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The Potted Palm The character of the Potted Palm will be new to modern players. The Potted Palm was a fixture in the game as it was run in the years before the First World War, and period letters indicate that it was considered wildly undesirable.
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Philadelphia? Pittsburgh? - date and player unknown |
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Clearly the first or last run this photo is believed to be W.D.E Thacker, though there is some suggestion that he dropped and the role was played by a "walk on" - if so did he heave a costume? |
"I had been looking forward to the new run of the old warhorse 'Clarence,' at the Hotel Harrington here in Washington, my dear, however having received my character sheet in the morning post, I am now rethinking it, and have considered returning my character sheet in the afternoon post with a brusque note. The whole weekend is going to end up costing close to twenty five dollars once two nights lodging for myself and Mrs. Thacker are paid, and luncheon, as well as dinner which one must take in the hotel restaurant, unless one wants to risk the vagaries of the diner on the corner where the newsmen eat, and then there is carfare for me, and probably on the return trip a cab for Mrs. Thacker who refuses to get upon a streetcar. On the whole, I thought it was a good bargain, however I have found I am to be cast as the potted palm. As I am neither green nor date-bearing I find myself rather insulted. I placed a telephone call to a mutual friend who says that it is because I have already played the role of Dr. Raleigh, however I find that logic spurious"
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A story that I heard about Potted Palm was the fact it was something that Henrietta wrote. Apparently the day before the game someone announced that they were bringing a friend I think it may have been Walker. I was never very clear on who though we talked about it in the bar during the game. Henrietta was furious she had been asked to write another character and so she took out a sheet of paper in wrote on it in pen "you are a potted Palm -- you sit in the hotel lobby and do nothing."
Upon hearing about it Walker thought it was a brilliant care here and said he had a lot of ideas for the character. I don't |
Dolores Cooke's "Costume Guide" entry for the Potted Palm, tusche, 1905 |
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know if this is one of those cases where he actually had something in mind or whether he was overreaching, or just saying that to keep Henrietta from thinking she had "one up" on him. He was brilliant but would sometimes commit to things or say he could do things that he couldn't. Then he'd drink and use that as an excuse for having "forgotten," as if he could have done it but just happened to be drunk and didn't remember. But he may actually have had something in mind whatever it was it didn't come out as far as I know, he wasn't a "great communicator." I don't think he talked to the player at all he may have assumed that they'd start out a went innd not have a lot of fun and then be surprised. Nowadays we understand that you need to talk to players about expectations and enlist their help in pacing but no one had any idea of that back then. The GMs just threw these characters at people and they either sank or swam. I don't know what the player ended up doing, the character was a loss. I'm pretty sure they walked Friday evening or maybe the next day or maybe they got a new character -- that's possible. I later read that Walker said he'd been up in the bar until two writing characters for Saturday to "fix" the game, and have even seen Marsden write about this, but I was in the bar until about 11pm, and it was closing at midnight, and I didn't see either of them, though Walker had been in earlier in the evening, he wasn't writing. The player who started out as the potted palm may have been the one who was to play the green fairy. I remember customs looked something alike only if there was less to the green fairy costume and that was one of the things that Henrietta was wrathful about. It well may have been that the potted palm became the green fairy I was never very clear on that it certainly would have been like Walker and I don't know as the green fairy was originally in the game. I can't imagine Henrietta would've permitted it - it isn't on the cast list, but only nineteen of the twenty four original characters are. On the other hand Henrietta lost a lot of battles with Walker because he could out talk her, and though he was young and somewhat timorous, Marsden supported Walker more often than not.
What I heard about the potted Palm character is that it was originally written by Walker, because that's about what he was up to at four that afternoon, and was written to accommodate some friend of Henrietta's who she sprang on them at a last-minute that was just like an eye and to a stone that the other writers could accommodate one of her friends I can't imagine why she had Marsden write a sheet other than probably he was the only one who would do it. The woman who played the palm originally I think was rather young. She certainly wasn't going to write anything, though she had her whole desk set there and I can't imagine that Horatio would've been willing to - he only wrote in his office. Occasionally Henrietta could coax work out of him, and he did produce all his characters. Henrietta flattered him. It was notable that sometimes she got the most out of Horatio because she flattered him him and would bolster his ego. The two of them often stood against the rest of the group or the total them plus Bucher stood against everyone else. The problem is that Bucher was frequently at odds with Henrietta - he had the strong Germanic ideas about LARP.
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