Actorviews (1923)

Miss and Mrs. Janis 83 “Irving Berlin advised me one day: ‘Take my tip, Elsie, and don’t put your Gang in uniforms.’ “I was just back — from you know wrhat. I’d stepped over dead bodies, to sing and prance for the fellows who were still going. And here at home I’d been in the hospital and seen some of the permanent wrecks — our fellows, once so tough and straight. ‘Irv,’ I said, ‘if America don’t want to see uniforms now, I don’t want to see America again ever.’ I was that serious ! I felt that if America could face those fellows with their chevrons and not feel something — well, then I’d leave America flat. Horrible threat!” “But she’s never told you,” Mrs. Janis supplied, “the offers she had for big non-soldier shows.” “And isn’t going to tell him,” Elsie said. “Only this — when Mr. Dillingham made his magnificent proposal I said, ‘No, I can’t. Charlie,’ I said, ‘I can’t go out on the stage with a lot of nude women shaking their shimmies ; I’d cry all over the place. There’s something — call it “spiritual” if you want to — that I’ve got to get out of my system.’ And I told him about this show, which I’d written — written in bed, like Mark Twain (I mean the bed) — and how little it would cost, because that was the way we wanted it. And he said I was crazy anyway and crazier since the war. But to go ahead, which I did ; and he never came to rehearsals — and when it was all done he said it was the only show he’d ever seen he didn’t want to cut somewhere.” “Why didn’t you show him the pay roll?” I brightly suggested. “Oh, that was proof. I’d promised the boys, every one, fifty bucks a week, rain or shine, and warned them all that I didn’t want to make a bad actor out of any man who had a good job. We’ve done some grading