New Britain Herald Newspaper, April 22, 1927, Page 27

Edith Day, whom Pat Som- erset lured from her husband just as he later lured Irene Martin from hers husband after she ran away from him for the sake of the seductive Pat Somerset, Irene Martin, of vaude- ville fame, is repenting at leisure and wants to be taken back. Richard “Skeet” Gallagher, the former husband, is receiving a steady stream of telegrams from Irene, plead- ing for reconciliation. - She admits, to him and the world, that she was “a little fool” when she permitted the blarneying English actor to talk her into love with him. Not only that, she is ardently in favor of the de- portation of Mr. Somerset, and, has offered to give the authorit any assist- ance she can if they wish to establish his status as that of an undesirable alicn, Just at present, the disillusioned “Skeet” is reading the pathetic and elo- quent messages and saying nothing. Some of his friends say he is all through with women, and will not experiment again. Others believe he is keeping the former Mrs. Gallagher on the anxious seat for a while, on the theory that it will be good for her soul. Eventually, they say, he will open his arms to her and they will try it over again. Irene, once Gallagher’s vau- deville partner, is in Hollywood, while he is playin: in a New York show. The last telegram he received from her read as follows: “If you can do anything to help the authorities deport Pat Somerset, I will stand by you to the finish.” Close acquaintance with the glamorous Pat has left her with a feeling far from kindly, and she advertises the fact that she considers him a public menace. Before “Skeet” Gallagher and Irene Martin were married, they were known from coast to coast as Gallagher and Martin, one of the most popular teams on vaudeville’s Big Time. After their marriage, they continued to “knock the customers off their seats,” and their fame grew mightily. So did their salary checks. Came the day, as they rsay in Miss Martin’s Hollywood, when “Skeet” de- cided it was high time for the little woman to stop working and start mak- ing a real home. “The wife is going to retire from the stage,” he told an astonished agent. “It’s Gallagher alone, from now on. Or Gal- lagher and somebody else.” He went into a show without Irene, and for a time they were as happy and contented as clams. “Skeet” delighted in his role of sole breadwinner. Irene found that transforming an apartment into a home was a fascinating occupation n itself. She had been raised a “trouper,” how- ever, and the noise and color and ex- DIVORCED in haste by her angry How Irene Martin Was Cured of Her Foolish Infatuation for Pat Somerset and Why She Hopes the Husband From Whom She Ran Away Will Take Her Back A photograph em- phasizing the girl- ishness that seems to have made Irene Martin an unusually easy victim of Somerset’s wiles citement of the theater was in her blood and part of her life. The neighbors were nice, but they weren’t interested in the things she had always regarded as vital. She missed the song-and-dance men, ‘“hoofers,” saxaphonists, chorus girls, leading ladies, snake charmers, trained seals and Russian acrobats she had worked with so long. Life among the homemakers grew to seem tame, and she was heard to declare that she was bored to deathy and if something didn’t happen pretty soon she would go er: nd have to be put away. Something happened. In fact, Mr. Pat Somerset happened. Somerset, an experienced actor, on the stage and off, specialized in understanding and com- forting wives who were bored or misun- derstood by their own husbands. He had been divorced by Margaret Bannerman because of his affair with Edith Day, a Minneapolis girl, and an actress, and when Edith was divorced, 400, they were day kiss of Edith Day and the once- adored “Pat,” who proved a most unsatisfactory husband and from whom the courts freed married. When he met Tréne, however, the affair with Edith had grown cold, and life was proving very unexciting. After an interval of intensive wooing, Somerset and Irene Martin Gallagher went away from New York, without leaving a forwarding address, and “Skeet” Gallagher returned to the flat one night to find the table bare, the can- ary unfed, Irene’s clothes closet stripped of it’s contents, and a pitiful little note on the bureau. Stunned by the bitter ending of his idyll, Gallagher waited, and found out that Somerset and Irene had gone West, and were sojourning in Hollywood. e put detectives on their trail. The Eng- lish actor had rented a bungalow in the movie colony, and Gallagher’s men began to shadow him. At all hours of the day and night, they testified later, Somerset and Miss Martin were about the place, but the actor never seemed to trust himself in the same room with the vaudeville star long, evidently fearing he was being watched. The siege of espionage ended with a midnight raid on the cottage, made after the lights had been put out and the oc- cupants had retired. Sufficient evidence was found. A few days later Gallagher filed suit for divorce, naming Somerset. The de- cree was granted. In the meantime, Edith Day sued her Don Juan, Mr. Somerset, naming Irene. In conversation with friends, and even with newspapermen, Miss Martin does not hesitate to condemn herself for her abandonment of the popular “Skeet” and her infatuation for Somerset “I was a perfect ninny,’ she s 4t don’t want to excuse myself. I was just plain dumb. I don’t see how I could have lost my head so completely. I don’t see how I could have forgotten the love that always existed between ‘Skect’ and myself. I never realized what a wonderful husband he was until I lost him. If ‘Skeet’ would only take me back now, I'd be the happiest girl in the world. It’s all up to him. I've wired Now I'm waiting, ready to join him if he says the word.” When Miss Martin surrenders, her surrender is complete, and her repenting is done on the same grand scale. “We’d been married for seven years when I ran away, and we never had a quarrel or even a dispute,” she says. “We worked together in musical com- edy and vaudeville, and all the theatrical folk called us the ideal stage couple. We were devoted to each other and im- mensely interested in our work. I thought ‘Skeet’ was the most wonderful man in the world. Now I know Ye is. her just the other day “I i when ¥ was time for me to retirs woma Wis an exj ich is putt w lonesome or neglec conversational line a girl in her heart. hising, he is man who ever stful wor in the lemned mc hen it comes to } the promisingest youn oked a tr and lie Py es of all sorts, tion prote iffets of cireur eye Eternal devo- harsh e was to be and tion from the ance. eternal lover, the tolerant husband the good provider, a How at man could ladle out the blarney! And make his victim like it. “Oh, well, I don’t deserve : I was over s wn better. d right off th n I tried to that he was alwa it w one. special . and should have , we went beran n his pre vs just out of whatever s I wanted. iternal devotion? He could no more help smile beguilingly at a pretty face or looking after a pretty than he could stop breathing. “Tolerant? It was the tolerance of indifference, after a short time. ways wanted the new expe lidn't care.what I did if T with him. “Provide for me? I had to provide for both of us. When the landlord or grocer had to be paid, it was my jewels and fur coat ‘hat out to ‘Uncle’s.” “He wi hadn't ankle He al- nee, and fere he took sn’t ‘Skeet’s' principle. like ‘Skeet’ a When T would charge him with breaking promises or disregarding obligations, he would s that dirty, stage drawing-room smile of his until I wanted to hit him with a cof. pot. Talk about disillusion And the woman paying! I learned a lot about men from Mr. Pat Somerset.¥ fee ot Copyright, 1927, by Johnson Features, Ine. Gallagher, the husband Irene is so sorry she deserted As soon as her impulsively conceived with Somerset rcached its inevitable end, and she tired of him, Miss Martin got herself a tiny bungalow, nt the movie s o0s, look- ing for small parts, and prepared Californian for life. She 1 started to to turn e no fight when Gallagher got his divorce, and througho t it st a new d for a divorced wife by saying he rved all the She oc- recc was perfectly right, an! de: sym-athy ¢ their old-time friends. h: used to see Somerset on many 1sions, according to gossip from the al of cinema-land, and her impetu- ous love for him has * irned to contempt, which is several degrees worse than hatred. In asking her former hu nd to have for the sila d to his wiles. The only way to know the philandering Pat is to live with him 1 while, she him deported, she says it is of other , who may be subje says, and she doesn't want some other poor woman to have to go through her experience the privilege of finding ou that is a bounder. If all the Government has to show is moral turpitude in order to de- port him, she is quite sure he will be own for he soon as Uncle books. t even if keet” Gallagher never forgives her enough to take her back, she will feel better for having told the true story of given his ling papers as n get the Martin h idence on told friends t Repentant Irene Martin, who hopes her disillusionment and remorse will be a warning to other wives tempted as she was her lawless love, its speedy ending and its punishment. She is not a moralizer, as a rule, but she has made a clean breast of her affairs, and if any girl can draw a worthy moral from it for her own guidance, Miss Martin says, “Good luck to her.” Somerset, a somewhat bedraggled Lo- thario of late, is playing small roles in the films at present, and hoping for an- other fat Broadway part, rather than deportation. In 1922 he made his entry into the United States, and the publicity ing attempts to bar him out for moral turpitude gave him quite a reputation as a great lover. His affair with Edith Day, the Minneapolis girl, who was Mrs. Carle Carleton, wife of the theatrical producer, was the talk of London before he left. She was playing in the London company of “Irene,” and he was in the same show. They came to the United States together. Before that, Carleton had openly charged his wife with disloyalty, and Somerset with wronging him, and there was a wild scene, with all three parties to the triangle present. Carleton re- turned to America without Edith, and sued her for divorce when a child was born to her of which Somerset was said to be the father. Miss Day and Somerset were married in 1923, after Margaret Bannerman divorced him and Carleton had got his freedom. Apparently, she found, as did Miss Martin, later, that he wore badly, and got worse on close acquaintance. In a depesition read the other day at the trial of her divorce action in Indian- apolis, Miss Day not only charged he had been in love with Irene, but made many tally drunk and re- he testified. The ability re to support a wife was not in him, she . and she was compelled to riture, clothing and jewelry in t. He even made her pay his peat or de Adding insult to injury, he sold some of her most treasured possessions to finance a little trip with another woman, whose name did not appear in the testi- mony. One of his pleasant parlor tricks, she deposed, was accusing her of dis- loyalty whenever she took exception to iis love affairs with other women.