Actorviews00asht.Pdf

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/actorviewsOOasht ACTORVIEWS Intimate Portraits by ASHTON STEVENS With Drawings by GENE MARKEY CHICAGO COVlCI-M?GEE CO. 191.3 Copyright 1923 COVICI- McGEE CO Chicago PRESS OF PRINTING SERVICE COMPANY CHICAGO Doctor A. H. Waterman Table of Contents The First Gentleman of the Theater 1 Arnold Daly’s Darling Daughter 9 A Duel or Two for Mr. Ditrichstein 15 Angel Cake with Miss Ferguson 23 Heart Interest and Mr. A. H. Woods 29 Why God Loves the Irish 37 A Rube Aphrodite 43 The Gravest Fault of Sir Herbert Tree 49 The Double Life of Ina Claire 55 Jack and John Barrymore 61 The Duncan Sisters and Royalty 69 Mr. Craven’s Lighted First Night 75 Miss and Mrs. Janis 81 Mr. Collier Under Oath 87 Miss Barrymore and the Wits 97 The Twenty-second Street Ziegfeld 101 The Second Wind of Mrs. Leslie Carter. 107 Consistently Savoy and Brennan 113 That Adorable Laurette Taylor 119 Louis Wolheim, Ph.D 125 Miss O’Ramey Concentrates 131 Why Managers Don’t Love Mr. Bennett. 137 When Sophie Tucker Kissed a Critic 141 TABLE OF CONTENTS— (Continued) Goodwin and Daly—Mostly Daly 147 Miss Moores and Her Mamma 153 Mr. Warfield Declines a Million 159 The Girl from Colosimo’s 165 Mr. Arliss Speaks of Mr. Archer 173 My Favorite Leading Lady 181 Mr. Jolson Acts Up for His Bride 185 Melting the Ice with Lynn Fontanne 193 “Hitchy.” 201 Twenty-Thousand-Dollar Legs 209 Sothern and Marlowe. 215 Fanny and I and the Baby 221 Bert William’s Last Interview 227 When Justine Johnson Was Natural 233 Imperial Morris Gest 243 Alone at Last with Helen Hayes 249 Nora Bayes on Lovers 255 Lynn Overman’s Long Rehearsal 263 The Self-Doubting Pauline Lord 271 Brownie and Bunny of “The Follies.” .... 277 Breakfast with a Perfect Lady 285 Making It Up with the Bordoni 289 Luck and Frank Bacon 295 An Unprintable Interview -with Miss Cowl. 303 Ambushing the First Actress 309 Index 319 ACTORVIEWS I have written five hundred in- terviews with players and been surprised in four hundred of them. I ought to be able to, but I can't—to save me I can’t— tell you why certain people tell me certain things. I can only tell you how they tell these things; which is perhaps all that is required of me. But there are times when I should like to be less of a reporter and more of a psychologue. The First Gentleman of the Theater MET John Drew on West Madison street the other day, when he was searching the signs for a moving pic- ture containing his nephew, Lionel Barrymure, and, strangely enough, called “The Face in the Fog.” It was on Madison street between Clark and Dearborn, and I was thinking how few beautiful women you see in that crowded section of Chicago, and what unpressed- looking men (I’d just had my gloves cleaned and was feeling rather superior) —when, lo! my bored retina was rejoiced by the reflection of a gentleman whose trousers did not spring at the knee and whose coat might have been tailored especially for himself. I recognized John Drew’s impressive wear before I recognized John Drew. I hooked arms, not unproudly, with my distin- guished friend and joined him in the search; but neither his thick lenses nor my medium ones could find a sign of the sign of Lionel, so we started to walk to a little arts-and-letters club in Michigan avenue, of which we are both members. But before we had reached its modest portal I was stricken with an idea, and I communicated it. “John,” I said, “I know your aversion to news- paperiety, and I respect you for it—but think of me! Why can’t I once in an age sit down and talk out an ! — 2 Actorviews interview with an actor I really know and really admire and ” “Don’t go too far!” said Mr. Drew. But he lis- tened to reason. I flagged a cab—John Drew does not walk so briskly as he did twenty-five or fifty years ago—and as we climbed into it he said: “What’s the matter? Aren’t you well? You’ve spoiled about a mile of my walk.” And when I stopped in the drug store under his hotel and ordered a kola, he testily observed, “I should hope I’d be able to do a little better than that for you upstairs!” He was charged with dry humor as well as the damper hospitalities. I remember, I would not take the big stuffed chair, preferring to lounge at length on his padded window seat. And when finally he reluctantly did take it, it was to caricature the whole blooming institution of the actorial interview by saying, and saying as only John Drew can: “ ‘Yes,’ replied the famous actor, as he reclined in the easiest chair in his magnificent Blackstone apartment and spoke substantially as follows :” He tried to find a letter for me—it doesn’t matter, in fact I’ve forgotten, what the letter was about but it was good to hear him “dash the souls” of all tidying chambermaids. And when somebody’s name came up—again I forget, but it was the name of somebody between fifty and one hundred years of age Mr. Drew said that this party was “older than God.” Only, of course, he didn’t say “party”; that would be blasphemous language for John Drew. And this prompted me to ask him how old an — The First Gentleman of the Theater 3 actor must be before he begins to brag instead of lie about his age. Mr. Drew didn’t seem to know just how old; his gesture made it incalculable. “But it’s all damn rot, this trying to conceal your age,” he barked, who would be seventy on his next birthday. “They’ve got you in ‘Who’s Who’ and the newspaper almanacs—and they’ve always got you right. I mean the almanacs, not the newspapers themselves. There was a paragraph in a New* York paper the other day that said—it ought to be here on the desk, but those women have tidied it out of sight, dash their sweet souls!” “Never mind looking, John. What did it say substantially ?” “Said that next March I’d celebrate my fifty-ninth year on the stage. Hell, fiftieth is enough!” “I should say! And today you don’t—honest to heaven, John—look more than that many years old. I’m almost tempted to ask you how you’ve done it.” “That’s what an old fellow was asking me the other night. ‘I know you’re two weeks older than God,’ he said, ‘because you keep looking younger. How do you do it?’ “I told him. I told him that I never sat up late,” smiled the habitually nocturnal Mr. Drew, stirring the brown stimulant from the bottom of his glass, “and never drank anything.” And we fell to talking about acting, and I asked him who is ever the most modern of the comedians of manners if, during the long years of achievement, there had been any conscious and calculated change in his method of attacking a so-called modern part. “You are, and always have been,” I said, “contemporary.” “I haven’t realized any change of method,” he 4 Actorvicws answered. “I suppose one progresses or else is called an old-timer. The actor who can’t keep pace with events and permutations becomes an old-timer, poor !” devil “And I wish you’d tell me,” I said, “what’s the matter with so many of the young-timers of our stage. Why haven’t we some young John Drews coming up?” “Come! Come!” he scoffed the question. “I mean this. We can get a lot of young women to play ladies without making a profound character study of the job. Why can’t we get more of the same kind of young men for the stage?” “Well,” said John Drew, measuredly, “you see, a lot of young men who might make good actors prefer to go down to the Equitable Life and clean out ink wells. They know they’ll only have to do that for a year, and then, possibly, with a rich father, be on the way to make a fortune. And fortunes aren’t made on the stage,” added one of our best bestowed histrions, looking up through his heavy glasses to encounter the entering presence of a recently dashed chambermaid. “Is that you, Margaret?” he asked with kindness. “No, sir; it’s Grace.” And Mr. Drew gave some friendly order to Grace, who was ample, who was middle-aged, who was as respectable looking as the First National Bank. “You’ll suspect nothing between me and Grace, I hope,” said Mr. Drew when she departed. “And I hope I shan’t drink myself into indiscreet utterances.” “I’ll protect you. And you didn’t,” I admitted, “chuck her under the chin.” “Eighteenth century!” said Mr. Drew, and won- dered if anybody ever did chuck anybody under the The First Gentleman of the Theater 5 chin—save on the stage—and if any woman ever was the “toast of the town”—save in a play. “John, how far back do you remember the stage?” “Oh, I remember as a boy going to see Charlotte Cushman play Meg Merrilies,” he said, as casually as you’d say you remembered Bernhardt as Camille.

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