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Me By Myself
The Confessions of a Comedienne
Wouldn’t it be the most terrible irony of fate if yon began with the aspirations of a Bernhardt and ended as a clown? I did.
What if you had spent hours with your father’s best buggy robe draped around your rather dumpy figure in a desperate imitation of your favorite tragedienne, only to meet with shrieks of laughter when your family, thinking you w'ere being murdered, burst upon you? It happened to me.
Have you not held yourself tense as you read Hugo or Maupassant into the wee, sma’ hours and relaxed with relief when you came to yourself again? 1 have. Only I couldn’t relax. It was real. I was meant to assume Duse’s laurel crown. Some day they would realize — then— oh, well, genius can afford to be generous.
I was raised in an atmosphere of roasts only on Sunday, starched calico dresses that scratched, and missionary meetings. My rather lonely girlhood had bred in me an absolute frankness toward myself and other people which made it difficult to understand the little peculiarities of folks in general. To laugh at them was the farthest thing from my mind. It was daily instilled in me that life was a .serious proposition — there was no such word as humor, and comedy consisted solely of black-faced clowns and medicine fakers.
The worst bump of my life was when I found I was not pretty. My
personal appearance had been given no thought at home — it was taken for granted, and my sole sacrifice to vanity was to stand meekly each morning while the clammy end of a wash-rag trickled down my spine.
It happened at a school dance. I was frankly a wall-flower. Any overtures I made to the callow youths lined up against the wall made no impression — something was radically wrong. I hurried to the dressing-room and gazed at mvself. No. I wasn’t like those ffirls out
“1 am not pretty,” declares Miss Fazenda. "Only a girl can realize what a terrible realization that is.” The first director that engaged her remarked to his assistant, “Give the kid a chance — but put her in the back and kccf' her in the shade’’
( Tliirtii four )