"Stage manager" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she would 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 ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... helplessly. I dont remember what followed. I thought I had fainted; but it appears that I nearly cried, and talked the most awful nonsense to her. I suppose the choking made me hysterical. However, I distinctly recollect the stage manager bullying the girls, and turning us all out. I was very angry with myself for being childish, as they told me I had been; and when I got back to Cambridge I actually took to reading. A few months afterward I made another trip to town, and went ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... commonplace and the commercial, the seeker after what is 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 ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... curtains were drawn aside. The lights had been "doused" as Nat, the acting stage manager, expressed it, and only a ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... day of April, 1917, stage manager Haig ordered the curtain raised and, with its raising, vengeance was let loose. Gaps 20 to 30 feet wide were blasted in the barbed wire; some of the mine shafts about Lens were flattened and destroyed; Fritzie's supply roads were rained upon with a steady ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... had many years of professional experience on the Stage and Screen: as actor, stage manager and designer, both ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... country, the particulars of which were given in a former chapter, had an especial object, viz., the setting of a novel of my own having the great conventionnel for its hero. The story was dramatised by two French collaborators, one of whom was at that time stage manager of the Grand Theatre, Rheims. What, then, was my delight to see one morning placarded throughout the town the announcement of the Anglo-French play? A few days before the first representation I had witnessed a rehearsal, and as I was guided through the dusky labyrinths ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... 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 ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... being the real thing, but only supes in police uniform—do their duty and arrest WILLOUGHBY.) Somebody remarks that ARNOLD is NOT GUILTY. COMIC CONVICT receives a full pardon, and a matrimonial mania seizes upon everybody. About this time it occurs to the stage manager that the play might as well ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... Italy. He kept a big crew of Romans busy, winter and summer, catching fresh lions for him to stick. He had killed a large number of men also. At one matinee for ladies and children he had killed a prominent man from the north, and had done it so fluently that he was encored three times. The stage manager then came forward and asked that the audience would please refrain from another encore as he had run out of men, but if the ladies and children would kindly attend on the following Saturday he hoped to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... little of being great. And at this late hour the star wanted it changed in order to bring her alone in the lime-light! It was preposterous. As Warrington was on the first wave of popularity, the business manager and the stage manager both agreed to leave the matter wholly in the dramatist's hands. He resolutely declined to make a single alteration in the scene. There was a fine storm. The star declared that if the change was not ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... ingenue[French], jeune veuve[French]. mummer, guiser[obs3], guisard[obs3], gysart |, masque. mountebank, Jack Pudding; tumbler, posture master, acrobat; contortionist; ballet dancer, ballet girl; chorus singer; coryphee danseuse[Fr]. property man, costumier, machinist; prompter, call boy; manager; director, stage manager, acting manager. producer, entrepreneur, impresario; backer, investor, angel[fig]. dramatic author, dramatic writer; play writer, playwright; dramatist, mimographer[obs3]. V. act, play, perform; put on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to complete the groups. This show was given at the Porte 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... for the basic excellence of this man's character that he was popular among his fellows, who, liking the man, overlooked the amateur stage manager. ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... luck we 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 ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... 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 without further inquiry, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... craftsmen and 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 ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... his temperament and 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 will tell you ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... 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 piece itself, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... loquacious stranger. "But my duties are manifold. As driver of the chariot, I endure the constant apprehension of wrecking my company by the wayside. As assistant carpenter, when we can not find a stage it is my task to erect one. As bill-poster and license-procurer, treasurer and stage manager, my time is not so taken up, sir, as to preclude my going on ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... when scenery and props arrive at the theatre barely in time to be set up. In the third act one of the characters has to take his trousers out of a handbag. He opens the bag, but by some error no garments are within. Heavens! has the stage manager mixed up the bags? He has only one hope. The girlish heroine's luggage is also on the stage, and our comedian dashes over and finds his trousers in her bag. This casts a most sinister imputation on the adorable heroine, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... a skilled stage manager, and chance had arranged a really effective scene in the hall of the Central Hotel. The Earl of Valletort seemed to be somewhat unwilling to take up any of the gauntlets so readily thrown down by Devar and the ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... 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
... 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 respective parts. ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... good for a fine, and to make matters worse some hussy got next to all my toothpicks and I had to use a hairpin for a liner; but did you notice the way that cat of a soubrette keeps me out of the spotlight? Professional jealousy, that's all; but it don't do me no good to kick, because the stage manager sends her silk stockings and that kind of junk, while the best I get is a chance to hold hands with the electrician; but, of course, he gets ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... your book to break in upon us, at the table. My dining-room isn't very grand, but it has plenty of light and color, and wouldn't make a bad background for the last act of this little drama. What do you say, Chancellor? I've always thought that your success as a stage manager of the Theater of Nations was partially due to your eye for ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... hotly resented, and her refusal to rehearse daily the love passages with Finnegan, the promising young comedian who two years before had driven an ice-wagon in New Orleans, was a constant grievance to the stage manager. In the last matter Harold Phipps had upheld her, as he had in all others; but his very championship constituted ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... small slick trunks strapped on behind. A whistle would sound shrilly then; and magically a gap would appear in the formation. Into this gap the horsemen or the imperious automobiles would slip, and away the column would go again without having been disturbed or impeded noticeably. No stage manager ever handled his supers better; and here, be it remembered, there were uncountable thousands of supers, and for a stage the twisting, medieval convolutions of a strange city. Now for a space of minutes it would be infantry that ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... which in the end fell to Maxwell's share, it seemed as if all the responsibility of the performance fell on Peggy's shoulders. She was stage manager, selecting appropriate pieces of furniture from the different rooms and piling them together behind the screen in the study, whence they could be produced at a moment's notice, to give some idea ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... part, and the wreath that is presented to him make the play unrecognizable to me from the first sentences. Kiselevsky, of whom I had great hopes, did not deliver a single phrase correctly—literally not a single one. He said things of his own composition. In spite of this and of the stage manager's blunders, the first act was a great success. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov |
