Showman (1937)

SHOWMAN tears mingled. When I say excels, I am trying to curb a showman's natural tendency to grow rhapsodical about an absolute first-rater. Otherwise I would say that Grace George is the peer of any comedienne who ever made an entrance on the American stage. I would say it if the dramatic critics weren't always saying it for me with literary flourishes that I'm not up to. I sent for Helen Hayes. At the time she was deep in the high heels and lipstick business— flapper roles. When I mentioned "What Every Woman Knows," she shook her head. "I'm afraid not," she said. "They'd compare me with Maude Adams, and then where would I be?" "Well," I said, "I just heard somebody say they'd go a long way to see you do it." "You mean yourself?" she said dubiously. "No," I said. "I mean Grace George." "If Grace George says I can do it," she said, "you can count on me." Three days before the opening I was so enthusiastic about her performance that I promised her her notices would be better than Maude Adams'— and that's exactly what they were. It was my wife who came home one evening telling me that there were a couple of Russians playing Ibsen in a tiny theater up two flights of stairs somewhere down off Second Avenue— the man, a newcomer named Oleneff, one of the finest she'd ever seen, and the woman, called Alia Nazimova, right behind him. We went down there immediately, saw the performance, which 261