Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1911 — MERELY AS A “BUSINESS” [ARTICLE]

MERELY AS A “BUSINESS”

Actors' Love-Making a Farce/ and Stage Lovers Often Are -Bitter Enemies. Chicago.—ln the course of an interesting article on stage love-making an suitor who has been the stage lover of most of America’s most famous actresses Bays: “I must make one more pin prick in the old bubble surrounding the idea that players in doing love scenes actually feel any of the emotions they portray. Strange as it may seem, many persons still believe that stage couples invariably fall deeply in love with each other after playing love scenes together. '- This is an old, old fallacy and in all my Btage career I remember only two instances of this sort “Everything that is done on the stage outside of the speaking of lines comes under the head of ’business.’ An actor walks across the stage, another lights a cigarette, an actress throws her arms around another player’s neck and kisses him fondly—aj’, this is ‘business’ and amounts to jusl what that word expresses. The play ers arp paid to do Just what a stags manager teMs them to do and whethei it be stabbing or kissing it is gone through in exactly the same. impersonal manner. The actor’s feelings when he embraces the leading lady are' the same as if he were tying; his necktie.” •