CHAMPION ACTRESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 738, 4 September 1953, Page 7

CHAMPION ACTRESS

(By

J. W.

GOODWIN

when one of the occupational risks of a chorus girl was to become a countess, but she was not "just a Gaiety girl." ’ An actor who later became a leading stage producer called her the most beautiful girl in the world-and meant itbut she says: "I could just as easily have been a flier, or a tennis champion, or a racing motorist; I'd have loved any of these things." A theatrical magazine said of her in 1910: "Bow down your heads, O Lovers of Musical ©omedy, for beautiful, charming, fair-haired has forsaken you. No more will she trip divinely down the stage and say with her adorable smile as she did in Havana: ‘Hello, people-people, hello.’ " Now Cecil Beaton says of het: "Merely to have survived in the public eye successfully through so many decades proves her to be, at the lowest estimate, a considerable character." And Somerset Maugham writes: "She has turned herself from an indifferent actress into an extremely accomplished one. . . I owe much to her." She was, she still is very much, Gladys Cooper. When her biography was: published in London the other day and she was the guest at a theatrical luncheon, those of us who had enjoyed her in Relative Values, her joint triumph with Noel Coward, learnt a great deal more and yet still admired. There are few vactresses of whom that can be said. Started as a Joke Gladys Cooper herself says: "I was never stage-struck-I just happened, to go on the stage, that’s all. It started more or less as a joke, and it wasn’t until I’d begun to have some sort of success that the joke became a serious reality. I suppose I’d never have been content just to run a house and bring up a family. I’d always have wanted another ‘outlet for my energies as well." As for her energies, her son-in-law, the actor Robert Morley, said at the S« was a Gaiety girl in an age

luncheon: "You would not believe how splendid Gladys is at the poker table. She always plays till five in the morning. ‘I must play until five,’ she once told me in New York, ‘then I just have time for a bath before taking my daughter riding in the park.’ " With engaging candour, he added: "She is not a champion beauty or a champion clothes peg. She is not even a champion mother-in-law. But she is a champion actress. .. I think she must have read Kipling’s If for she treats triumph.and disaster as impostors." Handicap of Beauty Of people connected with the theatre, few could differ more in experience and outlook than Somerset Maugham the playwright, Cecil Beaton the scenic designer, and James Agate the critic, yet each has praised her. In a restrained and dignified introduction to the biography, Without Veils, by Sewell Stokes (publisher Peter Davies), Mr. Maugham says: A "I have a notion that her beauty has been at once .her greatest asset and her

greatest handicap; an asset because without it she would never have gone on the stage, for she is not the born actress who, whatever she looks like, is impelled by her nature to act." Some irregularity of feature enables an actress to display emotion more effectively, he believes, whereas classical features limit the variety of her emotions: "Age, which has left her beauty almost unimpaired, has given her face an expressivenass which in youth it lacked." Commenting on the statement that at Hollywood, Gledys Cooper did not trouble to read the entire script, but managed to receive awards for outstanding’ performances, Mr. Maugham says: "Her wide experience enables her to get into the heart of a character by intuition." | : Relish and Precision She articulated every word with relish and precision, says Mr. Beaton, spat out her s’s, produced a little explosion with every p, dotted and. crossed every ~i and t. "Miss Cooper glittered like the Matterhorn at daybreak,’ wrote James Agate in 1938. "I have never seen the Matterhorn and seldom the. davbreak, but the conjunction is irresistible." "Pranking in Shakespeare" Naturally. she has her limitations. Her biographer quotes her as saying that she had been ‘"pranking in Shakespeare-I wasn't really at all bad as Desdemona: the’ critics said I gave her a sense of humour which is what she needs." Other critics were less kind. She could not persuade Lady Macbeth to be Gladys Cooper, nor wheedle Rosalind intg the part; she was always perfectly arch and word imperfect. However, her gifts in the right play are so remarkable that one wonders who will’ follow Maugham and Coward in writing the perfect parts for her to be perfect in. She seems to outlast them all. "Once I’d chosen my job, I worked hard at it; slaved at it, sometimes," she is quoted as saying. And at the congratulatory luncheon the other day she denied ‘the description of a "bustling little woman," but added: "I do not want to fade away yet-perhaps [I will just bustle off." As in her Gaiety days, it will be with that adorable ‘smile.