Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1922-04-20
BUDDING HAM[ETS
FACE ROCKY ROAD
Sothern Says Passing Of Stock
Theatre Robs Aspiring Actors
Of shakespe arean Fame
PRODUCERS ARE sKEPTIcAL

! "ell-
He was rapidly peeling out of the
buskins of Malvolia. In n trice he
was revealed in the innermost stratum
OF the costume, an anachronis.
tic suit of heavy merino. lie dipped
his hand into an immense Jar Of cold
cream and poised little COB Of it for
a moment on his forefnger.
81 suppose" Mr.. Sothern answered,
'thnt YOU mean the changes that have
come in my time and so or2 Things.
of course. have changed utterly. 1t is
next to impossible now for a Young
actor. even of appropriate talent and
intelligence. to get foothold in the
standard English drama.
'ln the first place. there>are hardly
any schools where he can learn the
technique of the parts. and no pro-
ducers who would be willing to back
MIN without guarantee of popular
support.
Hardly any actor is possessed of re-
sources prodigious enough to make the
attempt on his own, for the first years
inevitably mean one failure after an.
other.
I'm the old days there were in all
the principal cities Of this country stock
theatres. at which hardly anything was
played but the English stock dramas
One reason for that, Of course, was
that at the time America had virtually
no dramatic literature Of her own, ex-
cept few wild Western melodramas.
Young Actor Had Half Dozen Masters
THE point, however. was that to
those theatres came all tLe great men
Of that generation 10 p,ay such roles
as Hamlet, Brutus. Othello and so on,
supported by the local company. The
young actor had not only one great
master, but q half dozen or more"
away the last vestige Of Malvolio and
paused impressively to count his fingers.
Think" he said. 81 played at the
Boston Museum. and to that stage came
Booth and Barrett and Forrest and
Mccullough and Macready. and the
great Englishmen like Irving and"
But he had not fingers enough to
count them. At an imperceptible sig
nal the valet slipped over him an OIL
cloth apron and Mr.. Sothern bowed
his face gracefully into tin basin of
water.
One was lost in admiration at the
process Of Mr.. Sothern's gradual trans
tiguration, which went on with a
smoothness and absolute economy of
movement that no surgical team in the
world could have initiated.
''G-glub.' he said earnestly, rails
ing his head for moment from the
basin. ''At rehearsals in those days
the young man could observe one week
how Mr.. Booth carried his points. and
the next week how Mr.. Forrest carried
his. and could adapt them to what
ever genius was his own.
Opportunities for artistic compar-
son and experiment were infinite.
U. S. Found Dramatists
"But gradually the United States
began to find its own dramatists. n
rather fine crop of them on the whole.
The stock dramas began to disappear
from the board and, eventually, the
stock theatre.
There are only four organizations
| in the country that are doing this sort
of thing Old Bob Mantell, of course
after the most arduous struggle against
dlscouragements is beginning to sue
ceed-I mean financially.'
BY n miracle the merino undershirt
had been replaced by garment more or
less of the mode. Now Mr.. Sothern
was buttoning his shirt and slipping
over it his suspenders.
"Others try 1t sporadically,' he re-
sumed, but these efforts always COL
lapse. and will inevitably collapse when
the actor or actress Is not in posi-
tion to stand one failure after another.
"Suppose an actor goes to pro-
ducer and tells him that he can play
Hamlet. The producer will say. 'Ah,
that Is very interesting, but surely, my
dear sir, you don't want me to spend
S3O, 900 simply to find out that you
can play Hamlet?' For that's what it
would mean no matter what the man S
capabilities.
$50 that's the trouble. A tradition
has to be created before the public will
come" Mr.. Sothern received his hat
and stick-"and I'm not blaming the
public because ! know what has been
done in making Shakespeare like bad
dream.
Work Was Hard
eve have become an institution OF Il
sort now, but the work was frightfully
hard for many years a business Of drift
ing from one manager to another. Mrs.
Sothern (Juia Marlow) for six years,
earned hardly more than enough to keep
alive, although in that time she was
given the most flattering notices one
could ask.
Mr.. Sothern walked out Of his dress
ing room. Miss MarlOwe was waiting in
| the shadows OF the stage.
~ WAS saying" he. said. to. her.
"what time you had those six years" "
"Yes." she replied laughing. 'For
six years I worked for little less than
board and keep
Mr.. Sothern broke in.
"What is the answer to all that I
have been telling you? How are we
going to find actors for the standard
dramas in the future? don't mean only
Shakespeare and romance, but Ibsen
and Shaw and Brieux and Galsworthy
and all the other realists and ghosts.
Those plays aren't successful either.
Nobody has even made any money from
ghosts.
1.-The answer, ] say, is the universi =
ties. Each year more and more Of them
show signs of recognizing acting as n
fine art. Each year finds more and
more students in the galleries at our
performances.
''The universities and municipality
endowed repertoire theatres, that will
afford the same chance for training az
the old stock companies.
"Well, Julia, we'd better be getting
home. Good night. Good night"