MISS HUNTER-WATTS

Southland Times, Issue 20666, 23 April 1929, Page 7

MISS HUNTER-WATTS

AN INTERVIEW DECLINED

ATTITUDE JUSTIFIED

Miss Hunter-Watts, the Shakespearean actress, who refused yesterday to be interviewed by a Times reporter, expresses her views oh the subject of interviews: — “The oft-repeated request that I should express either by interview or article in the Press some revelations of the life and workings behind the scenes, or my mode of spending time in work or play, my personal opinions on such trivialities as the abbreviated skirt or the shingled head, encourages me to attempt to justify my reluctance to gratify such a flattering curiosity. I‘George Bernard Shaw, recently for the first time before a Dunedin audience through the medium of 'the Talkies,’ in a delightful and all too brief causerie, expresses his pleas ure in appearing before the public, since it may serve to eradicate a quite erroneous impression gleaned by the readers of his works that he is a rather terrible and aweinspiring personage, and so he reveals him self to us in speech, appearance, and manner as a very charming and gracious personal- -- “I, lighting ‘my farthing dip against this sun,’ ask of my public not a flattering curiosity as to my manner, appearance, tastes, etc., but rather a blissful ignorance of the commonplace nonentity that is ‘me,’ and t> perpetual memory of any lovely niomen' that I have helped to create for them in the world of the theatre. The Shakespea* can player above all others moves in a world of dream and enchantment, where romance ‘walks delicately in rich brocade’; we employ every extraneous device of lighting, music, costuming, line and colour to aid us to create this world of balanced beauty; and then enters the publicity fiend with an amazing clamour for what with fitting hideousness he calls ‘personal pars.’ Must I believe his reiterated assertion that this is what the public wants? Must they know what is Romeo’s golf handicap before they can simulate any interest in the play? Does the Juliet go down rose crowned into the future on the merits of a blonde or a brunette wig? Are the cloudcapped towers and gorgeous palaces of Shakespeare’s building Io dissolve into so many empty-headed speculations as to paint and canvas? Perish the thought! I cannot but believe that the Invercargill public, cradled in a town of such surpassing beauty of surrounding country, has too fine, too rare an imagination to descend to sucn small beer. I for one will keep a gracious silence.” i