Judge — January 6, 1917 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

B ET W E HE OLD PLAYGOER, who seldom attends modern performances, so worshipful of the past glories of the stage are his kind, was perusing the youthful- looking photographs of Bernhardt in various characters in the foyer of the Empire Theatre when two stall-fed women whose appetites quite apparently were bovine gazed in wonder at the same display. “How under heaven does she keep her chin?” exclaimed one of the pair. “They say she is seventy-two. I don’t believe it!” was the other's response. And they entered to verify the photog- raphy. Even the Tired Business Man was in the audience the same night. With him pure curiosity sometimes dominates the appeal of the se: And he met the Old Playgoer after ‘the performances. “Well,” said the Tired Business Man, “my curiosity is satisfied. Perhaps if I understood French I should have a lot of other satisfaction.” “Did you need to understand French in order to realize and be deeply moved by the death-bed scene of La dame aux camelias?” asked the Old Playgoer. “No. Really that was mighty fine. [hate to confess it, but I really wept over her anguish with Armand. And I don’t often weep, let me add.” “T have seen Bernhardt many times,” said the Old Playgoer. ‘In her younger days, when she was as slender as a reed, lithe, with the grace of a panther . “And she had a tiger cub for a pet, then, didn’t she?” broke in the Tired Business Man. “She liked young animals of sorts re- garded as wild, I believe, but do you know I think in those days she simply studied such creatures to learn from them the extraordinary feline grace that once dis- tinguished her among women?” “And by George she has it yet even in her manner, though she didn’t walk a step to-night!” “As I was about to say, I saw her almost at the beginning—I’m an old man, you know—in fact I witnessed her EN By CYRIL ANDREW first great success in Paris as Cordelia in ‘King Lear,’ after she had failed indrama and even had tried burlesque without suc- cess; and I have watched her at different periods in her wonderful career, through French classics and the turgid Sardou melodramas, in which she was histrionic though always she has been artistic—and I have never seen her with more of art’s ultimate appeal or with more of the finesse which abso- lutely represents Nature than she shov in that death-bed impersonation. She never played that scene as convincingly as she plays it now.” “And she looked about thirty years old to me as Camille,” said the Tired Business Man. Great art like hers discounts age and overcomes misfortune,” said the Old Playgoer. “In her the spirit has risen to command of all other elements. She certainly is the marvel of the stage. While I didn’t understand the sptech in the plays,” said the Tired Business Man, “I could see that the supporting actors knew their business.” “Yes,” said the Old Playgoer. “A great artist radiates efficiency, and while Bernhardt is a supreme—no doubt also an exacting—stage manager, to act with her must be an inspiration.” “Coming down to more modern things,” said the Tired Business Man, who had obviously a deep respect for the opinions of the Old Playgoer, “how did you like that play at the Princess, ‘Margery Daw’? I liked it in spots, although the theme didn’t please me at all.” Margery Daw’ was a_ well-con- structed play,” said the Old Playgoer. “It dragged a bit in the first part, though. Nothing really seemed to ‘get going’ till the third act; though perhaps that is due to the fact that Miss MacDonnell’s réle did not suit her as it might till then. She was undoubtedly much better in the third act than in the other two, and im- proved through the fourth. Frederick Perry also won laurels, it seemed to me. Of course, we have no really great CU RTATIN S actors or actresses today in comparison with—” The Tired Business flight into reminiscence, rupted. “But I didn’t like the plot,” he com- plained. “Why they have to drag in a lot of unsavory stuff about marriage and its evils and all that sort of thing is beyond me.” The Old Playgoer looked at the Tired Business Man in pity. age is intended to present life las to amuse,” he said. “You Man, scenting a hastily inter- to us as w cannot blink the salient facts of life in the drama any more than you can in liter Without them, the nothingness, ture or painting. drama would be empty echoing with hollow laughte The Tired Business Man sent out fran- tic S. O. S. signals to me, and I figura- i hove to and sent off a boat. hen you don’t think we are well represented on the stage of today?” I asked the Old Playgoer. The Tired Business Man gave me a grateful look and faded into the background. “T do not,” said the Old Playgoer, “for this reason: the public are not so parti ular as they were. Your friend, for in- stance—” his glance indicated the Tired Business Man, who was departing Mid- night-Folly-ward—“ while he enjoys the theatre, still does not demand the best. It is people like him who are responsible, if I may say it, for the decline of the American Drama.” I thought of the Tired Business Man's attitude toward the Old Playgoer, and chuckled inwardly. The ancient and modern schools were distinctly at logger- heads. “The difference between Bernhardt’s work and such a play as ‘ Margery Daw,’ for instance, illustrates what I mean,” continued the Old Playgoer. “But the younger gencration—” began. The Old Playgoer snorted. younger generation,” he said, “will never amount to anything till it ceases being the younger generation.” comicbookg