"Stage manager" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first semi-circle of amazons, and very beautiful. By rights she should have been on the end, but she was so proud and haughty that she would smile but seldom, and never at the men in front. Brady, the stage manager, who was also the second comedian, said that a girl on the end should at least look as though she were enjoying herself, and though he did not expect her to talk across the footlights, she might at least look over them once in a while, just to show there was no ill feeling. ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... Dickens' undoubted powers as an actor, as well as his ability as a stage manager, and it is well known that it was little more than an accident that kept him from adopting the dramatic profession. He ever took a keen interest in all that pertained to the stage, and when he was superintending the production of a ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... we sat at the piano, I had to listen to the most extraordinary objections concerning the trend of which I was for some time extremely puzzled. As the matter was much delayed by this vacillation, I put myself into closer communication with the stage manager of the opera, Hauser, who at that time was much appreciated as a singer and patron of art by ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... asked Kate if she had any apartments to let. She answered yes, and they went upstairs. After a cursory inspection he told her that he was the agent in advance to a travelling opera company, and that if she liked he would recommend her rooms to the stage manager, a particular friend of his. The proposition was somewhat startling, but, not liking to say no, she proposed to refer the matter to ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... in Dunkirk contained many of the elements which go to make up the actions and reactions of this war. It seemed to me that a clever stage manager desiring to present to his audience the typical characters of this military drama—leaving out the beastliness, of course—would probably select the very people and groups upon whom I was now looking down from the window. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Margaret followed the stage manager into the circle of light, a little woman suddenly detached herself, and, running across the stage and breaking into sobs as she ran, she was in Margaret's ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... those who know me best will understand how and why I died. "He had still over three weeks to stay there," they will say. "He was to act as the stage manager of charades." They will shake ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... have," said I. This satisfied Buntline, but we didn't study any more after he left us. The next morning we appeared at rehearsal and were introduced to the company. The first rehearsal was hardly a success; and the succeeding ones were not much better. The stage manager did his best to teach Jack and myself what to do, but when Monday night came we didn't know much more about it ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... And it's no good picking on me. I'm the star, not the assistant stage manager. If you're going to pick on ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... seen through the first performance of her farce, in her capacity of stage manager, had left the actors to their own devices, and wandered off to explore the other attractions. Betty met ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... From that finding he developed the concept of repression, i.e., the relegation of a painful experience into the unconscious, and kept imprisoned there by the censor. Also how there it became the complex, which, like a stage manager, never appeared before the footlights of the conscious, but determined its content just the same by inhibition or stimulation of any character or scene to be ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Grill, J. Glynn, Proprietor." The store also passed temporarily into the hands of its manager. Miners moved from the barracks that had been built by Macdonald into hastily constructed cabins on the individual claims. Wally had always fancied himself as a stage manager for amateur theatricals. Now he justified his faith by transforming Kamatlah outwardly from a company camp to a mushroom one settled ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... of anything: indeed it was said that the dress which the Stage Manager had originally proposed for her had been considered inadequate even by the Lord Chamberlain, but this is not the case. With all these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural that I should feel convinced of sin while playing chess (which I hate) with the great Dr Skinner of Roughborough—the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... temper, the Red Sea is favourable for dances and theatricals and, much against his will, Shafto was dragged into "the Neptune" company by Hoskins, a resolute, determined individual, who filled the thankless office of stage manager. Shafto was cast for the part of an old gentleman, the role being softened and alleviated by the fact that he was to undertake to play uncle to Miss Leigh. Although Bernhard had no part in the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... first Brother Fawkes, by himself; then Brother Bere, by himself; and then both together, so that you may say, if you are pedanticaly inclined, that I underwent three successive interviews. My Father, out of sight somewhere, was, of course, playing the part of stage manager. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... training, tried to do things up properly. And in that attempt certain basic traits of human nature showed in the very strongest relief. Thus there are three points of view to take in running any spectacle: that of the star performer, the stage manager, or the truly artistic. We encountered well-marked specimens of each. I ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... we decided that the two Earth panels were among the most remarkable of all. With satisfaction I heard Brangwyn compared by the painter to a great stage manager. "When I look at these groupings, I am reminded of Forbes-Robertson's productions of plays." Now we could see how brilliantly the decorator had planned in securing his effects of height by starting his group of figures close to the top of the canvas. And with what skill he had used trees and ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... specimen of ko[u]dan style, and has application to the present subject. It also instances how the Japanese stage boldly faces situations, the exigencies of which call for the greatest adaptation and facility on the part of actor and stage manager. The "Yotsuya Kwaidan" in the stage representation presents a number of critical scenes in which both qualities are severely strained. Rapid metamorphosis is a sine qua non. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Saint Martin and at the Cirque. I had the curiosity one night to go and see the women behind the scenes. I went to the Porte Saint Martin, where, I may add in parentheses, they were going to revive "Lucrece Borgia". Villemot, the stage manager, who was of poor appearance but intelligent, said: "I will take ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... of this rite, Persis in the adjoining room, looked at the clock, glanced at the window and then paced the floor, for once in her well-disciplined life too nervous to utilize the flying moments. Persis was in the dilemma of a stage manager whose curtain is ready to go up, and whose prima donna is about to appear, while the audience has failed to materialize. To such mischances does one subject one's self in assuming the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... capital of 790,000 marks. Willy Grumwald is really to be manager, Ernst Friedmann, business manager, and among the associates are Tilla Durieux, Carl Forest, Gerhart Hauptmann, Hilde Herterich, Else Lehmann, Emil Lessing (Brahm's stage manager), Theodor Loos, Hans Marr, Emanuel Reicher, Rudolf Rittner (who declares, however, that he is to return to the theater only as associate, artistic adviser, and stage manager, and that he still has no intention of ever acting again; since his blending of blazing passion ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... gold-diggers; and it is expected that they will both appear in full diggers' costume, such as they wore on the day when they knelt before the 'Southern Cross,' and swore to protect their rights and liberties. The whole will be under the direction of that capital stage manager, Mr. R. Barry, who will take occasion to repeat his celebrated epilogue, in which he will—if the audience demand it—introduce again his finely ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... could be heard the voice of Mr. Dickle, the stage manager, roaring directions through his megaphone. "Great scene! Fine! Register excitement! Fall down, Murphy! Tumble over, there, Lisk; you're dead—tumble, I say. Don't be afraid of your uniform. I'll pay for that. Fall!—fall!—fall! ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... was required at a moment's notice for a second danseuse, and the stage manager was distracted. "You must make something at once, Sullivan," he said. "But," replied the composer, "I haven't even seen the girl. I don't know her style or what she needs." However, the stage manager sent the dancer to speak with Sullivan, and presently ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... distinctive name, but which was little else than, an inflated type of the old sacra azione, employing the larger apparatus which modern invention and enterprise have placed at the command of the playwright, stage manager, and composer. I am compelled to see in his project chiefly a jealous ambition to rival the great and triumphant accomplishment of Richard Wagner, but it is possible that he had a prescient eye on a coming time. The desire to combine pictures with oratorio has ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... "Upon my word, Miss Hanny, you would make a good stage manager. There, could you have it planned out any nicer, Daisy? I shall have to be on hand to see the triumphal procession as ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... or The Three Wishes,' by the Dowager Countess of Hardwicke, with Viscount Royston, the Hon. Eliot Yorke, Mr. Sydney Yorke, Lady Elizabeth Yorke, the Hon. John Manners Yorke, Lady Agneta Yorke, the Hon. Victor Yorke, and the Hon. Alexander Yorke in the caste, and the Hon. Eliot Yorke, M.P., as stage manager. This company in 1853 repeated the 'Court of Oberon' with 'The Day after the Wedding.' In 1854 'The Day after the Wedding' was again given with a comic interlude 'Personation' by Charles Kemble and a popular ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... theatres and tried to persuade him that there would be money in it for any house which would have the courage to give a season of romantic tragedy. But the director, who seemed to be a liberal-minded man, assured him that until some stage manager could be found rich enough to buy up the dramatic criticism of the Constitutionnel and two or three other newspapers, the law students and medical students, who were under the influence of those journals, would never suffer the play to get as far as the third act. "If it were ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... good and true in art realizes how very few of these pictures have been rendered in the spirit of love and joy. The painter has one eye on his object and one eye on the public; and too often, as a distinguished actor once said of the stage manager whose vision is divided between art and the box office, the painter is a ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... all his toil and travel. Most men would have sought relaxation in being quiet. He found it in vigorously getting up private theatricals with the officers of the Coldstream Guards, at Montreal. Besides acting in all the three pieces played, he also accepted the part of stage manager; and "I am not," he says, "placarded as stage manager for nothing. Everybody was told that they would have to submit to the most iron despotism, and didn't I come Macready over them? Oh no, by no means; certainly ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... agree with you, Grace, for you were an ideal 'Orlando,'" replied Miss Tebbs. "However it's too late for regret, and the best I can do now is to make you assistant stage manager. Some of those girls need looking after. Miss Savell had a bad case of stage fright and almost had to be dragged on. She forgot her lines and had to be prompted. She's all right now, but I am devoutly thankful she didn't play 'Rosalind,' for she certainly would ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... the 'cello. Imagine the scene. Frank, white-hot, with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting from him. Helen, rushing and clinging to him, trying to explain. He catches her wrists and tears them from his shoulders—once, twice, thrice he sways her this way and that—the stage manager will show you how—and throws her from him to the floor a huddled, crushed, moaning thing. Never, he cries, will he look upon her face again, and rushes from the house through the staring groups ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... perhaps turn out very like the Lady of Greifenstein. The stage was always set; the scenery was always of the best and newest; the vacant boxes and the yawning pit were brilliantly lighted; the costumes were by the best makers; the stage manager was punctual and in his place; the curtain went up every day for the performance; but Frau von Greifenstein's theatre was silent and untenanted, not a voice broke the stillness, not a rustle of garments or a flutter of a programme in a spectator's hand ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... oration" is come, and the speaker is arranging his back hair in the star dressing-room of the theatre. The orchestra is playing selections from the Gentile opera of "Un Ballo in Maschera," and the house is full. Mr. John F. Caine, the excellent stage manager, has given me an elegant drawing-room scene in which to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... "and all hungry. Forty singers and an orchestra of thirty—seventy—besides props and the stage manager and Herr Fruehlingsvogel, who is ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... think. Glasgow has always been an eventful place to me!), a child was wanted for the Spirit of the Mustard-pot. What more natural than that my father should offer my services? I had a shock of pale yellow hair, I was small enough to be put into the property mustard-pot, and the Glasgow stage manager would easily assume that I had inherited talent. My father had acted with Macready in the stock seasons both at Edinburgh and Glasgow, and bore a very high reputation with Scottish audiences. But the stage manager and father alike reckoned without their actress! When they ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... artisans. Any one blessed with a clever or fantastic idea easily found a market for the product of his brain. He could see his poetic or quaint conception presented to an applauding public with a wealth of paraphernalia that a modern stage manager would not scorn. How much the nobles spent can only be inferred from the ducal accounts, which are eloquent with information about the creators of all this mimic pomp. About six sous a day was the wage earned by a painter, while the plumbers ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... something (not so much, but still a good round sum) if you could only stumble into that very dark and dusty theatre in the daytime (at any minute between twelve and three), and see me with my coat off, the stage manager and universal director, urging impracticable ladies and impossible gentlemen on to the very confines of insanity, shouting and driving about, in my own person, to an extent which would justify any philanthropic stranger in clapping me into a strait-waistcoat ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... result of this worship is the presentation to men of a false model for imitation. If people wrote of Shakespeare that for his time he was a good writer, that he had a fairly good turn for verse, was an intelligent actor and good stage manager—even were this appreciation incorrect and somewhat exaggerated—if only it were moderately true, people of the rising generation might remain free from Shakespeare's influence. But when every young man entering into ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... would dare to introduce himself informally to any lady who is employed under Mr. W.S. Gilbert's superintendence; but what can we say about the thousands who travel from town to town unguided save by the curt directions of the stage manager? Let it be understood that when I speak of the theatre I have not in mind the beautiful refined places in central London where cultured people in the audience are entertained by cultured people on the stage; I am thinking grimly of the squalor, the degradation, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... idea so eagerly that he sat down that evening and wrote to a London manager requesting him to secure the services of three famous actresses, whom he named, for the first week of the next year. He stipulated also for the presence of a competent stage manager through the whole week, and promised instructions with respect to scenery, and so forth, later on. In his enthusiasm he drew up a list of critics and authors to invite, and he and Leland straightway began to study their ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... the story, Buntline had whispered to the stage manager that when I got through with my story to send on the Indians. Presently Buntline sung out: 'The Indians are upon us.' Now this was 'pie' for Jack and I, and we went at those bogus Indians red hot until we had killed the last one and the curtain went down amid a most ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... prologue was his adaptation of Rowley's old comedy, "A Woman never Vext," produced at Covent Garden on November 9th, 1824, with a grand pageant of the Lord Mayor's Show as it appeared in the time of Henry VI. At one of the last rehearsals, Fawcett, the stage manager, inquired of the adapter if he had written a prologue? "No." "A five-act play and no prologue! Why, the audience will tear up the benches!" But they did nothing of the kind. They took not the slightest notice of the omission. After that, little more was heard of the time-honoured ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... your places!" called Pons, looking round at his little army, as the stage manager's bell rang ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Lieutenant Beechy became stage manager. The theatre received the name of the North Georgian, and was opened on the 5th of November, with "Miss in her Teens." The ships' companies were highly delighted, and Lieutenant Parry took a part himself, considering ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... she began, "for I was born in Italy; but when I was two years old I was taken to London, and my childhood was passed in that great city. My father was stage manager at Covent Garden, and has also held the same post at the Manhattan and Metropolitan Opera Houses in New York. So I have grown up in the theater. I have always listened to opera—daily, and my childish imagination was fired ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... company of his beloved. That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to struggle further, and Georgia's exit was made from the great stage when she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights. But there must be a stage manager who understands. She had given the cue to the one who ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... moment that Edna felt her journalistic ambition departing from her, and was aware of an overmastering desire to be somewhere else. But the stage manager, like an ogre, barred her retreat. She could hear the opening bars of her song going up from the orchestra and the noises of the house dying away to ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... humoredly.) You must not all steal my thunder. By the way, Seward, your pleasant friend Judge D——, who came from New York about Col. Corcoran, told me the meaning of that phrase. It seems a Dublin stage manager got up a scenic play with thunder in it perfectly imitated by a diapason of bass drums. A rival got up another scenic play, to which, out of jealous pique, the inventor repaired as a spectator. To his surprise he heard his ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Lily's arm as if she meant to break it, but all this noiselessly, in the shadow, behind the scenery, for fear of the stage manager. Besides, it was nobody's business what a mother thought fit to say to her daughter, and Lily, when people passed, pluckily tried to smile, so as to put them off, not to let them know that she was being beaten, a big ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... had appeared only as a stage manager. He had been concerned with his groupings, his lights, in assigning to his confederates the parts they were to play. Now that the curtain was to rise, as an actor puts on a wig and grease paint, Vance assumed a certain voice and manner. On the stage the critics would have called him a convincing ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis |
