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Lillian Gish

Never Say Dye

The late Tony Walton designed a 1973 Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. For one of its stars, Lillian Gish, he had designed an eggplant-coloured dress that she rejected, telling him, “Russian peasants only wore beautiful pastel colours,” according to Walton Hamilton. “He said, ‘Of course, Miss Gish,’ ” then he had it dyed one shade darker with each subsequent cleaning.

From The New York Times obituary for Tony Walton

Noel Coward

Unkind Words

On its second night, Noël Coward attended a play written around a fourteen-year-old "prodigy" who was on stage for most of the action. He remarked: "Two things should have been cut. The second act and that youngster's throat."

From The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, general editor.

William Hutt

Fit for a King

In 1973, the Stratford Festival production of King Lear was performed in the Soviet Union woth the original Canadian cast, including William Hutt in the title role. A Toronto theatre critic accompanied them. Hutt complained to the manager of their Moscow hotel after learning that the writer had been put up in a suite while he, the star, made do with a mere room.

The manager explained, through an interpreter, that the reviewer was an on-looker and therefore a guest. By contrast, Hutt, being an actor, was a worker, and so was being honoured with a worker's accommodation.

From The Broadview Book of Canadian Anecdotes, edited by Douglas Fetherling.