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Show pjllilliiliiiilililiiiiliiiil I! x 1111 15 1 ( 1 knw wHere tHe pitfaiis tffttSr tosk- ?Lsj ""SKi ss lie' for 1 wa$ a chrus gir1, 1 ji ' Want. make I I By Marie Dressier T HAVE been an actress for thirty odd years, j but the proudest, the most inspired moment of my life was when, as president of the Chorus Equity Association, I attended the State Fcdera-tion Fcdera-tion of Labor convention at Syracuse not as an artiste something particularly precious and re-moved re-moved from the common herd but as a laborer amonj,' laborers. It is madness to say that acting is not a trade. I The production of anything nea ary to the world is labor and must be lefrned. This sad old world needs comedians, people with the secret fl of joy and of the expression of joy in their being. It is the hardest of tasks to make an audience laugh. Audiences do not laugh because they want to, but because they can't help it. It takes years of study and thought to learn how to de-mand de-mand that laugh. That is why I want my own chorus people to feel the independence, the prido HI and self-respect which comes only to the true artisan who has begun at the bottom and lea I his way step by step to the top. That self-respect is what I know their spiritual and actual affilia- I tion with labor will give them. Those who, for ! reasons best unmentioned, did not want us to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor, talked of the impossibility of temperamental artists creating while connected with anything so Hj sordid as labor it must have been the sordidness of sure pay and decent treatment to which referred. Michael Angelo learned hia trade; he was a laborer and he got a laborer's pay. There were labor unions in Rome in those days and I am sure he was a member. 1 never heard that it mj left a taint on his art. Dream of a Life Work A11 mV lifc it has been my dream to form an association of chorus people which would bring the chorus back to the position it occupied in the old days-as a training school, an apprenticeship , for bigger work. When I started in the chorus Jt was wherc 011 oung actors learned their trade Some of the best known people of the profos-sion profos-sion of today came from the chorus, Francis Wilson started his career playing the hind legs of a camel or the left wing of a bat or somcthin g equally important. You know it takes study, ap- ! plication and real work to keep your name in electric lights for twenty years. I've seen mine thcrc for twenty-one years Yet I regarded the chorus as such an excellent training school that I went back to it twice after I had started playing leading business. I II A "Background" for Chorus Girls None of this is true now. The insults and in-I in-I dignities heaped on the chorus man or chorus irl HJ are such that no sensitive person willingly under- i-kes that branch of theatrical work. However, Hj necessity forces many there who could have 1 profited by the training in the old days. I can- H not pay too high a tribute to the men hnd women I of the chorus of today who are fighting against fvjf such terrible odds 1 hae met many, many won- W KietfflaK Marie Dressier, President of the Chorus Equity Association, and a Group of Chorus Girl Strikers in New York. y 2 One oi the Stage Groups Broken up by New York's Extraordinary Demonstration. derful people in the chorus and it is for their sakes that 1 want to rescue it from what it is rapidly rap-idly becoming the happy hunting ground of the kind of gill I call a luscious and expensive prop rather than a really hard-working and earnert chorus girl. My idea, and one that I have had for many, many years, is to have an association for chorus people that will give them a background, a self-respect self-respect in their vocation which will make them more responsible, more ambitious and hard working. work-ing. If you start referring to a puppy as just a cur the chances arc that he will grow into a full-fledged full-fledged yellow dog. When a girl goes into the Nctr-rinprr TYnturp SrrTlrc, 1910. chorus now the first thing that is said of her is "she is only a chorus girl," and bye and bye she gets the idea, "I'm only a chorus girl no one tares, so what does it matter what I do'?" I am vol ore of those people who start barking bark-ing like an excited fox terrier and try to climb a tree for sheer joy at a chance to interfere in someone some-one else's morals. It is none of my business whether any particular member of my trade is moral or not. What I am concerned in is that j he shall not be obliged to sell herself in sex slavery. Asa member of a strong labor association no chorus girl will have to stand insults and indignities indigni-ties from managers. She knows her association is backing her and she knows she can turn for protection to any stapc hand who will bitr brother her. As a labor loader I want to make the chorus safe for srirls with talent, so that any girl can come into it with a full feeling of moral independence inde-pendence I want to make it so that they daro resent indignities. Referring to the work done by the Equity, Chic Sales said to me, "Thank God, now I dare let my children go on the stage." The Matter of Pitfalls I know where the pitfalls lie, for I was a chorus girl. I am not trying to give the impression impres-sion that my youthful path was beset with wicked managers and stage-door Johnnies. It wasn't. I was too homely But my eyesight was good, and 1 know what a girl in the chorus is up against. The questions discussed in the strike, of managers man-agers paying for over-long rehearsals, for shoes and stockings for the chorus, etc., will have to be eliminated. No longer will it be possible for a manager to take large sums of money out of the pay envelopes of the chorus Understand, I am speaking comparatively here Even a magician could not perform that feat literally ostensibly to pay for the shoes and stockings his people have worn out in his service and pay only about half of this sum to the shoemaker, the ultimate destination des-tination of the rest being a secret known only to himself. And the Chorus Equity Association will protect pro-tect the manager quite as much as the members of the chorus. It will see that the people of the chorus play fairly and squarely with the management manage-ment that ha played fairly and squarely with them. It will not be necessary for the wary manager to pay the chorus on Tuesday rather than Saturday for fear they will jump, over tho week-end, to another show where they hope for r5 - ,J. ' I l better treatment. And the manager who hns signed up his chorus for a road tour when the New York season shall be over can go to the . tat ion on the day of departure and know that his i, entire chorus will be there itoi "To Be as a Mother" R I walk my own particular labor union to be as t a mother, a help and never failing resource to tho :oi people of the chorus, the one place where they j can always be suro of help. One thing I am going to work for as a labor 1 W leader and I shall never cease working for it ' ;'3 is a better understanding between capital and labor and between actors and managers. I do ' not want to fight ail managers, I want to bring them to a closer understanding of the actor. And I do not want to fight all capital. Not all wealthy .f;i( people are the criminal blood-suckers some would jjeE have us believe. I have found many, so many ijr who are willing .'rnd anxious to work and help . ri cc only they do not know how. The have been 'lie eager for suggestions, enthusiastic in their offers a nf support. Mrs. John D. Rockefeller and Mrs " William Fellows Morgan have promised to help ? in a plan I have had for years, that of establish- 0r ing, under the auspices now of the Chorus Equity Association, in New York and in every large city LyJ" of the country, a chain of Players' Houses for the people of the theatre, Tins would form a chain fa ( of real homes where theatrical people could live ifa in congenial and comfortable surroundings at Inji moderate prices. It wouldn't be an institution or I Be, a uom- in he sense that that wod is coming to lH be use I. I; would !" igped i specially for their ;3. l needs There would be suppers served after the Jj theatre, a time when every on: who has been 'lri brought up in the smell of grease paint gets hun- ! '' gry. And there would b little sitting rooms where the girls could receive and entertain the Vth Hien they know and be courted and maybe get married like any other working girl. r All these things the strength which the klUel Chorus Equity Association lias gained from its f-ible affiliation with the American Federation of Labor h will help win for us, But there is a bjgger. a D a : much biprger thing that we will cret. 1 felt it in C?ai Syracuse I have never ceased feeling it and I h want my people to feel it too a sense of oneness, ,,rn' of closeness to one's own people the workers of CHir the world. ; ?ea 10 Lawn tennis is at leapt thr centuries oirl, m:i( having been play d in 1591. when Queen Elizabeth p,0ffl was entertained at Eh - tham. m Hampshire, by the a Rtin Earl of Hertford. .Strutr, quoting from Nlchol'fl y1! -Progress of Queen Elizabeth," relates that "after tod dinner, about 3 o'clock. 10 of nis lordship'a ser- W vants. all Somersetshire men, in a square green 1 Omj court, before her majesty's win. low, did hand en. up lines, squaring out tho form of a tennis il rhi rourt. and making a cross lino In the middle. In gty this square they, being stript out of their doub- J8 pn lets, played, live to five, with hand ball, to tho TlcJir great liking of her highness." E 0r cr p to flM(f- l'iyWf -Er f-. P |