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Chapter 2 : ACTORS AND ACTRESSES FIRST ACTRESS (behind the scenes)--"Did you hear the way the p

ACTORS AND ACTRESSES

FIRST ACTRESS (behind the scenes)--"Did you hear the way the public wept during my death scene?"

SECOND ACTRESS--"Yes, it must have been because they realized that it was only acted!"

"These love scenes are rotten. Can't the leading man act as if he were in love with the star?"

"Can't act at all," said the director. "Trouble is, he is in love with her."

The teacher was giving the cla.s.s a natural history lecture on Australia. "There is one animal," she said, "none of you have mentioned. It does not stand up on its legs all the time. It does not walk like other animals, but takes funny little skips. What is it?"

And the cla.s.s yelled with one voice, "Charlie Chaplin!"

Eight-year-old Robert had been ill for nearly a month with tonsilitis, and nothing kept him contented but pictures of his favorite, Charlie Chaplin, clipped from the pages of the motion-picture pictorials.

One morning, as his mother sat beside his bed, he studied earnestly a full-page drawing of the million-dollar comedian.

"Mother," he asked, "will Charlie Chaplin go to heaven?"

"Why, yes--I hope so," answered the somewhat astonished parent.

"Gee! won't the Lord have some fun then!" was Robert's comment.

Sweeping his long hair back with an impressive gesture the visitor faced the proprietor of the film studio. "I would like to secure a place in your moving-picture company," he said.

"You are an actor?" asked the film man.

"Yes."

"Had any experience acting without audiences?"

A flicker of sadness shone in the visitor's eyes as he replied:

"Acting without audiences is what brought me here!"

It was a death-bed scene, but the director was not satisfied with the hero's acting.

"Come on!" he cried. "Put more life in your dying!"

"Pa, what's an actor?"

"An actor, my boy, is a person who can walk to the side of a stage, peer into the wings at a group of other actors waiting for their cues, a number of bored stage hands and a lot of theatrical odds and ends and exclaim, 'What a lovely view there is from this window!'"

"There were two actresses in an early play of mine," said an author, "both very beautiful; but the leading actress was thin. She quarreled one day at rehearsal with the other lady, and she ended the quarrel by saying, haughtily: 'Remember, please, that I am the star.'

"'Yes, I know you're the star,' the other retorted, eyeing with an amused smile the leading actress's long, slim figure, 'but you'd look better, my dear, if you were a little meteor!'"

INTERVIEWER--"What is your wife's favorite dish?"

HUSBAND OF FAMOUS MOVIE ACTRESS--"In the magazines it is peach-bloom fudge-cake with orangewisp salad, but at home it is tripe and cabbage."--_Puck_.

The actress stood before her mirror, in doublet and hose, and regarded her thin legs anxiously.

"I'm not exactly a poem," said she, "but I may pa.s.s for heroic verse."

ADVERTISING

_The Question is How Much More?_

TO RENT--In private home, a large, handsomely furnished front room; also a medium-sized one; every convenience; centrally and very choicely located; rent more than reasonable. Address, etc.--

Advertising is the test of integrity; the proof of integrity; that transmits an ever-increasing confidence to both producer and purchaser.

"I won't pay one cent for my advertising this week," declared the store-keeper angrily to the editor of the country paper. "You told me you'd put the notice of my shoe-polish in with the reading-matter."

"And didn't I do it?" inquired the editor.

"No, sir!" roared the advertiser. "No, sir, you did not! You put it in the column with a mess of poetry, that's where you put it!"

"Paw, what is an advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"An advertis.e.m.e.nt is the picture of a pretty girl eating, wearing, holding or driving something that somebody wants to sell."

A violinist was bitterly disappointed with the account of his recital printed in the paper of a small town.

"I told your man three or four times," complained the musician to the owner of the paper, "that the instrument I used was a genuine Stradivarius, and in his story there was not a word about it, not a word."

Whereupon the owner said with a laugh:

"That is as it should be. When Mr. Stradivarius gets his fiddles advertised in my paper under ten cents a line, you come around and let me know."