Show Yo c e J i r i 1 7 7 rr f N r J. J F FLAPPER ni S SOON 0 ON to PASS MIl a s sr c. c r L 6 a I It t f T i r c Flappers are characterized says an anc e a authority by thee their the it strict adherence to the rules of If one affects af- af 4 a certain of vanity case all the others follow just as they do in their slang By Y Carol Bird 1 A FLAPPERS are n not of the glorious young queens they think they are N Nor or are they as dangerous and naughty as they pretend to to be Nor as fascinating and beguiling as they hope to appear They are just dust young creatures getting a synthetic kick out of life Callow little things who try to dazzle and amaze with a bag of sham tricks Young girls whose c antics grew tiresome and silly a as s the old 1 year 1926 faded into 1927 This is what Helen Hayes young r cal star thinks about flappers z And Miss l Hayes knows aU all there is is to o L know khow about the much advertised much be rated observed much She p genus has been f their stage interpreter ever since they came in into o existence She has flapped and flapped and flapped for several years She has flaunted her flaming youth in numerous other roles such as Bab for fori i instance in Edward Charles Carpenters Carpenter's 9 comedy founded on Mary Roberts Rineharts Rinehart's Rineharts Rinehart's Rine- Rine harts hart's story She has giggled and cud cud- ki 1 dIed and necked and been kittenish in every conceivable flapper part She is the most expert and delightful of all stage flappers She has spoken the cryptic lingo ofF of F the flapper until she has had to learn straight English all over again She Shek k has worn their dazzling raiment their i rolled hose hos their short skirts their latest latest lat lat- est bobs She has puffed their cigarettes A flourished their flasks sneaked out on wild adventures when the folks didn't know about it All on the stage of course She has been just about as wicked wicked-as synthetically wicked wicked-as a ayoung ayoung young girl can be And now she's dead tired of being I II a flapper She's fed up on all the patter ij In fact at least for a while she has ceased altogether to be a flapper She is playing the role of Maggie Wylie it in Barries Barrie's What Every Woman r Knows And Maggie is a sweet and womanly creature dear and old old-fash- I toned who wh loves deeply marries and married stays r IN N FACT FACT Helen Hayes has always hated t delineating the flapper She hopes she Ehe will never be forced by some playwright playwright play play- wright or manager to flap again After reading leading what Miss Hayes has to sayi say say- i about them there will probably be a yo general exodus of flappers All the gay foolish young things who have been beena r a r flapping vigorously and Ostentatiously r and anno annoyingly for several years past may suddenly fold up their tinsel wings f and go straight home to bed and sleep off after they hear what Helen Hayes has to say agn em and for em Perhaps they will be a bit more original the flappers who remain Less clannish Stop traveling in packs Shake off the shackles of their and be individuals Not just flapping little t creatures cast off one mold F Helen Hayes held forth on the subject subject sub sub- of flappers flappers flappers' one day recently in a aNew New York hotel at a time when the place was alive with flappers flapper The h hotel tel parlors and the dining j room and the mezzanine floor were l simply spilling over with flappers And into their bright midst walked Helen Hayes No one recognized her You would almost expect them to arise larise en masse anti and give three loud cheers for this Queen Flapper But no They didn't even glance in inthe inthe the direction of the little figure which hurried in She hurries continuously She is far too busy for football games Y Helen says Hayes Hayes' y Flaming Youth Exponent x Who I Went Out Into the ht y o Moonlight oon t j je If of the e Mountain Lakes to l Get the Low Down Sheik and on the I t J in an Order I IIII Type e III r to 0 Portray t JJ t the G f Jt 1 r l. l it r r. as u In an a A Stage Role o le Sums Up V r MJ t j I 1 the Results of Her 4 jJ f V Vi t sr i 4 1 l. l a i y r rA i riz i if f i n G V iy i t 4 Helen elen H Hayes yes who has won von fame i t. Ay t t. t L in flapper roles after six years years' i experience presenting the type on the stage says Th They ey b bore ore oreT T r They are uninteresting me I and frolics She She came to grab a bite of o dInner before going on for her evening evenIng eve eve- nIng performance Dressed in a dark brown fur coat and a small green hat a tiny demure blonde with serious expression earnest blue eyes and no make up she is not the type to draw attention stage off after the fashion of th the typical fla per For the flapper usually dresses for this and this alone But not Miss Helen Hayes who knows the flapper from the inside out She isa is isa a conservative dresser She does not wag her flaming youth aloft lik like a red banner As a result she is seldom recognized recognized off FLAPPERS They bore bore me said Miss Hayes getting right to the bottom of the whole matter Ive played flapper roles for five or six years But ButI I never particularly liked portraying the flapper type Why Because I think flappers are uninteresting Why classify classify class class- them They are after all just the very young girls of this present age Why label them If they hadn't been labeled in the beginning been given a certain distinction and importance by bythe bythe the bestowal bestowal of of a title they would perhaps perhaps per per- haps have passed from public notice long ago For after all that's chiefly what they they want They'll do anything to obtain it Wear outlandish clothes originate an odd lingo travel in packs They thrive on publicity Their naughtiness is all synthetic They are really afraid to be bad So they do a lot of ballyhooing about their called so-called indiscretions If they were truly indiscreet truly immoral they wouldn't talk so much about it The naughty girls are quiet secretive The flappers use megaphones But they fool them them- dont don't fool many Perhaps they selves And perhaps there is a certain satisfaction in that appearing naughty without actually being so Flappers are such superficial young creatures that it isn't any fun delineating ing their characters I like to play a amore amore more mature type a woman like Maggie Wylie my role at present She is more womanly quite feminine charming tender wistful a splendid helpmate for forthe forthe the man she loves loves' and marries She isa is isa a woman more within my realm of un- un That was tL t. I 1 funny thing about me being selected to portray flappers Scarcely 20 at the time I began playing pla ing flapper parts I have never been a flapper myself Ive I've been on the stage since Iwas I Iwas was G. G I had never had the time to indulge indulge in- in in flapper nonsense When I was first picked to play the little sub deb flab Bab Babin in the dramatization of Mrs Rineharts Rinehart's stories I was so unfamiliar with the real nature of a flapper that I actually had to take a course in I went up to Loon Lake in the Adirondack Adirondack Adiron- Adiron dack Mountains to track the flapper to toone toone one of her lairs and there study her at leisure She was there in abundance all right But I had difficult time an awfully entering the charmed circle The flappers flappers flap flap- pers somehow didn't want me Perhaps who I-who had been an actress all my life was a bit too staid for them They eyed me askance if they eyed me at atall all and then turned away from me with witha a marked lack of interest I evidently didn't show the slightest earmark of being a potential flapper If only those girls had known that I was going to give the public a stage picture of them Perhaps then they would have been less les inclined than ever to take me to their bosoms It was a long time before I actually crashed in And then it was only by dint of much pushing and forCing my way And when they finally did let me me play with them I was at first shocked That was before I fully realized how synthetic was their naughtiness THOUGH I had been brought up in inthe inthe the atmosphere of the stage I had never before heard some of the things I heArd up there among the flappers in the mountains When I was only in my early teens I appeared in in some of the Lew Fields musical come come- dies But the chorus girls had always been very careful of the w way y they talked and conducted themselves with witha a child in their midst And I had always been well chaperoned by my mother during my entire stage career So that these flappers and their excessive excessive sive freedom and their conversation and what at first appeared to me to be their real devilishness were rather shocking For instance one of the first things that happened to me was an invitation to join the D S. S C C. C I wondered what sort of a society that was and asked what the initials represented Dirty StorY Club said the pretty young flapper flapper flap flap- per who had asked me to join The entrance requirement was the telling of ofa a new dirty story I didn't even know an old one I had never heard one in my life I came near not getting in right at the start but they agreed to waive that requirement nt At first I had difficulty in learning their lingo I really ne needed ded deda a glossary or a special dictionary But soon I could rattle off the stuff as glibly as they could Then came the midnight adventures It seemed that things even harmless things i done idone around the mystic hour of 12 were ever so much more devilish devilish devil devil- ish according to the flapper apper way of that summer played around much with girls my own age f so that I was enabled to drench H myself an atmosphere of youth and carry it over into Y my part Also later when I to m my I A sorrow and disappointment began began be- be gan to be cast to in one flapper role after another this flapper course helped me a great deal for this Flapper talk a Except N dress manner and codes change Neither I nor nort norF rapidly very the playwrights who F t some of wrote the plays in which I appeared appeared ap- ap as flapper a fully realized this until after the pl plays ys had a the authors run Then short a and I began to receive letters mostly from flappers sayi saying g rt that our dialogue our flapper V not authentic We talk was were baffled For I had cert certainly t heard that very lingo up and nd the play play- m in the thet mountains A who h wrote my first flap flap- t per role pc role had made it a point toper to the dialogue only after write ds f M f j he had hobnobbed in flapper q i sets We also were wee p puzzled for letters w were in In from all over corre- corre flapper of our and some the even gave us the The rhe Charleston caught flap flap- conversation This real tuff stuff pegs ers instantly and soon they same though It came was the were hard h aI J at a tt it I all a over U the Ie from widely scattered sections certainly differed from country y and nd it talk alk of the play pl y I flapper n th the e llUll 1 thinking than those done in daylight dalight So there were midnight canoe rides lides with the flappers lying flat in the bottom of the boats Puffing cigarettes But I soon realized that these flappers flappers flap flap- pers were only young things burning to take their fling but afraid t to So they they- were kicking up an awful fuss and roar and getting a whole lot of satisfaction out of worrying their elders Their antics palled I was glad glai when it was time for fo rile me to leave The flappers and I had nothing in common I got weary of their lack of depth and understanding their continuous frivolity I would have enjoyed contrasting hours of seriousness But it seemed they were loath to do anything but just flap I also realized that nothing I had learned was going to help me for my new role lole for Bab though young was a sweet innocent girlish but un- un sophisticated Not the modern flappEr type at all an This sojourn among the flappers did help me in two ways how how- ever It t did put me in close cont contact ct with young folks 1 have always been older than my years though I am told that I look younger I had never before th the flapper n e llUll 1 asked a well known well well- no non n novelist a then mother Just what the and a woman enlightened me She trouble was changes very every two wo or talk Flapper three months said my frIend Every time my children come home from school at vacation time they have a new lingo Your lines lines lines' are Probably outworn by though they're just a few now even months old And she was right We then brushed and everything was up on the lingo all right After Bab there followed a whole flood of young girl roles f for r me I felt that I was destined to be a flapper for for life lite I I. I played the lovelorn n Cora Cor in Cl Clarence and appeared in similar roles in a number of plays And AndI I was a flapper in Young Blood and appeared in The Wren and in Penrod by the same Also in Quarantine and Pollyanna and the little dream daughter in Barries Barrie's Dear Brutus which for a while took me out of the flapper class I appeared in To the Ladies Ladies' and The Moderns Moderns' and in Shaws Shaw's iconoclastic portrait of Cleopatra All ll during the years I was playing flapper roles and having to present cute and cuddly insipid and very frothy flappers I was hungering for certain roles that other actresses drew Some roles in of the wistful young women Barrie plays appealed to my imagination tion I felt that I was better qualified by nature and temperament to be castin cast castin in such parts than in to flapper roles Those women were more the kind of and could and understood an women I knew thus interpret chance cameto came cameto When finally my big to appear in Barries Barrie's What Every Woman Knows I was elated Grace George suggested me to William Brady for the role Thus came Miss Hayes transition from a flapper into the delineator of another and she thinks a much nobler type of womanhood to trace her stage career from 1 ASKED the time she wis was G 6 until now when she is 26 she began in Washington home town and worked New NewY D. D C. C her Y I started when I was wa's 6 said Miss Hayes My mother has always been fond of the theatre and used to attend regularly the perfo performances mances of a stock company in Washington When she learned that th they y needed a little girl for a child part in one of the plays she bought me to the managers manager and I was engaged After that I remained with the company and every few months theY would put on a play in which I I- could be featured such as Little Lord Fauntleroy for instance I remained in stock for about four years and then then mother decided to take me to New York We used to haunt the offices of th the theatrical agents but never plucked up sufficient courage actually to have interviews with them We would peek eek to in th the doors of th the offices find them crowded cro with applicants and growing discouraged walk away with th- th out even awaiting our turn Then on one day I was engaged to appear appear ap- ap pear in an amateur performance given at one of the New York theatres by a- a dancing school teacher Lew Fields was there and remarked to some one Theres a clever child Id I'd like t to help her The comment reached mother but she did not follow it up I guess she sho thought it might be presumptuous to do so At any rate when she repeated Mr Fields Field's remark to a friend he urged her herto herto to go and see him about it She finally did and Mr Fields engaged nie to appear appear ap- ap pear in to one of his musical comedies at atthe the Old Herald Square Theatre in New York The play was Old Dutch I stayed in the Fields companies for four years I played my first straight role roleon on Broadway in the support of John JohnDrew JohnDrew Drew in The |