IS ACTING A DYING ART?

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1519, 5 June 1919, Page 33

IS ACTING A DYING ART?

MANAGER MAKES COMPLAINT. Mr. Cochran, the manager of the London Pavilion, the Oxford, the Prince’s, and St. Martin’s Theatres, replies in the following article to the plea by Mr. George Relph that actors have no chance nowadays of acting in classic drama (says the London “Daily Express”). So Mr. George Relph thinks that acting is a dying art! I was interested in—dare I say amused by?— his article in the “Daily Express” a few days ago. J offered him the part of Christian in “Cyrano de Bergerac” supporting Major Robert Loraine, but he was more interested in a comedy by Mr. W. Somerset Maugham. Did you ever hear the story of the farmer’s son who stuck feathers in his cap and cracked a whip and said to his orthodox parent: “Feyther, I’m an infidel.” The old man replied: “Right, my lad, but why make such a hell of a noise?”

1 blame no man, no actor, for making his market. If he can get fifty pounds a week for playing Shakespeare, and ‘fifty guineas for singing comic songs, by all means let him sing comic songs, but don’t let him say that acting is a dying art, that the classical and the romantic drama is caviare to the general, when he is buying caviare for himself out of a revue salary. He makes me tired — and I hate to tire. I am a manager with a love of art. If it should happen that I make money on the swings of Shirley, I am prepared to spend it on the roundabouts of Sheridan. Last week I interviewed not fewer than a hundred young actors —pretentiously ambitious young actors —to whom I offered work in “Cyrano,” work that I was prepared to pay for, work that would teach or improve the worker, work that in my own days as a struggling stock actor would have banished hunger and built up my ideals. But what happened? They thought the work —the useful, instructive work of “doubling” characters —was too hard. They did not care to accept good wages for useful experience in a classic, because they could get better wages for smirking and shuffling in musical comedy. Again, I say, let them do so. God bless them! Vive the main chance! —but don’t write to the papers and say that acting is a dying art. Don’t

revile a craft that you are too selfish to acquire.

- There is a great outcry against the “commercial manager,” and one complaint is that he does not pay the poor actor sufficiently. Personally, I think acting a rare and precious art, to be lovingly and patiently and painfully acquired. The young “actor” of to-day seems to think that when he condescends to pass the stage door his immediate guerdon should be a fat salary. The drudgery and starvation that made the Keans, the Irvings are just amusing to him. Young men and women used gladly to accept the opportunity of “walking on” at the Lyceum or His Majesty’s to learn their trade. Now they sniff at £5 a week. Lately I interviewed in one day 50 actors, not one of whom could fence, dance the minuet, or doff his hat in the Louis Quatorze style. Loraine and Seymour Hicks and other stars of the day had these accomplishments before they could earn 255. a week. Recently, in reply to Mr. Dennis Eadie’s attack on “commercial managers,” I pointed out that the commercial manager in war time had simply followed the policy of the actor-manager—namely, he has tried to produce potentially popular plays. And there is no reason why a popular play should not be an artistic play. May I, as a commercial manager, cite Anatole France’s “Man Who Married a Dumb Wife” and “The Three Daughters of Monsieur Dupon”? And may I, as a commercial manager, say that were I about to produce a Shakespearian or any other classic play, I would tremble at the task of selecting 50 competent artists?

Interviewed at the Melbourne Oriental Hotel smoke room, Sir Harry Lauder said: “Melbourne wull aye be very dear tae me an’ my wife, because it was here that oor son John got the cable message that caused him tae get back as soon as he could tae join his regiment. I min’, fine how John sat on that chair over there an’ said, ‘Dad, I told you it would come. I must go.' How he answered the call an’ how he -did his duty the world kens.”