Why Actors Marry Actresses.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue XVI, 17 October 1903, Page 62

Why Actors Marry Actresses.

(By One of the Profession.! The question is a vexed one, and there are many arguments on both sides; but I think that if the subject be thought over carefully it will be seen that the answer to it ran but be in th<* affirmative. Think tor a moment of the life of an actress in its relation to the home. Suppose that home to be in London, and the wife** work to Im» mainly in the provincesIf her husband be an actor, there is usually comparatively little difficulty in finding an engagement for :hem both in the same company, when life. not only pleasant, but also economical in the matter of lodgings, housekeeping, and the like. If, on the other hand, the husband be no actor, ami his work lie in London or in one fixed spot, husband and wife will never be together, excepting when the wife is out of an engagement, which state, as my experience has shown me. usually means out of temper also. Suppose, on the other hand, that the actress have an engagement at a London theatre. She will probably have to be at the theatre at eleven in the morning for a rehearsal four or five days a week, and very likely have to go there She has no time to get back to her home for lunch, and in the evening she must dine before her husband’s work is over, and rush off to the theatre again, coming home hungry and tired an hour after her husband has retired to rest. Married life of this kind is hardly married life at all. for there is no companionship in it, and the infallible result must be the husband’s wish that his wife should leave the stage. Stage work is hard work, and work which few people who are not connected with the stage themselves can understand. You cannot, if you be a conscientious actress, put your work on one side when you leave the theatre and you will find few num who. unless they themselves be not actors, are capable of understanding and of sympathising in |(lie difficult i<os of stagecraft. Or take the other side of the picture—an actor married to a girl who is not on the stage. The home will be more comfortable in one sense, for the man who can keep house has not. 1 fancy, yet been invented: but husband and wife will see very little of one another, and a wife must be of an angelic temper not to feel occasional pangs of jealousy at the love-scenes with other women which will form the major portion of her husband’s life work. She will, if she be wise, of course, not show them: but restraint in this* respect will not make her suffer from them any less, and though one knows it is all make-believe, it is hard fo • a woman to see her husband make desperate love to other women, even

though the love-making be dime behind the footlights. A CAUSE OF JEALOUSY. Then there are rehearsals. No woman not an aetress whom 1 have ever met has ever yet admitted in my hearing that love-making at re hearsal does not breed familiarity, and, trust her husband as she may, she is sure not to like it. Again, the aetor whose wife is not on the stage will hardly ever see his better-half. He, too. has rehearsal, has to be up in town all day, am’ has to go to the theatre at night. A certain amount of supping out and sociability, too, are indispensable to his success, and actors and actresses are not eager for non-members of the profession at these little gatherings. DIVIDED INTERESTSAnd now let us look at the married life of an aetor married to an actress. At its best, where the two are working at the same theatre, or travelling in the same company, it is absolutely charming. Husband and wife are constantly together, have the same interests, the same topics of conversation, and can help one another with their work and with their criticisms. They leave home together, get home at the same time, require meals more or less at the same hour, however strange to the outside world those hours may be, and really live together. It must not be forgotten that a member < f the profession usually breakfasts heaviiy and late, dines at amut three or four o'clock, or, at the very latent, half-past five or six, and needs a supper after midnight when the snow is over.

Try to fit in these hours with those of any other business. It is quite impossible.

And even if husband and wife, actor and actress, are not playing at the same theatre —even if, to put the worst case possible, the one have work in London and the other be on tour —there is community of thought between them and community of interest.

No married actress would be unreasonably jeealous of her husband acting with another woman, for she would understand that it is necessary, and means no more than work tor him to do so. Nor would an actor worry in the least because his wife played with another man and at another theatre.

The love-making in either ease, the little gestures and the sentimental touches, which to the iron-professional wife or

probably, when wife and husband both are stagefolk, have been carefully re hearsed at home between them, and any manager will tell you that the married actor’s actress-wife is of the greatest use to her husband in the ‘business’ of his love-scenes, and that the same may be said without fear of contradiction in application to the actor husband of the aetress.

UNHAPPY MARRIAGES. L’nhappy marriages upon the stage art very rare when both husband and wife belong to the profession. One might mention many happy couples whose names spring naturally to one’s lips in this connection as instances of happy married life behind the footlights. In a great many cases husband and wife rarely, if ever, act together, but they have a mutuual understanding for each other's work, and this is all-sufficient for their happiness. 1 will not, in this article, touch too much on the subject of unhappiness where only husband or wife is upon the stage; but a moment’s thought will recall many and well-known cases of such unhappiness to my readers; and in almost every case it is the wife's or husband's want of understanding for the stage which caused it. The next best thing after the marriage of an actress to an actor is that her husband should lie closely connected with the profession in some other way. either as author, writer of stage music, or cos-tume-designer. And marriages of this kind—that of Mr and Mrs Cecil Raleigh, for example, in which the husband writes the plays for Drury Lane, and evolves unspeakable wickedness for his wife to depict, and several others with community of thought—have every chance of happiness. A WORLD OF ITS OWN. The best proof, perhaps, of the great happiness of stage married life, when both husband and wife are on the boards, is that, as a rule, the children of such marriages become actors and actresses, as their parents have been; and a striking instance of this is the Terry family, and also that of Mr and Mrs Beerbqhm Tree, whose daughter Viola will make a great name for herself some day. The world that lives and loves behinds the footlights is different to all other worlds. It has its own laws, its own language, its own customs, and its own peculiarities; and very few outsiders ever really undertsand them.