Motography (Jul-Dec 1914)

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\ 15. W14. MOTOGRAPHY 241 Sans Grease Paint and W7g By Mabel Condon •D Kate Pric ( I \ ' r expect me U' saj anything," warned Kate Price one afternoon recentlj when 1 found her enjoying a rockcr and a book in her dressing-room at the Vitagraph T h e a t e r. It was with a typical Kate L'rice laugh that she then explained : "1 put my foot in my mouth every time I open it, and I can't tell you any pretty tales to make a story out of ; all I can do is tell you the truth. "That's my failing," she bemoaned. "I have to tell the truth, no matter what. I'm right out with it. whatever it is ; and Mary Charleston is the same. She's my cousin, though she calls me aunt because I look more like an aunt than a cousin. She tells people she was born in Ireland. She's just like me. that way ; she has to tell the truth. I was born in the city of Cork and came over to this country when I was a big girl. There were other relatives with me and we settled in Rhode Island. I went to school there for two years and then went to work in the thread mills. It was then that I became interested in theatricals, for there was an amateur theatrical club that I joined and people told me I was wasting my time in the mills. ''It's the comical roles that I've always liked to play." went on Kate, putting a smile into the telling. Then the smile disappeared and Kate Price said : "It was during one of those amateur plays that I met me husband — that was twenty-two years ago. We were married eighteen years and two months and were never separated in our work until he was taken ill and wasn't able to do anything. "Well," she resumed with a sigh, "it was he who put me on the stage. He took me into vaudeville with him and our team name was 'Price and Steele.' Several times we left vaudeville for stock or a melodramatic engagement. I remember we opened in Chicago at the old Hopkins Theater in 'Her First False Step.' I created the part of the Irish wash-woman. We played together, my husband and I. always. Then four years ago he became ill and I stayed and took care of him until our funds were nearly gone. I didn't know what we would do when they were gone and I was pretending to my husband, right along, that we weren't badly oft at all. "One day somebody ^aid to me, 'Kate, why don't you go to the Vitagraph studio and see if they couldn't use you?' So I went and three days after I applied, they called me on a picture. It was 'Jack Fat and Jim Slim at Coney Island' — and it you want to know how really funnj it was, ju>t ask Fred Thompson; he directed it." At the memory, the Price laugh that is guaranteed t" cheer, sounded heartilj ami Kate deserted the rocker and pictured the slides and rolls and falls the} took during the sight-seeing visit of "Jack Fat and J iin Slim." "\\ e put one chute out of working order," related Kate, "and 1 did everything I was told to do. 1 weighed two hundred and twenty then; that's ten pounds more than I am now, and 1 had to do all the things first, and the others flying after me would all land on me. "Well, 1 was black and blue for months. My husband was in the hospital and I couldn't go to see him because I was stiff all over. It was three days before I attempted it and then I had to stand all the way in the subway, though there were lots of vacant seats. One day in a crowded car a lady offered me her seat, remarking, '1 know you must be ill, your face looks so funny.' "I declined the seat and she asked if I was going far. 'Only to 200th street,' I told her; and we were only at Brooklyn Bridge then. "All the time I was home I kept getting notices from the studio to come back, that there was other work for me, but I didn't go because I hated to tell what was the matter with me. But when I did go back, Fred Thompson asked, 'What kept you away?' So I told. Shortly after that I was put in the stock company and this is the only company I've ever been with." I remembered the death of Kate Price's husband more than a year ago — a year last February, Kate said — and recalled a day at the studio last summer when Kate was going out to the cemetery to put a huge bunch of wild flowers on his grave. "Often I get so blue," confided the big-hearted woman whom the public credits with possessing a perpetual laugh. "But I put on my hat and go out to a picture show where somebody on the screen hands me a laugh, and when I come back I'm all right. So long as I can laugh, I'm satisfied : and there are so many things in the taking of pictures that make one laugh. "In 'Fisherman Kate,' we went down to the docks for some of the scenes ; in one of them a man was to force me to leave the docks and I kept resisting and saying^ 'I won't go! I won't go!' One of the men who worked around the docks watched us a few minutes and then came over with a big iron hook in his hand and, stepping in front of me. said to the rest of the company, 'Leave the woman alone; she won't go if she don't want to!" I thanked him for his protection and explained I was perfectlv safe and we were only taking a picture ; so he went off without a word. "I have fun playing the funny parts, but when a role is sad I'm just as sad as it is. and generally come out of the scene crying. "I laugh easily and I cry easily; everything goes to my heart !" Kate Price analyzed with another of her laughs. It was not necessary for her to add, "But I laugh the easier." for those who have known the genial K