STAGE DOOR SWAINS

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 December 1928, Page 9

STAGE DOOR SWAINS

TYPES THAT HAVE , DISAPPEARED ... THE LADS OF THE GAY ’NINETIES... T wasn’t so many years a B° tllat OUe lleaVd a good deal about the IVli'iPJ stagedoor Johnnies. The gentlemen who waited patiently, flowers in hand, for their favourite actress to make her appearance after the show were famed in story and song and in cartoons. College boys off on a spree, visitors from out. ot’ town, husbands whose wives were cm holiday and moon calf young men--all who were, in fact, in search of romance, wore a path to the stage door. Young girls with glittering ambitions ot success on the stage longed for the time when they could be a part of lhe magical play world and win, as a resultant prize, the flattering attention and gifts of the stagedoor haunter. He was the Sir Galahad of their dreams. Those, too, were busy days for the door man. Running back and forth with notes, flowers and ribbon-bedecked bonboh boxes, and permitting the Johnny the mere privilege of standing at his door, provided him with no mean tips. Few were the novels of the day that didn’t picture the stage-door Johnny waiting in the dim gas light of the theatre for that mysterious, fascinating and forbidden person known as “the actress.” She was a person of a different planet. She stood for all that was romantic and alluring in life and the stage-door Johnny was her most persistent and ardent worshipper. What has happened to him in this blatant day of realism and ■sophistication when the fact that one is an actress causes a no more horrified lifting of the .eyebrows than does a one-piece bathing suit or a stockingless flapper?

“His day is past,” said Marilyn Miller, musical-comedy star, when approached on the question. She was resting in her dressing room prior to making up for her part of “Rosalie.” “If he made his appearance around here,” she continued, "he’d be langho.l at as some sort of a. freak, because that sort of thing isn’t done any more. Any gentlemen waiting at the stage door are more likely to be friends or brothers and even husbands of the girls in the show.” “Why don’t the stage-door Johnnies exist any more?” Miss Miller was asked. “Is it because the men regard the stage with less romantic eyes?” “No, I don’t think it’s that,” she laughed. “I rather believe it’s because of the change in the type of girls who are on the stage to-day. They are more serious and more ambitious. They have to work harder, as so much more is now required of them. In addition io locks, the chorus girl must have dancing ability and a good voice. This means that she must constantly devote herself to singing and dancing lessons if she wants to hold her job. She hasn’t the time or energy to waste, on strangers who may he hanging about tho stage door. “In former days the chorus girl was a rather stupid, uninteresting girl. In the majority of cases she wasn’t good for anything else and so she drifted to the stage because it was the easiest, way for her to earn a living. The only qualification she needed then was a pretty face. She was the type that helped to give the stage a reputation that wasnt’ of the best. Naturally the doors of Hie fluefamilies wern’t open to her and she had to seek her friends the best way

she could —usually at the stage door. “But the chorus girl to-day is on a par with the girl in any other business or profession. In fact, you wouldn’t know one from the other once they are off the stage. There is no longer any clasS distinction. And since they are on an equal footing socially, they are welcomed everywhere. They can find their friends in a respectable way without picking them up at the stage door not knowing who they may be. “The man, too, can meet plenty of stage girls through friends or at parties. It isn’t necessary for him to park himself at the stage door in order to know- an actress. And,” Miss Miller’s blue eyes twinkled, “sending notes to ‘the third from the end’ is likewise not done any more. If the usher were to receive such a note he’d probably throw it away and tell the writer that there was no answer. “On the road, though, things are pretty much as they used to be. Men in the smaller places so rarely get a chance to meet show girls that when a big revue of the Follies type comes to town admirers are frequently found at the door. Usually they’re college boys. They are the most persistent —and the nicest. There were three college boys that came around to the show quite regularly this past summer. When they had seen it about nineteen times the girls told them, •jokingly, that they were rather tired of seeing their faces in the front row. They were requested to break the monotony by staying away for a while. But the next night they came again, this time dressed in costumes they had hired, their faces conspicuous with long grey beards and bushy eyebrows. They were certainly successful in breaking the monotony that evening.” * . , Of course, intermarriage between members of the stage and society has already ceased to be a sensation. Hundreds of them have married into wealthy and aristocratic families. To get an introduction to a member of society, the actress no longer has to depend on the stage-door Johnny. Her beauty and her accomplishments provide her with friends. That is why she can afford to be as careful and aS particular of her friendships a® the society girl.