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I Wanted to Be an Actress - The Autobiography of Katharine Cornell
by Katharine Cornell.
Contents PAGE Foreword by Guthrie McClintic xi Introduction by Ruth Woodbury Sedgwick xiii 1 . Apprenticeship 3 2. Broadway - zj 3. Stardom 7 4. Actress-Manager 07 5 . Transcontinental Tour 125 6. The Record Is Brought Up to Date 1 53 7. A Record of Katharine Cornells Stage Career 1 8 1 With reviews and articles by the following Alexander Woollcott Walter Winchell Hey wood
Contents PAGE Foreword by Guthrie McClintic xi Introduction by Ruth Woodbury Sedgwick xiii 1 . Apprenticeship 3 2. Broadway - zj 3. Stardom 7 4. Actress-Manager 07 5 . Transcontinental Tour 125 6. The Record Is Brought Up to Date 1 53 7. A Record of Katharine Cornells Stage Career 1 8 1 With reviews and articles by the following Alexander Woollcott Walter Winchell Hey wood Broun Richard Watts, Jr. J, Rankin Towse Brooks Atkinson Percy Hammond William Lyon Phelps Burns Mantle Kclccy Allen Archur B. Waters George Ross Arthur Homblow John Anderson Stark Young Ray Henderson Alan Dale John Mason Brown Gilbert W. Gabriel Arthur Pollock H. T. Parker Richard Lockridge Jean Nathan Joseph Wood Krutch Bcnchlcy Eleanor Roosevelt Douglas Gilbert Ward Morehouse Lcn G Shaw St. John Ervitic William F. McDermott Katharine Cornells Career in Pictures Frontispiece portrait by Eugene Speicher i A. At the age of 2 iB. At the age of 4 2 A. At the age of 10 26. At the age of 1 6 3. With the Washington Square Players 4. Plots and Playwrights 5. As Jo in Little Women 6. A Bill of Divorcement 7. As Mary Fitton in Will Shakespeare 8. The Enchanted Cottage c. As Henriette in Casanova I o. The Way Things Happen 1 1 . The Outsider 12 Candida Katharine Cornell receives a bunch of roses from Peggy Wood in exchange for her role in Candida 1 4, The Green Hat Katharine Cornell and Gtithric McClintic at At lantic City during the run of The Green Hat 1 6. The Letter 1 7 . The Age of Innocence 1 8. Dishonored Lady 19. The Barretts of Wimfole Street 20. Vacation in Bermuda, 1932 21. Lucrece 22. Alien Corn 23. Vacation in Majorca, 1934 24. Flowers of the Forest 25. Romeo and Juliet 26. Saint Joan 27. Saint Joan 28. TheWingless Victory 29. The Wingless Victory 30. Herod and Mariamnc 3 1 . Katharine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic at their home in Beekman Place, New York City 32. Katharine Cornell today February, 1939 X Foreword Some seventeen years ago I was general assistant to Winthrop Ames when he produced The Green Goddess with George Arliss as its star at the Booth Theatre. In the ninth month of that plays run I married Katharine Cornell. A little over a month later she made her first big hit in A Bill of Divorcement. The night after she had received her glowing notices I had some business to at tend to backstage at the Booth. Mr. Arliss came out of his dressing-room and, instead of greeting me as usual, turned to Maude Ho well, the stage manager, and said Who is this young man And before she could reply, he adjusted his monocle, looked at me again and, with a malevolent foreboding chuckle, said Oh, of course, its Miss Cornells husband, That was a very happy thing to be then, anci after seventeen years it is still a very happy tiling to be. And as such I have been called upon to write or f to be more exact, supply a foreword. To you who read this book, and I trust there will be many, any thing I could say would be like bringing coals to New castle, But to Mr Arliss 1 might say, Meet the wife. GUTHEIE McCHNTIC
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The Tad Mosel biography of Cornell and everything I've read about her having a conniption over Quicksilver made it sound like Cornell was not ~really~ lesbian (just erotic letters between pals of course) and like she very actively fought that image of her-- but her reminiscing over her wedding with Guthrie McClintic could not make more explicit that McClintic was gay and from the start not romantically or sexually interested in her and for some mysterious reason that didn't bother her, all of he
The Tad Mosel biography of Cornell and everything I've read about her having a conniption over Quicksilver made it sound like Cornell was not ~really~ lesbian (just erotic letters between pals of course) and like she very actively fought that image of her-- but her reminiscing over her wedding with Guthrie McClintic could not make more explicit that McClintic was gay and from the start not romantically or sexually interested in her and for some mysterious reason that didn't bother her, all of her stories with him are just like two idiot friends getting into charades, and she has a habit of going deep into the descriptions of beauty of exclusively women who were also attracted to women. One story involves talking about how stately and elegant Clemence Dane was, how happy she was to finally get to spend a good deal of time with her friend Clemence Dane, and ends with them sneaking into Cornell's hotel through a back elevator. And this was originally printed in a fucking theater magazine. She also talks about Marlene Dietrich cooking for her, which I'm not sure how well known it was then that Dietrich went into huge German hausfrau cooking marathons for people she was interested in but the Riva bio makes it sound notorious and I've read jokes about it in some Photoplay magazines, I mean I don't think that Cornell wouldn't expect the reader to grasp the significance. However unlike the typical German hausfrau Marlene Dietrich wore giant emeralds while cooking that apparently would get lost and turn up in the dessert. That and blowing off Garbo is the Katharine Cornell life. Even though it's just a transcription of Cornell talking the writing is good, impressive eloquence. I adore Katharine Cornell.
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