Gertrude Lawrence Defends Long Frock

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 898, 15 February 1930, Page 26

Gertrude Lawrence Defends Long Frock

DEBATE IN NEW YORK Gertrude Lawrence, charming British actress, and Rita Weiman, playwright and short story writer, went at it hammer and tongs metaphorically in the Grand Central Palace in New York, in a sizzling debate entitled, “Short skirts versus long skirts,” says a San Francisco paper. Miss Lawrence and Miss Weiman crossed swords before an eager audience of club women, fashion experts, shop girls and stenographers. Miss Lawrence wore a dress of the new mode, since she chose to defend the long skirt. Her skirts were several inches below her knees. Miss Weiman’s hemline was an inch or two higher, and the chairman had on a green dress which almost concealed her ankles.

Miss Lawrence went to the bat fiist, reading her contribution from a manuscript.

The British girl’s attack was well executed. Long skirts, she said, are much more attractive to the eye—they are more aesthetic. The tall woman loses her stringy, beanpole aspect. The short woman seems to gain height by wearing them. “We have reached the point,” she said, “where limbs have become legs. Knees are no longer joints—they are institutions. Suggestion is much better than revelation. Our chief ifcsset is our femininity, and ■vye’ll lose It unless we wear our skirts longer. I favour the short skirt for business and street wear, an irregular hemline for afternoon attire, long dresses for evening, and trailing for teagowns.” Leyland Hodgson, last here in “The Trial of Mary Dugan," and before that in musical comedy, is in talking film, “The Case of Sergeant Grischa.”