O.O. McIntyre

Passaic Daily News/January 6, 1920

New York, Jan. 6.—Theatrical stars are literally made overnight in New York but they twinkle only for a brief period and disappear. It is possible to number on the fingers of one hand stars of the last decade who have had real careers. I can think of two at the moment—Maude Adams and Ethel Barrymore.

The rest have talent and genius but little capacity for hard work. A career means to them a continuous run on Broadway. They merely flash for a short while in the theatrical heavens not because of any lack of ability but because they will not leave the city.

Just recently an actress who it is believed had the most promising career of the present crop of stars quit the legitimate stage to go into the movies. The reason? It kept her in Manhattan and gave her a salary of $3,000 a week instead of $1,000. But only for a year. She had years of great moments and rich rewards ahead on the legitimate stage.

The hinterland to the average star means horse hide sofas, cracked china cups, bewhiskered landlords and town halls. They do not realize that some of the smaller cities have more appreciate audiences, better theatres and more genuine hotel comforts than they get in their stuffy chicken coop apartments here.

They may last two seasons on Broadway and a few weeks more in The Bronx and Brooklyn and the public here tires of them for the time being, at least. But they remain gauche and undaunted—not realizing they are out of it and that they can take up their career in the great world outside with New York success to give it impetus.

It is indeed a whimsical, unreal world, this world of the stage and an actor or actress of worth is only awakened from the dream of unreal values by the sudden realization that he or she is out of a job. Instead of a plucky fight for favor of the so-called “tank towns” they stubbornly stick to the Rialto and soon they are heard of no more. Voila!

_________________________________________

There is a black and white artist named Fish, whose offerings deal in the odd and bizarre in current periodicals. The artist has been somewhat of a mystery. Some said he lived in Greenwich Village and others said he was a product of the middle west.

Wherever he lived it was certain that he knew how to satirize society and could sketch a knickerbockered butler so haughty that it made you fume to see it. Fish was a wizard at drawing bridge playing bishops, lean curates, young bloods of the town, petering out peers, western vampires, horsemen, poets and pests.

In art circles here the insistent demand was to know who Fish was. The truth came out recently. Fish is an English girl. Despite the fact that he—beg pardon, she—is the most cosmopolitan of black and white satirists, she lives down on the Suffolk coast in England and has never seen Fifth Avenue or a London drawing room. Her creative imagination is wholly responsible for the people she draws, people whom the great capitals of the universe recognize and laugh over. She has never lived the life she limns. Rather she is a country miss of 23 who hoes in the garden and milks the cows.

______________________________________

The day or night is rare when something does not happen in New York that would keep the rest of the country talking for a month but is forgotten in this city of constant wonders as soon as the ink on the newspapers that made it public is dry. The sight of two men climbing down the Broadway side of one of the large hotels and a policeman leaning out of a window shooting at them happened at Broadway and Forty-second early the other morning. The men had beaten up the hotel guests and robbed them. It is only one of many daring crimes lately. The police say it is a result of crooks steeling themselves with drugs instead of gin and whisky as they did in the old days.