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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 1919)
G THE SUNDAY OREGONIAN, PORTLAND, OCTOBER- 5, 1919. "I know where the pitfalls lie, for I wasa chorus girl. I know what the chorus girl is up against. I want to make the chorus safe for girls." :.: -r ill BsMlM V' v v, '.;' ... Marie Dressier, President of the ChorusEquity Association, Tells Why , the Fight Be, Why Making People Laugh Is a Business That De serves Well of the World. 1 .V .... BY MARIE DRESSLER. T HAVE been ma actress for 30 odd I years, but the proudsst. the most inspired moment of my life was when, as president of the Chorus Equity association. I attended the State Federation of Labor convention at Syracuse not as an artiste some, thins particularly precious and re moved from the common herd but as a laborer among laborers. It Is madness to say that acting- Is not a trade. The production of any thing; necessary to the world is labor and must be learned. This sad old world needs comedians, people with the secret of Joy and of the expres sion of joy In their beinc;. It Is the hardest of tasks to make an audience laugh. Audiences do not laugh be cause they want to, but because they can't help it. It takes years of study and thought to learn how to demand that laugh. That is why I want my own chorus people to feel the Inde pendence, the pride 'and self-respect which comes only to the true artisan who has begun at the bottom and learned his way step by step to the top. That self-respect Is what I know their spiritual and actual af filiation with labor will give them. Those who, for reasons best unmen tioned. did not want us to 'affiliate with the American Federation of La bor, talked of the impossibility of temperamental artists creating while connected with anything so sordid as labor it must have been the sordid ft ess of sure pay and decent treat ment to which they referred. Michael Angelo learned his trade: he was a laborer and he got a laborer's pay. There were labor unions in Rome in those days and I am sure he was a member. I never beard that it left a taint on his art. Dream of Life Work. All my life it has been my dream to form an association of chorus peo ple which would bring the chorus back to the position it occupied in the old days as a training school, and apprenticeship for bigger work. When I started In the chorus It was where all young actors learned their trade. Some of the best-known people of the profession of today oama from the chorus. Francis Wilson started his career playing the hind legs of a camel or the left wing of a bat or something equally important. Tou know It takes study, application and real work to keep your name In elec tric lights for 20 years. I've seen nine there for 21 years. Tet I re garded the chorus as such an excel lent training school that I went back to It twice after I had started play ing leading business. A Backgroaad'' fer Chsraa Girls. None of this Is true now. The In sults and Indignities heaped on the chorus man or chorus girl are such that no sensitive person willingly undertakes that branch of theatrical work. However, necessity forces many T . $ 8 V v n 'LAV, Vt Marie Dressier, president of the Chorus Equity association, and a group of chorus girl strikers in New York. there who could have profited by the training in the old days. I can not pay too high a tribute to the men and women of the chorus of to day who are fighting against such terrible odds. I have met many, many wonderful people in the chorus and it is for their sakes thaj I want to rescue It from what It is rapidly be coming the happy " hunting ' ground of the kind of girl I call a luscious and expensive prop ratner thaa a really hard-working and earnest chorus girl. '.My idea, and one that I have had for many, many years, is to have an association for chorus people that will give them a background, a selfre spect In their vocation which will make them more responsible, more ambitious and hard working. If you start referring to a puppy as Just a cur the chances are that he will grow into a full-fledged yellow dog. When a girl goes into the chorus now the first thing that Is said of her is "she is only a chorus girl." and by and by she gets the idea, Tm only a chorus girl, no on cares, so what does It matter what I dor I am not one of those people who start barking like an excited fox ter rier and try to climb a tree for sheer joy at a chance to Interfere In some one else's morals. It Is none of my business whether any particular mem ber of my trade la moral or not. What I am concerned In Is that she shall not be obliged to sell herself in sex slavery. As a member of a strong labor as sociation no chorus girl will have to stand, insults and indignities from managers. She knows her association is backing her and she knows she can turn for protection te any stage hand who will big-brother her. As a la bor leader I want to make the chorus safe for girls, with talent, so that any girl can come Into it with a full feel ing' of moral independence. I want to make It so that they dare resent Indignities. Referring to the-work done by the Equity, Chlo Sales said to me: "Thank God, now I dare let my children- go on the stage." The Matter of Pitfalls. I know where the pitfalls He, for I was a chorus girl. I am not trying to give the' Impression that my youth ful path was beset with wicked man agers and stage-door Johnnies. It wasn't. I was too homely. But my eyesight was good, and I know what a girl in the chorus is up against, strike, of managers paying for over long rehearsals, for shoes and stock ings for the chorus, etc, will have to be eliminated. ' No longer will it lie possible for a manager to take large sums of money out of the pay en velopes of the chorus. Understand, I am speaking comparatively here. Even a magician could not perform that feat literally ostensibly to pay for the shoes and stockings his peo ple have worn out in his service and pay only about half of this sum to the shoemaker, the ultimate destina tion of the rest being a secret known only to himself. And the Chorus Equity association will protect the manager quite as much as the members of the chorus. It will see that the people of the chorus play fairly and squarely with the management that has played fairly and squarely with them. It will not be necessary for the wary manager to pay the chorus on Tues day rather than Saturday for fear 'The question discussed in the they will Jump over the week-end to another show where they hope foi better treatment. And the manager who has signed up his chorus for a road tour when the New York season 1 l V an, and A M f -..V. ' .KCiV :;::pj : I- 4 : ::--. jtOi-Jfe-'.: :: '".5kT-k f i. ?-lL linn nimni liniiir"1 Ar-ti,.. 1- .. - v,.. ...j, ,4-' -V ii - '-t f i1 V I I I .i 1 ' i . ' 3 - li- -OV 11. n,'t .a -4 1- . ... It - - - shall be over on the day of departu One of the stage groups broken up by New York's extra ordinary demonstration. can go to the station I that his entire chorus will be there i union to be as a mother, a help ana ' departure and know I I want my own particular labor I never failing resource to the people Edith Hallor. who came close to a choice as leader of the chorus girl strikers.- of the chorus, the one place where they can always be sure of help. One thing I am going to work for as a labor leader and I hall never cease working for it Is a. better un derstanding between capital and labor and between actors and managers. I do not want to fight all managers; I want to bring them to a closer un derstanding of the actor. And I do not want to fight all capital. Not all wealthy people are the Criminal blood suckers some would have us believe. I have found many, so many, who are willing and anxious to work and help, only they do not know how. They have been eager for suggestions, en thusiastic In their offers of support. Mrs. John D. Rockefeller and Mrs. William Fellows Morgan have prom ised to help in a plan I have had for years, that of establishing, under the auspices-, now of the Chorus Equity association. In New York and in every large cltyof the country, a chain of players' houses for the people of the theater. This would form a chain of real homes where theatrical people could live in oongenlal and com fortable surroundings at moderate prices. It wouldn't be an Institution or a home in the sense that the word is coming to be used. It would be de signed especially for their needs. There would be suppers served after the theater, a time when every one who has been brought up In the smell of grease paint gets hungry. And there would be little sitting rooms where the girls could receive and entertain the men they know and be courted and maybe get mar ried like any other working girl. All these things the strength which the Chorus Equity association has gained from its affiliation with the American Federation of Labor will help win for us. But there is a bigger, a much bigger thing that we will get. I felt it in Syracuse I hava . never cease feeling it and I want my Dejle to feel It, too a sense of oneness, of closeness to one's own people the workers of the world. RIP VAN WINKLE OF PACIFIC RIVALS MR. IRVING'S CLASSIC Old Indian Tale Is Every Whit as Interesting as Catskill Mountain Tarn and Has a Much More Pleasing Finale. R IP VAX WINKLE Is popularly became a famous medicine man after association with the Catskill his long sleeo. mountains through Washing ton Irving'a classic bit of fiction that for long haa been a fixture of Eng lish literature In our schools, yet there is anotner Rip Van Winkle of whom the world has little heard. It is the Rip Van Winkle of the Pacific coast every whit as interesting as the poor old Rip of New York state and the story has a much mora pleasing finale, since the westerner Mount Rainier, the great Icy octo pus rising 14.408 feet above sea level In the state of Washington, Its great bulk visible 150 miles away. Is the scene of the wanderings and the great long "snoose" of this western Rip Van Winkle. The story, written more than half a century ago. Is brought again to light by Robert Sterling Yard, chief of the education al division, national park service, de partment of the interior, in his la test ' volume on the great national parks of America. The story runs In this fashion: According to Theodore Winthrop, who visited the northwest in 1853 and published a book entitled "The Canoe and the Saddle." which bad wide vogue at the time and is con sulted today. Mount Rainier bad its Indian Rip Van Winkle. The story was told to him in great detail by Haraltchou, "a frowsy ancient of the Squallyamish." The hero was a wise and wily fish erman and hunter. Also, as his pas sion was gain, he became an excellent business man. He always had salmon and berries when food became scarce and prices high. Gradually he amassed large savings in hlaqua, the little perforated shell which was the most valued form of wampum, the Indian's money. The richer he got the stronger his passion grew for hlaqua, and when a spirit told him In a dream of vast hoards at the summit of Rainier he determined to climb the mountain. The spirit was Tamanous. which. Winthrop explains, is the vague Indian -personification of the supernatural. So he threaded the forests and climbed the mountain's glistening side. At the summit he looked over the rim Into a large basin, in the bottom of which was a black lake surrounded by purple rock. At the lake's eastern end stood three monu ments. The first was as tall as a man and had a head carved like a salmon; the second was the image of a camas bulb: the two represented the' great necessities of Indian life. The third was a stone etk's head with the antlers in velvet. At the foot of this monument he dug a bole. Suddenly a noise behind him caused him to turn. An otter clambered over the edge of the lake and struck the snow with Its tatL Eleven others any otter he had ever, seen; their chief was four times as big. The eleven sat themselves In a circle around him; the leader climbed upon the stone elk head. At first the treasure seener was abashed, but he had come to find hlaqua and he went on digging. At every thirteenth stroke the leader of the otters tapped the stone elk with his tail and the 11 followers tapped the snow with their tails. Once they all gathered closer and whacked the digger good and hard with their tails, but, though astonished and badly bruised, he went on working. Pres ently he broke his elkhorn pick, but Finally his pick struck a flat rock the biggest otter seized another in bis teeth and handed it to hjm. with a hollow sound, and the otters all drew near and gazed into the hole, breathing excitedly. He lifted the rock and under it found a cavity followed. Each was twice as biff asifiUed.to the brim with, pure white hlaqua, very shell unbroken and beautiful. Never was treasure-quest so suc cessful! The. otters, recognla'ng him as the favorite of Tamanous, retired to distance and gazed upon him respectfully. "But the miser," writes the narra tor, "never thought of gratitude, never thought to hang a string from the buried treasure about the sal man and camas Tamanous stones, and two strings around the elk's bead; no, all must be his own, all he could carry now and the rest for tie future." Greedily he loaded himself with the booty and laboriously climbed to the rim of the bowl prepared for the de scent of the mountain. The otters, puffing in concert, plunged again in to the lake, which at once disappeared under a black cloud. Straightway a terrible storm arose through which the voice of Tamanous 1 screamed tauntingly. Blackness closed around him. When he awoke he lay under an arbutus tree in a meadow of camas. He was shockingly stiff and every movement pained him. But he man aged to gather and smoke some dry arbutus leaves and eat a lew camas bulbs. He was astonished to find his hair very long and matted and him self bent and feeble. Tamanous," he muttered. Nevertheless, he was calm and happy. Strangely he did not regret his lost strings of hlaqua. Fear was gone and his heart was filled with love. Slowly and painfully he made his way home. Everything was strangely altered. Ancient trees grew where shrubs had grown four days before. Cedars under whose shade l.e used to sleep, lay rotting on the ground. Airplane motor' revolution meters have been invented by an Englishman to enable an aviator to estimate his speed and distance traveled.