Hampden Elected

Walter Hampden, only prominent actor-manager in the U. S. theatre,* was last week elected president of The Players. He succeeds the late John Drew and, according to the tradition of the club, will hold the post until death. Other presidents have been Edwin Booth, the founder; Joseph Jefferson.

Since the death of John Drew (TIME, July 18) there have been rumblings of controversy. The other leading candidates for president were Francis Wilson, the only charter member eligible (the president must be a prominent actor), and Otis Skinner. Mr. Skinner was a leader of the Actors' Fidelity League which opposed the now sovereign Actors' Equity at the time of the actors' strike in 1919. The hard feeling between these organizations, which is only now fading, was rumored to have raised factions in The Players. Mr. Wilson has always been a most ardent Equity protagonist. Any suggestion of schism was dispelled when Mr. Hampden was unanimously elected.

Walter Hampden is 48. Born in Brooklyn, he attended Brooklyn's famed Polytechnic Preparatory School; then Harvard University; then studied abroad. He first appeared on the stage as "a walking gentleman" in Sir Frank R. Benson's company in 1901 at Brighton, England. In recent years he has been chiefly associated with classic roles; presenting one of the most widely known Hamlets in the U. S., and the most popular present-day revival of Cyrano de Bergerac, generally considered his best role. He has his own Manhattan theatre in which he presents revivals and occasional new plays in a gradually widening repertory. Last year his play was Caponsacchi, based on Browning's The Ring and the Book. This season he plays Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. His real name is Walter Hampden Dougherty.

On New Year's Eve, 1887, a group of friends gathered at Edwin Booth's home (remodeled by Stanford White) in Gramercy Park, Manhattan. Shortly before midnight he disclosed to them a plan dear to his heart. He would found an actor's club, to which would be admitted men in the varied arts, and in which the best of the writing, painting and music world might come to learn that the actor, too, is a gentleman. Mr. Booth was distressed at the slight repute in which his profession was held before the world. He would give his home to this club; his treasures of the theatre. The Players stands today in the same little house as a memorial to this great actor's dream.

Every year at 11:30 on New Year's Eve, the members gather. A representative actor reads Booth's dedication speech, which ends close to the stroke of midnight. At that stroke Walter Oettel, Booth's dresser in the theatre, now the superintendent of the club, passes a cup in which the members drink the health of this hale old tradition.

Membership is something short of 1,000. Only a fraction are active members. There are about 300 actors. The rest are writers, painters, sculptors, playwrights, newspapermen and a few acknowledged patrons of the arts, of which Vincent Astor is most prominent. In glass cases on the wall of the club hang Booth's Hamlet and Shylock costumes, his pipes, the skull he used in Hamlet. It is a real skull. Tradition says it is the shell of a murdered man who willed it for Booth's use. Another treasured relic is Mark Twain's check for $200,000, which he, experimenting as a publisher, paid Mrs. Julia Grant for memoirs of her husband, Ulysses S. Grant. Mark Twain was a founder of The Players, as was Augustin Daly. Another treasure of The Players is one of the finest theatrical libraries in the world. On the upper floor are Booth's old apartments just as he left them when he died there, a book of poems he was reading left open on the table. The bedroom is never used; the sitting-room serves as meeting place for the directors.

Stubbornly sticking to its original, quiet neighborhood, The Players is not an actors' club in the popular sense.* The few that love it go there; a very few live there. There are card rooms and pool tables; soft chairs for reading; writing desks. In the back is a small garden around which runs a veranda where the members dine in summer. The club is always quiet, although from the peculiar demands of its actor members it stays open late at night. In these days Don Marquis may be often seen there; Jules Guerin, the painter; Otis Skinner; John Barrymore when he is in town; O. P. Heggie; and many another. Ladies are admitted to reception on Shakespeare's Birthday; also the spring evening when the annual Players all-star revival gives its last performance. Then, in the garden, supper is served and the cast and its invited actresses sit down in costumes of She Stoops to Conquer, The Rivals or perhaps Henry VI. There is no significance in this gathering; it is simply a custom of The Players, where the gentle riches of tradition prosper in seclusion. Some say the ghost of Booth that evening sits down at table too.

* There are other actor-managers; e. g. George M. Cohan. But they differ from the old school which founded one of the surest traditions of the theatre on the actor-manager principle. Usually the contemporary actor-managers present many shows ; appear themselves only occasionally; i. e. they are businessmen with an acting talent. There is, however, a famed actress-manager who last season showed herself an artist with a talent for business. She managed, directed and acted in (and will do the same this season) the Civic Repertory Theatre. She is Eva LeGallienne.

* Popular actors' clubs in Manhattan are The Lambs and The Friars. Neither is exclusive, or exclusively of the theatre. The Shepherd of the Lambs is Tom Wise; the Abbot of the Friars, George M. Cohan.