Evening star., 1939-05-07

" HIS is my first experience in writing
anything of an photographed nature
- and wish had less prosaic material to
go on. am not the unacknowledged child of a
grand duke and an opera singer; was never
stolen by gypsies; Belasco never found me
singing on street corner and offered me a
contract; no crowned heads have ever flung
jewelry at my feet, and the only time horse
was taken out of the shafts for me was by an
irate liveryman in Bermuda after had driven
appointingly normal existence.
was born Il shan't say when) in Chicago
chiefly because my father was playing an
engagement there at the time. My babyhood
seems to have been spent part of the time in a
market basket in my mothers dressing room,
part of the time with my maternal grand
mother and, when the theatrical season was
ended, with my paternal grandfather in
Vermont.
My mother decided that trunk was no
place in which to bring up child. so she quit
the stage and we moved to Bryn Mawr to
live, for no good reason other than the pres
ence there of the college and number of
schools. Neither Mother nor Father ever
attended college nor, indeed, did they even
graduate from high school, and although both
we're the most exquisitely civilized people
have ever known, they stood in curiously
naive awe of all educational institutions. To
give me the proper intellectual start we lived
for time in professors house on the Bryn
Mawr campus that is, Mother and did;
Father came home for Sundays when he was
playing near Philadelphia.
My initial dramatic appearance was in the
Bryn Mawr May Day Festival One of the
outdoor plays given on that occasion being
"A Midsummer Nights Dream" the campus
children were corralled as fairies. yearned
for the part of Peasblossom, whose costume
was vision of pink, silver and pale green but
little girl with blue eyes, yellow ringlets -
and, am certain, no talent (the minxD -
was cast for that stellar role while had the
humiliation of having to play Mustardseed in
drab garment of brown and yellow. 1t was
my first taste of the bitter bread of theatrical
disappointment. In all honesty was hardly
the Peasblossom type. A cadaverous. brown
and solemn child with high cheekbones and
large mouth, l looked like an Eskimo. In fact,
my early photographs bear startling resem-
blance to some of Doctor Crenfell's more
emaciated cases.
The theater was remote and lovely back
ground to an average childhood. The theater
meant wherever Father was playing at the
time; it meant occasional school holidays
when Mother and joined the company for a
few delicious weeks of trouping; it meant rare
and wonderful excursions into Philadelphia
to see Marlowe and Sothern, Maude
Adams and the Barrymores. For the
rest, attended preparatory school
where scholastically did extremely
badly. my marks being monthly
source of tears for both Mother and
myself. Mathematics were land still
are) completely beyond my mental
powers, and claim the distinction of
having, in an algebra exam, received
the mark of q for being present.
60 was passing.
In school theatricals took an active
part. The active part was usually the
leading man. This was because was
tall and lanky and because Fathers
theatrical wardrobe yielded consider
able treasure in the line of boots,
trousers and other miSfitting manly