Cornelia Otis Skinner
Cornelia Otis Skinner was an American author and actress. Skinner was the daughter of the actor Otis Skinner and his wife Maud (Durbin) Skinner. After attending the all-girls' Ethel Walker School, and Bryn Mawr College (1918-1919) and studying theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris, she began her career on the stage in 1921. She appeared in several plays before embarking on a tour of the United States from 1926 to 1929 in a one-woman performance of short character sketches she herself wrote. She wrote numerous short humorous pieces for publications like The New Yorker. These pieces were eventually compiled into a series of books, including Nuts in May, Dithers and Jitters, Excuse It Please!, and The Ape In Me, among others.
With Emily Kimbrough, she wrote Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, a hilarious description of their European tour after college. Kimbrough and Skinner went to Hollywood to act as consultants on the film version of the book, which resulted in We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood. Skinner was portrayed by Bethel Leslie in the shortlived 1950 television series 'The Girls,' based on Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.
In later years Skinner wrote Madame Sarah, a biography of Sarah Bernhardt, and Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals about the Belle Epoque.
She also appeared with Orson Welles on The Campbell Playhouse radio play of The Things We Have on May 26, 1939.
“To Mr. Blot, who went through life an unconscious example of the raison d'être of the British Empire, a shipwreck was merely one of the many things to be ignored. His was a calming influence.”
“Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention.”
“There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city.”
“Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed. ”