Photoplay Magazine Cover — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

Mme. Petrova, as she appears in one of her costumes - - as in the stage success, the “White Peacock One Night Stands EANNETTE cherie: It doesn’t seem possible that over a month has passed since my last letter to you. Once on a time I had an idea that I was somewhat original, but as moons wax and wane I find myself uttering such banalities as “time flies,” with a conviction that goes to prove that a sense of originality belongs only to extreme youth. The last few months have been busy ones. My play, the “White Peacock,” is now an acknowledged success in New York, after two weeks of one night stands and a Boston run of two weeks. As you don’t understand the jargon of the theater, I might explain that “one night stands’ means all that the term implies. I doubt that I did must else but stand during the entire two weeks. Even when my day’s work of rehearsals, matinee, reception (which consists of shaking hands with some odd hundreds of people), interviewers, lectures to the Rotary Clubs or the Elks, evening performance, and what-not, seemed about finished, I was hurried off to some sleeper (that word is distinctly humorous) located anywhere within half a mile of the station proper; to which one wallowed one’s way through mud and snow, only to be pulled off it again, at about seven in the morning, in time to start all over again. I am glad for some things for the experience. 50 Petrovas © aa I have gathered many mental photographs along the way, which I shall develop later for your amusement, Jeannette chérie, but—and I say this with the most profound seriousness —lI would rather scrub floors than go through the ordeal again. I wondered oft times to myself, as I saw play bills announc- ing other plays and players, that I was told put in about thirty weeks a season in this way, what can he the possible attraction in such an apology for existence. Is there some pot of gold at the rainbow’s end that I do not see? R is it just a dumb acquiescence, which in the long run brings atrophy of scnse and feeling? And what a bubble is this thing called the theater! What a huge circumference of nothing, as far as the player is concerned. Is there one among them that really considers the noisy plaudits of a public any equivalent for the peace of home, the association of a few dis- criminating and cultured minds, the time to read and to think? There may be some glamor from the “front” of the house, but surely there is none in the stinking alleys that lead to most of the “stage entrances.” ‘Pon my soul, I think that when a group of financiers gets ~ ready to build a theater they go to much trouble to find the dirtiest and narrowest back street in the town, Having found it they clap hand to thigh and say, ‘Ha! this will be a splendid location for the stage door.” And O Jeannette! It is impossi- ble to conceive of the filth of some of the dressing rooms, With one or two exceptions only, they were in underground cellars, without either light or air. Windows, of course, do not figure in cellars. An acrid odor of bug killer battles with the smell of plain dirt in many of them, If there were any preference, I think the bug killer had the advantage. Pornographic sentences adorned many of the walls. Placards (I annexed one from one of the dressing rooms allotted to me, and am keeping it as a curiosity) instructed the artists not to spit on the floor as the wall was just as handy, Of all the tawdry sights I have seen in my span of life, and I’ve seen many, these two weeks will stand out forever in my consciousness as silhouettes carven in black stone. I should love to tell you of some of the “hotels” where they charge you almost Ritz Carleton prices for fare that would shame a poor house. One in mind is the Exchange Hotel at Shanklin, Pa. Here we dined in a restaurant which contained also a lunch counter. Men ate with their hats on their heads and spat abstractedly on the floor during unoccupied intervals. I could cover more pages than I have time to write or you would have patience to read, but last month I promised to tell you in this letter of the corrida, so the other must go for an- other time. For at least a quarter of a mile, approaching the plaza, the entire traffic moves only in one direction—the direction toward the bull-ring. I am carried, rather than motivated by my own legs, through the enormous gates of the plaza. There are some twenty thousand chatterimg human monkeys gathered in the enclosure, which rises to the height of many hundred feet. I place my little cushion (price one peseta) on the stone ledge which forms the seat, and I look about me. There is so much to see; such a tremendous kaleidoscope unfolds iiself, that after taking a hasty mental picture of the whole, I prepare to specialize in detail. Before and below me is the enormous arena covered with yellow sand. We are on the shady and therefore the most expensive side of the ring. Directly opposite is the low white gate, through which, our courier tells me, the first bull will soon emerge, At this moment the ring is empty except for a few attendants in red caps and blouses who are giving a few finishing touches to the primrose sand, so soon to be trampled, and stained scarlet. Above the door, a little to the right and high up on the last tier, there is the orchestra. It is a colorful affair both as re- gards players and the noise that they manage to evoke from their brass instruments. On “GOMICDOO (Si COM ) :