PART ONE ASPIRATION
CHAPTER ONE ELEPHANTS
CHAPTER TWO THE DOCTOR TURNS SHOWMAN
CHAPTER THREE KIT MAKES UP HER MIND
CHAPTER FOUR FIRST STEPS TOWARD THE GOAL
CHAPTER FIVE KIT’S CAREER BEGINS
CHAPTER SIX KIT LEARNS A LESSON
CHAPTER SEVEN KIT GOES TO LONDON
CHAPTER EIGHT LOVE
CHAPTER NINE MARRIAGE—AND “A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT”
PART TWO ATTAINMENT
CHAPTER TEN “THE WAY THINGS HAPPEN”
CHAPTER ELEVEN STARDOM
CHAPTER TWELVE GERTRUDE MACY
CHAPTER THIRTEEN “THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN TROUPERS
CHAPTER FIFTEEN JULIET
CHAPTER SIXTEEN KATHARINE CORNELL GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE HOME AMONG THE DUNES
PHOTOGRAPHS
INDEX OF SEARCHABLE TERMS
CURTAIN GOING UP!
The Story of Katharine Cornell
Curtain Going Up!
The Story of Katharine Cornell
GLADYS MALVERN
With a foreword by Katharine Cornell
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
First Edition published 1943 by Julian Messner, Inc.
Copyright © 1943, 2013 by Glady Malvern estate
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2886-8
Distributed in 2015 by Open Road Distribution
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
For
MY MOTHER
The author acknowledges source material from “I Wanted to be an Actress,” the autobiography of Katharine Cornell as told to Ruth Woodbury Sedgwick, published by Random House, New York, 1938-9. Sincere gratitude belongs to Miss Gertrude Macy for her unfailing co-operation. I am indebted, also, to Miss Cornell herself who, bombarded with my questions, took the onslaught in her stride.
WERE ANYONE to ask me to summarize my career in the theater, I think I would be tempted to say: “Twenty-seven years of hard work.” I suppose there may have been once, somewhere, an actress who became a success overnight, who sprang into public attention like Venus from her shell; there must be some basis in fact for a Cinderella legend so tenderly nursed for years. But if there is such an actress, I wouldn’t know her or know of her; I’ve been too busy. Where there is work one loves and is determined to do well, there is contentment, which in turn fosters ambition to do even better. All over the world there are women who are doing hard work, who are striving to become finer, fuller beings moving apace with the events which condition them. Surely, many of these achieve serenity and have a relentless impetus to do better next time.
Among our women of tomorrow there may be some whom this account of an unfinished life will encourage in their desire to turn to the stage. There were many times in my youth when a friendly word would have meant all the difference, when I desperately needed the stimulus of encouragement. However, I was convinced that in this sort of a career one cannot ask how to get started, how to go about the business of being an actress. The whole secret lies in finding out those things for oneself. To those who plan to embark upon the hazards of a stage career or to those who may be faltering, part way along it, the knowledge that it can be done, that others have trod the same path before, may prove helpful; I hope it will. But it will be work—unglamorous, exhausting, dispiriting.
First of all, there must be a fierce determination, a deep conviction that acting is the thing you must do; then there must be a carefully planned series of assaults on a fortress—the commercial theater—that is none too easy to storm. Mere physical beauty isn’t everything, but it is one barrier less to climb over if you possess it. Intelligence, awareness, sensitivity, self-effacement, industry—all these are necessary in greater or less degree.
The picture of the American theater has changed, of course, since I plunged into it in 1916. There is no longer stock as I knew it: stock nowadays so often is a synonym for the shoddy and second-rate, and it is confined to the outskirts of large cities. The summer theater, which flourished until wartime cut out vacationers and automobiles, is no more. In New York, which still conditions the output of the commercial theater of America, there has been no modification of the dreary round of agents and producers that was a vicious thing even a quarter of a century ago when I went through it. Happily, however, there are not only many more college and amateur groups throughout the country today, but the quality and scope of their productions have also increased.
But perhaps young people who are considering a vocation, especially one in the theater, may find some inspiration in these pages, in which Miss Malvern has so accurately and sympathetically mirrored me and my career. No one can give you any formula for success: each must find his own path. For now more than ever, when footlights are dimmed in other lands, our own have need to shine the brighter, and new fuel must be added to the flame with which they burn.
IN ALL the world there was no more active and fertile imagination than that of Doctor Cornell’s little girl, Kit. For weeks now, ever since her father had told her that there was an act which had elephants in it coming to the Vaudeville Theater, and that if she were very good he would take her to see them, elephants had dominated her every waking moment.
“Will it be much longer before we go to see the elephants?” she asked each morning.
First the great event was two weeks off—and two weeks seemed interminable. Then there was only a week to wait; and then only a few days. Oh, she would be very good; and to this end she watched herself carefully, for it was unthinkable that the elephants would come to Buffalo and she should not see them.
“Is it tomorrow that we go to see the elephants?”
Mother laughed. “Yes, dear, it’s tomorrow. Would you like to feed them?”
“Feed them?” Here was an added joy. Here was a joy so profound that it was almost incomprehensible. Here was an honor unsought—to be allowed to feed the elephants!
“Me?”
“Yes. I’ll tell Susie to fix you a bag of buns for the elephants.”
“Oh!” gasped Kit, and lapsed into silence, for mere words profane moments so exquisite as this.
At last—at long, long last—the much-heralded day arrived.
They went in a streetcar. Too excited, too happy to talk, Katharine Cornell sat tensely beside her father, clutching the bag of buns which Mother had given her just before she left the house.
Almost everybody in Buffalo knew Dr. Peter Cornell, and now and then people boarding the car hailed him in friendly greeting; men with high collars and gray derbies, women with pompadours, their left hands bunching long skirts to save daintily ruffled hems from the dust, while their right hands held gay, lacy parasols—for in that year of 1903 no “lady” permitted herself the “vulgarism” of suntan.
The Cornells, related to Ezra Cornell who, in 1865, had founded the Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, were among the socially prominent families of Buffalo. Grandfather Cornell lived in a large, imposing frame house on a quiet, aristocratic street from which the house with an air of aloofness sat back majestically upon a wide and well-kept lawn. Behind it were commodious stables which even now Grandfather was talking of having converted into something called a “garage.”
The young Peter Cornells, with their five-year-old daughter, Katharine, lived in a small frame house with a back yard, where Kit climbed fences. It was a pretty house of three stories with a veranda close to the street. Part of the first floor was used as Cornell’s office, and a neat shingle nailed to the front porch read: “PETER CORNELL, M.D.”
Riding beside her father now, Kit could close her eyes and actually see an elephant. Had the doctor suddenly asked his daughter what an elephant looked like, she could have told him all about it. An elephant was an animal, small and beautiful, something soft and furry, something which, perhaps, she might even be allowed to hold on her lap!
Elephants, she would have assured him knowingly, with that singular earnestness characteristic of the five-year-old, were wonderful. They came from faraway, story-book places; they belonged to the glorious, fabulous lands where Cinderella and Snow White and fairies lived.
“Well,” announced her father, and behind his glasses his eyes were gay and bright as if he, too, were sharing in the wonder of that moment, “this is the place.”
“Gonna feed elephants,” declared his daughter, as he lifted her off the car.
“Yes,” he agreed, and his voice sounded as if the prospect were as delightful to him as it was to her.
To the child the surroundings were all a colorful haze. Presently her father, to whose hand she clung tightly, led her inside the theater.
“I got seats in the stage box,” he explained, “so you could get a good look at the elephants.”
She nodded blissfully. The show began.
“Where are the elephants?” she queried worriedly.
“Ssh. They don’t come on till the very end.”
At length some enormous, gray, ugly creatures lumbered into view. They had long, hideous tusks and huge flapping ears. Kit gave a little gasp of fright and nestled closer to her father.
“Those are the elephants,” he whispered, his eyes on the stage.
There must, of course, be some mistake. “Those?” she asked, in a voice all suddenly atremble.
Still not looking at his daughter, he nodded.
Here, for Katharine Cornell, was disillusionment—stark, tragic, terrible. In that moment she was engulfed in a deluge of fear. She remembered the bag she was so carefully holding. No, no, never, never could she go near those dreadful creatures! She closed her eyes tight so as not to look at them.
“Well,” declared her father at last, “it’s over. Now they’ll let us go on the stage and feed the elephants.”
She opened her eyes to gaze up at him in mute and despairing appeal. She tried to speak, but words were impossible at the moment.
“Come on, Kit.”
“I—I g-g-guess I—don’t want to feed the elephants!”
His smile faded. “What?”
“I—I think I’d—just—I-like to—go home.”
Surprised, questioning, her father stared down at her. Then he saw the agony of fear engraved upon that small, dark, sensitive face, and for a moment he hesitated. Doctor Cornell was a gracious host, a man of integrity, a jolly companion, but he was also a firm believer in discipline. Now, decisively, he reached down and took her hand, speaking in a stern, brusque voice.
“For a long time you’ve been talking about feeding those elephants. Now, you’re going to feed them!”
“No!” she shrieked. “No!”
“I tell you, they won’t hurt you. Come on.”
Despite the child’s shrieks of terror, he dragged her nearer and nearer to the elephants. Screaming, her small, thin body quivering, the child clung desperately to her father.
“No! No!”
Shrieking, sobbing, he led her to the stage. Now they were quite close to those leathery, enormous creatures.
People were staring. “That’s Doctor Cornell and his little girl,” a woman said. “My, such a scene! Such a scene she’s making—in public!”
“Feed them!” her father insisted.
Her face livid, her small hand shaking, her dark eyes blurred with tears, the child opened the bag. Then suddenly, still screaming, she dropped the bag and ran off as fast as she could.
That was Katharine Cornell’s first appearance on a real stage.
The Cornells were a gifted, colorful, energetic family with a flair for acting and an ingrained love of the theater. There were as yet no movies, but Buffalo was known among Broadway managers as a good “theater town.” Having made a success in New York, plays were invariably sent on the road, and Buffalo was included in their itinerary. Added to this there were numerous amateur theatrical societies which were always in the process of play production, sometimes for their own enjoyment, but more often in the cause of some local charity.
From his youth, Grandfather Cornell had devoted his spare moments to this amusement. Play producing was his hobby, his delight, his unwavering interest, an enthusiasm which was shared wholeheartedly by his daughter, Lydia, and by his sons, Peter and Douglas. There was nothing that Grandfather Cornell enjoyed more than choosing a play, getting together an amateur cast, and directing it. His love for dramatics prompted him to fix up the attic of his large house as a theater, complete with curtain, lights, scenery and a stage. Here, at irregular intervals, his guests assembled in what was perhaps one of the first “little” theaters of America.
It was the directing, rather than the acting, which brought him most satisfaction. Had he listened to the glowing encouragement of his good friend, John Drew, he would have straightway exchanged his comfortable home in Buffalo for the hazards of a theatrical career, for John Drew, acknowledged to be one of the most distinguished stars in America, was voluble in his assertions that Cornell was a potential theatrical genius; but the elder Cornell had no desire for fame. He was having a glorious time producing plays for the sole enjoyment of himself, his family, his friends and his neighbors.
His son, Peter, even as a boy spent every spare moment avidly reading about the theater or acting in one amateur play after another. Unlike his father, his love was for acting rather than directing, and as he grew to manhood, though he decided upon a medical career, his interest in acting knew no diminution.
He had met Alice Gardner Plimpton while a medical student, and it was during his student days that they were married, sailing shortly afterward for Berlin, where young Peter was to take a post-graduate course at the University.
Ardently in love as he was, it was at first incomprehensible and somewhat of a disappointment to him that Alice—his charming, beautiful, capable Alice—had neither the ability nor the desire to act. At first he tried to kindle in her a love for acting, but he finally abandoned the effort. However, though she could not share her husband’s penchant for acting, she loved the theater itself, appreciated his talent and encouraged it.
But that was Alice Cornell’s way. She possessed that rare faculty of encouraging and stimulating others. There was in her a shining and abiding faith in life, in people, in the goodness of human nature. Physically, she was strikingly attractive. Her figure slenderly rounded, she was of medium height—five feet five inches—with an abundance of lustrous dark hair and warm hazel eyes which gazed trustfully out upon what was to her a singularly beautiful world. She carried her smartly coiffed head with an air of breeding and distinction. Upon meeting her one was instantly impressed with a sense of warmth, vitality, friendliness. People had a way of bringing their troubles to her and asking her advice about things. No matter where she was, in Buffalo or Berlin, she had a knack of making and keeping friends.
Upon completion of Peter’s post-graduate course in the German capital, the Cornells returned to Buffalo where Doctor Cornell established his practice. With them was their six-months-old daughter, Katharine, who had been born in a Berlin pension—on February 16, 1898. Gazing at the child, people remarked that it was a fine, healthy youngster with a lusty and carrying voice. Alice would look across at Peter and they would smile a little proudly at each other, for only they knew how frail the mite had been at birth and how for months they had had to battle to sustain life in that tiny body, which had weighed not quite three pounds. They remembered the first few months of her life when, as was then the German practice, they kept her lying on a board, wrapped in cotton batting. There had been dreadful days when Peter Cornell, just twenty-seven years old, had walked the tidy streets of Berlin trying to prepare himself for the death of his only child. She cried so much that the Cornells were usually asked to leave the places where they stayed, but gradually the little cheeks began to fill out in endearing baby roundness, gradually her weight had increased, and they knew at last that their daughter would live.
Back in Buffalo, despite his substantial practice, Peter Cornell plunged into amateur theatricals again, and so it was that almost the first words which formed the child’s vocabulary were “play,” “show,” “part,” “costume,” “make-up,” “cue”—words which belonged to the magical, other-world called Theater. Sensitive, restless, impressionable, she began even in kindergarten producing plays of her own. It was fun—it was more fun than hopscotch or blind man’s bluff or farmer-takes-a-wife.
The day she started for kindergarten was a memorable day in Kit’s life. She came down to breakfast looking very spic and span, and her father, who was always the personification of neatness, glanced at her approvingly. To Kit, like any other little girl, entering kindergarten was an event. She faced it with both eagerness and trepidation. Her eggs being served, she began to eat them nervously, her mind not on the food, but on what lay ahead. Then came the accident. She spilled some egg on her nice, clean dress. Guiltily, apprehensively, she looked at her father, hoping that he had not seen; but his eyes were regarding her sternly.
“When you come home from school,” he told her, “you must practice for one solid hour—how to eat eggs!”
KINDERGARTEN CHANGED to school, and the play-giving continued. Plays were more fun than ever now, for the school had its auditorium and here plays and pageants were frequently put on, always gala occasions to which one’s friends and parents were invited.
These exciting events were preceded by weeks of preparation, evenings after dinner reciting one’s lines to Father or Aunt Lydia or Uncle Douglas, while Mother became very busy cutting out paper wings or crowns and making long, beautiful robes out of cheesecloth which somehow turned into celestial garments when, being an angel, one wore them in a pageant.
Mother was always very encouraging. Tenderly, while these preparations were going on, she would assure Kit that everything was going to be all right. Despite the fact that she was a doctor’s wife, Mother had her own theories about many things. Temper, for instance. Mother always told Kit that when a person got angry, it was not because that person had a bad disposition. Oh, not at all! It was simply due to bad circulation. So on the rare occasions when the child lost her temper, Mother did not scold or punish. She sent Kit out to run around the block. Kit never thought of disobeying this order. She ran around the block, never stopping, as fast as her skinny little legs could carry her. It was odd how well Mother’s theory worked, for Kit always returned home, her face flushed, her eyes bright, and all anger happily dissolved.
It was lovely, being an angel in the pageants, although Mother would laugh—that ready, ripply laugh of hers—and say that her daughter did not look in the least like an angel and certainly did not always behave like one.
Kit was a restless, active, timid child, with a remarkable memory, and forever asking questions. Everything interested her (except perhaps elephants and arithmetic), and everything interested her strenuously. Halfheartedness was simply no part of her nature. Her love, though given warily, was given wholly; while if she disliked anyone it distressed her even to be around them. Even as a child, she was intensely loyal.
Mother said that she was moody. The truth was that Katharine was an unhappy child. Sometimes this unhappiness was only vague and dull; sometimes it was sharp and tyrannical. She lacked the aggressiveness and shrewdness to cope with other children. She used to take piano lessons at the home of a school friend. One day, after the two children had practiced exceptionally well, her friend’s mother gave them twenty cents for two ice cream sodas at Smither and Thurston’s Drugstore on the corner. But on arriving at the drugstore, her friend met another friend.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Where you going?”
“My mother gave me twenty cents for ice cream sodas. Do you want one? Come on, I’ll treat you to an ice cream soda!”
Kit, not saying anything, stood there holding her bike, shocked and hurt at her friend’s perfidy. Even when the two girls entered the drugstore, arms about each other, leaving her outside, she was still speechless, too hurt to speak. At last she got on her bike and started for home. She had gone only a little way when she got off the bike and stood there, crying very softly. She never told anyone about that, not even Mother. But this shyness, this inability to cope with children of her own age, brought her almost incessant misery.
Too, she who loved beauty so keenly, felt always that she was ugly. Acutely sensitive, she had few playmates and avoided, rather than sought, friends her own age. This was a secret unhappiness, a strange self-dissatisfaction, which she could not explain, could not talk about to anyone.
Externally, it was a childhood singularly blessed. There was no lack of niceties of living in the Cornell home, there were no financial worries, there was no friction. Her world, indeed, was a very gracious place. There were books in it, beautiful books, although she loved the out-of-doors too much to read any of them. There were all the toys a child could want. There were trees which she learned to climb with the agility and fearlessness of any boy in the neighborhood. There was roller skating—whizzing down a hill at breakneck speed, whirling around corners, and often skinning a knee.
When Christmas came she could not understand why it was that every other child in the world had a Christmas tree, while she never had one. Wistfully, longing, she would walk along the street, gazing in the windows of the houses at tall, beautiful trees resplendently bedecked with candles and silver stars and varicolored globes and popcorn strung on a thread. Often she would say to herself, “Perhaps next year I’ll have a tree, too!” but somehow, it never came. The family always gave her many presents and even pinned a stocking to the arm of the sofa in her mother’s upstairs sitting room, but they never trimmed a tree for her. A Christmas tree was gorgeous and exciting. It never seemed quite like Christmas without one. Why wouldn’t they give her a Christmas tree? She never knew the answer to the question.
But if there were no Christmas trees, there were always—always the plays. To Kit, the most fascinating thing in the world was being permitted to attend the grown-up rehearsals. Grandfather said she might come if she would keep very, very still. How, she wondered, could one do anything else at rehearsal? Just to sit, to watch, to listen—that was enough. She would hunch herself ungracefully on the stairs, her thin legs clasped at the knees, her dark, luminous eyes fixed steadfastly upon that most amazing place where most amazing things happened—the stage! There for hours quite motionless she would remain, eyes fastened upon Grandfather or Father or Aunt Lydia who suddenly, as if some magic wand had been waved over them, would become quite different persons from those they were at home.
She was a tall, thin, leggy child. There was something already old about that dark, pale, intense little face; something old and wise in the dark, widely spaced eyes. Not even those who loved her most called her a “pretty” child in those days when “prettiness” was the vogue. The width through the cheekbones gave a Slavic quality to her face, and at that time when “rosebud” mouths were considered the epitome of beauty, her mouth was too large. Her straight, short hair was so dark a brown as to appear almost black. Mother always parted it neatly in the center and drew it back from the brows with a small, flat bow on each side.
Summers the Cornell family spent at Grandfather Cornell’s house in Coburg, Ontario. On very warm days Kit was permitted to go swimming in Lake Ontario, a form of sport at which she early became proficient. Too, on Grandfather’s estate there were herds of cows, wide fields of vegetables, tall old trees and spacious gardens. It was fun to help the cowmen at their tasks, to gather all the flowers she wanted, to help pick the vegetables. There was a smooth lawn, so smooth that it seemed almost like green marble. There was a tennis court and two or three riding horses. She rode horseback as soon as she was old enough, and while still a child she drove her Grandfather’s horse, named Rubber because of his color. But most important of all at the house in Coburg was the long gallery at the back. Here in the gallery plays were put on, and when the place was not in use by the older folk, Kit and her young neighbor, Jo Pierce, would take charge of it, putting on their own plays, plays which they themselves had written, all about Queens and Dukes and Princesses.
When the collaborators considered that their play had been sufficiently rehearsed, they gave their performance, charging pennies for admission. Sometimes they made as much as twenty cents, which did not always cover the cost of production, but then, who cared about profits? The thing was to act—and to act beautifully.
Kit was eight when one day she went in search of her mother to tell her all about the new play she and Jo had written called, “The Hidden Treasure,” in which she intended to play the part of the Duke. She saw her father first. He was a well-groomed man, slightly under medium height and stockily built. Even now, at thirty-five, he was beginning to grow bald, and the receding hairline made his naturally rubicund face seem even rounder. Seated opposite him was her mother. Evidently she had just returned from making afternoon calls, for she still wore her hat—a large, particularly becoming straw trimmed with flowers. Her summer dress was of white muslin modishly high necked and long sleeved, its full, sweeping skirt edged with a narrow ruffle. Kit always thought her mother extremely beautiful, and certainly, Alice Cornell made a fetching picture that day as she sat, holding her lace parasol with its long slender handle, and watching her husband with eyes that were fond and earnest.
“It seems odd,” Kit heard her say as she approached, “that there won’t ever be any more patients.”
This, to the child, was a startling announcement. Father? Without patients? She walked toward her mother and leaned affectionately against her, the somber, unchildish eyes questioningly upon her father. Alice’s arm reached out and tenderly encircled her daughter’s waist.
“But of course,” went on Alice brightly, “if that’s what you want to do, Peter—”
It was 1906, and little girls were taught to be seen and not heard, so Kit said nothing. But even to one of eight, it was evident that Father was about to do something daring and momentous.
It was a time of national prosperity, a time of change. The horse was already giving way to the automobile, which was now no longer called a “horseless carriage,” and which was no longer some strange contrivance at which people laughed and stared, and young boys called derisively, “Get a horse!” Automobiles were beginning to be considered quite safe, and ladies, “going automobiling” were suitably attired with a long natural linen coat called a “duster,” goggles, and a voluminous veil tied about the hat and under the chin. “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree” and “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie,” were the popular tunes being sung about parlor pianos. Here and there a new form of entertainment called the “Nickelodeon” was emerging. These were the first motion-picture houses—small, badly aired places, to which no refined person ever went. It was the consensus of opinion that these new moving pictures would not last, that they were merely a fad, and that, anyhow, they would never have any appeal except for the lower classes.
An actor felt that it amounted to absolute disgrace to play in a moving picture. He had only one excuse for doing so, and that was that he was penniless. Theatrical business itself was in its heyday. “Road shows” were going out from New York and Chicago by the hundreds, many of them to be stranded in faraway places. As yet actors had no union, no way of protecting themselves against such a catastrophe. Every theater curtain had its “peephole,” and before each performance actors would cluster about the peephole to see the size of the house, for whether or not they got their salaries at the end of the week often depended upon the number of what they called “customers” who came to see the show.
In those days an actor’s life was one of incessant wandering. Theatrical companies came to Buffalo, sometimes playing a week at The Star, and then went on—east, west, north, south—tours which in theatrical parlance were always referred to simply as “the road.” And now, as her parents continued their discussion, it developed that Peter Cornell was giving up his profession to become part owner and manager of The Star!
Father, managing a real theater! It was glorious and exciting. Having a father who was associated with a real theater somehow set one apart from the rest of the mundane world.
“Why, Kit,” Mother suddenly said, “you’ve got ink on your new dress! Darling, why won’t you be careful?”
Ink! Dress! As if anything mattered! Eyes aglow with pride in him, Kit gazed up at her father. He was smiling, gazing out into space over her head as if he, too, were suddenly above such everyday things as ink and clothes. For him there would be no more counting pulses, no more listening through stethoscopes and looking at tongues, no more prescriptions to write, no more patients sitting fearfully in the huge leather chair facing his desk. He was about to become part of a world which had held him always under a singular enchantment. Already he was planning innovations for The Star, changes in personnel, changes in the lobby display.
Dr. Peter Cornell could not look ahead. He could not foresee how much this change was to affect the future of his daughter. Something more than mere personal desire was at work in shaping his decision, something unrecognized and unknown, yet working surely, working invisibly, but leading onward and upward to a splendid and shimmering goal.
The Cornells had outlined no career for Katharine. If someone had told them that summer afternoon in 1906 that this dark, moody, imaginative child would one day be acknowledged as “The First Lady of the American Stage,” they would have looked at each other and gasped. They wanted their daughter to grow up into a useful, healthy, happy woman, they visualized for her no greater glory than this. They planned to give her the best education they could afford, and already Peter Cornell had begun to instill into that quick, receptive and retentive mind the principles of discipline, of resourcefulness, of perseverance, of reliability, of consideration for others—traits of character which were later to stand her in good stead, for experiences vast and portentous awaited her.
BUT ONE grows accustomed to anything, even to the fact that one’s father is the manager of a real theater. And to Kit that which at first seemed incomprehensible became, after a time, merely a matter of course. Kit was not yet old enough to be taken to see the plays; besides, there was school and an ever-increasing amount of homework to do, and there was a developing interest in athletics.
For a long time now she had had a punching bag and trapeze in her nursery, and she became so expert on the trapeze that she was asked to perform as a gymnast at a charity circus. Among the other acts was a professional acrobat who did a hobo act on a slack wire. Watching him spellbound, it came to her that perhaps the most wonderful thing a person could do in this humdrum world was to be able to walk on a slack wire. Here was ambition, indeed. She fancied herself a glorified being of incredible lightness, walking the wire with a kind of divine nonchalance, and even dancing upon it with a gaily colored parasol in one hand. A bit shyly, she discussed it later with the acrobat, who seemed to agree with her that it was a worthy goal. In fact, he made her a present of his slack wire. She could scarcely wait to put it up, and the next day, taking no one into her confidence, she did so. Now she must teach herself to walk it. Her father did not know she had the slack wire, and discretion being always the better part of valor, she did her practicing when he was not at home. The slack wire became her most cherished possession. This, indeed, was thrilling—she, of all the kids in Buffalo, had a slack wire!
With characteristic zeal, young Kit, aged ten, took up the art of wire walking, practicing so conscientiously that in a comparatively short time she could sustain herself upon the wire with a certain amount of ease. Promptly she was the envy of every child in the neighborhood. The ambition among the younger set to become slack-wire walkers became something of an epidemic. Suddenly Kit found herself popular, even courted. She was even known to accept bribes of candy and ice cream cones for the privilege of walking on her wire. Boys and girls swarmed into the Cornell back yard and took their tumbles with resignation. If you fell and got a bump on your head, it was all in a worthy cause. The only thing to do in such case was to climb grimly back on the wire determined that this time you would stay up. What might have been a brilliant career in the delightful art of wire walking ended abruptly when Kit sprained her ankle, and her father dismantled the apparatus as a precautionary measure.
Kit bore this philosophically because her ankle had to be done up in a splint and, like all children, she enjoyed wearing splints and bandages. Shortly after the splint was removed, she made the discovery that the foyer of the theater was almost as good a place to roller skate as a rink. It was wide and smooth and it sloped a little. Oldsters in Buffalo can still recall standing in line at the box office and watching a dark-eyed child careening about them on roller skates. There is reliable authority for the story (although later Kit would never vouch for it) that she once rode a horse through the lobby. Substantiation of this, however, states that the stable from which the horse was hired was Twothy’s.
But on the whole a theater lobby is better as a rink than as a bridle path. Now and then Kit would halt in her skating to stand gazing at the posters, those ever-changing, ever-fascinating posters in the lobby.
Maxine Elliott, statuesque and incredibly beautiful. Julia Marlowe, who always looked so sad. Sarah Bernhardt, whose hair always looked untidy. Nazimova, exotic and exciting. Tiny Marie Doro, so lovely it was difficult to believe that she was constructed of mere human flesh like ordinary mortals. Actresses all seemed possessed of one common attribute—beauty. Gazing at the posters, it seemed impossible to believe that these actresses had ever climbed trees or been kept in after school. The idea persisted that one had to be beautiful to be on the stage.
The idea that she would ever be an actress had not yet occurred to Katharine Cornell. When she thought about her future at all, she thought it would be rather nice to be a trained nurse. Then one day posted in front of The Star were bills which read:
“COMING
MAUDE ADAMS
in
PETER PAN”
This was an event, not only to the Cornells, but to the entire city of Buffalo. “Peter Pan” had been first produced in America at the Empire Theater in New York City in 1905. It had made one of the greatest hits in the history of the theater. After a satisfactory run, it had been sent, as plays usually were in those days, “on the road.” All America had heard of Maude Adams in “Peter Pan.” Every theater manager in the country was clamoring to book the star and the play. Maude Adams in “Peter Pan” meant packed houses.
Kit had heard about “Peter Pan,” and she raced, lickety-split, home to her mother, bursting into the house with the question: “May I go? May I go see ‘Peter Pan’?”
Mother smiled indulgently. “Why, of course, dear. I wouldn’t have you miss it for the world. We’ll go to the Saturday matinee.”
Waiting was torture; but finally came the very morning of the day.
Mother kept saying: “Now, dear, you must eat your breakfast.”
Kit was too excited to think about food. Anticipation had grown so acute that it was like an ache, and now that it was no longer a question of days but only a question of hours, the hands of the clock seemed suddenly paralyzed.
Finally, she was walking to the theater with Mother, but it was difficult to walk. She had to restrain herself to keep from running.
“There’s no hurry,” Mother told her. “We’ve plenty of time.”
Cur”