The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-12
Wild Oats Are Sown By Rollo
 At Little Theater

z let's go somewhere and set. Il dlnL @ used to my red and green lights being 7 Svertical: can't tell sta'bod from port ss and I'm too old now to be iandlubber, M Let's go and take on some cargo O zs steak" My old sea captain still had 2 the merry crofs-foot around his eyes and his piratical moustachios with his blue peaked cap still gave me the i'm pression of Louis Napoleon, even ,@ though I've forgotten ray French his yf tory.
 se We were sitting at a table in the c Chinese restaurant we always seek out N when in search of steaks when he SS asked me "How's the missus? Better \ phone her hadn't we?"
 S >"Oh, she's out at the Little Theater 7 working on costumes for their next show and believe me, she's up to her eyes in work. She gets started on that and forgets to eat, herself, much less feed me. That costume committee and the producing one have been doing aw- fully good work. don't know any. thing about the new production. but judging from what I've seen of the / others, they deserve worlds of credit and mention. I'm shark on details and you take a good actor in a good play and set him to cavorting around in messy senittgs and in clothes full of anachro- >, nisms and I can't ever see the actor"
 "Anachronisms, me eye! Whoever heard of clothes full of anachronsms |: unless you're trying to highbrow me and say holes?"
 Well, take pirate and put him in polo pants and you'll see what I mean. Of course it's not as bad as all that but I've seen some that were almost like that"
 Say; went out to that place last night and saw their new play. Seen it.?
 Not. yet. How did you get in:"
 Get in?- Why. I'm a full fledged member. They had some memberships open and l made fast onto one O them before they all got away. I set and watched rehearsal till almost mid night, and I didn't get tired of any, thing but just sitting in one spot without movin' for nearly four hours. It's interesting like to set and watch the director going at 'em hammer and tongs sos they'll get the most out O the play and their lines. Sometimes it's sorter like trying to bring a ship up in a choppy sea when she don't answer much to her wheel and then sometimes rits sorter like offering a prima donna platinum and diamonds when she's wanting right then a flat cut emerald ;; whatever that is. Sometimes I think it ain't fair to the actors and all con cerned to go and watch the wheels go round, but after they get to going good then like to know saw them settin t to work. And they've got lines that go like P. and O., boat when she's = homeward bound out O the Red sea and that directors a shark at casting. He sure can pick lem.
 ; Know the play? It's all about Rollo and His Wild Oat Somebody was telling me out there that, the author is a niece. of Mir. l.. T. Beeeher. You got scads O writers in this town but ain't never heard O no dramatists here but now you can say you've got the uncle O a crackerjack play-maker liv- ing here anyway. But I was talking about here anyway wasn't I? Well, sir, it gives me lots O pleasure to sit and watch somebody and listen to their lines and then try and see if I'd picked them for that part. When first come in there was little blond standing with her profile to me and fell right away in love; if grabbed age can fall in love with you. Then I listened to her a while and says, well he's pulled boner. She's just too pretty and too dumb. Then watched her walk and began to listen to her talk and then looked at her act and then I says, by heck, or something like that, you're wrong. He was exactly right when he chose her and she's bringing out the lines just like they're meant. You see it turned out that Rollo, him O. the Wild Oat, was producing the thing. He'd got the actor-manager bee in his bonnet and was producing Hamlet" and all by way O chance runs into the golden headed miss and falls in love with her too and wants her to play Ophelia. couldn't see her for Ophelia at all, either, and she know she wouldn't do too and as the lines went on, she kept on a telling him she wouldn't do and it gets plainer and plainer how she's the granddaughter O the most famous Ophelia O her day but that didn't make her an actress and in place O all that she was just a plain lovely miss who loved to sit at home and sew and out O a sweet-grass sew ing basket and mind the baby and tend the flowers and all that. And bein' like that she's been forced into a sit uation where she's got to play Shakes pear and have a Rollo actor-manager awanting to see her home in a purple lined plush cab every night. The poor little pretty is in the devile of quan- dary (does that rhyme with drome- daryO and she looks it and she acts it and the director was right and I was wrong. And worse still, Rollo's grandRd at first thinks she's a trying to grab Rollo off for herself and he drags her over the coals And then she's in a worse quandary, and she talks it and looks it and when you see the lights a shining off her curly gold head you just want to go and tell her, why damn that old air-brake grandfather O ROllO Come on let's hit him over his sore toe with a heavy chair!
 And that old man who's Rollo's grandfather is just right. He's irascible, made lots O money, stOmps his good fot and his fist and thumps the floor with his stick and N9ws the grandchildren and would die UN T torture before he'd tell 'em, and hA shrewd as a city slicker and speaks out his mind in the meetin', and can say more damns in five minutes than I car watching a bunch O lascars loadin coal in Port Said. Then he falls fol Goldie, the little shining blond, just lik, a wild man he opens up the insides anC shows her just a little bit O the req sentiment in him. He was tellin' he about how he loved her grandmothe and in one lone he tells how thi grandmother had a pet name for him She used to call me 'Horrie.' I nearl. jumped out O my seat when he pulle that line. heard Mary Anderson ono