Actorviews (1923)

Making It Up with the Bordoni Ti. .[HE little word “bonehead” was not once spoken, up in Irene Bordoni’s room, when, without any formal funeral, we buried the hatchet and sat down together like the lioness and the lamb. _________ Some reader with a twelve-month memory may recall that that little word, descriptively applied by her to the intelligence of Chicago audiences, got itself written into my last interview with this lovely creature, causing her pungently to protest in print and me to reply politely if not infirmly. But neither of us uttered the fatal word now, and I am sure that each secretly applauded the other for her and his tact. We had met the night before at dinner — at a laughing, joyous dinner where her words were brighter than her jewels — and she had said, in answer to my request, which came with the coffee: “Another interview? Sure. On one condition: that you write what I say.” “Make it two conditions: that you say you say what I write.” She had laughed; and here we were — “together again,” as George Cohan and Willie Collier used to sing after a season’s separation; and the bonehead of our contention was never mentioned. You see, I had forgiven Bordoni for the loveliness of her performance in her new piece at Powers’, “The French Doll”; and Bordoni had forgiven me for the rapture of my review of it in The Herald and Examiner.