by Bibi Gaston
The next morning Reinhardt, Kommer, Rosamond, and Gertrude met in one of the ship’s private salons, which was draped floor to ceiling in embroidered silk curtains of crimson and gold. A large gilded mirror hung in a recess, dominating the room and set off by cut-glass electric lights. Reinhardt introduced himself to Rosamond and Gertrude and recounted the legend of The Miracle.
A young nun named Megildis grows bored with her life in a medieval cloister and is lured into the forest by an evil piper. She embarks on a seven-year journey of joy and hardship. Men battle for her favors and die at her feet; she rescues a knight and finds worldly love in the arms of a count, a prince, and a crazed emperor. She wanders, always accompanied by the Piper, through mysterious landscapes, forests, palaces, and prisons. After her seven-year adventure, Megildis, defeated in mind, body, and spirit, winds up back at the cloister where she repents, is forgiven, and is welcomed back to her former life. While Megildis was off on her romp, the Madonna, once a stone statue at the entrance to the cloister, had climbed down to take up the Nun’s duties. Upon Megildis’s return, the Madonna resumes her position and all is well.
Reinhardt concluded his description of the legend, observing Rosamond’s profile, thinking her perfect for tragedy. But Rosamond knew little of tragedy and nothing about acting. At nineteen, she was planning her debutante party, followed by a Grenfell expedition to assist remote towns in Labrador, then perhaps a trip to Hawaii with her father and brother to learn to surf. She envisioned some vaguely imagined career having to do with the outdoors and sports.
Reinhardt left so that mother and daughter could confer. The esteemed professor had assuaged some of Gertrude’s motherly reservations, but Rosamond was trembling. That night, alone in her cabin, she had a revelation:
Suddenly, while I was sitting there alone, it came over me what a great chance I was missing by not making a great effort this time. I realized that at last something that I really wanted was being offered to me, and that it was a sort of laziness that prevented me from doing what was necessary…. The one thing that stood out clearly in my mind was that I wanted the part of the Nun more than I have ever wanted anything else before. So I got up and went to find Professor Reinhardt. He was finally located with the help of Mr. Kommer, and I told him that I was ready to try to act. I did not know what I was going to do, but I did know that Reinhardt did not understand English. So I began. Exactly what I said or how long it lasted I do not know, but I remember that I pretended to be talking to some third person, telling him how greatly I wanted the part, how well I could do it, and begging him to give it to me. It must have sounded like the appeal of a prisoner to be released. When it was over, I found that I had been crying without even knowing it. Like most people, I hated to be seen crying and had a horror of being laughed at for it. But Professor Reinhardt did not laugh. He did not say anything for a minute or so, except “sehr gut.”
By the time the Aquitania sailed into New York harbor, Reinhardt felt sure that he had found his Nun, but the final decision was up to the production’s impresario, Morris Gest, one of New York’s most relentless publicity hounds. While Reinhardt sought a transcendent stage presence, Gest sought exploitable glamour and ticket sales. If Reinhardt was right, his discovery would make Morris Gest a very happy man. Here was a young woman as beautiful as one could imagine, from a distinguished American family, who was sure to attract Manhattan’s upper crust. Her mother hailed from the illustrious Sedgwicks of Massachusetts and the Minturns, a successful New York shipping family. Rosamond’s father, Amos Pinchot, and his brother, Gifford Pinchot, were both millionaires, having inherited a fortune from their father, James Pinchot. However, what distinguished the brothers wasn’t money. Encouraged by their father, they both turned toward public pursuits: politics, conservation, and philanthropy. Before becoming the governor of Pennsylvania, Rosamond’s uncle Gifford had held the post as the first chief of the United States Forest Service under Theodore Roosevelt. Morris Gest couldn’t wait to see the headlines:
ROSAMOND PINCHOT, DEBUTANTE, TO STAR IN BROADWAÝS LARGEST PRODUCTION
This was showbiz. Showbiz required hoopla, so Gest would stage a massive publicity campaign of articles and advertisements. Everything would be bigger and better than New York had ever seen. He’d even market The Miracle with an exclusive product, “Parfum Miracle,” the exquisite scent of wayward nuns. The quasi–holy water would be produced by Lentheric, Paris, in limited-edition bottles of obsidian flecked with gold.
Although Rosamond’s mind was made up, her parents had reservations. But it was too late, the publicity machine was off and running. The New York Times got wind of Reinhardt’s shipboard discovery and reported the developments on Chapter 1:
Pinchot’s Niece, 17 [sic], Picked as Nun in “The Miracle,” by Reinhardt; Selects Girl With No Stage Experience the Moment She Passes Him on Ship; Calls Providence Guide.
The press reported Rosamond’s age wrong, but no matter, this was a highly unusual and controversial assignment for an American debutante. Behind the scenes, Gest was haggling with Rosamond’s mother and father over Rosamond’s working hours, understudies, and substitutes. Finally agreeing to the Pinchots’ requirements, Gest parted the waters and Rosamond was hired. There were backup nuns and sub-nuns but Rosamond Pinchot was to star as the number one Nun in Broadway’s largest production to date, which was scheduled for an opening night—Christmas Eve, 1923.
Rehearsals began immediately at the Jolson Theatre on Seventh Avenue and West Fifty-eighth Street, home to the Moscow Art Theatre. Reinhardt had pulled off his Miracle before, but never at this scale or under such pressure to meet an opening night. Between cast, crew, and construction, seven hundred people were employed, three hundred of whom were dispatched to build sets of forest and cloister in three off-site studios. The young scenic designer, Norman Bel Geddes, quickly drew up plans to transform Carrerre and Hasting’s Century Theatre on Central Park West, with its French modern interior, into a Rhineland cathedral complete with gothic gloom. Reinhardt challenged Bel Geddes to break down the age-old separation between actor and audience by doing away with the traditional stage, ridding the theater of its proscenium and turning its seats into pews. The audience wouldn’t be an audience, it would be a throng of acolytes participating in a great medieval spectacle. Engelbert Humperdinck’s score filled the nave and aisles with deafening organ music, bells, and the shouting of medieval crowds. Stained-glass windows were fabricated, animals were brought in, and seven hundred supernumeraries were instructed in the art of surging up and down the aisles as beggars, jesters, lepers, and lunatics. Meanwhile, three thousand costumes were created, the incense tested and lit. The only thing left was to await Christmas Eve, when the audience would be led by candlelight to their pews.
Due to delays, Christmas Eve came and went. Morris Gest placated angry ticket holders by churning out a hurricane of press releases explaining that the wait was worth it and that the faithful would be rewarded. Among various ploys, he staged fake catfights between the Madonna, played by the wife of an English diplomat, Lady Diana Manners, and her stand-in, the elegant Princess Matchabelli. Manners, who had been hailed as the most beautiful woman in England, found Gest’s sideshow undignified but consistent with his do-anything campaign to increase ticket sales.
Program for The Miracle
Rosamond as the Nun Megildis in The Miracle, 1923
The play finally opened on January 15, 1924, with Rosamond Pinchot as the Nun and Lady Diana Manners as the Madonna. The starring actresses were joined by a cast of Europe’s most prominent stage actors, including Werner Krauss as the evil piper, Rudolf Shildkraut who played the blind peasant, Schuyler Ladd as his son, and Orville Caldwell as the handsome knight. Opening night nearly went off without a hitch except that backstage Rosamond had locked herself out of her dressing room an hour before curtain. A locksmith was dispatched to avert liturgical disaster and the audience never knew anything had happened. That audience included Rosamond’s parents, A
mos and Gertrude; her uncle and aunt, Governor Gifford Pinchot and Mrs. Cornelia Pinchot; and a who’s who of New York society: the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts; the Duke and Duchess de Richelieu; the Duchess of Rutland, who was the mother of Lady Diana Manners; Otto Kahn; Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson; Senator Simon Guggenheim; Mr. and Mrs. Phelps Stokes; R. M. Sedgwick; Zoe Akins; the Posts of Washington and the Fields of Chicago; Mr. and Mrs. William Randolph Hearst with Marion Davies; the Brokaws; Frank Crowninshield; Miss Elisabeth Marbury; the Astors; the Lippincotts; Conde Nast; Prince Matchabelli; the Ochs; the Bambergers and Krocks; Mr. and Mrs. Jay Gould; and the Italian playwright and tragedian Luigi Pirandello, who had just opened the National Art Theatre of Rome with the support of Benito Mussolini.
“For darling Pinchie with all my love.” Diana Manners by Carlo Leonetti
The spectacle astounded audiences and critics alike. Alexander Woollcott, the prominent theater critic, described the transformation of the Century Theatre as “hocus pocus,” and Reinhardt’s ambition as the “most leaping” in American theater. “The Miracle is a wordless play,” he wrote, “that is at once a play and a prayer and a pageant, and in its service the work of thousands of hands over many months in many lands, has culminated at last in the unbelievably transformed Century, itself touched by some magic new in the theatre. The result was such a spectacle as this country had never seen before.”
John Corbin of the New York Times reported:
…One followed the Nun through a dance of elves in a wood, interrupted by an incursion of huntsmen; through a Prince’s nuptial feast and mock bridal procession; through revels in an imperial palace and the phantasm of an insane Emperor and the bloody orgies of a reign of terror. Everywhere the scene was multitudinously animated, vitalized by the sweep of Reinhardt’s imagination and his marvelous sense of detail. As for Miss Pinchot, the outstanding impression of her performance was the half animal grace and the physical vitality that first attracted Reinhardt’s attention. That is the primary and indispensable qualification for that marathon of parts.
Running up and down the aisles of the Century Theatre for three hours every night, Rosamond playfully told a reporter that she recommended the part for weight reduction. “I, who seemed to have no superfluous flesh to lose, have lost seven pounds!” she exclaimed. On a more serious note, she also said that the play seemed to be having a strange effect on her:
I drifted dazedly thru the play, like a wraith in a dream. Had it not been that the part had been so thoroly [sic] drilled into me that it had become a part of my mind I probably would have been a farce. When it was all over and my friends gathered about me with congratulations I gazed at them stupidly, hardly recognizing them. I was reduced to a state of speechlessness. And next morning I was surprised that the critics were so kind. Then of course I awoke to such a great sense of gratitude for the wonderful opportunity that had come to me.
At nineteen, Rosamond Pinchot became Manhattan’s “it girl” and her name was everywhere. She was a part of the Reinhardt machine, a well-greased operation that relied on a stable of the master’s chosen performers. She was frequently photographed with Max Reinhardt, who the press referred to as “Max, the Magician.” She learned about fame and what it meant to be discovered. She learned about luck and fate and the power a man had to see what a marvelous creature she really was. What girl doesn’t dream of being discovered? Being discovered meant going where she wanted to go. The papers reported that “There were no weary, grueling apprenticeships for her, no dismal days in tank towns, no trouping and no long bitter summers with stock companies.” The headlines read: “Rosamond Pinchot Passes Some Actresses Who Have Spent Lives On Stage.” Rosamond, they reported, had forsaken her debutante party to become an “Actress of Destiny.” Perhaps she was destined for one big beautiful life and wouldn’t have to dream up a career. Perhaps life was a quest for what was beautiful. One columnist noted that she “found in the theatre the fulfillment of her beauty quest.” Certainly she was on a quest. She told a reporter for The Princetonian, “I have received so many condemning me for appearing in such an immoral play, after having been brought up as a respectable girl, but I find them very amusing, since of course you have to get accustomed to all sorts of situations in modern plays. At the start, my family also objected furiously, and practically forbade me to play the part as it stands, but I convinced them finally.” When asked about her dreams for the future, she told Elita Miller Lenz, a reporter, “Well I dream of entering the drama seriously, to stay, and I am studying faithfully to that end, but I fear that perhaps after all this glory I may find myself announcing humbly next season, ‘Madame, dinner is now served.’”
The Miracle closed in New York after 299 performances, after which Rosamond agreed to join the cast for a U.S. tour. In its first stop outside New York, she appeared at the Cleveland Public Auditorium for twenty-six performances in December of 1924 and January of 1925, but in a letter to her father, she bemoaned the ugliness of Cleveland and wondered whether, at twenty years old, she could bear to travel through the hinterland and dozens of other bedraggled American cities. Through two years of grueling late-night rehearsals and performances, she had lost track of her friends, she missed her dachsund, Nicolette; her horse, Fleury; and Oscar, the parrot. She missed sleeping in a regular bed at night, but most of all she missed her family, particularly fishing with her father at her family’s summer home, Grey Towers, in Milford, Pennsylvania.
A prominent crusader for progressive causes, Rosamond’s father, Amos, knew when enough was enough. After two years, Amos had had his fill of haggling with Gest over his daughter’s salary and working conditions. Rosamond was hardly downtrodden, but Amos Pinchot was not someone to tangle with. He’d graduated from Yale in 1897, gone on to New York Law School, and served in 1900 and 1901 as Manhattan’s deputy district attorney; in 1912, he and his brother, Gifford, had helped Theodore Roosevelt establish the Bull Moose Progressive Party. In 1917, Amos had helped found the National Civil Liberties Bureau, the precursor to the American Civil Liberties Union. The writer Max Eastman attributed Amos’s passion to an “inherited nobility,” which earned him a sizable audience of readers in Manhattan. “If [Amos] wanted to make a statement on some public question,” Eastman wrote, “he had only to call up the New York Times and they would give him a top headline and a double column.”
Amos Pinchot was used to giving people headaches, and Morris Gest didn’t need an Amos Pinchot headache or any headache for that matter. Amos wrote to his older sister, Nettie, in London about his battle with Rosamond’s employers: “With the exception of Reinhardt, they are a very rotten lot, cold blooded exploiters, who care nothing for art, nothing for beauty and lack every quality of mercy. The only way to deal with those people is to kick them as soon as you get in the room, and very hard. Then they develop a very high regard for you or something equivalent thereto.”
If there was one thing Amos Pinchot knew about the members of his spirited and active family, it was that they required abundant sleep and exercise, and what Amos meant by exercise wasn’t running up and down the aisles of the Cleveland Auditorium. That winter, unable to reach an agreement with Gest, Rosamond left the cast and boarded a train for New York, where she planned to get back to the life she missed.
But that spring, before she’d had a chance to catch her breath, she received a letter from Professor Reinhardt, who suggested that Rosamond come to Austria to perform in The Miracle and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Salzburg Festival. Once again, Rudolf Kommer, the emissary, was dispatched to send the message:
Schloss Leopoldskron
Salzburg
20 April 1925
Dear Rosamond,
Now that everything is definitely settled, I feel justified in letting you know the Salzburg dates. The opening performance of the Festival will take place on the 13th of August. It will be The Miracle, with Diana and Rosamond. A week later or so Hoffmansthal’s “The Worlds Theatre” will also be performed. At the same ti
me there will be a Mozart festival (at the Salzburg Stadtheatre) under the direction of Richard Strauss. In short there will be a grand August in Salzburg. Your name has already been announced and the whole of Central Europe is expecting “Die fabelhafte junge Amerikanierin.” It will be necessary for you to arrive in Salzburg around the first of August. Come as soon as you can. The duchy of Salzburg is full of mountains and lakes. I assume full responsibility for your entertainment. I pledge my reputation. You will never regret your visit…. I hear from New York that the new “Miracle” season is to open on the 24th of September in Cincinnati. I hope it will not be too Gestly. Here in Munich, where I arrived today from Berlin, your “Waltz Dream” song is haunting me. To counteract it I am singing your favorite: “Einmal Komint der Tag….” Berlin and Vienna are full of new songs. I shall return to the States with a brand new repertory. Diana is somewhere in the south of France. I am proceeding to Salzburg in a day or two, where I shall spend my days waiting (in the coffee houses) for news from you. Max, the magician sends you his herrlichste grusse. I am doing the same. Please remember me to your parents. Auf Wiesdersehn!
Yours ever,
Rudolf Kommer
If Kommer’s dispatch sounded like a seduction, it was, particularly after the unpleasantness between Amos and Gest. Rosamond could pass up a winter in Cleveland, but how could she resist a summer in Salzburg at Reinhardt’s castle near the Alps? If her meeting aboard the Aquitania had taught her anything, it was that half of success was getting the breaks, but half of that half was recognizing them. When she had been discovered, it was like a giant hand had reached down and plucked her out of a crowd. And here it was again.
In June, Rosamond boarded the fastest ship in the world, the Cunard Line’s RMS Mauritania. She spent the summer rehearsing in Salzburg, perfecting her German, traveling about, and in August she performed as the Nun at the opening of the Salzburg Festival, then staged in one of the city’s main public gathering places, Cathedral Square. In 1925, thanks to Reinhardt, Strauss, and von Hoffmansthal, a new festival hall was under construction and the Felsenreitschule, the archbishop’s riding school, was being converted into one of the world’s most unusual theaters to house the Salzburg Festival, a spectacular outdoor auditorium carved out of the towering cliffs in the middle of the city.