Actorviews (1923)

Sothern and Marlowe Y friend Mr. Sothern will not take it amiss, I take it, if I say that of all the parts he plays he plays none so well as the one in which I found him the other afternoon at the Blackstone Hotel. He was being, perfectly, Julia Marlowe’s husband. Now, a perfect husband is rare enough even among the unsought and the undistinguished; but a perfect husband to a famous actress and himself a famous actor! — that is the stuff of which domestic dreams are made. I had been bidden to join them in “tea” (the quantity of tea I consume in this profession is not, I sometimes regret, exaggerated) ; and Mr. Sothern himself now made it and poured it and lemoned it and abetted it with toast and trimmings. He was host and hostess, too. They were going to another city before settling here for the engagement at the Studebaker, and Mr. Sothern was perfectly safeguarding Miss Marlowe from the needless wear and tear of travel — from tea and me, among other wears and tears. His wife, he told me — employing almost romantically, I thought, the homely word — his wife was in the adjoining room, “resting.” “Mrs. Sothern is not ill again?” — I had anxiously expressed it. And he was taking pains to attest the needlessness of my alarm.