Pauline Frederick : on and off the stage (1940)

Half-Century Mark 181 was made up and arguments only resulted in the " steel curtain " coming down with a clamp. At another time she would decide to go up to the desert or some such place, and the idea would occur to her to start at once, even if it happened to be the wee small hours of the morning. She did not ask anyone to come with her but, naturally, they did. It was nothing to find her sitting up sewing when the dawn arose or finishing a cross-word puzzle that she had started earlier in the evening! How she loved those wretched crossword puzzles! Just as one was dozing off into a beautiful sleep, consciousness would be jerked back abruptly by a voice saying: " What's a four letter word for sea eagle beginning with E? " One would have liked to reply: " I know a four letter word beginning with H and ending with L! ' But for some extraordinary reason one never did; instead you began searching your brain for that wretched " sea eagle "! To some people who have every door open to them, later life becomes a bore. Plenty of money, success and her natural charm had enabled Pauline to go everywhere and do everything, but she was never bored. Having tasted so much of the glittering side of life, it made her appreciate the simple things. The lesson she had learned in those early days out West served her throughout life and made such a much finer woman of her. An admirer once called her charm " glamorous simplicity " — two words that do not usually find themselves in the same company, yet nothing so well described her. All the stir that she had created for so many years and in so many places could never change that simplicity. While others liked, after a performance, to go into the bright lights and the gay places and be seen and admired, her greatest delight was to ask a few friends back to her apartment and cook