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From under my Hat
company: "Without doubt you are the most awkward cow it's ever been my misfortune to come across. How did you get in this theater in the first place? Who grabbed you off the farm? What you're doing here I'll never know. But if you've got nerve enough to take it, I'll give it. Now get back there in line and learn those steps!"
By that time I was so shaken I didn't know my left foot from my right. I decided that if I was going to be on the stage I'd have to take dancing lessons at night and learn fast.
Well, you can't be hung for trying. I went to see Mr. Romeo, ballet dancer in the Metropolitan Opera, and told him what had happened. "Please teach me a few steps, Mr. Romeo, so I can keep my job. I've just got to," I pleaded. It was either keep my job or accept a fate worse than death— go home to Altoona.
I didn't know until much later that Mr. Romeo and Mr. Wayburn were bitter rivals. For that reason and no other Mr. Romeo decided to teach me the fundamentals of the dance.
I couldn't even point a toe, so first he stretched my instep. I can still hear my cartilages creak and snap. But, by golly, I finally was able to point my toes, and it wasn't long before I was standing on them. But I was never cut out for the ballet. Those meat-market muscles were not the kind you dance with.
I got by with Mr. Wayburn. He gave me never a smile or a decent word, and I don't know what he thought. But it didn't matter. I held my job.
A year after Ned Wayburn died— I was then writing a column— I had a letter from his widow.
You knew, and I'm sure loved, my husband, as everyone did who knew him. You know the great story of his life. I believe it would make a wonderful movie. Because of his kindness to you, would you please help me sell it to a picture company?
When I first thought about getting Edgar Selwyn to give me a part in The Country Boy I talked it over with my friend Louise Dresser. The previous summer I had been lucky enough to get four weeks of work in stock in Mount Vernon, New York, and I lived with Louise.
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