Actorviews (1923)

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The Self-Doubting Pauline Lord 27 5 She can be cheerful without laughter; she can be cheerful with a rather uncheerful voice; she can be cheerful about a professional past which was gray when it wasn’t brown. “I used to meet actresses at parties who were successes,” she was saying, between quick, sometimes ironic smiles. “And I’d tell myself that I must be like them if I would succeed like them. They'd talk the American language Englishly, with that curious exaggerated enrichment, like, like — what’s it like?” “Like that,” I said, and arched the little finger of the hand that held my cup. “Yes; they talked with a curve — with no Vs’ where an ‘h’ would do as well, and with a marvelous contraction of syllables on words such as ‘circumstances.’ ” She wondrously and convulsingly congested that word. “I tried to learn how to pronounce the word ‘been’ like a vegetable ; in fact, I tried my darnedest to conventionalize myself — off stage, always off : I never had the nerve to try it on the stage. I should have sickened with shame. “But just the same,” she whimsically confessed, “I managed to pick up a little bag of tricks — about six tricks. I used all six on a part in a play called ‘The Talker,’ and made a so-called hit. But only half of the six would fit my next part, and none would fit the part after that. So I had to get down to rock bottom and begin acting all over again — just plain acting this time, without any tricks.” “That’s your trick now — no tricks?” “I find,” she philosophically answered, “it’s easier for me to get people to believe what I say and do on the stage when I believe it myself.”