JEW'S MASQUERADE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 63, 1 April 1937, Page 15

JEW'S MASQUERADE

Success As Actor The theory that in ^hese times of anti-Semitism theatrical managers prefer blondes has just been put to the test^in Austria with strange results. During' the Salzburg festival Herr Max Reinhardt was approached by a Tyrolese peasant with a plentiful fair beard. He was a man of the type with which the world has become famxliar from visits to or pictures of the Ober ammergau Passion Play. He came forward as a- simple, unspoiled son of tbe "hiUs, who was wont to read Sh&kespeare at his fireside, and, feelingi the diamatic urge within him, wished to leave his plougn for the stage. Given a trial he proved to have much talent. Through the blonde beard »Jl doors were opened to him,- and aftc-r Salzburg was over he came to -Vienna and sccred a- great success in Scbnitz ler's "Fraulein Else." Shy and retiring, he wandered axvkwardly among ife xuiaccustomed stage surrouudings at yehearsals, and only in the heat of Ihe play did all restraiut fall frotn him. Yienna audiences, ready to applaud something new, gazed wondering/ly on this unschooled but natural actor. from the Tyrolese mountain® whose beard had caught aud retainpd the gleam pt tlie Alpine sun. The beard was geniiine, but tbe Tyrolese name and the rest of the sfcory were not, and after some time sonjo fellow-players informed the mauager that they believed the man from the hills to be a Jewish actor, formerly well known in Berlin. Challenged, he admitted tbis. He had had to leave Berlin after the advent of Hitleriem m Germany, and for three years, he sail, he had been unable to obtain woc-i, until the idea of the masqueride. oecurrca to him. His success, he ciaimed, nad justified the means, and restored the selt-gonfidence which he had i »en rapully losing.