Lolita, it may be mentioned in passing, lived up to all the implications of the somewhat picturesque cognomen given her by McClintock, the park manager, when Jimmy first pointed her out to his superior.
“She sure is Miss Lulu Looker,” McClintock had remarked emphatically.
Lolita was all of that and a little more. Jimmy was not a poet and he was therefore unable to properly voice the feelings he had about her beauty. Had he been one he might have justly said that her cheeks seemed to have been kissed by the rosy flush of dawn; that in her sable eyes there lurked the eternal mystery of night beneath tropic skies; that her dark hair was as fragrant as the spices of Araby and that her lithe figure had all the gracile curves of a bounding antelope. As it was he contented himself with the frequent repetition of the decidedly unpoetic expression “some gal,” but this represented to him all the ideas noted above and a liberal assortment of others equally glamorous.
Lolita hailed from Cedar Rapids, Ia., and ever since the memorable occasion when Maude Adams played “Peter Pan” in that city for “one night only” she had cherished a great and overwhelming ambition. Her father ran the drug store next door to the Opera House and was a great crony of the manager. A number of boys and girls were picked up in each town to play the children in the Never Never Land scene and Lolita’s fond parent had persuaded the manager to select her as one of the group. It was a step that father was to regret vainly for many years, but on the night of her debut he was blissfully unconscious of the possibility of any bitter repining in the future and enjoyed the proceedings almost as much as Lolita did.
From that time on Lolita felt the call of the footlights and became convinced that, given the proper opportunities for the externalization of the emotional feelings that lay dormant within her, she was destined to become an international celebrity and the queen regnant of the English speaking stage. Chauncey Olcott came to town a few weeks later and she persuaded father to work her in as one of the youngsters to whom he sang a lullaby in a high tenor voice down in the “glen” which is always the setting for the third act of an Irish play. After that there was no holding her. She became a student of Miss Amanda Holliday’s School of Dramatic Expression which occupied three rooms on the second floor of the Turner block on Main Street and she participated in the semi-annual entertainments given by the budding geniuses who were under the tutelage of that small town preceptress of the arts. Versatility was her middle name. At one time she would play Ophelia in the mad scene from “Hamlet” and appear later on the program in a Spanish dance with castanets, a lace mantilla and all the other necessary properties. Six months later she would combine the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet” with an imitation of an imitation of Eddie Foy she had heard given by a monologue artist at the Orpheum Theatre. At the age of nineteen she was the town wonder. The dramatic editor of the Democrat-Chronicle predicted that within a short time “this talented daughter of our esteemed fellow townsman Henry P. Murphy seems destined to occupy one of the stellar places in the front ranks of the worth-while artists of our fair country.”