The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 93

77. lit tig I ItsA AVA fn'ninXM II lilt f' Death, Mystery, Love Griefs and Money Troubles Seem to Dog the Footsteps of Those Who Star in the Play Based on the Life of the Great (I French I Court esan mm liplillljil I 'tret The German Actress, Anny Aiders, Star of the Play Whose Mysterious and Tragic Death Was Thought by Many to He Suicide. Katlilyn Milliard, llie Kutilish Aelress Win Took Anny Ahlers' Place as Star in "Du Harry" and Died Not Long After It. Gitla Alpar, the Young Hungarian Art-reps Wlio Took Katlilyn Hilliard't Place After Her Death, Collapsed on the Stage and Is Now Hopelessly III in a Sanitarium. saw-- i YET another stage star, who until recently was playing the title role in "The Du Barry," the popular but strangely unlucky musical play about Louis XV of France's favorite mistress, seems to have fallen victim as well as the run of the play, for no one could be found who cared to take her place.

Two actresses known to millions of Americans dared the "Du Barry hoodoo" and won to the "Du Barry" curse. In this case the victim was Miss Gitta Alpar, a beautiful Hungarian actress who was playing this curiously ill-fated part in the production of "The Du Barry" in Vienna. While on the stage, putting her whole heart and soul in the rendering of Madame Du Barry's magnetic and electrical personality, she was seized with a very serious and prolonged fainting fit, and was forbidden by her doctors to continue playing the highly nerve-racking part. The production of "The Du Barry," which ran for a year in London, was darkened by real life tragedies. Actors and stage hands assert there is a sin triumph from the role and later, seeming-1 disaster.

They are Mrs. Leslie Carter, whose name two decades ago was almost a synonym for "Du Barry" because of her success in the play, and Pola Negri, who played the silent motion pic-ture version, billed in American theatres under the name of "Passion." These stars were not threatened by death, illness or injury while they were at Mrs. Leslie Carter, as She Appeared at (lie Height of Her Fame in the Role of I)n Barry, Before Her Disastrous Break With Itelasco. I'ola cRri, Who First Won Fame in the Screen Version of "Du Barry," and Then Suffered a 1-oiiK Series of Disappointments in Love. tmpersonat the unlucky court favorite.

But Mrs. Carter after touring America in "Du Barry" went bankrupt with debts of $191,000, and Tola Negri, ever since her first great hit in "Passion," has had a long succession of griefs, tragedies and disappointments in love. leaving Belasco she toured the country independently in "Du Barry" and the tour was a big success. But like the spendthrift French favorite, Mrs. Carter did not manage her affairs wisely under her own management.

She went into bankruptcy owing debts of $194,000. Many times afterwards she had money troubles, and was discharged from bankruptcy only to go under again. Even in recent years she has still been accounted a great actress, but she never got back to the peak she had reached with Belasco. Once she suggested that "Du Barry" be revived, but managers shook their heads. They would have nothing to do with that unlucky play.

Ernst Lubitsch, the moving picture director; Emil Jannings, the actor, and Pola Negri, once one of the most celebrated of screen stars, all owe their American success to the fact that Pola, then a screen actress in Berlin, made a hit in "Passion," as the Du Barry film was known in America. But the fame Du Barry had brought her also caused her removal to Hollywood, and that brought on the divorce from her husband, Count Eugene Dombski, the first of a long succession of griefs and disappointments in love. Divorce, death or discouragement jinxed all her affairs with the Hungarian artist Tade Styka, with Charlie Chaplin, with Rudolph Valentino, who died, with Prince Serge Mdivani, from whom she was divorced. The "hoodoo" followed her, too, in her stage and screen career. She could not recapture, in the talking pictures, the audiences of millions who had admired her in the silent days.

Illness interfered with her stage appearances. Only recently, while touring in a play which promised to be highly successful, she broke down and was compelled to leave the cast. Miss Negri doesn't blame "Du Barry" for all her hard luck, marital and otherwise, but there are many other stage and screen people who do, for they are a superstitious craft. The chances are it will not be revived again soon, either in this country or in Europe. "The Du Barry" continued for a while without Anny Ahlers, but the soul had gone out of it, the cast never felt the same, and the play with tragic associations was soon withdrawn.

Some said that no star was brave enough to tak-Anny's place, for people began to fee! there was something unlucky in playing the name-part. The tragedy of Anny Ahlers was recalled recently when another "Du Barry" leading lady died. This time it was Kathlyn Hilliard who took over "The Du Barry" role from Anny and allowed her to have that sorely-needed rest shortly before her return and her sad death. Miss Kathlyn Hilliard was also young, beautiful and talented, but she. too, col-' lapsed and was taken ill.

She died soon after in a nursing home in Worthing, a seaside resort. So that when the other day lovely Gitta Alpar collapsed on a Viennese stage while playing the strenuous, scintillating role of ill-fated Madame Du Barry, people began to whisper that there must really be something uncannily evil and unlucky about this play, the other Du Barry tragedies were recalled Anny Ahlers her collapse her pitiful end Kathlyn Milliard's untimely death. It was "Du Barry" which led to the break between Mrs. Leslie rushed to the window, and saw her lying unconscious on the sidewalk below. She had partaken heavily of drugs during the last few hours, and then had tried to whip up her flagging vitality with champagne.

She never recovered consciousness and died. A verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was returned at the inquest, though many The French Actress Ijuirettc Dauvripne, Who Was Injured in a Stage Accident While She Was Appearing in the Unlucky Flay. And Above, a Miniature Portrait of Mme. Du Barry. ister influence about this play of a King's mistress who reigned as the glittering favorite of his court for five years after her startling rise from the gutter.

Du Barry what pomp and intrigue, passion and drama, the name conjures! She was boyi with the homely-sounding name of Marie Jeanne Becu. She married a Comte Jean Du Barry. It was a sordid arrangement, because he only wanted her to act as his gambling decoy ar.d Jeanne Marie filled the bill splendidly, for though she was a little adventuress of lowly birth, first discovered in a disreputable Paris resort, she was of such surpassing beauty and wit that soon, as the King's recognized favorite, she was dazzling Louis XV and his glittering, dissolute court. But later she paid indirectly for her follies, for in the Autumn of her life during the French Revolution when royalty was falling, she was guillotined. Gitta Alpar was originally intended to star in the London production of "The Du Barry," but, as it happened, Miss Alpar had just got married to Gustav Frolich, the Vienna film star, and love's young dream intervened in the shape of a honeymoon, so that Miss Anny Ahlers, the German star, was chosen instead.

It was fortunate for Miss Alpar, and tragic for poor Anny Ahlers, for though Miss Ahlers scored a tremendous success in the London part, the nervous strain it imposed upon her was too much for her frail, highly strung artistic temperament. Her death during the run of the play in London created a tragic sensation in theatrical and society circles a few months ago. Beautiful, high-spirited and gifted, Anny Ahlers came to London at the invitation of Mr. Stanley Scott, a well-known producer. Red-haired, of magnetic personality and with remarkable talent, she was an instantaneous success.

She sang beautifully, and had learnt how to speak English in record time. She lived in her part Her vitality on the stage was amazing, and she kept her fellow players at concert-pitch, her audiences spell-bound. But the part exhausted her so much, for she was not always in good health, that when the curtain had been rung down she was invariably in a state' of collapse, and would have to go straight home and to bed in her Duchess street apartment. She often had to drink brandy between the acts to keep herself going, and she had to take drugs to induce sleep at night. But she was obsessed with her part, and often her maid found her sleep-walking.

"I always sleep-walk when the moon is out," Anny told her, laughing gaily afterwards, for when not worn out by her art, she was a sweet and delightful girl and was beloved of all. She used to dream that she was the Du Barry when the drugs allowed her overwrought brain to sleep, and another time her maid found her asleep at her piano, practicing her scales and songs. She was terribly troubled by illness. She had a throat affection that threatened her voice, and was terrified lest she could not continue playing Du Barry during the long run of the play. Once she collapsed on the stage, and for some weeks had to rest.

Her part was taken by Kathlyn Hilliard, an English actress, and the wife of George Baker, the singer. Kathlyn had a great success also in the name-part. She was acclaimed with as much enthusiasm as Miss Ahlers had been, for her interpretation of the ill-starred mistress of Louis XV was almost as good as that of Anny Ahlers, Carter and the late David Belasco, who was generally credited with having "made" Mrs. Carter the greatest emotional actress of her day. Seventeen years before their quarrel Mrs.

Carter, a red-haired Kentucky girl who had just divorced her husband, had gone to Mr. Belasco in New York and begged him to give her a chance on the stage. She had vowed to her ex-husband, Mr. Leslie Carter, that she would make his name a household word wherever English is spoken that the world had never heard much of Leslie Carter, but the name of his wife, which she proposed to keep as long as she lived, would be known to everybody. Belasco, then just at the start of his own career, took Mrs.

Carter in hand and they rose to fame together. In "The Heart of Maryland," "Zaza" and many other plays she grew more and more popular and successful every year. Not until she played "Du Barry" did trouble begin. While she was appearing as the bewitching French favorite a young actor, William Louis Tayne, fell in love with her, and she with him. She had promised David Belasco that she would never remarry, but in spite of this understanding she motored out to New Hampshire with Payne, one day in 1906, and they were married.

This led to the break with Belasco, ind for twenty-five years he and Mrs. Carter never spoke to one another. She went from one management to another but in the second phase of her career she had many troubles. After people still say that poor, beautiful Anny Ahlers did not kill herself deliberately, but fell out of the window accidentally while dazpd with sleeping draughts and distraught with anguish at the thought of being unable to carry on with the acting that had become part of her very being. In the first act of the play the Du Barry effects an escape by climbing out of a window and on to a balcony.

It is quite possible that in Miss Ahlers' dazed condition, her mind a blur with physical pain and mental agony, she confused the play with reality and fell accidentally to her death as her friends maintained. Two French actresses, Lucille de Tours and Laurette Dauvrigne, are also among the stage folk who have been set down in years past as victims of the "Du Barry hoodoo." It was not the recent musical revival of the courtesan's story in which they had a part, but the earlier French version by the dramatist Richepin. Mile, de Tours was stricken ill and died after a brief appearance in the unlucky role, and Laurette Dauvrigne suffered a stage accident which ended her engagement who, in the meanwhile, was down in the country fighting to regain her health and a grip on her nerves. Anny Ahlers won what she hoped would be a lasting victory. She returned to the theatre to play Du Barry.

London gave her a rapturous welcome, and once more she sank her identity in her part, and became Du Barry who loved, sinned, sang and intrigued She lived on her nerves she thought she could hold out until the end of the run. But all the time she was suffering with heT throat she had to have one operation and she was haunted with the dread of breaking down again. Her torment did not mar her performance or her exquisite beauty. Admirers came to see her over and over again, so extraordinary was her fascination. Then she fell ill again and stayed out of the show for a few days.

One day, just as her doctor called to see her, her. maid missed her the bed was empty and the window curtains were blowinsr ominously. Doctor and maid 1934, bj Americui Weekly, tdb. Grat Britain Bisbts araerrtd..