Page:The New Yorker 0001 1925-02-21.pdf/12

10 American minds, American aspirations, American art, as to study the American language. He has found a public content to let him repeat over and over the successes he made at La Scala, twenty years ago; and for the sake of the favor of that public he stopped thinking very vigorously almost as long ago. It has been the easiest way, the most dignified and profitable way. But it must be a fearfully lonely one.

Because, when he does rouse himself to communion with smaller fellows, Giulio Gatti-Casazza is able to crush them under a vast weight of wit and scholarship and compressed feelings. But how often is that worth his while? Usually, then, he prowls the corridors alone, head down, thumbs up in the arm-holes of his vest, a great grey owl on night patrol. Or sits apart, on some old trunk behind the scenes, or in the moody elegance of his own sanctum; sits apart, shivering a little … for he is in a cold country … and silently fondles his fine, memorable nose. —

He Who Runs

Phidippides with a wrist watch has the supreme self-confidence of the conqueror, without the latter-day eye for the first page story. Applause to Paavo Nurmi is an anti-climax, as are the throaty announcements of new records. Nothing matters but the doing. The rest might just as well be silence.

Retiring of nature, he is not shy. He speaks little, even among his countrymen, and mostly in answer to direct query. Then in monosyllables.

His face is not so sheepish as newspaper photographs make it seem. Curly blonde hair lends it distinction, especially in New York. It is pleasant, with an increasingly forceful appeal.

If Nurmi has had a thought, apart from running, he has not voiced it. Life for him is divided into three phases, preparing for a race, winning the race, and resting after achievement. Living itself is glorious and wonderful, for has it not made him fleetest among the world’s fleet of foot?

Such fanaticism as his is worthy of a worse cause.

Pan’s Sister

She was a precocious youngster, but fortunately she survived all the nice things admiring relatives said about her, until now she may proclaim proudly that she plays no golf, nor bridge; nor in a more elemental day, did she succumb to Mah Jongg.

Despite these deductions from the usual fund of small talk, she is an interesting conversationalist.

As might be expected from the sister of an elf, Beatrice Herford married an earthly gentleman, such an one as Richard Harding Davis would have been charmed to meet—and to high hat. Adjacent to her rural home she has built a complete theatre, which scats fifty without the slightest aid from Joe LeBlang.

She is of average build, somewhat beyond slightness; her face somewhat round; her eyes blue; her hair blonde—a good deal in a Nordic world.

Her wit is keen. Once, when a cat wandered onstage during her performance, she saved the situation by saying sweetly, “This is supposed to be a monologue, not a catalogue.” The line might apply to most of her own afternoon teas.

And—to Oliver’s lasting dismay—she is practical.

A Pony Statesman

A small man, physically, Mr. Walker, minority leader in the New York State Senate: a demi-tasse among legislator: more at home with mustache cups. His face is thin; his features sharp, and his cheeks have the perennially youngish tint of the juvenile who bounds onstage as the chief chorine shrills: “Oh, girls, here comes the Prince now.” Along Broadway he would past unnoticed, or in an Equity meeting. Among a convention of Baptists he would command recurring glances.

He is a rarity at Albany, for he has intelligence and a liberal outlook. It is Jimmy Walker who meets the perpetual onslaughts of the side-burned shocked troops of reform. He is as effective a public speaker as George M. Cohan was a hoofer—and for much the same reason. He likes prize fights, perhaps too well for his political good.

Friends expect, Fourteenth Street willing, that James J. Walker one day will be His Honor, the Mayor of the City of New York. The Governorship is not likely. Those regions known privately to the Senator as “the sticks” are slow to approve a statesman who seems to be clothed in the New York manner, or copyright, 1925, Hart, Schaffner & Marx.

Shoestrings and “Vons”

Joseph Sternberg drifted from the East Side, via Broadway, to Hollywood, a well-frayed shoestring pinned carefully in an inner pocket. He returns Josef von Sternberg, the “von” having blossomed under the beneficence of the Californian sun.

Out of experiences with butterfly movie companies, he wrought “The Salvation Hunters,” one of the most-discussed of the current reticent dramas. Forty-seven hundred dollars was Mr. Sternberg’s producing capital, garnered in reluctant fives, tens and twenties by a native salesmanship which would see nothing incongruous in attempting to peddle grand pianos from a pushcart. The players were extra people, paid often enough in shares. One actor of reputation, employed for a day, received the hundred dollars he demanded in silver. He did not appear next morning, which forced the producer to double for the avaricious star and incidentally to be photographed in deep shadows, a touch certain reviewers have deemed the imprint of true artistry.

The finished film was shown to Messrs. Fairbanks and Chaplin, who lent to its distribution their prestige.

Broadway glories in this triumph of supreme egotism, but it can’t quite forgive the conqueror his “von.”