I've been very slowly reading Salka Viertel's memoir, The Kindness of Strangers, and I came across a very interesting and timely passage about her experiences in the theater in the 1920s. Salka very much was enamored by the theater and wanted to be on stage. She was living in what was then Teplitz (now Teplice part of the Czech Republic) and was called into the office of the director. Can you guess where this is going? A young, attractive actress trying to make a name for herself and get an important role in a play?
"I went, my heart pounding so wildly that I thought I could hear it echo in the deserted corridors. The waiting room was empty, the door to the office open. I saw him, in his shirt-sleeves, sitting on the couch. I knocked and he motioned me to come in, then staggered from the couch and closed the door."
"There was not much dialogue in the ensuing scene. Director Frank was not what one would call an articulate man, but by grunts and by transferring the weight of his massive self to me, he drunkenly managed to convey that the time had come for us to know each other more intimately. Once I was able to extricate myself from his grip, it was easy to win the wrestling match. He lost his balance, fell, and cursed me. In a second I was at the door. Luckily he had not taken the key out, though he had remembered to turn it."
"Bruised, disheveled and breathless, I raced back to the dressing room. The ingenue was still in front of the mirror, taking off her make-up. 'That was fast work,' she said appreciatively, but then she looked at me and shut up."
What a sad thing to think it was known and expected that this was coming and would happen. Even sadder that nearly a century later it is still happening and only now being talked about and those who are taking advantage being outed and brought to some kind of justice.
This is good reading but so much to take in and so many details to remember. I suspect I will be chipping away at it for a while, and am waiting for my February book to arrive.