Actorviews (1923)

Alone at Last With Helen Hayes WILL leave it to the impartial reader if a mamma does not make all the difference in the world to an interview with her daughter. Miss Helen Hayes’ mamma was very much at home when I called on Miss Hd>es at tne Ambassador. She is a compelling hostess. There were many moments when I couldn’t see anybody, hear anybody but Miss Hayes’ mamma. She was as unignorable as her daughter had been the night before at Cohan’s in the opening performance of “To the Ladies!” A lady of high social spirit and ready phrase, she took the conversation into her competent hands and made it general, impersonal, polite. The taste, the tone, were perfect; we sounded like characters in one of those drawing-room plays wherein positively nothing happens. We seemed to cover every unimportant subject under the sun. We even talked — heaven forgive us! — of dear dead “Pollyanna.” And I thought I detected a twinkle in the clear eye of Miss Helen when that gifted angel child remarked that a whole season of “Pollyanna” (she once served thirty days) would make her feel like going out and doing something outright bad. Her mother looked slightly bewildered. “Make you feel like going out and getting five drinks and a South American?” I suggested, I know not why.