Actorviews (1923)

10 Actorviews A modern child, this little daughter of divorce; and when I said, “Are you hungry ?” the modern child replied, “I had dinner with friends, and that always makes me hungry.” So we gave the waiter quite a talk. Blythe Daly has a vocabulary, speaking words that writers only write. She has her father’s English vocabulary and her mother’s French; she is uncannily bilingual. Her face and fair coloring are her father’s over again, even to the blinking twinkle of the grayblue eyes; and like her father, she talks with all her vowels and all her countenance ; talks athletically, musically, beautifully. Sometimes she reminds you of Mrs. Patrick Campbell in a series of melodious explosions; but on the whole she has more legato; and breathes so well that you never know when ; breathes like a bird. She was presently trilling for me a letter she had recently written to Mr. Daly, who had reproached her for describing herself his “sincerely” : “ ‘Though I admire you immensely and glory in your name,’ I wrote to Father, ‘I couldn’t very well sign myself with the proverbial prodigal-child love and kisses for someone I scarcely knew, simply because he happened to be the more or less unwilling, certainly unsuspecting, and up to now quite unconscious author of my being.’ ” “Repeat that!” I cried. She did, and I wrote it down, vowing that a man should take a stenographer to an interview with Blythe Daly, if not two. “Child, where did you learn to talk?” “I have a brilliant mother,” she brilliantly answered. “Mother lies in bed and reads Emerson’s lectures to me. Then I’ve been brought up in part by