TRAGEDIES OF A "CURSE."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19221, 9 January 1926, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRAGEDIES OF A "CURSE."

EDGAR ALLEN POE. SEQUENCE OF MISFORTUNES. DISASTER, DEATH, GLOOM. THE THREE LATEST "VICTIMS." After having for years run the gamut of disastor, death and gloom, what the superstitious regard as the "Poe curse," has just struck down three fresh victims, says an American paper. "Nonsense!" scoff the cynical. "This unfortunato trio passed or. through perfectly natural causes." "Well, it's very strange that each of them was intimately connected with the production of a play based on the poet's life!" is the reply. What had happened was this: Several months ago plans for an elaborate presentation of Catherine Chisholm Cushing's now drama, "Edgar Allan Poe," were announced. Money was freely spent on research, documentation, scenery, costumes and cast. Yet within two weeks the piece, a complete fiasco, collapsed. Ar.d with its withdrawal leaked out the startling news that three men associated with the play house, on whoso stage "Edgar Allan Poo" had held forth were—dead! J. W. Mayer, manager and part ownor of the Liberty Theatre, near Broadway, New York, wan a guest at a Sunday night party tho day after tho play vanished. The following morning ho was dead, victim of a supposed heart attack. Sydney Martin, assistant treasurer at the Liberty, although up to the last minute he had continued to function in his official capacity, was also claimed by tho grave. To cap the triple doom, a stage-hand, Martin Galvin, fell to tho floor of tho stage, stricken in the very midst of his labours. Weird as was this sequence of fatalities, it presented merely the climax of the "Poe curse," which, despite the protests of the sceptics, has run its course through the period which began with the great lyrist's terrifying death. Particularly has this malign influence been felt in the theatre, the motion picture and the art Vorld. Previous Incidents. Let us consider, for the moment, the events just prior to the deaths of Messrs. Mayer, Galvin and Martin, which shook the theatrical centre of the country. Michael Strange, the beautiful and accentric pootress, herself the creator of unearthly and terrifying verses, announced that she had written a play based on the life of Poo. John Barrymore, her husband, and perhaps the most acclaimed actor in the United States, was to portray the title-role in "The Dark Crown." But no sooner had the Barrymores rotiirned from foreign travel than into the arena of contention sprang Misu Sophie Treadwell, author of "Gringo," "0 Night- , ingale" and other plays, with the accusation that Michael Strange had pirated portions of Miss Treadwell's own dramatic 1 depiction of Poe! \ According to Miss Treadwell's suit, she had submitted to Mr. Barrymore a drama upon which ho looked with a favourable eye. But, continued Miss Treadwell (in private life the wife of W. 0. MoGeehan, the authority on sports), delay followed delay in Barrymore's acceptance of the script. after time, she implored a decision, only to bo put off. She was not, she asserted, oven able to get her manuscript back. Ono of the most flaming disputes rememberable broke out, with denials from Michael Strange, counter-charges by Miss Treadwell, and a general air of smouldering anger which involved both sides in the controversy. Miss Treadwell got out a writ, asking the return of the play or £SOOO. Michael Strange filed a £40,000 damage action. It was a pretty mess! The Avenging Conscience, Another dominant dramatic personage to feel the blight associated with the Poe name has been David Wark Grifii.th. This motion picture director has always sensed the subtle fascination of the "dark angel" of Poe's personal charm. It was way back in 1908 that Mr. Griffith, then just striking his stride as a national figure, conceived the notion of putting Too into a one-reol biograph photoplay. Either the public of the period was too routine or something mysteriously "went wrong" with the film. For "Edgar Allan, Poe" made no money, and was condemned by such metropolitan magazines as "The Dramatic Mirror." Undeterred by ridicule, Mr. Griffith nourished his hopo of making a Poe production which should cast lustre on the unhappy poet's name. In 1913—the year before "The Birth of a Nation," his greatest triumph—he enlisted an all-star cast to present "The Avenging Conscience," which was his own combined dramatisation of tho poem, "Annabel Lee," and the gruesome short story, "The Telltale Heart." Ihe venture was appallingly unlucky. Not only was the picture shudderingly condemned as "morbid," "unwholesome," and "deadly;" misfortunes began to pile up on the luckless heroine of the tale. Blanche Sweet, then at the apex of her popularity as the screen's most beautiful blonde, underwent a nervous breakdown •» and was forced to retire from a professional career that promised brightly. 11l Bome said morbidly unhappy—and vnth her beauty bearing traces cf some misery, she withdrew, only to appear years later with her good looks restored, in picturo plays far removed from the type of "The Avenging Conscience." The case of other plays and pictures which suffered from tho weird Poe blight might be adduced—among them "The , Cask of Amontillado" and "The Pit and the Pendulum," but an even more striking instance of the "curse" is to be found it: three personal disasters among poets and artists. Struck down in Youth. In the London of the Nineties there were no mora gifted aesthetes than Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson. The former a sensational black-and-white portrayer of fantastic scenes of horror, abnormality and death; the latter, a poet 1-ngely influenced by Poe, the pah were struck down at the highest of their powers and barely beyond their boyhood. Dowson died in his twenties, a victim of poverty, heartbreak and tuberculosis, n pathetic figure. Beardsley, at twentyfour, succumbed also to consumption. i Poo's French translator, Charles Baude- \ laire, was another genius to be lashed by the whip of fate. Having done over all ' of Poe's "Stories of Imagination and , Terror," he passed through a terrible a family existence and finally died. <]

Just how far the ebony shadow thatengulfod Edgar Poe himself threw its darknos3 over his successors, is an open question, Poo's own lifo was a series of torments and persecutions ranging from the death of his child-wife, Virginia Clemm, to the day when, wandering the streets of Baltimore, he was "railroaded" and perished from exposure and ill-trest-ment.

From his very youth, he seemed marked for an unlucky destiny. The son of a lawyer and an actress, little Edgar, with his sister, Rosalie, and his brother, William, was left wholly destitute, in 1811, by the parents' sudden deaths. William likewise succumbed shortly. Edgar's beloved Itosalie went mad. Fortune's Hollow Leer.

If fortune seemed to smile on the tiny orphan when a rich tobacco merchant adopted hiin, it was but a hollow leer; for when the well-meaning planter sent his ward to tho University of Virginia, in 1826, the effects of an indulgent training on a temperament coloured by inherited neurotic tendencies sprang to the fore.

Fond of athletics, he was a strong and able swimmer; but, despite these Spartan recreations, the soul-bitten youth soon developed a passion for gambling and for "strong waters." His excesses compelled the authorities to demand his removal. John Allan, his monied foster-father, sternly refused to pay the boy's debts. The consequences were, for the passing moment, favourable to his spiiitual ,:iul ethical growth. Ife enlisted in tho United States Army, serving for two years and

displaying what must have been conduct beyond reproach, for he was promoted from the ranks to a sargeant-major. Mr. Allan, meanwhile, had procured his army discharge and had secured him a West Point nomination. The sad sequel wa,s that, due to his inability to get on with the authorities and general laziness, he was court-martialled and expelled. On his death Allan left his adopted son nothing. Adoration ol Cousin. Poe's subsequent money troubles were so painful and incessant that it is difficult to write of them even to-day. Despite his extraordinary genius (which the veriest fool should have perceived), he sold his amazing tales of horror and poems of shadowy souls for pittances, the immortal "Raven" going for a paltry ten dollars. His mad adoration of his cousin, Virginia Clemm; their marriage, and her subsequent passing on, after a protracted illness, are known to every man and woman who has ever faintly dabbled in literature. The parallel between Edgar and Virginia and Roderick and Madeline Usher in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is obvious. Said one of Broadway's best known theatrical producers: "Poe may be a fitting subject for tragedy, but the reputed 'curse' of his influence will probably debar him from ever being successfully played on the stage. Like his immortal raven, actors, managers and even the humblo 'grips' are inclined to say emphatically: 'Nevermore!' "