Essayed Role of Leading Woman at Sixteen
in a Play in Which Her Real
and Stage Father Were One.
In one sense of the term, Viola Allen never began at all. She plunged
right into the midst of her career. To put it differently, she has been a
leading woman from the first time she set foot upon the stage.
Her father and mother were both in the profession. Her father, C. Leslie
Allen, is acting yet, being with his daughter in "The Toast of the Town."
He was doing the father--a specialty of his--in "Esmeralda" at the Madison
Square Theater, when Annie Russell, the leading woman, fell ill.
Viola Allen was at that time barely sixteen--just the age of the
character. She had been about the theater a good deal with her father, and
in the sudden emergency it was suggested that she should play the part.
"They came to me with the proposition," said Miss Allen, in describing the
incident, "and I was so absorbed in the story that I began with all
eagerness to study the part, without seeming to realize all that it meant
to play it. I shall never forget my sensations on that first night when I
walked out on the stage in response to the cue, which, as it happens, was
given to me by my own father.
"At rehearsals, of course, the auditorium had been dark and empty. Now it
was a glow of light and a sea of faces. This is what I should have
expected, but somehow I had failed to do so, and now, being confronted
with the thing, my wits seemed to fail me.
"My lines went from my memory, but luckily I did not have to speak them
until I was close to my father. He, realizing that I must have stage
fright, whispered the words to me, and as soon as I heard them I was all
right again. I plunged back into my absorption in the story I was helping
to depict, and went through to the end without any further trouble."
With "Joe" Jefferson.
After her term in "Esmeralda," Miss Allen played Shakespeare leads with
John McCullough and the elder Salvini, and then became first assistant to
Joseph Jefferson in "The Rivals" and "The Heir at Law." From this she
passed under the management of Charles Frohman, and helped lay the
foundations of his fortunes, along with Henry Miller, in "Shenandoah," and
from its second season and for many years thereafter these two were
closely identified with the conspicuous position won for the stock company
at the Empire, where Miss Allen's _Rosamund_ in "Sowing the Wind" took the
town by storm.
In this connection, it is an odd circumstance that the part Miss Allen
most enjoyed playing in the whole Empire list was that of _Audrie Lisden_
in Henry Arthus Jones's "Michael and his Lost Angel," a play that ran for
only twelve nights in New York, and had been no more successful in London.
Miss Allen handed in her resignation from the company after the production
of "The Conquerors," a play of which she wholly disapproved, and she was
then starred by the Lieblers in "The Christian," the dramatizing of which
was her own suggestion, and from which several people reaped fortunes.
When, three years ago, she deliberately cut loose from the Hall Caine type
of drama in order to follow her own personal inclinations and take up
Shakespeare, she was looked upon almost as a martyr to the cause of art.
Monotony the Bane of the Footlights.
And yet the outcome would seem to prove that she was only a shrewd woman
of good common sense, after all. Her managers followed "The Eternal City"
with Hall Caine's "Prodigal Son," and lost mighty sums upon it.
It is interesting to recall that before Miss Allen finally decided on "The
Christian" with which to inaugurate her stellar career she was minded to
use a version of Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish". She is very
bookishly inclined, and has said that there are two things she prefers to
acting--to be an author or to serve as a trained nurse.
Nine years ago, when she was at the height of her success at the Empire,
she was asked by a certain paper to state what in her opinion was the one
drawback to the full enjoyment of life on the stage, and her prompt answer
was "Monotony, the deadly routine engendered by the long run."