Dictator, The

Dictator, The (1904), a farce by Richard Harding Davis. [Criterion Theatre, 64 perf.] Believing he has fatally struck a cab driver in a fight over a fare, Brooks Travers ( William Collier) and his valet ( Edward Abeles) take the first boat for Porto Banyos, where revolutions are weekly events. The latest revolution was engineered by none other than the American Consul ( George Nash) with the aid of General Santos Campos ( Robert McWade Jr.). But the Consul's reign as dictator is short, for the General organizes another coup and makes himself dictator. Fearing for his life, the Consul assigns Travers both his position and a battle‐ax widow ( Louise Allen) who has been pursuing him. Travers must choose between returning to America and going to jail, or fighting not only the General but the harridan señora. He elects to fight. To give his men backbone, he ups their pay from twenty‐eight cents a day to thirty, then announces the next revolution will take place at 11 o'clock. But the General proves a determined opponent until Travers gets his cocktail‐swilling telegraph operator ( John Barrymore) to send a message asking that Admiral Dewey come to his aid with the Olympia. Just as the opposition capitulates, Travers learns that the cab driver was not seriously hurt. He decides to take the next ship back, preferring obnoxious taxi men to Latin instability. The comic piece, produced by Charles Frohman, toured successfully for several seasons and was frequently revived by little theatre groups. A musical version was presented in 1920 as The Girl from Home. Richard Harding DAVIS (1864–1916), a native of Philadelphia, was best known as a war correspondent and short‐story writer, but he wrote several successful plays, and his stories provided others with material for dramatization. Davis's other hit comedy was The Galloper (1906), in which the hero poses as a famed war correspondent. Plays based on his stories include Robert Hilliard's The Littlest Girl (1895) and later Augustus Thomas's Soldiers of Fortune (1902). His brother was the noted critic Charles Belmont Davis (1866?–1926). Biography: Richard Harding Davis: His Day, Fairfax Downey, 1933.