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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
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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
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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
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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-.
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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."