Actorviews (1923)

Angel Cake With' Miss Ferguson . _=n!SS ELSIE FERGUSON’S lovely face ^ y was almost as close to me as the paper rm on w*1^*1 I am writing, and a clear I light beat upon it from the windows of yf I her drawing-room at the Ambassador |1 A Ml (I can think of twenty beautiful actresses whose faces it were an indiscretion to expose to such a light) and yet her face was more surpassingly lovely than ever before. She is more delicately beautiful than stage or screen may show. The infantine clearness of her skin can’t be counterfeited and projected with makeup; there is a note of coral in her live, bronze hair that dies in the fires of the footlights. And her mouth, that might have been cut by a hand that molded Elgin marbles, slightly droops its left lower lip, when you are close enough to see, in a way that is ridiculous and adorable. And her pensive blue eyes, under their classic arches, are a little tired, whether from looking too much out at the world or in on oneself, I do not know; perhaps both. Her nose, which with a little encouragement might have turned up at the tip, is not classical, thank God; but I have yet to know that this exquisite organ denotes a sense of humor. “Miss Ferguson,” I said, from my seat on the couch in whose soft corners we were bestowed, “is it beauty or brains that has made you what you are in the theater?”