Word: balieff
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...been said a man is a genius in the ratio that he possesses woman's qualities (emotion, perception, tenderness, ruthlessness). Genius Balieff possessed one woman's quality, and it finally drove him to desert the Moscow Art. He craved to talk. To satisfy this craving he formed his own theatre; in its early days a sort of music hall cafe, and called it The Bat. "When I make the theatre in a cellar, as I go in one day. . . one bat was flying...
Moscow approved The Bat. The Tsar saw the show; invited M. Balieff to dinner. Came 1917 and revolution. In 1919 Nikita Balieff was jailed because he "was not consented with their views on poltique." He pointed his fingernails and skulking behind a long square beard escaped to Georgia (southern Russia) as a Persian...
...Paris with 20,000 francs, hired the Femina Theatre, and put on a vaudeville with Russian emigres, only three of whom were professional performers. The first attempt was creaky but a "moral success"; its possibilities were recognized by Charles Cochran, London producer. Under Mr. Cochran's management M. Balieff took the troupe to London. Shortly afterward "that stupid man" appeared, M. Balieff and his vaudeville opened in Manhattan and played 65 consecutive weeks; toured; became a U. S. institution...
...Nikita Balieff is bored with one thing-"The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers." Their famed mechanical march and the tune that went with it has been played, imitated, repeated over most of the civilized world. The idea came from a tradition of the autocracy of Tsar Paul I. Absentminded, the Tsar walked off the parade ground one afternoon, forgetting to give the command to halt. Because he was so cruel, nobody dared remind him. The soldiers went marching on to somewhere in Siberia before he remembered and ordered them to return. They arrived with beards. The Parade based on this...
People ask whether M. Balieff in private really speaks as broken English as he does for public consumption. He does not. But his dialect has become so completely a stock in trade that he uses it in conversation and correspondence. Says...