The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-04-15

1buOOAOHA WAAV bAAA grated to New York from St. Pe- tersburg when he was IA, he still has all the volatile, tempestuous character of the Muscovite.
 He beckoned me to his table the other evening for amiable chatter; the talk fled quickly from local trivia to the war scare, thence to bakers dozen subjects. He is intimately conversant with many.
 He was reminiscing, by the way, about the time he went to Wash ington to paint President Herbert Hoover. It had been stipulated that the President would grant Gordon a two-hour sitting. But the artist tried to drive bargain. He pleaded with the President to divide the allotted time into four half-hour sessions.
 President Hoover said "No!"
 So in a Muscovite huff, Artist Gordon left his easel and oils in the White House and fled the Capital.
 Neutral Marches
 After 376 scholastic interviewers, from high schools and colleges, asked to have chat with Fred eric March and his wife, Florence Eldridge, the famed movie couple capitulated and agreed to see them all at once.
 But they fortified themselves in advance. Knowing that the ques- tion would be inevitable, they stenciled a uniform reply to the query, Which do you prefer, movies or the stage?"
 Their answer, mimeographed 376 times, says. we feel equally at home in both mediums. Each has its advantages and disadvan- tages, its recompenses and its drawbacks"
 Poets Pub
 Greenwich Village suffers no dearth of historic" landmarks spots hallowed by the presence in the past of Edgar Allen Poe or Bret Harte, Eugene O'Neill and the late, immortal "Jig" Cooke.
 And probably the site most de- serving of a tablet is a restaurant that goes quaintly by the name of the Crisis" Overseen by a TO- bust, cheerful lady named Marie Dumont, the Crisis is the rendeZ- vous of most solvent Bohemians nowadays.
 The legend persists that on the same grounds, Poe once toiled and lolled and avoided the land- lord; that when it was sawdust filtered pub, John Masefield, now Poet Laureate, served in there as bartender, while waiting for his odes and sonnets to yield some monetary return.
 The tablet on the building speaks proudly of its having also been the home of Thomas Paine who penned '"The Age of Rea- son."
 Just Hospital Corpse"
 Over a tavern table, Harry Mes- tayer was relating the eerie ex- perience of reading his own obitu- ary in a newspaper.
 While playing in Pittsburgh some twenty years ago, Mestayer caught typhoid fever and was carted of to the hospital. After he lay there a few days, the doc. tors went into a huddle and de- cided he couldn't possibly live more than twelve hours. So when reporter phoned to learn how "the young actor" was, they told him, "O.K- print the death notice"
 Mestayer double-crossed the physicians, woke the next morn ing, called for a paper. And star ing him in the face was dole full little paragraph saying that Harry Mestayer died quietly last night" A New Wrinkle
 One of the veteran stage ac- tresses about town, who persists in trying to pass for one much younger, asked an acquaintance, What do you think of my lines in my new play?"
 Oh" replied the other, you're too self-conscious. Your makeup hides them beautifully!" Poo1x A no~v