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Actorviews
York the other night and I loved Wilton Lackaye’s very entrance. It was so theatrical. He carved every word he spoke. He had a grand time, and I envied him and hated the sweet little parts I have to play.” “Was he better than Skinner?”
“I’ve never seen Skinner — what’s he like?”
“Just oozes ‘presence.’ ”
“I should love him,” she sighed — “and hate the things I have to play. I get so weary of being sweet . . . and dear . . . and pure.”
‘“You would like,” I asked with an ear to my story, “to be a bad woman — on the stage?”
“I’d adore it — a regular Borgia, only modern. I’d like to have just one chance to be — well — you know — brilliant. And in this sophisticated day a woman doesn’t seem to be brilliant — on the stage — unless she’s been wicked. I want to be wicked — on the stage, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“Oh, not that I wouldn’t want to be wicked otf the stage, and would be,” the flower-faced infant vowed, “if I really wanted to. But I have no inclination to be a bad woman in my private life. There’s something terribly wanting in me, all right,” she deplored.
“But you are very young, Helen,” the Devil prompted me to suggest.
“Not so very, very young,” she flared. “And I’d give — I’d give fifteen years of my life to be fifteen years older and know ... You know, I had to give up reading the lives of the great actresses.”
“You were afraid ?”
“That I’d be tempted to do as they’d done? No; that I wouldn’t be. I knew I was hopelessly moral. The great actresses tell us it was their hectic loves that made them great artists. And I haven’t the first