Leah Kleschna

Leah Kleschna (1904), a drama by C. M. S. McLellan. [Manhattan Theatre, 131 perf.] Leah Kleschna ( Minnie Maddern Fiske) has long admired a man who saved her during a shipwreck, but she does not know his name. Her admiration would seem to be one of Leah's few commendable qualities, for she is a thief who steals at her father's behest. When her father sends her to steal jewels from the home of Paul Sylvaine ( John Mason), Sylvaine catches her in the act, and she recognizes him as the man who saved her life. A certain rapport is instantly kindled between the two, but while they are talking, Raoul Berton ( George Arliss), the dissolute brother of Sylvaine's fiancée, enters and himself steals the jewels Sylvaine had meant for his betrothed. Sylvaine's refusal to blame Leah for the theft, which is what Raoul hopes will happen, and his reluctance to implicate the real thief, alienate Sylvaine's fiancée. So in the end, it is Sylvaine and Leah who marry. McLellan's original ending, when the play was called Into the Great White Light, was equivocal, leaving Leah's future open to conjecture. But producers Harrison and Mrs. Fiske, bowing to the era's theatrical requirements, insisted he add a fifth act in which Sylvaine marries the heroine. It was revived in 1924 as the author had first written it, but by that time styles of dramaturgy had changed and the work was perceived merely as a dated “crook play.”