The Seven Lively Arts by Gilbert Seldes - HTML preview

FOOTNOTES

1 Except that supplied by the professional journals—often excellent.

2 But there is more to say; a little of it occurs on page 41.

3 Scenario by the adroit Anita Loos.

4 Seven years ago, when this imaginary conversation was published, I wanted to be fair to Mr Eaton and to persuade Mr Griffith to do Helen of Troy. I succeeded in neither, and the document has only historical interest. I do not know Mr Eaton’s present stand on the movies, and I apologize to him for retaining his name here. What I do know is Mr Griffith’s position. It will be entertaining to compare it with the imaginary future outlined for him above. See page 323.

G. S.

5 See Appendix.

6 It appeared in The New Republic and will probably be found in The Flower in Drama (Scribners).

7 See page 92.

8 My indebtedness, and, I suppose, the indebtedness of everyone who cares at all for negro music, is apparent—to Afro-American Folksongs, by Henry Edward Krehbiel (Schirmer).

9 It has been clairvoyantly pointed out to me by another composer that Berlin’s preëminence in ragtime and jazz may be traced to his solitary devotion to melody and rhythm; in the jazz sense there remains something always pure in his work. This supports the suggestion made in the next paragraph.

10 Internal, off-beat rhyme occurred as long ago as Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. Bud de Sylva has used it intelligently, but not expertly enough in Where is the Man of My Dreams? and Brian Hooker and William Le Baron make it a great factor in their highly sophisticated lyrics. So also Cole Porter.

11 In “The Spice of Variety,” which he conducts for Saucy Stories.

12 Since writing this I am informed that the Winter Garden has changed, at least structurally. But even if the type of show at that house also changes, The Passing Show as a type will be seen elsewhere, so I leave what I have written. In 1913 or 1914 Mr H. K. Moderwell wrote of the worst show in years, “They call it The Passing Show. Let it pass.” Apparently they did.

13 This review appeared in Vanity Fair sometime in the summer of 1922. I allow it to stand with nothing more than verbal corrections in spite of my dislike of books which collect articles expressly written for magazine publication, because I feel that the negro show is extraordinarily transient and that a transient criticism of it is adequate. The permanent qualities are touched on elsewhere; especially in the essay entitled “Toujours Jazz.” Since this was written there have been other negro shows, and I have heard that one was better than Shuffle Along. What has interested me more is the report that there is a “nigger show by white men” which is standing them up every night. This verifies a prediction made below—that the negro show would have an effect on the white man’s. I am not at all sure that there will not continue to be negro shows for a long time—why in Heaven’s name shouldn’t there be? They have their qualities and their great virtues. It is only in relation to the sophisticated Broadway piece that I find them lacking; and have perhaps not been fair enough to them.

14 For da Ponte’s share in the work, cf. Edgar Istel: Das Libretto, which analyzes the changes made in Beaumarchais’ play.

15 All this was written before Bert Savoy died. I haven’t changed the verbs to the past tense. “How well could we have spared for him....”

16 R. C. Benchley has written a just and sympathetic account of Jackson. It appeared in a magazine and is not, so far as I know, available in book form.

17 A number of comic-strip artists, on achieving fame, stop drawing, leaving that work to copyists of exceptional skill. I do not know whether this is the case in the Happy Hooligan strip.

18 I must hasten to correct an erroneous impression which may have caused pain to many of Krazy’s admirers. The three children, Milton, Marshall, and Irving, are of Ignatz, not, as Mr Stark Young says, of Krazy. Krazy is not an unmarried mother. For the sake of the record I may as well note here the names of the other principals: Offisa Bull Pupp; Mrs Ignatz Mice; Kristofer Kamel; Joe Bark the moon hater; Don Kiyoti, that inconsequential heterodox; Joe Stork, alias Jose Cigueno; Mock Duck; Kolin Kelly the brick merchant; Walter Cephus Austridge; and the Kat Klan: Aunt Tabby, Uncle Tom, Krazy Katbird, Osker Wildcat, Alec Kat, and the Krazy Katfish.

19 See Appendix.

20 Heywood Broun has discovered that everybody in vaudeville is an “artist” except the trained seal.

21 I do not know enough of Carl Hyson and Dorothy Dickson or of the Astaires to judge their place.

22 For example: “Ours is a sincere doubt as to whether the question ‘And what did you do during the Great War?’ might not embarrass, among others, God.”

23 He said of Firpo that when he came up after the sixth or seventh knock-down, his face looked like a slateful of wrong answers.

24 A footnote to a footnote is preposterous. Perhaps the very excess of its obscurity will give it prominence and render faint justice to the old New York Hippodrome. It is a fine example of handling of material, and of adjustment, spoiled occasionally by too much very loud singing and a bit of art. It is part of New York’s small-townness; but it is so vast in its proportions that it can never acquire the personal following of a small one-ring circus like the Medrano in Paris. I adore the Hippodrome when it is a succession of acts: the trained crow and Ferry who plays music on a fence and the amazing mechanical and electrical effects. Joe Jackson, one of the greatest of clowns, played there, too, and had ample scope. I like also the complete annihilation of personality in the chorus. When you see three hundred girls doing the same thing it becomes a problem in mass—I recall one instance when it was a mass of white backs with black lines indicating the probable existence of clothes—the whole thing was quite unhuman. And one great scene in which, I believe, the whole of the personnel participated: there were, it seemed, hundreds of tumblers and scores of clowns, and a whole toy shop in excited action. Oddly enough, one finds that the weakness of the Hip is in its humour; there is plenty of it, but it is not concentrated, and there is no specific Hippodrome “style.” What it will become under the new Keith régime remains to be seen.

25 I have seen them since in another entrance, the most brilliant of all. See Appendix.

26 They nevertheless played exquisitely, I am told, in the Cocteau-Milhaud Bœuf sur le Toit.

27 Quanto più, un’ arte porta seco fatica di corpo, tanto più è vile! Pater, who quotes this of Leonardo, calls it “princely.”

28 It is not too late for you to film Mr D. Taylor’s Should a Brother-in-Law Give a Damn?

29 I haven’t seen The Covered Wagon. Its theme returns to the legendary history of America. There is no reason why it should not have been highly imaginative. But I wonder whether the thousands of prairie schooners one hears about are the film or the image. In the latter case there is no objection.

30 They have done so. See “The Cinema Novel.”

31 I wrote once, and was properly rapped over the knuckles for writing, that it wasn’t to escape Bach, but to escape Puccini, that one played Berlin. Mr Haviland, whom I have quoted frequently, replied that those who really cared for jazz cared for it, not as an escape from any other art. I had not intended to write an apology; only, since I was replying to the usual attack on the jazz arts, I wanted to indicate that in addition to their primary virtues they have this great secondary one, that when we are too fed up with bad drawing, bad music, bad acting, and second-rate sentiment, we can be sure of consolation in the lively arts.