NO SHINGLES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 152, 17 September 1927, Page 22 (Supplement)

NO SHINGLES

Thurza Rogers and Zillah Bateman

FEW LONG-HAIRED WOMEN ON THE STAGE

C. B. Cochran has described Joan Clarkson as the last long-haired woman on the London stage. In Melbourne there are two leading ladies who have that distinction, Zillah Bateman and Thurza Rogers.

Everybody has admired the beautiful golden hair of Zillah Bateman, who is at present playing Ophelia in the •Hamlet” matinees with Peter Gawthorne. The part is one which requires an actress with long tresses. Miss Bateman smiled pityingly when she was asked why _

she didn’t shingle and become comfortable, trusting to a wig to cover her shortcomings, so to speak. “For one thing, a -wig always looks a wig,” she explained, “just as

dyed hair always looks particularly dead. Dead hair never takes the light as real hair

does.” As she Zillah Bateman spoke, two long Marguerite plaits dangled down her shoulders. Thurza Rogers, the New Zealand girl now playing lead in “Tip Toes,” is the other long-haired leading lady. A shingled head does not go with classical dancing, she

declares, and she does not grudge a few minutes each morning to “doing her hair.” She was trained by Pavlova, herself a long - haired “Pavlova would have gone mad if we had suggested such a thing as

_. _ shingling,” Miss Thurza Rogers Rogers declared. A

shingle and the classic ballet dress would have been as incongruous as a Hebrew in kilts. One needs long hair to adapt to various ballets. No one who has seen Pavlova’s graceful, braided hair would ever want to see her shingled. “I have nothing to say against the shingle,” she said, “but for my work I prefer to use my own hair instead of a wig. Shingling would take away whatever personality I possess.”

But no one obtained more laughter than did Miss Kathleen Harrison in the comparatively small part of a servant. She was funny even when she had only a single word to say. The end was weak; yet there were many curtain calls, and the authoress, dark and tall and slim, made a little speech. Tn the course of it she suggested that while critics might dwell upon the merits of the acting, it was she who “said it first.” A subtle touch!

A London actress, a popular blonde beauty, received in her dressing-room a feminine admirer who had called to “talk art.” The conversation had fallen flat, due largely to the fact that the beautiful blonde would talk of nothing but herself. Finally the visitor turned in desperation to an old stand-by. “I suppose,” she said, “that your great ambition is to play Shakespeare ?” “Well,” said the actress, “he has svritea isome nice parts*”