Dean Hampden

(See front cover)*

When John Drew died in July 1927, the deanship of the U. S. stage passed from the Drawing Room to the Library. It might have gone into the Bed Room, but aging David Belasco had long since carried his pawkiness beyond the point where he could command respectful attention. Besides, vague though the title is, the Dean of the Stage should be an actor, if possible.

The Barrymores, though actually of Hampden's age (John is now 47; Lionel, 50; Hampden, 48) seemed too young. Otis Skinner seemed ruled out by his hostility to the Actors' Equity Association. So Walter Hampden really had no rival as "Uncle John" Drew's successor.

As if to seal the investiture, The Players unanimously elected him in October 1927 to succeed "Uncle John" as their president. And last fortnight another seal was added when Manhattan's Lotos Club hailed Actor Hampden as guest of honor and made speeches about him.

Since 1870, the Lotos Club has considered itself and been considered authoritatively epicurean in personalities as well as gastronomies. Paderewski and Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Alfred Emanuel Smith, Mary Garden and Andrew William Mellon, are some of the figures who have been honored, variously, with its cocktails, terrapin and oratory. The senior Oliver Wendell Holmes attended in 1883 and punned for the lotophagi six times in one hour.

There are, of course, a great many people who feel that Actor Hampden has been Dean for a number of years. And there are plenty of other people--O'Neill addicts and the like--who believe that any man who can take Shakespeare seriously must be full of stuff and bombast. Whatever the case, Actor Hampden would be the last to worry about it one way or another, and last week found him proceeding comfortably into the third month of his second triumphal revival of Cyrano de Bergerac, with his own company, under his own direction, in his own theatre.

Dean Hampden is the only actor-manager, in the sense of the term as it was applied to such as Edwin Booth and Richard Mansfield, in the U. S. today. He is the financial and artistic force "behind every play shown in the Walter Hampden Theatre on upper Broadway. A beardless patriarch, aged only 48, he follows his profession with perhaps sterner self-discipline but with more self-consciousness than his brothers, Paul, John, and Malcolm, have developed in following their respective professions of painting, law and literature.

Hampden is the Dean's middle name. His family name is Dougherty, the "Dockerties" of Brooklyn. The first boards he trod were in the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, where he was a gangling "Shylock" in itchy whiskers at the age of 16. He had a year at Harvard and another year, to experiment with his bass-baritone voice and a certain flair for the cello, in Paris.

His interest in the stage predominated, however, and he was wise enough to know that this took study, too. His father, a judge, had stipulated that if actor he must be, he must be a Shakespearean actor. He went to England and in 1901 joined the Shakespearean company of Sir Francis R. Benson as a "walking gentleman." For three years he trouped and in that time played 70 parts. Then he set out for London. There he found an engagement with Harry Brodribb Irving, son of the late great Sir Henry. He was playing Laertes when his big chance came: Mr. Irving fell ill. The next day London's dramatic critics hailed a new Hamlet, only 25 years old, a prodigy.

He returned to New York in 1907 carrying a manuscript by Charles Rann Kennedy. It was The Servant in the House, but no producer would chance it. So Walter Hampden made his U. S. debut in The Comtesse Coquette with Alla Nazimova. The following year he found a producer for his imported script, with memorable results. He had to resort to special matinees and Saturday morning performances to get his Hamlet before a Manhattan audience, but he persisted. He did Romeo and Macbeth, too. Since 1918 his place in the theatre has been his own.

When one is a tall, serious person with a scholarly background, a person whose attitude and diction are deemed worthy of a medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, it is difficult to find parts that will satisfy oneself and at the same time busy the box office. Art is art, but one cannot give Shakespeare all the time. Lack of funds to assemble proper supporting casts hampered several Hampden ventures, but finally, in 1923, he hit upon Poet Brian Hooker's translation of Cyrano. That somewhat mystical, fourth-dimensional architect, Claude Bragdon, helped "set" a production which was attracting standees within a week.

Perhaps it is ironic that a high tragedian should have to fall back upon Cyrano's gasconnade and buffoonery for the bed and board of his art. But, even as Cyrano cries after the duel with Valvert: "As I end the refrain, thrust home," so perhaps there never was a neater thrust than when Walter Hampden, whose heart is on nobler things, offered Rostand's sentimental hero to the sentimental U. S. public. Cyrano profits have enabled him to try Caponsacchi and An Enemy of the People. Next year he may try something by Benavente, or perhaps Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

Offstage, Dean Hampden ceases at once to be a Great Actor. On spring and autumn evenings he hurries from the theatre to a late train for White Plains, N. Y. There his Franklin car is waiting and he drives rapidly northeast into the night. In the morning he may be seen puttering in baggy clothes around his shingled house near Ridgefield, Conn., weeding the garden or playing his fair game of tennis.

His wife was Miss Mabel Moore of the oldtime Benson company. She has played all things for him, from "Desdemona" to "Voice Offstage." They have two grown children--Paul, 21, and Mary, 18--neither of them stagestruck.

*By Artist Truman E. Fassett