allayed
by the fact that the central characters
did not bear the title that was in every
mind. The voice of Christ was first
heard delivering beatitudes in the
New Theatre (now the Century) New
York City, and a little later He was
seen in His own person in Sarah
Bernhardt'spresentationof "La Samar-
atine." Concurrent with this latter
play came a purely American product
in the Merle-Miller spectacle, "The
Light Eternal," which will be seen at
the Whitney theatre, Wednesday, Octo-
ber C, matinee and night.
"Within the Law" employs the ser-
vices of one of the most carefully se-
lected and evenly balanced acting or-
ganizations gathered in many seasons,
and the scenic production provided by
the American Play Company, produc-
ers of the play is very elaborate.
"Within the Law" is a world wide suc-
cess, as the play is at present equally
popular in E'ngland, Germany and
Australia.
"STORY OF DREAMS
THAT CAME TRUE"
Charles rb an, liiventor of Kiiieia.-
color, is in Reality an Amnerican
Who Ila Lived for Years in Eng.
lain 41
Always when something new and
beautiful flashes across the vision and
consciousness of the public, curiosity
is manifested to know all about the
Iran who invented it and sent it forth.
The latest new and beautiful thing is
delighting every audience at the Ma-
i(stic theatre.
The inventor, then, of animated pic-
tures in natural colors, must be an
interesting personality. tHe is.
Furthermore, he is now in this country
cn a short visit, so he may be studied
at short range. And before going any
further, let us nail the comforting
When the writer met Mr. Urban he
was giving five minute interviews to a
sort of theatrical bread line that
stretched from the door of his private
office at 48 Street and Broadway, New
York, down six flights to the cigar
stand in the hall. It was an artistic
bread line, to be sure, made up of
lecturers, photographers, and other
temperamental men, all, however, in-
tent on making their fortunes.
The five minute stipulation was for-
gotten by Mr. Urban when he recount-
ed his discouragements and successes
to the interviewer. Looking back a
dozen years is fascinating work to a
man, from Cincinnati or anywhere
else, who has reached a position of
wealth and fame, and is receiving the
hearty co-operation of kings and presi-
dents, after being rebuffed by cynical
secretaries and doormen.
"Fifty years ago," said Mr. Urban,
"the actual details of a royal function
were witnessed only by the few spec-
tators gathered to watch it. Kinema-
color camera is a sort of universal
eye. Wherever its unerring glance is
cast, there remains an unalterable
record of all that has passed before it,
whether good or ill. It has reduced
the globe to the dimensions of an
orange, which we can turn about and
examine at will."
It was in London I came in touch
with a Mr."Turner who had been a pupil
of Sanger Shepherd, of color-photog-
raphy fame. Mr. Turner wanted to in-
vestigate the possibility of applying
so simple that it would be put into the
hands of tens of thousands of opera-
tors. This was about four years ago.
"For another twelve months we did
nothing except think. Then the idea
struck us to divide the spectrum in
half. The three primary colors being
red, blue, and yellow, we divided them
in half, using half of the yellow with
the blue and making a blue-green, and
the other half of the yellow with the
red, making a deep orange.
"In his 'other experiments, Mr.
Smith had made use of stripfilm nega-
tives, taken alternately through red,
green and blue filters. When he made
a positive film from this red light the
results were almost colorless, owing
to the excessive actinic action of the
blue light that had produced the nega-
tive record and the correspondingly
overpowering effect through the blue
filters."
The kaleidoscopic play of colors in
the long sentence that Mr. Urban had
just delivered, made the writer blink
involuntarily, and Mr. Urban kindly
recognized that a too quick succession
of verbal deep blues and oranges
might be confusing to an ordinary per-
son. So he spoke more slowly, illum-
inating his meaning, as follows:
"In other words, the exposure neces-
sary to get satisfactory green and red
records was utterly out of the scale of
that required for the blue record. An-
other disadvantage of the three-color
process was that normal speed of the
ordinary kinematograph film, one foot
MARIE PAVE v
As Jo in "Litte Women."
"WITHINTHE, LAW"
The American Phy (1oimmpanmmy Presents
The Dramatic Senlsition of lthe Year.
One of the genuine treats of the
local theatrical season is foreshadow-
ed in the announcement that "Within
the Law," Bayard Veiller's absorbing
new play of modern American life
and the dramatic sensation of the year
in New York and Chicago, is to be
presented by the American Play Com-
pany at the Whitney theatre on
kAednesday, October 15.
This deservedly successful drama.
which has been critically commended
as possessing the most engrossing
human interest story given the stage
in a decade..has for its central char-
acter, a pretty and quick-witted young
woman who is falsely accused, and
wrongfully convicted of stealing from
her employer. She serves three years
in prison, comes out determined to
"go straight," is betrayed time and
time again by the police, and finally
is forced to abandon the effort to
earn honestly a livelihood, and live by
her wits.
She prospers by the use of many in-
genious devices, outswindles swind-
lers, conducts a blackmailing opera-
tion on perfectly legal lines, fortifies
herself against police int'erference by
effective lawful defence and, in short,
preys upon society at will as a, law-
breaker, but remains herself always
"within the law." At last she revenges
herself upon the man who sent her
unjustly to prison by luring his son
into marriage. And then, of course,
she falls in love with him.
>eachy Chlorus in "The Runaways" at the Whitney Theatre, Thursday
nd Friday, October 9 and 10.
e "m"TWINS BGOSH"
Scene from "Little Women" at the Whitney Theatre, Saturday, October 11, Matin e 'and Night.
tion regarding Roman life in the
gn of Emperor Diocletian was a
k requiring many weeks of re-
arch. Many details were very easy,
course, as they had previously been
tied beyond discussion; but in "The
ght Eternal" innumerable small
estions came up that were hard to
swer-for instance, the matter of
iting materials and utensils of the
iod. Every one knows the Romans
d a parchment scroll, but who can
off-hand just what sort of pen or
il was in vogue at the beginning of
fourth century? Search as I
uld through libraries, book stores,
I private collections, I could not be
'e of a solution. My best source
d me that ink pots and marking
eks were in use at the beginning of
Christian era, and that the qill
s used during the early Renais-
ice, but just when the change was
de I could not determine. Finally
ame across a small volume on the
tory of writing and printing, and,
suming the information contained
rein to be correct, I will not again
at sea on a similar question. From
s book I learned that a modified
m of the marking stick-really a
y good imitation of our present
lus pen, made of gold, silver, ivory
d bone, and highly ornamented with
ns-was the thing for our play; and
making of half a dozen of these
Is was no small item of expense."
The development of religious drama
probably one of the most striking
istrations possible to cite in proof
the gradual broadening of the pub-
mind. Like all innovations, plays
aling with a biblical' theme have led
precarious existence on the Ameri-
n stage, but seem now to have pass-
through the last stage of the stress
d opposition that has beset them.
out 1890 Henry E. Abbey abandoned
plan to present the Passion Play
this country because popular dis-
proval spoke in no uncertain tone.
wever, after a lapse of centuries,
',ITTLE WOMEN"
Ann Arbor Will be the First City Out-
side of Detroit to See the Stage Ver-
sion of Louisa M. Alcott's Celebrat-
ed Book,.
A stage version of "Little Women,"
Louisa M. Alcott's immortal story,
dramatized by Marian de Forest,
magazine writer and dramatic critic
of the Buffalo Express, and produced
by William A. Brady, will be the at-
traction at the Whitney theatre, Sat-
urday, October 11, matinee and night.
"Little Women," the play, is in real-
ity "Little Women," the book, made
into a character comedy in four acts
and two scenes, telling the familiar
story of the March girls. As Miss
Alcott and her sisters were the origin-
al Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy, it took
eight years of persistent endeavor be-
fore the Alcott heirs would consent to
have the story made into a play. Per-
mission was finally secured by Miss
Jessie Bonstelle, and the work of
dramatization was given to Miss de
Forest.
It were idle at this time to recount
the difficulties encountered and over-
come, the delays, the disappointments,
but the reward came when the Alcott
family formally accepted the play, and
the necessary contracts were signed.
Then began the detail work, securing
proper stage. effacts and costumes
(for "Little Women" will be dressed in
the quaint style of the early 'G's),
and, above all, finding a company of
players to interpret adequately the
familiar characters. "Little Women"
stands essentially as a character com-
edy, and each part is a distinct type.
Many of the identical costumes and
properties used by the March girls
in their famous stage frolics have
been preserved by the Alcott family,
and will be used in the stage produc-
tion.
fact at once that Charles Urban-for
that is his name-is an American and
an Ohioan, albeit he has for the last
fifteen or sixteen years made London
his home. He was born forty-odd
years ago in Cincinnati. He went to
London at $125 per month-less by a
good deal than Southern Michigan
yielded; less, too, than the fur collar
on his overcoat costs now. But, sup-
pose before we take up the story
chronologically, we glance at the man
ts he appears today.
r '71r
I r..
the three color process of photography
to kinematography. I supplied Mr.
Turner with apparatus and films and
money for his experimental work.
"After about ten months, when very
good results had been shown, we came
to the conclusion*that the process was
too complicated and expensive for
general use. It seemed then that it
could not be made a commercial suc-
cess. And then Mr. Turner died sud-
denly from heart disease. And I
didn't know anything more about color
photography than a rabbit knows
about shaving.
"I had sunk a great deal of money
so I went to Mrs. Turner, who had
several children to care for, and affer-
ed to buy all of the notebooks and
other data that her husband had got
together bearing on his experimental
efforts along this line. She was glad.
to dispose of them, and when I got
them, and tried to make head or tai;
of the mass of shorthand memoranda
and tables of chemical analyses, and'
stray paragraphs about this and that,
it was next to impossible to under-
stand the first thing about it.
"There was a chap named Albert
Smith, who had a small place in the
country, down Brighton way, who lik-
ed to do'photographic' stunts, and was
so fixed he could, if he felt like it,
give a lot of time to his experiments.
Mr. Smith had been employed in black
and white photographic work, and had
considerable knowledge of chemistry.
1 told him what I was searching for,
put him' in charge of experiments, and
he and I worked steadily on the propo-
sition for several days.
"It was the same old story of spend-
ing large sums of money and ultimate-
ly being forced to the conclusion once,
more that it was almost impossible
to attain a process that would enable
us to take advantage of the existing
market. That Is, to obtain a machine
a second, hadt to be trebled to give
forty-eight exposures instead of six-
teen a second, and such an increase of
speed involved prohibitive expense and
complicated mechanical devices for
the manipulation of the films.
"The Kinemacolor camera, as final-
ly worked out, is similar to that used
for black and white work, except that
it is built to run at twice the speed-
thirty-two instead of sixteen expos-
ures a second. Its essential differ-
ence is that it has a rotary color filter
placed between the lens and the shut-
ter. This filter consists of an alumin-
um skeleton wheel, having one seg-
ment filled in with green dyed gela-
tine, and it is so geared that the ex-
posures are made through- the two
filters alternately.
"The negative films consist of im-
ages in pairs, one being the record
of the red, and the other of the green
in the object photographed. In the
Kinemacolor projector the two pic-
tures are not superimposed on the
screen at the same moment, but the
picture is projected first through the
red and then through. the green filter
at the rate of thirty-two pictures a
second."
But to go back to the story of the
process. The idea of dividing the
spectrum into half made it necessary
that an entirely new equipment of
machinery, cameras, and printers be
obtained. These matters were worked
out by Mr. Uban, while Mr. Smith
devoted himself to the chemical as-
pects of the investigation. About
three years ago the first length, con-
sisting of about fifteen feet of films,
was successfully shown in color, and
three months more of exhaustive ex-
perimental work showed that the in-
ventors had finally solved, according
to Mr. Urban, the problem of produc-
ing motion pictures in natural colors,
as demonstrated nightly at the Majes-
tic theatre.
Scene from "The Light Eternal" at the Whitney Theatre, October 8, Matinee
and Night,