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Minnie Maddern Fiske, 64, was bora in New Orleans, daughter of Thomas W. Davey, theatrical manager. Aged 3, she appeared in Richard III; aged 15, she was starred with her own company. She has played Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Becky Sharp, Salvation Nell, many an Ibsen heroine. In 1890 she married theatrical director Harrison Grey Fiske who still stages her productions. Eight years ago she gave up tragic, wearing parts, but later rallied to play Ibsen's Ghosts. She wears no real furs or feathers, eats no flesh. In 1925 she said: "Society is so organized as to make it seem necessary for thousands of shouting, cursing men to stand knee-deep in blood, dealing ferocious blows right and left upon millions of shrieking animals in order that we may be fed. . . . The steel trap has no place in anything even remotely describing itself as civilization and to abolish it we shall rely upon the modern woman."
Stripped is a romance, including an imaginary kingdom and its Prince, stalwartly interpreted by Lionel Atwill. In the search for the stolen crown jewels it seems for a while that a woman suspect may be forcibly denuded, but those who anticipate this violence will be disappointed.
Week End. Austin Parker, Saturday Evening Post writer, conceived this first offering of Bela Blau, Inc., prosperous and principled new producers (TIME, May 13). Among his characters he included a drunkard who, as played with strange understanding by Hugh O'Connell, is one of the season's great. Inebriates are of course familiar to the stage, but the antics of most of them seem like distorted mummery beside Mr. O'Connell's gentle and imaginative euphoria. As a chubby, post-War wastrel at a houseparty in Barbizon (just outside Paris) he may be found continuing his perennial search for a champagne in which the bubbles go down instead of up, and ever so politely inquiring, "Did you ever feel as though you had a live trout inside you?" Most of the stories he tells are ridiculous, dipsomanianecdotes but one, which begins like the rest, has such sorrowful innuendo that you soon stop laughing.
This delightful, unfortunate fellow, brooding over the misery which he causes his wife (Vivienne Osborne), finally shoots himself. By that time she is leaning toward a virile magazine writer (Warren Williams) and their host and hostess have settled a domestic tiff which also involved the drunkard's buxom spouse. These people are all members of the so-called "lost generation," and their varied plights are sincerely described even though the host and the writer continually hark back to their Wartime comradeship with enthusiasm of the "You old rhinoceros!" variety.