Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-05-28
FAMOUS ARTISTS
START STAGE LIFE
IN LOW[Y SK|TS
Even David Warfield Made His
Debut in English Avenue
Saloon.

When an old actor dies people read
! with intense interest and sometimes
with astonishment the obituary ac-
counts of how he first happened to go
on the stage, writes the New York Sun.
SO it was recently when John G.
Sparks, one of the few survivors of
the Harrigan and Hart school. passed
away after half a century before the
footlights. And to many people who
had known him all their lives as a
stage 1rishman is was a quaint sur
prise to read that he began his
career as a waiter with a song and
dance speciality in Owney Geoghegan's
saloon on the Bowery.
There are all sorts of ways of going
on the stage. There's the %dynastic
way, for instance. That's probably
the easiest. 1t involves being born
into some theatrical dynasty, like the
Drews, the Barrymores, the Ranklns.
the Davenports, or-in England-the
Terrys IT the Thornes.
But every promising entertainer
can't be born with the buskins on his
feet, as it were, and many a curious
byway of life has been trodden by
some of our most admired actors and
actresses before they found their vo-
hdllOu- ANON IL aSpih CuNh e
repeat themselves. The singing and
dancing waiter, for instance, repeats
itself in the career of that conjurer of
the laugh with the tear behind it,
David Warfield.
Warfield First an Usher
Everybody knows that Dave began
his theatrical career as an usher, but
everybody doesn't know that he. like
the English poet Masefield, had his
transition episode in an English avenue
While he was "%ushing" in the
Bush Street theater, San Francisco,
his singular talent for mimicry caught
the attention of Ed Harrigan, then
the country, and he was prom
Used a job if he would come east.
The youth raised or saved enough
money to start across the continent,
and-working his way here and there
at length reached New York. He
didn't get the promised job, but drifted
to the Eighth avenue saloon. where,
for SD a week, he served schooners of
beer and did a specially to beguile
customers. The speciality
consisted of dialect bits with which he
climbed to his first fame.
Hitchcock Sold Shoes
Raymond Hitchcock sold shoes in al
in Auburn, n. Y. before he made
his first stage appearance as a chorus
a
The late James O'Neil was a doth
ing salesman in the days before he
his imposing presence before the
[oOtlights. He is said to have studied
the priesthood, among other early
ventures. He first trod the boards as
super" when Edwin Forrest played
1t the National theater, Cincinnati.
Tom Wise, to whom O!Neill wrote
one of his last letters-a letter ac-
claiming Wise "the old Falsaff since
he elder Hackett"-relates that O'Neilli
vas the only actor he ever saw who
,ould bring an audience jumping out
If their seats. with a single word. 1t
vas in Monte Cristo," and the word
vas "One!"-uttered, of course, to
celebrate the fall of the first victim
If Edmond Dante's revenge.
Not until after sampling a varied
assortment of occupations did Wise
himself find bis way to the stage. Hel
ried to be a lawyer. a steamboat man,
railroad man, a publisher, a dry goods
nan, a photographer, a new agent
md a reporter for a trade Journal
III with disastrous results. |,
Lawrence Barrett was a bellboy
arly in life. Willie Collier was prompt
10Y at Days. Maude Adams was a
hid actress in San Francisco, and so
vas Blanche Bates-both being daugh-,,
Of old-time actresses. Walter Ed
niger describes himself as ''one of
he original Little Lord Fauntleroys.
De Wolf Hopper enjoys the rare dis
of having been a star from {
be outset of his career. Well con-
ected and well-to-do, he made his first
at the old Madison Square,
heater in an entertainment with the r
lmost prophetic title, "a Hundred t
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