“A CAT AMONG PIGEONS.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 25, 29 December 1925, Page 11

“A CAT AMONG PIGEONS.”

SECRETS OF THE THEATRE. PIQUANT REMINISCENCES. Mr Charles B. Cochran’s reminiscences, ‘•Secrets of a Showman, will put a cat among tlie theatrical pigeons. Writing about the production ol “Tlio Better ’Ole,” at Uio New Oxford, lvir Cochran says:— “1 set about engaging Mr Arthur Bourchier at a salary or £IOO a week. When 1 engaged Mr Bourchier it was understood that lie was not to bo bothered about tho production of the play. Nevertheless, lie stipulated that the following note should appear in the programme: ‘Mr Cochran wishes to acknowledge ,liis indebtedness to Air Bourchier for producing the play on his behalf.’ ” Of Air Seymour Hicks, Mr Cochran says:— . “I made up my mind many years ago that lie is about tlie best actor on the British stage. Moreover, there is not much he doesn’t know about the theatre. I think sometimes lie doesn’t know it, but he oozes grease paint from every pore. ‘‘Seymour cannot help acting; lie is always acting. Life to liim is a comedy. Probably his versatility accounts for his not being a West End actormanager. He is never content unless ho is writing a play and a book, and producing a musical comedy or two at the same time.”

Mr Cochran did not find Mr Nelson Keys “an inventive comedian.” “i do not recall one idea introduced by Keys himself into ‘London, Paris and New York’ ” (one of Mr Cochran’s revues, which ran at tho London Pavilion), he writes. And he found him “too expensive.” “When he began to discuss a new engagement, I said, ‘Bunch, you’re too expensive; you cost too much to dress. I have had Delysia here, and it’s part of her job to display clothes. I thought sho was expensive to dress, but you cost twice as much.’ “ ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

“ ‘Well,’ I answered, ‘do you know what' you have cost me in clothes and accessories during the run of ‘London, Paris and New York?’ No less than £709 3s 2d.’

“ ‘Well,” he said, ‘you don’t expect me to go on the stage looking like a tramp, do your I must have the best.’ Mr Cochran gave Billie Carleton, that poor girl who died so tragically, her first chance on the stage. “She was the victim of circumstances which she was not strong enough to control. Her childhood had given her a positive fear of alcohol, and she was, all tho time I knew her, a strict teetotaller, although her nervous temperament, always craving for excitement, must have desired stimulant of some kind. “Billie Carlton never.had a chance against heredity. That is tho explanation of her downfall. . She tried her hardest to resist temptation, but there were horrible people who would.not leave her alone.”

When Mr Cochran first heard Alice Delysia sing some old French ballads, he said to her, “Why don’t you go on tho stage?” The late Harry Fragson, who was present, retorted, “She would drive everybody out of the theatre.”

Miss Nellie Taylor, a few years ago one of the most promising of young actresses in musical pieces, but now never seen on the stage, “got haunted by a fear of facing the footlights.” “This talented and beautiful young girl had the ball at her feet. She was a legitimate successor to Lily Elsie. Facing the footlights had been a nightmare to her. Her obsession was that she would forget her lines. It was necessary for her to: work for a living; and she begged me to let her appear in the chorus; but I told her that not by such means would she regain confidence.”