IN THEATRELAND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22391, 11 April 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

IN THEATRELAND

THE VINTAGE YEARS Will Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Elisabeth Bergner and other famous actresses of the presont attain the same stature in retrospect as Lady Bancroft, Madge Kendal, Ellon Terry and other great ones of the past? It is extremely unlikely because personality comes so little into the picture at the present day.

Little is known of our actresses except their fabulous salaries, the number of times they are divorced and other apocryphal stories sent out for publicity purposes. They are only seen at second hand, flat shadows on a white screen. Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, and Elena Duse were flesh and blood people, almost as important and well loved oif the stage as on it. Sir George Arthur in his book of reminiscences, "From Phelps to Gielgud," draws pictures of them with a familiar and sympathetic pen. He is a pleasant man, who knew and liked them all, or nearly all, and was well liked by them. Of course he had his favourites, though so catholic is his judgment that it is very difficult to be sure of them. Reading between the lines it may bo that he has a warmer place for Madge Kendal than for any other, though at other times Ellen Terry, Sarah Bernhardt and Helena Modjeska seem to 6taud beside her.

It is easier to pick his antipathies and Mrs. Patrick Campbell is one of these. Ho is equally interesting when he speaks of playwrights. It is good to find him denying to Ibsen the absurd importance so often assigned to him. Ibsen merely gave a fillip to a movement well under way in England before his name was heard there.

The way was clear for the drama of ideas; Ibsen's depressing tracts merely misdirected it for a while. But they were transplanted to alien soil. Paying Englishmen still go to the theatre to be entertained, and this Scandinavian gloom probably retarded the movement instead of helping it. Sir George Arthur is an enthusiast lor the tiinss in which he has lived, but is no die-hard, and looks out on the world to-day with surprisingly youthful eyes. "From Phelps to Gielgud," Reminiscences of the Stage Through Sixty-five Years, by Sir George Arthur. (Chapman and Hall.)