One Touch of . . .

Broadway these days seems a strait-laced street, solemn with young Method actors mooning over Chekhov and Freud, censored by Actors Equity, censured by critics. Little is heard to compare with the 19th century chores of young Edwin Booth, who led his father, Junius Brutus Booth, staggering from the corner saloon; or Stella Campbell, who turned her back on Sir Beerbohm Tree so often that he ran screaming from the stage. But last week Broadway's most spectacular feline feud in years had the whole street on edge. The clawing started when gifted Actress Kim (Bus Stop) Stanley abruptly announced her departure from Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet.

"Mr. Portman's behavior and frequent drunkenness," said Kim, "have made it impossible to stay." Everyone else's immediate denials only produced exchanges worthy of the acid O'Neill script itself.

In Character? Booze never bothered Eric Portman, said Kim's understudy, Nancy Malone. "Like most British actors, he drinks during a performance. Sometimes he drank a little too much, but he was never falling down or out of control." Said Portman, who gives the leading man's lines with a muffled Yorkshire accent: "The character himself is a drunk. He starts out a drunk, and he's a drunk all the way through. I like to think that my behavior indicated this."

Although Stanley's steamer had not mentioned her at all, Helen Hayes, Broadway's "First Lady," who played Kim's mother onstage, tried to lift her own skirts well clear. "We have worked together with the greatest understanding and sympathy," said Actress Hayes. "I am an innocent bystander."

This only reminded her friends of her constant complaints. "Portman was just a red herring," said one Hayes intimate. "The trouble was between Kim and Helen." Old Pro Hayes was sorely tried by the Method in Kim's acting. "I don't feel like being touched tonight," said Kim before one performance, and so a tender mother-and-daughter scene was played without a caress. Another time, Helen Hayes was quoted as saying, "I got two elbows down my throat from the girl."

Virus Escape. Kim herself has been known to relax with a drink on occasion, but, said she: "Nobody has ever accused me of drunkenness on the stage." A veteran of the "virus escape" in past shows (Bus Stop, A Clearing in the Woods and the London production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Kim missed 31 Poet performances because of illness. But with Kim gone, the situation showed no signs of calming down. When her part was offered to Understudy Malone on a permanent basis, Nancy Malone asked for $500 a week. (Kim Stanley had got at least $1,500.) Producer Whitehead offered her $450; Nancy quit in a huff (the part will be taken by Actress Cloris Leachman). "It's like having the moneychangers in the temple," Nancy bitterly told a friend--over a cup of coffee.

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