Stage Confidences | Page 2

secretly cherish a hope for a glorious career on the stage, while her bosom friend most likely knows every line of Pauline and has practised the death scene of Camille hundreds of times. Surely, then, the would-be actresses can see that their own numbers constitute one of the greatest obstacles in their path.
But that is by no means all. Figures are always hard things to manage, and there is another large body of them, between a girl and her chances, in the number of trained actresses who are out of engagements. There is probably no profession in the world so overcrowded as is the profession of acting. "Why, then," the manager asks, "should I engage a girl who does not even know how to walk across the stage, when there are so many trained girls and women to choose from?"
"But," says or thinks some girl who reads these words, "you were an outsider, poor and without friends, yet you got your chance."
Very true; I did. But conditions then were different. The stage did not hold then the place in public estimation which it now does. Theatrical people were little known and even less understood. Even the people who did not think all actors drunkards and all actresses immoral, did think they were a lot of flighty, silly buffoons, not to be taken seriously for a moment. The profession, by reason of this feeling, was rather a close corporation. The recruits were generally young relatives of the older actors. There was plenty of room, and people began at the bottom quite cheerfully and worked up. When a "ballet" was wanted, the manager advertised for extra girls, and sometimes received as many as three applicants in one day--when twenty were wanted. Such an advertisement to-day would call out a veritable mob of eager girls and women. There was my chance. To-day I should have no chance at all.
The theatrical ranks were already growing crowded when the "Schools of Acting" were started, and after that--goodness gracious! actors and actresses started up as suddenly and numerously as mushrooms in an old pasture. And they, even they stand in the way of the beginner.
I know, then, of but three powers that can open the stage door to a girl who comes straight from private life,--a fortune, great influence, or superlative beauty. With a large amount of money a girl can unquestionably tempt a manager whose business is not too good, to give her an engagement. If influence is used, it must indeed be of a high social order to be strong enough favourably to affect the box-office receipts, and thus win an opening for the young débutante. As for beauty, it must be something very remarkable that will on its strength alone secure a girl an engagement. Mere prettiness will not do. Nearly all American girls are pretty. It must be a radiant and compelling beauty, and every one knows that there are not many such beauties, stage-struck or otherwise.
The next question is most often put by the parents or friends of the would-be actress; and when with clasped hands and in-drawn breath they ask about the temptations peculiar to the profession of acting, all my share of the "old Adam" rises within me. For you see I honour the profession in which I have served, girl and woman, so many years, and it hurts me to have one imply that it is filled with strange and terrible pitfalls for women. I have received the confidences of many working-women,--some in professions, some in trades, and some in service,--and on these confidences I have founded my belief that every woman who works for her living must eat with her bread the bitter salt of insult. Not even the plain girl escapes paying this penalty put upon her unprotected state.
Still, insult does not mean temptation, by any means. But careful inquiry has shown me that temptation assails working-women in any walk of life, and that the profession of acting has nothing weird or novel to offer in the line of danger; to be quite frank, all the possibilities of resisting or yielding lie with the young woman herself. What will tempt one beyond her powers of resistance, will be no temptation at all to another.
However, parents wishing to frighten their daughters away from the stage have naturally enough set up several great bugaboos collectively known as "temptations"--individually known as the "manager," the "public," etc.
There seems to be a general belief that a manager is a sort of dramatic "Moloch," upon whose altar is sacrificed all ambitious femininity. In declaring that to be a mistaken idea, I do not for a moment imply that managers are angels; for such a suggestion would beyond a doubt secure me a quiet summer at some strictly private sanitarium; but I do