Hammond Speaks Again

Everyone on Broadway except the child actors remembers Percy Hammond, either with delight or something approaching brainstorm. Last week a few of Percy Hammond's intimates had gift copies of a new collection of his work. This Atom In The Audience (his own phrase), privately printed by his free-lancing son John Hammond of Newtown, Conn. Other envious Hammond admirers were tickled to learn that the book could be had on order from bookstores generally.

Sampling Percy Hammond's columns in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Tribune and Herald Tribune over 27 years, the book proves what a host of Hammondites have always known--that its author was not only an obliterating wit but also a first-rank critic. Born in 1873 to a merchant-newspaper family of Cadiz, Ohio, he went to Franklin College (Ohio), spent twelve years on the first Tribune, 15 on the second, grew to be a massive, silver-haired Buddha of first nights. For more than a quarter-century, he waged an acid campaign for maturity and subtlety on the stage--and in the audience. He developed a prose style as ornate as a Victorian bandstand, used it for the elaborate puncturing of the phony or the inane.

During one of Sarah Bernhardt's many "farewell" tours he wrote: "To me in every role she is the Mona Lisa, disinterested, semi-smiling, and inscrutable save for the knowledge that she insists on being paid every night in fresh $100 bills." His high irony made his pages sound flippant to the stuffy, but to all others his fastidious values were plain enough. Many actors hated Percy Hammond, many others recognized his pith. When the Chicago Tribune announced that he was being sent abroad to cover World War I, a Chicago actor remarked: "Heavens! What if he doesn't like it?" Sample Hammondisms:

> Of Comedian Frank Tinney: "He fertilizes the most sterile wheeze with the persuasive manures of his unctuous manner, and makes it blossom with laughter unabashed."

> Of Gaby Deslys: "One bit of apparel came near to disrupting her performance. It was black, and in the back of it were three discomfiting apertures so extensive that they suggested preparedness for a major operation."

> Of Mourning Becomes Electra: "From four o'clock yesterday afternoon until eleven at night, Eugene O'Neill heckled Life in one of the bitterest and lengthiest of his attacks upon that popular institution."

> Of Matinee Idol William Faversham: "So effectively trimmed is he that you feel almost that he has been done by a committee."

> Of Dancer Evan-Burrows Fontaine: ". . . in a repertory of exotic ballets, showing what a thin line divides the scamper from the dance."

> Of Helen Hayes: ". . . one of those artists, apparently, who can dare extravagance, and by her charm and her deft obviousness blur the line between acting and an exhibition."

> Of a musical: "I find I have knocked everything but the chorus girls' knees, and there God anticipated me."

> Of Oldtime Composer Joseph E. (7 Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now?) Howard: ". . . when he is in evening dress it seems that there can be no more evening dress in the world, so much of it does he have on."

> Of The Wanderer (an undressed Biblical spectacle) : "... patronized by the sex-suburbanite, the visitor from the provinces of decorum to the carnal capital. There he may, maybe not, with arctic overshoes and furled umbrella look up open-mouthed at the tall buildings of sex, and wonder, without being soiled."

> Of Jack Dempsey: "The high gift of courage showed out of the slits of his narrow eyes and in his attitude of chill indifference--a gift that was needed, since Miske, his adversary of the afternoon, had nothing at all the matter with him except a little spine disease."

> Of Travel Lecturer Burton Holmes: "Nature, I imagine, did not in igneous wantonness upheave the mountains of southern Germany, but reared them thoughtfully for Mr. Holmes within the range of his lenses."

> Of Representative Frank Wheeler Mondell of Wyoming: "A typical Congressman in appearance and habit, Mr. Mondell was audible and visible, but nothing else. His trousers were too long and he lacked personality."

> Of Joe Jeannette (Georges Carpentier's Negro sparring partner): "All that Old Blind Joe needed to make him a perfect ruin was some ivy."

> Of David Belasco: "He is, God love him, as foolish as a fox."

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