Memories of a great actress
Perhaps the most legendary theatrical figures of that time [1904-1921] were the international star actresses, those great creatures whose names alone could fill a theatre. I saw Eleonora Duse in Ghosts at the New Oxford Theatre in Tottenham Court Road, long since demolished. I stood at the back of the packed theatre at a matinee. Every actor in London was there and the feeling in the audience was unforgettable, a mixture of respect and awe, a sense that we would never see this great woman again. When Duse came on, the atmosphere was already electric, and she could hardly fail to make the most wonderful impression. I did not know the play very well, but Duse looked infinitely sad and distinguished with her white hair, and wearing a plain black dress with a shawl draped over her shoulders. I remember that her acting seemed very, very simple. She had marvelous hands and all her movements were weary and poetic. Here was a legendary figure whose career had spanned fifty or sixty years of the nineteenth-century theatre, and she succeeded, to my mind, in living up to her legend, although she was evidently old and tired.
Many years later, in 1952, at a cocktail party in Hollywood, I was introduced to Charlie Chaplin. He took me aside and began to talk to me about his boyhood in London when he used to see Tree’s productions from the gallery at His Majesty’s. For some reason we talked about Duse. Chaplin described an occasion on which he saw her act. He began to imitate the actor who had appeared that night with Duse. He whipped out a chair and sat astride it and began to jabber bogus Italian. In a brilliant mime, he showed how the actor was enthralling the audience with a long speech when suddenly the curtains behind began to move and a little old lady came out very quietly and glided across the stage and put her hands towards the fire. Duse. And at this point the poor actor who had seemed so remarkable a moment before was completely blotted out.
An Actor and His Time by John Gielgud (BrE)
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