Judge — July 3, 1920 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

Drawn by Henan Parscen Who are Our Leading Actors, Anyway? By Perriton Maxwet. RECENT London dispatch narrates the thrilling escape from Bolshevictorious Russia of a noted “white” General and his party. Both the General and the men and women who fled with him were “disguised as actors.”” In Russia no one suspects an actor of owning anything worth confiscation, hence the success of these refugees who were wise enough to camouflage their real station in life with the mummer’s plumes and buskin. “By extreme hard work and sinking to the lowest level, Ostroumoff (a kind of industrial impresario in the matter)” ultimately got the General and his party out of Russia,” details the news story. What of it? This: Suppose it should suddenly be revealed that a considerable number of our stage celebrities were really emissarics of some other country more or less inimical to us, or that our best be- loved “‘stars” are here to spoof us theatrically while their real mission is to corner the necktie market for Senegambia or put over a deal in sugar whereby St. Jago is to get the entire Cuban output of sugar-cane while we face a saccharine famine? If the suspicion is well-founded that “there’s a chiel amang us takin’ notes,”” should we not arouse ourselves to the unknown but impending calamity? It is an awful thought, but are we not admonished day and night that preparedness is the cardinal virtue of both the individual and the nation? Let us look into this matter calmly, and without hysterics, like one who con- fronts a grave crisis, but is determined to meet it manfully. Whom have we in our midst whose tinselled cloak and tinted face arouses the deep suspicion that he or she is not what they appear to be? Who are the possible wolves of ulterior purpose parading among us in the sheep's clothing of Thespus? One hates to begin the list, but there is Willie Collier. In his farce “The Hottentot” you can, if you possess the inner eye, discern the subtlest of propaganda for a certain dark-skinned people of Africa. There is no doubt but that Willie is here in Caucasian disguise to spy out the secrets of our success as a nation, for the sole betterment of his native heath on the Equa- tor. It is all very well to point out thac the so-called Collier person was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., but the Secret Service people will tell you, if you know them well enough, that here is an African King living incognito on Broadway as the funniest comedian of his time. And Sam Bernard! Is evidence lacking, even to the most unobserving play-goer, that he is an underground plenipoten- tiary from the rejuvenated Jerusalem? Would it surprise you to learn one day that this same Bernard had returned to the Sacred City on the edge of the Syrian Desert with a contract for supply- ing all the matzoths used in New York during Yom Kippur? And who do you suppose William Gillette really is, if not a representative of Scotland Yard, here to ferret out the workings of our police department? Is there a lingering doubt that Hale Hamilton (closer to his native self as “Wallingford” than in any of his other impersonations) is more or less than an agent of the French Société des Terrains with an eye on factory sites in Wichita? Can you question that Brandon Tynan is not a strong arm of the Sinn Feiners and in the privacy of his bath- room practices with a shillalah? That Leo Ditrichstein is a Bavarian ambassador in the lavender trousers of a matinee idol? That Otis Skinner is a trusted representative of the Italian proletariat here to increase the wage of the downtrodden wop? It needs but a little scrutiny of men and facts in the mimic world to uncover a horde of base deceivers. If John Drew is not the missing Dauphin, who the Frohman is he? If Raymond Hitchcock does not carry the mandate of Hasawad in his pocket, what does he carry there? Does not every bit of circumstantial evidence direct the finger of exposure toward Al Jolson as the undeclared envoy of Angola? And the ladies! Could Madame Nazimova clear her silken skirts of the charge of being the muffled scout of the royalists encamped at Veliki Luki and Petroparlovsk if, indeed, she is not a chief secret messenger of the Ibsen clan of Jarlsberg og Larvik? Even in the case of Mrs. Fiske one is not at all certain that she is not a masked nuncio from Citta Vita or a gentle commis- sionaire here to control the cheese industry in behalf of Roque- fort or Neufchaiel. EI Ferguson, we may be sure, is an agent, commercial or political, for owld Scotland, and that Billie Burke holds a similar job with the new rulers of the Isle of Emerald Green. I make no charges directly or by innuendo, but I raise my voice to exclaim: Watch all these people of the stage and watch them steadfastly. Watch Frank Craven and his interpretations of the genus Boob—mere camouflage, since official Washington knows him as the unsleeping proponent of Shikoku independence and the overthrow of the present dynasty. Watch Henry Miller and Richard Bennett—the first an indubitat‘e reactionary who wants to see shirt-sleeved America arrayed in powdered perrukes, knee breeches and lace neckerchiefs in the style of Moliére, and the other man the adoption of chin whiskers, white kid gloves and the freedom of the Brieuxery. No need to extend the list of infamy. But when you see any of these noted players prancing the boards as if acting were their sole occupation in life, please remember the “White” General and his party who escaped the horrors of red and chaotic Russia only because they were thought to be innocent mimes; and remember, too, that no actor is as good as he is grease-painted.