MY
ACTOR-HUSBAND
A TRUE STORY
OF
AMERICAN STAGE LIFE
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1912, by
JOHN LANE COMPANY
To
PROFESSOR CHARLES T. COPELAND
Of Harvard University
| CHAPTER I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX |
FOREWORD—A RETROSPECT
IN presenting this autobiography to the public, the author feels itincumbent upon herself to impress upon her readers the fidelity andstrict adherence to the truth, relative to the conditions which surroundthe player. In no instance has there been either exaggeration or aresort to imaginative creation. It is a true story with all the uglinessof truth unsoftened and unembellished. Nor is the situation presented anexceptional one. One has but to follow the career of the average actorto be convinced that the dramatic profession is not only inconsistentwith but wholly hostile to the institution of marriage. Managers andactors alike know and admit this to be the truth—amongst themselves.What they say in print is, of course, merely so much self-exploitation.The success of any branch of "the show-business" is dependent on thebureau of publicity.
To one intimately acquainted with the life, the effusions of certainactors' wives, which from time to time appear in magazines for women,are ironically humourous. They are to be put down as the babbling of thenewly-weds or the hunger for seeing their names in print. To hear thewife of a star declare that she always goes to the theatre and sits inthe wings to watch her husband act is to presage the glaring head-linesof a divorce in the not-far-distant future. If it be not now, yet itwill come, for those players who go through life with but one, even twomarriages to their credit are the great exception to the rule. Theactor's life precludes domesticity and without domestic life there canbe no successful marriages.
Every community has its stage-struck girls. Year after year theAcademies of Divine Art turn out graduates like so many clothes-pins.