4
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
“DIZZY ACTORS.”
Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), is an antiquated old beau, a silly old dandy, who curls his thin, grey locks, and is generally dubbed "Dizzy."
I am not prepared to state, however, that from his pet name was called the broken-down actors of the United States, and that sort of audiences which in former days was understood as "quizby."
However fierce the sting of poverty may be—however heavy the hand of fate may be upon him—the Dizzy never doubts his own talent; if others roll in wealth while he suffers the pangs of hunger, he attributes it to "luck" which favors others less deserving of fortune than himself, or to a depraved and degenerate public taste, that cannot recognize nor appreciate a good actor when it sees one. Notwithstanding, there are instances of terribly dizzy people being remarkably successful. There is a story told of a certain actor who started starring a few years ago — with a "specialty" of his own in the shape of a fearfully and wonderfully bad sensation piece; the profession could not determine which was the worst, his acting or the play. A manager telegraphed that he would give him five hundred dollars for one week's performance. He replied:
"I accept your $500 for the week. Have sent parts and book."
Back came a dispatch saying :
“No—mistake—fifty ($50) for the week.”
The young star flashed back the answer:
"All right; I accept $50 for week. Have sent parts and book."
Time and experience, they tell me, have now made a very fair actor of him.
The worst and most famous as the worst of dizzy actors was, without doubt, McKean Buchanan. He used to be a sugar broker in New Orleans, got stage struck, and "sailed out" as star. He was a good fellow, witty, well-educated, tall and fine-looking. He had many friends, some of whom encouraged his mania as a joke, and others from kindly feeling. He was the best tempered man that ever lived—if one might judge by the beaming smiles with which he received the laughter and derisive applause which greeted his Shakespearean efforts, for nothing short of Hamlet, Othello, and such parts, would he appear in.
"My wardrobe," he would say, "is too good for anything but old Bill."
And in those days no one in the West and South had seen the like of his costumes. It took a mountain of velvet to make him a king's cloak, and in one of his fearful rushes on the stage, in one of Othello's jealous frenzies, he would say to the actors standing at the wing:
"Stand aside, minions! Make room for my three-ply — imported from Lyons, every inch of it! Blood! blood, Iago! blood!"
For his first few engagements he was utterly dumbfounded because the audiences "guyed" him, but he got used to it after a while, and accepted the popular verdict; he disarmed criticism by avowing himself as the worst star actor in the civilized world, but he never truly believed that that was really the case. He had a curious habit of losing his breath between his sentences, and catching it up again with the exclamation of "a!" thus, he would say;
"Tis—a—he—a" "Tis—a—she—a!" and—
“Hang out—a—”
“Our banners—a”
"On the outward—walls—a-"
"They—a—come—a!"
"The cry—a-"
When the actors would suggest new readings to him, he would loftily reply, "Look at the house! there isn't standing room in front. I think my old readings will do well enough."
star was too smart to dismiss so good a business manager as that, for such a trifling weakness, which he met and overcame in another way. After the performance he would almost invariably sit down with the agent at draw poker, and never failed to win back all the money. He used to say he had to play twice over for every dollar he got.
He was as fine a poker player as he was bad as an actor. He had an agent to travel with him, who in his business was invaluable; he had a thousand virtues and one vice, which vice was that he would rob Buchanan regularly every night of the larger part of his receipts, whether great or small. But the
A certain facetious low comedian says that of all modern actors, "Dr. Landis, of Philadelphia, is the most wondrously dizzy. He came to New York last winter, after inflicting himself occasionally on long-suffering Philadelphia, until there were signs of riot and revolt in the air when his name was mentioned there. He knew he was talented, but was only kept down at home by petty local jealousies; so he came, and at one of the minor theatres astonished, and, for a time, amused its patrons by a round of tragedy impersonations. It is hard to say what he played worst, but probably his Hamlet was the most ghostly thing ever beheld outside of a morgue. In disgust at his lack of success as a tragedian, he had a piece got up for him in which to burlesque tragedy—which seemed to be his strong point. In it he killed everybody in the cast at least once, and was himself killed four times. Multitudes would have rushed with fond anticipation and delight to witness the proceedings had one of the four times been real; but as all were, like himself, only sham, people kept away from the theatre, and finally he abandoned the stage in disgust.
"He used to drive the famous Count Joannes to frenzy by his challenges to play for the championship."
"How long," said a crushed tragedian to a ticket clerk in a depot, striking an attitude, "how long will it take a first-class actor to get to Podunk?"
"No longer," replied the clerk, "than it would any other first-class darned fool!"
Mr. E. F. Thorne was once acting with a man who was as dizzy in the words as in his art; in reply to every speech he would thrust his hand into the breast of his coat, and, striking an attitude a la Sothern, would say, "I, sir, am an American gentleman," which praiseworthy and patriotic statement was irrelevant, and afforded no clew to the plot of the play, and even more vague in furnishing a cue upon which to give an intelligent rejoinder.
Wearied at last by the glittering but monotonous generality, Mr. Thorne, on his side, struck a tragedy pose and responded:
"Prove it! Prove that you are an American gentleman and I'll show you where we can make a barrel of money!"
These interpolations into the rightful text will give the uninitiated reader a good idea of what is meant by the technical term of "gagging."
Very different is the female to the male dizzy. While he is painfully skirmishing for forage in the outlying precints of civilization, she purchases for a fabulous sum a wardrobe in Paris, a piece in London, and "an opening" in New York, where her "youth, beauty and talent" are rung the changes on by the press; if she is a passee "society lady," who has concluded to honor the stage with her presence, then her "accomplishments and literary ability" become the theme of every tongue, and in all human probability she is said to write her "own play," like the great American champion Dizzy Actress Anna Dickinson.
In every case she has the control of money; most generally it percolates into her pocket through that mysterious channel aguely known as "a backer"—that Mrs. Harris, of the theatrical Betsy Gamps—with the difference in favor of the Fothringays of the stage, that "there is such a person, Sary."
The dizzy ramifies through every department of the histrionic art—from the star to the supe. I remember a dizzy little Dutchman out West, who was burning to become an American actor and could not be made to understand in those days of predeliction for drinking at the "well of English undefiled," that his terrible accent was an impediment to his playing Hamlet and the like.
In a dramatization of one of Cooper's novels he was given just one line to speak, and invariably brought down the house when he bawled out at the top of his lungs:
"Ein pote along ter site!" ("A boat alongside!")