Actorviews (1923)

118 Actorviews letting down my hair and being the woman I oughtn’t to be, this is the season. “But my type, the type of woman I represent,” Mr. Savoy proceeded, “won’t permit me to be too abandoned. You know the type, Ashton, the type of woman that knows everything and knows nothing ; that wants to make you believe how bad she is and never gives herself a chance to be bad — laughs herself out of it. I’m that way myself ; I never have what you would call a perfect good time — I always talk myself out of it. “But as I say,” he went on, enlarging the character, “this is a blase season and there’s such a thing as being too conservative. This is no season for poise and particularity (you spell it, Jay), and the thing for a poor girl is to have her room rent paid in advance.” Mr. Savoy’s wig was off, exposing a highish, baldish forehead. From a bedizened and unlovely woman of the night he had been momentarily transformed into a good-looking man who might have been author of a book or president of a rubber company or proprietor of a hotel. “Do you ever appear on the stage with your own bald brow?” I asked Mr. Savoy. “I wouldn’t resort to such a thing!” he flared, “I’ve never in my life got out of my character for an audience — I have too much respect for their intelligence. Nothing could induce me to walk mannish for them, or say a basso ‘Hello, Bill!’ or pull a wig. I’d never pull a wig on an audience.” “Do you think female impersonators ought to get married?” “Yes, Ash, I do,” answered Mr. Savoy, who is single. “And then,” Mr. Brennan completed, as he fluttered his blue lids, “when they felt the act flopping, they could pull the wife instead of the wig.”