The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-03-19

season. You know the people who go
to see the tank drama have standard
of acting of their own and Nina Farley
never came up to it, Exactly.
In the emotional scenes in the Great
Diamond Robbery and Lady Audleyss
Secret" and a Midnight Marriage she
was said by the critical audiences VINO
saw her work to be a dead one" Her
managers used to advise her to throw
mere ginger into her work but she mad
stubborn pride which survived all the
humiliations and vicissitudes OF her ca
reer and she refused to "act down. to
her audiences.
Heaven knows they might have left
her that pitiful remnant of her former
self Youth, beauty, innocence, galety,
faith-she lost them all in those four
teen years. And no wonder. The life
of an actress is hard at the best. And
the actress of Nina Farley's class has
a particularly unenviable existence.
Nina Farley's father was an Irishman
who kept a saloon in a little town in
Illinois. Her mother was a pretty, gem
tie, sweet faced woman with big brood
of handsome freckle-faced children
Tom Farley was good to his family and
in his own way he was ambitious Tor
them. He bought the girls a. piano and
had them take music They learned
to sing and dance and they went to the
Sisters school and were graduated in
white gowns and wells. Nina was very
pretty when she was young-with red
dish brown hair and big Irish blue eyes
and a fair, fresh freckled skin. She
studied eloeution at the convent and
when she had finished there she per
suaded her father to send her to Chi
cago to continue her studies. Her am
bition at first was to be a reader" and
go out with a concert company such as
sometimes appeared at Empire nall
But in Chicago after she had quit the
school of expression and gone into an
academy of dramatic art her ideals
changed and she was determined to be
real actress and play Camille.
About this time Tom Farley who had
been going down slowly for several
years succeeded in drinking himself to
death and when the business was
Strengthened up it was found there
wasn't much left. So Nina left the
dramatic school and got her place in the
stock company and thus started on her
miserable professional career
One night the wretched company with
which Nina Farley was playing that
year closed a weeks engagement in
Cedar Rapids.
1t was one of these repertoire COM
panies which change the bill every night
and give plays like In Old Kentucky
and Lost Paradise under disguised
names so as to eVade the consequences
of heterogeneous on the copyright. Nina
Farley was the leading woman and
there were about fifteen other people
in the company, including the man who
sang the illustrated ''weepers' between
acts and the cake walk artists VINO
We're respectively the ingenue and the
leading Juvenile of the company. The
Saturday night bill was Article AT
lurid thing which you may have seen
and the performance was something
awful The actors were miserable sticks
stage settings were frightful. Nina Far
ley as the dangerous enchantress the
constituencies adventures. was res
plendent in red plush and paste
a Tn where her lover
stabs her and she clings to the portieres
with her back to the audience While she
dexterouSly dabs her throat with car
mine to simulate her life blood the gal
lery howled with delight and apprecia-
ton. Afterwards her manager who was
also the star told her patronizingly that
she was looking up" The fact is that
she had had severecoldfors several days
and the pianist who played the accom-
paniments for the vaudeville numbers
and the Flower Song" during the emo
tional scenes of the drama had taken
bottle up to her room that afternoon
and she had emDtied 1t before supper
which explains why, for once in her
life, she approached the ideals of her
audience.
In that audience sitting down well
toward the front was Jim Ryan, a
travelling salesman for an implement
house who had missed the train out of
Waterloo the night before and SO was
stuck" as he would have expressed it,
for a Sunday in DogtoWn" instead or
getting into Chicago as he had hoped to
spend the day with his wife and family.
Jim had enquired at the hotel if there
was anything doing in town and had
haen diEected to the opoSa house" where
Nina Farley was playing in Article Al.
Jim was not over critical but he had
been around a good deal and he knew
before the play was fairly started that
it was pretty punk but he staid on
until the end not because it improved
or because his interest increased but
because he recognized Nina Farley as
a girl he had known very we'll back in
his little home town in Illinois and he
was curious to meet her again and learn
why as nice and pretty girl as she
had been should be playing such
Rapids. Jim and Nina had been boy
and girl sweethearts in that home town
where his father had been the mayor
and had had a butcher shop and her
father had been a councilman and
had had a saloon and their families had
been close friends. They had gone to
the parish school and catechism to-
gether and had been in the same con-
firmation class and then he had gone
away to Chicago to work in the whole
sale house for which he was now a
drummer and she had gone to the Sis
tiers school and afterwards to the dram
attic school in Chicago.
But by that time Nina Farley
Cooked much higher than Jim Ryan
She had her mind set upon a career"
and in her ambitious dreams there was
no room for a clerk in a wholesale i'm
plement house. So he afterwards con-
soled himself with a girl who worked in
Plow's candy store and who was now
Mrs Ryan, the mother of his three
children and the mistress of the new
home he had recently bought in Engle-
wood, Jim Ryan had Jared pretty well
| in his life and it was evident that Nina
Farley had not, so he felt he could
afford to be magnanimous. After the
curtain had descended on the last act
of article Az he sent his card up by
! the usher and Miss Farley sent back
word for him to come up to her dress
| ing room She seemed awfully glad
to see him. and she looked so much