Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1894-11-08
PROTEST FROM MRS. SHAW.
The Charming Whistler Resents Care
less and Unjust Criticism on
Stage Women.

The cutlery against Madeline Pollard
attempting to make Il living on the
stage strikes me as being ungenerous
and unjust, in view of the standard
OF morality by which public opinion
declares the women of the stage are
in too many cases governed. says Alice
Juliettc Shaw. A mans standard in
such matters doesn't seem TO matter.
whether he be a manager or simply
a rouge without theatrical affiliations.
immortality has been so often charged
against, l might almost say. the ma
jority of actresses that there has even
come to be subtle suggestion of i'm
morality in the successful career of
the actress or singer With the truth
or the falsehood of this charge | am
not called upon to deal. My profes-
sional sisters need no defender in me-
That this suggestion exists / leave 1t
to fair minded men and women. pro-
feSSional or not, to say. And If it does
exist and so long as it exists, what
can be more natural than for women
whether maids, wives, widows or mis-
treSSeS, to whom Il sexual faint al
taches, to reap the greatest possible
benefit from that faint by exploiting it
and, incidentally, their dramatic as
piratiCns upon the boards?
Now, this is a gross injustice to the
honorable women of the theatre and
concert hall. To put IL plainly, it is
possible to succeed on the stage and
remain chaste. Personal purity is not
with
The Sneer. the hooking laugh. with
which such an assertion will be re-
ceived in many a green room, dramatic
agency and managers office is not to
be taken as throwing any real doubt
on the correctness of the assertion, but
rather as ridiculing the audacity of
the professional woman who dareS to
raise such a question by risking such
an assertion.
AS Il proposition which is worthy of
hearing and of consideration ] make
bold to say that young woman in
distress, a widow left helpless with q
family to support or an abandoned
wife. with nothing but her own talents
between herself and the streets, may
hope to attain an honorable career
and an uncOmpromising triumph in
the theatre
You can run over on your fingers all
the names of successful actresses and
singers to whose skirts no scandal has
attached, at whose fair fame not even
the harpies and hangers on of the pro-
feSSiOn have dared to throw mud. ]
will not be SO presumptuous as to men
ton them, and be crushed with the re-
tort: what! Are there no others"
There are great many more than the
scandal mongers imagine.
But I feel safe in saying that my
own experience shows how the mother
of four helpless little girls. widowed
and left penniless through no fault of
her own. may turn to the stage and
find not only helping hands but a fair
chance to earn bread and butter, and
more. too, without bringing blush to
her children's cheeks. Like Marchesi,
l consider my whistling a unique form
of singing. and I am proud Of earning
my money by whistling for it.
The re}a tons between managers and
stars are often such as to encourage
the censOrious that any honest woman
on the stage ought to be pardoned for
entering a public protest against them.
The suspicion that surrounds those re-
latiOnS in so many cases is so we'll
founded, even if it be founded on APP
pearanceS only, as to support without
difficulty the edifice Of smut which is
so readily built upon it. The induce
mentS young women are supposed to
offer, or to be obliged to, or asked to
offer. to managers in order to secure
engagements in comic opera companies
are notorious topics of gossip. If those
relations and those inducements are
lies-vile, Infamous falsehOods, SIAN
ders in seven league bOots-why, then
| for one think it time they were
stamped as such and the tongues Of
ten thousand critics, in press and pull
pit, barrOOm and loafers corner, 81
fenced once for all. If they are not
lies, let the shame of their truth fall
where it belongs
| Let the men who are responsible for
such a state of affairs be pilloried.
for one am tired of hearing inslnua-
lions against the honor Of women who
pursue a professional career as con-
scientiously as they would a perambu-
lator. And I am tired of the cant and
hypocrisy which masks the dishonor
it is vain to deny.
Instead of publicity in ones daily
life being an encoura cement Of loose
ness of morals, as the critics would
have us believe, it ought, by all the
rules of common sense and common
decency, to be the exact opposite. The
very fact that an actress Or a singer
Or whistler, for that matter, lives
and exists by living in the public eye
ought to make it all the harder for her
! to transgress public conventions And
/ it does.
/ What is to be thought of the shame
! lessness our Clerical and our barroom
critics alike impute to professional
obligations to correctness of life which
that publicity does and ought to entail?
Now, do they?
And how much, by the way, Of the
! immortality Of professional women are
managers" responsible for?
If these ISLANDERS are true let it be
conceded publicly. If they are not
true let them be denounced publicly.
Seer E,'TAPY CRESHAM III,