Ill Eagels

Hailed before the Equity Council to explain why she had deserted the road company of Her Cardboard Lover, why she had lounged in Milwaukee and then returned to Manhattan while her show went westward without her, Actress Jeanne Eagels languidly stated her defense. She had been ill, she said, and had not been able to appear. The producers, Gilbert Miller and Albert Herman Woods, should have hired an understudy.

Actress Eagels is famed for her outbursts of temperament as well as for her brilliant acting. Once, playing on Broadway, she walked off the stage in the middle of a scene because she wanted a glass of water. Her most recent eccentricity had caused Her Cardboard Lover to end its tour, and had deprived the producers and the other members of the cast of profits which they deserved to gain (TIME, April 2). The Equity Council conferred and came to a decision: Actress Eagels should be fined $2,000 and suspended from membership until September 1, 1929. This is the most severe penalty which the Equity Council has ever seen fit to impose.

Informed of a decree that will prevent her appearing on any stage with actors who belong to the Actors' Equity Association, Jeanne Eagels was unregenerate. She called the verdict "ridiculous and unjust." She said: "No handful of actors for whom, with a few exceptions, I have no respect, can keep me from Broadway. I'll be back in a new play by Christmas. . . ."