(See front cover)
To Washington's National Theatre one night last week Anna Eleanor Roosevelt took Secretary of the Treasury & Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Jr. to see Helen Hayes as Victoria Regina. So charmed was Mrs. Roosevelt by Actress Hayes' performance that when the play ended, she stood up in her box, clapped for five curtain calls. Next day she had Miss Hayes in to the White House for luncheon and at 3 p. m. Actress Hayes hurried back to her hotel suite in high excitement, canceled half a dozen appointments, summoned a beautician to fix her bobbed hair. That evening by special invitation she went back to the White House for 8 o'clock dinner and the glittering Diplomatic Reception which followed. Clearly Helen Hayes had made a profound impression upon the Presidential family. And critics who watched her Washington tryout forecast another hit for her when Victoria Regina opens on Broad way this week.
Victoria Regina, For those who make a hobby of Actress Hayes' career, Victoria Regina can be considered a sort of retrospective exhibition of some of the memorable parts she has played on her way up to the top during the past 17 years. Scene 1 represents the entrance hall at Kensing ton Palace early one morning in 1837. Lord Conyngham, the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury have come to rouse William IV's niece out of bed, tell her of her uncle's death and her succession to the Throne of England. Suddenly Actress Hayes appears, long locks falling to her shoulders, a night dress sweeping the floor. She receives the news without a word, but by some alchemy of gesture and expression, manages to convey in full the young queen's terrific bewilderment, anxiety and delight. Those who saw Miss Hayes a good 16 years ago as the extraordinary dream-child in Dear Brutus could almost hear the echo of her plaintive cry, "I don't want to be a might-have-been!"
In Scene 2, only a year after her coronation, "Vicky" has already begun to assert her Teutonic stubbornness. Her colloquy with Lord Melbourne, in which she gently lets that Prime Minister understand that she will accept his matrimonial advice provided that it coincides with her own wishes, is strongly reminiscent of Actress Hayes' pert and pretty Bab period.
Miss Hayes continues to model her impersonation of Victoria with sure dramatic strokes when, after her marriage to the tall and handsome Albert, she sees him at his toilet for the first time. "Oh-h-h!" she cries, breathless at the wonder of her maidenly discovery, "you're shaving!" Not even the quiet resolution of punctilious Albert prevents her from embracing him before an open palace window, an act of domestic abandon evocative of certain tender moments in the cinema version of A Farewell to Arms.
Most people who take their theatre-going seriously managed to see Helen Hayes in Mary of Scotland, one of the dramatic events of 1934. Memorable sequence in that play was the hapless Scottish queen's leave-taking from her lover Bothwell (Philip Merivale). Minus swords and capes to heighten the drama, Miss Hayes as the dumpy little royal matron of Victoria Regina manages to pack an astonishing amount of tragic power into her dismay at Albert's fatal chill.