"I suppose you want an interview-the-I-was-born-in-the-saddle-and--received- my early-education-in-the-wilds-of- someplace or-other sort of thing. Well, I'm afraid I'm not very good at it." With these words, Beatrice Lillie, the English peeress starring in "Oh, Please!" at the Tremont Theatre, greeted her interviewer between the acts of the performance last night.
"Well, I dress an excellent game of golf--oh a magnificent game of golf and I like America very much. More than England? I doubt it. After all, home is home. But when I'm in England, I want to get back to America, and when I'm back here, I'm dying to get back to England. I don't like to stay in one place very long, anyhow. You might say I am almost cosmopolitan.
"What do I think of England and America? Rather a large question, don't you think? In America everybody seenis to be in a hurry; in England people like to take their time. And both countries seem to get there just the same! What's the use?
"As far as audiences go, there is little difference between the two countries. A flat joke is a flat joke wherever it is. Of course, these cocktail jokes in "Oh, Please!" would have to be changed to transport the show abroad, but aside from that it could go just about as it is."
Her interviewer asked not too fact-fully, perhaps, whether the Englishman was as slow to appreciate a joke as be is reported to be.
"No, absolutely not!" declared Miss Lillie, not without considerable vehemence. "They can see a joke just as well and just as quickly as an American. One country's ideas of another country are often quite amasing. You very seldom see the American's idea of a typical Englishman with his monocle, or, for that matter, the Englishman's idea of a typical American with his chewing gum. Both have their short comings, but one doesn't mind them if one possesses a sense of humor, does one?"
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