Arizona republican., 1901-05-03
A CRUSHED ACTOR DETECTIVE.
Sad Plight of Man Who Devoted Him.
 self to One Character.

Tt doesn't do 10 become too tne n any one line of work" said the actor as he dived into the pickle jar to spear another onion which vexatlously eiuded his thrust. This is a business in which you've got 10 show little variety. even though managers will try to keep you doing the sort of thing they think you do best.
 There's Nat Guilford, for instance. who used to be the greatest man in de- tective roles that ever lived. He could come in for five minutes with false mustache and hat pulled down over his eyes and the audience wouldn't see anybody but him on the stage. He had an inslnuating sneak about him that marked him as a born deteriva the first time he ever played in The Ticket O Leave Man on the oil City circuit.
 He was simply saturated with mys- tery the moment he came in sight and you couldn't have found better per son for the line of parts the managers gave him. He played them so well in oil City that after a while he got on Broadway and there wasn't London melodrama produced here in ten years that didn't have Nat in the first act or the seventeenth as detective look ing for the man who had stolen the lost daughter or the lost will, as the case happened to be.
 After a while the public got on to the melodrama. didn't want any more of them, and one after another they be- gan to fail. Then the managers wanted new people to act them; though: that fresh blood was needed to give them life and even had the courage to fire Nat after while.
 He tried hard to get another line of business, but 1t was no go. It was as if somebody had hung out sign, No detectives wanted wherever he ap- piled. The managers never thought of him as an actor. They looked at him only as detective and in that light he came to be regarded by everybody.
 He was out of work three or four years. though he kept offering to do anything except act the detective. which was just what nobody wanted him to do. although there didn't seem any desire on the managers part to have him in anything else either. He wanted to do a sketch in vaudeville. but the manager wouldn't have any thing but a detective sketch. and he put Nat on one day as an extra turn. Then he told him the act was no good and that anybody ought to have known that a comic detective wouldn't go.
 After three or four years of this sort of thing Mats money was gone and he had no prospects of getting work again. By luck it happened that a friend of his opened hotel and wanted detec- tive to look after the guests. Nat looked the part so well that his friend engaged him to walk around the office and look at people in an inquiring way. This Nat did 90 well that he made cold chills run up their spine and gave them the impression that they really had come there to steal something, even if they were the most honest church goers in the world.
 Well, Nat did that job so well that he got more money to come to a larger money just for prOwling around and scowling than men who have served a long apprentice for that sort of thing In Mulberry street.
 "One thing he can't stand Is the sight of an actor, and that affords his sole relaxation from the labor of mak- ing other people uncomfortable. Once he sees an actor sitting comfortably down in an easy chair he fixes his eyes on him like two augers and he bores the same sort of holes through any other actor who sits down to write a letter. When he spies one nibbling at bit of cheese at the free lunch table he hovers around until in desperation the actor runs out of the place and de- clares he'll never go back.
 That's his revenge, of course, for not being able to keep in the profes- sion. But wasn't 1t his fault to devote himself too exclusively to one line of business?"-New York Sun.