GREENROOM GOSSIP

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1524, 10 July 1919, Page 30

GREENROOM GOSSIP

The death is announced at the age of 60 of Mr. Ben. Nathan, the actor and theatrical manager, at Golder’s Green, North London. A Birmingham man, Mr. Nathan started his stage career in one of the famous Gaiety burlesques, “Ruy Blas or the Blase Roue.” He scored a great success in 1901 by taking up Mr. Willie Edouin’s part in “Florodora” at short notice. He was last seen in London last year in a clever character sketch of a Jewish “marriage broker” in “The Little Brother,” at the Ambassadors’ Theatre.

Miss Mary Macfarlane, touring manager for Frederic Shipman’s New Fantastics, writes from Deolali, India: “Here we are, nearly at the end of our Indian tour. Just six more weeks, and then Burmah, the Malay States, and home to Australia once more. We have had a right royal tour, and have been most fortunate in the weather, which, up to the present, has not been disagreeably warm. India is now a gieat centre of demobilisation, and this particular town is the busiest corner of all. Thousands are pouring in daily and leaving in all directions a few days after. It is a perfect canvas town. We have already played one return, and are booked for another at the end of the month. We have met such a lot of Australian boys since arriving in India. There are 250 leaving to-night for Australia. Hard luck! They had a case here of measles in their number, and so have been isolated. But who ever heard of a lot of Australian boys being kept away from anything they wanted to see or hear? So, needless to say, tunics were changed with Tommies by the dozen, and shorts and shirts took the place of the usual uniform. We gave a special performance for them at their own quarters,

and you never heard such cheers and coo-ees in your life. They voted the Fantastics just splendid, and mobbed the girls at the end of the performance to shake hands. One boy came up and said to one of the girls, ‘Oh, do say something! I’m just longing to hear an Australian girl speak’.”

A three months’ season of the Russian ballet was to commence at the Alhambra Theatre in London on April 30. It contains several ballets either entirely new to London or not seen since the Russian dancers visited there before the war. The three new ballets that have never been danced before on any stage are “La Boutique Fantastique,” “The Three-Cornered

Hat,” and “The Gardens of Aranjuez.” Mlle. Lydia Kyasht and that incomparable dancer, Mlle. Karsavina, were to appear in the ballets.

Before Mr. Harry Dearth, the distinguished English baritone, commenced his opening season in Melbourne he was warned by his friends to be sure and not make his programme too high-class. It was popular music of a good class that was really wanted in these troublous days of reconstruction, and people could not be bothered with the classics. So, believing this to be excellent advice, he planned his programme accordingly, and gave the Melbourne people a touch of real quality in swinging rhythmical ballads, which he sings just as well as oratorio or grand opera arias. And for this he was taken to task by one highbrow critic, who said: “He has a highly cultivated sense of drama and tone colour, a voice of rare quality, diction nigh perfect. and a charming manner that would hold an audience in whatever he chose to sing. It is all the more disappointing that his programmes are so unworthy of a musician, and of Australia as a supposed music-loving country and community.” Turning to the programme we find that Mr. Dearth sang Cowen’s fine song “Onaway, Awake,” Sanderson’s “The Company Sergeant-Major,” Cyril Scott’s “Afterday,” and Willeby’s “The Fortune Hunter,” and Douglas Grant’s sweet ballad “The Little French Baby.” There is no pleasing some people.

Mr. Albert Goldie (emissary for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce), who was at one time press agent for Hugh J. Ward, says that the number of Australians who are making good in pictures in Los Angeles is surprising. Incidentally, he mentioned that Mr. Rupert Julian (for years playing small parts with J.C.W.) was now the biggest producer in Universal City, and his wife, the auburn-haired Elsie Wilson, was one of the very few successful women producers in the States. Notable success had been made by Sylvia Breamer, Louise Lovely (Carbasse, of Marlow and Anderson companies), Winter Hall (for-

merly of the Plimmer-Hall Comedy Company), Enid Bennett (now Mrs. Fred Niblo), and several others. Life in Los Angeles was peculiar. However sensational the incident before your eyes might appear, you simply take no notice —it is the movies; you see a wild bolt in a suburban street, the girl with the reins terrified to death, then up gallops a horseman, jumps from his horse into the trap and pulls up the trap as the girl faints in his arms —you simply shrug your shoulders —it is the movies. Even a girl flying for her life down an exterior fire escape of a big hotel, with a madman brandishing a two-foot dagger in pursuit, does not disturb your equanimity. At one time, says Mr. Goldie, people were only too delighted to loan their houses and grounds for pictures, as they liked to see them in the films, but latterly they have become shy owing to the damage done to gardens, etc., so the

movie people have to seize the first and brightest opportunity of getting off their scenes, and a habit called “location stealing” has grown up, in which scenes are enacted in grounds without the owner’s consent, usually very early in the mornings, when the household is fast asleep.