Hollywood Studio Magazine (August 1972)

during stage action and entertained between acts. Stock Companies worked on guarantees of $250 a week. That is the total way for all 11. Often they grossed more but there were many minimum weeks, especially on rain-outs. A rain-check was given to each patron if it rained before the final curtain went up. After that deadline, tough luck. And many troupes were in mad rushes through dialogue and action amid thunderclaps and lightning flashes during next-to-last acts. My brothers and I knew there was more than the play-acting between rise and fall of curtain. Men came out to teil jokes or sing between acts. Pretty girls sang and danced. We heard such song gems as “Fm Saving My Kisses For Someone Who’s Saving His Kisses For Me,” “Be My Little Bumble Bee,” “Daddy Has a Sweetheart and Mother Is Her Name” and ‘Tll Build a Little Cabin Where the Swanee River Flows.” Then there was the evening when an actress dressed like a rag doll, came out and delighted with words and gestures, singing, “I’ve Got a Pain in My Sawdust.” As I grew older, I worked more and more around the Aerdome. There were two Corbett brothers, near my age and friends of mine. One Saturday I tore up paper until there were bushel baskets full of scraps. That night, my handiwork fluttered down as snow for “Orphans of the Storni.” For a time, I passed out those straw seat mats. And I peddled soda pop, cracker jacks, chewing gum, popcorn, peanuts and cigars (no cigarettes in Kansas, Buster) at a nickle a buy. Somewhere around the 1912 and 1913 summers, I became conscious of my favorite stock Company. The Dubinsky Brothers. Morris, the oldest, played the villain roles. Barney, the youngest, did comedy and juveniles. In between, there was Ed, always the hero. He was billed as “The Handsomest Man in America.” I believed it. Before the last act curtain went up, Ed would Step out in front of the footlights. He would say, “Pardon me for stepping out of character, but...” Then he would do a pitch about the plays scheduled for the remainder of the week. And he would end, “And now, after the next and last act, we bid you all a kind good-night.” Enter Jeanne Eagels The most beautiful girl in the world was in that Company. She was brown-haired and thin and her eyes lit up the night. I saw her and the Dubinsky troupe in “Grit, the Newsboy,” “Within the Law,” “Buffalo Bill, Jr.,” “Under Two Flags,” “Hawthorne of the U.S.A.,” “Poor Little Rieh Girl” and probably others. One evening in August of 1913, I was thrown into a state of juvenile, unsophisticated confusion by my favorite actress. In one scene, she grew faint and asked for a “glawss of wawtah” and handsome Ed sprang to attention and rushed to her a glass of water, which she drank. It slowly dawned on me that she had been speaking some foreign language about a glass of water. But then I was lost again. She said, “Thank you, dolling.” Now this was Kansas, 1913, and I had not yet ridden in an automobile. I thought that Dolling was a stränge name for a handsome male. The next morning around 11 o’clock, I was gathering and stacking those straw mats while Morris Dubinsky was explaining some stage action for the local stage manager. Suddenly, the man was calling to me. He asked if I would run an errand for him. “Take this letter to my wife at the hotel and ask her to Write down on the back how I should reply by telegram,” he said. I took the envelope and a dime and looked puzzled. “That’s our leading lady, son. Amelia Jean. She’ll probably be having breakfast in the lunchroom.” I started for the Mit-Way Hotel only around the block, thinking that eleven o’clock was an unlikely time for breakfast. I was more disturbed, however, to find out that the sweet young person was married to a man who every night tried to do God-awful deeds to my heroine. In one play, he had slapped her. How I had hated him. She was his wife really? Probably a love slave! She was the only customer in the dining room. I took her the envelope, mumbling why I had come. Tensed and husky-voiced in' her presen ce, I knew this must be that stage fright Fd heard about. She smiled and told me to sit down. As I did, I estimated her to be about nineteen or twenty. Six or seven years beyond my boyish years. I watched her read, then turn over the sheet of paper and write some words with a pencil she took from her purse. When she had finished she said, “Thank you.” I realized she was going out of my life forever, that Fd never again probably have an opportunity to teil an actress I was her fan. I heard myself gushing it all out, even that confusion of mine about “glawss of wawtah” and the mysterious “dolling” name. She was amused. “Didn’t you understand I was playing a British girl? They talk that way over there, you know?” I had not known and confessed my Continued on Page 21 10