The first scenes had been that old familiar struggle of the young girl trying to convince managers that even though she has had her theatrical training somewhere west of Broadway she really can act. She had encountered and combated the habitual have-to-show-me look until one day in Jerry Coghlan’s office while the latter regarded her over horn-rimmed specs, she gave him a disarming smile and said quietly:
“Yes, Mr. Coghlan, I know you’re from Missouri, but how can I show you unless you give me a chance?”
Coghlan, being Irish, had tossed back his head with a roar of approval and given her what she asked. He had never regretted it.
Nancy possessed two qualities that register with an audience more quickly than genius—charm and personality. I might better say, personality alone, because that includes charm, doesn’t it? By the time she had reached the place of leading woman and the age of twenty-six, she had a following many older and more experienced actresses envied. She was never idle. When Coghlan, who had her under contract, was unable to find a play or part for her, he loaned her to other managers who featured their good fortune in advance notices and electrics.
Nancy had what Broadway calls class. She was supple and slender with an airy slimness that seemed more spiritual than of the body. She could curl up in a couch corner with child-like grace or stand tense and supplicating or sway with emotion. But whatever she did, one felt the spirit ruling the flesh. She had heavy gold hair that fell in deep sweeping waves over ears and forehead. The brows that mounted above gold-brown eyes were straight and black as were the lashes shading them. Her mouth, a bit too large for beauty, had a fascinating upcurve when she smiled but in repose was strangely firm and chiseled. One found oneself puzzling as to whether it belonged in a face whose charm lay in the fact that its actual features eluded one. I’ve called her eyes gold-brown. They weren’t always. At times across the footlights they looked green, at others hazel, and often in some scene of fury they went burning black.
Audiences loved her in all her moods—the matinée girls because she might have been one of them; older women because she might have been their daughter; young men because she was so much a girl they wondered how much a woman she might be; and old men because, for a fleeting moment, she gave them back their youth.