Evening star., 1942-01-05

Veteran Actor Played
More Than 325 Ports,
Produced 33 PIoys
~ the Associated Press.
NEW YORK, Jan. 5.-Otis Skin
ner. dean Of the theater, Is dead
at SO.
The veteran actor. whose mother
cnce said he would never succeed
on the stage because he could not
even talk straight" but whose his
trionics during a 55-year span won
him international acclaim, died last
night Of uremic poisoning.
Funeral services will be held at
noon tomorrow In the Little Church
Around the Corner. Burial will be
in Woodstock, vt.
Mr.. Skinner was stricken Decem-
ber I while attending . benefit per-
formance at the Plymouth Theater.
With him when he died was his
daughter, Cornelia Otis Skinner,
herself . famed actress. His wife, the
former Maud Durbin, whom he met
on stage, died five years ago.
Produced 80 Plays.
Mr.. Skinner, who played more
than 325 parts and produced 80
plays before his retirement in 1882,
was born In Cambridge, Mass, a
son Of the Rev. and Mrs. Charles
A. Skinner, who did not encourage
his dreams Of the footlights.
Yet 1t was they who indirectly
launched him as an actor on
Philadelphia stage in 1877. Mr..
Skinner got that first part with the
help of q letter from P. T. Barnum,
which read:
20. A. Skinner is known to me.
His parents are very respectable"
Consummate skill in acting, plus
something Of the dash and color
which marked the romantic figures
he liked best to portray, distin-
suished Mr.. Skinner throughout his
50 years as q favorite Of the Ameri-
can stage.
Although he met objection from
his parents when he decided to make
acting his life's work, firm in his
purpose, he left home at 10. almost
penniless, and joined a stock COM
pany In Philadelphia at IS q week.
In q hard and hungry first season he
eked out his scanty funds by selling
his schoolbooks, one by one.
;,. ai 1ifn Iid HRr Skfn>
ner venture into the movies, and
then with conspicuous success. His
single photoplay was "Kismet" in
which he played "the joyous mur-
derer, Hail" who was called also
''the wickedest william of the stage"
As the wild and colorful beggar OF
Bagdad the actor was thoroughly
happy.
Daughter Wrote Play for Him.
Because she knew her father al
ways wanted to act in pirate play"
his daughter Cornelia wrote Cap
tain Fury Of the Holy Innocents'"
for him In 1925.
Another play made to measure"
by q member OF his family was
"Pietro" in which his wife collabo-
rated with Jules Eckert Goodman.
The manuscript was left at the
Globe Theater for Mr.. Skinner In
1918 by "a man in sailor clothes"
It was months before he learned who
had written it.
No effort was too great for Mr..
Skinner In preparing for . part.
When he played the deaf hero III
Goodman's The Silent Voice" he
studied the inmates Of an asylum In
Buffalo, N. Y, where the company
happened to be, until he acquired
the peculiar voice tone of the deaf
man and the way of watching the
lips.
So much q part of the American
stage for 50 many decades, Mr.. Skin
ner became something of a national
II not an international institution.
Calling on President Coolidge In
1926, he was invited to luncheon at
which the conversation turned to
boyhood days in New England, To
their surprise the friends discov-
cred they had fished the same
streams and played with some Of the
same boys in the mountains Of Ver-
mont where the family Of the elder
Skinner, the itinerant preacher, at
one time lived.
The life of the actor was bright
with friendships. His deepest af1ec-
ton was for Edwin Booth who, he
said, was tine most lovable man" he
had ever known. In the Skinner
memoirs, called "Footlights and
Spothghts" and published in 1924,
the writer is a minor character al
though it is his own life story. but
Booth and others whom he knew
and loved are treated with great ten
derness.
Anecdote on Edwin Booth.
That Mr.. Skinner possessed the in
stincts of the dramatiSt, also Is
shown In his anecdote, there includ-
ed, OF Edwin Booths great grief at
the assassination of Lincoln by his
brother, John Wilkes Booth. On
q winter night in the furnace room
of the old Booth Theater In New
York, Mr.. Skinner wrote, his grief
stricken friend in silent tears burned
the silk and velvet costumes his dis
honored brother had worn.
On all phases Of the drama Mr..
Skinner had became an authority
through his habit Of concentrated
study Of his many parts. He wrote
well and drew special attention by
an article in Scribner's magazine
in 1926 on Edmund Kean, an English
actor Of the time of Keats and BY
ron, who cared nothing for noble au-
diences but sought only to please
''the pit"
Stage censorship he could not SYM
pathi7e with. When police raids on
the Broadway theater began In 1927,
he said In Hartford, Conn, where
he was playing in THE Honor Of
the Family"
There may be things wrong with
the theater, but there Is nothing
80 radically wrong that it needs
this wholesale readjustment. We
are perhaps q bit more frank than
We were before, but so is the world