VintageMeld

“Greenroom Stories: Some True Tales of Stage Folk” reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post, June 3, 1905, by Charles Bloomingdale, Jr. This is the 4th of 5 parts of uneven length. More on this selection at the bottom of the page.

Part 4: The Fly in Booth’s Ointment

Talking of Booth brings to mind a talk we had on the unreliability of memory, and what a little thing it took at times to throw the orderliness of one’s mental machinery helter-skelter.

Edwin Booth as Hamlet, circa 1870

“I do not know how many hundred times I have played Hamlet,” he said. “One night I was in the middle of the famous ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy that every schoolboy knows. I had stopped for a fraction of a second to note a fly that alighted on the arm of my chair. The momentary diversion of looking at the fly threw my mind from the soliloquy, and when I paused for a second I found myself completely at sea.

“My presence of mind did not desert me. I passed my hand over my forehead, and looked out at the audience as if in deep thought. With the speed of an express-train I began at the beginning of the soliloquy and dashed along mentally until I had reached the word where the fly had taken possession of my thoughts. Then, when I came to the place where my memory had failed, the words that followed came back quickly and naturally. Once more passing my hand over my brow, I went on as if nothing had happened.

“I think,” concluded Mr. Booth, “that after a man has played a certain role a great many time that the words come to him mechanically and without any particular meaning attached to them. The slightest diversion–even a fly–is sufficient to break the thread of continuity.”

But for no reason under the sun an actor may forget his lines–as witness this story told by Jeff de Angelis in a cafe one night during the run of The Jolly Musketeer.

“I think I lost ten pounds in one minute to-night,” he said. “In the second act of our show Harry MacDonough and I have a duet with dance accompaniment–he sings two lines while I dance around the stage–then I come to the footlights and sing my two lines while he dances. Well, MacDonough had finished his two lines and down toward the footlights I pranced for my couplet. Then, for no earthly reason, what I was to say went clean up in the air, like a skyrocket, and left my brain bare of one single thought. It came on me like a flash that I must fake; so I pranced around stage again trying to think of the two lines I was to sing. Counting performances and rehearsals, I suppose I’d sung the couplet two hundred times at least, but it had vanished from my memory as completely as if I’d never known it. As I neared the footlights for the second time I paused: ‘Hurry up–hurry up!’ called the orchestra leader to me. I was in a perspiration of despair then, and my legs were so tired I could hardly budge them. But I danced over toward MacDonough: ‘My first word–I’m stuck!’ I said to him in a frenzied stage whisper. He called it to me–and I was down stage singing the two tiny lines that had eluded my memory.

“I lost ten pounds between fight, despair and perspiration in the minute I was hunting the word to start me, yet I’d sung the verse at least two hundred times, and had no reason for forgetting it. Can you explain why I forgot?”

Note: In the original article Part 4 continues with a Joe Jefferson anecdote, but seeing how Part 5 is both very short and about Jefferson I’m going to cut off Part 4 early and save the rest for the conclusion in our final entry.

Previously: Part 3: The Player’s the Thing
Next: Part 5: Jefferson’s Recipe for a Farce

I deal in a lot of old magazine back issues and from time to time find myself distracted paging through them. When the material provides a peek into the pop culture of yesteryear plus is old enough itself to be in the public domain, I’m going to do my best to transcribe it here, on the VintageMeld.

I’d been hoping to pull some stories of late 19th and early 20th century stars of the stage into the VintageMeld, so “Greenroom Stories,” published in 1905 by the Saturday Evening Post, seemed a natural selection to serialize. Published in one helping by the Post, I’m going to break it into uneven parts on the VintageMeld, basically cutting it off at each major break in the original article. “Greenroom Stories” gives me a chance to share some images of early 20th century stage stars while Mr. Bloomingdale has the opportunity to entertain once again, over 100 years later.