"Footlights" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great paraffin lamp threw broad, opaque shadows, making the whole a strange blur in the kitchen, while in the bedroom opening off it, where the tense, dead woman lay, was a glare of candles as from footlights, and there gathered the old women of the neighborhood, discussing everything in hushed, vindictive whispers—the price of cows, morbid diseases, the new wife some man had, and whether such a girl was with child.... And ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... 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 ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... boards when—when I was weary of them. But my heart goes back to them sometimes. It seems to me there is no smell like that of the hot oil in the footlights and of the oranges in the pit. ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... house, 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^; artists; comedian, tragedian; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... down the street and dropped into the opera house in time to hear the grand finale of the last piece by the band. As the great outburst of music died away, Captain Tolliver radiantly stepped to the footlights, dividing ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... said meditatively; "I'd rather face the footlights at the Metropolitan than come down this beach at the bathing hour. It makes me feel pigeon-toed in ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... through the 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 ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... the audience that he had power, he only made 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 opera-glasses ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... rows the legs of the chorus ladies were arranged about the stage; the low comedians cracked jokes close to the footlights; the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... that author and producer (Mr. Eille Norwood) would do well to watch the serious passages—always the danger-points in farce. As nobody on our side of the footlights takes these seriously the folk on the other side must substantially dilute the seriousness. The tragically uttered, "O God!" at the end of the Second Act ruined an otherwise excellent curtain. But I must not end on a note of censure. I was much too thoroughly entertained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... thought of lessening her success, of making a sparing use and not giving the full power of her voice and talent; but her resolutions like those of her husband could not withstand the glare of the footlights. Her talent, almost unconsciously, overstepped her will. Then she humbled herself before him, belittled herself. She asked his advice, inquired if he thought her interpretation correct, if he understood the ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... production of W.B. Yeats's poetic one-act play, The Land of Heart's Desire, at the Avenue Theatre, London, on March 29, 1894, began the modern Irish dramatic movement. When the poet had tasted the joys of the footlights, he longed to see an Irish Literary Theatre realized in Ireland. Five years later, in the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin, on May 9, 1899, his play, The Countess Cathleen, was produced, and his desire gratified. The ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... 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 flames with swift, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... supper. He had come away in disgust. A soiled soubrette with orange-colored hair and baby socks had swept her practiced eye over the audience, and, attracted by Sam's good-looking blond head in the second row, had selected him as the target of her song. She had run up to the extreme edge of the footlights at the risk of teetering over, and had informed Sam through the medium of song—to the huge delight of the audience, and to Sam's red-faced discomfiture—that she liked his smile, and he was just her style, and just as cute as he could be, and just the boy for her. On reaching the chorus she ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... agreed, "but in the strong lights of the stage and the footlights too, you have to ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... that outer play-world which lay along Monaco's three short miles of marble stairway and villa and hillside garden appeared to him, in his mood of settled dejection, as artificial and unnatural and unrelated as the life which he had just seen pictured across the footlights of the over-pretty and meringue-like ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... The chattering 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
... during a rehearsal—a peculiarly gingerless performance according to Connie's account—and had watched from the wings awhile, and then, unasked and apparently without premeditation, had broken in among them and at the edge of the footlights, to a gaping, empty theatre, had danced ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... my thoughts as the Play went on. The hours flew on joyous feet. When Adrian came to the footlights and looking aparently square at me, declaimed: "The World owes me a living. I will have it," I almost swooned. His clothes were worn. He looked hungry and ghaunt. But how ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the door. At last, in desperation, he resolved to storm the citadel, to beat down the faithful guard and to carry war into the enemy's camp. One night he dashed past the astonished guardian of the stage entrance just as the curtain fell upon one of the acts of a play. He emerged before the footlights, eluding all pursuit, dressed as a harlequin, and, before the audience had recovered from its astonishment at this scene not set down in the bills, the baffled, but not subdued, aspirant had delivered the lines of an epilogue in rhyme with so much effect that, before he could be ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... 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
... print of dusty feet upon the red plush cushions. In a twinkling the house was filled from stage to topmost gallery. The aisles were packed solid, even on the edge of the stage itself men were sitting, a black fringe on either side of the footlights. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... theatrical projects were of the vaguest. They hung mainly on the problematical good-will of an ancient comedienne, with whom Mrs. Farlow had a slight acquaintance (extensively utilized in "Stars of the French Footlights" and "Behind the Scenes at the Francais"), and who had once, with signs of approval, heard Miss Viner recite ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... more he perceived in it. What he perceived in it indeed he now perceived everywhere; if he stopped, in the London dusk, before some flaring shop-window, the place immediately constituted itself behind footlights, became a framed stage for his figures. He hammered at these figures in his lonely lodging, he shaped them and he shaped their tabernacle; he was like a goldsmith chiselling a casket, bent over with the passion for perfection. When he was neither roaming ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... unravelling of its plot. It is altogether probable that the heights to which Shakespeare rose as a dramatist were due in a measure to his knowledge of how a comedy, or a tragedy, appears behind as well as in front of the footlights, all in an atmosphere quite other than that surrounding ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... 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. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... unimaginative Englishman, of the normally healthy type, a sportsman, a good fellow, and a man of breeding—and Saton, this strange product of strange circumstances, externally passable enough, but with something about him which seemed, even in that clear November sunshine, to suggest the footlights. ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 clever contrivance. ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... half turning to the audience, he was to address his farewell to the departing lady. It had 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 ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... by dozens of people as he stood before the footlights and brandished his dagger; but his swift horse quickly carried him beyond any haphazard pursuit. He crossed the Navy-Yard bridge and rode into Maryland, being joined very soon by Herold. The assassin and his wretched ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... however, showed him that such a course would unquestionably arouse suspicion, and he settled the matter by blackening his face, a disguise which, under the glare of the footlights, ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... Place Station, "and it's mighty lucky for my career that I didn't see more of him. But he'll be far happier with that lovely honey-princess, and I'm glad she's drawn a prize. As for me, hooray for Cousin Julia and the footlights!" ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... result of a stable stock company with the parts always cast in the same mould. And it was almost an impromptu performance. Pinchas, from his proximity to the stage, could hear every word from the prompter's box, which rose in the centre of the footlights. The Yiddish prompter did not wait till the players 'dried up'; it was his role to read the whole play ahead of them. 'Then you are the woman who murdered my mother,' he would gabble. And the actor, hearing, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... 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 half the world ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... 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 ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... tricks or tours de force; in no atmosphere of darkened footlights and smell of sawdust; but in frank and free novel-fashion, with a Venetian church, a famous maestro (Porpora), a choir of mostly Italian girls, and the little Spanish gipsy Consuelo, the poorest, humblest, plainest (as most people ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... chose to request; and Abdallah came in with a string of bells around her, and paced, cantered, galloped, trotted, marched or walked as the word was given. The horses were generally expected to come to the footlights and bow to the audience at the close of any feat; occasionally one would forget to do this, and then some of his comrades would shoulder or buffet him, or Mr. Bartholomew would give a reminder, "That ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... golden joy. She was aware of people—her aunt, her father, her fellow-students, friends, and neighbors—moving about outside this glowing secret, very much as an actor is aware of the dim audience beyond the barrier of the footlights. They might applaud, or object, or interfere, but the drama was her very own. She was going ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... The Light That Failed is not a characteristic and a fine achievement. It means that its character and fineness have nothing to do with Dick and Maisie or with any of that stuff of the story which contrives to exist behind the footlights of Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson's theatre. The Light That Failed must not be read as the love story of a painter who goes blind. It must be read, with .007 and The Maltese Cat, as an enthusiastic ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... the front and the back view of any temptation to which we yield—all 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... "popular" magazine still holds?) The average "playlet"—atrocious word—in the variety theatres is a dreadful thing, crude, obvious, often sensational or sentimental, usually very badly acted at least in the minor recircles, and still more a frank padding, a thing of the footlights, than the afterpiece of our parents. It has been frequently said by those optimists who are forever discovering the birth of the arts in popular amusements that vaudeville audiences will appreciate and applaud the best. This is only ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... from the audience, were set at the outer corners of the stage; but the main illumination was from a row of screened footlights which not only made the whole stage brilliant but cast high upward on the wall in the rear—above the gaping ruined niche where once had stood the statue of a god—a flood of strong yellow light that was reflected strongly ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... immense illustration of a maxim of Dante Rossetti to the effect that artists had nothing to do with morality. She was always on the stage—in the most familiar act and in the presence of strangers she never lost sight of the footlights, and the best acting I ever saw her in was in private and in the representation of some comedy or tragedy of her own interests. She played with a marvelous power one part, and all others were but variations of that or failures—it ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... beggar 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
... good deal of fun in 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 the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or gift she had had found ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sentimental, more modern, but less universal "Manon Lescaut." There is a certain artificial, genuinely artificial, kind of nature in it: if not "true to life," it is true to certain lives. But the play lets go this hold, such as it is, on reality, and becomes a mere stage convention as it crosses the footlights; a convention which is touching, indeed, far too full of pathos, human in its exaggerated way, but no longer to be mistaken, by the least sensitive of hearers, for great or even fine literature. And the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... good elocutionist in Oxford Street. I think I would go and have some lessons, if I were you, Bruce; the summer classes are just beginning. They teach you to speak so clearly, to get your voice over the footlights, as it were. I think all men require to study oratory and elocution. It ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless, and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who understood each other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they understand each other so well that they could afford to trifle? ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... dark woman had just ceased dancing, and as she paused before the footlights amid a burst of musical accompaniment, the audience with one impulse rose to its feet and gave vent to prolonged salvos of applause. Showers of glittering gold and silver coins, bouquets and wreaths of flowers were flung upon the stage, burying her feet ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... me manage it. I'm from the West Side myself, and I'd rather see one of the same gang win out before I would an East-Sider, or any of the Flatbush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-iners. I'll see that Junius Rollins is present on your Friday night; and if he don't climb over the footlights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I'll let you draw it down from my own salary every Monday night. Now, am I talking on the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... desired to do this time? That which we have both been trying to do at one and the same time: to seize, in passing, these stirring times of ours, these modern manners, that society which perpetuates the antediluvian uproar, that feverish, bustling world always posing before the footlights, that market for the sale of appetites, that kirmess of pleasure that saddens us a little and amuses us a great deal, and allows us romance-writers, simple seekers after truth, to smile in our sleeves at the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... peculiar loud indrawing of the breath, like the pant of a blacksmith at his anvil. So strong is this resemblance, that we burst forth all together in the strains of the "Anvil Chorus"; and the accompaniment is beaten with tenfold more regularity and effect than on the stage, in the glare of the footlights, by "Il Trovatore's" gypsy-comrades. I doubt if Verdi's music was ever so rendered before, amid such surroundings. The compliment may be the higher, coming from so ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... King's adviser. He was instructed that he must resign both, or neither; resigned both; fell out with the Consuls on details; and is now, as we are advised, seeking to resile from his resignations. Such an official I never remember to have read of, though I have seen the like, from across the footlights and the orchestra, evolving in similar figures to the strains ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kennan remained. The two burnt-cork comedians finished their turn and their three encores, and the curtain behind them went up on a full set of an empty stage. A rough-coated Irish terrier entered at a sedate walk, sedately walked forward to the centre, nearly to the footlights, and faced the leader of the orchestra. As the programme had stated, he ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... of piping peace, the Operatic and Dramatic Company of this particular ship had known many vicissitudes. Under the guidance of a musically inclined Ship's Steward, it had faced audiences across impromptu footlights as "The Pale Pink Pierrots," and, as such, had achieved a meteoric distinction. But unhappily the Ship's Steward was partial to oysters, and bought a barrelful at an auction sale ashore. On the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... negligee talk is no less offensive than his manner of laying loving hands on my person. As a rule, he treats me like a third-row dancing girl that goes to petition the manager for a place nearer the footlights. There is no limit to his familiarities or to the license of his conversation. "Fine wench" is a term of affection he likes to bestow on his future queen; indeed, one of the less gross. He has the weakness to like epithets that, I am told, gentlemen sometimes ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... 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 exigency ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... the strength of our wearied ear-drums, fiery snakes sizzled through the air, big wheels spurted brilliant marvels, and along the very edge of the lake, to the great discomfort of the front rows of the stalls, a line of combustibles behaved like gigantic footlights on a spree. ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... a thronging, undulating, murmuring, waving, streaming multitude, all rose, and blue, and half translucent white. There were lustres burning overhead; far off there was a stage, a solemn green curtain, a row of footlights. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... experienced enough for that department; what he did write was clever, shallow sketches of that same society into whose charmed precincts he was but so lately a comer that much was to him interesting which had long ceased to be observed by eyes turned horny with the glare of the world's footlights; and, while these sketches pleased the young people especially, even their jaded elders enjoyed the sparkling reflex of what they called life, as seen by an outsider; for they were thereby enabled to feel for a moment a slight interest in themselves objectively, along with ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... all the stupendousness of the times rushed over me that you and I, who have rubbed our noses on historical monuments so often, have chased after emotions on the scenes of past heroism, and applauded mock heroics across the footlights, should be living in days like these, days in which heroism is the common act of every hour. I cannot help wondering what the future generations are going to say of it all; how far-off times are going to judge us; what is going ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... clamber upward, Covering the slender 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 pictures; Subtle ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... come to insist on it, and shed the cold light of reason on it, no more do I," he said with a laugh. "Jokes are very well behind the footlights." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... Jopp and speak his regret like a man. And after that it would be his duty to carry a double debt his life long for the life saved, for the wrong done. He owed an apology to La Touche, and he was scarcely aware that the native gentlemanliness in him had said through his fever of passion over the footlights, "I beg your pardon." In his heart he felt that he had offered a mean affront to every person present, to the town where his interests ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... in its true setting against the wintry sky, Thomas Sylvester became acutely conscious of the return of a familiar sensation. It was, in fact, precisely the sensation which one Roger Merton had enjoyed when waiting for his cue to step from dim obscurity into the flare of the footlights on the first night of a new drama. Would his old acquaintances accept Mr. Hobhouse without question as an entire stranger? If he spied so much as one suspicious questioning glance, his whole scheme ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... unique. In a life that offered deplorably little of novelty and adventure she would not for worlds have thrown away such a chance. Meryl, on the other hand, would probably not have felt the tension; she would have quietly walked past him out at the entrance. Diana felt the atmosphere of the footlights and calmly waited. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... for our little amateur play to-night, in my private theater, the footlights shall be lit, the stage set, and two of the principal puppets dressed and painted for the show, before nine. I suppose you can introduce the leading man by that time or a ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... the edge 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
... it will come; the readiness is all. Let be." Then follow the courtesy, the grace, the fraud, the justice, of the swift, last scene; the curtain falls; and now the yearning sympathies of the hearers break out into sound, and the actor comes before the footlights to receive his meed of praise. How commonplace it is to read that such a one was called before the curtain and bowed his thanks! But sit there; listen to the applauding clamor of two thousand voices, be yourself lifted on the waves of that exultation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... out the candle upon the table, and escapes from the room, while his mistress totters to the bed and throws herself upon it, feigning sleep. The stage is left unoccupied, while the just-extinguished candle still smokes upon the table, and the sidelights and footlights, being lowered, wrap the vast chamber in ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... 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
... 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 commenced, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... with a stage at one end, for this concert and sketch business. We could make it mighty picturesque, with Japanese lanterns, and we fellows might be able to rig up some batteries and electric lights for footlights." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the 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
... entitled Night Falls On The Gods, is a thorough grand opera. In it you shall see what you have so far missed, the opera chorus in full parade on the stage, not presuming to interfere with the prima donna as she sings her death song over the footlights. Nay, that chorus will have its own chance when it first appears, with a good roaring strain in C major, not, after all, so very different from, or at all less absurd than the choruses of courtiers in La Favorita or "Per te immenso giubilo" in Lucia. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... Passepartout's fault. Abandoning his position, clearing the footlights without the aid of his wings, and, clambering up to the right-hand gallery, he fell at the feet of one of the spectators, crying, "Ah, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... had died away and the actors had bowed their thanks before the footlights, both audience and players were refreshed with lemonade and cakes, and Judith transferred her envy to the fortunate ones who stood talking over the evening's triumph with Catherine and Genevieve and the rest of the cast. She envied Genevieve ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... which we had become intensely patriotic by the singing of songs. A beautiful actress, who had no thought of doing "her bit" herself, attired as Britannia, with a colossal Union Jack for background, came before the footlights and sang the recruiting song ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... great public in general know of what the singer often suffers in the way of nervousness or stage fright before appearing in front of the footlights, nor that his life, outwardly so feted and brilliant, is in private more or less of a retired, ascetic one and that his social ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... drink, and the chairman, puffing at a huge cigar, used his little hammer and announced "Miss Sally Slater will appear next." Battlemoor roared approval, and then in a short skirt and black stockings Sally rushed to the footlights and took her audience, as it were, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... four novels in order of publication have been dramatized and enjoyed by thousands from before the footlights and it has been a delight to renew acquaintances with old friends in this way. It remained for "The Eyes of the World" to be the first of his books to be presented in a feature ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... always been 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 home to ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... Finally he decided on Joan; she had already achieved popularity by her dancing, the audience would be kind to her. If she saved up her voice for her duet with Strachan and her one little solo at the fall of the curtain, Brown thought she might be heard beyond the footlights. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... in a breakfast scene where eggs were being served, and a child sitting in a box made manifest his interest in the food. Stepping down to the footlights she tendered the youngster an egg, but his mother drew back her child with a sign ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... it here," said Lenore, advancing to the footlights, "and he doesn't know. It is not his fault. He's waiting for his cue. See, Mr. Delacour! Leave out that bit about the daisies, and ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... does—he just pulls out his arrow and sticks him. From the strength of his arm, and the force of his blows, The Red-bearded Rover falls flat on his nose; And Sir Walter, thus having concluded the quarrel, Walks down to the footlights, and draws this fine moral: "Ladies and gentlemen, lead sober lives: Don't meddle with other folks' sweethearts or wives!— When you go out a-sporting take care of your gun, And—never shoot ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 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 part ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... to get on the war paint. Say, have you offered your services for the Friar Festival yet? Well, you had better get on the job if you want to consider yourself classy. So long! Oh, you know the ushers will hand flowers over the footlights if you just tell him who they ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... even 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
... moonlight there, the soft glow-fire of the jelly-fishes in the surf like the kerosene-lamp footlights I have seen in the new haole theatre! It was not the walk of a girl, but a woman. She did not flutter forward like rippling wavelets on a reef-sheltered, placid beach. There was that in her manner of walk that was big and queenlike, like the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... emulated the farces and the melodramas of forgotten British playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas fils and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sea, in every direction as far as their eyes could reach, seemed as if covered with a coating of frosted silver; and, all around the ship, at the water-line, there appeared a brilliant illumination, as if from a row of gas jets or like the footlights in front of the stage of a theatre. Where the sea, too, was broken into foam by the slight motion of the ship, it also gave out the same appearance; and the faint wake astern was as bright as the track usually lit up by the moon or rising sun across the ocean, resembling a pathway ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... 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
... 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. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... intact as a private personal accomplishment. On the stage, having steered clear of comedy and confined myself to tragedy, it had never been cheapened and made nauseous by sham and machine representations indigenous to the hated footlights, and was an untapped preserve to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... himself speaking out loud, holding conversations with them as it were, like an actor in a melodrama who apostrophizes the audience on the other side of the footlights; till he suddenly ceased with a start at his absurdity. Perhaps those incoherent words of the wanderer were heard within the walls by some student or thinker over his lamp; and he may have raised his head, and wondered what voice it was, and what it betokened. Jude now perceived ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... have been a card. Fancy the attraction—an emperor before the footlights; but fancy the boredom also. The joy at the announcement of his first appearance was so great that thanks were offered to the gods; and the verses he was to sing, graven in gold, were dedicated to the Capitoline Jove. ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... known young-manliness, that quality which warms the heart till death, and gives Mr. Wilcox an imperishable charm. He was frigid, through no fault of his own, and without cruelty. He thought Helen wrong and Margaret right, but the family trouble was for him what a scene behind footlights is for most people. He had only one suggestion to make, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... afraid of being ill. Do you hear the gentlemen who are dressing in there in the Baron's dressing room? What a noise! Ha! ha! ha! it is charming, a regular gang of strollers. It is exhilarating, do you know, this feverish existence, this life in front of the footlights. But, for the love of Heaven, shut the door, Marie, there is a frightful draught blowing on me. This hourly struggle with the public, the hisses, the applause, would, with my impressionable nature, drive me ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... opulent creature, of my own age, born for the footlights, with an extremely sweet and thrilling voice, and that slight coarseness or exaggeration of gesture and beauty which is the penalty of the stage. She did not in the least resemble a La Valliere as she stood there gazing at me, with her gleaming, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... giving Vronsky one finger of the hand in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders she twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so as to be duly naked as she moved forward towards the footlights into the light of the gas, and the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the journalist Hippolyte Rolle, in a letter published in his correspondence. "Is it on the morrow of a battle," he wrote, "when the bourgeoisie have so generously shed their blood on behalf of threatened civilization, and when they are in mourning, that one can drag them before the footlights?" ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the human voice intrudes in an orchestral work, my dream-world of music vanishes. Mother Church is right in banishing, from within the walls of her temples the female voice. The world, the flesh, and the devil lurk in the larynx of the soprano or alto, and her place is before the footlights, not as a vocal staircase to paradise. I say this, knowing in my heart that nothing is so thrilling as Tristan and Isolde, and my memory-cells hold marvellous pictures of Lilli Lehmann, Milka Ternina, and Olive Fremstad. So, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... sulk and act the Stormy Petrel. I should have pulled her through on those lines if she'd been obliged to play Jim Beckett's broken-hearted fiancee. But to do the siren with your brother—no, she wouldn't be equal to that, even to please me: couldn't get it across the footlights. I had to win her to Brian as well as win Brian to me. I hope you don't mind my calling him by his Christian name? ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and the dainty nose, The shell-like ear where the jewels flash, The arching brow and the languid pose, The rare old lace and the subtle scents, The slender foot and the fingers frail,— I may act till the world grows wild and tense, But never a flush on your features pale. The footlights glimmer between us two,— You in the box and I on the boards,— I am only an actor, Madame, to you, A mimic king 'mid his mimic lords, For you are the belle of the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... once my senses and power of motion, I bounded like a maniac from the stage, pursued by the convulsive roars of the spectators, and upsetting in my retreat the unlucky Verasawmy, who rolled down to the footlights, doubled up, and in a paroxysm of terror ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... 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 enacted ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D. |
