BALLET GIRLS DRESSING-ROOM.
The great value of the art of making-up, as the preparation for participation in a play is called, both in the matter of painting the face and costuming, will be understood when the story told by Maze Edwards, who was Edwin Booth's manager during the tour of 1881–2, is recited. * * * The company got to Waterbury, Connecticut, ahead of their baggage. When the hour for the performance arrived the baggage, consisting of all their costumes and paraphernalia was still missing. The manager was in a terrible plight; but I will let him tell his own story as he told it to a newspaper reporter a short time after the occurrence.
EDWIN BOOTH.
"When I found the baggage, with the costumes, had not arrived," said Edwards, "I was just going to throw myself into the river. Then I thought I would go and tell Mr. Booth about it and bid good-bye to some of the people who had always thought a good deal of me, before killing myself. To my astonishment Mr. Booth took it as coolly as you would take an invitation to drink. He said, inasmuch as the people were in the hall, he would make a few remarks to them about the accident, and then they would go on and play three acts of "Hamlet" in the clothes they had on. And so it was fixed up that way. Well, the thought of Hamlet in a short-tailed coat and light pants almost made me sick, and when Mr. Booth came upon the stage, looking like an Episcopal minister, with a Knight Templar's cheese knife that he borrowed, I couldn't think of anything but Hamlet. I forgot all about his clothes, and I believe if he had only had on a pair of sailor's pants and a red flannel fireman's shirt that the people would only have seen Hamlet. I tell you he is the greatest actor that ever lived. The people sat perfectly still, and seemed wrapped up in Booth. That is, they were when they did not look at the other fellows. But when they took Laertes, with a short, ham-fat coat on, a pair of lah-de-dah pants and a pan-cake hat, it seemed to me I could hear them smile. And the King, Hamlet's step-father, he was a sight. Imagine a king with a cut-away checkered coat, a Pullman car blanket thrown over his shoulder for a robe, and a leg of a chair for a sceptre, mashed on a queen with a travelling dress and a gray woollen basque with buttons on it. And think of Polonius, with a linen duster and a straw hat with a blue ribbon on. Oh, it made me tired. Ophelia was all right enough. She had on some crazy clothes that she had been travelling in, and we got some straw out of a barn and some artificial flowers off the bonnets, and she pulled through pretty well. But the Ghost! You would have died to have seen the Ghost. He had on one of those long hand-me-down ulster overcoats with a buckle on the back as big as a currycomb and the belt was hanging down on both sides. The boys got him a green mosquito bar to put over it, and with a stuffed club for a sceptre, he fell over a chair and then came on. I should have laughed if I had been on my death-bed when he said to Hamlet, 'I am thy father's ghost!' He looked more like a drummer for a wholesale confectionery house, with a sort of tin skimmer on his head, and I believe the audience would have gone wild with laughter if it had not been for Mr. Booth. I don't believe you could get him to laugh on the stage for a million dollars. He just looked at the Ghost as though it was a genuine one, and the audience looked at Booth, and forgot all about the ulster and the Ghost's pants being rolled up at the bottom. It was probably the greatest triumph that an actor ever had for Mr. Booth to compel the vast audience to forget the ludicrous surroundings and think only of the character he was portraying. I wouldn't have missed the night's performance for a thousand dollars, and when, at 10 o'clock, I heard the boys getting the trunks up-stairs, I was almost sorry. The last two acts were played with the costumes, but they were no better performed than the first. Still, I think, on the whole, I had rather the baggage would be there. It makes a manager feel better."
M'KEE RANKIN.
In the olden times, and in the days of the early American theatre, the dressing-rooms were beneath the stage, and were by no means the perfect and cozy places that are to be found in existence at present. Hodgkinson, I think it was, who, during the last century built the first theatre having dressing-rooms above and upon the stage. Later improvement has removed the dressing-rooms, in first-class houses, entirely from the stage, ample and neatly-furnished rooms being provided in adjoining buildings. This change has been necessitated by the demand made upon theatrical managers for greater stage room and better opportunities than they had heretofore in keeping up with the growing taste for extensive scenic representations with magnificent appointments. The star of a company, male or female, always has the best dressing-room the establishment affords, and it is generally very close to the green-room. Minor performers share their rooms; and the captain of the supers usually has an apartment beneath the stage where he gathers his Roman mob, or marshals his mail-clad but awkward squad of warriors. No better burlesque upon this ill-clothed, dirty-faced, knock-kneed and ridiculous theatrical contingent has ever been presented either in type or on the stage, than the character of the Roman Lictor created by Louis Harrison in San Francisco, and afterwards relegated to another performer in "Photos." The story is told that Harrison having been cast for the part of a lictor in a tragedy in which John McCullough took the leading role, he grew offended, having higher aspirations than mere utility business, and determined to make the part funny and, if possible, spoil the scene. When he came on the stage, he was in war-paint, his face strewn with gory colors and intermingling black; he had on the dirtiest costume he could find, with a battered rusty helmet, and carried the insignia of his office so awkwardly, while his knees came together his toes turned in, and his general attitude was that of a man in the third week of a hard spree. He brought the house down, spoiled the play and was discharged for making too much of a success of the part. But this is a digression, and we must hurry back to the dressing-room.
THE THREE VILLAS.
The most difficult part of the actor's work preliminary to going on the stage is to make-up his face. By the judicious use of powder and paint, and a proper disposition of wigs, beard, etc., the oldest man may be made to assume juvenility and the youngest to seem to bend with the weight of years. Wigs are to a great extent reliable, but the old fashioned false beard is clumsy and apt to make the wearer feel dissatisfied with himself and the rest of the world. But the old fashioned beard is going out of style, and gray wool stuck on the face with grease is generally used. I can recall vividly how a beard of this sort worn by poor George Conly, the basso, while singing the part of Gaspard in "The Chimes of Normandy," while with the Emma Abbot troupe last season, struck me as the perfection of deception. It always requires a dresser to put on one of these beards in anything like a satisfactory manner.
An old actor of the "crushed" type who has been almost forced off the stage and into running a dramatic college, by the young and pushing element in the profession, in an interview had with him lately in Philadelphia, remarked, as he looked with evident interest upon the crowds in the street: "I like to study faces. To my mind it is the most absorbing study in the world—that of men's faces. You see, the thing has more interest for me than for the run of men even in my profession, because I'm an enthusiast in a certain sense. I belong to the times when the study and make-up of faces was mighty important in the theatrical line. It wasn't such a long time ago, either; but the times have changed since then, until now there seems to be almost no effort at all to make-up and look your part."
"It must be a great deal of trouble to make up every night."
"Oh, but, my boy, look at the result! Go down to the theatre, where they still do it, and if only five years have elapsed between the acts, see how it is shown on every face