I think we should be made aware in finer ways of the artists who open and close our bills. Why must the headliner always be a talking or a singing person who tells you how much money he needs, or how much she is getting? There is more than one type of artistic personality for those who care for vaudeville. Why doesn't a team like the Rath Brothers, for example, find itself the feature attraction? Must there always be the string of unnecessary little men and women who have such a time trying to fill up their twenty-two minutes or their fourteen? Why listen forever to puppy-like song writers when one can hear and watch a great artist like Ella Shields? My third visit to Ella Shields convinces me that she is one of the finest artists I have ever heard, certainly as fine in her way as Guilbert and Chevalier were. It is a rare privilege to be able to enjoy artists like Grock—Mark Sheridan—who is now dead, I am told. Mark, with his "They all walk the wibbly-wobbly walk, they all wear the wibbly-wobbly ties," and so on. Mark is certainly being missed by a great many who care for the pleasure of the moment. When I look at and listen to the aristocratic artist Ella Shields, I feel a quality in her of the impeccable Mrs. Fiske. And then I am thinking of another great woman, Fay Templeton. What a pity we must lose them either by death or by decisions in life. Ella Shields with her charming typification of "Burlington Bertie from Bow."
The other evening as I listened to Irene Franklin, I heard for certain what I had always thought were notes from the magic voice of dear old Fay. Unforgettable Fay. How can one ever say enough about her. I think of Fay along with my single glimpses of Duse, Ada Rehan, Coquelin. You see how I love her, then. Irene Franklin has the quality of imitation of the great Fay without, I think, the real magic. Nevertheless I enjoy her, and I am certain she has never been finer than now. She has enriched herself greatly by her experiences the last two years, and seems at the height of her power. It was good to get, once again, little glimpses of her Childs waitress and the chambermaid. It seemed to me that there was a richer quality of atmosphere in the little Jewish girl with the ring curls and the red mittens, as also in her French girl with, by the way, a beautiful gown of rich yellow silk Frenchily trimmed in vermilion or orange, I couldn't make out which. The amusing French girl, who having picked up many fag-ends of English from her experience
