Miriam Nesbitt — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸

We sat in the parlor of the St. James hotel on West Forty-fifth street and Miriam Nesbitt told me all about how she came to New York with only ten dollars and wasn’t it a wonder something awful didn’t happen to her or the ten dollars?

by Mabel Condon

I say she told it to me, I should have said “us,” for a large audience, a fat lady, wafted into the little parlor right behind us and I judged she was waiting for somebody to come from Europe, so solidly she sat and so still. She lost not a word of Miss Nesbitt’s recital and when a brass-buttoned, dusky boy announced that Miss Nesbitt was to bring her company up-stairs for tea, the majority of the audience was plainly disappointed.

“I didn’t know mother was to have a mothers’ club meeting up-stairs today,” apologized Miss Nesbitt, as she led the way to the hotel parlor. “So we’ll talk on the sofa in here and go up for tea afterward. Put your things on the table here — do you know, when Mr. Bannon ‘phoned me you were coming, I fancied an entirely different kind of person?”

“Yes, I know — somebody tall and thick,” I answered correctly from knowledge gained in previous experiences.

“He told me you were from Chicago — I’m from Chicago, too.”

“Yes?” It was the only safe thing to say, as I was feeling in my muff for two gloves and guessing that only one was there; the other was probably on the upholstered chair the fat lady had just sighed into.

“Was born in Chicago and went to school there and in St. Louis at the same time.” The fat lady looked her sincere disapproval of this statement and listened harder than ever.

“My grand-mother and aunts were in St. Louis and insisted on my spending half the year with them; so I did. I’d go to school there from September to February and in Chicago from February to June. I’d graduate from one school and then graduate from the other. After that I went to boarding school. Then my mother married again and I decided I’d earn my own living. I didn’t know just what I would do and while I was deciding, I went down to North Virginia to visit my uncle.

“A New York paper happened in somehow one day and in it I read that a well-known head of a dramatic school would hear applicants read, on an early day.

I determined to go to New York and asked my uncle for a pass; he was auditor of a road that ran into New York and got it for me.

“Well, when I arrived I had just ten dollars and no idea where I was going to stay. But I sought out the dramatic school and was allowed to do little readings and scenes for the instructor. ‘You have promise — and the course will be one thousand dollars,’ she told me. ‘And I have ten,’ I answered. She gasped and asked how I expected to study with her and to clothe, room and feed myself meanwhile. I told her I thought she would let me have the instruction and pay her back when I had earned it on the stage.

“I had great faith in myself, you see, and when she pronounced me ‘promising,’ I never for a minute doubted but what I would be a success as an actress. I guess it was this wonderful assurance in myself that prompted her to agree to this condition. ‘But how are you going to live?’ she inquired, and I told her I had some cousins here somewhere, and I would look them up and see if I could earn my room and board with them. It happened that my cousin had advertised just that morning for a. young girl to act as companion to her and she received me with open arms. Not only that, but she gave me an allowance of $1.75 a week, and I began my course at the school in opulence!”

“But the $1,000 debt — didn’t it worry you?” I asked.

“Not as much as when I buy a dress now and pay more for it than I feel I can afford,” she replied. “It was my faith in myself that made me so optimistic. I still believe in things just as strongly, it’s a great help,” she nodded convincingly. The stout person looked doubtful, then glanced nonchalantly about the room as though she did not know it contained a sofa and two other people. Miss Nesbitt resumed and the two-hundred pound glance ceased roving.

“I worked awfully hard at the school, and at four o’clock each afternoon took a fencing lesson and after that a dancing lesson — all this to be paid for when I was on the stage. I had been a pupil about three months when a matinee was decided upon and the Frohmans were invited to attend. They did. I had been given the principal role, wherein I was to refuse to marry a plotting knight, and it was my misfortune that we had had no dress rehearsal. The play was a costume one and I had never worn a train, a crown or a wig in my life. I didn’t know how to manage the train and I felt the crown and wig slipping at the crucial moment. It was the one wherein I was to refuse the knight and make a tragic and heroic exit. With one hand clutching- the crown, which had slipped down over one ear, and the other wildly denouncing the knight, and shrieking, ‘I will never marry you!’ I tripped over my train and fell back into the wings to the accompaniment of roars of laughter.

“It was awful. Thereafter I was in terrible disgrace and slunk about the school like a yellow dog. Then another matinee was called, the Frohmans were again invited and I was trusted with a one-line maid’s role. But at the last rehearsal the girl who had the lead was taken ill and I was the only other one who knew her lines. The character was that of a mountain girl and I was perfectly at home, thanks to summers spent in the Tennessee mountains, and after the performance the Frohmans offered me a two years’ contract with them. I began it as James K. Hackett’s leading woman, and I’ve never played anything but leads since then.

“And the debt?” I inquired and was informed it was paid back within a year.

“That was in 1898,” resumed Miss Nesbitt, letting her eyelids drop a little as her turquoise-blue eyes concentrated on mental figures. “Yes, 1898 — how long ago was that?”

“I’m dreadful at higher mathematics,” I apologized, as after a full sixty seconds I didn’t know.

“So am I,” encouraged Miss Nesbitt, and we concentrated again.

“I thought it was longer than that,” she mused when we had finally agreed that the difference was sixteen years. “In that time I played five years straight in New York, one in London with the original Peter Pan production, and have gone on the road in number ‘A’ companies. The County Chairman, The Traveling Salesman, The Road to Yesterday, are a few of the long-run plays I have appeared in, and William H. Crane, Henry E. Dixey and Chauncey Olcott are some of the men with whom I have played.

“Something, I don’t know what, prompted me to try one-night stands. But I couldn’t live in a trunk and I never got rid of a cold, and when the company went off before daylight one morning to catch the train to the next ‘stand,’ and left me ill, in a little frozen town up north, I decided right there I would leave the stage, and I did.

“Entertaining, was what I thought I would love to do and tried it in New York. But I discovered that it called for one-third ability and two-thirds social tact, and I knew I’d be sure to ask after somebody’s dead mother or the husband of somebody else who was newly divorced, so I gave up entertaining and thought about motion pictures.

“The Edison studio was the first place I applied and they said they would give me a trial. I’ve been there ever since and that’s three and one-half years. Marc McDermott was in the company in which I started and we have played together a great deal. Our last trip to Europe covered seven months and we’re only back four weeks. I’ll show you some splendid pictures we took over there, when we go upstairs.” It was at that moment that the brass-buttoned, dusky youth announced “Mrs. Payne says for Miss Nesbitt to bring her comp’ny upstahs!”

“There’s something wrong with this elevator,” Miss Nesbitt chatted as the car painfully ascended to the twelfth floor. “I hope nothing happens — my stepfather has the insurance on it.” We alighted and entered the Payne apartment, where the club was luxuriating in cozy chairs about the tea-table.

There remained but a few minutes for private “picture” talk, but in them Miss Nesbitt declared she hopes for the day when there will be more art than there is now in motion pictures; when it won’t be necessary to have the girl fall in the man’s arms at the conclusion of a story to have it be a successful screen play, and when the actors will not be directed to “point” the meanings of obvious things.

“Of course it’s much better now than formerly,” she admitted. “But oh! for the time when a person will see a perfectly visible note on the floor, without walking all around the room and looking at everything else first. And when a person at a window can let his audience know he sees what is going on outside without frantically telling them so with his arms and lips. I’m hoping this will be, some day,” she concluded but it sounded like rather a hopeless hope.

I saw the splendid collection of pictures taken in Europe with Mr. McDermott’s kodak and Miss Nesbitt told of some of the pretty things she brought back with her. The ecru dress she was wearing, with its crimson girdle and trimming, which brought out to advantage the richness of her coloring and the black of her hair and lashes, was of Flemish make and the thin crystal-like bracelet of crimson came from Naples. The hand-wrought gold circlet on her other wrist was a Paris offering and the necklace of oblong crimson beads was bought in London.

Somewhere a clock struck six.

“I want to show you New York at night, from our windows,” said Miss Nesbitt and snapped off the lights. Broadway’s world of circling, flashing, colorful lights played on the background of the early night. From the Hotel Astor to Columbus Circle, they stood out ever shifting, ever compelling.

“The lights of New York,” murmured Miss Nesbitt. She snapped the bulbs of the living-room into life again. Five minutes later I was one of Broadway’s passers-by. I stopped at the nearest subway to see if there was a red ball on the front of the trains — a red ball signifies skating at Van Courtland Park.

There was, so I hurried.

—

Life Photo Film Corporation

Scarcely more than twelve months ago an ambitious youth, tired of working for a successful man, decided to branch out for himself. He persuaded his immediate family to invest a few hundred dollars in a camera outfit and an office, and soon made good his declaration that he could make money for himself as well as for others.

After four months of hard work he succeeded in convincing one of New York’s largest embroidery manufacturers that his acorns were taking root, and that with the aid of a few thousand dollars these roots would soon sprout out in the soil of prosperity.

The embroidery manufacturer, seeing the wonderful possibilities of the moving-picture game, immediately purchased a substantial interest in the company, which was then incorporated for $25,000, and was soon actively interested in the commercial, industrial and educational pictures that the company was manufacturing in its perfectly equipped laboratories, built on the profits of his investment.

In one year’s time this young man had sown his acorns so successfully that the small concern which he had started was increased to a capitalization of $100,000, and is now incorporated under the name of the Life Photo Film Corporation; Edward M. Roskam, the young man in this story, is president of the concern, and Bernard Loewenthal, the embroidery manufacturer, is the treasurer.

Beginning with a camera only, the company now has a thoroughly equipped laboratory that is turning out an average of 200,000 feet of film per week, has branched out and is building a modern and perfectly equipped studio to be run in conjunction with its laboratories.

Collection: Motography Magazine, February 1914