The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-11-01
STAGE PEOPLES EMPERS
ALWAYS CULTIyATING EMOTIONS,
ARE EAsILY OyERwROUGHT.
Trihes May Enrage Even the Most
Seif-Controlled Among Them-They
Understand Each Other.
York Mail and Express.

New York Mail and Express.
In a Broadway hotel a few evenings ago
a party of players, who had gathered there
for a customary bit of supper after their
nights labors. became involved in a discus
sion as to who is the worst-tempered actor
on the stage. Many claims were put for
ward for this curious distinction. and some
stories were related that would make di-
verting matter in type could they be re-
peated as they were told. 1t appears that
the player who does not occasionally lose
control of himself is as rare as uranium.
1t is not very difficult to understand the
tendency of players to ''go up in the air.
under the spur of trifing provocation. For
there is this difference between actors and
other people, that whereas well-bred per-
sons off the stage have been schooled all
their lives to repress their emotions, the
players must constantly cultivate theirs. In
their lives they play many parts; they
must weep, they must laugh, they must
rage and ruffie, they must find quarrel in
a straw, they must counterfeit every pas
sion that tears the human heart. Simula-
ton itself becomes a habit, and so used
the actors are to keep their feelings at "the
tickle o the scar that now and then they
are pounO TO explode when 1t is not their
cue. IL is no great discredit TO a man to
make n scene when it is considered that
making scenes is his profession.
BARRYMORE'S BAD EYEBROWS.
One Of the most ~1aughable incidents is re-
lated of the unfortunate Georgia Cayvan. 1t
was at a time when her fine talents were at
their best. She was playing in Goblin
Castle" and Lionel Barrymore was cast in
a character part that required him to make
up as an old man. Miss Cayvan summoned
him to her dressing room just before they
were about TO go on the scene at an i'm
promptu j~uncture in the piece. She took
one look at him..
Those ey%ebrows," she shrieked.
whats the matter with them?' asked
Barrymore.
"Oh, you're a fright. Why liant you
do anything right?" the actress cried; and
thereupon she sat down upon the floor.
weeping, and beating the boards with her
hands, like nothing so much as an angry
child that presently will be judiciously
spanked into silence. Barrymore fled to do
something to his eyebrows. and while the
orchestra repeated the 'tween-act music the
stage manager labored to coax the actress
back to composure. She was not herself
all that evening, but seemed upon the point
OF another collapse every time she looked at
SDNho DoAt iAcAO hho hNi "oo ANo's
nothing wrong about the eyebrows; it was
simply a case of nerves drawn too taut.
Mrs. Fiske. who is said By other players
to suppress herself to the point of under
acting in most parts, has her feelings under
excellent control, but even she has been
known to lose her poise. On one occasion
when she was playing Little Italy," in
Toledo, she was detained after the play by
a newspaper woman VINO sought an inter
view. A cab had been ordered for the
actress. and explicit instructions had been
ofx-n. fIof - - ..nN ~ IN m ol,A H. MI
hanson, but a carriage from the stables
that should look somewhat like a private
vehicle.
When Mrs. Fiske emerged from the the
| alter she was tired. nervous and impatient,
and one glance at the cab was enough. She
wouldn't ride in a thing like that; she'd
, driver would go straight back 70 the stables
and get a decent carriage; and she'd see
hat somebody suffered for the insult. The
| distance from the theater to her apart.
ments was less than three blocks, but she
waited till the driver, who had been i'm at
| tendance on her for al hour, drove to the
stable, a mile away. and returned with a
| carriage that Mrs. Fiske would accept. And
| with characteristic ~buoyancy. by the time
she had reached her hotel she had so far
recovered her equanimity that she gave
the offending driver a generous tip for his
trouble.
D'ORSAY'S PATIENCE TRIED.
1t was only the other evening that Law
renee D'Orsay arrived at the Lamb in a
| state OF frenzy. Something had happened
at the Princess, where he was playing The
Earl Of Pawtucket''-just what it was his
friends never did find out. He had held
| himself together till he was safe within the
| portals of the club. Once there, however,
he let loose his vocabulary; raved like a
mailman; vowed that all the mathematical
idiots in the world seemed to be gathered
| around him..
His friends there, most of whom a fell
Iow-feeling made wondrous kind. were very
gentle with him till his wrath had worn
itself out. 1t is quite conceivable that when
a man has at a certain hour every day for
300 days said, "Aw, Sarah. I've had a tele-
| gram from Sarah. Sarah's betteh," his
nerves are ground to a wire edge.
Stories of Richard Mansfield's irascible
disposition are plentiful, but here is one
that probably has not become familiar. Mr..
| Mansfield habitually wears a handkerchief
neatly folded in the upper outside pocket
| of his coat. He seldom unfolds il. but il
| he has occasion TO wipe his lips with it he
replaces it, still folded in his pocket. One
day an assistant stage manager came into
his presence with a handkerchief disposed
| precisely as Mansfield'S was, with the edge
of it protruding from his coat pocket
| Doubtless it was meant TO be but the fat
terry of imitation. but Mansfield was in.
stantly enraged. and he would not stir g
step in the play then in progress till the
reckless person had been discharged anC
sent away.
bob" billiard WEEPS.
Some actors get a certain pleasure out Of
their own periodical outbursts-afterward o.
course. But it is not everybody who can
like the soldier in Kipling's poem, ''stant
beside and watch himself behavin' like &
hloomin' fool" Robert Hilliard, however