Footlights

John Shakespeare’s son remarked once in a play he lightly invited us to take “As You Like It” that all the world’s a stage. He told us that men and women have their exits and th...

It was inevitable that Parsinova should meet Hubert Randolph, as Lou Seabury had prophesied. It was not inevitable that he should prove to be the man whose intent gaze had held...

We who sit in the orchestra of life are inclined to smile, to lend willing ear to whispers of scandal from behind the footlights. Perhaps the standards are a bit less rigid on t...

Out Long Island way on the North Shore where Newport goes to stretch her tired limbs after a busy season, there’s a house set like a long white couch on a green carpet that spre...

Across Bryant Park, chilled and damp under a gray sky emptied of stars, a man hurried. His overcoat collar was turned up. His soft hat was pulled down. His eyes between the two...

Over Long Island, as Cleeburg drove in the following day, hung a mist that made the low hills look like a mirage melting into the sky. It was as if the smoke of the city reached...

Of course that was not her name. No one knew just how she had been christened—if at all. To a worshipful public she was known as Jane Goring, which, as names go, answered all pu...

At 5.00 a. m. ’Dolph Cleeburg was seated in the living-room-library den of his apartment completely surrounded by early editions and the butts of cigars. One of the latter circl...

Have you ever been in a small town, small time vaudeville house? Well, even if you have, and could live through it, you’ve probably never seen that mysterious region known as “b...

A car pulled up sharp at the curb and a woman leaned out to read the tall lettering. It loomed startling and white against a black ground. Along a street where theaters crowded...

She gave delicious interviews in which she misapplied American slang in a way that made the press chuckle. She spoke of the tragedy of Russia. She told of her struggles there. S...

The hum of arrival in that great hive, the Grand Central, kept up an incessant drone. Scurrying figures swarmed like bees from the gates to disappear into the night. Red caps ra...

Exceeding the most exalted expectations, “Peacock” ran two full seasons. It might even have packed houses during the hot spell, save that the star decided to give herself a rest...

She had weary eyes—eyes with the weight of centuries of knowledge upon them—eyes that could no longer open wide with astonishment at anything life might hold. The lashes were so...

A Kane opening is not an ordinary first night. It happens, at the outside, twice a season at the two most artistic theaters in New York. It is an event as important socially as...

Some months later word came from the West that Bob McNaughton had secured a divorce. There had been no personal reply to her letter. Calmly and quietly he had complied with her...

They opened in Washington the end of August. Cleeburg tried to get Atlantic City but the theater had been booked weeks before his bid for it. Hence, in spite of the star’s popul...

This will be the fourth time I’ve seen the show and the third time I’ve asked you to go to supper. If you tell me you can’t again, I’ll think you don’t want to—and quit. No, on...

“And I said to him: ‘My deah boy, don’t talk to me as if I were your wife! And don’t imagine you’re the only twin six in town.’ And we settled it right then and there.” The full...

To a woman, the discovery that events do not work out as she had planned comes in the nature of a disappointment. To a man, the same discovery adds zest to the determination to...

“H’m!” Merciless blue eyes took in the small white face, listless shoulders and drooping mouth, while their owner hummed low and languorously, “When I Come Back to You.” After w...

Through the window Naomi had lifted that morning, the shaft of sunlight receded slowly until it slipped away. Naomi had been sitting in the same position ever since her door had...

Miss Mallard’s wide, wondering orbs, accompanied by Grace’s, turned toward the door. Sallie MacMahon had just entered, resplendent in spring outfit. Above slim ankles billowed a...

For a long time, almost a year to be exact, Mr. Kane had been letting fall gentle hints of his discovery of a rare Russian genius, driven by the war to these shores. He was havi...

It was an afternoon of late March, grim and forbidding, as if winter had thrown a last shadow across oncoming spring. The steam heat, turned off in the chorus dressing-rooms dur...

Parsinova unlocked her door, stepped into the little foyer and after an instant’s pause to take off hat and dustcoat, crossed the hall to her living-room. Once more cretonne hun...

Naomi made no pretense of trying to sleep. She did not even resort to the bromide she was in the habit of taking when rest refused to come. She merely lay, with blinds drawn to...

This letter is going to be harder to write than an income tax report. When a man has never before been on his knees to a woman, they’re apt to be creaky and resist bending. But...