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The Poor Little Rich Star
Tragedy Has Come to Little Viola D:
always knew it!” Husbands, ’sposin’ you had wives who considered you “ab-so-lu-tely per-fect?” . . . ’Sposin’???
I dont know whether the Dana eyes, specifically, are famous or no. If they are not, they should be. They are her facial chef d’ oeuvre — being extraordinarily large, extraordinarily brilliant and likewise of an extraordinary topaz-green. Also, they are in frequent and most telling use.
“I dont know,” the diminutive Dana bewailed, ‘why a double tragedy should happen to so small a person as me! Just imagine — I’m losing my husband, which, goodness knows, is plenty bad enough — and my director at one and the same time. I’m trying to be awf’ly brave about it, but it’s har-rd I” It was hard, even then; it is still harder for the tiny star now, but there was a spunkiness about her, a dauntlessness in spite of her fairy-like stature. She had about her the atmosphere of one who will not be downed, will not be felled, no matter what the ter
‘•T^o sleep, to dream, and then to die,” some time, some one has
Two photographs the Viola of 1919 are presented on this page, while, in the center, is a study of Miss Dana making up for the stage play, “The Poor Little Rich Girl,” in which she scored a hit
felt that and said it. It is sad, but so is it sweet. To love, to work, and then to die . . . this has not been said heretofore, but it is being done all thruout these days, when we are here today and gone tomorrow — and if it is still sadder, so, by the same token, is it far sweeter — so very sad, so very, very sweet that all of life must be perfumed because of it . . . perfume that brings tears . . . but tears that bring healing . . . and we who believe in the marvelous resilience of youth, if we are still to believe in anything, must believe that the perfume of her Beautiful Memory will bring healing to little Viola Dana. And it TXfill be a beautiful memory . . . beautiful enough to vanquish pain. For when it was not a memory, but a vital and blessed fact, it shone out of her luminous eyes like stars and quivered in her jubilant young voice and radiated from her whole personality. It was her Topic Extraordinary. I, who was there for the sole purpose of having her ample autobiograph, who was bestowing upon her what most Everywoman would have considered the golden opportunity of talking for two hours straight about Herself, heard instead that the beloved John was in the draft, that he was a perfect specimen, according to his draft board, and that he was the only one in sixty-two who was.
Adroitly, as I thought, vainly, as I soon discovered, I steered the frail conversational barque to her achievements, past, present and anticipatoiy, to the stageversus-the-screen (an ever lucrative beginning), to Sister Shirley Mason, to preferences, to fads and foibles, to East and West, and ever and anon we came back to — ‘‘out of sixty-two other men, just think, ab-so-lu-tely per-fect!” As an addenda she said, with a snappy little snap of her big, big eyes, ‘‘of course ... I
ror, what the blow. Sometimes it does seem as if a blow has the faculty of falli n g in the wrong place, and yet, we who are here, not knowing Why nor Whither, dare not say believing And still—
(Fifty -two)