The Third Degree

Third Degree, The (1909), a play by Charles Klein. [Hudson Theatre, 168 perf.] A bogus art collector commits suicide after his old, long‐married flame refuses to visit him. The woman's alcoholic son, Howard Jeffries Jr. (Wallace Eddinger), is seen coming from the house, and the police, after a brutal interrogation, force a confession of murder from the innocent young man. His parents, whom he alienated by marrying a poor girl, will not come to his aid, but his loyal wife, Annie (Helen Ware), secures a leading attorney, Richard Brewster (Edmund Breese), who unearths the suicide note and forces the police to make their error public. As he had with The Lion and the Mouse, Klein successfully mingled social commentary derived from the muckraking of the time (in this instance the campaign against wanton police brutality) with gripping theatre.