for Mr. Ziegfeld and he hired me
at once. I didn't even have to show him my picture taken as Aphrodite in
a classical art study.

"I went over to rehearsal, and of all the frowsy dames I ever piped--far
be it from me to knock, but they looked like a bunch of pie-trammers
that had just rushed over from Child's. The stage manager was a friend
of mine, and I asked him when he had started an old ladies' home, and he
told me--mind you, this is the strictest confidence--that the divorce
courts and the cheap rates from Pittsburg was raising Cain with the crop
of merry-merries.

"I was standing over near the piano when the leading lady galloped in.
Believe me the dog she put on would make you think that she had every
other star looking like a twinkle, and before she landed where she is
now she was leading lady for a moving picture company.

"But the comedian--honest, when he gets a couple under his belt he is
just that funny--gee! I nearly howled my head off at him calling the
tenor Gertrude.

"Say, he got awfully peevish and was mad enough to crush a grape when he
found out that he couldn't have the 'spot' when he does his duet number
with the ingenue, and when he found out that he would have to dress with
the character comedian, who is a low, coarse brute, always drinking beer
in the dressing room and not sharing with anybody, he got so mad I
thought he would burst into tears.

"He's another of these exaggerated ego guys, every move a picture, wears
his handkerchief up his sleeve and all that kind of guff.

"The funniest thing about the whole show is that the author is staging
the piece, and what he don't know about the show business would make the
Lenox Library look like a news stand He wanted the tenor to hold the
prima so she couldn't show her rings. And that's the only thing that got
her the job--her jewelry.

"We open in Hartford in a couple of weeks and then play Washington and
then come in here for a run.

"Honest, the way those two towns fall for this: 'Manager Soandso is to
be congratulated upon securing for his next week's attraction Mr.
Suchandsuch's elaborate production of the great London success, 'The
Rancid Prune,' with the following all-star cast of metropolitan
favorites.' And some of them, ach, Himmel!

"I do wish that the merry Springtime would hurry up and kick in. Them
can have the Winter that likes it, but not for little Angel-face; give
me the summer and that 'Robins Nest Again' number.

"