AMUSEMENTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2722, 29 January 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

AMUSEMENTS.

HIS MAJESTY’S. LOCAL FIXTURES. Path© Pictures. —Nightly. February 2,3, 4, s—Scarlet Troubadours. The New York Opera House is inaugurating a system of wireless telephones. The music can be heard over a distance of eighty-five miles. William Miller, who until fifteen years ago was a ragged newspaper boy on the streets of Pittsburg, has been engaged by the Munich Royal Opera to act as leading tenor for the season, at a salary of £2,400. Hugh Ward is to show Australia a new farce entitled “The Girl from Rector’s.” Rector’s is a well-known American restaurant, and the play is said to be full of laughs and inducements to laughter. Harry Lauder is said to be the highest" salaried -.performer on the vaudeville stage. He receives about £1 10s for every minute he is regaling his hearers with his inimitable Scotch dialect and witticisms. Mme. Sarah Bernhardt is appearing in Paris as Joan of Arc in a play by M. Emile Moreau, who collaborated with Sardou in “Madame Sans Gene.” The play puts Joan of Arc before the public in a new and more human light than has ever been represented before. She is represented as a sort of female Hamlet who strives to put the world right and who fails. In M. Moreau’s play Bishop Cauchon is whitewashed, and the Queen of England, who was a princess of France, is made to intervene for Joan.

Harry Lauder is a Scot on the edge of middle life, who began his career as “a comic singer of no importance” in the English music halls. Pit and gallery discovered him first, but it was not long before stalls and circle clamoured to call him their own. To-day he is recognised as one of the world’s greatest entertainers, and is engaged for several years ahead. If he lived tor one hundred years he could not till the contracts that are being freely offered him by theatrical managers..

Miss Florence-Baines, of “Miss Lancashire” fame, after appearing successfully in various parts of England, particularly in Lancashire and Yorkshire, sailed during November for the United States, where a tour has been mapped out- for “Our Mary Ellen.” Miss Baines, in a communication, wishes to be very kindly remembered to her friends and theatrical patrons in the dominion, and she desires to let them know that at the conclusion of her American tour her steps will be turned again to that “dear, delightful country, New Zealand.” Well, I am sure Miss Baines will be most heartily welcomed.

Some little time ago it was announced in this column the London “Daily Telegraph”) that a troupe of dancers selected from the harem of the late Sultan of Turkey had been organised. and was even then being exploited at one of the Viennese variety theatres. From the manager. Mr Ch. Sarkany, we have received the following letter, which deserves to be printed literatim et verbatim : “I beg to inform you that the ‘Real Turkish pantomime’ will be in London in December. lam the impresario of the show. I insist of cause I am the own who can present a real Turkish princess, the last favorite of the Sultan Abdul Hamid and her six Turkish girls accompanied of two ‘ennuques' and working on the stage under the direction of the ballet-master, who was for twenty-seven years at the Abdul Hamid court.’ All of whidli is as clear as it is satisfactory.

Pars from the ‘‘Bulletin”. —The biograph, intelligently exploited, is a great money-spinner. Especially does it find favor* and reap profit in country parts whose inhabitants don’t want their intellects strained bv classic comedies and dramas of psychology and so forth. Dick lvenna, hotelkeeper, of Bathurst (N.S.W.), struck a smart show scheme recently. He advertised that at 1 p.m. on such and such a date a _ biograph. camera would be at work on his balcony overlooking the main street. Just that and nothing more. The day dawned. The hours rolled by. At quarter to one the thoroughfare was deader than a morgue—which is to say _it was in its normal condition. No living thing stirred barring dogs. No sound fractured the stillness save the discordant howl of the town bellman in the slaughter of his duty. The appointed hour drew very near. With a confident smile the biograph owner strode to his machine and prepared to 'wind. He had not erred. With a sound like unto the waters descending at Ladore, Bathurst suddenly awoke and started defiling with an elaborate air of unconsciousness past the muzzle of the instrument. Every class was represented. Doctors and pastoralists fled by in motor-cars and then turned and' fled back again in case the first picture wasn’t a success; horsemen of all ages and styles careered madly about the pub’s front step; '■aggies, drays, waggons, etc., appeared from noAvhere, vanished into the void, reappeared.unexpectedly, and then did it all over again. It is said that several clerics were anxious to expound the Word on the footpath within the purview of the instrument, and a local oonstable offered to arrest someone, with or without violence, in the interests of a satisfactory picture. With a few negligible exceptions, every Bathurstian who wasn’t either out of town, speechlessly drunk, in-gaol or absolutely chained by both legs to his business turned up and was ’graphed. That night the promoter of the venture scored a bumper house. He deserved it. Others have .taken local football matches, racemeetings, and such like paltry concerns. JJick Kenna was the first to lut upon the grandiose idea of biographing ail entire town _ Royal Divorce,” like most of Wills historical plays, teems with inaccuracies. It' snows Josephine alive at- the date of Waterloo, whereas she died in 181-1. The meeting between Josephine and Marie Louise in Act 11. (an idea plagiarised from Schiller'I’s 1 ’s “Mane (Stuart,” wherein Queen Bess and Scotch Mary have a palaver) amounts to a distortion of history. lhe twain never met. Stephanie, Josephine s daughter, was never at Waterloo. In any” case' Augereau (her lover in the plav'l could not have met her there, as he‘had long before deserted to the Bourbons. Also, Augereau denounced bv Napoleon as a traitor after his return from. Elba—did not accompany him into exile at St. Helena. Murat was also missing from the famous Belgian scrap, being then a- scattered fugitive. Nor was Marie Louise ever hunted m the Tuileries gardens, effective as that episode is on the boards'.