As a School Marm She Got Behind Footlights
to Dodge Promotion from
Kindergarten to Primary Grade.
I knew that Blanche Bates came of a theatrical family, and that,
therefore, she had an open sesame to the stage, but I did not know just
when she made her first appearance, and to learn this for THE SCRAP BOOK I
sought her out in the brief interval of rest she has, without a costume
change, between the first and second acts of "The Girl of the Golden
West."
"How did I make my start?" she repeated in answer to my question. "Well, I
rather think it was because I balked at the idea of being known as a
'school marm.' I'll tell you about it. Although both my father and mother
were on the stage, I didn't care for the life in the least. In fact, in my
small young mind, I set up to being a very grand lady.
"'An actress? No, indeed,' I told myself. 'Something much better than that
for me.' I was interested in young children and became a kindergarten
teacher in San Francisco, where my mother was playing with L.R. Stockwell.
But it was my very success with the youngsters that brought about the
close of my career as a teacher. If I could do so well in the
kindergarten, the committee argued, I was worth promoting, so one day they
came to me with the announcement that I had been advanced to the charge of
a grade in the primary department.
To Teach or Not to Teach.
"I suppose I should have felt duly honored, but I didn't. I sat down and
began to look ahead, through the vista of years to come. A teacher, a
schoolmistress! That somehow didn't agree with the ideas of the grand lady
my fancy had conjured up. And, at that psychological moment mother came
home with a proposition from Mr. Stockwell.
"It seemed that they were to give him a benefit, and he suggested to her,
by way of novelty in the bill, that I should appear in a one-act play.
Coming as it did just as I was wavering in my mind about my prospects in
the teaching business, the idea caught me, and I said: 'Yes, I'd like to
do it.'
"The play was 'The Picture,' by Brander Matthews, and I was the only woman
in it, with the gamut of all the passions to run in the portrayal of the
part. But I was too young and inexperienced to be frightened at the
notion. I went on, and got through, and with the smell of the footlights
possessing me I became thoroughly set upon a New York appearance."
After her experience with the Stockwell forces, Miss Bates secured an
opening with the Frawley stock as utility woman at twenty dollars a week,
which led to the realization of her hopes in the way of a chance on
Broadway. And this came in the shape of an engagement with no less famous
a company than Augustin Daly's. She made her debut in February, 1899, but
lasted only two nights.
Too Good for Daly's.
"The resignation of Blanche Bates from Augustin Daly's theatrical company
will give a good many persons the chance to say 'I told you so,' the
dramatic critic of the New York _Sun_ observed at the time. "A short
career for Miss Bates on that stage was predicted on the opening night of
'The Great Ruby; or, The Kiss of Blood.'
"She was called before the curtain four times after her best scene, and
the applause was enthusiastic and genuine. That would have been enough to
base the belief on. But there was a second and bigger reason, said the
prophets, why her stay would be brief.
"The curtain later fell in silence on what should have been an impressive
climax for Ada Rehan, and was lifted a single time after the ushers had
incited a mild demonstration of personal regard for that favorite.
"It has never been customary to have at Daly's any other actress of
dramatic strength than Miss Rehan. The roles secondary in serious
importance have been played by charming but weak young women. As soon as
rivalry began, as in the case of Maxine Elliott, it was removed.
"In the sensational melodrama from Drury Lane, with the singularly
felicitous title or sub-title of 'The Kiss of Blood,' is a Russian
adventuress, who has an honest love affair, though she is a thief, and who
is the only female character to figure in the heroics of the play. Miss
Bates was assigned to it.
"She had come from California, and was unknown here. She proved to be
handsome, fiery, forceful, and very talented. She was a revelation to the
first audience, and it was disposed to go wild over her.
"Maybe it would have been better for Miss Rehan if the part had been given
to her. Perhaps she had disliked to enact a wicked woman. Anyway, she had
chosen instead to appear as a vain, frivolous, but clean and cheerful,
wife of a London tradesman.
"This had been written as an eccentric character, and at the Drury Lane it
had been played with irresistible drollery by Mrs. John Wood. But Miss
Rehan had no mind to look grotesque, and as to low comedy, it is clear out
of her line.
"In a serio-comic scene of somnambulism, where Mrs. Wood had been a fright
in curl papers and a funny nightgown, Miss Rehan sacrificed nothing to the
comic requirements. She was as dignified and stately as any _Lady
Macbeth_. For those reasons the sleep-walking episode, which had been very
valuable in London, counted for nothing here, and at its end the actress
had good reason to know that it had failed with the audience.
"It was then that experts foretold the withdrawal of the California
actress. She appeared at Daly's only one more night. She had not found
Daly's Theater comfortable."
Naturally, Miss Bates did not long remain without an engagement. She was
snapped up by the Lieblers for _Miladi_ in "The Musketeers," and soon
caught the eye of Belasco, who featured her in "Under Two Flags." Her real
arrival, however, was with "The Darling of the Gods," which brought her
seven hundred and fifty dollars a week salary and a percentage of the
receipts, not a mean advance from the twenty dollars she had been getting
from Frawley less than five years before.