Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-05-10
WAIST MEASURE OF ACTRESSES.
What Some of Them Have Done to
Regulate the Size for Themselves.

From the New York Sun.
There has been great comparing Of the
waist measures of actresses lately, and it has
been found that though Mrs. Potter and Sarah
Bernhardt are the two thinnest women on the
stage, their waist measures are by no means
the smallest as they wear their corsets as loose
as is consistent with their keeping on at all and
giving their bodices an appearance of smooth.
ness. They both measure good % inches on
the outside of their dresses, and would proba-
bly, measure less if the tape were passed around
underneath their corsets. Ellen Terry is also
a slim woman, but she has one of the biggest
waists in the profession, the tape meeting
around her just where the 28-inch mark comes,
and for the most part she wears no STAYS at all
Miss Eastlake has very large waist, for she
has some trouble with her back and instead of
stays usually wears broad, heavy linen band
age wrapped about her many times, which. of
course, makes her waist look enormous She
never wears anything cut in the ordinary fash
ion; generally it is floating drapery wound
about IN some mysterious way, concealing her
outline so that it is difficult to know lust what
the size of her waist is.
Hading. though she is plump enough and has
full, round arms, Is one of the long greyhound
wasted type who do not have to lace to look
small. Her figure is of the sort which the
French dressmaker loves-somewhat broad and
square in the shoulders, fat in the back, and
with long, slim lines slOping down to a 21-incb
waist. Mrs. Langtry began with the usual tight
laced English waist of 20 inches. but in spite
of all tight-lacing since, it has steadily gone up
to %; but there she succeeds in keeping it.
through the aid of muscular maid. Mrs.
Scott-Siddons tells this story of how she came
by her good-sized waist. 1t seems she suffered
desperately from fatigue after every peE3Drm-
ance. and the doctor told her she must take off
her corsets and let her waist grow much to her
disgust. for its span of % inches had long been
her pride. He was intexible however. and off
the corsets came, and in three months the size
of her girdle had increased inches but she
was SO much healthier and stronger and played
with so little fatigue to herself that she con-
eluded to let 1t stay at that size. and had her
corsets made accordingly afterward
Ada Rehan has always kept her measurement
at twenty-three inches, an extremely small one
for person of her height and breadth of shout
der. Fanny Davenport's waist measure has
huctuated very much since she first went on the
stage; when she began she was slender, and
even then wore her clothes pretty snug fitting.
so that she measured only nineteen inches
that steadily grew year by year, SO that when
she first commenced to star for herself she had
run all the way up to twenty-eight. Then be-
gan her period of struggle with her too, too
solid flesh, which she was bent upon reducing
since 1t interfered with the possibility of her
looking the romantic parts she was DESTROYS of
Playing Sne uSeu the Bantlng process for a
year or two with the usual result of seriously
injuring her health, and also with the
result that the moment she gave
it up she began at once to gain flesh
again. The physicians assured her of the un-
pleasant truth that in her case eternal vigilance
was the price of slimness, and she has been
doing steady battle ever since with her ten
dency to avoirdupois. When she was PLAYING
IN La Tosca" she rarely got to bed before
O'Clock, but rose again at 6 and walked from
her lodgings up to the park and to the obelisk,
around which she walked fixed number OF
times at rapid rate, doing it at this early hour
In the morning to escape observation, and after
1t was over walking straight home to bed fol
the rest of her sleep. BY this means and care
full dieting she had gotten her waist back to %
and means to keep it there.
Mary Andersons waist few years ago was
twenty-four inches, but it is now nearer TWEEN
ty-six, and she wears her corsets and clothes az
loose as possible. The famous Mrs. Bernard
Beere, of London, does not wear stays at all
and she has waist of twenty-seven inches
Lefty Lind, Of the London Gaiety company
has naturally slim waist, but she also laces il
good deal and only measures twenty inches
Georgia Cayvans waist in spite of lacing, ha.
increased in the last five years from twenty-five
inches to twenty-six, and it has been founs
that the average waist measure of the younger
actresses is about twenty-four inches.