“LAST NIGHT" AT DALY’S

Evening Star, Issue 22817, 27 November 1937, Page 27

“LAST NIGHT" AT DALY’S

FAMOUS ACTRESS ATTENDS On a recent Saturday evening Dame Marie Tempest paid her farewell visit to Daly’s Theatre, London. She sat 'in a box and watched the last performance that will ever take place on the stage which she first made famous. „ „ • , When the curtain fell on The First Legion,’ and the applause due to a fine play and a fine performance had died away, Mr Cecil Paget, the manager of the theatre, came on to make a valedictory speech. .. In a voice which Ins emotion hardly allowed to be audible, he touched on the theatre’s long history of success; and when ho' mentioned Dame Marie s name at the head of the list of Daly s stars the applause was terrific. OLD DAYS RECALLED. The scene- outside the theatre afterwards must have reminded Dame Marie of the days when her name on this theatre’s facade seemed as permanent as that of Augustin Daly himself. True, she left by the front entrance and not by the stage door. But her adoring public were waiting for her just the same, leaving her the narrowest of lanes through which to get across the pavement, and mobbing her car respectfully, but insistently, till she was driven away. She bore her part regally, and, indeed, it was only one of many such scenes to her. A LAST HANDSHAKE.

To me, however (writes W. A. Darlington, in the ‘ Daily Telegraph ’), it was a new experience, for I was privileged to be her escort on this occasion, and I had never before clearly realised what it must mean to be the object of close-quarter public worship. It is like being put under a giant microscope. Just before the car drove off the front-of-the-house commissionaire put his head in the door. “ I must have a last handshake, madam,” he said, while the crowd drew nearer, peered in, and listened breathlessly. “ I’ve been here 35 years. My name’s Robinson.” He extended an enormous hand, in which Dame Marie’s was quite lost. Then he shut the door, and the car drove off amid hand-wavings and shrill cries of goodwill; and I reflected, with the astonishment that any consideration of ago in connection with Marie Tempest always calls up, that the heroine of this little scene had severed her connection with Daly’s two years before Sergeant Robinson began his long tour of duty there. As for the evening itself, it had been a sober experience, tinged with the melancholy that hangs about the end of most chapters in human affairs. But it was somehow not a sad one, except for the theatre staff who were being evicted from their home. The reason for this, I think, is that the play, * The First Legion,’ is such a sincere and gripping piece of work, and so well acted, that while it was being played we had no emotion to spare for anything else. Certainly Dame Marie herself sat in rapt, attention throughout, aiid told mo that she had enjoyed it more than when she saw it the first time. REIGN OF EDWARDES. During the intervals Mr Paget came to the box, and he and Dame Mario exchanged stories of Daly’s, almost all of which centred on George Edwardes. What a character he was, how many stories there are concerning him, and how seldom are those stories anything but good! One that appealed particularly to me was Marie Tempest’s account of how she was first engaged for Daly’s. She had just returned from America, and had made all arrangements to go back there. Contracts had been signed, casts engaged. Edwardes made short work of all that. He was determined to have her for Daly’s and he did not mind what it cost him. When the negotiations were over, and her engagement was settled, she asked him what her part was to he. “ Oh,” he said blandly, “it isn’t written yet!” It turned out to be ‘ The Artist’s Model,’