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Show Actress' Voices and Tears. In a recently published article, Clara Morris is reported to have spoken as follows fol-lows of Sarah Bernhardt's voice : "Wonderful," she said; "her intonation; intona-tion; her command of her voice, the musical modulation ; the intensity. She seems to know iust how far to go with it. I remember seeing her act once, and she allowed her voice to play on the feeling of the audience for a certain time, and just as nearly every woman before her was on the point of crying, Bernhardt cleared her voice, changed its key, changed the whole meaning of the lines, and I, who was as much worked up as any one in the audience, and expected ex-pected to cry the next moment, got fooled. I could have murdered her almost for spoiling that cry ; but she did it purposely, a3 I afterward learned. The voice betrays tears more quickly than the expression of the face. I have learned that. By training my voice in a certain key I can feel a situation more quickly than by trying to look what I express by the tone of my voice. The voice plays upon the feelings of an audience more quickly than any look that was ever seen on an actress' face. It's a pity that a good many young actresses can't understand under-stand that voice needs more careful training train-ing than facial expression. The expression expres-sion of the face becomes a twin to the expression ex-pression of the voice, but the face must follow the words. "Tears!" asked the actress in reply to a question. "Well, one must either be a pump or else one must be a desert in emotional drama. For. my own part I cry in nearly everything I play. The audience frequently follows me. Of course I feel a great deal that I play. I must, else never mind how large my reservoir of tears, there would be times when I couldn't cry. Let a woman play Miss Multon, we'll say, and imagine herself her-self the character she is playing, and ninety-nine women out of every 100 will cry. They can't help it." |