Some actors at my little theatre the other night got talkin’ about “stage-fright,” and tellin’ anecdotes about it. It seems that E. L. Davenport one night here in New York got an attack of stage-fright of the very worst kind. He was playin’ at the Olympic with Mrs. John Wood, and all of a sudden his knees trembled, he lost his voice, and shook like an aspen leaf. He couldn’t go on with his part. Mrs. Wood thought he was ill, and was goin’ to ring down the curtain. But the fit passed almost as rapidly as it came on, and in a few minutes E. L. was himself again.
This “stage-fright,” or nervous dread of an audience, is one of the most unaccountable things in the world. It probably has laws of its own, but what they are nobody knows.
Sometimes when you expect it sure, it don’t come at all. Ned Forrest didn’t have stage fright the first time he appeared on the stage. Neither did Burton. Mrs. Mowatt, the actress, came near havin’ a terrible attack of it on her first appearance at the old Park Theatre, but warded it off, just out of spite, in a thoroughly womanly manner.
Skerrett at that time was the low comedian of the Park, and he had been prophesizin’ to Mrs. Mowatt all the time that she would have a fit of fright the moment she faced the footlights. Mrs. Mowatt protested that she wouldn’t. But still Skerrett persisted that when the time came for facin’ her first audience, Mrs. Mowatt wouldn’t be able to speak a word from sheer scare, and Barry and Mrs. Vernon seem to agree with him.
Well, the time came–the moment of her debut arrived. She was to go on as Pauline in “The Lady of Lyons,” and havin’ taken her place with Mrs. Vernon as Madame Deschappeles, the signal was about to be given to raise the curtain, when Mrs. Mowatt was seized, just as Davenport was afterwards, and nearly choked and fainted.
She clutched Mrs. Vernon’s hand. “For God’s sake do not let that curtain go up yet!” she cried; “not yet. I cannot–cannot–” Then she gasped for breath.
Mrs. Vernon tried to reassure her, but in vain. Barry went to her side to calf her down, in vain. Finally Skerrett came along. “Where’s your courage” he asked. “Didn’t I tell you so?”
These words were enough. What all the doctors couldn’t have done for her then, Skerrett’s jeer accomplished. Woman-like, just to “spite her tormentor,” she determined not to gratify him by exhibitin’ any fright. By a tremendous effort of will she conquered her agitation, and turning to Skerrett, said: “I told you I would not be frightened. And see, I am not. Ring up the curtain.”
The curtain went up and the play went on beautifully. Yet years afterwards this very Mrs. Mowatt was seized with “stage-fright” of the very worst kind.
Once an actor tried to palm his drunkenness off on Mrs. John Wood as “stage-fright.” He came rollin’ and reelin’ on the stage, and mumbled a lot of jargon instead of recitin’ the words of his part. And then when Mrs. Wood was goin’ to discharge him for intoxication, he struck an attitude and swore by all that was holy that he had not touched a drop.
‘’You know,” he said, “that stage-fright affects one just like drunkenness.”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Wood, “but then it don’t affect one’s breath. It don’t make it smell of whiskey as yours does.” So the actor was discharged.
Stage-fright is almost as funny as stage friendship, or love and hate among actors and actresses, when on the stage. I have known an actor and actress to be playin’ lover parts all the time, who never spoke a word to each other off the stage, and only spoke to each other at rehearsals about stage business through the prompter.
An actor called Barnes, and his wife, who quarreled like cats and dogs, used to like to embrace each other on the stage before the audience, and for no other reason than just to bother and tease each other. She would take a chance while doin’ the tender business, to pinch him, and of course he couldn’t resent it before all the people. And he would get even with her by rubbin’ off the powder and disarrangin’ the paint on her face. Once Barnes stuck a pin into his wife and ran it in so hard that, although it was a benefit night and the theatre was full, she couldn’t restrain herself, and extractin’ herself from his embrace, slapped his face soundly, to the great delight of the gods in the gallery.
But if stage “love” is often this way, a sham, there is a deal of reality in stage “pluck.” Actors, and especially actresses, have a deal of nerve, in the way of their profession. The women of the stage seem to have more of it even than the men. Lucille Western was full of it. Adelaide Neilson, frail as she looked, had plenty of it. She played an engagement once at Booth’s, in which every night she fainted behind the scenes from sheer fatigue, and was only kept alive by raw brandy.
One of the pluckiest women on the stage was this Mrs. Mowatt already mentioned. She wasn’t strong to look at, but was full of determination.
Once she was playin’ Juliana in “The Honeymoon” supported by E. L. Davenport. There was a tremendous house and she was playin’ finely. At the end of the second act she rushed to her dressing room as quick as she could to put on her dress for the last scene. But on her way to the room she dashed against a pair of boots, and cut her throat with ‘em. That is to say, the boots were on the feet of one of the stage carpenters who had thrown himself upon a sofa and was lyin’ down, with his feet on top of the sofa back, a deal higher than his head, and the sharp edge of these boots jagged right against her throat.
This sudden rush against a pair of clod-hoppers hurt the actress’s neck and breast a good deal. Still she didn’t have time to stop and bother about it. The audience were waitin’, and her maid was waitin’, too. She dashed on to the dressin’-room and dressed, her neck and breast hurtin’ her more and more.
The curtain rose on the last act, and Mrs. Mowatt came on, loudly applauded, and lookin’ splendidly. But she could hardly speak. Her throat seemed full. She felt like chokin’. Still she struggled on till about the middle of the scene; then she couldn’t stand it any longer. She came up to Davenport, who was playin’ the Duke, and gasped:
“Cut the scene!”
“Why?” asked Duke Davenport.
“Because I can’t speak,” she replied.
“Then I will cut the scene,” said Davenport, and he did. They both “came to cues” as they say on the stage, and made short work of the wind-up. Still it went off well, and Mrs. Mowatt had to wait and come out before the curtain twice, gettin’ fainter and her throat gettin’ fuller all the time.
At last the actress got to her dressin’-room. A doctor was sent for, and then it was discovered that she had ruptured a blood vessel. The shock of the boots had ruptured it, and for a full half-hour the woman had been actin’ with a ruptured blood vessel. No prize-fighter ever beat that pluck.
[Editor’s notes: For further identification:
–Mrs. John Wood (Matilda Charlotte Vining), (1831-1915), English actress and theatre manager
–Edward Loomis Davenport (1816-1877), American actor. He married actress Fanny Elizabeth Vining, cousin to Mrs. John Wood.
–Anna Cora Mowatt (1819-1870), American actress, author, playwright, and preservationist. Her book, Autobiography of an Actress, Or Eight Years on the Stage (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1854) was the source for several of the anecdotes in the column above.
–George Skerrett (1810-1855), English actor, comedian, theatre manager
–Jane Marchant Fisher Vernon (1796-1869), English actress, known for her roles as an old woman]
