"Footlights" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the row of footlights," she said. "I was on the platform; the audience was in the hall; or, if it was at a house, my father made the arrangements. I only came in at the last moment, played my part, and went away. It was never brought ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... that my father always loved the theatre, though perhaps the Green Room better than the footlights. The marked passages in his library still attest his propensity. He now looked about him with a keen appreciation, as though my words were all that he required to round out his evening. Like a man whose work is finished, and who is ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... the mountain, throwing into grand relief its rugged seam-scarred sides, the calcium light; the pine trees with waving plumes, rising file on file like shrouded specters, form the stage setting; the mountain brook, on whose bosom the moon leaves a streak of molten silver, the footlights; while all the myriad voices of the night, harmoniously blended, are the orchestra. Even the birds in their nests, awakened by the firelight, join their sleepy chirpings to ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... Shakespeare's, and among its exponents are Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry, we turn from the gods in the gallery and from the goddesses in the stalls, to enjoy the charm of the production, and to take delight in the art. The lions are behind the footlights and not in front of them when we have a noble tragedy nobly acted. And I have rarely witnessed such enthusiasm as that which greeted on last Saturday night the two artists I have mentioned. I would like, in fact, to use the word ovation, but a pedantic professor has recently informed ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, behind the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn and a few hundred of Vancouver's social elect critically, expectantly listening. She sang her way straight into the heart of that audience with her opening number. This was on Wednesday. Friday she ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of that to-night was indeed managerial, and the performer's own contribution fairly that of the faultless soldier on parade. Densher saw himself for the moment as in his purchased stall at the play; the watchful manager was in the depths of a box and the poor actress in the glare of the footlights. But she passed, the poor performer—he could see how she always passed; her wig, her paint, her jewels, every mark of her expression impeccable, and her entrance accordingly greeted with the proper round of applause. Such impressions ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... that had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers' ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman, with his naive, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle, like the footlights at a theatre, reveling in the intricacies of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... said that I had made up my mind in my earliest days to go to the Bar or on the Stage, and that love for the histrionic art (sometimes called the footlights) never left me. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... take place immediately after light supper. The great hall was arranged for the occasion. A stage was erected at the farther end, in the darkest and most shadowy spot. Across the stage a great curtain was drawn, and footlights had been secured to throw up the antics of the different animals the twelve girls were to act. One was the kitchen cat. Daisy was to be dressed exactly to fit the part by Miss Kent's and Hollyhock's ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... pen that Punch attacked so lustily our licensing system—or want of system; and from him, too, came the burlesque "Schopenhauer Ballads," and other contributions, which, many of them, have been reprinted in "Footlights," ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... know," she agreed, "but in the strong lights of the stage and the footlights too, you have to ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... seen him to-night. Come here." He led her towards the footlights, and, pulling back the edge of the curtain, allowed her to peep past him out into the dance-hall. She had never pictured a place like this, and in spite of her agitation was astonished at its gaudy elegance. The gallery was formed of a continuous row of compartments with curtained fronts, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... act was over, and Rosetta Rosa stood at the footlights bowing before the rolling and thunderous storms of applause, her hand in the hand of Alresca, the Lohengrin. That I have not till this moment mentioned Alresca, and that I mention him now merely as the man who happened to hold Rosa's hand, shows with what ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... it. Grey laughed with everybody else; she would ask God to bless her to-night none the worse for that. It had some touches of pathos in it, and she cried, and saw some men about her with the smug New-York-city face doing the very same,—not just as she did, but glowering at the footlights, and softly blowing their noses. Then the music came, and La petite Elise. Grey drew back where she could not see her. Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she came out from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... succeeded. Their souls had followed it over the footlights, and, floating in the limelight, shone there awaiting the fulfilment ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bareheaded, with a full head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes, like some mad animal's, flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back of the footlights—turns fully towards the audience, his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm and steady voice the words, 'Sic semper tyrannis'—and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... cannot write plays, she is surcharged with dramatic energy. But, to use a familiar phrase, it is action in character rather than character in action which marks her work most impressively, and the latter is the essential element for the footlights. Shakespeare, Rostand, and Barrie have both, and are naturally therefore great dramatists. Two of the most of Miss Branch's poems are Lazarus Ora Pro Nobis. These are fruitful subjects for poetry, the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... fury and despair! Men hurled themselves over the footlights in vain pursuit of the assassin. Already the clatter of his horse's feet could be heard in the distance. A surgeon threw himself against the door of the box, but it had been barred within by the cunning hand. Another leaped on the stage, and the people lifted him up in their arms and over ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... their hats. The promenade was as gay as on Fifth Avenue. Doctor Argyle gave his arm to Mrs. Harris, Lucille walked between Alfonso and Leo, and doctors of divinity and men of repute in other professions kept faithful step. Actors and actresses moved as gracefully as before the footlights. A famous actor carried on his shoulders a tiny girl who had bits of sky for eyes, a fair face, and fleecy hair that floated in the sea breeze, making a ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... stealing back. The orchestra boils over in a cadence and stops. The theater is darkened again. The footlights come on with a flash. The curtain silently lifts, ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... the Peabody Symphony concerts. This engagement was a bold undertaking, which cannot be better presented than in his own words. In a letter to Hayne he says: "Aside from the complete bouleversement of proceeding from the courthouse to the footlights, I was a raw player and a provincial withal, without practice, and guiltless of instruction—for I had never had a teacher. To go under these circumstances among old professional players, and assume a leading ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... of "evenings of honor," when admirers had surprised her in the green room while outside the audience was applauding wildly, and she, lowering her lance, and surrounded by ushers with huge bouquets, would step forward to the footlights and make her bow of acknowledgment, under a deluge of tinsel and flowers. One medallion bore the portrait of the venerable don Pedro of Brazil, the artist-emperor, who paid tribute to the singer in a greeting written in diamonds. Gem-incrusted frames of gold ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gave up the poor travesty upon life that we should have seen behind the footlights for a glimpse into one of ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... little door beneath the stage and took their accustomed places. A dart, propelled by an urchin of the upper regions who evidently had no fear of the monitor's stick, sailed serenely downward and found a resting place in a blonde lock of the salesgirl's hair. The footlights flashed on, and the musicians struck up a lilting, popular air, as Sid ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... obliged with appropriately lugubrious wailings and thumpings, and the Baroness seized the opportunity to make a dash to the dressing-room to effect certain repairs in her make-up. Cassandra, nervous but resolute, came down to the footlights and, like one repeating a carefully learned lesson, flung her remarks ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... the end. Murder, suicide, poison, dagger, lightning even decimated their ranks, and when the curtain dropped there was not a soul of them left alive. The crowning effect of this parody was the appearance of the prompter himself before the footlights. In a few tear-choked words he informed the audience that after seeing the actors all die, and nothing but corpses around him, he could and would not survive, and so he made an end of himself, too, using a rope ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... heard of him? Mortimer Farwell is—or was—the most popular matinee idol on the stage. He's resting on his laurels at present, but I don't think he will rest long. Between you and me, he misses the footlights." ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... nature. Lady Dunstane was the casual betrayer. He shrugged at the nonsense of a boy's publishing; anybody's publishing he held for a doubtful proof of sanity. His excuse was, that he had not published opinions. Let us observe, and assist in our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... girls returned, and 'tis needless to tell their wonder. They preferred the stage, yet condescended to say they would favour the ball, since Mrs Bellamy counselled it. "But, never, never will it turn my heart from the charming footlights!" says ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... uniformed and helmeted, stalwarts carrying torches and banners. And then there were the draughty opera-houses with the sylvan scenery pushed back and plush chairs and sofas pushed forward; with an ominous table, a pitcher of water on it and a glass, near the footlights. The houses were packed with more bewildered citizens. What a wonderful study of mob-psychology it would have offered! Men who had not thought of the grand old Republican party for two years, and who had not cared much about it when they had entered the dooms, after an hour or so went ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and I'm agoin' to fix up the attic fer him. I don't jest see how we air agoin' to manage about feedin' him. Thar's no room to the table now, and thar ain't dishes enough to go around, but you're so contrivin' like, I thought you might find out a way." Memories of the footlights were temporarily banished upon hearing this wonderful intelligence. A puzzled pucker came between the brows of the little would-be prima donna and remained there until at last the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... "I didn't think those fellows in Belfast had brains enough to grasp that fact, but apparently they have. I must say that this gun-running performance of theirs is good. It has the quality which Americans describe as 'punch.' It has stirred the popular imagination. It has got right across the footlights. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... left-hand wall is a door, and beyond it a window. Near the window are a round table, arm-chairs and a small sofa. In the right-hand wall, at the farther end, another door; and on the same side, nearer the footlights, a stove, two easy chairs and a rocking-chair; between the stove and the door, a small table. Engravings on the walls; a cabinet with china and other small objects; a small book-case with well-bound books. The floors are carpeted, and a fire burns ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... called him, nor did he rhapsodize over handsome Miss Van Alstine, whose wonderful gown and thrilling voice captured the audience. It was only when a slender, dark, elderly man stepped down to the footlights with a violin in his long, thin hands that Archie sat bolt upright, his eyes blazing with excitement, his breath catching ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... repugnant, with its cookery, its hobbles, its demand for immediate and brutal success, its army of collaborators, to which one must submit, from the imposing leading man down to the prompter. How much more independent are we in the novel! And that's why, when the glamor of the footlights makes the blood dance, we prefer to exercise it by keeping aloof and to remain the absolute masters of our works. In the theater we are asked to submit to ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... we thought most worthy of a place in our collection. As the room was fairly large and as the mouldings ran entirely around it, we had plenty of space for even our very elastic love for the heroes and heroines of the footlights. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... her conception of the passions was different from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it was certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range, was not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had admirers enough in the green-room, but awakened no abiding affection among the audience. In this strait, it occurred to her that she had a voice,—a contralto of no very great compass or cultivation, but singularly sweet and touching; and she finally ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... think that I am bodied forth under the character of Harry Benson, and am, in consequence, a handsome young man, who can do a little of every thing instead of——but never mind what; your actor has not yet sufficient standing to come down before the footlights, and have his little bit of private chaff with the audience. Only this will I say, so help me N. P. Willis, I mean to go on with these sketches till they are finished, provided always that Fraser will take them so long and that you continue to read them, or fall into a sweet and soothing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... saw him in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid and a probable curate in mufti, demanded an order of courage ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... combined result of the two. The girl was pretty. In the ray of that electric light, the soft, childish outline of her face and the pale, sensuous strands of her hair were probably lent a glamour such as that given by the footlights. The man, too, was on his way back to companionless chambers. The lower end of Regent Street may be a far from lonely spot in which to take up one's abode; but there is nothing so empty as an empty room, no matter on to what crowded thoroughfare it may look. Say, then, it was a combination of impulses, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... suddenly took on a rapid crescendo, ascending a full third in the scale and then dying abruptly in a little high falsetto shriek; and Bobby, with a lady upon either arm, found his little trio immediately alone in the center of the stage, a row of dim footlights cutting off effectually any view into the vast ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... stark moment no one stirred, then suddenly a man with an opera-cloak on his arm was seen to spring across a space of many feet between a box on the level of the stage and the stage itself. He crashed into the footlights, but recovered himself and ran forward. In an instant he had enveloped the agonized figure of the singer and had crushed out the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that it gives the impression of not being written at all, but spoken in that vivid, pawky, homely way which makes him 'get over' the footlights as no ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... calling on Heaven to see justice done between Mr. Miller and themselves. The seventh, a long-legged young man in faultlessly-fitting tweeds of English cut, seemed, on the other hand, not so much hurt as embarrassed. It was this youth who now stepped down to the darkened footlights and spoke in a ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... frosty winter dusk or under the usher-oak in the balmy summer twilight, but walked through life briskly and bravely, with a perfect mate; whom he had not failed to recognize as a real diamond among the bits of glass before the footlights—a diamond which his old mother had consented to set ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the hours as only stories and dreams do, and put ourselves, at ten of the clock that night, behind the green curtain and the footlights, in the blaze of the three rows of bright lamps, that, one above another, poured their illumination from the left upon the stage, behind ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... a winning smile, "I wish you would understand me. I want you to know that I never dreamed of insulting you. In my profession, all life belongs to me. I take what I want, and what I can, and return it over the footlights. Now, if you will, let's let it go at that. I came in to see you about something else. We've been pretty good friends for some months, and I'm going to take the risk of offending you again. I know you are hard up for money—never mind how I found out; a boarding house is no place to keep ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... trying to lecture in a chautauqua tent in Illinois, a crippled woman was wheeled into the tent and brought right down to the foot of the platform. The subject was The University of Hard Knocks. Presently the cripple's face was shining brighter than the footlights. ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... now willingly sacrifice to make the Sunny South prosperous and happy. Will you take it, General?' There was a moment's hesitation, a moment of death-like stillness in the hall, and then General Lee was on his feet, his hand was extended across the footlights, and was quickly met by the preacher's warm grasp. At first there was a murmur, half surprise, half-doubtfulness, by the audience. Then there was a hesitating clapping of hands, and before Mr. Beecher had loosed the hand of Robert ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... all breath thrown away. The puppets, instead of continuing the recital, redoubled their noise and outcries, and, putting Pinocchio on their shoulders, they carried him in triumph before the footlights. ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... were the first, and we were pioneers and we were new. To be new is everything in America. Such palaces as the Hudson Theatre, New York, were not dreamed of when we were at the Star, which was, however, quite equal to any theatre in London, in front of the footlights. The stage itself, the lighting appliances, and the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... she thought, as she directed the note, and that night she dreamed that Amy came to her, with a face and voice so like her mother's that she woke with a start and a feeling that she had really seen her mother, as she used to stand before the footlights, while the house rang with thunders ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... proceeded to its termination amid thunders of applause, which, as the curtain finally descended on the last scene of the last act, became perfectly deafening, accompanied by cries for the author. But no author appeared behind the footlights or in the proscenium box; and, at last, the uproar becoming redoubled, the manager came forward, and, in the author's behalf, tendered grateful acknowledgments for the unprecedented favor, even by a Parisian audience, with which the production had been received, but, at the same time, entreated ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... dear old lady whom the world wishes the footlights might always shine upon and upon whom the ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... been a difficult task for him to obey my instructions, as he maintained that it was against all operatic custom for the singer not to address such an important passage straight to the public from the footlights. When in the course of the performance he seized his harp to begin the song, there was a cry from the audience, 'Ah! il prend encore sa harpe,' upon which there was a universal outburst of laughter followed by fresh whistling, so prolonged, that at last Morelli decided boldly to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... her part and at the same time she must be sufficiently conscious that she was placing a part not to let any impulse of aversion betray her. The tea-table scene had been a rehearsal; coming was a premiere before the ghostly, still faces across the bent glare of the footlights. No ready-made lines, hers She must create them. Every word must be the right word and spoken in the right way, all for ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... said slowly. "Perhaps that's why life is sometimes a huge joke and sometimes nothing but sadness and disillusionment. We play our little game of make-believe and strut around proudly, making ourselves, as well as others, think that we amount to something and then comes death, like a curtain; the footlights go out and where are we? Who thinks of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... women anxious for light for the sake of their children. Some of them were first stirred to action by Wedekind's powerful drama "The Awakening of Spring," which, with Teutonic grimness, thrusts over the footlights the lesson that death and degradation may be the fate of a group of gifted school-children, because of the ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... the removal of the facade. Chairs, beds—all the domestic economy of the house—sagged visibly outward toward the street, or stood still firm, but open to the four winds. It was as if the scene were prepared for a stage and you sat before the footlights looking into the interior. Again, the next house and that beyond were utterly gone—side walls, front walls, everything swallowed up and vanished—the iron work twisted into heaps, the stone work crumbled to dust; the whole mass of ruin still smoked, for ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... was but dimly lighted, draughty, odorous, and gloomy. Beyond the extinguished footlights they could see the curved enormous cavern of the house, row upon row of empty seats. In the orchestra box two or three men, one in his coat sleeves, were disputing over an opera score. High up in the topmost gallery ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... or run tea-rooms, or bred pet dogs, become a mannequin, or a dance club hostess, or even "gone on the films." But none of these avenues to feminine employment existed in the eighteen-forties. Hence, it was the footlights or nothing. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... presence." Her brother, the pastor of Plymouth church, had converted one hundred and ninety souls. A theater was used for a place of worship. Actors were called upon to repent: You who have portrayed human nature before the footlights, fall on your knees and acknowledge God! Rum had been driven from a saloon near this theater. "Thank God," said Beecher, "let us pray silently for the space of two minutes. What a history has been here. A place of fictitious joys but of real sorrows has been reformed. It ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... tag for a playhouse, Dick,' cried the officer. 'How doth it run? "The bigotry of kings and the tyranny of priests." Why, if well delivered by Betterton close up to the footlights, with one hand upon his heart and the other pointing to the sky, I warrant the pit would ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Somehow I bought a ticket and hurried into the tent. The seats were sparingly occupied, and I saw, as I would have guessed, no one whom I knew in the eager, stamping little audience. In their midst I lost the slim figure that had preceded me, until she mounted the platform and swept before the footlights a stately courtesy. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... kept out of the papers, you know. And you won't have to live with her—you can pension her off and send her abroad. I dare say she's after money. Women are the very devil, Jack, ain't they? I could tell you about a little scrape of my own, with Totsy Footlights, of ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... footlights the beset man darted, and like a desperate swimmer plunging from a foundering bark into a stormy sea he leaped far out and projected himself, a living catapult, along the middle aisle. He struck the tall yellow woman as the irresistible force ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... celebrated were Maria Riquelme, Francisca Beson, Josefa Vaca, and Maria Calderon, familiarly known to the theatre-goers as la bella Calderona. Philip IV., as much infatuated as the meanest of his subjects by the glitter of the footlights, never lost an opportunity when at his capital to spend his evenings in the royal box, where he showed his appreciation by most generous applause; and he was soon on familiar terms with many of the reigning favorites. Among them all, La Calderona seemed ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... in front of the potter's hut. On the right from the middle of the back of the scene to the footlights, the walls of the dwelling made of beaten clay. Two unequal doors. The wall is slightly raised supporting a terrace where pottery of all kinds is drying in the sun. Left, a wall of loose stones high enough to lean on. Between the wall and the house an opening leading to an invisible ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... short trousers, sandalled shoes, white spencer, pink gauze bonnet, green veil and curl papers, who turned a pirouette, then looking off in the opposite wing, shrieked, bounded forward to within six inches of the footlights, and fell into a beautiful attitude of terror, as a shabby gentleman in an old pair of buff slippers came in at one powerful slide, and chattering his teeth fiercely, brandished ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... literary man called to see me. On a table in my studio lay a "make-up" box—used by actors preparing their faces for the footlights—a bald head with fringe of light hair, large fair moustache, wig paste, a suit of clothes too large for me, and other trifles. My visitor's curiosity was aroused. Taking up my "properties," he asked me what they were for. I explained to him a huge joke had been arranged as a surprise ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... real than the other players. There was no make- believe about Mother. She thundered across the stage and stood before the footlights, interrupting many a performance with her stubborn common-sense and her grip upon difficult grave issues. 'This performance will finish at such and such an hour,' was her cry. 'Get your wraps ready. It will be cold when you go out. And see that you have money handy for ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... of him the place rose at him, howling out its devotion. He flung off his overcoat, letting it fall upon the floor, and he strode forward almost to the trough of the footlights; and then for a space he stood there on the rounded apron of the platform, staring out into the troubled, tossing pool of contorted faces and tossing arms below him and about him. Demagogue he may have been; demigod he looked in that, his moment of supreme triumph, ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... tragedies which had, as the French term it, the honour of seeing the light of the footlights, Desnoyers wrote a play on Joan of Arc in 1841, and was followed by a series of other writers in verse and in prose—Caze, Dumolard, Maurin, Cramar, Hedouville, Millot, Lequesme, Crepot, Puymaigre, Porchat, Haldy, Renard, Jouve, Cozic, Daniel Stern, Bousson de Maviet, Constant ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... cut-and-dried, melodramatic sort of thing you read about, or used to read about, in the early days, with a couple of Winchesters poking through the scrub pines to represent the gang in hiding, and one lone, crippled desperado to come down to the footlights in the speaking part. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... on, detailing a plan of some sort which she could not understand because they had missed the first five minutes of the play. Emmy could not tell that the actor was only pretending to be an American; she could not understand why, having spoken twenty words, he must take six paces farther from the footlights until he had spoken thirteen more; but she could and did feel most overwhelmingly exuberant at being as it were alone in that half-silent multitude, sitting beside Alf, their arms touching, her head whirling, her heart beating, and a wholly ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... with air and then letting it go vigorously, powerfully, for a long time together and rhythmically.—And by way of compliment he accorded a certain great singer a certificate of good health. He was not content with flaying the artists. He strode over the footlights and trounced the public for coming, gaping, to such performances. The public was staggered and did not know whether it ought to laugh or be angry. They had every right to cry out upon his injustice: they had taken care not to be mixed up in ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... of course, and no hearth in our lodging, so we betook ourselves to the blacksmith's forge across the platform. If the platform be taken as a stage, and the out-curving margin of the dump to represent the line of the footlights, then our house would be the first wing on the actor's left, and this blacksmith's forge, although no match for it in size, the foremost on the right. It was a low, brown cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung by the foliage and peeling boughs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was added real physical trial. Frohman showed in towns wherever there was the least prospect of any kind of a house. The company therefore played in skating-rinks, school-houses, even barns. In some places the members of the company had to take the oil-lamps that served as footlights back in the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... of the stage. There were no footlights in those days. Favourite though Jack Hall was not a hand nor a voice was raised to greet him. Jack Hall lost his nerve—which, however, as it turned out was the most fortunate thing which could have happened—and this is what he ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... good deal of risk, as well as of convenience, in suspended animation. People do not always welcome Rip Van Winkle when he returns to life, as we would all welcome Mr. Jefferson if he revisited the glimpses of the footlights, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... turning to Dorothy. "You enter from vhere you are, valking to de center of de stage, down near de footlights. Smile, Miss Dorothy, und do not put your violin to your shoulder until de orchestra is half way t'rough ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... a great theatre-goer," says Field in his "Auto-Analysis." And it may be doubted if any writer of our time repaid the stage as generously for the pleasure he received from those who walked its boards before and behind the footlights. No better analysis of his relations to the profession has been made than that from the pen of his ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... affecting scene on the stage of a New York theater the other night—a scene invisible to the audience and not down on the bills, but one far more touching and pathetic than anything enacted before the footlights that night, although it was a minstrel company ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... new attraction—has been added to the British Drama. Mr. WALTER HACKETT has brought the scent of the cinema across the footlights. When he wants to inform you of certain episodes in the hero's past career, or let you know what he is doing when he is out of sight, he throws the main stage into darkness and lights up a smaller one on which he gives you as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... I seem to myself to wander in a ghostly street—E.W., I think, the postal district—close below the fool's cap of St. Paul's, and yet within easy hearing of the echo of the Abbey Bridge. There in a dim shop, low in the roof and smelling strong of glue and footlights, I find myself in quaking treaty with great Skelt himself, the aboriginal, all dusty from the tomb. I buy, with what a choking heart—I buy them all, all but the pantomimes; I pay my mental money, and go forth; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "and I was figuring that if I hung round here a week or so and played my hand all right, I'd maybe get her to do a few steps for me in the parlor. Oh, Lordy! And now I got a chance to see her before the footlights and size up her capacity for ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... fallen close to the footlights, to represent an "Ante-room in the Palace." Attendants bring on two dressing-tables. Enter the two principal danseuses, who are about to dress for the Grand Ballet, when Lulli, the Composer, and Prevot, the Maitre de dance du Roi, come in and very inconsiderately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... Club," and entertainments were frequent. The middle classes of the community, overflowing with artistic instinct, supplied a phenomenal number of reciters, vocalists and instrumentalists ready to oblige, and the greatest favorites of the London footlights were pleased to come down, partly because they found such keenly appreciative audiences, and partly because they were so much mixed up with the race, both professionally and socially. There were serious lectures now and again, but few of the members ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dressing had been going on for the last hour, and now a goodly company of courtiers and dames stood about waiting while Miss Tebbs and Miss Kane rapidly "made up their faces" with rouge and powder. This being done to prevent them from looking too pale when in the white glare of the footlights. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... Mae's upturned face and far-off smile. Patty Wyatt pointed out that Mae had taken special pains to seat herself in the light of a stained-glass window, and that occasionally the rapt eyes scanned the faces of her companions, to make sure that the effect was reaching across the footlights. But Patty's insinuation was indignantly repudiated by ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... the Paris Conference, where her cause was referred by Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau to Mr. Wilson to deal with. The behavior of her representatives was an illuminating object-lesson in the worth of psychological tactics in practical politics. They hardly ever appeared in the footlights, remained constantly silent and observant, and were almost ignored by the press. But they kept their eyes fixed on the goal. Their program was simple. Amid the flitting shadows of political events they marched together ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of Jenny Lind, on her first appearance, in point of enthusiasm, was probably never before equalled. As Mr. Benedict led her towards the footlights, the entire audience rose to their feet and welcomed her with three cheers, accompanied by the waving of thousands of hats and handkerchiefs. This was perhaps the largest audience to which Jenny Lind had ever sung. She was evidently much agitated, but the orchestra ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... found himself in a low square room, and could see about him again by the subdued light of oil lamps fixed against the wall. At one end was the small stage, its scarlet curtain now down; in front a row of tin lamps, primitive footlights, and the rest of the room was filled with rows of empty chairs. Mechanically and without interest, Hamilton went forward and seated himself in the first of these rows. The tom-toms had ceased: there was quiet, an interval of rest ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... woe, being dissatisfied with the dress that she was to wear in a new part. I saw her frequently again when war had been declared, for she it was who, every evening, with overpowering force and art, sang the Marseillaise from before the footlights. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... were called out for exhibition. Youngsters of the first line they were and even in their privates' uniform they bore the unmistakable signs of belonging to the Russian upper class. Each saluted and made his bow, as if he had come on to do a turn before the footlights. It was not the first time they had been paraded before visitors. In the prince's eye I noted a twinkle, which as much as said: "Well, why ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... faintly recall a saccharine tune sung by someone who strode stiffly to and fro in a glare of amber footlights—wasn't there a song about: "And I lo-ong to settle down, in that old Long Island town!" Wasn't there such a ditty? It came softly back, unbidden, to the sentimental attic of our memory as we passed along that fine avenue of trees ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... poses before the world—even the Canadian world—in the role of an author, he is expected to step up to the footlights, and explain his purpose in presenting himself before the ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... the violins are tuning up: Scraping of crystal bows, picking of strings!—Hush! Let the footlights now leap into brightness, for at a signal from their little leader the crickets' orchestra have ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... on the night of his last concert in New York. He had sat there in the box while his brother and Katharine were called back again and again after the last number, watching the roses go up over the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano, brooding, in his sullen boy's heart, upon the pride those two felt in each other's work—spurring each other to their best and beautifully contending in song. The footlights had seemed ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... July night had come from the theater. Most of those present had been acting, but a certain number had been to the opening performance of the latest better-than-Raffles play. There had been something of a boom that season in dramas whose heroes appealed to the public more pleasantly across the footlights than they might have done in real life. In the play that had opened to-night, Arthur Mifflin, an exemplary young man off the stage, had been warmly applauded for a series of actions which, performed anywhere except in the theater, would certainly have ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... well simultaneously speak of two families. 'When two flowers open together,' the proverb says, 'one person can only speak of one.' But whether the stones be true or fictitious, don't let us say anything more about them. Let's have the footlights put in order, and look at the players. Dear senior, do let these two relatives have a glass of wine and see a couple of plays; and you can then start arguing about one dynasty after another. Eh, what do ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... entrance. The organ is playing and the bells are ringing. The service is just ended, and the people are leaving the church. The Sexton and his wife are standing by themselves in a corner near the footlights.) ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... carpenter and of the costumer. He must try to realize what problem the leading lady has to face and how well she solves it. The same carefulness of judgment must be given to each member of the cast. Only when the critic is able to see past the footlights and to understand the technique of the art, can he judge intelligently. And as his judgment can be at best only relative, he must have a background of many plays and much stage knowledge upon which to base his estimate of any ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... 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.
... and abundant creature, hopelessly healthy beneath the coat of paint, powder and peroxide with which she armoured herself against the battle of Life. Normally good-looking in ordinary daylight, she was a radiant beauty across footlights. Her eyes were bright even at such times as belladonna lacked in them; her nose pretty and pert; her mouth, open for laughter (as it usually was), disclosed twin rows of sound, white, home-made teeth. Her active young person was modelled on generous lines and, as a rule, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... out of curiosity, attend a performance, generally pay more, and are given more comfortable seats upon the stage. The stage is a primitive affair. It boasts of no curtain, footlights or scenery of ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... them think he was sleepy. Major Pond, having lived much with orators, and thinking the trick easy, tried oratory on his own account, and succeeded as well as did Matthew Arnold. No one ever heard Major Pond: his voice fell over the footlights, dead, into the orchestra; only those with ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the Opera houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink and red roses. Gigantic ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... compared with acting on the stage, in telling a story one misses the help of effective entrances and exits, the footlights, the costume, the facial expression of your fellow-actor which interprets so much of what you yourself say without further elaboration on your part; for, in the story, in case of a dialogue which necessitates great subtlety and quickness ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... quickened, a greater pressure of time is applied, and through that the accents become sharper and the emphasis more powerful for the attention. But secondly the form of the stage intensifies the impression made by those who move toward the foreground. The theater stage is broadest near the footlights and becomes narrower toward the background; the moving picture stage is narrowest in front and becomes wider toward the background. This is necessary because its width is controlled by the angle at which the camera takes the picture. The camera is the ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... conditions are numerous and complex, the most apparent being the immense influx of immigration from the crowded centres of the old world; the glamor of city life, which has allured thousands from the country, fascinating them from afar much as the gaudy colors and tinsel before the footlights dazzle the vision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nigh impregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderful labor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, instead ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... hers; But all the London footlights know The little plaintive smile that stirs The shadow in ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... actors, when called before the curtain at the close of the play, how they pass before it one by one, and perhaps joining hands make their bows in line, to all appearance, on a very narrow platform. The curtain is your background, while the footlights may stand for the surface of your wood. In illustration of this principle, let me call your attention to the arrangement of the animals in Plate VI, where economy of space, and a desire to display each detail to advantage, are the leading motives. I give it as the readiest example ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... woodwork, While between them are suspended Gorgeous tapestries and curtains: Scenes Arcadian boldly woven, Charmingly designed by Watteau.... In the place of stage, an arbor; Summer sun in place of footlights; Thus we rear Thalia's temple Where we play our private dramas, Gentle, saddening, precocious.... Comedies that we have suffered; Feelings drawn from past and present; Evil masked in pretty phrases; Soothing words and luring ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... with tongues of red berries, hung by ropes of cedar from the vaulted roof directly over the stage; and saw the two great scarlet camellias that had been coaxed into full bloom specially for the capitalist placed at either end of the footlights, while potted poinsettias and small madrona trees, brought in from the bluffs above the grounds, finished the scheme with the effect of an old mission garden. Then there were a hundred more poinsettias disposed of, without crowding, on the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the salle de musique. The curtain rose on a very pretty garden scene, with trees on either side, green linen on the floor representing grass, a village with a church- steeple in the background, and for stage properties a garden bench and a vase placed just before the footlights, so that it would not interfere with our movements, but would show us ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... actually sniggered over this, being of the opinion that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as a "super," I believe, and in a part where ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... exaggerated in their gestures; stilted and affected in their speech. They seemed, indeed, to belong to a world apart, a world of unreality which became real only on the planks of their stage, in the glare of their footlights. Good-fellowship bound them one to another; and Andre-Louis reflected cynically that this harmony amongst them might be the cause of their apparent unreality. In the real world, greedy striving and the emulation of acquisitiveness preclude ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... stalls, boxes, pit, gallery, parquet; greenroom, coulisses [Fr.]. flat; drop, drop scene; wing, screen, side scene; transformation scene, curtain, act drop; proscenium. stage, scene, scenery, the boards; trap, mezzanine floor; flies; floats, footlights; offstage; orchestra. theatrical costume, theatrical properties. movie studio, back lot, on location. part, role, character, dramatis personae [Lat.]; repertoire. actor, thespian, player; method actor; stage player, strolling player; stager, performer; mime, mimer^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... radiant and beautiful on the hither side, and when we get past it and look back at it, all hideous. Like some of those painted canvases upon the theatre-stage: seen from this side, with the delusive brilliancy of the footlights thrown upon them, they look beautiful works of art; seen at the back, dirty and cobwebbed canvas, all splashes and spots and uglinesses. Let us be thankful if memory can show us the reverse side of the temptations that on the near side were ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the audience was voiced by a torrent of bravos and handclappings that thundered until La Favorita, having thrown a long mantle about her, came out into the glare of the footlights. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... solitary stall. But I had not counted on the high gods who crowd shadowy into the silent seats and are jealous of a mortal in their midst. Without warning was I wrested from my place, hurled onto the stage, and before my dazzled eyes could accustom themselves to the footlights, I found myself enmeshed in intolerable drama. I was unprepared. I knew my part imperfectly. I missed my cues. I had the blighting self-consciousness of the amateur. And yet the idiot mummery was intensely real. Amid the laughter of the silent shadowy gods I thought ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... most friendly relations were established between the people before and beyond the footlights. Remarks full of fun and humor were freely exchanged. Handy played Humpty, and introduced by way of variety a breakdown that, in the manipulation of his legs, would have made Francis Wilson grow green with envy. Smith was the Pantaloon, and obligingly entertained the audience, by ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... was classic; Mrs. Milray's Bostonian achieved a snub from her by saying it was like a Botticelli; and in fact it was merely the skirt-dance which society had borrowed from the stage at that period, leaving behind the footlights its more acrobatic phases, but keeping its pretty turns and bows and bends. Clementina did it not only with tender dignity, but when she was fairly launched in it, with a passion to which her sense of Mrs. Milray's strange unkindness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... face quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the light of the bonfire from below, like a face in the footlights. His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit. I had an unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as I paused a burst of red sparks ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Your idealist can see no beauty in sober fact, but must array it in all the theatrical properties of a vulgar imagination; he must give to things more imposing proportions, he colours gaudily; Nature for him is ever posturing in the full glare of footlights. Really he stands on no higher level than the housemaid who sees in every woman a duchess in black velvet, an Aubrey Plantagenet in plain John Smith. So I, in common with many another traveller, expected to find in the Guadalquivir a river of transparent ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... perfection of frescoe painting, and will bear the closest inspection. It is impossible, even with a strong glass, to distinguish between some of the frescoes and the bas reliefs. The stage is very large, and rises gradually from the footlights to the rear. The orchestra pen is sunk below the level of the stage, so that the heads of the musicians do not interfere with the view of the audience. The dressing of the stage is novel. The side scenes, or wings, instead of being placed at right angles to the audience, as ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and tabouka in the court behind him grew thinner; the boom of drums and voices in the street grew big. He had crossed the threshold. A hundred candles, carried in horizontal banks on laths by little boys, came around him on three sides, like footlights. And beyond the glare, in the flaming mist, he saw the street Dar-el-Bey massed with men. All their faces were toward him, hot yellow spots in which the black spots of their mouths gaped ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... I spent at a little station in Bengal, between Lucknow and Delhi, an evening given over to private theatricals. The theatre was a huge tent, and the little roughly improvised stage was lit by a row of oil footlights and so small as barely to give a foothold for the actors and actresses in the more crowded scenes. About me were the great people, the colonel's wife, a touring young man of family, officers and the wife of the manager of the big sugar refinery close at hand. Behind were English of a more ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... herself," said Peggy Jarvis, who lived with Ann and smiled over the footlights each night in comedy that was comedy and to crowds that were crowds, "She doesn't know that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... nursery of the topical song. There, by lantern or candle-stump, wit Rabelaisian, Aristophanic or Antarctic was cradled into rhyme. From there, behind the scenes, the comedian in full dress could step before the footlights into salvoes of savage applause. "A Pair of Unconventional Cooks are we, are we," and the famous refrain, "There he is, that's him," were long unrivalled in our ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson |
