MISS ALLEN BEGAN AT TOP.
Essayed Rôle 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."