In Other Words/Footlight Motifs

by Franklin P. Adams

Layout 2

 

Footlight Motifs

ANNA HELD

I shall not praise your Gallic ways,
 Nor say that you are sweet;
Nor even tell about the spell
 That brings me to your feet.

I shall devise about your eyes,
 Nor precious words nor choice;
I shall not print a single hint
 In honor of your voice.

I shall not sing of anything
 That makes me genuflect;
Nor grace nor air, nor face nor hair—
 In brief, in no respect.

I shall not praise the heldian ways.
 If you must know, forsooth—
Because that I detest a lie,
 And aim to print the truth.

EMMY WEHLEN

Lady stars from oversea,
 Twinkling in our firmament.
Small the smash you make with me
 Be you ne’er so prominent.
Keener critics may adore you;
Frankly, though, I’m seldom for you.

I was never one who raved
 O’er the pseudo-picturesque
Nor, though young, was I enslaved
 By the art of H. Modjesk.;
And I own I do not care a
Lot about the Perfect Sarah.

Polish ladies leave me cold;
 Dames Italian warm me not;
And, if further truth be told,
 I’m electrified no jot,
Trifle, fragment, ohm, iota,
By th’ entire foreign quota.

But, however, still and yet,
 Maugre all my prejudice
I am not so firmly set
 That I will not yield in this:
If I like a lady’s way, so
Help me Robert, I will say so!

Fairy, elfin, pixie, sprite,
 Naiad, hamadryad, fay,
Witch and Phantom of Delight
 Such-a-little flow’r-o’-May,
Emmy Wehlen, more than pretty
Subject of this Deathless Ditty!

Wherefore I should like to hint,
 Caring not if it be seen,
Here and now in public print,
 She’s considerable queen.
Nothing’s left in my thesaurus —
She’s a peach, believe me, Mawruss.

EVA TANGUAY

Tell me not, in boastful hollers,
 What her salary may be;
Though it be a million dollars
 It is all the same to me.

Though the universal rumor
 Place her at the top of fun,
To my narrow mind, of humor
 She has absolutely none.

Lives of actresses remind us,
 We can make an awful Hit,
If we only put behind us
 All our Piety and Wit.

Let us then be up and pounding
 Piffle of the kind that flaunts
Its inanity astounding!
 “Give the public what it wants!”

THE CLASSIC DANCE

Isadora, when you dance
 I am bounden by no thrall,
And the Rhythm of old Romance
 Surges o’er me not at all.

Critics with a keener eye,
 Judges with a broader view,
Tell me that your Art is high—
 Wonderful the things you do.

Banal I and low my brow,
 And my bean is built of bone,
For allegiance I vow
 To Montgomery and Stone.

KITTY GORDON

“It is not beauty I demand,
 A crystal brow, the moon’s despair,
Nor the snow’s daughter, a white hand,
 Nor mermaid’s yellow pride of hair.”
These lyric lines are not my own;
They’re by an elder bard, unknown.

And then he sings of lips and eyes,
 “A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks,”
Counting her charms in ancient wise,
 As was the custom of the Greeks;
He ends his catalogue, whereat
“They are but gauds,” he says—like that.

Which—pardon my discursive style,
 (’Tis thus the British rhymers do;
No vulgar haste to coax the smile.
 [I rather like the plan. Do you?])
Which, as I started out to say
Before this unforeseen delay—

Which brings me, after false alarms
 And haltings, to this theme of mine:
In brief, to Kitty Gordon’s charms
 Gold, ivory and incarnadine.
She is, meseems, a gaudy star
Cold, distant, bright — and there you are.

MARY GARDEN

Mary had a little voice,
 (Unless the crits are wrong),
And everywhere that Mary went
 She took the voice along.

It followed her upon the stage
 (Which isn’t far from fact),
It made the audience applaud
 To see Miss Mary act.

They crowded to the opery house;
 They filled each row and tier;
And clapped their hands and split their gloves
 When Mary did appear.

“What makes the folks love Mary so?”
 The eager public cry,
“Why, Mary is the earth’s best show!”
 And that’s no Barnum lie.