Charles Klein

[from review of Klein's play of the same name, The New York Times, Fri, Sep 1, 19111]

In "The Chorus Lady" Miss Rose Stahl, acting Patricia O'Brien, one of the wisest if no the loveliest of the merry-merrys, was able by self-sacrifice to save a little sister who slipped but did not fall. And now as Maggie Pepper in Charles Klein's play of that name Miss Stahl courageously extends her rescue mission work, so that at the end of the play she has three souls to her credit, including one adult male. Previous to her intervention he had borne the illuminative title of "the continental cut-up." This illustrious personage is no other than the proprietor of the department store in which Maggie Pepper is employed. And before the encounter with Maggie Pepper he had never done a day's work in his life. Then the affairs of the business are put into Maggie Pepper's hands, and the store, hitherto known as "the old curiosity shop," suddenly begins to prosper.

When it is further mentioned that in the course of the proceedings Maggie Pepper has to save her dead brother's child from a mother who steals, and a step-father who blackmails -- that ere the end of it she sees the man she loves shot down by the latter -- that she is able to nurse him back to health and strength in time to say she will marry him in the end -- it seems hardly necessary to add that the play is a melodrama*.

*Interesting side note, per Wikipedia, almost three quarters of a century later, a childhood picture of Rose Stahl 9from her biographical entry in an American stage encyclopedia) was featured in another melodrama: the romantic fantasy "Somewhere in Time" (filmed adaptation of Richard Matheson's "Bid Time Return" (1975) starring Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve. The picture can be seen in this clip at :16, where Stahl, as a child Elise McKenna, is the small girl, to the right side of "her" entry, holding a doll.