Greenroom Gossip

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1574, 24 June 1920, Page 30

Greenroom Gossip

A NEW DAME. Mr. Marriott Edgar, who plays Dame Spoopendyke in the coming J. C. Williamson “Sleeping Beauty” pantomime comes from a family of “dames,” and has played the role himself in all the great centres, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol, Bradford, and the like. The late George Edwardes engaged him for a particularly strong musical comedy company in “San Toy,” and similar pieces at the Cape, whence the combination toured throughout South Africa during the Boer War. George Graves was in the combination, and several of the other artists, Harold Thornley, Frank Danby, Fred Walton, Claude Bantock, became known in Australia. On his return to England, Mr. Edgar remained in musical pieces for a time, and at the Manchester Theatre Royal he played the Village Idiot to George Robey’s Dame in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and found the star comedian particularly free from jealousy, and in every way easy to work with. In vaudeville he appeared in a single turn, “The Man in Red,” at all the leading London variety theatres during a period of four years. Just before the war the J. C. Williamson direction engaged him for Australia, but he was claimed by the world’s big show for three years, during which he rose to the rank of first lieutenant, en-

listing first with the Royal Sussex Regiments, and then with the Mechanical Transport Service. The War Office paid him his commission gratuity the week he was discharged, and a few months later he was facing his old friends, the Aussies, in Melbourne, where he submitted at Christmas his thirteenth dame impersonation in “The Sleeping Beauty.”

“The Little Damozel.” the latest of J. and N. Tait’s hits, made a great sensation in England owing to the character of the hero, Recklaw Poole. In conventional English comedy and drama, the hero must be personally irreproachable, and at least must be a gentleman. But Recklaw Poole was not a gentleman in the arbitrary English meaning of the term. In the first place he had lost his status by being warned off the turf, and had committed the irredemiable blunder of being blackballed at his club. Furthermore, he had accented £15.000 for the pleasure of relieving Captain Partington of nretty Julie Alardy. Yet. despite all these defects, the author had the genius to make the hero acceptable to English audiences. The piece was an immense success, and was played before King George, at Sandringham.

Lee White, the popular London artist, is delighted with the welcome playgoers have extended her in Sydney in the Tivoli production. “Bran Pie.” “I’ve always heard,” she says, “that the Australian’s chief characteristic is hospitality. Now I believe it. But what also impresses one is their eagerness to enjoy a play and help every character in a piece. They are kind to everybody.”

Miss Maggie Dickinson is premiere danseuse of the J. C. Williamson “Sleeping Beauty” pantomime, and is something by herself as a dancer. She is born to dance. A happy creature with a touch of the soubrette vocal •in her toes and limbs and lithe little body. Her ballets are the special feature of the pantomime, especially the fantastic compost of the shot swan and “The Pheasant and the Fox” in the forest scene. Benno Moiseiwitsch, the great pianist who played to audiences of 3000 and 4000 people at every appearance at the Sydney Town Hall, is at present continuing his triumphs in Melbourne. Moiseiwitsch is well described as a “poet of the piano.” He touches the heart and the ear of the average man, and musicians are enthralled by his temperament and technique. In Sydney he achieved a record that had never yet been accomplished by any other pianist visiting Australia. He played to a firstnight audience of over 3000, and late comers had the amazing experience of learning that there was “standing room” only.

Despite the rumours going the round of the marriage, or the forthcoming marriage, of Constance Talmadge with some mysterious young man, the lady herself still denies it vigorously. “And what is more,” she said to an interviewer recently, “I don’t ever intend to marry. Men interest me, I will admit —but as for marrying one of them, well, I’m not at all thrilled!”

A sunshiny day took me to the cemetery of St. Pierre, on the outskirts of Marseilles (writes “E.V.,” in the “Daily Dispatch”). Through high, black gates you enter a spacious courtyard where all around are numerous stalls with flowers of every description and colour. The Riviera sends its most beautiful blooms, and the vendors try to tempt the many mourners who stream through the gates. At one of the prettiest spots of the great cemetery, in a sunny corner among pine trees, stands the column which marks the last resting place of Gaby Deslys. A large trelliswork screen has been erected to extend on either side of the stone monument and its steps, and in this are entwined the most beautiful flowers. All around in heaps lie wreaths and crowns and crosses, still bearing white ribbons and cards. One inscription struck me: “A ma Gaby cherie. Harry.” And it appears it was Harry Pilcer himself who organised the whole funeral arrangements. On the tombstone is inscribed “Hte. Caire” —Caire being the family name of Gaby, and this the monument and family vault she had erected in memory of her sister. Crowds of townspeople stand gazing at the now fading heaps of flowers. Marseilles has every reason to be grateful to Gaby for her great generosity to the town, but perhaps it would have been better if her villa on the Corniche, one of the loveliest in the district, were sold, and the money set aside for a hospital or for the poor; for the small, luxurious villa is ill-adapted for a convalescent home.