Showgirl

“ But, here is another girl in the same social set who makes no claim to being a beauty, and does not think of herself as being of a type that lends charm to the stage—and this Cinderella may possess the very qualities that go to make the professional actress and dancer, and yet let the opportunity pass because of her failure to recognize her own value. ”

“ She worked early and late; she rehearsed, studied, acted, mended, and made; for her salary absolutely forbade the services of a dress-maker. She had two gowns a year, one thick, one thin. She could not herself compute the age of her bonnets, so often were they blocked over, or dyed and retrimmed. Yet no better appearing woman ever entered a stage-door than this excessively neat, well-groomed, though plainly clad, old actress.
It is not to be denied that a great many professional women are absolutely without the sense of order. ”

“ It was, of course, the women who made Society, and gave it its tone; and the women of Society were actresses. They were actresses in their love of notoriety and display; in their taste in clothes and jewels, their fondness for cigarettes and champagne. They made up like actresses; they talked and thought like actresses. The only obvious difference was that the women of the stage were carefully selected—were at least up to a certain standard of physical excellence; whereas the women of Society were not selected at all, and some were lean, and some were stout, and some were painfully homely. ”

“ No actress can answer all the girls who write to her,—no more can I, and that disturbs me, because I like girls and I hate to disappoint them.
But now for my proposition. Why not become a lovely composite girl, my friend, Miss Hope Legion, and let me try to speak to her my word of warning, of advice, of remonstrance? If she doubts, let me prove my assertions by incident, and if she grows vexed, let me try to win her to laughter with the absurdities,—that are so funny in their telling, though so painful in their happening. ”

“ It would be pleasant to me to know that when I quit the stage I leave behind me a well-trained, faithful, gifted comrade to more than fill my place, and carry on what I have much at heart—the purification of the stage. Perhaps you are she; but remember, mere beauty and rich costumes do not make an actress, nor are the efforts of a clever little girl to play great characters real art. ”

“ And even this is spared to the actress, since her directions are more often received from the stage manager or manager than from a woman star. True, her life is hard, she has no home comforts; but, then, she has no heavy duties to perform, no housework, bed-making, sweeping, dish-washing, or clothes-washing, and when her work is done, she is her own mistress. She goes and comes at her own will; she has time for self-improvement, but best of all she has something to look forward to. That is a great advantage over girls of other occupations, who have such a small chance of advancement. ”

“ The theatrical ranks were already growing crowded when the "Schools of Acting" were started, and after that—goodness gracious! actors and actresses started up as suddenly and numerously as mushrooms in an old pasture. And they, even they stand in the way of the beginner.
I know, then, of but three powers that can open the stage door to a girl who comes straight from private life,—a fortune, great influence, or superlative beauty. With a large amount of money a girl can unquestionably tempt a manager whose business is not too good, to give her an engagement. ”

“ The barriers that once existed are broken down; “professional beauties” are received in circles where their presence formerly would have been the signal for all respectable women instantly to retire; ladies of title are satisfied to caper on the boards of the theatrical stage, in costumes that display their shape as undisguisedly as possible to the eyes of the grinning public, or they sing in concert halls for the pleasure of showing themselves off, and actually accept the vulgar applause of unwashed crowds with a smile and a bow of gratitude! ”

“ She relished his exasperation for a moment longer, then changed her tone. “Do be sensible, Staff. I’m crazy to hear that play. How long do you mean to keep me waiting?”
He knew her well enough to understand that her moods and whims must be humoured like a—well, like any other star’s. She was pertinaciously temperamental: that is to say, spoiled; beautiful women are so, for the most part—invariably so, if on the stage. [Pg 77] That kind of temperament is part of an actress’ equipment, an asset, as much an item of her stock in trade as any trick of elocution or pantomime. ”

“ Acting is a matter of pretence, and she who can best pretend a splendid passion, a tender love, or a murderous hate, is admittedly the finest actress. Time was when stage wardrobe was a pretence, too. An actress was expected to please the eye, she was expected to be historically correct as to the shape and style of her costume; but no one expected her queenly robes to be of silk velvet, her imperial ermine to be anything rarer than rabbit-skin. ”

“ As for beauty, it must be something very remarkable that will on its strength alone secure a girl an engagement. Mere prettiness will not do. Nearly all American girls are pretty. It must be a radiant and compelling beauty, and every one knows that there are not many such beauties, stage-struck or otherwise.
The next question is most often put by the parents or friends of the would-be actress; and when with clasped hands and in-drawn breath they ask about the temptations peculiar to the profession of acting, all my share of the "old Adam" rises within me. ”

“ Of course it is very rash for a male, unless he happens to be a man milliner, to write about the costumes of actresses; and we leave untouched the clothes of the actor, lest our own and their lack of style should be put forward as a ground for disqualification. Still it is impossible to avoid noticing the dresses of the ladies upon the stage; it would even be bad manners not to do so, seeing how much trouble the dear creatures take to please our eyes, for we are too gallant or vain to believe the cynical idea that they only dress to crush one another. ”

“ Like these men, the actress's independence is comparative; but measured by the bondage of other working-women, it is very great. We both have duties to perform for which we receive a given wage, yet there is a difference. The working-girl is expected to be subservient, she is too often regarded as a menial, she is ordered. An actress, even of small characters, is considered a necessary part of the whole. ”

“ Yet as we read of these early English actresses we hardly think of acting as a profession or of them as artists. They were in no sense students of the parts they played. Beauty, youth, high spirits, a certain native endowment of wit or boldness, ability to sing a song or dance a jig, seemed to meet all the demands of audiences too much delighted with the mere fact of seeing women on the stage to be over-critical of their technique or interpretation. ”

“ My companions, who have known me from babyhood, look upon me as a sister or daughter, and treat me with invariable affection and respect; and as for the men of the outside world who haunt the coulisses, and seem to think that an actress is public property, off the stage as well as upon it, I have thus far managed to keep them at a distance—continuing in real life my role of modest, ingenuous, young girl, without hypocrisy or false pretensions. ”

“ Of the three girls who dressed with her in a large, bare room which seemed miles away, up at the top of the theater, two were illiterate but inoffensive, and the third proved to be one of the merriest little creatures who ever wished to be a great actress when nature intended her for a good washer-woman. ”

“ Her mother had been a great actress in the Booth and Barrett days. She, herself, had lisped some childish lines with them. Later, she had become a soubrette and a star in merry little plays in which she sang and danced and "emoted," all in one evening. There are no soubrettes nowadays. The term has degenerated into a slangy sobriquet. "Ingénue" has replaced it; nothing is required of an ingénue but saccharine sweetness and vacuous prettiness—and youth, youth, youth! O, the harvest of age! The public which she had amused for years has forgotten her. ”

“ Our modern stage world gives the ideal outlet for all that is most worth while in the youth and art of the female sex. It matters not that it is notably unmoral. You cannot predicate that of any individual case until afterward. At any rate, to me, and so far as women are concerned, it is distinguished, brilliant, appropriate, important. I am always interested in a well recommended woman of the stage. ”

“ Our only consolation while watching her is that there are not many good women off the stage. Life is bad enough as it is; if there were many women in real life as good as the stage heroine, it would be unbearable. ”

“ Yet there has been little comment upon the fact that, with two or three exceptions, the so-called actresses have had no position of importance in the legitimate ranks of the profession. A woman may perform in a theatre, and even draw a big salary, without being an actress, and she may have brains, beauty and popularity, and nevertheless enjoy little chance of marrying anybody with a "handle to his name," if she confines her work to the non-musical stage. ”

“ In fact up to a comparatively recent period, the Miltonic theory was practically acknowledged and acted upon, at the theatre, the female characters of the Drama being always represented by proxies of men or boys.
Even in the present age, the début of an actress, having so many “lengths” to deliver in public, is reckoned one of the severest ordeals that womanly modesty can undergo. The celebrated Mrs. Siddons described it as a “fiery trial,”—a “terrible moment,”—and any play-goer who has witnessed the first appearance of a young lady on any stage will easily give credit for its agonies. ”

“ Field muttered to himself. "It strikes me that that young lady is likely to be of service to me. I'll find out who she is and whence she comes. And now to go off to the Comedy and see if I can get in touch with the little actress who must play her part in more dramas than one. I wonder if I had better see her at the theatre or follow her to her rooms. ”

“ And yet the exhibition was pathetic, for it had the suggestive vulgarity of a woman in man's clothes. The imitation is always a dreary failure.
THE MISTRESS. Such women are the rare exceptions. I am ready to defend my sex; but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in one.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I have great hope that women will bring into the newspaper an elevating influence; the common and sweet life of society is much better fitted to entertain and instruct us than the exceptional and extravagant. ”

“ It may be offensive to a girl's vanity deliberately to choose a path in which her personal charms, or those which she believes herself to possess, must be of little service. On the English stage it may be doubted if such a policy will ever be adopted, though on French there are instances which might be cited of actresses who have played dowager characters during the whole of a profitable, long and respected career. ”

“ People laugh a good deal at actresses who come back after leaving the stage. They think it is a kind of craze for excitement. But it is better than that. The stage is still the only place where a woman’s individuality is recognized and where she can be really herself.
“Sheila—er—Miss Kemble—pardon me—Mrs. Winfield has the theater in her blood, of course. Almost all the Kemble women have been actresses, and good ones. ”

“ In the Lady’s Magazine for March 1776, a ‘Female Reformer’ addresses to the fair sex some ‘moral reflections’ on ladies’ fans, and draws attention to the loose, almost indecent, mounts ladies have to their fans at the present day, giving too much reason to suppose that a coarse, indelicate, and immodest picture is not so offensive to the view of the fair as prudence, virtue, and chastity could wish. ”

“ Why, you will soon be rich and famous, Miss Harding, for your beauty and talent will win you rapid promotion on the boards. Do you see how all those strangers have watched you on the ice to-day? It is because your face has already won you the sobriquet of 'the prettiest salesgirl in New York.' Soon it will be changed to 'the prettiest actress on the stage.' Will not that sound better? ”

“ The other type of servant-girl on the stage—the villa servant-girl—is a very different personage. She is a fetching little thing, dresses bewitchingly, and is always clean. Her duties are to dust the legs of the chairs in the drawing-room. That is the only work she ever has to do, but it must be confessed she does that thoroughly. She never comes into the room without dusting the legs of these chairs, and she dusts them again before she goes out. ”

“ If the show is successful they are in luck for a while, and their pictures are in every paper. They spend their salary money to buy prettier clothes and to live in beautiful surroundings, and they gauge their expenditures upon what they are earning from week to week. But girls I have known tell me that is the great trouble. For when the play loses its popularity, or fails, they have accustomed themselves to extravagant tastes, and they must rehearse for another show, without money coming in."
"Oh, but a clever girl can pick out a good opportunity." ”