Some Makers of Ecstasy in the Theater

Past Masters of the Gay: In veterate Enemies of the Dull

GILBERT SELDES

THE gay arts on the stage are the most fleeting things in the world. You see a great actress create a magnificent character in three acts; and occasionally a critic, like Bernard Shaw, can make those hours imperishable in prose. But the lesser arts are not so constructive. The great moment is often actually a moment—an ecstatic fraction of time suspended, perhaps, between long hours of dullness. Yet these moments have their own perfection. The minor arts, too, have their intensities: and these are left without record, and their creators are unrewarded even by the tribute of a word. You cannot say when this moment of ecstasy will come. It is an unpredictable event; but there are those on whom one can count to approach it. My memory goes back to some of these occasions, trying to fix the incredible moment again.

It will be impossible to communicate even the sense of it, unless the material be dissociated from the event. Surely there is nothing exquisite in the roaring charwoman created on our stage by George Monroe. He had, to an inspiring degree, the capacity to be one of those vast figures in Dickens—Mrs. Gamp to perfection—and it is odd that another impersonator, Bert Savoy, should have created, in Margie, Mrs. Gamp's own confidante and admirer, the devoted Mrs. Harris. George Monroe's creation was huge and cylindrical in shape, more like a drain-pipe than awoman.

There was no effort at realism, for Monroe roared in a deep bass voice, and his " Be that as it ma-a-y" was a leer in the face of all logic, order and decency. There was in it an unrestraint, a wildness, an in[ependent commonness, which rendered it immortal.

THE creation of Bert Savoy was at the other extreme. It was female impersonation, and the figure was always the same—the courtesan whose ambition it was to be a demimondainc. Savoy made capital of all his defects, down to the rakish hat slanting over one eye. His repetitions, apparently so spontaneous, were beautifully timed and spaced; the buzz and pause in the voice—"You muzzt com'over, " or "You don't know the ha-ff of it, dear-ie"—fix themselves in our memory. He is remembered for the excellent stories he told, and they were worth it; but the interpolations were funnier than the climax. His audacity was colossal and disarming. The occurrence of a character out of Petronius on our stage is exceptional in itself; that it should, at the same time,be slightly vicious and altogether charming, funny, immoral and delicate, is the wonder. Last year, there was an added touch, when Savoy danced while he sang a stanza about the Widow Brown. It was as delicate, and it passed as quickly, as a moist breath on a window-pane.

(This much was written before Bert Savoy was killed by the inscrutable, but disproportionate, activity of Nature. It is even too late to write an epitaph; one changes "is" to "was", and the raucous voice dies away, the terrible, high, roaring laughter fadesout. Broadway, which he exemplified, is perceptibly dimmer. "How much better we have spared. . . !")

I repeat, the material does not matter. For Leon Errol has nothing but the type drunkard to work with, and he is wonderful. In his case, it is easy to analyze the basis of the effect—it is in the loping dance step into which he converts the lurch of the drunkard. The tawdry moment—funny enough, if you can bear it— is always Errol's breathing into someone else's face; the great moment comes directly after, when the lurch and the pall are worked up into a complete arc of dance steps, ending in three little hops, as a sort of proof of sobriety. Jimmy Barton has the same quality in his skating scent—he uses less material, and the movement round the rink is beautiful to watch. But of him it is useless to speak. Someone has pointed out that he can slap the bare back of a woman, and make even that funny!

IT is interesting to note how many of the people who possess this special quality arrive out of burlesque.

Harry Kelly is another. I recall him first with "Lizzie, the Fish Hound" in Watch Your Step, and last in a quite useless musical comedy, The Springtime of Youth (textually, that was the title—and in 1922!). For two acts he was wholly wasted. In the third, he was magnificent. He was playing the obdurate father: "No son of mine shall ever marry a daughter of the Baxters", was his line. He was informed that she was, in fact, an adopted daughter,and that her uncle had left her the bulk of his fortune. For precisely a minute and a half, Kelly played with the word "bulk"—one saw it registered in his brain, saw an idea germinating, and felt it working forward to the jaw before the cavernous voice gave it utterance—and again, one felt the conflict of pride and avarice. It was remarkably delicate and fine—so is all of Kelly's work, when he has a chance. His spare figure, long hands and unbelievable voice, always create a character—and it isn't always the same character.

Bobby Clarke's scene with the lion comes at once to mind (it is another burlesque act), and Bert Williams—in many scenes—always softspoken, always understating his case.There were five minutes of Blanche Ring and Charles Winninger, once, at the old Winter Garden; to my surprise, there were more than that for Eugene and Willie Howard at the same house; and these were gained in spite of the Winter Garden technique, which underestimated even the lowest intelligence. Willie is rather like Fannie Brice at moments; when he cuts .loose, one has an agreeable sense of uncertainty.

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JOE JACKSON, actually a great clown, J although one doesn't recognize this in the highly developed medium he chooses, has exactly the opposite effect— he doesn't cut loose at all: he develops. Everything he does is careful, and nothing exaggerated; so you think at first that, although he will be funny, he will not quite reach that top notch on which an artist teeters perilously while you wonder whether he will fall over or keep his balance. Yet Jackson gets there. As the tramp cyclist, his acrobatics are good, his make-up enchanting; but his expressed attitude of mind is his most precious quality. It becomes almost too much to watch him worrying with a motor horn which has become detached from the handle bars, and which he cannot replace. He tries it everywhere; at the end, he is miserably trying to hang it up on the air; and when it fails to catch there,he is actually wretched. His movements are full of grace—like those of the grotesque Alberto among the Fratellini—and the ecstasy he gives comes by a surfeit of laughter. Another moment of great delicacy, without laughter, however, is that in which Fortunello and Cirilino swing about on the broomstick. They are a lovely pair, and the little one seated on the other's hand is a beautiful picture.

Either few women are brought out of burlesque, or women haven't the exceptional quality I care for. In any case, they have seldom given me this excess of emotion by what they have done. Their beauty is quite another matter on which I fail to commit myself. Ada Lewis, in her broad and grand way, has the stulf; and so has Florence Moore. And once in each performance you can be suie that Gilda Grey will utter a sound or tremble herself into a Bacchanalian revel. For the most part, her singing is undistinguished; and I do not care for the anxious way in which she regards her members, as if she fancied they would fall off by dint of shimmying. Yet I have newer gone to a show of hers without hearing some echo of the nymph pursued, or seeing a movement of abandon and grace. The dark, shuddering voice is sub-human, the movement divinely animal.

DIFFERENT in every way, but exquisite in every way, was Gaby Deslys. It is good form now to belittle her: she was so vulgar; she can e so much on the crest of a revolution; she was such a bidder for our great, precious commodity,news-space. Ah, well!—we have given publicity to less worthy causes. For she was perfect of her type; and in her hard, calculating, sublimely decent way, she made us like the type. It was gently vicious—the whole manner. It was overdone—the pearls and the peacock feathers. But behind it all was a lovely person—lovely to look at, and enchanting to all the senses. No, she could not act— how pitiable her loyal efforts: she sang badly; she wasn't one of the world's great dancers. But she had something iircducible, not to be hindered or infringed upon—her definite self. She was, to begin with, outcast of our moral system, and she made us accept her because she was an independent human being. She had a sound and accurate sense of her personal life, of her rights as an individual. Nothing could stand against her—and it is said that, when she was at grips, at the end, with something more powerful than popular taste, she still held her own, and died rather than suffer the spoiling of her beauty. If that were true, one could hardly wish her beauty back again.