Duse could snub a Czar! Why? Because she had a load on, that's why. Not until she'd started drnking would she face her audience! You, too, can be just like this person who drowned her terrors in alcohol - but you can do it with ginger ale! (To which you can add alcohol.)

She quit the stage in 1909, gave up men, took up with an Italian feminist, then had an affair with Isadora Duncan, and died in 1924.

Probably not something that was generally known to the ginger-ale drinkers. But they didn't have wikipedia.