The One I Knew Least of All, part VI
”All men and women are actors by nature.” Whether this is true or not, it remains that professional actors are “different.”
A friend of the theater who loved marriage and its children and all their ways insisted that actors would not seem so different if, like the rest of the world, their working days began at nine o'clock in the morning and ended in the afternoon.
The most difficult thing in an actor's life, and what differences him chiefly from his kind is something which he hasn't-routine which is forced upon most people by their profession or their trade.
Four hours of an actor's day are fixed, and they are at the wrong end-from seven o'clock at night to eleven. Instead of being at his best at ten o'clock in the morning, he must be at his best at t en o'clock at night. In every week two of his days, sometimes more, are turned upside down by matinees. If he is traveling his trains leave at different hours every day and there is no health in them.
The greatest difficult that confronts a young actor is in finding and forcing upon himself a sure discipline, for his profession is always nibbling at his time; and without an anchor of discipline to windward, even a great talent can be defeated. Without a constant struggle, an actor's life has no rhythm and all the things that should happen today because they happened yesterday simply are not there. This differences him more from his fellow creatures, it would seem, than the actual labor of his profession.
And it is an elusive labor which is hard to fasten down with rules. What actor has not wished that, instead of telling us how many times a role was played, the great ones would tell us how they did it? How they began the study of a play; how they found the keynote of their own part, and how they studied in relation to the other parts. The Continental actors are more apt to do this than our own or the English. And their experience of the labor entailed is a great blow to our idea of genius, which of course flowers overnight.
Though an art so evanescent is difficult to describe in words, it is interesting that so few of the great ones have left a record of their thoughts and methods. As might have been expected, it is chiefly from the members of the Comedie Franqaise, “such a school of taste as was not elsewhere to be found in the world,” that the most illuminating reflections on the art of acting have come to us.
Creating a Part
Those of Coquelin are the most sprightly and withal the most instructive: “When I have to create a part. I began by reading the play with the greatest attention five or six times. First, I consider what position my character should occupy, on what plane in the picture I must put him. Then I study his psychology, knowing what he thinks, what he is morally. I deduce what he ought to be physically, what will be his carriage, his manner of speaking, his gestures. These
characteristics once decided, I learn the part without thinking about it further; then, when I know it, I take up my man again and, closing my eyes, I say to him, 'Recite this for me.' Then I see him delivering the speech, the sentence I asked him for; he lives, he speaks, he gesticulates before me; and then I have only to imitate him.”
It is interesting and curious that while France holds the theater so close to her life and has done so much for the material status of her actors she had done so little for t heir souls and pride. Actors have been recognized, but in some form which ignored their profession. There was great rejoicing when it was learned that M. Got was to be recognized and honored by the French Government. But when the moment came he was honored not as an actor but as a teacher in the Conservatoire.
Coquelin made impassioned appears for the recognition of acting as an art and of actors as part of the body politic. But France is strangely phlegmatic. While her actors hold the greatest places in the theater of the world, they are outsiders so far as their government is concerned. She subsidizes her theaters to maintain the great traditions of the craft, but she has never given her actors the consideration nor the standing that England gives hers. England seems to make a habit of being abreast of things when she is not just a little ahead.
Scenery and costumes that transport us to any time or place a play demands are today a matter of course, and it is hard to realize it is so short a time, comparatively, that we have had such scenery and such accuracy. Among the earliest remembrances of the one I knew least was that of a little company playing melodrama in the tiny towns of California. The backs of chairs and sofas for the various plays were decorated with antimacassars; the anti-macassars were altered for the different plays by different-colored ribbons, looped through them; pink for one play, blue for another and, I think, even red for one of our wilder melodramas. It was our pitiful effort in the trend toward realism.
But the beginning of the trend was in Napoleon's time. His radical spirit, which swept oer kings and emperors, blew a revolution into the theater as well; it was in his day that the idea of accuracy in costume and scenery came into being in France. A great actor of the time complained bitterly of the influence the theater had exercised on his imagination; princes and heroes had been, in appearance, all of one boiling. “Bayard, without a beard...elegantly dressed...powdered and frizzled like a petit matre of the eighteenth century.” And Caesar: “highly buttoned up in a fine white satin coat, his long, flowing locks fastened with rosettes of ribbon. If an actor attempted to reproduce the antique dress, the simplicity was lost in a profusion of ridiculous embroidery.” And it was only when the painter, David, took the matter in hand at Napoleon's insistence, and inspired other artists to turn their eyes and their art to the theater, that actors were given the enormous help of “atmosphere,” the feeling of time and place in which the characters on the stage could move freely and at home. David removed the periwigs and powder from the heads of Roman senators, and gave their togas and draperies instead of satin coats and folderols.
The Alexanders Help
Since that time the best painters of their times have found pleasure in giving the work of their hands and minds to the theater; and how grateful the theater has been is shown in the remarkable advance she had made in beauty.
When Peter Pan first blew over her horizon and called for human habiliments, the one I knew least found herself in a dilemma. She was mooning out of her window one June morning; it was very early; the morning star seemed to point directly to a cottage on a little hill, one of the “Hills of the Sky.” She had heard that the Alexanders were spending the summer there, and it seemed probable that there was the answer to her problem; if only John Alexander would help! The great painter loved the theater, but he was an extremely busy man; he was on all sorts of committees, not only those related to his own profession; he was interested in everything civic and philanthropic. But only a busy man knows how to manage time, so the one I knew least was emboldened. Mr. Alexander not only helped her in the costuming of Peter Pan, but from that day until his death gave his great knowledge and enthusiasm to every play that was produced by her company; she had not dreamed there could be such whole-hearted help in the world as John Alexander and Elizabeth Alexander gave. The Jesters was one problem they solved together; Chantecler another. It was delightful to see them work out a difficulty. John Alexander would draw and redraw the lines of a headdress until it gave exact expression to the face under it; E.A. would follow, inch by inch, with her scissors, often doing the actual work of sewing and finishing herself, that there might be no mistake. They worked wonderfully together. John Alexander knew the lines the material should take, and E.A. knew how to get them. And the actors, who normally labored under the burden of designs and fittings and changes and alterations, flitted about as butterflies, carefree as far as costumes were concerned.
It was John Alexander who saw and recognized, in the work Mr. Hewlett was doing with gauze scenery, a new idea and a great advance. the one I knew least had grown up with “gauze drops,” but they never had formed the substantial part of the scenery; they were frills and furbelows, transformation scenes-pearly clouds and a golden gate, little Eva about to enter it, with angels hovering about and Uncle Tom kneeling in the foreground. There was some sort of mechanical contrivance that pulled the angels heavenward on an inclined plane; the whole thing was very unsteady and precarious. It was a very anxious period for the angels, for they more often found themselves precipitately in place than gently maneuvered there. In those days it was called an apotheosis-an awful word that troubled an entire childhood.
Peter Pan had a little house that rose out of the bowels of the earth, and the more it wiggled, the more delighted was the one I knew least; for it brought back remembrances of palpitating gates and tremulous angels of early childhood, wiggling solemnly into place.
But Mr. Hewlett's idea of gauze was quite different from the gauze apotheosis. In the plan which he perfected it formed the substantial part of the scenery. It could be adapted to theaters of all sizes, and it made a tour of Peter Pan in the smaller cities possible. The original production of canvas was so heavy and bulky that it could not be set up completely in the smaller theaters; and cutting out this or that bit of a scene is a disturbing operation. The new gauze scenery removed all necessity for paring down and made it possible to give the play as completely in any city in the country as in New York. This was also manifest in Chantecler,which was put on in many cities where it would have been impossible to do so under old conditions.
An Experiment in Rehearsing
A description of the work in the theater makes it seem desultory and trivial, because the real work of the theater has no rules. The individual needs are so varied; and who knows the best rules to govern the emotions? You see, “You are done for at the start!”
Rehearsals, especially in the early stages, are not apt to be impressive to a layman. With thirty people or more sitting about reading scraps of manuscript, no one but the star and perhaps the leading man or woman knowing anything about the play, it is a curious and rather depressing spectacle. But to give thirty people a play to read, each one forming his own conception of his part, would leave a very curious medley for a director to piece together.
As Mr. Frohman's time became more occupied, and he could give less attention to preliminary work, an experiment in rehearsing was tried with one of his companies and was found extremely satisfactory. After Mr. Frohman had decided upon the cast, the play was given to the stage director. When he had studied the play carefully, instead of calling a general rehearsal he called only the leading man, to whom he gave a complete outline of the play; then the relation of his part to the play was discussed fully. The actor was then given the manuscript of the first act, and a detailed discussion of each scene as it followed.
The importance of this was that it gave opportunity for unrestrained discussion. Actors are not less sensitive than other folk and are apt to be made self-conscious if a number of people are sitting about waiting impatiently for them to “be done with their part.” But under the new arrangement the actor put forward his ideas without fear of antagonism or impatience. His ideas were very important to the director-so important that the conception of the relation of his part to the whole was oftentimes profoundly altered. The director, for his part, with the play as a whole firmly in mind, was not led away on bypaths which would add nothing to the cumulative effect of the production.
On the succeeding days the director and his leading man went over the second act in the same way, then the third and fourth acts, until the entire play had been thoroughly studied. Then the actor took the work in his own hands. This method of rehearsal was followed with every member of the cast, and resulted in a great saving of time. Another advantage was that it did not give anyone a free rein until all ahd grasped the idea of the play as a whole-the actors did not waste their time and industry running off on tangents. When they came together for the first general rehearsal, the performance moved swiftly and with precision; and what was more important, the actors did not lose spontaneity as they do when they have to watch scenes rehearsed over and over again.
So Long as One Keeps Faith-
I wonder if actors of other countries are as happy in their audiences. Mr. Frohman said once, years ago, on a “first night” when stage fright was almost overwhelming; “This audience does not wish to see you fail-it has come hoping to find a little pleasure.”
The most inspiring thing in our American audience is that it holds to a standard. It puts up with things now and then, but its feeling for reality and sincerity is always there. Plays that an actor likes come and go, but so long as he keeps faith the American audience will never fail him. Oh, young people of the theater, love that audience and cherish it; an actor's greatest happiness comes in his sense of responsibility to his audience.
An actor learns the intrinsic difference in cities very quickly and very definitely, but he has a distinct sense of relationship as he travels through the country; he is a brother hailing from another city or another state. East, West, North and South, the sons of America are one in their feeling about work-the desire to do something and something useful seems to run from one end of the country to the other and gives all factions in society a common interest. It was this feeling that made the presentation of Chantecler a very simple matter. It would have seemed an impossible task with hero and heroine and all the rest stalking about in feathers, but the genius of the play was so overpowering and appealing to Americans that it was a great experience.
Apart from the life in the theater there are two cities that hold very tender memories. One, in a lovely valley protected by friendly mountains, is always “home.” The people of the valley have gentle manners, as if their spirits moved with dignity. Their forebears suffered great hardness in the search for their haven, but those who survived found peace and plenty in the beautiful Valley of Salt Lake. And their children have inherited the gentleness that comes from having endured hardness. The memory of them, the thought of them and their lovely valley is an anchor in a changing, roving life.
The other city, San Francisco, was a foster home to the one I knew least, and a generous one. The dear city was always held in extraordinary affection by her children, but now there is added a great tenderness for her born of her gallantry and her suffering. When the one I knew least returned to San Francisco after a lapse of several years the beautiful city was a charred ruin. She had been through her great ordeal, the earthquake and the fire, and the gallant bits of her which had survived were infinitely pathetic and moving to a lover of the old city. And as if she had not endured enough, there were strikes in the building trades, the telegraph and the street railways. But there was no sign of discouragement, and no resting on disaster. The people had deep feeling for the city and could n t bear to leave her-”It would be like leaving an old friend in trouble”
To survive a great disaster seems to give a curious understanding or appreciation of the infinite-as if the survivors had touched the edges of that great thing and knew that it was there and that it would be there endlessly. These courageous people! To them there was no past, there was a long, long future. And there was no fear; what had happened once could well happen again, but every day, like fishermen putting out to sea, each man embarked on his own little raft, confident of floating home.
A San Franciscan said: “You forget, we are but two generations from soldiers of fortune, and it is difficult to crush that spirit.”
Delightful San Francisco
There is more to be done and more ways to do it in San Francisco than in any city I know. In less than half an hour from the hotel there is the sandy shore of the Pacific. In the opposite direction Berkeley has some of the most beautiful drives imaginable; Oakland has beautiful drives, and one must cross the bay for both cities. Then there is the sail, and the drive, and the road to Tamalpais. And all the places are so different, which is strange, as they have the same climatic conditions and are just trees and soil. Cities are different by nature, or rather, by what man has done to nature. But the outskirts of Oakland are no more like the outlying Berkeley than Boston is like New York.
There is a road leading into the Presidio which gives an exquisite glimpse of the Golden Gate, and then opens the world to you. We happened on it by accident. Nearly everyone takes the gates lying to the east, but the far west gate leads to the greatest beauty. It is a delightfully varied land all about San Francisco, and so mixed with water, ocean and bay, that fancy roams from canoes to battleships, with house boats on the way; and one can fish for whales and minnows all on the selfsame day.
Making Soundings
The great disadvantage in illness is that it gives time to make own's own acquaintance. At the end of 1921, when the one I knew least was drifting out of a long illness, she was confronted with the necessity of finding some sort of work that would give a fresh point of view, a new interest. As all her life had been in the theater, it was natural to look for something not too remote from all her former interests. Some friends who were interested in motion pictures tried to interest her in them, with no success whatever. But one day she was shown the workings of a motion-picture machine; the fact that it was something new that had to do with lights was the great thing, and she returned to her early enthusiasm, electric lights. For two years she lived in Schenectady and waited about for developments.
A tiny laboratory was fitted up and Dr. Perley Gordon Nutting was persuaded to take charge. It was a new life and one of great interest to the one I had known least. From a world of make-believe to a world where two and two had to make four was a shock and a great stimulus.
Afte the design for the new lamps was agreed upon, she waited fifteen months before the first lamps appeared. There were two of them; they came all the way from Ohio. They rested at night in a Pullman berth, protected with pillows and cushions, and when the arrived it was found one had broken on the way. The other allowed itself to be installed in a housing and burned like a charm. Dr. Willis Rodney Whitney, the great scientist, and head of the Research Laboratory in Schenectady, who had started the wonderful lamp and made it possible, was begged to come at once and look at it. He generously hurried down, and as he crossed the threshold of the little workshop, the lamp blew up!
Being a woman, the one I had known least wanted to cry. But no one else seemed to mind. She gathered that lamps in their beginnings were supposed to blow up. Three months more, and three lamps arrived and not one of them blew up.
Then followed more work, more developments, more absorbing interest, and finally a new tool for everyone to work with.
The scientific mind is more astounding than any djinn of Eastern fable. A wish or need is expressed, and off sails the mind, making soundings now and then-a figure here and there on a bit of paper to show what reefs are about-the fearless little craft dipping its nose into the most forbidding seas that ought to engulf it. But no, it is at home only on uncharted seas; and when at last it sails into port with its golden cargo, before you can grasp with surprise and thankfulness, off it goes again on some new quest.
While the work on the new tool was going forward, a deep interest grew in motion pictures themselves and an appreciation of them as an extraordinary medium for beauty, for human interest and understanding; even more than music, they speak a universal language.
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