Gladys Malvern - Curtain Going Up!: The Story of Katharine Cornell

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 wouldnt know her or know of her; Ive 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 workunglamorous, 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 fortressthe commercial theaterthat is none too easy to storm. Mere physical beauty isnt everything, but it is one barrier less to climb over if you possess it. Intelligence, awareness, sensitivity, self-effacement, industryall 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 Cornells 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 offand 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, its 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 unsoughtto be allowed to feed the elephants!

Me?

Yes. Ill 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 lastat long, long lastthe 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 parasolsfor 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 Cornells 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!