TYPES
They've got me down for a hick, bo,
Sam Harris says I'm the best boob in the biz,
And that no manager will cast me for anything else.
Curses on my hit in "'Way Down East"
That handcuffs me forever to yokels,
And me a better character actor than Corse Payton!
That's how it is they're stuck on types,
And the wise guy who plays anything
Isn't given a look-in.
Listen to me, young feller, and don't ever
Let 'em tab you for keeps as a type.
It's curtains for a career as sure as you're born.
Why, there's actors sentenced to comedy dog parts,
To Chinks, to Wops, to Frenchmen and fluffs.
There ain't no release for them.
The producers and managers can see only one angle,
And you may be a Mansfield or Sothern.
It's outrageous that's what it is, that make-up
And character acting should be thrown in the discard.
You can sit in an agent's office for months
Before a part comes along that you fit without fixin'.
This natural stuff puts the kibosh on art
And a stock training ain't what it used to be.
Say, if ever I rise to be hind legs of a camel
Or a bloodhound chasing Eliza, I'll kick or I'll bite
The type-choosing manager.
GEORGE M. COHAN
Blessed be Providence
That gave us our Cohan;
Irreverent,
Resourceful, prolific, steady-advancing
George M.
Nothing in life
Better becomes him
Than his earliest choice
Of Jerry and Helen
For father and mother;
Bred in the wings and the dressing room,
The theatre alley his playground,
Hotels his home and his schoolhouse,
Blessed with a wonderful sister,
And in love with a violin.
From baby days used to the footlights,
With infrequent teachers of book lore
In the cities of lengthy engagements
Showing him pages of learning
That he turned from to life's open volume,
Acquiring indelible lessons,
Loyalty, candor, clear seeing,
Sincerity, plain speaking, love of his own,
Passion for all things American.
From Jerry, his father,
Came Celtic humor, delight in the dance,
And devotion to things of the theatre;
From Helen, his mother,
Depth, Celtic devotion to things of the spirit,
Fineness of soul.
Early he turned from his fiddle
To write popular songs
And tunes so whistly and catchy
That the music of a child
Enraptured the nation.
Then followed comedy sketches,
Gay little pieces that made public
And player-folk chatter of Cohan.
Later, essaying the musical comedy,
He wrote "Running for Office,"
To be followed by that impudent
Classic of fresh young America,
"Little Johnnie Jones."
One followed another in rapid succession;
His name grew a cherished possession,
And ever his dancing delighted.
His manner of singing and speaking
Provoked to endless imitation.
His personality became better known
Then the President's.
Always he soared in ambition
And, becoming a lord of the theatre,
He ventured on serious drama,
And out of his wisdom and watching
Wrote masterful plays,
Envisaging the types of our natives.
Truly a genius,
Genius in friendship, genius in stagecraft,
Genius in life!
Even in choosing a partner
He fattened his average,
Batting four hundred
By taking a kindred irreverent soul,
Graduated out of the whirlpool
That wrecks all but the strongest,
Born on the eastern edge
Of Manhattan,
Sam H. Harris, man of business,
Who to the skill of the trader
Adds the joy in life
And the sense of humor,
Coupled with pleasure in giving
And helping
That Cohan demands of his pals.
Together they plan wonderful projects,
And the artist soul
And the soul of commerce
Are an unbeatable union.
Best of all about Cohan
Is his congenital manliness.
He sees Americans
As our soil and our air and our water
Have made them;
Types as distinct as the Indian.
He follows no school,
Knows little of movements artistic.
A lonely creator,
His friends are not writing men,
Reformers, uplifters or zealots.
He writes the life he has lived
So fully and zestfully,
And over it all plays like sheet lightning
A beneficent humor.
Growth is his hall-mark,
Hard work his chief recreation;
Not Balzac could toil with labor titanic
More terribly.
George M. Cohan,
Excelling in everything—
Beloved son, brother, father, partner, friend,
Our best-beloved man of the theatre.
DAVID BELASCO
King David of old slew the Philistines;
Our David has made them admirers and patrons;
He has numbered the people
Night after night in his theatres.
Will he ever, I wonder, send forth for the Shunammite?
Many there be who would answer his calling,
For he has shown ambitious fair women
To acting's high places.
As Rodin in marble saw wondrous creations
To be freed by the chisel,
So Belasco in immature genius and beauty
Sees the resplendent star to be kindled
At his own steady beacon.
Too varied a mind for our comprehension,
Too big and too broad and too subtle
To be understood of the bourgeois American
Whom he has led decade after decade
By a nose ring artistic.
Capable of everything, he has worked
With the ease of a master, giving the public
Marvelous detail, unfailing sensation and poses pictorial;
Preferring the certain success to arduous striving
For the more excellent things of the future.
Like David his forebear, a king but no prophet,
Amazingly wise in his own generation.
A wizard in art of the everyday,
Lord of the spotlight and dimmer,
But nursing the unconquerable hope, the inviolable shade
Of what in his dreams Oriental
He fain would do, did not necessity drive him.
His the fascination of a great personality.
Who knoweth not him of the clerical collar?
Hair of the sage and eyes of the poet,
Features perfectly drawn and as mobile
As those of the inspired actor;
With speech so much blander than honey
And insight that maketh his staged stumbling in bargains
Cover the shrewdness of a masterly trader.
None better than he knoweth the crowd and its likings,
As to using the patter of drama artistic,
That's where he lives.
With incense and color and scenery
He refilleth the bottle of art so that the contents
Go twice better than in the original package.
Thanks be to David for joy in the playhouse.
Wizard, magician, necromancer of switchboards,
He hath woven spells from the actual,
Keeping ideals and ideas well in the background.
Like Gautier, these things delight him:
Gold, marble and purple; brilliance, solidity, color.
He can stage Tiffany's jewels but not Maeterlinck's bees.
Deep in his soul there are tempests
Revealed in the storms of his dramas—
Sandstorm and snowstorm, rainstorm and hurricane.
That nature revealed in its subtle reactions
Would show in its deeps the soul of an Angelo
Subdued to success and dyed by democracy.
Opportunism hath made him
An artistic materialist.
One work remains for David Belasco,
And that is to stage with patient precision
A cross section in drama of his own self-surprising,
Making the world sit up and take notice
With what "masterly detail," "unfailing atmosphere,"
"Startling reality" he can star David Belasco.