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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 2, 1908)
BP m & 1 H Striking Dental Displays low The Chief Assets of ) Stage Beauties. QOME years ago cigarette makers used 11 ' millions of pictures of Jae favorites in tights and the ruffles and flufferies of the ballet costume. And the popular actress was proud of her figure. She may be as proud of it now, but her fancies in photographs do not run to tights. Instead, she tries to have all her teeth glis ten and gleam as the camera clicks. No actress or show girl nowadays need expect any great vogue in magazine or post card illustration unless she can show a good set of teeth and knows how to display as much of them as possible. Marked, indeed, is the growing su premacy of teeth over tights. Dazzling dental displays have much to do with the fortunes of stage beauties. I T WAS a warm, weary and anxious crowd of voung women that filled the anteroom of the great stage manager. Seeking a posi tion in midsummer is the bane of the actress' life. A little girl in modest brown, sitting near 1 the door, sighed dejectedly as the frowsy headed boy coming from the inner office called out a : name not her own. Sinking back in her chair, she let her eyes run over the row of girls wait ing, like herself, for summons to The Presence. "He's promised me "the second lead in 'The Toes of Topsy,' " chewed a girl nearby. "And I wouldn't take anything less, you bet. Haven't I a figure that Van der I'lump says was never beaten before the camera?" Her figure? The little girl in brown, who was there for the first time, looked at her own. Well she knew there wasn't much avoirdupois, nor, truth to tell, much "shape." And most of the girls, she observed, had figures of some kind. Suddenly the boy appeared again. Her nane ! The room swum about her; the row of powdered faces and the peroxide heads blurred as she passed them. The next she knew a voice eaid, not unkindly: "Sit down." WON BY A SMILE Afterward she didn't know how Fhe g" through it but fhe remembered she smiled; sh tried to smile, although s-he didn't feel it. And when she left, engaged for a place in the chorus, she heard his voice: "You'll win all right. You have tecrh, beautiful teeth, bv Jove!" Teeth ! Rows of teeth ! (ilistening teeth; teeth :a white as ivory, as lustrous as pearls! A stage ul ueth! That was what the manager was looking for. And later came the rehearsal-. On the morning alter the first, the stage manager sat up in bed and rubbed his (y( s. Had he been dreaming! " He tried to think. What had he had at the club the night before? Yes he remembered he had had "horse's neck." It must hare .been that. Then he U-jfj i to ak himself, and it hummed monotonously in his head if you drink a "borse'i neck" do ju get a nightmare? Teth! Heavens! His entire ballet was j composed of teth! The calcium played on teeth. -Tbe curtain roe and went down on teeth. And in his dream tboe teeth performed Uncanny dances; they sidled and smirked; tiny 'pirouetted wickedly, danced wildly, madly, fate r and faster, with wild abandon, increasing to a furious frenzy. Xo wonder bis Ivad wam. 'i Latejy in tb office of the chief, he thought ful! regarded tbe pictures oa the wall. Trxre wcr core f old favorite, from Charlotte CWntaa to I'uxnj Darcrpcrt, Tbea he turned to iw 'V " ' inm- "V TO".. ft Mi 7f AC 4 f -r V a more recent army; of the stage ph"toL'T could wear tights, l.e to 'l.e latent triumphs .pher's art. Any one kin '.v ; ut good teeth .p." And the demand could not be "made i, had come for teeth. "There's Lulu i er," he rerrarked. "What is her chief asset " "Teeth. Little 1'riui Schf ff after nil they've talked about her s-hape it's teeth. There's Eva Tanguay. What's in hi r dance? Teeth. El'ie .Tflms teth. Maude Fealy used to pose with her hair all draped. Now she shows her teeth Sn doe Hattie Williams; and. bh-ss you, Kdna Wallace Hopper, too. Malel Hire has d ne a lot with her incisors. Julia Dean teeth. The chorus girls teeth. And so it gr, "Did you ever not ;'.- li dreadfully serious roost of the old-timers 1 x keH when sitting fur their photographs? Of rour. Fanny Daven port liked serious rr.k-s ; )-, was at her best in something like 'I To.-a ' And the Bern hardt would not think of howing all her teeth in 'L'Aigloa.' "Edna ifay. during her period cf grrateft triumph, was photgrarhed. perhaps, more thsn r,y other latter-day atr,. Qne reason vn that the ptnt a great deal of time in Londen, here they are literally crajy over photograph of popular actrewee. Yet one can aeldom find THE OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL, PORTLAND. SUNDAY c. , """" JV 4 0 if. T f. I 3 a picturp of F.dna May showing her indulging in a radiant smile. "How many pictures of Maud Adam have von observed with a wholeom whole-hearted grin en the rather thin face? How many tiroes has Julia Marlowe been caught smiling at the camera ? "As for Mr. Patrick Campbell, her smiles, apparently, are reserved for .Pinky Tanky Too; EWnora ,Iue. the great Italian actress, who atterrpted a conjTWt of America some yean c serm to consider it .far beneath ber dig nity to smile. "Jt'i a funny thirj, too, about EDaline Ter- fowrtNING. AUGUST 1908 Y err f-c 21 k r w fa a riss, the popular young actress, who seema to be responsible for the introduction of the smiling fad in London. Nearly every recent photograph of Miss Terriss showB her in the most serious mood, with no trace of a smile upon her pretty face." Seriously, which do you admire most, teeth or tights? Notice the postcard trade barometi- of public taste and observe which now prevails. By what subtle telepathic process small boys take to playing marbles at certain sea sons of the year is a thing such a psycholo gist as Lombroso might not be able to ex plain. It is equally true that at certain times Dublic taste changes, and they who cater to public taste by some subconscious agency, become aware, even before the hint, of what the public wants. So it was when tights gave way to the supremacy of teeth. The change came quietly, almost unobserved. But, as the small boys say, "It's here." Just as publishers knew when the public wanted historical novels, stage managers knew when it wanted teeth. Good teeth are the "Three Weeks" of the stage, just now, and will continue to be next sea,son. The rage for dental displays, which actual ly became feverish last season, has now infected London. Reports come daily concerning the marvelous teeth of the popular fairies of the calcium. It was Ellaline Terriss who introduced the vogue in London. Doubtless she saw some of the pictures of Elsie Janis, or Hattie Williams, with a foreground of gleaming ivories. Any way, her smiles became wonderfully expansive. Every time she appeared she unveiled the ivory, display. And London gave way to a strange de light. Then there was a falling off in the postal card trade. On most cards Sarah Bernhardt didn't show ber teeth. Mrs. Pat Campbell, as "Electra," bad ber mouth pursed tight. Even Miss Maud Allan's dance, n tbe postal, didn't go as well as might have been expected. In time the cardmakers awoke; they real ized what the public wanted. So, with formi dable courage, they tackled the modest actress! and demure actors whose aversion to publicity is so well known and pleaded pitifully that they deijjn to consent to new sittings.. Long effort won the day, and now, on all the stalls of London, you may find excellent like nesses very excellent likenessen -of the moat prominent tbespians with lips wide apart. They say an actress tries to look best be-. rnTiTT'ITW 1 WMi ' V F r fore the camera oh, yes, the audience changes every day, but the man who buys a cabinet or; postcard keeps it in his bachelor den or hia. office, if he is a benedict for months; maybe years, if the Cybcle or Rosamond adds spice to her career by getting divorced and remarried often enough. So they put on their best facial I bib and tucker for the camera. And they would: not think of posing except with an exceedingly j smiling countenance. I Perhaps, after all, it is as difficult to smile into a camera, when one doesn't feel like it, as to smile day after day and hour after hour into the faces of those one meets. One of the best-known funmakfjrs on the stage had the following to say, not long 6ince, upon the subject of humor because the actress who smiles successfully and winsomely must have a pretty clearly defined sense of humor: ! "Humor is spontaneous," she said. "It ia born with one or it is not. It cannot be ac quired, and it cannot be forced. "To illustrate: I often receive letters from magazines asking me to write on the humorous side of this or that. Many times I sit, my foun tain pen clutched in my hand, my features tense as a tragedian's. And nothing happens. I have to write the editor, 'I can't. That's all.' ! "Sometimes it is quite otherwise. The sub ject happens to come within the scope of my ob servations, is comprised in the rcdius of my in terest, j "Yes, the stage -oman, to become popular, must know how to smile to grin widely, if you ' must put it that. way. For the jaded man and woman, seekinjr relaxation f rm business or family cares at the theater, wish to see tbe most spontaneous, broadest smiles that tbe face can ciT."
