WHISPERS FROM THE WINGS

Concerning the Great Bellport Mystery, Lady Di's Disappearance, Eben Plympton and the Camels, and the Effect of the Movies on the Playreaders

Acton Davies

LAST summer, when Miss Effie Shannon and Mr. John Mason were both hunting for homes on Long Island, they both chanced to find desirable furnished residences at Bellport,

L. I. which were owned by the same iandlord.

They rented these places for the summer and found them so much to their liking that finally they both purchased the properties and installed their individual Lares and Penates there. Before the properties had been bought, however,

Miss Shannon and Mr. Mason happened to meet on a Long Island train and began to compare residential notes.

"There's one mystery about my house which I can't fathom," remarked Mr.

Mason; "my house is filled from roof to cellar with theatrical photographs.

They're nearly all scenes from standard plays, and one particular man, a very good-looking chap, appears in all of them, from 'Hamlet' to 'Lord and Lady Algy.'

Well, here's where the mystery comes in.

I thought I knew all the American actors and actresses, by sight at least, but except for one faded old photo in which Elsie De Wolfe appears as a very young girl, there isn't a living man or woman of them that I ever laid eyes on before."

Miss Shannon burst out laughing.

"That's funny. Only yesterday mother made almost the same remark to me. Our house is jammed with the same sort of pictures. When mother asked me who on earth they all were, and when I said I didn't know, she told me I ought to be ashamed of myself for not being more intimately acquainted with my own profession."

Many months later, at the Christmas festivities of the Twelfth Night Club, at which both Miss Shannon and Mr. Mason were present, the actress, meeting Mason, exclaimed:

"I've found him at last in the fleshour mvsterious unknown. He s eating ice cream with Mrs. Tom Whiffen. Let's go over and get introduced.

Two minutes later Mrs. Whiffen was presenting the actor and the actress to Mr. Edward Fales Coward, the dean of New York s amateur actors

"Though we have never met before, you both certainly must know my face very well," laughed Mr. Coward.

"We most certainly do!" cried the actor and actress in chorus.

"You see, I lived down at Bellport some years ago. Your landlord is an old friend of mine. As I was coming to live at a hotel he offered to keep my big collection of amateur theatrical performances for me, which contain photos of all the most notable productions of the Comedy, the Columbia College Dramatic Club and The Strollers. I told him to do what he liked with them so long as he kept them intact. He was building the houses you both own now, and so that's how you came to get such an awful overdose of me."

IMAGINE the leading lady of a sporting melodrama suddenly disappearing during a matinee performance, and although tracked by her footsteps through the snow for nearly eight miles from the theatre to the edge of a dense forest, no trace of her has ever been found. Imagine, too, if you can, unbelievable though it may seem, that the press agent of the theatrical company neglected to make any capital out of this strange disappearance, and although the incident happened in Portland, Maine, during one of those furious blizzards which gave the lie to our predicted early spring, not a line has appeared in any newspaper with regard to the vanished actress up to the present date.

At the time of the disappearance the actress was playing the title role in that good old Adelphi melodrama, "The Whip," but in private life—or perhaps what we might term stable and society circles—she was known as Lady Di.

Excepting that she was known to possess a mad infatuation for the handsome leading man, Mr. Herbert Sleath, under whose guidance she frequently took long canters through the country, her conduct while she had been with "The Whip" company had been as exemplary as it had been circumspect.

The first particulars of her disappearance reached her guardian, "Doctor" Martin, the famous equine impresario who supplies all the horses for New York productions, in a telegram which ran as follows:

"Send a new horse to play 'The Whip,' opening at Providence, Monday night. Lady Di ran away during Wednesday matinee, and no trace can be found of her. Have retired street car horse understudy here, but owner won't allow her to travel, so send up to Providence the best acting mare you have in stock."

What really happened to Lady Di was this. The theatre in Portland was so small for such a huge production as "The Whip" that the horses had to be saddled and bridled in the engine rooms and then gently led upstairs to the stage. At this particular matinee there was a new engineer in charge, and he proved to be such an amateur that while he was experimenting with the steam pipes he accidentally turned on an escape valve. The noise of the escaping steam frightened Lady Di almost out of her hide, and as the stable boy, who had left her for a moment, had forgotten to shut the door, Lady Di took to her heels and ran madly through the snow-clad streets of Portland and out into the open country.

So great was the consternation in .the company at Lady Di's disappearance that the performance was cut as short as possible, and the entire company, headed by Mr. Sleath and Mrs. Cecil Raleigh chartered sleighs and started in search of the missing equine star. Not only the police department, but the fire brigade and the Mayor of Portland himself, took up the trail of Lady Di.

The depth of the snow made it an easy task to follow her tracks for a long distance, but finally at the edge of the forest some eight miles out of Portland, all trace of her was lost, and even the offer of a reward of $200 has not brought forth any tidings of the missing heroine.

The explanation made by the management as to why their press agent did not avail himself of this fine story is both sensible and to the point. Lady Di had proved such a great favorite in The Whip's" title role that it was feared any mention of her absence might have a disastrous effect upon the box office receipts.

AND by the way, speaking of stage animals, these few remarks from Miss Sarah Truax, who has just concluded a forty weeks' engagement with "The Garden of Allah," in which, of course, she played the role of Robert Hitchens' absurdly punctilious heroine:

"I have been a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ever since I was a little girl, but since my long tour with the extensive menagerie attached to 'The Garden of Allah' I feel like resigning and creating a rival organization to be called 'The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Actors by Animals.'

"After this last tour of mine I never want to lay eyes on a goat or camel again as long as I live. Camels and goats, as you know, are our principal live stock in 'The Garden of Allah.' Never did I believe it possible that animals could be guilty of professional jealously before, but no sooner woulcf one of the principals receive a particularly good notice for their performance than it would seem as if the entire herd of camels, as well as a fair percentage of the goats had read the morning papers, and resented the fact that while we had been praised individually, they had only been lauded en masse, as it were.

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"It is a fact, though, that any member of the company will vouch for, that it would always be on a Tuesday night, just after the reviewers had appeared, that the animals always behaved a little more devilishly than usual. The goats were comparatively pacific in their fighting methods; but what those camels, which we used to call righteously the Seven Devils, wouldn't do to any of the principals when they got them at their mercies, on or off the stage, would have been the admiration of Huerta himself. These Seven Devils, in their fiendishness, seemed positively inspired. With us, that good old Scotch air 'The Camels are Coming' took on a new and deadly significance, I can assure you. There was a tradition in the company that it was that splendid actor Eben Plympton, who first inspired 'The Garden of Allah's' menagerie with a deadly hatred of all actors who had lines to speak. The supers and extra boys they always treated as equals, if not friends and brothers in art. Of course, this incident took place before my time, during the original rehearsals at the Century, when Mary Mannering and Lewis Waller were at the head of the cast.

"It happened that at one of the rehearsals, Mr. Hugh Ford, the producer, was suddenly called away, and left the authors of the play, Mr. Hitchens and Mary Anderson Navarro, in charge, during his absence.

"They happened to be rehearsing the opening scene that morning, when all the camels and other animals, accompanied by slaves of both sexes, are seen crossing the desert. It is in this scene that Mr. Plympton, who played the Count, made his entrance. This was the first day that Mr. Plympton had rehearsed with the animals. In reading his role from the manuscript, he had failed to realize what an important part the menagerie was to play in this scene. When he realized the situation, his indignation knew no bounds.

"Waving the camels back to the wings, with an imperious gesture, as they advanced in open file to take possession of the center of the stage, Mr. Plympton advanced to the footlights and fixing poor, mild-mannered little Mr. Hitchens with his eagle eye, he exclaimed: 'There's a little matter of precedence just here, Mr. Hitchens, which we may as well settle at once. I haven't the least objection to associating for purposes of the drama, with the slaves and courtesans of the desert, who seem to form the major portion of the diabolical procession, but I would have you know, sir, that I am Eben Plympton—and Eben Plympton will never resign the center of the stage to any -goat or camel that ever lived.'

"Mr. Plympton and Mr. Hitchens eventually became great friends," concluded Miss Truax, "but the animals never forgave it, and they've been taking vengeance out of us poor actors ever since."

"IT'S a curious thing," remarked the play reader of I one of the big theatrical firms, "but, unconsciously, the motion pictures have done us play readers a very good turn. In a word, they have stemmed the great tide of bad and utterly impossible play manuscripts which were threatening to swamp us. Now the tide has turned in their direction with a vengeance, thank goodness, and the scenario reader for the 'Movie' companies must be experiencing a good many of the horrors which we readers of plays for the theaters have had to endure as best we could for years.

"All those untold thousands of would-be American dramatists have, for the moment, turned from the stage to the screen. Those of them who have had plays refused by the theatrical managers in the past are now so busy converting these plays into 'Movie' scenarios that they have no time left in which to concoct new stage material for us to consider. Consequently the play reading ilk are enjoying, nay, they are revelling, in the first lull they have known in years. Last summer when I started for the country I carried with me no less than four hundred and fourteen manuscripts, out of which I was able to pick exactly one play which, on its face value looked as if it contained the makings of a success. It was produced and lived less than three weeks, including its out-of-town performances. This year I am carrying with me to the country only twenty-seven manuscripts, and out of the few of them which I have so far scanned I have found three plays which even at a cursory glance look exceedingly promising.

"I should like to think that this was a case of the survival of the fittest; but the profession of play reading makes one somewhat of a skeptic, and my private opinion is that the majority of those four hundred odd manuscripts which I turned down last summer, provided they do not find a haven with the movies will come back eventually to me—under new titles."