Sinful Woman Read Online Free PDF

moistened them before beginning a big scene. Then she spoke in the quiet, vibrant way that Sylvia spoke when these scenes opened, the way that suggested patience, restraint, all the idealistic things she stood for. She said: “What I want to know is, why did you agree to this? What did she say to you, Vicki, that made you decide to give me up?”
    “I merely told him—”
    “No, please. Let Vicki talk.”
    “Say you nuts. Is all.”
    “It couldn’t have been that. You knew that already.”
    “Din on’stan about thees t’ing.”
    “And it couldn’t have been about the money.”
    Sylvia looked up, startled, and Vicki seemed to have turned to wood. Hazel went on: “Certainly it was nothing of a business nature. We’ve talked this over many times, and both agreed that Sylvia would be much better off to stay with Phoenix, and I had agreed to turn the stock over to you as soon as we were married, since I better than anybody else know what’s good for her. Was it about business?”
    “Can be.”
    “Vicki, I don’t believe you.”
    She was sad, patient, detached, every inch Cavell rebuking a young nurse who had failed to bring a soldier his canteen of fresh water. After a pause in which she looked out the window with a little compassionate smile, she went on: “There’s only one other thing she could have told you ... Dirt! Dirt! ... Rotten, filthy dirt!”
    This was the celebrated Shoreham change of pace, the pregnant whisper with which Sylvia could get more terrible punch into a scene than most actresses could get with a hundred foot of screaming. Sylvia, who had sat down, started to speak, didn’t. She leaned back, closed her eyes. She acted as though she had been through this many times before, and knew there was nothing to do but let Hazel have her head until she ran down, when perhaps she would become manageable. Hazel went on: “Oh yes, there have been men in my life. I’m human. All too human. I didn’t think it hurt anybody. That I could have a little romance, a little touch of beauty to look forward to. Little did I dream that my own sister—”
    She broke off and stood with face twitching, tears welling into her eyes. This was another Shoreham specialty: a dead-end stop with tears, not with the assistance of a cut and glycerine, but straight into the camera, with real tears glittering in her eyes. After a long look at distant inspirations, Hazel went on: “My own sister. She’s been kind, you say. Yes, kind she has been. She feeds me, gives me a bed to sleep in, buys me shining raiment. She buys me silk, and costly furs, and fine motor cars, and little trinkets, to prove she loves me. But I, I have known the joy of giving, too. I have given a life. Little do they realize that I too might like to be an actress. Little do they know that I too crave admiration, that I too might like my name in shining lights from Maine to California, from China to Timbuctoo, from pole to pole and sea to sea and tiny isle to greatest continent. And it might be mine. Who knows? Am I not young? Am I not fair? But no. I renounced my share of the sun that she might shine. I gave up what might be mine, that she might have what should be hers. I, God help me, I loved her, and my reward was—this—”
    A wrenching monologue that was usually given Sylvia in Reel 5, this was spoken without so much as one motion, standing behind a desk. The usual way to close it out was not to attempt to finish it, or make a great deal of sense out of it, but to give Sylvia’s matchless voice its chance as long as the scene would hold, as well as her incredible capacity to speak with no pantomime whatever, then let her do some trivial thing to bring the story back to everyday realities. Hazel again tapped her cigarette, opened the middle drawer, as though looking for a match. She tried to close it, but she was rapidly losing muscular coordination as her break progressed, and it stuck. She pushed against it with her hip, and her dress caught