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ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
Entertaining the American Army 
 
ENTERTAINING 
 THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 The American Stage and Lyceum 
 in the World War 
 
 ■J^MES -W.' EVANS 
 
 Dramatiz Ffoducer a.tii Coach 
 AND 
 
 CAPTAIN GARDNER L. HARDING 
 
 Attached to General Pershing's Staff at Chaumont 
 Intelligence Division of the War Department 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY NEYSA MCMEIN 
 ANITA PARKHURST AND ETHEL RUNDQUIST 
 
 ASSOCIATION PRESS 
 
 New York: 347 Madison Avbnub 
 1921 
 

 • •<►/•» « 
 • • • tt 
 
 
 Copyright, 192 i; by 
 
 The International Committee of 
 
 Young Men's Christian Associations 
 
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 All Those Who Served as Entertainers 
 WITH the American Army 
 
 9657C3 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 No doubt every book published should have a dedica- 
 tion to the public, for by them it will be read and by them 
 judged, but in presenting this particular history in narra- 
 tive form, one must realize that while it may bring much 
 interest to the general reading public, it belongs by its 
 very title to those women and men who wisely saw the 
 writing on the wall and indifferently turned their backs 
 upon their everyday life with its creature comforts, never 
 counting the cost nor exaggerating the danger, but gladly 
 joining the great crusade. 
 
 History repeats itself! But in this present book there 
 is no repetition — for, search as we may through the annals 
 of past wars, we can find no precedent for a work of this 
 nature. In very fact, when the opportunity came and the 
 idea grew into a resolve, those who believed in the gospel 
 of recreation realized that by the creation of just this 
 particular type of amusement, an anachronism was being 
 inaugurated. But by the very nature of its novelty it 
 found a hearty response in the minds of the men in the 
 camps in this country and overseas, and by its inherent 
 opportunity for service it commended itself to the women 
 and men who had no other chance of showing how solidly 
 they stood behind the representatives of their country. 
 
 From its very moment of inception it carried with it 
 the support of two men, without whose whole-hearted 
 assistance it must have failed — Mr. William Sloane, Chair- 
 man of the War Work Council of the Young Men's Christian 
 Association, and Dr. John R. Mott, its General Secretary. 
 Through its early stormy days, when the skeptical and 
 the timid hesitated at the very innovation of the proposi- 
 tion, they stood absolutely convinced of the power of 
 
 Tii 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 entertainment, and by the very authority of their coagency 
 carried with them the more doubtful and hesitating. 
 
 Where shall we turn for an adventure more novel than 
 that imdertaken by those vahant people who crossed the 
 seas that they might bring maybe the last smile to those 
 "going over the top," that they might be perhaps the first 
 "real American" girl the doughboy had seen since he 
 sailed from the land of Home? 
 
 Into the theatre or the cow-barn, to the tent or station 
 platform, they brought the gospel of laughter, and even 
 while the shells burst over their heads or whizzed by like 
 rent cloth, the song of sentiment soared hke a wave of 
 comfort to tired and homesick men. 
 
 No sympathy need be extended to those who went — 
 only to those who did not see the opportunity to get out 
 of themselves and learn the joy of losing, that others might 
 be the gainers, the joy of relinquishing a real money-making 
 position and going out to meet whatever came, so that 
 when the roll call is answered they will not be ashamed 
 to answer to their names. 
 
 No record, however complete, could tell all the indi- 
 vidual sacrifices that were made, or the story of the sol- 
 diers' appreciation, but this volume is offered as a lasting 
 tribute to those who went, that their contribution may 
 be recorded and their offering chronicled. 
 
 That the Young Men's Christian Association was priv- 
 ileged to be the instriunent through which this presentation 
 was made it feels duly grateful, for the recollection of this 
 service will last when others may be forgotten. 
 
 To each and every man and woman who did his and 
 her part in this work and received an honorable discharge, 
 this book carries a greeting from those whose privilege 
 it was to be the instrument through which this service 
 was consummated. The work was an inspiration and the 
 service rendered adds the only comment necessary. 
 
 Thomas S. McLane. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XL 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword vii 
 
 Preface xi 
 
 The Performers Enter 1 
 
 The Men behind the Scenes 6 
 
 The Advance Guard in France 11 
 
 The Pioneer Company 17 
 
 The Troupers in Action 22 
 
 The Ames-Sothern Reconnaissance 35 
 
 The Stage Called to Arms 42 
 
 A Message from France 51 
 
 The American Stage Answers 60 
 
 A Stock Company under Fire 66 
 
 A Regular American Girl 74 
 
 The Over There Theatre League Enters. ... 80 
 
 A Bombardment of Songs and Fun 88 
 
 Strenuous Days for the Troupers 101 
 
 Keeping Step with the Doughboys 109 
 
 Pushing Up to the Front 121 
 
 Knights and Ladies 134 
 
 Two Makers of Entertainment History 143 
 
 Spreading Joy along the Line 156 
 
 Soldier Shows after the Armistice 164 
 
 Broadway Successes on the Big Circuit 180 
 
 Famous Casinos in a New Role 185 
 
 Entertainment in Camps at Home 193 
 
 Singing Their Way to Victory 201 
 
 Enlisting Eminent Lectures 213 
 
 "Movies Tonight!" 223 
 
 Curtain 237 
 
 Appendix — Personnel 240 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The greatest books of the War have not yet been written. 
 While we now have contemporary records of incalculable 
 value, upon which many future judgments will be based, 
 the permanent histories of the conflict are yet to come. 
 The General Staffs of all the Governments are now pre- 
 paring their military records. The diplomatists have only 
 just begun to write their memoirs. The time has not 
 arrived when standard works, weighed in the scales of 
 historical perspective and scientific research, can begin 
 to give the final judgment of the world struggle. 
 
 It is with this understanding that we ask the privilege 
 of submitting to contemporary records a phase of Amer- 
 ica's participation in the World War which might other- 
 wise be overlooked. The purpose of this volume is to sketch 
 some of the adventures and experiences of what we may 
 term ''our American troubadours," professional, semi- 
 professional, and amateur, who followed our Army through 
 the War; to show what the entertainers, the American 
 stage and lyceum, did in the World War; how they under- 
 took one of the most important missions in the struggle; 
 how, like true soldiers, they did their duty to the end. 
 
 While it is conceded that this was one of the most effec- 
 tive arms of the Army, and it is generally understood that 
 the American stage and lyceum performed a great service, 
 the magnitude of it is little known by the public. It is 
 realized that the American stage was one of the powerful 
 forces behind all the Liberty Loans, Red Cross drives, 
 and United War Work campaigns; that it was directly 
 instrumental in raising hundreds of millions of dollars; 
 that it recruited the entertainers from every available 
 source, including actors, lyceum entertainers, lecturers, 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 singers, musicians, song leaders, motion picture stars and 
 operators, vaudeville performers, soldier shows, stock 
 companies — all merging in this achievement, which re- 
 quired the organization of play bureaus, costume and 
 scenic factories, transportation offices, and the leasing of 
 many of the most famous theatres in Europe; that it en- 
 rolled in its operations at home and abroad more than 
 35,000 men and women. 
 
 We trust that the experiences and anecdotes related 
 will give a new insight into the hearts and characters of 
 our soldiers. Names are named, not so much to honor 
 individuals, as to illustrate situations. The problem has 
 been to select. There are almost endless records of mirth 
 and misery, romance and tragedy, such as the bards of 
 other days used in ballad and epic. This volume is sub- 
 mitted, therefore, as a tribute not only to the entertainers, 
 but to the American Army — one more contribution to the 
 records of America's fight for humanity in the World War. 
 
 The readers of this book are particularly indebted to Miss 
 Neysa McMein, Miss Anita Parkhurst, and Miss Ethel 
 Rundquist, entertainers all, who have brought the very 
 life of overseas service into these pages through the illustra- 
 tions they have contributed. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PERFORMERS ENTER 
 
 *^They have their exits and their entrances; 
 And one man in his time plays mxiny parts.** 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 It is June, 1917. An axis^joer^tic old mansion at 31 
 Avenue Montaigne, Paris, is the ^ scene of the beginning. 
 This former palace, with its mass«of, ^iJilirg, .qf.irr.(;rs, and 
 satin upholstery, is transformed suddenly from its stately 
 elegance into the headquarters of our troubadours; a 
 movement through which those in America are to touch 
 hands with their sons along the battle fronts of France. 
 It is here that the pioneers start the plans for the stupen- 
 dous achievement. Six months later, we find the old 
 palace unable longer to hold the rapidly expanding forces, 
 and in December, 1917, all the splendor is left behind for 
 a commodious French office building at 12 Rue d'Aguesseau. 
 
 Let us climb to the fifth floor. It is reached by a wind- 
 ing marble stairway, or a personally conducted French 
 lift holding four people. The building is unfinished and 
 unheated and the plaster is oozing moisture. Mail sacks 
 block the hall and all the near-by office entrances, since 
 next door is the post office and mailing room. 
 
 Parties of Americans, just arriving from "home" or 
 coming in from the front, sweep along the hallway, hopping 
 over mail sacks and struggling with the knob of the door 
 leading to the two rooms known as the "Entertainment 
 Department" on this fifth floor. The office is horribly 
 crowded and grows worse week by week as the Americans 
 are coming on every ship, climbing the long staircase, tripping 
 over their hand-baggage, seeking information regarding 
 
2 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 their destinations, demanding to be sent right out to the 
 front line, and finally waving good-by as they disappear 
 with their red permits and start off on their individual 
 missions. 
 
 So great did the office and other activities become that 
 it was found necessary to move again to larger quarters and 
 take over a house on 10 Rue de I'Elysee — a street running 
 from Faubourg St. Honore down to the Champs Elys^e, 
 along the west side of the President's palace. The Enter- 
 tainment Department was housed on the third floor and 
 given overflow rooms Giver, the stables in the courtyard, 
 the driveway leading through the house in regular French 
 fashion. .. . And t\)jd Departm^t filled these quarters and 
 * 'cried for more." 
 
 What scenes there were through all the hours of the 
 day and late into the night — rehearsals, tuning instruments, 
 trying out songs, costuming, playwriting, all going on at 
 the same time with the regular office routine of booking 
 and routing. You met doughboys, medieval ladies, knights 
 in armor, and French widows, hurrying to rehearsals, up 
 and down the carved and frescoed marble stairway. Out on 
 the Rue de TElysee big army trucks were drawn up to the 
 curb, loading and unloading musical instruments, and the 
 sidewalk^ were' covered with bass drums, banjos, trom- 
 bones, and violins. 
 
 This, then, is the story of how the American stage and 
 lyceum sent out an army of volunteers which finally num- 
 bered more than 35,000. It tells how they furnished enter- 
 tainment in cantonment and training camp, in cities and 
 towns, in shipyards and ports of embarkation for more 
 than 4,000,000 men who at one time and another passed 
 through the great war organization of the American Army; 
 how they followed the A. E. F. through the campaigns and 
 out to the battlefields; and how they fought and won 
 
THE PERFORMERS ENTER 3 
 
 continuous battles against a common enemy — gassed, 
 bombed, and under fire in the greatest crusade in the 
 world's history. 
 
 Let us line up our forces for review: The first line is 
 composed of the 1,064 who were sent from America over- 
 seas to France and the 300 recruited from the French; 
 the second line consists of the recruits whom they trained 
 in the American Army in France, 4,000 soldier-actors, who 
 in turn coached 11,000 more from their own ranks for 
 soldier shows; the third line comprises the 200 trained 
 song leaders with their forces augmented by 1,000 recruits; 
 the fourth line brings the 1,500 enrolled in the motion 
 picture service; the fifth line presents the 200 lecturers 
 augmented by 500 more recruits and volunteers; the sixth 
 line includes the costumers, theatre managers, general 
 staff, and transportation service, over 300 more — the field 
 strength now exceeds 20,000. Behind this are the reserve 
 entertainers in America, working in the home camps or in 
 the War Fund drives, numbering 15,000, bringing the 
 fighting strength to 35,000. 
 
 In estimating the full service of the profession in the 
 foregoing forces, it is necessary to mention the American 
 theatre owners who opened their houses for war service 
 in whatever capacity needed; the actors working from all 
 the stages in the loans; the managers delivering personal 
 appeals, and purchasing bonds in the millions; the solicitors 
 working in the aisles of the theatres. More than 25,000 
 theatres (motion picture and legitimate) throughout America 
 became the central points for all the organized efforts. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate the huge funds raised in the 
 theatres. Such favorites as Mary Pickford, Douglas 
 Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and William S. Hart alone 
 raised more than $17,200,000 on their tours through the 
 country. It is further safe to state that there probably 
 was not a professional or semi-professional entertainer in 
 America who did not give his services either among the 
 
i 
 
 4 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 soldiers in their camps or at benefit performances during 
 the War. They became one of the most powerful arms 
 of the Government and ''did their bit" in the true tradi- 
 tion of the profession. 
 
 It is to the war experiences of the troupers 1,064 strong 
 who went to France, and their augmented forces, that 
 this volume must largely confine itself, with occasional 
 reference to those who served at home. To put through 
 this tremendous task there was organized the biggest 
 entertainment enterprise in the history of amusements: 
 
 It gave 109,794 separate performances to the soldiers, 
 with an approximate attendance overseas of 87,000,000 
 and more than 40,000,000 at home. 
 
 It gave overseas 157,000 movie shows aggregating over 
 8,000,000 feet, or more than 1,500 miles, of film. The 
 aggregate attendance at these movie shows alone (between 
 April, 1918, and July, 1919) was over 94,000,000 at 5,261 
 different places. It is estimated that in the United States 
 and overseas the gross attendance at motion picture shows 
 reached 210,000,000. 
 
 It gave performances by stock companies and perform- 
 ances by soldier shows throughout the area of the Amer- 
 ican Army. 
 
 It organized four great ''play factories" which were 
 centers for rehearsals and costume equipment. It im- 
 provised plays and vaudeville acts. 
 
 It provided overseas alone 23,000 costumes and ac- 
 cessories, 18,000 musical instruments, and 450,000 pieces 
 of sheet music. 
 
 It took over and ran in the leave areas and important 
 cities behind the fighting line the largest circuit of theatres, 
 casinos, and amusement halls ever administered under 
 one management. 
 
 The adventures of these modern troubadours, if each 
 
THE PERFORMERS ENTER 5 
 
 could be persuaded to relate his own experiences, would 
 give a deep insight into the most human side of the War. 
 There would be tales aboard ship, nights on submarined 
 seas, the first hours ashore at the base ports, the journeys 
 into the bleeding heart of France, the last march on the 
 road to battle. 
 
 From trench to stevedore camp, from the leave areas 
 to the great supply centers, in dugouts, ruined chateaux, 
 cathedrals, barns, village squares, and trucks backed 
 against barns, these couriers of cheerfulness and sanity 
 and corn-age, the troubadours of our time, sang the Amer- 
 ican Army on to victory, the splendid consmnmation of 
 its mission across the sea. 
 
 Throughout the whole range of the profession, from the 
 Shakespearian actor to the burlesque comedian, from the 
 classical singer to the juggler, the ventriloquist, and the 
 chalkologist, no one could set a limit to their enthusiasm 
 or their devotion. One little jazz soubrette, whose lightning 
 dance steps brought her to complete exhaustion after a 
 single performance in America, coming across a trainload 
 of forlorn, show-hungry soldiers, gave this amazing dance 
 eighteen times at different sections of the train, and then 
 exclaimed, "All right, go on with the War!" 
 
 But let us now observe how this crusade was put into 
 operation and become acquainted with the forces behind it. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MEN BEHIND THE SCENES 
 
 ^^Turn him to any cause of policy, 
 The Gordian knot of it he mill unloose, 
 Familiar as his garter.*' 
 
 King Henry V. 
 
 The cast of characters in this dramatic invasion is so 
 great that if given in the method of the profession it would 
 include, directly or indirectly, every celebrated name on 
 the American stage. It will be necessary, therefore, to 
 select the characters as they appear and watch them in 
 action, that we may judge the work of many from the 
 experiences of a few. 
 
 It will be well, however, to stop a moment behind the 
 scenes and meet some of those who planned, developed, 
 and kept this continuous campaign of entertainment in 
 operation throughout the War. Here in America we find 
 the forces of the Red Triangle, under the direction of the 
 National War Work Council, as the motive power behind 
 the whole achievement, with Mr. William Sloane, an able 
 and progressive administrator, as its chairman. We meet 
 Thomas S. McLane, as Chairman of the Overseas Enter- 
 tainment Bureau, in ^'command" of the recruiting and 
 movement of the entertainment army across the seas to 
 France; we meet James Forbes, the dramatist, with his 
 able lieutenant, John Briscoe, in command of the forces 
 of the Over There Theatre League. 
 
 Those in France, we find engaged in the constantly 
 expanding headquarters described in the preceding chap- 
 ter. Here is the ''Director General" of all the operations 
 of the A. E. F.-YMCA, Edward C. Carter, who entered 
 the War in India at its outbreak in 1914, followed the 
 
 6 
 
THE MEN BEHIND THE SCENES 7 
 
 British-Indian armies into the campaigns in Mesopotamia, 
 came to the seat of operations in London, and, upon Amer- 
 ica's entrance into the War, went to Paris, extending full 
 cooperation in any and every capacity in which the organ- 
 ization which he represented might be able to serve. 
 
 We have looked into the crowded headquarters of the 
 Entertainment Department, from which we found the 
 operations of the Troupers being directed. Here, in com- 
 mand during the big campaigns were a progressive business 
 man from the Midd e West, Charles Steele; Walter H. 
 Johnson, Jr.; and one of the most lovable personalities in 
 the whole army, A. M. Beatty, a man who probably knows 
 more actors intimately than any man who went to France. 
 With all these men and many more we shall be face to face 
 in the coming chapters. 
 
 The First Division arrived in France in June, 1917, 
 and settled in its training areas around Gondrecourt by 
 the middle of July. By the end of October the other di- 
 visions of America's first contingent began to arrive. Within 
 a few days of each other, early in November, the Second, 
 Twenty-Sixth, and Forty-Second Divisions landed in France, 
 and went into training quarters. The Forty-First Division 
 arrived at the end of the year, and by January, 1918, 
 there were something over 190,000 American soldiers in 
 France, of whom about two thirds were combat troops. 
 The Second Division, including the Marines, went into 
 quarters around Bourmont; the Twenty-Sixth, the Yankee 
 Division, composed of the National Guard units from the 
 New England States, spread out around Neuf chateau; 
 while the Forty-Second, the Rainbow Division, made up 
 of National Guardsmen from all over the country, moved 
 into the Rolampont Area between Chaumont and Langres. 
 
 These were pioneers of the commonwealth of fighting 
 Americans from whom the world expected so much. They 
 settled in an area something less than fifty miles in diameter 
 around the newly founded General Headquarters at Chau- 
 
8 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 mont, occupying in all over one hundred and fifty villages 
 and towns, strung out for the most part along the lines 
 of communication, but concentrated here and there in 
 centers outnumbering the neighboring French villages five 
 and even ten to one. 
 
 Hard work and indomitable cheerfulness carried the 
 Americans a long way through the almost unrelieved mo- 
 notony of their routine in this environment. The courtesy 
 and hospitahty of the French inhabitants aided enor- 
 mously in staving off homesickness and keeping up the 
 spirits of the troops. But the American soldier is the 
 most social human being in the whole world — and he soon 
 began to realize, amid the dreary rain and mud of the fall 
 and winter, how completely he was cut off from home. 
 The mails had failed. The leave system was still undevel- 
 oped. Leisure time after work became a thing rather to 
 dread than to enjoy. 
 
 Our action begins here. The American soldier felt free 
 to express his real feelings — he wanted to hear American 
 voices, American jokes, American laughter, and American 
 songs, to see American girls, American movies, American 
 shows. In September and October, Chief Secretary Carter 
 had cabled to New York urging that an organization be 
 set up immediately to fill the demands of the soldiers for 
 entertainment. Every army in the War had been forced 
 to meet this same situation. 
 
 Already ''back home" in America the profession was 
 beginning to take up the call. Hundreds of volunteers 
 were performing among the American camps and the 
 ranks soon swelled into thousands. Before the first de- 
 mands from overseas were heard, in September, 1917, 
 Dr. Paul Pierson had brought a long experience in man- 
 aging Chautauquas to the task of covering the home camps 
 with entertainment troupes and had established, under 
 Mr. William Sloane, a central booking office in New York. 
 
 The problem now arose of finding the right man for 
 
THE MEN BEHIND THE SCENES 9 
 
 the important task of sending an army of entertainers 
 overseas on a scale sufficient to cope with the vast need 
 of the rapidly expanding Army in France. 
 
 One day early in October, 1917, there came into Mr. 
 Sloane's office a man on his way to Washington to volunteer 
 for war work. On Mr. Sloane's desk lay a cablegram from 
 Paris, reiterating the extreme need of entertainment for 
 the men in France, which he handed to the caller, and 
 thus Thomas McLane became director of what was soon 
 to be the greatest entertainment enterprise in the world's 
 history. The following twenty months wrote a new tra- 
 dition into the history of America's entertainment. 
 
 Mr. McLane first organized a successful campaign for 
 "that spare ukelele on the top shelf." He searched the 
 country, in other words, for new and secondhand instru- 
 ments, sheet music, plays, and sketches. This was but 
 one of his jobs. He then organized a '^drive'' to reach 
 every professional and amateur in America, to impress 
 them with the need on the other side of every eligible 
 entertainer. And the volunteers responded by the thou- 
 sands — by letters, by telegrams, and in person — all the 
 way from eminent actors down to stage-struck girls and 
 the elevator boy who wanted to play Hamlet. 
 
 From four to six every afternoon he "received" hopeful 
 talent. For months a quiet New York home resounded 
 to the clatter of jazz-dancing feet, the wheeze of sax- 
 ophones, the chirping of lady singers, the gusto of male 
 quartets, the patter of monologuists in all dialects and 
 known forms of speech — all to save the soldier from a 
 career of crime. There were times when life for Mr. McLane 
 was one long round of tragediennes telling him wrathfuUy 
 that "The Hun Is at the Gate," large ladies in white singing 
 "Good-By Sunmier" (in January); and breezy soubrettes 
 always leaving for the "Darktown Strutters' Ball." 
 
10 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Mr. McLane looked for three main qualifications: First, 
 the ability to entertain; second, a watertight hst of recom- 
 mendations; and third, personality as tested by his own 
 instinct. Using these standards, he traveled out to Chicago 
 and Pittsburgh. Later, Francis Rogers, when he came 
 back in the spring of 1918 from a six-months' tour of enter- 
 tainment ^^over there,'' consented to trying out candidates 
 in his own home. 
 
 All this, however, was only the beginning of the McLane 
 campaigns. His was the foresight which endorsed and 
 forwarded the plan to send dramatic coaches to France, 
 as well as actors and entertainers. Thomas Wood Stevens, 
 a professor of dramatic technique at the Carnegie Institute 
 of Technology, and Joseph Linden Smith, a well-known 
 pageant director, were the principal protagonists of this 
 idea. After months of firsthand experience in France, 
 Stevens, in cooperation with Dean Bossange of the Carnegie 
 Institute of Technology, organized at Pittsburgh a short 
 course in the technique of play directing which required 
 but three weeks, and graduated a group of trained people, 
 who, when they went over to France, stepped into action 
 at once as trained personnel ready at hand to put on soldier 
 shows. This was how the soldier show got its real chance 
 for professional finish and expert leadership. A second 
 course was all ready to open at the Carnegie Institute to 
 prepare another group of directors when the Armistice 
 cut across its plans. 
 
 As this story unfolds, the service of this man back in 
 America bulks larger. For many weeks he was the link 
 between the Army in France and the entertainment world. 
 The results are known. The accomplishment is the more 
 impressive when it is understood that Mr. McLane was 
 neither a member of the profession, nor a welfare worker, 
 but an American business man volunteer, who was search- 
 ing for some form of service to the soldiers when he was 
 swept into the task by Mr. Sloane. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ADVANCE GUARD IN FRANCE 
 
 *^/ would applaud thee to the very echo 
 That should applaud again.'' 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 The experiences of the first American troubadours in 
 France begin with the arrival of the American troop — 
 some four months before the crusade "back home" was 
 organized. In truth, they even preceded the arrival of 
 Pershing in France. 
 
 The man to whom the honor should probably go of being 
 the first American entertainer to go "overseas" after Amer- 
 ica's declaration of war is Jack Barker. This pioneer 
 arrived in Bordeaux on May 16, 1917, six weeks before 
 the arrival of General Pershing and the first American 
 contingent. Barker was a young college man just grad- 
 uated from Northwestern University. He was sent to 
 England, where he sang his way into the hearts of the 
 Britishers and got up shows, not only for the Americans 
 coming through on their way to France, but also for many 
 British camps. His gift of holding an audience and of 
 conducting a sing-song made him invaluable. After more 
 than two months in England he went over to France to 
 cover the American camp circuit at a time when enter- 
 tainers were "worth a regiment." With his "one man 
 shows" and his popular sing-songs he covered the camps 
 at Brest, Issoudun, Gondrecourt, Neufchateau, and else- 
 where through the American sector. He was taken ill 
 and lay for a time in Neuilly Hospital, returning home 
 to enlist early in 1918. 
 
 The first American to go directly to the American Army 
 in France, was Gerry Reynolds. He sailed from New 
 
 11 
 
12 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 York on July 29, 1917. (Barker was then in England.) 
 Reynolds had been music director at a New York high 
 school, a church organist, and an entertainment coach. 
 He went to France as the first musical and dramatic di- 
 rector. He was at once assigned to the First Division at 
 Gondrecoiu-t. He tried continually to get into the Army 
 as a volunteer and was rejected, but his spirit was irre- 
 pressible — he could sing, tell stories, and give rollicking 
 imitations. 
 
 Gerry Reynolds spent twenty-six months in France 
 when he had planned to spend two; he went up with the 
 First Division in August, 1917, the first full-time enter- 
 tainer in the field; he opened up the amusement enter- 
 prises in Paris in October and put on its feet the splendid 
 organization for entertaining men on leave there, which 
 later grew to such huge and capably managed proportions; 
 he went to Aix-les-Bains as Entertainment Director in 
 February, 1918, and wrote, rehearsed, and staged shows 
 in a single day, led the local orchestra, took a chance as 
 impromptu impresario of a real grand opera company, 
 and handled the collective temperaments of the Comedie 
 Frangaise Company, the finest players in France, as well 
 as innumerable stellar French vaudeville attractions. He 
 ran the Aix Casino, the social center of one of the most 
 notable watering places in Europe, with dances, parties, 
 and shows put on nightly to the delight of the soldiers 
 on leave; he helped to organize entertainment circuits in 
 the Riviera; he spent two months at Brest, of muddy misery; 
 he reopened the Festhalle in Coblenz with a show that fin- 
 ished its last rehearsal five minutes before the curtain 
 went up; he put on the show '^Let's Go" and clothed his 
 soldier chorus with amazing gowns which he had secured 
 from the leading costumers of Paris. 
 
 The first male entertainer to appear among the fighting 
 troops was a "song and piano" artist — C. E. Clifford 
 Walker. He came over at the end of September, 1917, 
 
E. C. Carter 
 
 Lt.-Col. R. M. Lyon 
 
 Major J. O. Donovan Warren Dunham Fostei^ 
 
General Y M C A Headquarters, Paris 
 
THE ADVANCE GUARD IN FRANCE 13 
 
 and stayed about three months. Walker was with the 
 First Division when they went into the line. He had 
 a piano on which he "vamped' ' as he told his various stories 
 and gave his divers imitations, but as they neared the 
 firing line he was forced to leave his piano behind, and at 
 the front he simply let his legs hang over a stage and told 
 stories to the boys. 
 
 Along the lines at this time was a magician, Maletsky. 
 He was one of those marvelous one-man-shows, the rest 
 of his company being made up of rabbits. He had to 
 return to Paris every now and then to stock up on rabbits, 
 as those he had with him grew amazingly and soon got too 
 large to fit into silk hats. Maletsky could not speak a 
 word of EngUsh and as he would say, ''Eh, Monsieur, 
 voila!" or "Alors, un, deux, trois, vous voyez?'' the men 
 took great delight in mimicking him and in counting in 
 unison. Fortunately, besides being a prince of prestidig- 
 itators he had a great sense of humor, so, after all, he spoke 
 the American language in his own way. 
 
 The first woman entertainer to appear with the A. E. F. 
 was a grand opera contralto — Mme. Cobbina Johnson, 
 wife of Owen Johnson, the novelist. This charming artist 
 came up from Monte Carlo, where she had been singing 
 with great distinction in the opera after successful tours 
 through France and Italy. She volunteered to go with 
 the First Division toward the end of September, 1917. 
 
 They wanted somebody to go out to the Mallet Reserve 
 at Soissons for Christmas. It was in the French Zone 
 and at that time there was great difficulty in getting the 
 passes. They had planned to have her go with Nicholas 
 Sokoloff, a fine violinist and conductor, and spend Christ- 
 mas with the boys. Mme. Johnson was told that these 
 boys did not have anybody to help them out on Christmas. 
 
 "I will go if you will get me my passes," she exclaimed. 
 
! 
 
 14 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 "We can't." 
 
 "All right, I'll get them for myself." 
 
 She went to the French Embassy, got the passes, and 
 spent Christmas with the Mallet Reserve. She lost her 
 voice and could not speak for two months; then she went 
 down to Aix in the summer of 1918. Mme. Johnson made 
 a great hit because of her versatility and willingness. She 
 would sing at any time, under any conditions, whether 
 with a band, a piano, or alongside a canteen counter. 
 
 No account of this period will be complete without 
 recording the superlative good luck of the American Army 
 in having at their disposal the services of Mrs. August 
 Belmont who, as Eleanor Robson, will always be remem- 
 bered as one of the most gifted and beloved actresses of 
 the American stage. Mrs. Belmont went over in special 
 work with the American Red Cross in the fall of 1917, 
 and found time to make several trips around the American 
 camps. Before she returned home in March, 1918, she 
 gave selections from all her great successes. Mrs. Belmont 
 took an active interest in the work from the start, and 
 it was she who suggested to Mr. Carter the happy choice 
 of Mr. Winthrop Ames as the man best qualified to become 
 the chief recruiting officer for the American stage. No 
 measure can be placed on the value of this single suggestion. 
 
 Another of the pioneers with the First Division at this 
 time was Miss Anna Hughes, a Philadelphia girl. She went 
 over to France with the "American Fund for French 
 Wounded" and filled a very important niche as a delight- 
 ful personality, who not only gave songs for the boj^s, 
 without number and without price, but who could raise 
 more volume of song from the men in a given space of 
 time than anyone else in reach. She literally was the 
 first to set the Army to singing its way to victory. 
 
 It was in these modest beginnings in France that the 
 
THE ADVANCE GUARD IN FRANCE 16 
 
 stage was being set for this greatest entertainment enter- 
 prise in history, the little beginning of a big achievement 
 — and right here let us record the fact that it began as a 
 lecture bureau. 
 
 Arthur H. Gleason, an American who had served as a 
 private in the French Army, and written the volume ^^ Golden 
 Lads" as an account of his war experience, was now in 
 England. At Mr. Carter's invitation, he came to France 
 and joined Emmet O'Neil in the PubUcity Department. 
 It was Mr. Gleason 's idea that much could be gained by 
 an interchange of speakers, familiar with both nationalities, 
 between the American and French Armies, and on his 
 own initiative he went ahead on this idea. Its original 
 purpose was to send lecturers into both Armies — and these 
 lecturers did take an important part as the vast enterprise 
 developed. 
 
 Dr. John G. Coulter, of Chicago, was appointed on Septem- 
 ber 15, 1917, as sole head of the Bureau of Lectures and 
 Entertainments. Dr. Coulter had just finished six months' 
 service with the French Army as a captain in the American 
 Ambulance Corps. With two young ambulance drivers 
 as his assistants, he found himself installed in the little 
 office on the Avenue Montaigne, with facilities for enter- 
 taining the American Army — consisting of ten men and 
 women who had been serving in the field as lecturers and 
 half a dozen entertainers who had been sent over by the 
 New York office. This was the nucleus of a great idea. 
 Dr. Coulter expanded it with all the means at his dis- 
 posal. He engaged French concert and music hall artists, 
 whenever his funds would stand it, and sent repeated calls 
 for help to America. 
 
 Before the First Division arrived in France, the organ- 
 ization was asked by the French Government for a group 
 of men to state the causes of the War clearly to some of 
 the flagging units of the French Army, in the Foyers du 
 Soldat established at the divisional bases. These lecturers 
 
16 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 first brought to the French Army the promise of the im- 
 mense American assistance that was to come. Later they 
 reported to the French the first arrival of the American 
 troops. When the First Division sent a regiment to march 
 through Paris on July 4, 1917, these secretaries with the 
 French Army in the field shared in the wonderful demonstra- 
 tion of gratefulness and relief with which the French greeted 
 this symbolic act of their great ally. There was no such 
 pressing need at that time for stimulating the American 
 Army, but some of the same group of lecturers performed 
 a splendid service in putting before American soldiers in 
 the field, at the very beginning of their operations, the 
 basic issues of the War. 
 
 At this time, also, the first prominent American enter- 
 tainers began to arrive in France. The story of these 
 pioneers will be told as this powerful human drama de- 
 velops — it is one of the many intensely interesting scenes 
 to come. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PIONEER COMPANY 
 
 ''So we'll live 
 And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh.'' 
 
 King Lear. 
 
 It was the twenty-fifth day of October, 1917, that the 
 first ''company" to leave America sailed for France. This 
 pioneer ''company'' consisted of Francis Rogers, a prom- 
 inent baritone of New York; Mrs. Francis Rogers (Cornelia 
 Barnes), a well known and talented elocutionist; and Roger 
 Lyons, an accompanist, and it set sail on an historic voyage 
 — a tour that was to make history — for the Rogers were 
 not only to be the first company to travel through the 
 battle areas tackling the hardships of transport and staging 
 under the most primitive conditions, but they were to 
 bring home with them the first message of the great hunger 
 with which the American doughboys were waiting for 
 "real American shows." 
 
 The Rogers were recruited by Mr. Sloane, in response 
 to the urgent call from France for entertainers, and set 
 sail shortly after Mr. McLane took control. It was a stroke 
 of wisdom and excellent judgment diu'ing a critical time. 
 The Rogers were truly patriotic, and immediately upon 
 America's entrance into the War had volunteered their 
 services. They had been appearing in the army camps 
 in this country before the boys "went over" and were 
 anxious to get into the conflict. Rogers set aside his pro- 
 fessional work to give his entire services, in company 
 with his wife, to the American Army. 
 
 And so they sailed on one of the early troop ships — 
 their adventures would alone fill a volume. They began 
 
 17 . 
 
1^ ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMr 
 
 to entertain on the ship until it passed into the submarine 
 zones, Mr. Rogers singing many of his own songs, and 
 Mrs. Rogers in lier monologues impersonating (juamt 
 characters with a joyous humor that soon made the boys 
 forget their dangers. 
 
 The first letter ^^home" from Mr. Rogers described the 
 experiences of these American pioneers: 
 
 '^In the first eight days ashore we gave ten concerts, 
 eight in the American camps and two on the side in the 
 French hospitals. The responsiveness of our boys is really 
 pathetic. They all say that they measure the passage 
 of time by the arrival of letters from home. 
 
 ^They all want to hear the latest songs and anything 
 fresh from home. Their taste in music is frankly Broadway. 
 The boys want songs with chorus and ragtime. Their 
 favorites are: ^When the Red Dawn Is Shining,' 'Sunshine 
 of Your Smile,' 'I May Be Gone for a Long, Long Time,' 
 *0h, Johnnie, Oh,' 'Good-by Broadway, Hello France,' 
 'Tipperary,' 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,' 'I Want 
 to Be in Dixie,' 'Keep the Home Fires Burning,' 'Indiana,' 
 'Joan of Arc,' 'Where Do We Go from Here?' 'Huckle- 
 berry Finn,' 'Over There,' 'A Long, Long Trail,' 'Pack Upi 
 Your Troubles,' 'Poor Butterfly.' 
 
 "All mother songs the boys are crazy about — no matter 
 how sentimental they are. They love such solos as: 'I 
 Hear You Calling Me,' 'Mother o'Mine,' 'Mother Machree,' 
 'Irish Love Song,' 'Little Grey Home in the West,' 'Per- 
 fect Day,' 'Absent,' 'That Little Mother o' Mine,' 'An 
 Irishman's Dream.' 
 
 "Nellie has found a great liking for the poems of R. W. 
 Service among the boys — especially 'Rimes of a Red Cross 
 Man.' She has had great success, too, with her poem, 
 'Now That My Boy Has Gone to France.' " 
 
 After persistent demands and many difficulties, the 
 Rogers were granted permits to tour first in the Bordeaux 
 Area, but went as soon as they could make the connec- 
 tion — that is, late in November — up to the First Army 
 Area around Gondrecourt, where 30,000 Americans were 
 getting ready for action. They were one of the first enter- 
 
THE PIONEER COMPANY 19 
 
 tainment groups ever to play in the big artillery camp at 
 Valdahon. There were Americans serving on the front 
 line even then. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers put on their '^show" 
 under real war conditions in cities and camps under bomb- 
 ing fire within German artillery range. They went to 
 Rheims, covering a long line of British front up toward 
 Bapaume in that breathless period just following the 
 Cambrai offensive, when the British revealed for the first 
 time in the War the redoubtable tank. 
 
 In those days Americans were still doing all they could 
 to help entertain the French in the Foyers du Soldat, 
 especially along the Champagne front, where a perilous 
 morale still persisted from the unhappy days of that summer. 
 The Rogers pitched in nobly. Mr. Rogers translated his 
 songs and Mrs. Rogers her stories and monologues into 
 French, and you might have beheld the unique sight of 
 huts filled with French soldiers actually laughing at Amer- 
 ican jokes translated into French, but with their American 
 origin showing through every chink of the translation. 
 
 The tense and most dramatic moments came, however, 
 after the performance. The Rogers were real folks. Mrs. 
 Rogers, a charming, home-loving woman, loved every 
 mother's son of them. So after each performance they 
 went out and shook hands all around and wanted to know 
 if there was anything, anything at all, they could do for 
 the boys — and they never failed to find a heartfelt response. 
 What they did will never be known. Only the boys can 
 tell. They probably relieved more lonesomeness to the 
 square inch than any other people on the circuit during 
 that winter. ^'When they gave you cigarettes or a bar of 
 chocolate in the days when stocks of these articles were 
 just beginning to get through the transportation jam, it 
 was like getting a personal gift from folks in your own 
 home town," say the soldiers, who do not forget. Some- 
 times they ate with the men; sometimes they took boys 
 back to their own hotel to give thetn a taste of real home 
 
20 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 preserves and an hour of real U. S. A. talk. No one knows 
 how much this meant to men who were just shaking down 
 to war, thi'ee thousand miles from home. 
 Again Mr. Rogers sent word back to America: 
 
 '^The response of the boys is wonderful. We are 'carry- 
 ing on' under the greatest difficulties — there has been only 
 one clear, dry day since we landed in France. In the re- 
 gion where we have been the ground is always covered 
 with mud. When it rains, the mud is inches deep; when 
 the heavens cease to weep, the mud is just the same. 
 
 ''My wife and I did our best to keep going, but she 
 gave out on one night and I on the next. We are now in 
 Paris recovering our voices. We hope to resume work 
 next week. It is a wonderful work and we love it. Our 
 boys need and deserve everything anybody can do to 
 cheer, encourage, and support them." 
 
 And on they went, these pioneer American messengers, 
 carrying happiness to the ports and the S. O. S., arriving at 
 Brest just in time for the big Christmas celebration organ- 
 ized by Gerald Reynolds and Karl Gate. For this celebra- 
 tion "friends'' back in America had sent a load of gifts 
 for the boys. Mr. Rogers wrote: 
 
 "The 'Y' is doing a beautiful work. My greatest admira- 
 tion goes to Mr. Garter, Miss Ely, and Miss McGook, 
 who never seem to lose their tempers under the most un- 
 toward circumstances, and to the brave women canteen 
 workers and secretaries who exist in cold, damp, fireless 
 rooms and are subject to any kind of hardships and who 
 do their work with good cheer and courage. It is splendid." 
 
 By this time the Rogers had lost their identity as a 
 single party and were giving joint shows with most of the 
 other early pioneers on the circuit. They toured the British 
 front, for instance, with the Dushkin party which had 
 been organized in France. It was one of those wonderful 
 violin, singing, instrumental combinations, which did mag- 
 
THE PIONEER COMPANY 21 
 
 nificent work in every sort of environment. The personnel 
 of the Dushkin party consisted of Samuel Dushkin, the 
 famous American violinist, Mile. Mona Gondre of the 
 Theatre Odeon in Paris, Jean Verd, accompanist, and Pablo 
 Casals, one of the world's great cellists. The Dushkin party 
 not only toured all over the front and stayed with the Ameri- 
 can troops through their hardest campaign periods, but stuck 
 to the game until way along in May, 1919, one of the long- 
 est periods of service, if not actually the longest, achieved 
 by any concert troupe in France. 
 
 The last message from Mr. Rogers at the front reads: 
 
 "We have now given more than 100 concerts and are 
 planning to go home in about a fortnight. We ought to 
 be in New York by April 15th. After that date we shall 
 be entirely at the service of the YMCA for concerts, advice, 
 or any old thing. We have had a wonderful experience 
 and are sorry it is nearly over. But we are going to work 
 harder than ever in our American camps at home." 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Rogers finished their service in France 
 by providing the pihce de resistance of the concerts which 
 greeted the first regular leave of the First Division at 
 Aix-les-Bains in the spring of 1918. On their return home 
 they sang in camps near New York City and assisted in 
 war work and Liberty Loan drives. As the first concert 
 people to respond to the call, theirs is a splendid and en- 
 viable record. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE TROUPERS IN ACTION 
 
 ^^ Screw your courage to the sticking-place 
 And we'll not fail.'' 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 The problems which were developing in the American 
 Army at home and abroad in the fall of 1917 called for 
 urgent action. General Pershing, with the whole American 
 nation behind him, was accomplishing the ''impossible" 
 — the creation of a huge fighting machine behind the lines 
 in France. Mr. Carter in Paris foresaw the burdens and 
 responsibilities that were to be placed upon his organiza- 
 tion with the continual arrival of troops. His cables warned 
 **the folks back home" of the increasing needs. The pioneers 
 on the field were proving the incalculable value of sus- 
 taining the spirits of the soldiers at the fighting pitch 
 with which they had embarked on their great adventure. 
 In America, the same farsightedness was actuating Mr. 
 Sloane and Mr. McLane — the latter now in full control 
 of the task of recruiting and sending over the volunteers. 
 
 The problems were without precedent — never in the 
 history of warfare had such an undertaking been attempted. 
 Whether a hundred or a thousand recruits would be needed, 
 or for what period they should enlist, was entirely un- 
 known. There was no way to judge what type of enter- 
 tainers would be most acceptable to the soldiers. The 
 factors of the human equation on which everything was 
 to depend were still unknown. Then there were the problems 
 of present contracts, of passports and war regulations, 
 of recruiting exclusively above the draft age, of trans- 
 portation — innumerable difficulties that must be met and 
 overcome when the recruits went into service. 
 
 22 
 
THE TROUPERS IN ACTION. 23 
 
 Mr. McLane's first move was to get in touch with the 
 responsible agencies where entertainers, such as Mr. and 
 Mrs. Francis Rogers, could be secured. This initiative 
 resulted in the survey of the entire field of concert singers, 
 church organists who could play a wide range of popular 
 music, Chautauqua readers, and gifted amateurs and 
 volunteers of all kinds. His second move was to secure 
 thousands of musical instruments — guitars, banjos, mando- 
 lins — whatever might be sent to the doughboys to help 
 them create their own ' 'spirit." His third move was to 
 secure hundreds of thousands of copies of popular songs 
 to start the Army singing its way to victory. 
 
 The public quickly responded to Mr. McLane's cam- 
 paigns. Thousands of letters began to flood his office. 
 The cooperation of the big music publishers proved a very 
 valuable asset. Mr .Walter Damrosch, from the plat- 
 form of Carnegie Hall, made an eloquent appeal for the 
 movement. Mrs. John Philip Sousa appealed for band 
 instruments, and the result was literally carloads of gifts. 
 When Mr. McLane sent out his nation-wide call for every- 
 body to take down ''that old ukelele" from the top shelf 
 and send it to the boys "over there," the public threatened 
 to bury him under mounds of instruments. 
 
 The first regularly organized unit to be sent to France was 
 forced to sail on three ships. First went the famous Liberty 
 Quartet with an accompanist and its organizer, who 
 later became director of the whole entertainment bureau 
 in Paris — Walter H. Johnson, Jr. This pioneer unit sailed 
 on the Rochambeau on November 30, 1917. It included 
 Mr. Johnson, two church choir singers — Miss Beulah 
 Dodge, contralto, and Miss Kate Horisberg, soprano — 
 and Albert Wiederhold, who had been bass soloist for some 
 time at Dr. Parkhurst's church in New York. On the 
 second ship, the Niagara, on December 16th, went William 
 
24 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Janauschek, an organist from Englewood, N. J., who later 
 became Elsie Janis's accompanist extraordinary in her 
 record-breaking tour of the armies. On the third ship, 
 La Touraine, saihng December 28th, was John Steel, one of 
 the bright Ughts of Broadway, who also had been a church 
 choir singer. 
 
 The Liberty Quartet was a splendid organization. Col- 
 lectively, it was an aggregation of stars endowed with a 
 fine esprit de corps; individually, the members of the unit 
 all made magnificent records and displayed unconquerable 
 spirit and unswerving loyalty to the cause they went abroad 
 to serve. From the beginning they encountered many 
 difficulties which were inseparable from the conditions of 
 the time, but they stuck through everything with a perse- 
 verance and pluck which set a high standard for those to 
 follow. 
 
 The initial difficulty — a typical instance of the unfore- 
 seen circumstances which created continual obstacles — 
 was met on the pier on the very day of sailing. ''We got 
 down to the dock of the French Line," says Mr. Johnson, 
 "and everybody thought they would all meet there. 
 When we got there we found Bill Janauschek, the accom- 
 panist, and we said, 'Hello, Bill,' but he said, 'I can't go.' 
 Word had come from Washington at the last moment 
 canceling his passport until further investigation." Thus 
 the strong hand of the Government's necessary precaution 
 was interposed, as many times afterward, to make as- 
 surance doubly sure of the hundred per cent American 
 quality of the men and women who were going over to 
 join the fighting forces. Mr. Janauschek's detention was 
 a purely technical matter and this loyal American sailed 
 on December 16th on the next French liner, the Niagara , 
 to join his comrades in France. 
 
 Meanwhile, the quartet, minus accompanist and tenor 
 (for Mr. Steel was not able to sail until December 28th), 
 sang all the way over on board the Rochambeau, and 
 
THE TROUPERS IN ACTION 25 
 
 on their arrival in Paris December 10th spent no time 
 waiting for the missing members of their Httle group, but 
 went out to sing in the camps around Paris, with Mile. 
 Colet, a Franco-American girl, as their accompanist. Their 
 programs ranged over a wide field, all the way from opera 
 numbers and religious selections to the beautiful old Negro 
 melodies. They also had a goodly sheaf of humorous and 
 comedy songs, for in this dreary winter every laugh was 
 as good as a letter from home. And at the end of every 
 show they saw to it that the boys had a good sing-song of 
 their own. ^'It was then,'' Mr. Wiederhold modestly says, 
 "we had some real music." Anyhow, each evening a 
 thousand or more happy soldiers went away from the 
 show feeling that life was worth living and that a million 
 loving thoughts from America were still on their trail in 
 muddy, dreary France. Then they started for Chaumont 
 and the training areas round Neufchateau and Gondre- 
 coiu-t. On Christmas Day, they commenced a long tour 
 through the hospitals along the whole American line of 
 communication. The prodigality with which they gave 
 themselves to the work is shown by the fact that on Christ- 
 mas Day they gave fourteen different programs. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Johnson was having his first taste of 
 service in the Twenty-Sixth Division. Mr. Carter sent 
 him immediately on his arrival to the little town of Pom- 
 pierre, to learn at first hand, as a hut secretary, the life 
 of the soldier under war conditions. He stayed there till 
 February 1, 1918. No better training for the man who 
 was eventually to supply such splendid and practical 
 initiative at entertainment headquarters could be imagined. 
 
 Entertainment facilities during this period were prim- 
 itive, indeed. Mr. Johnson tells this story of the Christ- 
 mas show at Pompierre: 
 
 "I will tell you an experience at my own hut at Christ- 
 
26 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 mas. I had been there a few days. We had any quantity 
 of cigarettes, big tin boxes of five hundred each. So we 
 took the tin boxes and bent them out to make reflectors 
 for foothghts, and used candles. All the lights we had in 
 that hut of ours were three lamps; the chimneys of two 
 were broken and we had no oil, but we used candles, with 
 these tin boxes as footlights, and we built a stage out of 
 wooden crates that cigarettes came in and things like that. 
 I will never forget the show we got up. The average French 
 peasant in such a little town had about two suits of clothes, 
 the one he had on and worked in and his Sunday clothes. 
 The Sunday clothes might be fifteen years old, but they 
 were his Sunday clothes and they were neat, not particularly 
 stylish, but serviceable and clean. We put on a show at 
 Christmas, entitled 'School Days'; the idea was a school 
 in which there could be any quantity of horse play that 
 appealed to the masses and was automatic. It really took 
 little rehearsing and it was automatic. But we had to 
 have a certain amount of costumes and in feeble French 
 I went around the village and tried to get clothes from the 
 French. We got a few women's dresses and a few pairs 
 of civilian trousers and out of courtesy to the French people 
 who had loaned their other suits of clothes we asked them 
 in to see the show. We borrowed desks from the school- 
 houses. I think they were the desks that Napoleon Bona- 
 parte studied over; the old school-teacher must have been 
 seventy-five easily. 
 
 *^I don't think we had ever had a dress rehearsal. The 
 first time they had those clothes on was the real thing, 
 and every conceivable prank that you can imagine might 
 be pulled off in a schoolroom — only rather intensified — 
 was pulled off at that show. Not throwing cream puffs 
 but paste or anything hke that, and the kicking of seats 
 out from under one another, all of which I am telling be- 
 cause of the effect it had on those Sunday clothes of the 
 French populace who were in the back of the house and 
 were just raving mad at seeing their clothes, their only 
 other suits, going to rack and ruin. The crowd of dough- 
 boys thought it was a wonderful joke and the sorer the 
 French got the better the show was. It took a considerable 
 number of francs to make up to the French. They never 
 really did get over it." 
 
THE TROUPERS IN ACTION 27 
 
 Every day of Mr. Johnson's six weeks at Pompierre 
 was not so eventful as this, but the job was training of the 
 kind that gains real value when the need comes. Mr. 
 Johnson remembers with particular affection, as does 
 everybody who worked overseas, the quality of his soldier 
 assistants. 
 
 On the first of February, 1918, there came a brief tele- 
 gram from Mr. Carter: "Report to Paris to C. M. Steele." 
 Although Mr. Steele, before he went to Paris to become 
 Director of the Entertainment Department, had had an 
 experience as hut secretary similar to Johnson's in a little 
 town not twenty miles from Pompierre during this very 
 time, this was the first Johnson had ever heard of the man 
 with whom he was to accomphsh such far-reaching results 
 in the entertainment initiative overseas. Johnson had 
 been selected as Assistant Director, so he was informed 
 when he arrived in Paris. But Steele was "out on the 
 road" accompanying Messrs. Ames and Sothern on their 
 tour through the camps, so Johnson's first job was not 
 to report to his chief, but "to chase and catch him." He 
 caught him at Tours. Mr. Steele was extremely glad to 
 see his young assistant, for the trip he was then taking with 
 the Ames-Sothern party around the American area re- 
 vealed to all how much there was to be done before even 
 a fair beginning could be made in entertaining the fast- 
 growing American Army. They returned to Paris about 
 the 15th of February and then began that long connection 
 which lasted, with the exception of a six weeks' trip to 
 America which Mr. Steele took between late July and early 
 September, until the end of December, 1918. Then Mr. 
 Johnson carried on the campaign in sole control until 
 May 8, 1919. 
 
 Charles M. Steele had arrived in France in December, 
 1917, and gone out with the First Division to become 
 
28 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 hut secretary at the httle town of Baudigncourt. He won 
 a considerable reputation in the early days as the man 
 who had put on more good shows than anybody else in 
 the First Division, a record that culminated in the Christ- 
 mas celebration at Baudigncourt, which Mr. Steele pre- 
 sented to six enthusiastic audiences of doughboys. He 
 describes it in this modest fashion: 
 
 "From the time that I first went out to take over the 
 hut at Baudigncourt, I saw that one of the big things 
 was to have entertainments, and so, having had a little 
 experience in getting up shows in Detroit at the Board of 
 Conamerce, I started to do it. It wasn't hard because one 
 of the first things the gang said to me was, ^Why don't 
 we have a show?' So we had some very crude entertain- 
 ments, sort of rough and tumble, wild-west kind, and that 
 developed a certain amount of dramatic talent or what 
 we were pleased to call our Dramatic Club in the battalion. 
 
 "When Christmas came we put on a show which we 
 called The Soldier's Dream' and because the hut was not 
 big enough to hold the whole battalion we gave the show 
 by companies. We gave the show four times Christmas 
 Eve with the distribution of presents, and then Christmas 
 afternoon we gave a part of the show for the children of 
 the village and Christmas morning we had an athletic 
 meeting — so that made a program of six entertainments 
 within twenty-four hours." 
 
 Meanwhile, in all this period of beginnings, especially 
 from January 1, 1918, to the crisis of the great German 
 drive which began on March 21st, the Liberty Quartet 
 continued to be the most active of the entertainment units 
 in the field. Mr. John Steel and Mr. Janauschek joined 
 the quartet soon after Christmas and for two months they 
 went on a grand tour which covered the areas of the five 
 American divisions and swung down on the S. O. S. and 
 leave area circuits as far as Aix-les-Bains on the east and 
 Brest and the other deep-sea ports on the west. At Brest, 
 
Col. John 
 R. Kelly 
 
 Lt-Col. R. B. Gampli; 
 
Jazz and Jazzerinos 
 
THE TROUPERS IN ACTION 29 
 
 the quartet was the first entertainment group to board 
 the American transports then coming in great numbers 
 to the shores of France. They sang on the old Prometheus^ 
 the big repair ship which became famous as the "mother 
 ship" of the American Navy; they gave a show on the Seattle y 
 the American cruiser which brought Secretary Daniels to 
 France. At Issoudun, they gave one of the first shows to 
 the American Air Force in a hangar which the boys had 
 converted into a stage. "They had put lovely white crash 
 on the floor," says Miss Dodge, "and on either side of 
 the stage were machines owned by the boys themselves, 
 which they called their private boxes. The mud out there 
 was simply dreadful, and we with our muddy feet felt 
 just criminal going on their lovely white flooring." 
 
 Miss Dodge tells another anecdote : "One day at Issoudun, 
 we went into a hut after mess with the officers to get warm, 
 and saw three young lieutenants shaving at the far end. 
 We started to back out at once, but one of the young men, 
 who afterward proved to be Quentin Roosevelt, waved his 
 razor and called out, 'Oh, come right in! This is just a 
 little of the home touch, you know.' " 
 
 After the Brest performances the quartet split up and 
 went out separately, for by that time entertainers had 
 come to be so much in demand that everybody as far as 
 possible had to be a little quartet all by himself. Mr. 
 Wiederhold paired up with the inimitable Mary Rochester, 
 who not only played the piano beautifully, but was one of 
 the earUest of the singers who discovered in themselves a fine 
 ability to get the boys to sing, which made all of their 
 performances memorable. Miss Rochester, by the way, 
 who had been a music student in New York and an am- 
 bitious beginner in church and concert work, was one of 
 the real musical discoveries of the War. She arrived in 
 France on February 24, 1918, and her brief account of 
 some of her early experiences reveals a loyal and intrepid 
 soldier admirably worthy of her splendid opportunity. 
 
30 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 ''My earliest experiences were with the First Division 
 in the Toul area. At this time the men hadn't seen an 
 American girl for months and when I entered the large 
 camouflaged tent where hundreds of men were waiting 
 wide-eyed for their first glimpse of an American girl, their 
 eager, concentrated stare embarrassed me very much, but 
 I soon came to realize what it all meant — that I stood for 
 some one of their American women at home. The one 
 thing that impressed them more than any other was that 
 I could speak English. 'She talks English, she's an honest- 
 to-God American girl,' they would cry. I used to wear 
 my gas mask in alerte position when I played accompani- 
 ments, but only once was I ordered to put it on. One night 
 the shelling was so loud I stopped playing and asked whether 
 they were going or coming, which amused the boys very much. 
 
 "I shall never forget the way the boys would file past me, 
 pumping my hand up and down, some of them too timid 
 to look in my face, but squeezing my hand so hard I always 
 had to remember to take my ring off. One man stuttered 
 so when he talked I could hardly understand him. When 
 I asked him why he stuttered, he replied he was so em- 
 barrassed meeting a girl. They were just like children out 
 there, it was too pathetic. 
 
 "One night an officer took me out to his battery. He 
 telephoned his men to be prepared, that he was bringing 
 an important visitor to call. They, of course, thought it 
 was no less than a general himself, and were all standing 
 at attention when we arrived. It was late at night and it 
 seemed to me we had walked through miles of mud to get 
 there. They stood at attention all the while, but the smiles 
 on the boys' faces, especially when I sang for them in their 
 dugouts, was worth the long ride out and my wet muddy 
 feet. Only a few nights after that, all these boys were 
 killed when their battery was blown up, and the house 
 where I had dined was wrecked." 
 
 Miss Beulah Dodge, the quartet contralto, after the 
 trip to Brest was assigned with Jean Nestoresen, the violin- 
 ist to the royal court of Roumania. "We toured together 
 for six months," she says, "a most successful concert tour. 
 We were all over in the lines and were in several bom- 
 bardments and night raids in camps near the front, giving 
 
THE TROUPERS IN ACTION 31 
 
 several interrupted concerts during the great drives of a 
 year ago in which our Americans figured so prominently up 
 in the region of Chalons. We were stationed in Mailly and 
 gave concerts all around. For instance, we went up into 
 the Vosges woods, where the men were so delighted to have 
 anything at all, and simply mobbed us with appreciation. 
 The men were almost stumped by the fact that an Amer- 
 ican woman had really come up there to entertain them." 
 
 These trips were not all mere mud and frolic, as the 
 front was simply poisonous, then as always, with tonsilitis 
 and other deadly throat and bronchial risks. Miss Dodge 
 got back to Aix, after her tour with M. Nestoresen, and 
 found that she had lost her beautiful voice and nothing 
 could bring it back again save an interminable rest. So 
 this gallant little soldier, to whom the loss of her voice 
 meant nothing less than her whole vocational and artistic 
 future, put her own troubles behind her and pitched in to 
 canteen work in the Aix Leave Area. For more than eight 
 months she worked there loyally and unselfishly. Her 
 voice came back, but she sang for the men too soon and 
 lost it again. In those days it did not seem to matter 
 much, when the very men to whom you were singing had 
 faced death cheerfully and were going back in a few days 
 for another bout, that a singer should lose a little thing 
 like her voice. The real artistic spirit was to offer one's 
 best, but if ever any noncombatant deserved a wound 
 stripe, it was Beulah Dodge. 
 
 Such sacrifices were legion; the pity of it is that many 
 of the entertainers, early and late, who suffered the most 
 in voice or physical impairment or in falling behind in that 
 hard competitive struggle which goes on so remorselessly 
 even in the world of art — the pity of it is that most of those 
 who suffered did not tel . Another girl who lost her voice 
 came back to the leave areas and became one of the best 
 dramatic coaches in France. Others kept on with the 
 cheering reflection that, after all, if the boys did not mind 
 
32 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 the cracked pianos they seemed so fond of, they couldn't 
 object very much to cracked voices, especially if they could 
 join in the choruses and give the singer a rest. 
 
 Another party which belongs unforgettably to this 
 period is the ''Five Hearon Sisters," a quintet of dainty 
 English girls who had won deserved recognition in Amer- 
 ican vaudeville and who were lovingly referred to by the 
 boys as the Sardine Ladies. They were Winifred, Anna, 
 and Charlotte Hearon, Clara Gray, and Eunice Prosser. 
 
 These five girls hold one of the long-distance entertain- 
 ment records of the war. They sailed February 17, 1918, 
 immediately after finishing a long circuit on the American 
 Chautauqua. They played to twelve different combat 
 divisions, including all the veterans, the First, Second, 
 Third, Fourth, Seventh, Twenty-Sixth, Twenty-Eighth, 
 Forty-Second, Seventy-Ninth, Eighty-Fifth, Eighty-Ninth, 
 and Ninety-Second; they made a circuit of all the base 
 hospitals, and played for four months in most of the large 
 cities where the American Army of Occupation in Germany 
 was stationed, finally coming home and "calling it a war" 
 late in March, 1919. 
 
 Five girls appearing on the stage at the same time were 
 bound to be a success in the prevailing psychology of the 
 A. E. F. But the popularity of the Sardine girls was founded 
 on enduring qualities. They seemed to turn up wherever 
 the fight was the thickest and the need for diversion and 
 relaxation of overstrained nerves was the greatest. When 
 the Twenty-Sixth Division took over its first hard sector 
 from the French on the Marne in May, 1918, the Hearon 
 Sisters played every unit in the division, and in the weeks 
 just before July 15th, when the morale of the AlHed Armies 
 was probably at its lowest ebb, they played every single 
 unit of this crucially situated American division. General 
 Edwards, the idolized Commander of the Twenty-Sixth, 
 
THE TROUPERS IN ACTION 33 
 
 saw that the girls made the circuit as complete as possible 
 by sending them about in one of his own staff cars. Many 
 of the men of the Yankee Division got their last real mes- 
 sage from home from the plucky and laugh-compelhng 
 show put on by this courageous quintet. They were on 
 hand at Chateau-Thierry, this time helping in dressing the 
 wounded, and giving impromptu entertainments at the 
 first aid stations all along that historic line. 
 
 In half a score of places the girls played a good part of 
 their show under fire. In Essey, for instance, where they 
 were playing to a ballon squadron, a German shell fell 
 close to the car in which they were leaving the performance, 
 only missing them by a miracle; while at Bouillon ville, 
 where they played in a gun pit one and a half kilometers 
 behind the lines, they were in the midst of a very lively 
 artillery duel for the greater part of their stay in town. 
 In this town, which had only recently been captured from 
 the Germans, they gave a show at a Red Cross hut which 
 had formerly been a German moving picture theatre. 
 Half an hour after their departure and the dispersal of 
 the audience of over five hundred men, a German airplane 
 came over and industriously machine gunned the town. 
 The next day an officer counted over fifty bullet holes in 
 the roof of the theatre. The Hearon Sisters were on deck 
 during the St. Mihiel drive, and carried up supplies to the 
 advance units just before the offensive opened. They 
 were then stationed with the First Division, and just on 
 the day it went into the line they entertained the Sixteenth 
 and Eighteenth Regiments of that division all day. 
 
 On Dominion Day, July 1, 1918, the Hearon Sisters 
 were the central attraction of the great Canadian celebra- 
 tion, and made that patriotic festival as memorable for 
 the Canadian soldiers as Elsie Janis made the Fourth of 
 July eventful for the American doughboys in Paris. They 
 found time also to put in a week's intensive entertaining 
 among the British Tommies. 
 
34 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 That they came out of all these tireless months of travel- 
 ing and trudging was miraculous. Charlotte Hearon was 
 severely injured while riding on a truck near Verdun, but 
 she soon came back fit for action again, and never even 
 asked for a wound stripe. Certainly the Hearon Sisters 
 lived up to Winthrop Ames's amply justified claim that 
 entertainment was as practical and vital an everyday 
 necessity in the American Army as overcoats and intrench- 
 ing tools, or any other of the indispensable auxiliaries to 
 a victory. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE AMES-SOTHERN RECONNAISSANCE 
 
 ^'Strange things I have in head, that will to hand; 
 Which must he acted ere they can he scanned.'* 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 Great events were now brewing in both France and 
 America. There was a premonition throughout the Amer- 
 ican Army that things were doing, when early in January, 
 1918, Mr. Steele had arrived in Paris to take over the 
 entertainment service, and was joined later in the month 
 by Mr. Johnson as his assistant. Mr. Steele had arrived 
 just in time to link up with the first emissaries of the Amer- 
 ican stage two of its most distinguished representatives — 
 a great producer and a great actor — Messrs. Winthrop 
 Ames and E. H. Sothern, who arrived in France late in 
 the month to survey the whole entertainment field and to 
 report to the theatrical profession in America what the 
 American Army expected of them. 
 
 The Ames-Sothern mission is notable in dramatic his- 
 tory. It originated, like most of the important movements, 
 at the New York end, from the initiative of Mr. McLane. 
 A cablegram was received one day bearing simply the 
 cryptic message ''Belmont suggests Ames.'' McLane de- 
 cided that it meant in plain English that Mrs. August 
 Belmont, who was then in France, suggested Winthrop 
 Ames as the ideal man to survey the entertainment problem 
 in France, and to get what was wanted from the American 
 stage to cover that field. He communicated this suggestion 
 to Mr. Ames, who protested that he was a "high brow," 
 but finally said, '1 will go if Ed Sothern will." The re- 
 suit was that Messrs. Ames and Sothern decided to go. 
 
 Throughout the American lines these emissaries of the 
 
 36 
 
36 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 American stage gave shows and watched shows, looked 
 over huts and got out among the men, conferred with 
 General Pershing in Chaumont and with the ''Y" head in 
 Paris, and finally evolved a thorough working plan, which 
 they drafted in the form of a report as to what the Amer- 
 ican theatrical profession could do — and what they were 
 determined to see that it would do — to bring relaxation 
 and happiness, and to help hold up the spirits of the Amer- 
 ican Army in France. Theorists had been expounding for 
 a long time before the spring of 1918 just what kind of 
 entertainment the American Army in France wanted. 
 Students in crowd psychology, military authorities, and 
 newspaper writers had proposed various solutions, from 
 stock companies to programs exclusively devoted to clog 
 dances and pretty girls. The splendid entertainers who 
 had already been sent over to France were beginning to 
 report back some real experience. But it was from the 
 report of Messrs. Sothern and Ames that the astonishingly 
 simple solution was finally and decisively learned. This 
 was that the same show that was good at home was good 
 over there, and that when the really good shows came to 
 camp, the S.R.O. sign went up outside of huts just as it 
 did in a crowded theatre on the Great White Way. 
 
 Mr. Sothern tested this out for himself before huge 
 audiences of cheering soldiers. His repertoire in France 
 was what is generally known in the profession as "classical 
 heavy, '* specializing on the immortal passages with which 
 he has thrilled a generation of American audiences. It 
 ranged from Petruchio's boisterous Elizabethan advice 
 about handling women in 'The Taming of the Shrew" to 
 Francois Villon's romantic love-making in ''If I Were King." 
 He recited the great poems of the War, "In Flanders Fields," 
 "Verdun," "The Hun Is at the Gate," "The Landlord's 
 Daughter," and the stirring war songs of Alan Seeger and 
 Paul Scott Mowrer. Besides this, Mr. Sothern discovered 
 in himself an altogether new talent — he told stories. 
 
THE AMES-SOTHERN RECONNAISSANCE 37 
 
 Standing on the dark and shaky stages of the little huts, 
 Mr. Sothem found in these rows and rows of sturdy, brave, 
 attentive faces the greatest audiences of his lifetime. In- 
 stead of polite handclapping, he was greeted with cheers, 
 pounding, stamping of feet, and real American yells. His 
 programs were always followed by friendly handshakes, 
 long comradely talks, and an exchange of war yams for 
 the latest stories from home, hours which made Mr. Sothern, 
 in a way neither he nor his audiences can ever forget, a real 
 member of the A. E. F. 
 
 Sometimes the effect of the performance was greatly 
 heightened by the unexpected thrills which were always 
 lurking about at the front. One night Mr. Sothem was 
 doing a recitation from ^'Hamlet," in a towTi where the Grer- 
 man airmen often put over a different kind of entertain- 
 ment. The actor had just got to that impressive point, 
 following the murder of Polonius, where the Queen says, 
 ''O, what a rash and bloody deed is this," when a soldier 
 stuck his head in the half Ughted room and yelled, "Air 
 raid, lights out." Out went the lights and the audience 
 sat perfectly still in the dark except for the ominous mur- 
 mur that arises from several hundred men in a state of 
 considerable tension. Then a sharp voice rang out in the 
 ColoneFs well known tones, "Attention! Turn on one 
 light on the stage. We have air raids every night, but we 
 don't have Mr. Sothem. Mr. Sothern, would you mind 
 going on with your readings?" So Mr. Sothem continued, 
 ''O, what a rash and bloody deed is this,"— "I'll tell the 
 world," sang out a doughboy's voice from the dark. The 
 spontaneous laugh which followed broke the tension and 
 the show went on. This is probably the only time that 
 this solemn speech from "Hamlet" ever "got a laugh"— 
 and deserved it. 
 
 On another occasion, Mr. Sothem's automobile passed 
 through an intensive homemade barrage coming from an 
 American ammunition dump which had just been hit, 
 
38 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 and which was going off in all directions. His car con- 
 tinued, however, and finally landed him in an old chateau. 
 Climbing up to the second floor, he found a large room 
 filled with doughboys and officers, waiting for him in the 
 midst of this weird scene. Two candles on the mantle- 
 piece gave the only illumination. All the windows were 
 boarded up. The audience sat on camp stools and boxes, 
 or lay about the floor. Such was the setting in which he 
 recited Alan Seeger^s poems, nor could that heroic soldier 
 poet himself have wished a better one. 
 
 At another time, Sothem found himself in the cellar 
 of a ruined house, before two himdred men with their steel 
 helmets and gas masks, and only one sputtering candle 
 for illumination. Here he decided that recitations on 
 Verdun and heroism were out of order and that the only 
 thing to do with these men was to talk to them. Sitting 
 down in the midst of the bunch, he told stories about 
 Kankakee and Cincinnati and Broadway, and the folks 
 back home in that country about which every boy had 
 agreed that there was only one real slogan — ''See America 
 First." 
 
 The gallant little party went everywhere. Mr. Ames 
 made the arrangements and saw and studied everything 
 from the S.O.S. to the front. In Bordeaux Mr. Sothem 
 put on four shows, including a special performance for 
 the Negro stevedores which w.as perhaps the most enthusi- 
 astically applauded show of the whole trip. Everywhere 
 they found doughboys who had been scene shifters, actors, 
 property men, advance agents, and other acquaintances in 
 the brotherhood of the stage. They dined with General 
 Pershing and received from him a cordial and personal 
 approbation of their foster child, the Over There Theatre 
 League. 
 
 Mr. Steele made practically the whole trip with them, 
 
THE AMES-SOTHERN RECONNAISSANCE 39 
 
 and his enthusiastic and tactful collaboration laid the 
 foundation for the harmonious relations which prevailed 
 in the months that followed between the entertainers and 
 the directing heads of the *'Y." 
 
 Mr. Ames spoke to the men on many occasions, and 
 caught at first hand the splendid spirit of the audiences 
 he was going back to supply with the best talent of the 
 American stage. Doughboys who met the party on their 
 tour aroimd France remember them with humorous affec- 
 tion, for the distinguished travelers were encountering for 
 the first time the wreck that the War had made of the 
 French railway service. Hot water bags, thermos bottles, 
 cushions, and other signs of a desperate attempt to be 
 comfortable protruded at various angles from their baggage. 
 
 Later in the year Mr. Sothem gave in England one other 
 set of impromptu performances which deserved special 
 mention. This was in August, 1918, when American 
 wounded, following the generous invitation of the British 
 authorities, had abeady begim to arrive in British hos- 
 pitals. Mr. Sothern on this occasion made a special tour 
 of Great Britain, giving not only Shakespearian readings 
 but real performances wherever possible, in company 
 with Miss Mary Anderson, the famous and beloved Shake- 
 spearian actress, and Ben Greet, leader of the Ben Greet 
 Shakespearian Players. The party played imder all sorts 
 of circumstances, from a "real" show at the Eagle Hut 
 in London to an improvised string of scenes which was 
 put on at the big hospital near Evesham. 
 
 This last show was one of the greatest examples of what 
 an actor can do with nothing to work with. The play was 
 "Macbeth,'' and the stage was a kind of scaffolding across 
 one end of a room. There was an erratic curtain but no 
 footlights, no scenery, no properties. The company finally 
 cut the property list down to five items, as follows: Two 
 blood-stained daggers, a saucer of blood (or rather, two 
 saucers in case one got spilled or lost), a bell, and the mechan- 
 
40 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 ism for producing ''the dull ominous knocking at the gate." 
 Sir John Hare, the famous English actor, whose daughter 
 Miss Mollie Hare played one of the parts, volunteered to 
 supply the knocking, and contrived for that function a 
 croquet mallet swathed in a silk scarf. The only exit door 
 was very considerably lowered by planking, and there was 
 a precarious passage off the stage, ending in one plank 
 through the door. As a result Mr. Sothern, engrossed with 
 his lines, smartly banged his head against the door every 
 time he entered the stage and every time he left. His 
 most effective exit, however, was on the occasion when, 
 as Macbeth, he escorted the weeping Lady Macbeth off 
 the stage. At this great moment Macbeth walked the 
 plank one step too far to the left and disappeared amid 
 some confusion, only to clamber back again and make a 
 dignified exit, while the house maintained a sympathetic 
 silence. The dark and creepy murder of Duncan had to 
 be contrived in the broad sunshine, there being no foot- 
 lights. The great scene where Macbeth is surprised by the 
 knocking at the gate found Macbeth waiting on the stage 
 in an agonized attitude, for there was no knocking. Sir 
 John Hare was reading the manuscript and all signs failed 
 to disturb him. Finally Lady Macbeth, from behind the 
 scenes, stamped her foot three times, whereat Macbeth 
 gave the required guilty start. Just then the mallet, not 
 to be denied its part, protruded in full view of the audience, 
 gave three solemn knocks, and was stealthily withdrawn. 
 
 The audience, according to Mr. Sothern, was the most 
 chivalrous aggregation that ever listened to Shakespeare. 
 Their chance to be magnanimous came when a messenger, 
 who had carefully rehearsed the part of announcing the 
 coming of the king, violently knocked his head on enter- 
 ing the stage, and then said in a strange voice, "The king 
 comes here tonight." Lady Macbeth duly replied, "Thou'rt 
 mad to say it." Whereupon the messenger rendered a 
 perfectly good Shakespearian speech thus: "So please you. 
 
THE AMES-SOTHERN RECONNAISSANCE 41 
 
 it is true. One of our fellows told me about it, who could 
 scarcely speak because he was dead." 
 
 Mr. Sothem admits that this performance was not far 
 short of that classic situation of melodrama when the 
 villain stands before the firing squad, but to the command 
 "Fire" only a series of feeble clicks replies. Somebody has 
 forgotten the cartridges. But the villain must die. "My 
 God," suddenly cries the doomed man, "I have broken 
 my neck," and so he falls dead. 
 
 The Sothern-Ames party returned to New York in the 
 middle of April, 1918, with the material for a fruitful and 
 inspiring message for the American stage, and with a vivid 
 idea of the splendid democracy of service overseas. One 
 of the ways in which the latter conception got home to 
 them may be told in the following anecdote. One day 
 Mr. Sothem, who had noticed for a long time that his 
 chauffeur seemed exceptional, asked him what he did in 
 the States. 
 
 "My name is Danforth," was the reply, "William H. 
 Danforth. I'm from Missouri," and he named a nationally 
 known cereal miUing company. 
 
 "Maybe they will promote me," said Mr. Danforth, in 
 answer to Mr. Sothem^s inquiries as to why he did not 
 ask for work more in his line, "but if they don't, I am 
 going to stick to this job for the duration of the War." 
 
 "Well, that is the best recruiting story I ever heard," 
 said Mr. Sothem, "I will use it on the actors." And he did. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE STAGE CALLED TO ARMS 
 
 "// it were done when 'tis done, then Hwere well 
 It were done quickly. " 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 When Messrs. Ames and Sothem returned to America, 
 the great German offensive of March 21, 1918, had al- 
 ready broken upon the AlHed Armies. The terrible shadow 
 of that spring impelled every American to seek the means 
 readiest and nearest to him to back up the Army. Amid 
 this general spirit of self-sacrifice and deepening loyalty, 
 Messrs. Ames and Sothem confidently prepared their 
 appeal to the theatrical profession. The arrival "home" 
 of the Sothem-Ames mission, with its message to the 
 American stage, and the scenes which followed form in 
 themselves a drama of American spirit and American charac- 
 ter. They returned to America with a definite purpose 
 and plan by which through eighteen months of unstinted 
 work the American stage was to serve the Army. 
 
 "The opportunity for the American stage and lyceum 
 to do a great service in standing back of the men behind 
 the guns — behind the American doughboys — is without 
 parallel," announced Messrs. Sothern and Ames on their 
 return home. "The first step is to prepare the way, under 
 the 'Y,' by erecting 'war theatres' or auditoriums through- 
 out the war areas." It was proposed to grade all the halls 
 in France to meet the needs; to concentrate on plans for 
 a great chain of small, home-like, standardized theatres 
 where 700 soldiers could easily be within sight and hearing 
 of the stage; and then to recruit from the American stage 
 and lyceum every man and woman who could go "over 
 there" to do his or her "bit." 
 
 42 
 
THE STAGE CALLED TO ARMS 43 
 
 Messrs. Sothern and Ames brought home a specimen 
 itinerary on which American entertainers could spend 
 ten weeks in France for the back areas, and a similar period 
 for the front, so as to cover the maximum amount of terri- 
 tory. This report suggested a plan to supply trained 
 dramatic coaches for the soldier shows, which were even 
 then breaking out everywhere. It also communicated the 
 vivid impression of its authors of the great need for plays 
 of all kinds in manuscript and synopsis form, for grease 
 paint, false mustaches, rouge, and the hundred other 
 props and accessories of the make-beheve world, required 
 for minstrel shows and costume nights; to relieve, if only 
 for an occasional evening, the strain and tension of war. 
 
 On the night of April 6, 1918, at the Metropolitan Club, 
 Mr. McLane gave a dinner to the Sothern-Ames mission, 
 which was in the nature of a preliminary conference. Among 
 the guests were Daniel Frohman, the great producer, E. F. 
 Albee, head of the B. F. Keith enterprises and dean of 
 vaudeville, George W. Perkins, General T. Coleman Du 
 Pont, C. W. McAlpin, John Sherman Hoyt, Harold I. 
 Pratt, and William Sloane, Chairman of the National 
 War Work Council. In the midst of this group, Mr. Sothern 
 told his story with an eloquence and a conviction which 
 swept all before him. Mr. Ames followed his colleague's 
 vivid portrayal of the need "over there," with an account 
 of the inspiring suggestions which they had devised to 
 begin the work. 
 
 The next step was to mobilize the managers. Mr. Ames 
 gave a dinner at Sherry's, the old Fifth Avenue rendezvous 
 which passed with the War, to every prominent manager 
 who could be reached on short notice. George M. Cohan 
 came, and Marc Klaw, Abraham Erlanger, Lee Shubert, 
 Daniel Frohman, E. F. Albee, and many others. Mrs. 
 August Belmont, who had just arrived from France, reen- 
 
44 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 forced Mr. Ames's appeal for prompt action, and the only 
 question the meeting had to discuss was what to do and 
 how soon to begin. 
 
 The American managers rose magnificently to the occa- 
 sion. They guaranteed their full cooperation not only to 
 release every actor who wanted to go to France, but to 
 put their weight behind a great mass meeting of the theatri- 
 cal profession which would be a stirring call to service 
 for every actor in America. Before the dinner was fin- 
 ished, the Over There Theatre League was christened. 
 
 Original Proclamation 
 
 New York, April 17, 1918. 
 Mr. E, H. Sothem and Mr. Winthrop Ames have re- 
 turned from a three months' tour through the American 
 camps in France. They report that entertainment, and 
 particularly entertainment sent from ''home,'' is vital to 
 the morale of our troops there. They bring a message 
 from General Pershing emphasizing the need. 
 
 The opportunity has come for our men and women of 
 the stage to serve, in person, our soldiers abroad. 
 
 This opportunity for service is so important that we 
 
 feel it should be put before the American Theatre as a whole. 
 
 Will you not attend a meeting at the Palace Theatre 
 
 on Tuesday Morning, April 23rd, at eleven o'clock, to 
 
 consider the situation? 
 
 Mr. Sothem and Mr. Ames will describe the conditions 
 in France. 
 The need is urgent. We bespeak your presence. 
 E. F. Albee 
 
 (The B. F. Keith Circuit of Theatres) 
 George M. Cohan 
 
 (Abbot of 'The Friars") 
 Rachel Crothers 
 
 (President "Stage Women's War Relief") 
 Walter Damrosch 
 
 (President "Musicians' Club") 
 Charles B. Dillingham 
 (Captain N. A.) 
 
fu^%7r^ ^ 
 
 You are mistaken, you who think the life of an entertainer was one of 
 luxury and ease and floating about in a limousine. You see here a common 
 occurrence — the sore-throated and wet-footed soprano, ruining her voice for 
 the sake of her country, while the young gallant shields her with his mar- 
 velous find — ^yes, an umbrella — unheard of in the A.E.F., but miraculously 
 produced by that astonishing and obliging wonder of humanity, a doughboy. 
 
THE STAGE CALLED TO ARMS 46 
 
 John Drew 
 
 (President "The Players") 
 Daniel Frohman 
 
 (President "Actors' Fund of America") 
 Joseph Grismer 
 
 (Shepherd of "The Lambs") 
 Marc Klaw 
 
 (Klaw and Erlanger) 
 Willard Mack 
 
 (President "National Vaudeville Artists") 
 Lee Shubert 
 
 (President "Shubert Theatrical Company") 
 Augustus Thomas 
 
 (President "American Dramatists and Composers") 
 Francis Wilson 
 
 (President "Actors' Equity Association") 
 
 The scene now changes to the Palace Theatre, in the 
 heart of America's dramatic world. "The actors are going 
 to recruit for the War." This was the word along the 
 Great White Way. Thousands of actors from every nation 
 were fighting in the ranks of all the armies. Tens of thou- 
 sands of professional musicians were in the trenches as com- 
 mon soldiers. The flower of the British stage, the artists of 
 France, the actors and musicians of Italy were in the ranks. 
 
 At last the hour had struck for the American artists. 
 It was eleven o'clock on the morning of April 23, 1918. 
 The Palace Theatre was crowded with the greatest gather- 
 ing of actors "before the footUghts" in the history of the 
 profession. More than 2,200 theatrical folk stormed the 
 doors, filled every available seat, crowded the boxes, and 
 even sat in the aisles. Mr. E. F. Albee, head of the Keith 
 Circuit, was host of the occasion in the finest of his great 
 chain of theatres. He raised his hand for order and named 
 George M. Cohan chairman. Mr. Cohan, hero of a life- 
 time of patriotic hits, but never so much as on this occasion 
 the leader of real patriotic public spirit among his profession, 
 brought the audience sharply to the seriousness of the 
 task in hand with a few trenchant words. 
 
46 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 "General Pershing," he announced, "has called upon 
 the actor to line up with the rest of the manhood and 
 womanhood of America, and now is the time to send him 
 his answer." 
 
 "I say to General Pershing," exclaimed Cohan, "that 
 whatever he wants from us we are ready to give him." 
 
 This was the keynote appeal; the audience broke into 
 its first cheer. He read the following telegram: 
 
 "I learn with greatest interest of the work you are under- 
 taking in collaboration with Mr. E. H. Sothern and Mr. 
 Winthrop Ames. It has my most cordial approval and I wish 
 you the best possible success. It is a big undertaking, but I 
 have no doubt you will accomplish it. — Woodrow Wilson." 
 
 There was no doubt of the stand of the American actors 
 in the World War. The response came from all parts of 
 the house. They spoke from the audience, from boxes, 
 and from the stage — but all spoke to a house imbued with 
 an electric spirit of sympathetic enthusiasm. 
 
 The dean of American dramatists, Augustus Thomas — 
 the only American dramatist to have been honored with 
 an election to the presidency of the American Institute 
 of Arts and Letters — stood before the assembled actors. 
 
 "I came this early because I have to leave to take the 
 train for Boston where I am doing some government work," 
 he explained. "I regret not being able to remain here 
 and see the inspiriting sight that I know all who will be here 
 will witness. The War has done a great deal to turn over 
 old opinions," continued the dramatist. "It has brought a 
 great many changes in our social fabric, and is bringing 
 a great one to the theatre and the status of the theatre. 
 We of the theatre come into the field with our contribu- 
 tion as one of the most effective in the whole push behind 
 the drive. We are not especially renowned as business 
 men, and a lot of us make bad contracts. The world does 
 not call upon us when it wants to revise its philosophy, 
 but business and logic are not the only things in this life. 
 
THE STAGE CALLED TO ARMS 47 
 
 The great thing is the spiritual ^ect and nothing is done 
 at all where the emotions are not stirred. Now in that 
 field of emotional stir, we do not take off our bonnet to 
 anybody. That is our reason for being. That is the thing 
 in which we specialize and we are going to go into this 
 whole-heartedly, and the whole theatrical community is 
 going into it." 
 
 Mr. Thomas, knowing full well the soul of the actor, 
 then prophesied: 
 
 ^'I know when the proper time comes — and this meeting 
 is called on for volunteers — that there will be a wonderful 
 sight. I am reminded of the captain who had come to 
 his company for volunteers. He was talking to his line 
 of fine young fellows. He told them he wanted three, 
 but that if one went through the work would be done. 
 He did not disguise the danger. He said, 'Now I want the 
 men who will volunteer to step out one pace.' As he thought 
 of what they were going into, he momentarily crossed his 
 hands over his eyes. 'Not one volunteer?' The whole 
 line had stepped out one pace." 
 
 Mr. Sothern stepped to the edge of the stage. He has 
 appeared for a quarter century before distinguished audi- 
 ences, but never before a gathering of celebrities such as 
 greeted him here. 
 
 "A very great distinction, as Mr. Thomas has just told 
 you, has been conferred upon our calling," he said. ''It 
 is very important that you should be aware in the beginning 
 of the origin of this meeting. In the middle of December 
 a message was conveyed by Mr. McLane of the Y M C A 
 to Mr. Ames here in New York, from General Pershing. 
 It appears that General Pershing, in consultation with Mr. 
 E. C. Carter, General Secretary of the Y M C A in Paris, 
 stated that it was very necessary to aid and uplift the 
 spirits of the forces at the front by some formulated plan, 
 preferably from the profession of entertainment from this 
 country. Mr. Ames was appealed to, and he asked me 
 
48 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 if I would care to look over the ground. We had very little 
 time to call a mass meeting of our fellows. We just got 
 on board a steamer and we went. The object was to find 
 out under what conditions entertainment could be given 
 to the troops in France." 
 
 The master of the art of Shakespeare here related some 
 of his experiences: 
 
 '^We went to the American front and to the British 
 front," he said, "and we brought back, I beheve, a very 
 complete report of what the condition is and how we are 
 able to serve. I need not tell you with what pride Mr. 
 Ames and I went upon this mission. I felt that the call- 
 ing of which we are very happy to be members, had been 
 very distinctly honored. 
 
 "The necessity of entertainment at the front becomes 
 very obvious when you land amongst the forces — ^when 
 you perceive their life, the conditions under which they 
 live, the monotony of their existence. The vehicle for this 
 service is necessarily in the hands of the Y M C A. They 
 have built at the front, as Mr. Ames will shortly explain 
 to you, a great number of buildings which are called huts. 
 In these buildings, which are the club, the general meeting 
 place for prayer, for gatherings of all organizations, these 
 performances will have to take place. The Y M C A, there- 
 fore, becomes the inevitable place where these performances, 
 we hope, will be held." 
 
 "The situation of the American forces is more difficult 
 than that of the French or the English," Mr. Sothern 
 explained. "The Englishman can go home to England. 
 He is content with what small entertainment is provided 
 amongst his own fellows. The same conditions prevail 
 amongst the French. They also can visit their homes 
 occasionally. Our men will not come back to this country 
 until the War is over; it may last for two or three years, 
 and then they may not come back to this country until 
 eighteen months after the War is over." 
 
THE STAGE CALLED TO ARMS 49 
 
 Mr. Sothern dramatically presented some of the scenes 
 which he had witnessed along the battle front. 
 
 "We, who have traveled all over this country, and have 
 been known to all the boys in the Army more or less, know 
 that the desire they have for some thread with their homes 
 is very pathetic. You find them sitting in the huts looking 
 at the women canteen workers with the greatest longing. 
 They sit around dumb, with their eyes full of wonder and 
 full of affection which they dare not express. 
 
 ''This anecdote is very familiar in the huts, and has 
 occurred again and again. A boy, after watching one of 
 the women canteen workers for days and days, will edge 
 his way up to the counter where the ^Y' woman is serving. 
 She will ask, 'Is there anything I can do for you?' The 
 boy will look very sheepish and say, 'No, lady, I just wanted 
 to hear you talk.' 
 
 "When I was about to go on this mission with Mr. Ames, 
 I confided my purpose to a friend. He immediately began 
 to smile and said: 'This is the first time that I ever heard 
 that fighting men found it necessary to carry about their 
 company of comedians.' He had not been recalling his 
 history, because there was a time when distinguished 
 monarchs took their dancing girls and accompanying 
 vaudeville teams on all their military expeditions." 
 
 And here the great classical actor paid an historic tribute 
 to the vaudeville stage — to the man who can tell a story, 
 to the girl who can sing the latest jazz music and "do a 
 dance," to the fellow who can play the banjo, to the in- 
 imitable "all-evening-by-himself vaudevillian." 
 
 "Those of us who have taken part merely in plays will 
 have to learn a very important lesson from our brothers 
 and sisters in vaudeville," said Sothern. "When we get 
 over, we shall find conditions of such a nature that we 
 shall not be able to perform our plays. I am stating the 
 facts of my own experience when I tell you that I was 
 practically useless for entertainment. I went to investi- 
 
50 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 gate, but I was very eager to entertain and consequently 
 I persuaded myself to recite, a thing I have never done 
 before in my life. I am sure I did not do it very well. 
 There was no stage. I got on tables and on counters and 
 I stood amongst the soldiers and did what I could. I have 
 been in the habit of being supported by a company. I 
 have never been able, as the vaudeville artists so brilliantly 
 do, to get up and entertain by myself. But you will be 
 called upon to do it and if you are not able to do it now, 
 the thing to do is to get to work and learn. I am very sure 
 that those qualities that have enabled you to distinguish 
 yourself in the theatre proper will enable you to do some- 
 thing worth while which is important. 
 
 "When I arrived in France and contemplated what the 
 YMCA was doing," continued Mr. Sothern, *'I was en- 
 tirely overwhelmed, as were Mr. Ames and Mrs. Ames, 
 who accompanied us. The function that the YMCA 
 fulfills in France is one of the most amazing and most 
 difficult accomphshments that you can possibly imagine. 
 That also Mr. Ames will explain to you. I merely wish to 
 offer my own tribute to the activities which are carried 
 on at the front by the YMCA and to plead on behalf of the 
 YMCA that you will recognize in it the inevitable help, 
 the great instrument with which you are favored in ful- 
 filling this service. May I humbly plead with you to 
 respond to the appeals that are going to be made to you? 
 I should be very proud if any work of mine could induce 
 you to such a response. If I can induce you to go over 
 there and stay over there until all is over, over there, I 
 shall be very happy to have contributed to the result." 
 
 And right here let us ring down the curtain — not that 
 the curtain was rung down, for it was a continuous per- 
 formance — but the ovation literally ''stopped the show." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A MESSAGE FROM FRANCE 
 
 ''Stand not upon the order x)f your going, 
 But go at once.*' 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 As the curtain rises on what we may call the second 
 spectacular scene in the national drama at the Palace 
 Theatre on this April morning of 1918, we find Winthrop 
 Ames occupying the center of the stage. Home from the 
 battle front, Mr. Ames told his experiences in France. 
 With Mr. Sothem and Mr. McLane — "the power behind 
 the throne" — he completed the triumvirate which became 
 the "godfathers of the American stage" in the world 
 conflict. 
 
 "Nobody can say that our profession hasn't done its 
 full share in this war," he exclaimed. "Actors have given 
 their services and managers have given their theatres for 
 benefit after benefit. Our work for the Liberty Loans has 
 probably exceeded that of any other profession. I think 
 one cause of our eagerness has been a secret feeling that 
 in this world crisis entertainment had no vital place. The 
 farmer, the manufacturer of munitions, and the shoemaker 
 can each see the direct need of his work. But the artist 
 — the painter, the actor, and the singer — ^somehow couldn't 
 see any direct use for his personal service except as an 
 advertiser of some other fellow's efforts. I think in our 
 hearts we've felt a little out of it." 
 
 At this moment Mr. Ames delivered the message that 
 he had brought home from General Pershing. 
 
 "I've just come back from France," he declared, "and 
 I can tell you, as a fact beyond dispute, that entertain- 
 
 61 
 
52 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 ment is not a luxury to the modern man. Once deprive 
 him of it, even for a little time, and he learns that it is a 
 necessity as vital to him as sugar in his food. We actors 
 make something that is as needful in this war as overcoats 
 or shovels. And at last our opportunity has come to serve 
 — not through some other fellow any longer, but in person 
 — to fight side by side with our soldiers, to enter actively 
 the service of America's Army in France." 
 
 Mr. Ames thus explained the situation as it confronted 
 him in France: 
 
 "In France there are two organizations that are the 
 right and left hands of the American Army, accredited by 
 and working under its control — the Red Cross and the 
 Y M C A. Both are semi-militarized, and the functions of 
 each are assigned by military order. You will be prac- 
 tically in army service and subject to its discipline. In- 
 deed, I have no doubt that if any of your performances 
 over there should be bad enough to warrant it, the officers 
 in conamand might order you out and have you shot at 
 dawn." 
 
 Vividly he pictured the exigencies of war and its demands : 
 
 "You must wear the Y M C A uniform, not only because 
 you belong to the entertainment organization, but be- 
 cause you'd have as much chance of getting about the 
 camps in civilian dress as a convict in stripes would have 
 of strolling down Broadway. 
 
 "I think you will get very fond of that uniform, and 
 may be pretty proud of it before you've worn it long," 
 he exclaimed. "It is a badge of service to the soldier that 
 he has grown to esteem and respect. When I got back to 
 New York and passed our boys in the street I missed 
 it when they didn't smile and say ^Hello,' as they almost 
 always did when I was in uniform over there. And my 
 wife particularly missed the half affectionate greeting 
 ^Hello, "Y," ' which is their pet name for women in that 
 service." 
 
A MESSAGE FROM FRANCE 53 
 
 The speaker told how he found wearing that uniform 
 abroad presidents of big manufacturing concerns, bankers, 
 and college presidents, and all sorts of other men, many 
 of whom had given up large incomes and big positions 
 for the duration of the War. 
 
 ''You will find them in the huts," he said, "getting up 
 at daybreak, making their own beds, and spending the 
 day selling cigarettes, sweeping the floors, and moving 
 heavy benches for your evening performance. In one of 
 the huts I met a woman canteen worker whom I had known 
 in New York. The last time I saw her here, she gave me 
 a lift in her limousine. There were two men on the box 
 and she was wearing the finest sable coat I ever saw. In 
 France, she was standing behind a counter, wearing a soiled 
 uniform, and doling out letter paper. When she shook 
 hands with me, her hands were chapped and red from 
 days spent in washing chocolate cups. And she told me 
 she had never been so happy in her life." 
 
 Many dramatic scenes to be expected in the life of a 
 volunteer American, making the voyage to France to ''do 
 his bit" for the doughboy, were graphically presented by 
 Mr. Ames and he predicted that his experience would soon 
 become that of thousands of others. 
 
 "Before you sail you may have an opportunity to ac- 
 quire a little of that patience under orders that is part 
 of military life. For instance, maybe the very day you 
 are ready to start the Government may conmiandeer your 
 berth (I say 'berth^ advisedly and not 'stateroom^ for 
 some officer, and you'll be left to cool your heels till the 
 next steamer. Well, there is nothing to do about that 
 sort of thing but to bear it — and grin if you can. In any 
 case, you'll be wise to acquire early, before you face the 
 inevitable little discomforts and irritations of war service, 
 the useful French habit of shrugging your shoulders and 
 saying cheerfully, ^C'est la Guerre' — 'Well, it's war!' 
 
 "But no trifling discomforts will coiuit in face of the 
 
54 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 great experience that is coming to you — of learning what 
 war really is at first hand. You'll begin to get some hint 
 when you see your steamship — camouflaged perhaps to 
 look like a cloud on the horizon; or when you find that all 
 your fellow-passengers, without exception, are either officers 
 or workers in some war service like yourself. The mere 
 Visitor' to Europe doesn't exist any more. You will feel 
 it when your portholes are battened shut at night, and 
 covered with tin lest any gleam of light escape, and you 
 are forbidden to smoke on deck. And before you see the 
 shores of France there will come out of the sky to meet 
 and watch over you, an American airplane followed by 
 an American destroyer flying Old Glory. 
 
 ''And before you reach the dock you may gather some 
 notion of what it means for an entire nation to be at war 
 when, instead of the smart French customs inspector of 
 former days, a little file of middle-aged women clad in 
 black climbs the rope ladder up your steamer's side to 
 examine your baggage." 
 
 It was a thrilling story of adventure that Mr. Ames 
 related — perhaps the clearest insight that has been given 
 of the varied phases of hardship and self-sacrifice for the 
 great cause. 
 
 "As the train takes you through France — for you will 
 first go direct to Paris for instructions — you will see no 
 men out of uniform," he said, "except those actually de- 
 crepit, and only women working in the fields. And every- 
 where there will be barracks and more barracks, and crawl- 
 ing freight trains laden with cannon and ammunition, and 
 boxes and bales labeled from every part of the world. 
 You'll pass encampments of English troops and Canadian 
 troops, and troops from India and Senegal and Africa, 
 and gangs of day laborers by the thousand brought from 
 China. 
 
 "The whole stream seems somehow headed in one direc- 
 tion, crawling toward 'the line.' That thin line — only about 
 
A MESSAGE FROM FRANCE 55 
 
 450 miles long, the distance from Washington to Boston, 
 and never wider than a mile — that crack in the ^arth is 
 the center and focus of the whole world today. And toward 
 that crack — that narrow crater of destruction — ^the whole 
 world is flowing in two streams from opposite sides of the 
 globe. And you are carried with the current, and are part 
 of it. 
 
 ''In Paris the YMCA will take charge of you and tell 
 you what area of camps you are to visit first. Most of 
 the camps are not actually in the towns, but from two 
 to seven miles outside. But the base town is where you 
 will lodge — some of them are the most interesting historical 
 towns in France — and go out by motor to the camps them- 
 selves for your performances. And when youVe given 
 performances in all the camps near that town, you'll go 
 back to Paris and get a bath (hurrah!), and start for an- 
 other base town. And so on!" 
 
 The observations of Mr. Ames, with his keen analysis 
 of character and his sense of humor, must here become a 
 permanent part of war literature. 
 
 "You will be met at the station by your local boss, that 
 is, the YMCA secretary in charge of the district; and about 
 nightfall he'll load you all into one open Ford motor car — 
 so there mustn't be more than six of you in the company 
 at the very outside — and you'll start for the camp to give 
 your performance. 
 
 ''All the scenery you'll be able to carry ought to be under 
 your hat; and your costume, if you take one, must pack 
 in a flat handbag; otherwise there won't be room in the 
 Ford. But, oh! respect that humble Ford! It cost $1,000 
 in France, and had to be fought for at that! And the gas- 
 oline that feeds it can be had only by order from the Army, 
 and it's a penal offense to use a drop for pleasure riding. 
 
 "On your way to the camp your car may be halted two 
 or three times by a sentry — and his rifle is really loaded. 
 'Halt! Who goes there?' 
 
 u r 
 
56 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 "TMCA/ 
 "Tass YMCA/ 
 
 "And finally you do pass the bounds; and inside you'll 
 find a flat, treeless expanse of trodden mud, covered close 
 with the barracks where the boys live. The camp looks 
 like a newly built mining camp without the saloon. Imag- 
 ine a big sleeping car, without wheels, built of matched 
 boards, and you have a picture of a barrack. Inside it 
 there is a center aisle, and on either side of this aisle is 
 a double row of bunks. This is the soldier's home!" 
 
 "Oiu" boys are the finest, healthiest, most upstanding 
 set of young giants you ever saw. They are as keen as 
 mustard to get to the front, and when they are at the front, 
 they are as keen as mustard to get at the Boche, and we 
 are going to have reason to be mighty proud of them." 
 
 It is to Mr. Ames also that our war records are indebted 
 for a clear vision of the ' 'soldier's home" in besieged and 
 war-ridden France. 
 
 "Some genius realized what this absence of any touch 
 of home in the^soldier's life might mean, and the Y M C A 
 in France is the result. Wherever there is a camp, you'll 
 find a Y M C A hut or house. It isn't decorative. It is 
 made of matched boards, and it looks just like a larger 
 barrack, or a shooting gallery at Coney Island without 
 the paint. It might cost at the outside $3,000 to put up 
 in America; in France it costs $15,000, because the lum- 
 ber has to be smuggled out of Spain or Switzerland under 
 the nose of German agents, and when the Army can't spare 
 the men to help put it up, or there are no German prisoners 
 available, it sometimes has to be put up by French women. 
 But it's there in every camp now with its Red Triangle 
 over the door, and it is the soldier's home and club, and 
 corner grocery store, and church — and it wants to be his 
 theatre. 
 
 "There is always a canteen (or counter) at one end, 
 where they sell, at cost, the minor luxuries that Uncle 
 
A MESSAGE FROM FRANCE 57 
 
 Sam doesn^t supply, such as cigarettes and hot chocolate 
 and shaving brushes and biscuits. Along one side is a 
 row of plain wooden tables, always crowded, where boys 
 are writing back to you letters home. You may have 
 noticed the Red Triangle on the corner of the letter paper. 
 On the other side is another row of tables where they are 
 playing checkers or cards. There is a little library of 
 books. And here's where the old magazines go that you 
 put a stamp on and drop into the postbox without address. 
 There is probably a phonograph grinding out 'Mother 
 Machree.' And at the end, opposite the canteen, is a 
 little platform. This is your stage. Sometimes the hut 
 hasn't even a platform, and they will put two tables to- 
 gether for a stage. 
 
 "In some of the more important camps there are sep- 
 arate auditoriums — except that auditorium is altogether 
 too grand a word, for they are just like the other huts, 
 except that there are no tables or canteens and they are 
 filled with closely packed benches. Sometimes the little 
 stage has a drop curtain, oftener it hasn't. Once in a while 
 the boys have painted a rudimentary back-drop. It almost 
 always represents New York harbor with the Statue of 
 Liberty. There may be a little gasoline engine coughing 
 its life away outside, and so you may have the luxury of 
 electric lights. Sometimes the light is kerosene lanterns, 
 and once in a while candles. But even when there is light 
 enough, it's hard to see because the place is so filled with 
 smoke. 
 
 "The fact that you are coming to play there will have 
 been chalked up a week ahead on the bulletin board out- 
 side the hut, and the hut will be packed with boys to wel- 
 come you. They will be standing outside the windows 
 as far as they can hear. If you are late they will wait." 
 
 And Mr. Ames told a story about getting to one hut 
 where Mr. Sothern was announced to read. Their car 
 broke down ("You may expect that, and it may be raining. 
 
58 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 too — but 'C'est la Guerre!' ") and they were an hour and 
 a quarter late. 
 
 ''But the boys had waited all that time, whistling and 
 singing in chorus to keep themselves amused. Not one 
 left his place, because he knew that some one else would 
 take it if he did. You see, it's not only entertainment you'll 
 be bringing them, but entertainment from home — home 
 that's 3,000 miles away. 
 
 ''Over there in France everything about home has come 
 to have a kind of golden halo. You know how it is your- 
 self when you've been away for a long time. Every man 
 from America seems to the doughboy a kind of messenger 
 and representative from 'God's country,' and every Amer- 
 ican woman represents, not merely a woman, but his own 
 mother or wife or sweetheart." 
 
 He related how when Sothern and he went up to the 
 trenches they took Mrs. Ames as far as a woman was allowed 
 to go. They left her in a canteen hidden away in a little 
 wood, at nightfall. The shack was lighted by three candles. 
 In it there were about two hundred boys who had come 
 in to smoke because they couldn't light matches outside, 
 or to get a cup of hot chocolate before they went out for 
 their night's shift in the trenches, or to mend the broken 
 barbed wire on "No Man's Lane." They had to mend 
 that wire by feeling. They showed her their hands. She 
 was the only woman within two miles. 
 
 "When we came back," related Mr. Ames, "I asked 
 my wife how she felt among all those boys. And she said: 
 'If I had a daughter of sixteen, I'd leave here there alone. 
 And if any man touched her with his finger, these boys 
 would tear him into a thousand pieces.' 
 
 "The place was within reach of gas shells, and she had 
 been ordered to carry a gas mask. But the boys took it 
 away from her. One of them held it near. 'I'll put it on 
 you quicker than you can if there is need,' he said. 'But 
 we just can't bear to see an American woman wearing a 
 
A MESSAGE FROM FRANCE 59 
 
 gas mask/ Is it any wonder that everyone who saw our 
 men in France feels that there has come to them a new 
 dignity? 
 
 "They are just great, happy, wholesome, fine American 
 boys," explained Mr. Ames. "They haven't lost their 
 sense of himior. For instance, one division has taken for 
 its motto: ^See America First.' They don't want you to 
 lose your sense of humor, when you come to them. They 
 want cheerfulness, and gaiety, and clean laughter, and 
 good catchy music, and stirring recitations, and little swift 
 plays — oh, anything that's good of its kind, and well done, 
 and that is 'Made in America.' That's it — 'Made in Amer- 
 ica.' You'll never realize how much it will mean to those 
 boys to have you come 3,000 miles to serve them — how 
 much they need you — till you stand before your first 
 audience and get their welcome. I envy you that feeUng. 
 
 "We of the theatre can personally help to speed the 
 victory, because our men will fight better if we keep them 
 happy and contented in their exile, and because in addi- 
 tion to entertainment we can bring the unspoken message 
 that America is with them and behind them every day 
 and every hour. The service we are asked to do is not 
 a duty — it is a great privilege. And we owe a debt to the 
 Y M C A in France, who have asked us to join with them 
 in serving our soldiers there, and whose pioneer work has 
 made our service possible." 
 
 Mr. Ames's simple narrative thrilled his auditors. He 
 had brought to them a professional message from the war 
 zone. He had pictured in the imaginative minds of the 
 creative artists of his time the true vision of war. The 
 doughboys were calling to them — ^waiting for them. Is it 
 at all surprising that the adventure which followed on the 
 scene in the Palace Theatre was to become one of the 
 heritages of the American stage? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE AMERICAN STAGE ANSWERS 
 
 ^'We are ready to try our fortunes, to the last man." 
 
 King Henry IV. 
 
 If the S. S. Leviathan could have been made fast at the 
 door of the Palace Theatre, it is safe to say that the audi- 
 ence would have gone on board en masse, prepared to sail 
 for France at once, with the cordial consent of the man- 
 agers, booking agents, producers, dramatists, and the 
 whole theatrical world, leaving the American public to 
 shift for its dramatic future as best it might. 
 
 And this despite Mr. Ames's warnings: ''If a commander 
 disapproves of your performance he can have you shot 
 at simrise"; "All the scenery you can carry must be under 
 your hat"; ''Your costumes must be carried in a hand- 
 bag, and your company be squeezed into a Ford"; "You 
 will be dirty, bedraggled, tired, hungry, and homesick"; 
 "You will travel through a desolate country, in which 
 the graces of civilization have been suspended by war"; 
 "You will get utterly lost, from time to time, amid the 
 planless confusion which is inevitable in a great war where 
 every soldier is more important than you are" — but with 
 the assurance of Mr. Sothern, "You will play before such 
 audiences as you never believed existed on earth, and 
 you will hear applause that will drown the air raids." 
 
 But when the American stage becomes imbued with a 
 great idea, when it hears the call of country or humanity, 
 it never fails to answer with heart and soul — as was dem- 
 onstrated in every Liberty Loan drive, in every Red Cross 
 and United War Fund campaign, in the response to the 
 appeals of every relief organization. 
 
 60 
 
John W. Beattie 
 
 Joseph Lindon Smith 
 
 William H. Duff, 2nd 
 
 Carl J. Balliett 
 
THE AMERICAN STAGE ANSWERS 61 
 
 And SO it was on this historic occasion in the Palace 
 Theatre, as Sergeant Arthur Guy Empey pointed his 
 aggressive finger at the audience and shouted: ^'The biggest 
 job in the War is to send the boys over the top with a 
 smile. It is the men who go over the top with a song in 
 their hearts who keep their wits about them and come 
 back — and you've got to provide the songs." Empey 
 told of running a show 600 yards behind the Hnes with 
 shells flying over so regularly that ^'the bass dnmmier 
 would wait and let the shell make the noise for him while 
 he rested." He told the actors they probably would be 
 disappointed with Europe until they played their first 
 engagement before the soldiers, then ''no matter how 
 rotten you are, you're going to get a wonderful hand." 
 
 Mrs. August Belmont inspired her hearers: "The boys 
 over there are giving their best, and they deserve yours; 
 the service you can render, small as it may seem amid the 
 great sacrifices that are being made, will come back to 
 you in after years as the greatest experience of your lives." 
 
 Mr. McLane pledged the support of the National War 
 Work Council. 
 
 No element of the profession was forgotten. Joseph 
 Grismer, a Union veteran of the Civil War, pledged the 
 full ranks of ''The Lambs" and its thousand or more 
 members. 
 
 Margaret Mayo promised to turn actress again for the 
 occasion, though she admitted, even in George Cohan's 
 presence, that a playwright was only a bad actor whom 
 the managers would not hire. 
 
 Francis Wilson, who was called upon to respond for the 
 Actors' Equity Association, made probably the happiest 
 one-minute speech of the morning. He said: "It was 
 understood that a few of us would address you, and I was 
 to be among the few. I want to call your attention to the 
 change that is coming over our opinion of the Y M C A. 
 We used to think of them as pink tea folks, but now we 
 
62 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 know that they are a power of manhood. The ' Y' has made 
 its discovery, too. It is learning how great an influence 
 for good there is in the American stage. The members of 
 the Actors' Equity Association will go." 
 
 With such an audience, won a thousand times over 
 by these irresistible appeals, the response went far beyond 
 control. Volunteers rose from all parts of the house before 
 any call was made, and when Mr. Cohan finally asked 
 all those who were "ready to go'' to stand up, three fourths 
 of the audience rose. 
 
 To the standing crowd, Mr. Cohan read telegram after 
 telegram pledging the great names of the American stage 
 for service overseas — Julia Marlowe, Maude Adams, Lillian 
 Russell, John Drew, John Barrymore, William Collier, 
 Frances Starr, Viola Allen, Marguerite Clark, Grace George, 
 James T. Powers, Grant Mitchell, Jessie Busley, John 
 Charles Thomas, Jane Cowl, Ruth Chatterton, Louise 
 Dresser, Donald Brian, Walter Jones, Billie Burke, Otis 
 Skinner, Kittie Edwards, Eugene O'Brien, Julia Sander- 
 son, Joseph Cawthorne, David Bispham, Blanche Ring, 
 Tom Wise, Marie Doro, James J. Corbett, Weber and 
 Fields, Barry McCormack, Nora Bayes and Company, 
 Amos Sutherland — and a long roll call of celebrities cover- 
 ing every branch of the profession. 
 
 Miss Amelia Bingham volunteered from a stage box, 
 and Edith Wynne Mattison and Charles Rann Kennedy 
 were announced as among the volunteers, as were Charles 
 B. Dillingham, Joseph Riter, and Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. 
 The last three offered their services as producers. Organ- 
 izations offering to organize companies to go overseas 
 were the Players, Lambs, Friars, Green Room Club, Stage 
 Women's War Relief, Actors' Equity Association, and the 
 National Vaudeville Artists. 
 
 Elsie Janis cabled from London making a date with the 
 whole audience in France. Willie Collier volunteered to 
 "head a company, or carry a spear or gun or anything." 
 
THE AMERICAN STAGE ANSWERS 63 
 
 The tide of emotion reached its topmost crest when 
 Secretary Henry Chesterfield, of the National Vaudeville 
 Artists, announced that more than 9,000 members of that 
 great organization had signified their willingness to go at 
 once. As the famous Tammany politician said, from then 
 on ' 'pantomime reigned." 
 
 Thus there emerged from this historic meeting, held 
 on the birthday of Shakespeare, the Over There Theatre 
 League, fully organized, officered, and ready for duty. 
 Its officers were: 
 
 George M. Cohan, President (Abbot of "The Friars"). 
 
 E. F. Albee, Vice-President (The B. F. Keith Circuit of 
 Theatres). 
 
 Directors: Winthrop Ames; Rachel Crothers (President 
 * 'Stage Women^s War Relief"); Walter Damrosch (Presi- 
 dent "Musicians' Club"); Charles B. Dillingham (Cap- 
 tain N. A.); John Drew (President of "The Players"); 
 Daniel Frohman (President "Actors' Fund of America"); 
 Joseph R. Grismer (Shepherd of "The Lambs"); Marc 
 Klaw (Klaw and Erlanger); Willard Mack (President 
 "National Vaudeville Artists"); Lee Shubert (President 
 "Shubert Theatrical Company"); E. H. Sothern; Augustus 
 Thomas (President "American Dramatists and Com- 
 posers"); Francis Wilson (President "Actors' Equity Asso- 
 ciation"). 
 
 The following individual contract was drawn up: 
 
 America's 
 Over There Theatre League 
 
 AND 
 
 Y M C A Contract 
 
 By my signature below, and because of the receipt by me 
 of a uniform and living expenses from the Y M C A, and 
 a salary of S2.00 per day from America's Over There Theatre 
 League, and because I shall be employed in a country at 
 war, I hereby pledge myself to 
 
 1. Obey all Military Authorities in conunand, 
 
64 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 2. Obey the Secretary of the Y M C A to whom I am 
 du-ectly responsible. 
 
 3. Remain in Entertainment Service abroad not less than 
 three months, unless otherwise ordered. 
 
 4. Return to the United States at any time upon the 
 request of the head of the Y M C A organization in 
 France or England. 
 
 5. Deliver to the Y M C A, immediately after my re- 
 turn to America, the uniform furnished me by them. 
 
 Signed 
 
 Accepted by T. S. McLane 
 For the National War Work Council, Y M C A. 
 
 Witnessed by 
 
 Accepted by Winthrop Ames 
 For America's Over There Theatre League. 
 In order to facilitate the handling of entertaining com- 
 panies abroad, I further agree to recognize 
 
 as the manager of the unit with which I am connected, 
 and to conform to such arrangements in regard to travel- 
 ing, etc., in France as he may make. 
 
 Signed 
 
 Received from the Y M C A and America's Over There 
 Theatre League: 
 
 (1) $100 in French money, to be used for trip expenses, 
 an expense account and any balance left over to be 
 delivered to the Y M C A, 12 Rue d'Aguesseau, 
 Paris, France. 
 
 (2) $5.00 to be spent on taxi fares, etc., to steamer here. 
 
 (3) Order No. — , entitling me to America's Over There 
 Theatre League's allowance. 
 
 (4) Service contract. 
 
 (5) The balance of my passport photographs. 
 
 The offices and headquarters of the Over There Theatre 
 League were for nine months in the Little Theatre, the use 
 of which was extended to the organization gratuitously 
 by Mr. Ames. 
 
THE AMERICAN STAGE ANSWERS 65 
 
 The list of volunteers for immediate service exceeded 
 seven hundred personal applicants in two days and steadily 
 went on growing; and the vigorous and unstinted enthusi- 
 asm of organizations representing more than 15,000 mem- 
 bers placed the resources of the whole dramatic world at 
 the feet of the American Army. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 A STOCK COMPANY UNDER FIRE 
 
 " ^Tis true that we are in great danger; 
 The greater therefore should our courage 6e." 
 
 King Henry V. 
 
 Before Messrs. Ames and Sothern sailed for home, they 
 met the first American professional stock company which 
 had come to France. This was the Craig Company, which 
 had been sent over by Mr. McLane, on the initiative of 
 Mr. and Mrs. John Craig themselves, the heads for many 
 years of the famous Craig Players of Boston. The sacri- 
 fices and experiences of the Craigs would require a volume 
 in themselves. 
 
 "I would not trade my experience for a million dollars, ^^ 
 was the answer of Mr. Craig when questioned regarding 
 his nine months' tour of the A. E. F. 
 
 John Craig and his gifted wife, Mary Young, co-leaders 
 of Boston's time-honored Castle Square Stock Company, 
 decided as early as September, 1917, to put everything 
 aside and go to France. They had given their two sons 
 to the cause — both had volunteered in the service of the 
 French Army without waiting for the call of their own coun- 
 try — and one was to make the supreme sacrifice. It is an 
 heroic story of an American stage family that gave all they 
 had to the call of humanity. 
 
 There are two very interesting phases of the Craig expe- 
 riences: the first was their persistence in getting to France; 
 the second, their fight to go to the front and play clear 
 up to the trenches. The spirit which actuated them is 
 such that it deserves a special place in this story. 
 
 The first play selected as the medium for overseas pro- 
 
 66 
 
A STOCK COMPANY UNDER PIRE 67 
 
 duction — Margaret Mayo's rollicking farce, '^Baby Mine" 
 — had enjoyed a record run on Broadway some years before. 
 It was a play which required the minimum of costumes 
 and scenery — the chief items being three rubber babies 
 and a portable telephone as the props, with citizens' clothes 
 as the costumes. Also it was a play with inextinguishable 
 humor of situation, the first and funniest of its type of 
 farces. 
 
 Mr. Craig, Mary Young, his wife, and the capable players 
 who supported the Craigs, Charles Darrah, Ivy Troutman, 
 Robert Tabor, Theresa Dale, Rose Saltonstall, and Wilfred 
 Young, sailed from New York February 3, 1918. 
 
 ''The company had to be reduced to six,'' Mr. Craig 
 explained, ''so that all the players and properties could 
 be gotten into a Ford. We went from camp area to camp 
 area by train and then by automobile over each area. 
 These were sometimes forty miles in extent, but we had 
 to make every center in a day if possible. We carried 
 draperies for scenery, and these were hung in a field, in 
 the woods, or in a hall, as the case might be, wherever 
 the soldiers congregated. Many a performance was given 
 outdoors, and we always had an appreciative crowd. If 
 we couldn't borrow an army cot, we would requisition 
 a chair for the bed that is used in the play. We even put 
 on 'Baby Mine' in a dugout one night for a few officers, 
 most of whom had to sit on the edge of the 'stage.' " 
 
 Their first regular assignment was Aix-les-Bains. It 
 was in March. The First Division was turned loose in 
 that area, for their first real leave of the War. There the 
 Craig Company went to give America's veteran fighting 
 division the sight of the first real show they had seen in 
 France. The town was placarded with posters — the un- 
 believable news that an honest-to-goodness American 
 comedy in four acts, "not a movie," was being staged at 
 the local casino by America's best known stock company. 
 
 When the players arrived, they found for the first time 
 in their lives that the theatrical writer's ancient boast, 
 
68 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 'The house was crowded to the rafters/' had really come 
 true. The last square inch of floor space had been pre- 
 empted. The nimble doughboys had climbed to the girders; 
 they even decorated the short slanting joists that upheld the 
 roof. The delighted yells and cheers of this irrepressible 
 audience would have made any show a riot. But when 
 the stage husband, who yearned in vain for a *'che-ild'' 
 and found himself presented with one, then two, then three 
 infants, who bobbed on and bobbed off the stage in a series 
 of astonishing miracles — one finally being produced of 
 altogether the wrong color for its parentage — the dough- 
 boys howled and cheered until some of them nearly dropped 
 off the rafters. This was a ''regular show." And this was 
 its usual reception. 
 
 As we follow the Craig players, as they go toward the 
 front and play under impromptu conditions which differ 
 at every performance, a series of pictures arises which show 
 that the nimble wit and resourcefulness of the American 
 actor had a share in helping the Army to win the War. 
 
 There is the time, for instance, when the company is 
 jogging along the road in its own "tin Lizzie." It meets 
 an outfit of plodding doughboys on the march. Some- 
 body recognizes them or sees the entertainment insignia 
 on the uniform and there is a general yell of greeting. The 
 column halts and one of the officers says: "These boys 
 have been in France six months and haven't seen a real 
 show yet. We don't know when we shall see you again. 
 Can't you give us something?" Mr. Craig looks at the 
 open field, with a little hill on one side, shaded by some 
 trees, and then at the long line of upturned lively faces, 
 and says: "Sure! We will give you a whole play right 
 here and now." And so the news passes from rank to rank, 
 the men give a whoop as the order is given to break ranks, 
 and soon Mr. Craig is stepping forward and coolly announc- 
 ing: "Our first scene is laid in a Chicago drawing-room, 
 and you who know what a Chicago drawing-room looks 
 
A STOCK COMPANY UNDER FIRE 69 
 
 like will feel perfectly at home — the rest can use their 
 imagination." 
 
 The audience is ranged in a broad circle on the ground 
 imder the trees. At one side of the ''stage/' which is fur- 
 nished with square boxes for chairs, with long boxes for 
 sofas, and a tall box on end for a table, stand the local 
 villagers who make a very good screen behind which the 
 actors can disappear and make their modest changes. 
 When the great bed scene comes on it is an army cot bor- 
 rowed from a salvage wagon which takes the place of the 
 Chicago brass bedstead, and a soap box serves as a cradle 
 for the unhappy infants. As the excited heroine dashes 
 across the stage and leaps on to the bed in order to be safely 
 tucked up before her husband enters, the bed gives way 
 with a crash; but after a little carpentry the scene goes on, 
 funnier than before. A volimteer is called for to enact 
 the star part of an irate janitor in the last act. He is re- 
 hearsed in front of the whole audience, made perfect in 
 his lines, and at the right moment rushes on to the stage 
 and sometimes — it happened once or twice — he gets the 
 lines right. But there is terrific applause as the play fin- 
 ishes. Then the ranks form up again. The army boots 
 again take up their rhythmic tread as the boys go off over 
 the hill with a laugh in their hearts. The company packs 
 up its India rubber babies and its telephone and wends 
 its way to the next camp. 
 
 There is the time, repeated over and over again, when 
 the company is playing close up behind the firing line to 
 a tense crowd of men who have only recently come out of 
 action, or who may be going in the next morning. Grad- 
 ually the tenseness relaxes and into their eyes comes the 
 fresh, care-free look of men over whom a breath of air 
 from home is visibly blowing. In the midst of the per- 
 formance comes an order. All over the house men get up 
 quietly and steal away. They are going to the front. 
 The rest of the audience sits quiet, but the tenseness comes 
 
70 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 again. Then when the show is over, tramp, tramp, tramp, 
 go the boots again up toward the Unes, as the actors go, 
 tired and spent, to their cold but well-earned beds. 
 
 Half a dozen times ''Baby Mine" is interrupted by 
 other kinds of infants of German extraction, which come 
 from enemy aviators above. Actors and audiences are 
 forced to seek shelter until the pests are driven off. From 
 camp to camp the company travels in the indestructible 
 "Lizzie," a war product which runs with many of its parts 
 missing and apparently with all nourishment taken from 
 it excepit water. They play in railroad stations, with 
 trains coming and going, the audience leaving as their 
 trains come in and being swelled by newcomers from 
 other troop trains. 
 
 At one camp they are playing "Baby Mine" before the 
 Sixth Marines of the immortal Second Division. The 
 place is a barn and the illumination is candle light. The 
 only exit is through the closely packed Marines. On an- 
 other occasion when there is absolutely no illumination, 
 the resourceful soldiers, not to be beaten out of a show, 
 all turn on their electric pocket torches and focus them 
 on the actors' faces. This is the first time in the history 
 of the stage that every actor has had not only one spot 
 light to himself but hundreds of them. 
 
 They play in quarantine camps where spinal meningitis, 
 diphtheria, and many other contagious cases are confined. 
 At one place they have 2,500 contagious cases in the audi- 
 ence, yet they cheerfully take the risk and are a thousand 
 times rewarded in giving limitless pleasure to men who 
 have not seen a show since they have been in France. 
 On another occasion they play before the Polish-American 
 soldiers who are on their way to join the Polish Legion. 
 They play to Negro stevedores and French soldiers. And 
 they give a never-to-be-forgotten show before the Ninety- 
 Ninth Aero Squadron — at the conclusion of which, as a 
 special tribute, Mary Young is taken up and given a flight 
 
A STOCK COMPANY UNDER FIRE 71 
 
 in a plane by one of the best known aviators in the British 
 Army. 
 
 All through these months John Craig gives readings 
 from Shakespeare — one-man shows. He specializes in 
 "Twelfth Night'' or "The Taming of the Shrew," and 
 writes some special new interpolations in Petruchio's 
 famous part which the twentieth century doughboys under- 
 stand and cheer frantically. Finally, he finds time to help 
 the hard-pressed administration of Johnson and Steele in 
 Paris, and is a useful liaison officer between his fellow- 
 entertainers and the "Y" directors, inaugurating the first 
 outlines of the reception and assignment work, later so 
 ably taken up and conducted by A. M. Beatty. 
 
 The Craig players covered the entire front and played 
 in practically every American advance base of any size. 
 Besides "Baby Mine," the company occasionally gave "The 
 Circus Girl," a musical comedy which had been one of 
 Mary Young's early successes. They also presented some 
 one-act plays hastily adapted and condensed for use when 
 only a very abbreviated show could be given. Then there 
 were the pageants — "The Drawing of the Sword," and 
 "Joan of Arc." 
 
 "The Drawing of the Sword" was written by Thomas 
 Wood Stevens of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, the 
 well-known play and pageant creator who was in France 
 under the Entertainment Department. Another distin- 
 guished American dramatic writer, Frederick Cowley, 
 assisted in the production, and the Craig players filled the 
 principal parts and helped to coach. Two performances 
 were given in the large yard or drill ground of Napoleon's 
 old barracks at Camp Pontanazen near Brest, while a third 
 was given in the big American "Y" Navy Hut at Brest, 
 which was choked and crowded in the best war style. The 
 music was furnished by one of the best bands in the U. S. 
 Navy, and soldiers, sailors, telephone girls, "Y" worker?^, 
 British Tommies, and many others were liberally called 
 
72 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 upon to fill the parts. The pageant put in broad historical 
 setting the Allies' cause in the War. It was a successful 
 and stirring dramatic exploit. At any other time it would 
 have been a national event; but in the War's profusion of 
 splendid initiative, it was just one more Craig success. 
 
 The Joan of Arc pageant was based on one of Mr. Stevens's 
 plays, which was awarded the gold medal of the Joan of 
 Arc Society in America when it was first performed in 
 Pittsburgh some years ago. Mr. Stevens never dreamed 
 that it would one day be given in its own atmosphere at 
 the birthplace of Joan of Arc. Not only did this happen, 
 but the fitness of this splendid and moving spectacle was 
 heightened by costumes designed by a member of the 
 Institute de France. The play was staged in front of the 
 cathedral in Domremy, enacting with striking fidelity the 
 life of France's peasant girl saint in the place of her birth. 
 To enact Joan of Arc, standing thus on this hallowed stage 
 centuries old, and looking out on another army of her 
 own countrymen and their allies, thousands strong, en- 
 gaged in the greatest of all wars of liberty — that is a dream 
 whose fulfillment might make any actress feel that she 
 had not lived in vain. Miss Young's performance, though 
 no theatrical critic or sophisticated audience was there 
 to give it fame, was one of the greatest of her career, for 
 she herself, like the stoic peasant mothers in the audience, 
 had made the supreme sacrifice and had given her eldest 
 son on the battlefield of liberty. 
 
 Here, too, on one occasion, comedy trod the boards, 
 inseparable from romance and tragedy. Miss Young had 
 made the criticism after a previous performance that the 
 fire for Joan's martyrdom had been, for safety's sake, so 
 limited that the result was not the moving spectacle it 
 should have been. ^Tom" Gushing enlisted the services 
 of members of the Camouflage Corps. This was their 
 opportunity and they made their preparations but did 
 not rehearse their fire. The result was a success of a kind, 
 
A STOCK COMPANY UNDER FIRE 73 
 
 but such a success that Joan was concealed so completely 
 and apparently consumed so rapidly that she was unable 
 to read her final lines. 
 
 After *'Baby Mine" completed its tour, Mr. Craig was 
 sent on an inspection trip of the Y M C A huts, scouting 
 for all which might prove suitable for performances by 
 other companies of players who would come later, and 
 arranging for such changes in construction as were neces- 
 sary for the adaptation of the huts to theatrical purposes. 
 ^^On this trip," he said, ^^I used to recite The Taming of 
 the Shrew' in the huts at night, taking all the parts. I 
 usually followed this with a recitation of the poem, 'Christ 
 in Flanders.' One night I read it to a large assemblage 
 that was waiting to go into the action that wiped out the 
 St. Mihiel salient. After I had finished, the boys asked 
 the 'Y' man, a noted Boston pastor, to pray. This he 
 did while every head was bowed and knee bent. Immedi- 
 ately afterward the order came to move forward." 
 
 Miss Young did not accompany her husband back to 
 America. She waited in Paris for their son, John Craig, 
 Jr., who had been serving as a second lieutenant in ar- 
 tillery, commanding one of the French seventy-fives. 
 Before Mr. Craig's return — after the Armistice — he and 
 his wife went on a pilgrimage to their shrine. It was the 
 journey to the grave of their other son, Harmon Craig, 
 a former member of the French Volunteer Ambulance 
 Field Service, who fell in action at Verdun and lies buried 
 just back of France's impregnable fortress. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 A REGULAR AMERICAN GIRL 
 
 ^^Make the doors upon a woman^s wit and it will out at 
 the casement; shut that and 'twill out at the key-hole; 
 stop that, Hwilljly with the smoke out at the chimney." 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 In the spring of 1918 began one of the most memorable 
 individual adventures of the War. It is an exploit, the 
 like of which has no parallel in theatrical history. The 
 first scene is laid in most unromantic surroundings — and 
 is one of the War's most thrilling prologues. It is in a big 
 locomotive shed at the American railway repair shop at 
 Nevers. Present: four thousand waiting doughboys. 
 The boys are standing on the tracks. They are swarming 
 up the sides of the shed, keyed up to great expectancy. 
 Suddenly there is a shout. A big Baldwin locomotive 
 puffs up one of the tracks. The men make way on either 
 side, cheering madly, for there on the cowcatcher, her 
 famous fluted skirt streaming in the breeze, her hand 
 waving the usual breezy salute to everybody, is *'the girl." 
 Up to the very platform she proceeds, jumps nimbly off, 
 turns a handspring, and shouts: "Boys, are we down- 
 hearted?" There comes a thunderous ear-splitting answer: 
 "Hell, no!" It is Elsie Janis, who from this day becomes 
 the "Sweetheart of the Army," in the most spectacular 
 stage entrance in the annals of the theatre. 
 
 What this American girl was to accomplish in the armies 
 in France; how she was to go along the battle areas to 
 arouse the cheers of "my boys"; how she worked day and 
 night for six months in camps, hospitals, leave areas, with 
 fighting regiments, in dugouts, up to the very lines where 
 it required the Army to hold her back from going "over 
 
 74 
 
A REGULAR AMERICAN GIRL 75 
 
 the top" is one of the War's classics. General Pershing 
 echoed the opinion of every doughboy when he declared 
 at his own dinner table to the for-once shy and abashed 
 star: "Elsie, when you first came to France they said you 
 were more valuable than a whole regiment. Then some- 
 body raised you to a division, but I want to tell you that 
 if you can give our men this sort of happiness you are 
 worth an army corps." 
 
 Elsie Janis came over to France on March 3, 1918, hav- 
 ing been in England since October, 1917. An unexpected 
 breaking of a French contract was the providential means 
 of her beginning at once. Nobody is a better authority 
 on how she happened to start out for the *'Y" than Elsie 
 herself. She tells the story in her breeziest style in her 
 book, "The Big Show": 
 
 "When I left home we had no arrangement with the 
 Red Cross or Y M C A ; we came ostensibly to fulfill con- 
 tracts in Paris and London. But the Y M C A was right 
 on the job that very next day after our arrival. They 
 had a map of France with dots all over it where their cir- 
 cuit would take me if I would go. At first I was not too 
 keen on being with the Y M C A. It sounded rather like 
 it might cramp my speed — and I asked them quite frankly 
 if my friends could come to the shows whether they were 
 Young Christians or not! They explained that they had 
 only one idea, that was to make the boys happy. As we 
 had the same idea, we agreed to start at once. That very 
 afternoon they sent a pianist up, and we rehearsed. I 
 must say that for a Christian Association they have some 
 speed. It was arranged I would start on tour one week 
 later, and in the meantime would practice on the soldiers 
 in and around Paris." 
 
 Elsie's performance was simplicity itself. It consisted 
 of a few songs, some stories, some imitations, a little dancing, 
 another story, and "Good Night." This could be repeated 
 over and over again, and nobody ever seemed to get tired. 
 Elsie sang French songs as well as English songs, and when 
 her French songs failed she would translate English songs 
 
76 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 into French songs and vice versa, with amazing results. 
 Her imitations depended upon the whim of the audience. 
 She could do anything from Queen Mary of England to 
 Chauncey Olcott. She claimed she could imitate anybody. 
 
 One night a boy called out from the ranks: 
 
 "How about Will Rogers?'' 
 
 "Haven't got the rope." 
 
 "Yes, but here's one," said the boy, producing a nice 
 long one. 
 
 Elsie was caught that time, but she took the rope, made 
 a lasso and danced in it, like the famous Follies cowboy 
 himself. Result, a riot. 
 
 Elsie's accompanist was William Janauschek who, as 
 narrated in a preceding chapter, had gone over as pianist 
 for the Liberty Quartet. Mrs. Janis, or "Mother Janis" 
 to the doughboys, accompanied the party. She is a lovable, 
 motherly woman who served her country as nobly as any 
 soldier. The party at first struck into the Old First Di- 
 vision training region around Gondrecourt, Chaumont, 
 and Neufchateau, where Elsie caught the inevitable cold 
 that dogged the steps of all entertainers who faced that 
 lung-searching spring weather. Elsie was laid up for ten 
 days in Paris as a result, but was off again as soon as she 
 was able even to whisper her stories or to sing in a hoarse 
 and husky voice. 
 
 She swung around the entire circuit, spending three 
 months of tireless zigzagging and volplaning over the war- 
 torn roads of the American area, going into the heart of 
 that Homeric region northwest of Toul which had already 
 become known to the American public as the American 
 front. She traveled in a General Staff car, with a con- 
 stantly accumulating collection of silver stars from T. A. G.'s. 
 T. A. G. means, in the Elsie vernacular, "Terribly Attrac- 
 tive Generals." She was one of the few entertainers who 
 sought out and made a special trip among the American 
 units which were tucked in along the British front. When 
 
Charles 
 Steele 
 
 Walter H. Johnson, Jr. 
 
A REGULAR AMERICAN GIRL 77 
 
 she finally had to depart in October, 1918, to fulfill a long- 
 planned engagement to head the cast of "Hello, America" 
 in London, she had come as near to playing to the whole 
 American Army as any entertainer on the road at that 
 stage of the War. 
 
 The experience of Elsie Janis with the American Army 
 was unique. Owing to a combination of circumstances, 
 in which Elsie's inability to contract herself for a six- 
 months' service at any one continuous period was the 
 principal factor, Elsie was permitted to go out without a 
 uniform. The men enjoyed seeing a famous actress dressed 
 like a regular American girl from Colimibus, Ohio, bobbing 
 up defiantly in an environment where all the world went 
 uniformed. 
 
 She stops in her whimsical and entirely individual book 
 to record the hope that: "Some day some one with the 
 powers of description of Hugo, Balzac, Dickens, and a 
 few others, will try to describe the splendid work done by 
 the Y M C A.'' 
 
 This American girl, who had considered it a hard day's 
 work to do two twenty-minute shows a day in peace times, 
 tore about war-torn France and was never allowed to go 
 to bed until she had done five and even nine shows during 
 the day, sometimes with laps of 75 or even 100 kilometers 
 on the day's dizzy circuit. Imagine Elsie in a Httle Amer- 
 ican sector in Alsace after a day of eight performances. 
 Waking up in her hotel, she catches the strains of the song 
 she had sung the night before, "When Yankee Doodle 
 Learns to Parlez-Vous-Frangais" — it is echoing through 
 the climtip, clump of the doughboys' iron-shod feet as they 
 are marching up to the front at four in the morning. Imag- 
 ine her leaning far out of her window and joining in the 
 chorus, while a thousand faces look up and shout back: 
 "Yea, Elsie! Atta boy, Elsie!" until she withdraws in sobs 
 of speechless exultation. 
 
 On that great Fourth of July in 1918, it was Elsie who 
 
78 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 appeared at the Gaumont Palace in Paris and symbolized 
 the indomitable crusader humor of the American Army. 
 She stood on the platform in the midst of a typical Amer- 
 ican crowd — in a real prize ring alongside of the wonder 
 man, Georges Carpentier himself. When Elsie appeared 
 on this fantastic stage, the French members of the audi- 
 ence looked in terror for the next exit, for from the throats 
 of all Americans present there arose yells, screeches, whistles, 
 and a din so terrible and so bloodcurdling that they imagined 
 a German spy at least must have been trapped on the 
 platform. It was only the boys' greeting to Elsie. 
 
 It was a great spell and it held throughout the War. 
 It can best be expressed by that husky American colonel's 
 brief speech up on the line, when a bunch was just getting 
 ready to go into action after one of Elsie's shows: ^The 
 British give their men rum when they go over the top, 
 and the French hand out cognac, but we give ours 'Janis 
 straight.' " 
 
 The stories! How Elsie could tell them! What boy, 
 however morose, could help being affected by this one, 
 with Elsie leaning over the platform and employing the 
 richest of her dialects: 
 
 A colored soldier is on outpost duty, and it gets a bit 
 thick. So he comes running back at great speed and bumps 
 into an officer. 
 
 "Hey! What's the idea of leaving your post of duty?" 
 demands the officer. 
 
 And the colored soldier replies: "Oh, Lord, boss, the 
 shells is just raining out there. One went right by my nose." 
 
 Officer: "How did you know it was a shell? Did you 
 see it?" 
 
 Soldier: "Did I see it? I seen it twice — once when it 
 passed me — and once when I passed it." 
 
 Just one more story from her inexhaustible fund : 
 
 Two Negroes in the guardhouse, talking through the 
 bars to each other. It is Sunday. 
 First Negro: "How long you in foh?" 
 
A REGULAR AMERICAN GIRL 79 
 
 Second Negro: '^Three months." 
 ^^What foh?" 
 
 ^'Stealing from the captain. How long you in foh?" 
 'Three days." 
 ''What foh?" 
 "Killing a sergeant." 
 
 "How come you get only three days foh killing a sergeant 
 
 while I get three months foh only stealing from a captain?" 
 
 "Oh, they takes me out on Wednesday — an^ shoots me." 
 
 Elsie Janis succeeded because she went through the 
 whole experience overseas in the essential spirit of a "regu- 
 lar American girl." She asked no favors that she could 
 not a hundred times repay in service; she paid her own 
 way except for meager personal expenses, in the spirit 
 of true sport, spending herself recklessly in the cause in 
 which she was little less than a fanatic. And all the enter- 
 tainers in France have a right to part of her glory, which 
 she would be the last to begrudge them, for all shared the 
 same common danger and rose to the glorious opportunities 
 of that unforgettable time. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE OVER THERE THEATRE LEAGUE ENTERS 
 
 '^Suii the action to the wordt the word to the action.^^ 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 The spontaneous outburst of ''Americanism" which was 
 set in operation at the Palace Theatre, in April, 1918, 
 did not wane. It developed into a mighty force. The 
 whole American stage and lyceum wanted to go to the 
 front — now — today. And unable to get overseas at once, 
 its members put their forces into immediate action at 
 home. They visited the American camps; they threw their 
 energies into the Liberty Loans; they took the lead in all 
 the war drives for funds to relieve suffering. And they 
 took hold enthusiastically of the red tape whose unwind- 
 ing would enable them to join the rapidly increasing 
 American troops in France. 
 
 The difficulties that began to develop in America — the 
 almost insurmountable obstacles that beset Mr. McLane 
 and the organizers of the Over There Theatre League — 
 were but replicas in miniature of the stupendous problems 
 that confronted the Government at Washington. Here 
 was the urgent call from General Pershing for entertainers 
 from "home"; here were the thousands of professionals 
 and semi-professionals volunteering their service. Here, 
 too, were the multitudinous restrictions and complications 
 of civil and military authorities — the inquiries, confer- 
 ences, documentary exchanges, and the whole gamut of 
 routine which necessarily develops under war conditions. 
 The government problems were of first consequence — they 
 must have the right of way — all else was secondary. 
 
 The difficulties met by all the subsidiary agencies and 
 their cooperating organizations were of minor consequence 
 
 80 
 
THE OVER THERE THEATRE LEAGUE ENTERS 81 
 
 when placed in the historical Ught of achievement itself. 
 Nevertheless, it is well to give an insight into the details, 
 precautionary measures, and infinite patience required in 
 even so comparatively limited a service as that of recruit- 
 ing entertainers for the Army. The response to the McLane- 
 Ames appeals had ''swamped" all the channels for securing 
 passports, for securing transportation, and for all govern- 
 ment decisions. The theatrical world stood ready to go 
 to France en masse and now. How could it be absorbed? 
 What regulations would it be necessary to set up? What 
 were to be the military restrictions? These are but a 
 suggestion of the thousand and one points of detail to be 
 carried through. 
 
 Following the Palace Theatre meeting, there ensued an 
 inevitable period of roughing out the great work ahead 
 through committee meetings and through what army officers 
 call the "exploitation of documents" for the purpose of 
 meeting all the requirements of the Government. These 
 documents were mainly the elaborate questionnaires sent 
 to the volunteers, to be filled out with a complex and be- 
 wildering variety of information. Each item of this in- 
 formation was designed to settle some practical question 
 of eligibility for overseas service. 
 
 The number of counts on which the most ardent and 
 apparently the most eligible entertainers could be dis- 
 qualified was extensive and seemed to increase weekly. 
 There was the question of the draft, which cut out all 
 the young and able-bodied men entertainers at the start, 
 and which always kept back a large number of men, on the 
 borderland of physical fitness. Then there was the ques- 
 tion of nationality, raised by our Allies, a ban which cropped 
 out most unexpectedly. It was a prime deterrent, especially 
 when a drastic interpretation was made excluding even 
 American citizens, one of whose parents had been born 
 in an enemy country. There was also the later ruling 
 forbidding husbands and wives to go over and the ruling 
 
^2 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 holding up sisters who had brothers in the service, which 
 was appUed with varying strictness. 
 
 Above and beyond all, there was the condition which 
 can be described only as the great drought in passports. 
 It was the time when every ton of shipping was being 
 concentrated not merely on the Army but on the arm of 
 the service most crucially needed in France, the infantry, 
 plus only the bare necessities of its equipment. While 
 artillery, quartermaster supplies, and even engineering 
 equipment were held up on the docks to make more room 
 for fighting men, there was small opportunity of finding 
 places for actors and entertainers, who had so far no status 
 with the Army but their own noble and patriotic desire 
 to serve. 
 
 The Over There Theatre League thus opened its career 
 in the face of an inexorable situation. The actor was 
 willing and ready to sacrifice a season if a decision could 
 be made to sail tomorrow, or even next week or next month, 
 but could not face the uncertainty and delay of many 
 weeks during which all arrangements for the coming season 
 had to be postponed and all opportunities for the immediate 
 future killed. Hence, with the best intentions in the world 
 and after urgent appeals to be sent "over there, ^' many 
 of the great of the American theatre had to forgo their 
 hope to serve their country in France — only to turn more 
 energetically to serving the soldiers in America. Thousands 
 waited eagerly, as week after week passed by, for the favor- 
 able decision from Washington which must sooner or later 
 come and break the passport ban. The first volunteers 
 among the "over there" entertainers waited weeks at their 
 own expense, with spirits undismayed, already trained, 
 contracted, equipped, inoculated, and ready for the great 
 war circuit. 
 
 Here enters another personality, one of the leaders of 
 
THE OVER THERE THEATRE LEAGUE iENTERS 83 
 
 the American stage — James Forbes, dramatist. It was in 
 May, 1918, that this inspiring leader took command of 
 the Over There Theatre League. Mr. Forbes accepted 
 the title of Chairman of the Program Committee of the 
 Over There Theatre League, but his duties could better 
 be described by some such title as Czar, Lord High Pro- 
 tector, Man-of-All-Work, and Chief of Staff, with other 
 innumerable duties thrown in. Mr. Forbes confessed that 
 he preferred the simpler but much more expressive title 
 of Chief Doormat. 
 
 This is Mr. Forbes^s own outline of his induction into 
 the service. Telephone conversation between Ames and 
 Forbes, as reported from Forbes's end: 
 
 ''How are you?" said Ames. 
 
 ''Well," said I. 
 
 "And strong?" said he. 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 "That's good," said he. 
 
 "And how is the League?" said I. 
 
 "Fine. I've decided to tm-n it over to you," said he. 
 
 And never a word said I. My motor wasn't transmitting. 
 
 "I'm going to be its godfather," said he. 
 
 "And what am I going to do?" said I. 
 
 "The work," said he. 
 
 Mr. Forbes is a man of vigorous ideas and action. He 
 had already got into war work long before the Palace 
 Theatre meeting, having volunteered for the War Camp 
 Community Service, and with Mr. Marc Klaw and others, 
 helped to put on its feet back in October, 1917, an organ- 
 ization later perfected by the War Camp Community 
 Service and the "Y" entertainment section, whereby the 
 soldiers in home camps should organize amusement com- 
 panies themselves. Mr. Forbes went down to Washington 
 and volunteered his services to the Government. In the 
 late fall he instituted at the War Department a card index 
 system covering all the talent in the American Army — 
 a stupendous undertaking in itself. General Kuhn, Com- 
 
84 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 manding General of Camp Meade, who later commanded 
 the Seventy-Ninth Division in France, cordially sup- 
 ported the Forbes plan, as it paralleled very closely the 
 organization General Kuhn had himself witnessed on his 
 recent visit to the British Army front in France. 
 
 The first service of Mr. Forbes for the Over There Theatre 
 League was to set up a practical plan for ascertaining the 
 exact requirements of the Army. His plan was to give 
 the volunteers an effective and realistic trial on this side 
 before sending them abroad. The League found an ideal 
 stage ready for this purpose in the big hall at Ellis Island, 
 where thousands of sailors from destroyers, mine sweeping, 
 and home fleets constituted a steady audience with just 
 the kind of criticism that was needed for ''try-outs." Every 
 Thursday night a new group of volunteers was tried on the 
 ever-willing crowd of ''gobs" at Ellis Island and the results 
 were almost always decisive. This was another instance 
 where the Navy served the Army. Mr. Forbes soon dis- 
 covered what he had long suspected — that the boys re- 
 served their greatest welcome for the highest type of acts. 
 
 Among the whistles, cheers, and yells with which this 
 audience of more than two thousand fighting men greeted 
 the opening of every performance, many professionals 
 discovered that they were just beginning to learn what 
 a stage reception could be. As the program progressed 
 the jazz dances, monologuists, and comedy acts were re- 
 ceived with discriminating good humor. The men joined 
 in one of those great chorus songs of the War, which can 
 be heard in all their beauty only as the great surge of 
 men's voices swings up to the platform. This was usually 
 the time to put on a "straight" singer. 
 
 There were thrills in those early days, but life for most 
 of the volunteers seemed to be just one delay after another. 
 All the volunteering, all the training, all the sacrifices 
 were dependent on one little piece of paper with a big 
 seal in the comer. June passed and July, and still there 
 
THE OVER THERE THEATRE LEAGUE ENTERS 85 
 
 were no passports. The German drive was at its zenith; 
 the Marines were fighting their dogged way through Belleau 
 Wood; the American Army was still in the transport 
 crisis; and the actors, a modest, almost forgotten force, 
 were still desperately holding a line along Broadway. There 
 is a limit to the time that even an actor, famed as he is 
 for happy improvidence, can live without working. And 
 this limit approached, arrived, and passed for many of the 
 first volunteers. ^'There were noble souls among them," 
 says Mr. Forbes, in relating the experiences of those try- 
 ing days. "No one will ever realize the great heart of our 
 American stage folk. They were true patriots." 
 
 Optimism impelled alike the successful actor and the 
 still struggling one to give up all in the hope that the ever 
 receding "next week" would see them sail. One man 
 sold his home, his car, and most of his worldly goods, and 
 took a small room in town, spending the weeks of scorch- 
 ing July weather in waiting for the opportunity for which 
 he had sacrificed everything. There is an end to New 
 York engagements, even for the strongest headliner in 
 vaudeville, and after playing the Palace Theatre and the 
 "subway circuit" as much as they would stand, one actor 
 after another found himself stranded in the metropolis 
 in midsunmier, a very unenviable role to play among 
 a city full of friends who would keep exclaiming: "Why, 
 I thought you were going to France!" With fine spirit 
 they pitched in and filled dates around the camps, but the 
 "neither here nor there" sensation was a grievous tax on 
 the temperament of the artist. 
 
 An unexpected revelation of the questionnaires was the 
 large number of vaudevillians and professional people 
 who were of German, Austrian, or German-Jewish parent- 
 age. The regulations in this case were very strict. They 
 required that neither the actor nor his parents should be 
 of alien citizenship. The first quartet to start for France 
 was crippled by the elimination, right at the very pier, of 
 
86 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 the perfectly loyal American citizen of Austrian parentage, 
 who was to act as their accompanist. This bore as hard 
 on sons and daughters of German-Alsatians and German- 
 Poles as on bona-fide Germans; it produced heartburning 
 complications without number. 
 
 All this time the volunteers who had passed muster 
 were being inoculated and photographed and measured for 
 their uniforms; equipment was bought and kits got to- 
 gether and made ready; and the long list of entertainers 
 was grouped and regrouped into the teams of little units 
 which it was hoped would harmonize into complete pro- 
 gram companies over there. The uniforms evoked a varied 
 reaction. "Well, I should say/^ said one young lady, 
 "the boys will certainly be heroes to face us now." The 
 general remark was, "I am willing to do this for my coun- 
 try, but for no one else." But the real feeling, as Mr. 
 Forbes and many others can testify, was a new "pride in 
 belonging," which a real uniform, a uniform that already 
 has a tradition and history behind it, cultivates above all 
 other agencies of comradeship and service. 
 
 While the passport drought continued unabated, the 
 "fathers'' at Washington provided one or two surprise 
 rulings which were all in the day's work in running the 
 War, but which nearly split the little army of actors, al- 
 ready impatient to the point of exhaustion, from end to 
 end. The most interesting of these bombshells was the 
 celebrated "husband and wife" ruling, which descended 
 in July, 1918, and forbade both members of that well- 
 known partnership to go to France with the same army. 
 
 "Vaudeville, as all those who know it understand," 
 explains Mr. Forbes, "is a hopelessly domestic profession. 
 The League's lists were at that time crowded with hus- 
 bands and wives, many of whom had given up all their 
 contracts and even sold or leased their goods, in the early 
 expectation of going overseas. 
 
THE OVER THERE THEATRE LEAGUE ENTERS 87 
 
 "The government ruling came on Saturday, and after 
 the League office in the Little Theatre had descended to 
 a state of complete consternation, it was decided to give 
 these hopeful couples at least a peaceful Sunday before 
 breaking the news to them. Even then they hung on, 
 and divorces were really considered if that was the only 
 way to get over." 
 
 Eventually, after a frantic exchange of cables, Mr. Carter 
 obtained rescindment of this order direct from General 
 Pershing, and hope again came to the Little Theatre offices. 
 
 These cold statements seem trivial now, but every prob- 
 lem involved men and women — individuals used to quick 
 decision and movement on a moment's notice. No one 
 was used to war conditions or war regulations. The changes 
 in rulings and consequent delays during that intolerably 
 hot summer made it the most trying time in the lives of 
 those connected with the entertainment work, but the 
 entertainers met the trials bravely and well. 
 
 The first volunteers under the Over There Theatre 
 League sailed on July 31, 1918, the last on May 15, 1919. 
 The League ceased its activities on July 15, 1919. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A BOMBARDMENT OF SONGS AND FUN 
 
 *Wo pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.^^ 
 
 Twelfth Night. 
 
 The spirit of 1918 brought the severest test of the AlUed 
 cause since the first great German host was beaten back 
 at the Mame in 1914. In this crucial period, when America 
 was bending every effort to send troops to France, and 
 while every ship that went over had every available foot 
 of space crammed with troops, leaving even essential 
 equipment to be gathered on the other side, Mr. McLane 
 continued to augment the ranks of his entertainers. It 
 was General Pershing himself who had said to Mr. Carter: 
 ^'Morale is a state of mind upheld by entertainment." 
 
 Between March and July, 1918, Mr. McLane responded 
 to the emergency by sending over artists, independent of 
 the Over There Theatre League, including Mr. and Mrs. 
 Forrest Rutherford of Denver, among the most successful 
 of the early vocalists; Myrtle Bloomquist, the musical 
 comedy star of ''O Lady, Lady,'' fame, with her happily 
 chosen "side partner" at the piano, Lillian Jackson; Neysa 
 McMein, the painter and illustrator (who added actress 
 and playwright to her roles in France) ; James Stanley, the 
 New York concert basso, accompanied by his wife, a bril- 
 liant pianist and a favorite overseas, and by Miss Geraldine 
 Soares, reader and impersonator extraordinary; George 
 Warwick, artist and chalkologist, who drew and chalked 
 cheerful pictures on every front, and downed language 
 bars by drawing whimsical Americanisms for half a score 
 of the motley nationalities on the Allied battle line; the 
 immortal Joe Lorraine, banjoist; the Hoyt sisters, "Smiling 
 Sue and Silly Sally," who sang everything from Yvette 
 
 88 
 
A BOMBARDMENT OF SONGS AND FUN 89 
 
 Guilbert's chansons to "Kaiser Bill's a Bum"; little Mary 
 Seller, the Irish harpist, and Grace Kerns, soloist at St. 
 Bartholomew's, New York, the first American girls to 
 stir the deathless echoes in the underground citadel at 
 Verdun ; Walter Damrosch, greatest of American symphony 
 conductors; the St. Louis Quartet, composed of Charles 
 Flesh, Ernest Collins, Robert Stark, and Wallace C. Neid- 
 ringhaus, all residents of the Mound City and far and away 
 the most popular male quartet that ever came to France; 
 Sarah M. Willmer, the plucky Chicago singer who subjected 
 herself to every hardship an artist couM stand, including 
 drenchings from the weather and gas from the Germans; 
 Paula Lind Ayers, the girl who sang the shell-shock patients 
 to health again ; Tsianina, daughter of a real Cherokee Indian 
 chief, who danced and sang to the music of her forefathers; 
 and finally, omitting many, many others, a splendid little 
 army of unselfish and devoted troubadours. Miss Margaret 
 Wilson herself, the President's daughter, who went over 
 with her singing teacher, Mr. Ross David. 
 
 These are some of the actors in the drama. When the 
 "Big Push" began in earnest with the great German drive 
 on March 21, 1918, and the whole American military 
 policy was accelerated to the utmost limit to stop what 
 looked like a very imminent disaster- to the Allied cause, 
 whatever regularity there had been in the lives of the 
 entertainers disappeared. In the swift movements of 
 troops from training areas to trenches and from one section 
 of France to another, the entertainment policy was adapted 
 "to play anywhere and everywhere" the men might be, 
 whether this happened to be on the road the night before 
 they went into action, or the morning after they came 
 out. The S. O. S. still remained a stable area, though new 
 camps and veritable cities, like the great 60,000 population 
 camp around Gievres, were gi-owing up weekly along the 
 American lines of communication. Before this enormous 
 multiplication of arriving troops and of new camps and 
 
90 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 troop centers, the number of entertainers seemed micro- 
 scopic in the face of the huge forces which had suddenly 
 set themselves in motion. The organization adapted itself 
 to conditions as best it could, especially in administering 
 specified areas by the regional system instead of trying to 
 follow specific units of rapidly moving troops, and it fell 
 to the lot of every entertainer who was in France during 
 this ominous period to play as he could under any and 
 all circumstances that developed. 
 
 The experiences of Mr. and Mrs. Forrest Rutherford, 
 who went over in the middle of March, illustrate splendidly 
 what two good-humored, thoroughly human entertainers 
 could do for the American Army at this stage of the War. 
 Mr. Rutherford was a business man, to whom singing 
 was a delightful and constantly practiced avocation. He 
 had had many years^ experience in concert singing in the 
 West, particularly in and around Denver, his home town. 
 His wife had been an accompanist and a very competent 
 musician before her marriage. Mr. Rutherford had a 
 repertoire of droll readings and impersonations which he 
 sandwiched in liberally throughout the program. The 
 Rutherfords usually ' ended with an uproarious concert in 
 which the audience was the dominant factor, and the test 
 of a big evening — "Did you boys have a good time?'^ — was 
 answered in a thunderous affirmative through song after song 
 under Mr. Rutherford's energetic and contagious leadership. 
 
 The Rutherfords early in April went straight up to the 
 Toul sector. Throughout all that long spring, when the 
 veteran divisions were battling in the practice sectors 
 north and northwest of that great fortress town, they 
 wove a network of shows and traced out a tireless itinerary 
 of cheer which kept pace, as much as one entertainment 
 party could do it, with the rapidly shifting troop move- 
 ments of the time. 
 
A BOMBARDMENT OF SONGS AND FUN 91 
 
 They gave their show ''anywhere" — sometimes in real 
 huts and real halls. Usually when they drove into a town 
 in their three-ton truck, it was simply a case of stopping 
 in the largest open space and telUng the boys, subject to 
 censorship by the officers, that there was going to be a 
 show in an hour. They then went to the nearest hut, 
 if there was one, or to any house in sight with a roof on, 
 prinked up a bit, foraged for a meal, and came back to that 
 particular puddle in the sea of mud where they had left 
 the truck. Here already a crowd of doughboys would have 
 gathered with some live spirit beating out ragtime on the piano 
 — it seemed a shame to disturb them by an entertainment. 
 
 Mrs. Rutherford struck the first notes of "On the Road 
 to Mandalay" — and the boys were convinced that a real 
 show was on. Soon the whole town, French soldiers, civil- 
 ians, and the usual troop of black-eyed youngsters, reen- 
 forced the silent ranks of appreciative Americans clustered 
 around the truck. Then Mr. Rutherford would lean over 
 the side of the truck and tell some real American stories. 
 During the handshaking farewells which followed, some 
 honest-to-goodness doughboy would exclaim fervently: 
 "Gee, I'd rather hear the old stories well told than all the 
 new ones in the world!" 
 
 The chauffeur cranked up the truck and they slowly 
 oozed through the mud and lurched around the corner 
 toward the next town, with the strains of "Glory, Glory, 
 Hallelujah," or some other splendid refrain, ringing in 
 their ears from hundreds of manly throats. The Ruther- 
 fords, clinging to each other and to the jolting piano, wiped 
 the tears from their eyes and declared: "This is the great- 
 est life in the world!" 
 
 What experience could be more romantic than that of 
 Joe Lorraine and his bull-necked banjo? "SmiUng Joe" 
 came over in April, 1918, with a party of secretaries on the 
 
92 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 S. S. Victoria. Being a "one-man show," he simply slung 
 his banjo over his shoulder on arriving in Paris and hmped 
 siway. He stayed in France five months and gave over 
 six hundred performances, not coimting the times when 
 he gave a show "every time a boy who saw the banjo over 
 his back asked him if he could play." Joe^s method was to 
 go up with the troops wherever they went, eating and sleep- 
 ing where he could, and playing and singing almost literally 
 all the time. Imagine him sitting on a fallen tree trunk 
 in the Argonne, for instance, while an artillery unit under 
 camouflage lay in a circle all around him and joined in 
 the choruses of the Southern lullabies and the old-fashioned 
 coon songs, which never sound quite so beautiful as when 
 they are twanged on a real old banjo. 
 
 The best proof of Joe's travels was this banjo. All over 
 it on every inch of space there were scrawled and scribbled 
 and printed the names of his auditors. He had over 700 
 names on the banjo, almost all of them fighting men from 
 the front line. There is the name of the young American 
 captain, for instance, who fired the first shot from an 
 American gim on captured German soil ; there is a Senegalese; 
 there is the Marchioness of Marshfield, said to be the rich- 
 est woman in France; there are privates from Dallas, 
 Texas, and Cohoes, New York, and Walla Walla, Washing- 
 ton; and in the midst of a little white circle there is the 
 name of Sergeant Charles Cunningham. 
 
 You may not know the story of Sergeant Cunningham 
 — it is one of the prize stories of his division, but the re- 
 porters did not get hold of it. While out with a raiding 
 party in No Man's Land he came upon eight Germans. 
 He shot four of them and wounded three others before a 
 hand grenade laid him low; and then he crawled back. 
 Joe Lorraine met him in a hospital and was told by the 
 doctor that his wounds were fatal. Cunningham, smiling, 
 stretched out his hand to grasp Lorraine's and said: "String 
 up the old banjo and let us have a tune, Buddy." 
 
Thomas S. McLane 
 
 WiNTHROP Ames 
 
 James Forbes 
 
 Johnson Briscoe 
 
'M '■^'" 
 
 
 >:t f** 
 
A BOMBARDMENT OF SONGS AND PUN 93 
 
 Joe sung a little Negro lullaby. Then Cunningham asked 
 for another, and Joe played it. The nurse held the boy 
 up, and, the doctor helping him to guide the pen, Cunning- 
 ham wrote his signature falteringly in a little unoccupied 
 space at the head of the banjo. There was a smile on the 
 boy^s face as he was laid back on his cot, but there were 
 tears in the eyes of the nurses. And the smile was still 
 on Cunningham's face as he died. 
 
 There is a little white space still left about Cunning- 
 ham's name, the only vacant space left now on either side 
 of the head of Lorraine's war banjo. "I never again played 
 the tune Cunningham asked for," said Lorraine, "without 
 looking at that little space and thinking of the smiling 
 hero who 'went west' with the echo of the music still in 
 his ears." 
 
 Lorraine washed dishes for canteeners, helped find beds 
 for doughboys in Paris, and in various other ways inter- 
 preted the word "entertainment" with generous liberality. 
 Although he was lame, and by no means husky in physique, 
 he kept up with the infantry during the Argonne, riding 
 on the ammunition wagons and in the big trucks. Many 
 a terrific jam around a shelled crossroads corner heard the 
 familiar twang of the bull-necked banjo, and as the drivers 
 listened with a weather ear for the well-known whistle of 
 the next German shell they said to one another: "There's 
 that little 'Y' duck with the banjo back there somewhere." 
 
 Joe Lorraine was there once too often. One day in the 
 folds and hollows of the captured land there lurked a little 
 too much mustard gas. He didn't know he was gassed, 
 however, until he tried to whistle and found his Ups would 
 not pucker, but he could sing and play, and so he went on 
 giving shows. But his face gradually became paralyzed 
 on one side. Then he had to give it up and go back to 
 the hospital. At the hospital they told him he had "a 
 narrow squeak," and ordered him to go home as quick as 
 he could get there. 
 
94 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 So he came back to America, but he could not remain. 
 In April, 1919, he sailed for France again, and spent three 
 months in the great demobilization centers, returning in 
 July. The next heard of Joe Lorraine was that, not satis- 
 fied with being a troubadour in France, he must try Russia 
 also! With one of the early groups of ''Y" folk, who went 
 to Archangel to help cheer the lot of the little American 
 force existing there in the dark during the winter of 1918-19, 
 was recorded the name of Joe Lorraine, banjoist and 
 entertainer. 
 
 Among those who met and loved Joe Lorraine in France 
 on his wayward journeyings is George Warwick, cartoonist 
 and chalkologist. The two traveled together for a number 
 of weeks. Warwick, like Lorraine, was a whole show in 
 himself. He also came over early in June, 1918, and wan- 
 dered around through the Army like a jongleur of old 
 France, except that he made pictures instead of songs. 
 Warwick broke down language barriers that singers could 
 not overcome, for everybody understands a picture. He 
 stayed overseas for a year; he drew for the Twenty-Seventh 
 Division at Kemmel Hill and for the Seventy-Seventh 
 Division in the Argonne. He was at St. Mihiel and on the 
 Marne; he worked along the Picardy coast among the 
 naval aviators and the naval base camps, and he was one 
 of the headliners of the '^after the war circuit" in Germany. 
 Near Verdun, he entertained 500 men of the Twenty- 
 Sixth Division just before they went into a drive in which 
 only sixty of them came out unwounded. 
 
 Warwick gave shows outdoors and in dugouts. He 
 drew the Kaiser's picture in every conceivable place where 
 his audience could throw things at it. Meals were irregular 
 and sleep was a luxury. Like many Montmartre artists 
 in Paris, who draw their pictures on the walls of the Chat 
 Noir and many another restaurant for a free meal, Warwick 
 
A BOMBARDMENT OP SONGS AND FUN 95 
 
 encountered rolling kitchens on the front where the cook 
 demanded examples of his art for a hand-out of army 
 beans. ''I gave them all the pictures they wanted," said 
 Warwick in telling of it afterwards, ''even if the cook was 
 a horseshoer by trade." 
 
 Warwick's performance generally began with pictures of 
 the Kaiser in comic relief, with his numerous progeny; 
 then, in a more serious vein, he drew striking sketches of 
 President Wilson, General Foch, the inimitable Teddy, 
 always a favorite with the soldiers, and other war-time 
 figures. Then he came to even more important subjects 
 — he could probably draw food better than any living 
 artist. 
 
 "Now let's have a banquet," he would say. "What will 
 you have, boys?" 
 
 "Draw a plate of hot biscuit," shouted a boy from 
 Alabama, and, presto! there they were. Then George 
 would draw roast chicken, waffles, salad, and strawberry 
 shortcake with whipped cream and great big red straw- 
 berries. The boys would yell at every stroke of the chalk, 
 for these were the days when army stew, slum, corn willy, 
 and other famous jokes of 1920 and after were not jokes at 
 all, but day-by-day realities with nothing else in sight. 
 After Warwick had finished up with ice cream and a cup 
 of real American coffee, somebody would shout from the 
 audience: "Say, there's one thing you have forgotten. 
 You ought to have a sign over that banquet, 'For officers 
 only!' " 
 
 Then as a grand climax — and this was a special hit in 
 Germany — Warwick would draw a transport fljdng the 
 Stars and Stripes with the Statue of Liberty looming out 
 of the west. Did you ever hear real applause — terrific 
 applause? You never did unless you heard the dough- 
 boys at this moment. In the midst of this tumult he would 
 draw the "little gray home in the west," or that little house 
 in Dixie, or Indiana, or Cape Cod, or wherever the majority 
 
96 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 of longings among the audience were being directed in 
 those long, lonesome days. There was a moment of tense 
 silence — then deep gulps and an outburst of thousands 
 of voices in song and cheers swept over the crowd. 
 
 Neysa McMein was an artist, too. She was another 
 early June product who played with special diligence and 
 success along the hospital circuit through the summer of 
 1918. Miss McMein was a real artist — not only with her 
 crayon and brush, but as an impressario, actress, play- 
 wright, and scenario writer, all of which vocations she 
 employed to delight the doughboys. Her principal side 
 partners during the summer were Anita Parkhurst Wilcox 
 and Jane Bulley. These clever women put on one of the 
 most original shows the boys had the good luck to see. 
 
 And this is how they did it: They arrive in a village, 
 let us say, just as the band is concluding 'The Star-Spangled 
 Banner'^ at evening retreat. Miss McMein jumps out 
 of the little car, as the groups are just unstiffening from 
 ^'Attention.'' 
 
 "Boys, do you want a show tonight?'' 
 
 Nobody had expected them. But the doughboys are 
 quick on a trigger. "We sure do!" comes back the response 
 from the surprised camp. 
 
 A show on the spot results. It is first necessary to find 
 a place to give it. Somebody calls, "Fall in!" About 
 500 men follow along through the winding streets to an 
 old barracks suggested as a good "theatre." By the time 
 the crowd reaches the theatre it is about three times too 
 large. So Miss McMein orders: "About face!" and leads 
 the way to the village square. The mob heaves an old 
 manure wagon up in front of a big bam door. The artists 
 nail their sketching papers and movie curtain to the barn 
 door, put two boxes on the wagon for table and chairs — 
 and all is set for the show. 
 
A BOMBARDMENT OF SONGS AND PUN 97 
 
 Like the offerings of Homer for the Greek villagers in 
 ancient times, the show added a little at every performance. 
 Its usual title was ''Orlando Slum, a Man of Mystery/^ 
 It was an amateur play cast in a movie scenario art form. 
 Mrs. Wilcox was the heroine, Susie Coughdrop of Bird 
 Center, Iowa, U. S. A., a lady of large eyes and many 
 adventures. Miss McMein was the villainous vamp and 
 the rest of the cast was selected from the audience. Miss 
 McMein, cruising around among the audience, suddenly 
 pounces on a blushing victim and calls loudly: 
 
 "Jane, can we have a villain with blue eyes?" 
 
 "Stand him up so I can look him over," replies Jane. 
 
 Needless to state, 500 brother soldiers are perfectly ready 
 to "stand him up." Thus Orlando, the Man of Mystery, 
 is found and cast in his part. On the other side of the 
 field Susie Coughdrop calls : 
 
 "O, Jane, this one has a lovely profile for a hero — just 
 look." 
 
 Mid another uproar, Harold, the Hero, is chosen with 
 loud acclaim. A beard, some make-up, a row of medals, 
 a pair of bone spectacles for the villain, and a red sash 
 for the vamp, and the stupendous plot is ready to unroll. 
 One by one the thrills are reeled off, until at last the vamp- 
 ing villainous lady spy eats corn willy and dies. 
 
 One can imagine the way anywhere from 300 to 1,500 
 men just out of the trenches howled at a performance like 
 this. When Neysa and her troupe gave it for the marines 
 — which they did for a month devoted to cornering through 
 the Marne sector — one company of marines followed them 
 for four or five shows in near-by towns and "laughed their 
 heads off" at the last performance as unrestrainedly as 
 at the first. The marines' famous battle hymn, "The 
 Halls of Montezuma," is the greatest tribute the marines 
 can pay to any visiting pal, and it rang out scores of times 
 on the tours of Neysa McMein. 
 
 Neysa's principal performance was, of course, her own 
 
98 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 sketches and impromptu drawings of all sorts of things 
 which ^^came into her head" at the front. She sketched 
 on blank walls and tents; she worked with her chalk by 
 flashhght, candle light, and searchlight, as well as by 
 intermittent daylight. Also she put on one of the most 
 whimsical and farcical movie productions ever seen on any 
 screen. Windsor McKay drew it. The heroine was ''Gertie, 
 the Dinosaur.'' Gertie had many adventures with the 
 Germans in the War, and her prehistoric temperament 
 unfolded its gargantuan humor through a thrilling series 
 of episodes before the Flood, at the end of which Gertie 
 completely "strafed" the Hun and returned to her dino- 
 sauric nest chortling in Jabberwockian glee. 
 
 Jane Bulley, who accompanied Neysa on some of her 
 tours, tells of a characteristic McMein performance during 
 the hectic midsummer on the Marne: 
 
 "The night we played for our pet battery," she says, 
 "things were expected to happen at any minute, and the 
 major issued us gas masks directly we arrived. How- 
 ever, it isn't the thing to start anything before dark over 
 there. They decided that if we had our show directly after 
 dinner, even if the Hun meant to get busy that night, 
 we could all be finished before he began. 
 
 "They let the men congregate in an old barn and they 
 surely were a beguiling crowd of generous enthusiasts. 
 They seemed to be leaking into the building from all di- 
 rections. As we became accustomed to the dim light, 
 we picked out bunches of them on rafters, heads and shoul- 
 ders coming through old windows in the back wall, and 
 through cracks high and low on the sides. 
 
 "What daylight squeezed in round the edges of the men 
 dwindled away before Miss McMein had finished her third 
 sketch. When she came to tackling the handsome young 
 French lieutenant, acclaimed for sacrifice by overwhelming 
 popular opinion, we had to pick out his features with 
 little pocket flashhghts. We'll have to 'hand it' to the 
 McMein — all things considered, the resulting 'portrait' 
 wasn't half bad. 
 
 "After that Gertie pranced on to the scene. Windsor 
 
A BOMBARDMENT OP SONGS AND PUN 99 
 
 McKay probably didn't have the European front in his 
 mind when he drew the 12,000 pictures that constitute 
 the movie film of ^Gertie the Dinosaur,' a great prehistoric 
 monster who cavorted over the landscape trying to behave 
 like a little trained beasty. But 'Gertie' has done her bit 
 in twenty camps already, and is still going strong. 
 
 ''Our pet battery took Gertie straight to their hearts 
 — so warmly indeed, that we had to make a desperate 
 dash back to that camp next day in a Ford that had rheu- 
 matic springs and no brakes at all. For it was decreed 
 that Gertie should serve the battery as a mascot. So 
 next morning they took Miss McMein out to the guns 
 with three cans of paint and some brushes that you'd like 
 to have seen anyone offer her back in the States. With 
 the entire battery lined up on the sidelines, she painted 
 violent orange, blue, and green Gerties on six fine big guns. 
 
 "Some of us watched her operations through a long 
 range glass up in an observation post. By and by we 
 swung the glass over to a point about five miles away 
 where we could see German shells exploding in a little 
 French town that they were tearing to bits. There seemed 
 to be a strange mixture of good nature and nastiness abroad 
 that morning. '^ 
 
 Miss McMein's own account of her work is becomingly 
 modest, but an artist certainly deserves success who writes, 
 as she wrote to Mr. McLane in July: 
 
 "In my whole life I have never worked so hard nor | 
 been so happy. I had no idea of the importance of this i 
 job nor of the size of our 'Y' organization when I came \ 
 over here. As I told you before I left, my whole idea was j 
 service. My plan was to join Margaret Mayo, as she | 
 had asked me to do, but when I got here the Paris office i 
 had other plans, so with Jane BuUey and another New 
 York artist we've evolved a 'show' of our own, in which 
 we make pictures, dance, sing, show 'Gertie, the Dinosaur/ i 
 and put on a melodrama — needless to say we have a per- 
 fectly magnificent time. 
 
 "Incidentally, I used to be rather fussy about my work, 
 but here I've made pictures in cow-pastures, on manure 
 
100 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 wagons, on the walls of hospitals, on operating tables — 
 and usually a barn door or a canteen table — and while this 
 war may have put the jinx on my career as an artist, it has 
 made me a first-class roustabout. I can build an easel 
 or push a piano aroimd with equal ease." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 STRENUOUS DAYS FOR THE TROUPERS 
 
 ^'Hang out our banners on the outward walls; 
 The cry is still, 'They come.' " 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 We have seen the Liberty Quartet, the first entertain- 
 ment unit to he sent over by Mr. McLane's office, spUt 
 up in the early spring so that the soldiers might make the 
 most of their services. We followed, .;t}';ie , £i,dv^t^4res : of 
 Miss Beulah Dodge, who kept on singing long after her 
 voice had succumbed to the climate and who did such 
 splendid work at Aix as canteen worker while she was 
 recovering. We have also seen how Albert Wiederhold 
 went on tour through the First Division with Mary Roches- 
 ter during the spring and summer. We now find them all 
 through the summer right up with the guns at the front. 
 The third member of the quartet, John Steel, the tenor, 
 is continuing his service by joining forces with two very 
 able musicians, Miss Myrtle Bloomquist, contralto, and 
 Miss Lillian Jackson, pianist, forming an ideal little con- 
 cert troupe called 'Three of a Kind.'' They are playing 
 the front line divisions, specializing on the lines of com- 
 munication among the railway troops. We see them sing- 
 ing for a heavy artillery regiment in the Verdun sector, 
 in which their concert is given from the flat car on which 
 the big Yankee naval gun is furnishing a magnificent 
 background, while the audience is lined up along the tracks. 
 
 Mr. Steel figured with pardonable pride that at least 
 600,000 soldiers had come within the sound of his voice 
 during the six months he spent abroad. Most of the sum- 
 mer tour of the "Three of a Kind" troupe was spent within 
 fifteen miles of the front line. Over and over again they 
 
 101 
 
102 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 sang in camouflaged huts two miles or less from the German 
 trenches. On one occasion they used a piano that had 
 been hit only a few days before by a German shell — not 
 to speak of the many pianos which, Miss Jackson said, 
 should have perished in this way. 
 
 Mr. Steel went home in the late fall. Miss Bloomquist 
 and Miss Jackson after the Armistice admitted Miss Elsie 
 Stevenson, a very capable violinist, to their little family, 
 and rechristened the party the ''Amex Trio." These three 
 girls then entered into another, if less spectacular, chapter 
 of adventures. They were assigned to the Aix-les-Bains 
 Leave Area, where they cheerfully filled in as canteen 
 girls on a "uothing to do until tomorrow" schedule — that 
 is, they went on at eight o'clock in the morning and went off 
 sometime near midnight. In the meantime they made 
 all their own evening gowns and kept up their entertain- 
 ment schedule. At their last performance in Paris in June, 
 1919, Miss Bloomquist and Miss Jackson were able to 
 claim the record of serving fourteen months as enter- 
 tainers in France without canceling a single engagement. 
 
 The achievements of the women equaled those of the 
 ancient Spartans. There was the tour of Miss Mary Seller, 
 the well-known Irish harpist, and Miss Grace Kerns, the 
 petite soprano soloist of St. Bartholomew's Church in New 
 York. These two early robins went over in May. Miss 
 Seller soon became known far and wide on the lines as 
 "The Little Minstrel of the Trenches." Miss Kerns, who 
 stands on a stool when she sings in church and who at 
 home contested with Emma Trentini the title of being the 
 smallest soprano in America, sang her way into the dough- 
 boys' hearts with her wonderful repertoire of favorites, 
 ranging from '^O, Laddie, My Laddie" and the magnificent 
 aria from the second act of "Louise," to "Dear Old Pal 
 of Mine" and "The Rose of No Man's Land." 
 
STRENUOUS DAYS FOR THE TROUPERS 103 
 
 We find these two wandering minstrels singing their 
 "ballads, songs, and snatches" up as near the front as 
 women were allowed to go. At one performance an air 
 raid brought the usual precaution of dousing the lights; 
 after the German Tauhes had passed over, leaving half 
 a dozen explosive souvenirs in close proximity to the bar- 
 racks, Miss Seiler found that one string of her precious 
 harp had been neatly snipped by a flying fragment. It 
 takes more than German shrapnel to put an Irish harp 
 out of business, however, and Miss Seiler continued her 
 performance on the remaining strings. 
 
 Miss Kerns and Miss Seiler were probably the first 
 American girls to give a recital in the immortal citadel 
 at Verdun. The American divisions which passed through 
 Verdun in September, 1918, when it was used as one of 
 the jumping-off places in the Argonne Drive, never forgot 
 these two plucky little troubadours, and went into battle 
 with fragrant memories of the two self-reliant little musi- 
 cians giving the best of the beauty that was in them on 
 this exposed and ruined front. Miss Kerns came back 
 in the late fall to resume her engagements in New York, 
 but Miss Seiler stayed through until June, 1919, and car- 
 ried the lilt of her harp from Aix-les-Bains and Nice up 
 through the lonelier sectors of the Coblenz front before 
 she finally '^called it a war" and came home. 
 
 The Hoyt sisters, Grace and Frances, were two American 
 girls, properly and conventionally billed as singers and 
 elocutionists, who went over in July, 1918, but before they 
 had been in France many weeks, became known wherever 
 they went as "Smihng Sue" and ''Silly Sally." These 
 sisters had a cosmopolitan quality, coupled with an un- 
 usual amount of charm and American ''pep," which in- 
 sured them a tumultuous welcome. 
 
 On the steamer the Hoyt sisters sang at the churcn 
 
104 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 service; they sang for seasick passengers; they taught 
 some Polish soldiers in the steerage ^'The Star-Spangled 
 Banner'^; they led fifty Bohemian soldiers in the chorus 
 of "Over There"; and when they left the boat, in their 
 most exquisite manner they sang, "Fare Thee Well and if 
 Forever'^ to the sailors who had steered them safely to 
 French soil. You simply couldn't keep those girls from 
 singing. 
 
 The sisters' own accounts of their performances are full 
 of humor and appreciation. This is one of Grace's stories: 
 
 "Last week we gave a performance for about 2,000 men 
 who had been in the trenches since February. Our stage 
 was a boxing platform in a beautiful grove. The piano 
 was two tones below pitch. My sister sat on a soap box 
 to play and the army mules broke loose during one of our 
 songs. The men sat and stood in mud at least three inches 
 deep — all who were not festooned in the trees over our 
 heads — but we were all happy. The nights in this part of 
 France are very cool, but we wear our flufiiest white gowns 
 when we sing, for the boys say it's a relief from seeing 
 uniforms. They keep us so busy that we don't have time 
 to feel cold. The old peasants and children — there are of 
 course no young men — come to the outdoor performances 
 and we always do some of their folk songs, so that they 
 can sing the choruses with us." 
 
 Another note from one of Grace Hoyt's letters illus- 
 trates their wholesome and characteristically American 
 approach to the Army: "They (the soldiers) take a great 
 amount of interest in our gowns. Instead of wearing tight 
 and very short skirts as the French girls do, ours are quite 
 full and fluffy, and the boys tell us frankly they are glad 
 to see some good-looking slippers again." 
 
 During this same memorable summer an event occurred 
 which made musical mihtary history. It was the arrival 
 in France of one of America's greatest musicians. Dr. 
 Walter Damrosch, the distinguished leader of the New 
 
STRENUOUS DAYS FOR THE TROUPERS 105 
 
 York Symphony Orchestra, who sailed on June 15th. 
 Dr. Damrosch was imbued with an intense ardor to serve 
 America. His desire was to head a company of musicians, 
 largely recruited in France, who would give a series of 
 orchestral concerts in the large centers along the Amer- 
 ican line of transportation. This generous plan was made 
 possible by the joint initiative of the Y M C A and a special 
 fund given by Mr. Harry Harkness Flagler, president of 
 the Symphony Society of New York. 
 
 Military exigencies required some readjustment of plans, 
 which finally resulted in enlarging the important service 
 rendered by this international artist. Dr. Damrosch was 
 so honored by the French that he became the first non- 
 French orchestra conductor to be invited by the French 
 Government to play at the historic Salle de TAncien Con- 
 servatoire. His concert at this famous hall was part of 
 the festivities on Bastille Day, July 14, 1918. Among the 
 audience were M. Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. 
 Alfred Cortot, Acting Minister of Fine Arts, and many 
 other distinguished French and American guests. 
 
 An inspiring feature of Dr. Damrosch 's concerts in France 
 was the rendition of ^'The Star-Spangled Banner," as 
 arranged by a committee of American composers headed 
 by Dr. Damrosch and John Philip Sousa. This martial 
 arrangement set the blood of every true American tingling 
 and the heart beating, while the feet kept time. Its thrill 
 swept through the Army, it was adopted by the American 
 Navy, and has steadily gained headway among military 
 bands and orchestras throughout the country as the most 
 dignified and artistic rendering of America's great anthem. 
 
 Dr. Damrosch was an indefatigable worker. While in 
 France, in addition to his musical services, he continued 
 his generous activity as president of the Society of Amer- 
 ican Friends of Musicians in France, an organization formed 
 for the purpose of obtaining funds to aid French musicians 
 and many foreigners who were studying music in France, 
 
106 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 and who had suffered on account of the War. Several 
 months after his election as president more than 65,000 
 francs were sent to the various societies to be distributed 
 among artists in straitened circumstances. Dr. Damrosch 
 thus combined his mission of music to the soldiers with 
 substantial aid to his fellow-musicians in France. Be- 
 sides his work in France, he gave many concerts in home 
 camps and cantonments in America. 
 
 The American Army also had the historically suggestive 
 experience of being entertained by a native American 
 Indian singer, a Cherokee girl, daughter of a former chief 
 of that tribe. Her name was Tsianina. She had been 
 educated at Eufaula Indian School and at Wolf Hall in 
 Denver. Tsianina, or, as the boys delighted to call her 
 because of her proud and erect posture, Princess Tsianina, 
 sang and crooned the old Indian lullabies of her forefathers 
 and did many of the stately Indian dances. There were 
 15,000 Indians in the American Army, and Tsianina, both 
 in America and overseas, did her best to bring to each and 
 every one of them the message of aboriginal music and 
 culture, to the study and expression of which she has de- 
 voted her life. 
 
 Tsianina had two brothers fighting in France. Con- 
 sequently, she could not go over until the rule was abrogated 
 which refused to allow women entertainers in America to 
 go to France if any member of their immediate family 
 was fighting abroad. One of her brothers was killed, and 
 the other, a member of the signal corps, saw action through- 
 out all the major battles. 
 
 Another Cherokee girl played Pocahontas to the American 
 Army. This was an Oklahoma girl, Galilohi, whose Amer- 
 ican name was Anne Ross. It was Galilohi who was chosen 
 to pose for the Zolnay statue of Sequoya, one of her Indian 
 ancestors, who was the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet 
 
STRENUOUS DAYS FOR THE TROUPERS 107 
 
 and one of the great leaders of American Indian culture. 
 Sequoya's statue now stands in the Hall of Fame at Wash- 
 ington, and Galilohi was fittingly chosen to unveil it when 
 it was presented to the pubUc in 1918. The Indian name ^ 
 Galilohi means ''one who does things well," and this Indian 
 princess lived up to her ancestral name by singing and 
 dancing for the soldiers of the Ninetieth Division, which 
 contained hundreds of Indian soldiers. She also, as plain 
 Miss Anne Ross, filled in her time as a tireless and diligent 
 canteen worker and a girl of all work. I 
 
 A distinguished personality of these strenuous days was 
 the eldest daughter of the President. Margaret Wilson 
 went to France on October 23, 1918, after spending the 
 spring and summer touring throughout camps and army 
 centers at home, singing to more soldiers than have been 
 reached, probably, by any other single entertainer. Her 
 splendid energy and enthusiastic devotion carried her 
 through a similar trip which covered, during the seven 
 months she spent abroad, practically every center that 
 the American Army was then occupying. It was a re- 
 markable effort by a woman who knew how far the magic 
 of her name and the semi-official character of her mission 
 carried a real message from the American people to the 
 men in France. 
 
 Miss Wilson was accompanied by Mr. Ross David, her 
 singing instructor, who had traveled with her on most 
 of her tours throughout America and who was himself 
 an accomplished baritone and genial platform singer. 
 Mrs. David was the accompanist, and this remarkable 
 woman, herself a composer and a poet, raised the task of 
 accompanying Miss Wilson's songs to a very fine art indeed. 
 
 Throughout this whole period leading up to the victory 
 
108 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 (Armistice Day), and on till the last American soldiers 
 left France to return to their homeland, the troupers 
 were in constant action. Through the hospitals and con- 
 valescent camps their songs and laughter were ringing. 
 The entertainment forces, now hundreds strong, threw out 
 their barrage of good nature along the lines. What magnifi- 
 cent tales of adventure could be told of this whole loyal 
 I army of entertainers if the limitations of space would only 
 \ allow! Tales of self-sacrifice, fortitude, courage, patience, 
 \ and all the noblest qualities of manhood and womanhood, 
 but we must now turn to the oncoming invaders under 
 the indomitable James Forbes — the Troupers from the 
 Over There Theatre League. 
 
o 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 KEEPING STEP WITH THE DOUGHBOYS 
 
 "0, wfiat men dare do! What men may do! 
 What men daily do, not knowing what they do!'^ 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 It was in the late summer of 1918 that the American 
 Army began to upset the idea that this war could be fought 
 X)nly in the trenches. Wherever the American Army went, 
 open fighting took place — open fighting in which for the 
 first time in the whole War the tide of victory began to 
 set steadily and surely against the enemy. In similar 
 fashion Mr. Forbes and his much-tried volunteers had 
 been forced to ^^break through" the obstructions back 
 home in America before they could begin their first drive 
 in France. July dragged on; and at length Mr. Forbes, 
 figuratively speaking, addressed his fellow-volunteers in 
 this wise: ^'I have told you, you were going to France to 
 act for the soldiers; and yet after thirteen weeks you are 
 still waiting — and still here. This is magnificent, but if 
 it is war, then Sherman was right. And so I am going 
 down to Washington to fight it out on these lines (apol- 
 ogies to General Grant) 4f it takes all summer.' " Thus 
 began the siege of Washington. 
 
 The General Staff was organizing the first strokes of 
 the counter-offensive that stopped the last German drive 
 in the middle of July. But General March found time 
 enough to be interviewed and finally surrender — to Mr. 
 Forbes. General Churchill, then Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Churchill, head of the Military Intelligence Division, 
 signed, sealed, and delivered forty-four actual, authentic, 
 and long awaited passports. 
 
 109 
 
110 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 The fact that there were no steamship reservations 
 available was a small obstacle before the accumulated 
 momentum of three months' impatience. To save Mr. 
 Forbes from the imminent danger of being stampeded by 
 his own troupers, the Women's Department of the ''Y" 
 postponed enough canteeners, and the Men's Department 
 vacated the places of sufficient secretaries to make a little 
 gap in the passage lists on various ships just large enough 
 for the first of the Leaguers to creep in. Thus it was that 
 on July 31, 1918, the first contingent of American players, 
 five in number, to be sent abroad by the Over There Theatre 
 League, set sail, closely followed by twenty-three others. 
 The departure of the first unit was an event — and from 
 then on the invasion of France by the professionals was 
 a constant, forward movement. 
 
 ''No one will forget the unique experiences of the early 
 period," says Mr. Forbes. "One young lady of the first 
 contingent, who shall be nameless, burst into the office 
 of the League at eleven o'clock, three hours before she was 
 to sail. She protested in tears and complete despair that 
 she could not go after all. The office by this time was 
 beyond any reasonable accountability for its actions; so 
 it simply waited dumbly for her to state the trouble. 
 
 " 'Haven't you been telling me all along,' she said, 'you 
 must have ten things to go to France? Well, I have only 
 nine. Look for yourself,' and she dumped the contents 
 of her handbag on the desk; while she related how she had 
 unpacked her trunk and hand luggage twice and had 
 worried all through a sleepless night, she checked off the 
 following list: 
 
 Passports with French and British vises, 
 
 War zone pass, 
 
 Y M C A certificate of identification, 
 
 Certificates of inoculation and vaccination, 
 
 Orders for steamship tickets, 
 
 Twelve extra passport photographs, 
 
KEEPING STEP WITH THE DOUGHBOYS 111 
 
 French and English money, 
 
 Baggage labels, 
 
 Contract with the League and with the Y M C A, 
 
 League salary card. 
 
 'The missing item was No. 8, baggage labels, and they 
 were on the excited young lady's trunk!" 
 
 Fortune, that most fickle and exasperating of stage 
 managers, had piled one anticlimax on another until she 
 bade fair to make the contribution of the American actors' 
 great drama in France one long, heartbreaking rehearsal 
 in America. It must be admitted, however, that when 
 she finally got them cast and on the way to the scene of 
 action, she then proceeded to evolve a series of situations 
 that satisfied the most exacting temperaments among 
 the actors and their soldier audiences. Picture, for instance, 
 the soldiers who were waiting for "real home stuff" greet- 
 ing the first company that arrived under the banner of the 
 Over There Theatre League. Will M. Cressy and Blanche 
 Dayne were the leaders of this company. 
 
 There are very few Americans who have not seen or 
 heard of that most familiar of all American stage classics, 
 "The Old Homestead." Who does not remember the 
 corn huskings and spelling bees and countrified sagacity 
 of that rock-ribbed old American drama? Who, especially, 
 could forget Cy Prime, the greatest of all story tellers of 
 the cracker barrel brigade, every one of whose stories could 
 be proved "if only Bill Jones were alive!" 
 
 Well, Cy Prime was Will M. Cressy, and Will M. Cressy 
 was Cy Prime, and so much has Mr. Cressy mingled him- 
 self with his first and greatest characterization that he 
 still lives on a little New Hampshire farm. He has lived 
 on the same farm, in the same town, with the same wife, 
 for thirty years. He met Blanche Dayne in "The Old 
 Homestead" and they have lived in it ever since. Mrs. 
 
112 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Cressy is also the heir of another great American stage 
 tradition. She was — yes, you have guessed it — little Eva 
 in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and for six years played the 
 unforgettable part of Rickety Ann in 'The Old Home- 
 stead." For twenty years they have played in vaudeville 
 and have carried their country types, bom out of their 
 own shrewd observation and their own native hills, to 
 every city in America. 
 
 Certainly, then, it was a generous fate which cast these 
 two genuine Americans for the Over There Theatre League's 
 pioneer party, which sailed for France on the S. S. Megantic 
 on July 31st. The supporting cast of that little company 
 included three exceptionally able theatrical folks: George 
 Austin Moore, a vaudevillian and Winter Garden star, 
 who had traveled throughout the Orient with Donald 
 Frawley's famous "China Coast Players"; Howard T. 
 Collins, musical director in Victor Herbert's, "The Only 
 Girl," "Nobody Home," "Very Good Eddie," and other 
 successes; and last but not least, Helene Davis, a little 
 vaudeville singer who was another of the bright stars to 
 graduate from the first production of "Everywoman." 
 Later the party received a breezy reenforcement in the 
 person of Stella Hoban, who had sung her way to success 
 on Broadway in the "Oh Boy" and "Love o' Mike" pro- 
 ductions. 
 
 On the Megantic going over, there were 3,200 boys of 
 the Wildcat Division, National Army boys from the South- 
 ern Atlantic States, who later made that division one of 
 the most picturesque units in the American Army. Dur- 
 ing the nine days' passage the Cressy Company made 
 life exciting even for the Wildcats, and turned up with 
 twelve good generous shows. The company, on arriving 
 in England, had the honor of giving the first regular Over 
 There Theatre League show at the big Eagle Hut in London. 
 
 These pioneer leaguers arrived in France on August 20, 
 1918. Five days later they were headed out along the old 
 
KEEPING STEP WITH THE DOUGHBOYS 113 
 
 Neufchateaii-Toul circuit. On the Keith circuit in far- 
 away America the Cressys used to skimp along in the old 
 days with a carload of scenery to put on one sketch; in 
 France they had repertory of a dozen plays and they got 
 along on a suitcase apiece. The most unwieldy property 
 was the inevitable organ, the exact counterpart for a gen- 
 eration back of the familiar sitting-room ornament in "The 
 Old Homestead." Occasionally there was a piano; and 
 Mr. Collins, who had to live up to his description in the 
 program as "at the piano," kept it as clean of rust and 
 mud as possible under the circumstances. The Cressy 
 Players quite deserved the name of "that dead game bunch." 
 How they made good so emphatically, Mr. Cressy's own 
 words may help to explain. This is how he describes the 
 exciting days of their first trip to the front: 
 
 "This is a great route we are playing. I started in my 
 career of crime, via the footlight ladder, about as near the 
 bottom as anyone could. My weekly remuneration, if 
 I could get it, which I couldn't always, was six per week. 
 Now, twenty-five years later, I am getting twelve — and 
 paying expenses out of it. And, in addition, living in such 
 dirt and general filthiness as I did not know existed. I 
 am writing this by the light of a candle in a dirty room 
 in an awful French inn, where the furniture consists of two 
 lame chairs, two beds, and a wounded table. We don't 
 talk the language, and don't have to, but take what they 
 bring us to eat, which is black bread, string beans, car- 
 rots, and some kind of meat, the original shape and name 
 of which we do not ask. 
 
 "But at that, there is not money enough in all America 
 to make one of us quit our job. Oh, if you could see what 
 we can do for these boys! We are now playing to men 
 who have been up in the front line trenches in the midst 
 of such hell as you cannot imagine — himgry, dying, seeing 
 their best friends die at their sides — for weeks and are 
 now back before going at it again. When I start in to talk — 
 I open the show with a 'single' — their faces are drawn and 
 tense. But gradually they begin to relax, the lines go, 
 the smiles begin to come, and then, when I think the 
 
114 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 time has come, I go after a real, man-sized laugh. I may 
 not get it the first time, but by the time I hand them over 
 to Helene Davis they are feeling better, and from then 
 on the laughter and applause and cheers are such pay 
 as no living player ever received in America. And then, 
 at the end, to see the changed men that go out of the 
 Y M C A huts — well, God has been good to us to let us 
 have this opportunity.'' 
 
 Mr. Cressy was a great lover of the doughboy. He 
 knew the man who wrote home to America, ''I am touring 
 France in an hommes-chevaux four-wheeled car"; and the 
 legless doughboy who received a pair of socks as a Christ- 
 mas present, but proved he had not had his sense of humor 
 amputated by getting up a little presentation ceremony 
 and presenting them to a man who had lost both his hands 
 in the same hospital. With all these lovable, inimitable, 
 fun-loving, and lion-hearted boys. Will Cressy made good. 
 You can see him as he stands with his arms around a group 
 of "your sons and mine," leading the vociferous hymn 
 which was among all other songs the darling of the dough- 
 boys' hearts: 
 
 '^We are, we are the Doughboys, 
 
 With the dirt behind our ears; 
 We are, we are the Doughboys, 
 
 Our pay is in arrears; 
 The Caval-ree, Artil-ler-ree, 
 
 And lousy Engineers, 
 Oh-h they couldn't lick the Doughboys 
 
 In a hundred thousand years!" 
 
 The Cressy show was a simple affair which, after the 
 company had got into the swing of a circuit, practically 
 ran itself. Will Cressy generally opened the program by 
 stepping to the front of the stage and giving his famous 
 monologue. One of the best features of this monologue 
 was his own little poem, 'The Boy Next Door," for ''that 
 is what these kids over here are to me," he says in one 
 
KEEPING STEP WITH THE DOUGHBOYS 115 
 
 of his letters, ^'just the boys next door, and that little 
 poem never failed to make us friends at the start." Then 
 he would indulge in that famous theatrical sport known as 
 ''kidding the set," that is, he would introduce the piano 
 and tell how the only way that last night^s show was given 
 was by means of four husky doughboys holding a tarpaulin 
 over the said piano in the midst of a terrific downpour; 
 he presented the various wounded chairs and incapacitated 
 tables serving as furnishings of the New England country 
 home; the scene of the night's drama would likewise be 
 ''kidded" into proper perspective. 
 
 "These two soap boxes," he would say, "are the dear 
 old family sofy, and here is the supper table — imagine 
 it has four legs instead of three — with the old red checked 
 table cloth, and among other things the good old-fashioned 
 New England cream pitcher with real cream for real Yankee 
 coffee." This was the signal for a deafening outburst, for 
 most American boys who went abroad had by that time 
 forgotten that real milk had ever existed. In the Riviera 
 Leave Area "kidding the set" became a totally different 
 kind of pastime, but none the less a laugh-getter; for the 
 New England homestead had to be played at Nice, Men- 
 tone, Cannes, and similar "swell" places, in a room dec- 
 orated with Louis XIV furniture and gilded French mirrors. 
 
 Mr. Moore was a capital singer and an invariable success, 
 and beside his own special part in the performance, he was 
 usually cast for a strong part in the playlet which followed. 
 Almost all the plays were of Mr. Cressy's own writing. 
 Then- alluring titles included "Bill Biffin's Baby," "The New 
 Depot," "Town Hall Tonight," and "Wyoming Whoop." 
 
 The Cressy Company was one of the first Over There 
 Theatre League troupes to cover the Riviera district after 
 the Armistice. For three months more they continued 
 their unabated war speed of four or five shows a day. ' 
 From dawn until dark they could be found in the hut, 
 and when the time came for them to start for home late 
 
116 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 in February, 1919, they left a splendid record of ungrudged 
 and generous service behind them. 
 
 Will Cressy had that happy faculty which a great many 
 more actors possess than the world gives them credit for 
 — the abihty to get on with the people with whom he was 
 working. This is what he said of his relations with the 
 Young Men's Christian Association: 
 
 "Of course, soul saving was entirely out of my line. 
 My religion had always been a good deal like the one 
 white shirt that was issued to me along with my two O. D. 
 shirts. I had it with me all the time but I didn't use it 
 much. But I do not believe there was anybody, man 
 or woman, who saw more of the American soldier boys 
 or the workings of the American 'Y' in France than Mrs. 
 Cressy and I. For seven and a half months we banged 
 and bumped around the eastern front, playing at from 
 three to seven different camps a day. We played at over 
 four hundred different camps. We played to something 
 over eight hundred thousand boys. And all under the 
 auspices of the Y M C A. And if we do not know the 
 organization, I don't know who does. To put the facts 
 in one small bundle, I want to say that anybody who finds 
 fault with the Y M C A as an organization is mighty mean 
 or mightily mistaken." 
 
 None of these actor folk, least of all modest old Bill 
 Cressy, want to be called heroes. In Mr. Cressy's case 
 a wreath of honor should be placed upon his reluctant 
 brow. Like many of his comrades, he went into the gas 
 zone whenever his job called him there. He was gassed, 
 like many others, but how badly he did not realize until 
 almost a year later when the ax he was wielding on his 
 New Hampshire farm slipped and made a deep gash in 
 his leg. The gas poisoning in his system then operated 
 on this surface cut and brought about an infection which 
 it may take an indefinite period to heal. It is as honorable 
 a wound as any soldier endured in the cause which he 
 went overseas to serve. 
 
KEEPING STEP WITH THE DOUGHBOYS 117 
 
 But for the fact that this narrative has of necessity 
 been constructed in a series of parallel lines, along which 
 the players in this great drama seem to lead a much more 
 consecutive kind of life, independent of one another, than 
 was really the fact, the adorable and whimsical career of 
 Margaret Mayo would have flashed across these pages 
 long ago. At one time or another this energetic little 
 playwright and actress met everybody on the circuit and 
 everybody met her. She took over "The Mayo Shock 
 Unit." It goes without saying that the author of "Polly 
 of the Ch-cus," "Baby Mine," and "Twin Beds" had a 
 sound idea as to what would amuse the American soldier. 
 Certainly her company was a splendid witness of her in- 
 stinct for the right people in the right place. It was a 
 great company that could include, beside Miss Mayo, 
 two such feminine stars as Elizabeth Brice and Lois 
 Meredith. 
 
 Elizabeth Brice is the girl who, just as in a novel, stepped 
 out of obscurity one night into the satin slippers of the 
 star — one night when Grace Van Studdiford was taken 
 suddenly ill — saved the performance, and became an un- 
 mistakable star herself. She twinkled her way to the 
 reputation of one of the most roguish and fetching musi- 
 cal comedy stars of the day. 
 
 Lois Meredith came to Broadway from the Alcazar 
 Stock Company of San Francisco, but didn't stay there 
 long, for one of the road companies of "Peg o' My Heart" 
 claimed her talents in the name part; then she went on to 
 more fame in the movies. The men included Will Mor- 
 rissey, the famous vaudevillian who has recently been 
 Miss Brice's partner in "Buzzin' Around"; Thomas J. 
 Gray, the vaudeville comedian who sang himself to fame 
 with the song, "Any Little Girl That's a Nice Little Girl 
 Is the Right Little Girl for Me," and who has written over 
 200 playlets and short stage pieces; and W. Raymond 
 Walker, pianist, music publisher, and accompanist. 
 
118 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 When 'The Mayo Shock. Unit" went ''trouping with 
 the troops," it strove to play straight to the doughboys. 
 The troupe played for more than ten weeks in the thick 
 of the steady but terribly costly advance of the American 
 Army. Miss Mayo herself gives a typical setting of these 
 performances in a passage from her breezy and very per- 
 sonal Httle book, 'Trouping for the Troops." They had 
 arrived in the midst of a forest. Although there were 
 thousands of American troops within a few miles, the 
 encampments were so densely camouflaged in a thick woods 
 that from her own little lookout absolutely nothing could 
 be seen of human occupancy. 
 
 "Each day our local secretary would take us in a car 
 to some thicket where within twenty minutes we would 
 have such an audience as none of us shall probably ever 
 see again. Sometimes we would mount a truck for our 
 performances, for wagons, artillery, and horses were also 
 concealed in these woods, but more often we would play 
 on the ground. The officer in command would give the 
 order for the first few hundred boys to lie flat, those be- 
 hind them were permitted to kneel, those at the back 
 could stand, and those who were left over' would 'shinney' 
 up the trees like squirrels and drape themselves across the 
 branches and hang suspended in strained attitudes during 
 the entire show. If we happened to be playing in a young 
 forest we were sometimes almost dizzy with the swaying 
 of the slender saplings waving back and forth under the 
 weight of hiunan bodies. 
 
 "Sometimes our performance would be canceled or cut 
 short by the men to whom we were playing being sud- 
 denly ordered forward. On one occasion when our con- 
 ductor had happened to leave us to the Colonel of the 
 regiment, who had volunteered to send us home in his 
 car, the whole division was ordered forward in the midst 
 of our performance. The Colonel had no alternative but 
 to move with them. We were obliged to walk to the near- 
 est railway station and beat our way 'home' huddled to- 
 gether on a meat chest in a box car. We arrived about 
 midnight, hungry and chilled. As we picked our way 
 through the mud and the darkness up the hill toward the 
 
KEEPING STEP WITH THE DOUGHBOYS 119 
 
 barracks, our musician drew his foot out of a hole and 
 paused long enough to remark that he was sick of life. 
 He didn^t care whether his gas mask fitted or not. . . . 
 But the next morning we were all going back down the 
 hill in the sunlight with the despised gas masks and hel- 
 mets — off toward Verdun.'' 
 
 The Mayo party gave from start to finish a light-hearted 
 vaudeville show, a regular "little night at home" by itself. 
 Will Morrissey told stories and played the fiddle, Tommy 
 Gray sang, Lois Meredith danced and sang her song-hits, 
 and Miss Mayo herself resumed her career as a comedienne 
 to put on a bright little informal act all by herself. Also 
 there was usually a skit in which everybody took part. 
 Miss Mayo never claimed to have the latest jokes. "The 
 old jokes well told," says Miss Mayo, "are better than all 
 the new jokes on earth." 
 
 Maybe the best chance the company had to see how 
 the boys felt about it was the one time they played in a 
 real theatre up near Argonne. It was crowded to the roof 
 with buck privates and poilus, shoulder to shoulder. 
 The poilus were quiet during the time-worn gags from 
 back home. Will Morrissey, with his vaudeville jokes, 
 got only a polite murmur from them. Tommy Gray, 
 with his alfalfa whiskers, amused them very mildly. Pretty 
 Lois Meredith won real but sedate appreciation; and even 
 Ehzabeth Brice, singing "Buzz Around, Buzz Around," 
 with all the pep in the world, was welcomed quietly, so 
 far as the French half of the audience went. 
 
 But the doughboys! The doughboys made up for all 
 that. Not since the time when the theatre was divided 
 into three parts had that gallery so resounded! Whistling! 
 Clapping! Stamping of feet! But the next morning while 
 the troupe was at breakfast, a delegation of French visi- 
 tors, including the Mayor of the town, called upon them. 
 They wanted, they explained, through an interpreter, to 
 compliment the company upon the most excellent per- 
 
120 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 formance of the night before, and to present their pro- 
 found apologies for the rudeness to which the players had 
 been subjected. They were grieved to the heart that there 
 should have been whistling during such a charming pro- 
 duction. 
 
 And so the Mayo Shock Unit weaves throughout the 
 Army its web of cheer and encouragement. Its members 
 sing one day in a base hospital. On another they make 
 a dash to Paris at a gala show at the Tuileries Gardens; 
 next day they play at a barge canal, at a little camp be- 
 hind the lines where a lonely service unit has just finished 
 putting up a little platform for the first entertainment 
 they have ever had; next day they are in the midst of the 
 front, playing in a barn somewhere south of Montfaugon; 
 another day they are in a nice little theatre just as far 
 front, but, to their amazed eyes, having all the appurte- 
 nances, footlights, dressing rooms, and real scenery of an 
 up-to-date playhouse; now they are playing in the drench- 
 ing rain under a camouflaged stone rest-billet for the for- 
 ward artillery; now they play for the gas units, and after- 
 ward eat a friendly meal in the gas chamber itself, an ugly 
 little structure which looks like an ironlined hogshead, 
 but which their presence makes as bright and cheery as 
 the snappiest cabaret in Paris. 
 
 In late October or November, 1918, they make a tri- 
 umphal little tour through the rest areas and leave cities 
 of eastern France. While they are there, Margaret Mayo's 
 presentiment that the War would be over before they got 
 back to the front comes true. Late in November the 
 little company breaks up, a shock unit no more, but a 
 group of individuals who have given abundantly. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PUSHING UP TO THE FRONT 
 
 "7^0 he generous, guiltless^ and of free disposition is to 
 
 take these things for bird holts that you deem cannon hul- 
 
 lets." 
 
 Twelfth Night. 
 
 It is said that the only complaint Marshal Foch and the 
 Allied staff ever made of the American Army was, "You 
 can't hold them back." That, too, was the only real trouble 
 with the actors — they wanted to play right up to the 
 German trenches. 
 
 There never was a group more thoroughly expressive 
 of the American "never-say-die'^ spirit. The streets of 
 Paris soon began to look as familiar as "dear old Broad- 
 way." Here on this August afternoon in 1918 we find 
 our old friends — Irene Franklin of "Redhead" fame, and 
 her husband, Burt Green. Here, too, are Corinne Francis 
 and Tony Hunting, likewise twin luminaries in married 
 stardom. They are just starting on a conquest which is 
 to result in an unconditional surrender of the armies. 
 They sailed on August 5, 1918. 
 
 Stage folk, when confronted by the harlequinade of 
 getting about in this bizarre dayUght world, are the great- 
 est satirists in creation; and Irene's account of what was 
 perhaps the most exasperating voyage of any made by 
 members of the Over There Theatre League is a little 
 classic voyage of satirical humor. Miss Francis and Mr. 
 Hunting, by the way, had started two days before and 
 were spared all this. 
 
 "We left on the S. S. Quilpue/' says Miss Franklin. 
 "It was her maiden trip across the Atlantic. Well, finally. 
 
122 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 to skip a lot, we arrived at a port somewhere near the 
 North Pole (it was only Scotland, but that's near enough). 
 The harbor looked like a Russian toy shop gone mad. 
 All the ships were covered with bright screaming camou- 
 flage. Not a single color was omitted. 
 
 " 'Now, look here,' I said to Burt Green, 'if we are going 
 to stay in this place two days, I'm going to give some 
 shows,' so we went ashore and found a theatre which we 
 rented. Then I asked the captain if he would wigw^ag 
 to the captains of all the boats in the harbor and ask if 
 their men could come to the show. I guess that was the 
 first time that a program with all the acts and names of 
 the performance was announced in real shipshape sailor 
 fashion. All the captains except one agreed. That one 
 commanded a special mother ship to submarines or some- 
 thing of the kind and everybody was strictly kept off her 
 mysterious decks. Everybody? Well, now listen. That 
 afternoon I hired a tug, and Mr. Green and several of the 
 other entertainers went out to that ship. The stern cap- 
 tain came to the side and said nobody could come aboard. 
 He looked so sorry, that I thought I might take a chance, 
 so, standing on the rope ladder, we started one of the 
 strangest shows that you ever saw on sea or land. I don't 
 know what watch it was, but before we finished everybody 
 was watching us. Finally, just as I had thought, the 
 stern captain relented and I led a troop of boys to the 
 back deck, where I shut my eyes and said I wouldn't tell 
 what I'd seen, and then for about a half an hour we gave 
 a regular show." 
 
 Irene Franklin and Burt Green made a remarkable 
 team, and the fact that Miss Franklin's physician had 
 warned her of a nervous breakdown a few weeks before 
 they started for France only made her work the harder. 
 After a short period out on the front line circuit, they 
 met Tony Hunting and Corinne Francis. The four of 
 them, ''The Broadway Bunch," put on a combined show 
 during the big weeks of the St. Mihiel offensive. They 
 were playing just south of Verdun when that offensive 
 got under way, having just "detrained" in the midst of 
 the Woevre Wood, all loaded down shoulder high with 
 
PUSHING UP TO THE FRONT 123 
 
 bedclothes, costumes, gas masks, helmets, make-up, and 
 other equipment. "We looked like a couple of caravans," 
 says Miss Francis, "as we rolled off the train, but our 
 entrance got a big Yankee laugh and that made our aching 
 limbs a lot less tired." 
 
 A vivid idea of the kind of show these four clever enter- 
 tainers were giving may be had from the account of an 
 enthusiastic soldier critic in the Plane News, a weekly 
 sheet issued at a big aviation center. 
 
 "There are shows and there are shows, and there are 
 just productions. The true classification of the 'Redhead' 
 show, however, is that it is one of the biggest and greatest 
 productions on the stage in the A. E. F. And the most 
 remarkable thing about it is that only four people make 
 up the entire cast. Irene ranks first; she is ably accom- 
 panied at the piano by her husband, Burt Green, who 
 also is the single-handed orchestra for the other big part. 
 Miss Corinne Francis and Tony Hunting are real come- 
 dians. The curtain rises if their stand happens to be in 
 a place where such a thing is available. Burt Green is at 
 the piano, and after they hear his first selection the audi- 
 ence usually wishes that the evening program might be 
 entirely musical. But Corinne and Tony soon cause this 
 feeling to disappear and create an uproar. Their comedy 
 is about as genuinely American 'as they can make 'em.' 
 
 "Miss Francis displays fine talent with instrimiental 
 and vocal selections and Tony clogs himself up into further 
 fame. When this couple has finally satisfied the bench 
 warmers and escaped from the continuous cry of 'Encore' 
 Miss Irene reappears as the little 'Redhead' in bloomers. 
 It is impossible to describe the effect of her song and ex- 
 pression. Time flits by all too quickly, and almost ere 
 one has had a chance to appreciate fully her splendid 
 effort, the curtain has separated the audience from the 
 finest entertainment that ever struck France." 
 
 This is straight-from-the-shoulder doughboy criticism. 
 And the fact that it deals with superlatives is no reason 
 why it should not be applied to many another show, for 
 
124 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 in the generous atmosphere of France every show that 
 really made a hit was "the best that ever came over." 
 
 Like their teammates, Miss Francis and Mr. Hunting 
 gave an informal and extremely adaptable vaudeville show, 
 in which either partner could do almost anything people 
 generally do in vaudeville, from playing musical instru- 
 ments to dancing and singing. Hunting and Francis so 
 fell in love with the work that they decided to stay over 
 as long as there was any work to do; and as they gradually 
 became veterans they accumulated in an unusual degree 
 the store of experience which was Hfe's greatest compensa- 
 tion overseas. 
 
 Perhaps their most unique show, best illustrating their 
 exuberant generosity and good will, was given one day 
 when their car overtook an ammunition train of fifty- 
 eight motor trucks. These had pulled up by the side of 
 the road for a few minutes' rest and overhauling. About 
 four hundred men were in the convoy, and a lot of them 
 were in bathing as the entertainers came by. The boys 
 spotted Hunting and Francis at once as entertainers. 
 There were cheerful greetings, then somebody shouted, 
 "Can't you give us a show?" And Corinne Francis replied, 
 "Sure, let's give it right here." So the grimy motor drivers 
 who hadn't been in bathing, and the clean ones who had, 
 all gathered around in a large circle. Hunting and Francis, 
 vaudeville headliners and distinguished comedy artists, 
 got down in the chalky-dusty road and gave their show 
 for all it was worth. Ear-splitting yells greeted their sallies 
 and songs. With the shouts of the doughboys echoing their 
 choruses to the horizon, they got back into their machine 
 with tired lungs and voices but full hearts and drove away. 
 
 At another time in the Argonne they gave a show on a 
 little homemade stage down in the valley, with 3,100 
 doughboys looking down from the hillside. This time, as 
 on many other occasions, they had no piano. Miss Francis 
 strummed the guitar. After the show was over she went 
 
Doughboy Masqueraders at Coblenz 
 
 Rehearsing the Heavy Villain 
 
At Versailles 
 
 
 — f- 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ — '*"~^-*-^ ^ ^'^ 
 
 mm. m 
 
 1 
 
 ^giw 
 
 B^B 
 
 ^H 
 
 i 
 
 Counted Out 
 
PUSHING UP TO THE FRONT 125 
 
 out among the groups of men and sat down on the steps, 
 wherever there were any, and played whatever the boys 
 called for — proving a veritable angel of music to the men 
 who were, within a few hours, to go back into battle. 
 
 A very exceptional performance was in a French foyer 
 about five kilometers behind the line, where they were 
 billed to give two shows. The first show went off all right, 
 but in the midst of the second there came a blistering air 
 raid. Bombs actually dropped all around the hut. Miss 
 Francis was singing and playing the guitar when the raid 
 started. She never turned a hair, but continued to sing 
 and play, calmly passing from one song to another. The 
 French poilus, who were fond of American songs under 
 all conditions, caught the spirit of the American girl. Their 
 voices rang out in the choruses of "Smiles, '^ "You'll Never 
 BeUeve Me," and the always infectious "Pack Up Your 
 Troubles," until the air raid was finished and Miss Francis 
 declared both shows over. A young French captain who 
 was present said it was the finest example of American 
 nerve he had seen in the War, and declared that he would 
 put in a claim for a decoration for Miss Francis at once. 
 The organization soon afterward went back into the battle 
 lines, however, and the great veil of the War dropped over 
 their lives again forever. 
 
 "The Broadway Bunch" made a specialty of "girly" 
 dresses. This made them welcome even before they spoke 
 a word or tuned their instruments. It must be added that 
 it was not only the doughboys who were glad to see these 
 pretty dresses. Nobody ever gave "The Broadway Bunch" 
 a more enthusiastic hand than the nurses, those stout- 
 hearted American girls who braved the privations of the 
 front and the deprivation of feminine clothes for many 
 long months. All they could wear for variety was a colored 
 sweater, and they cheered heartily whenever their eyes 
 were filled with the delight of real clothes worn by the 
 women entertainers. 
 
126 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Hunting and Francis played at Verdun and St. Mihiel, 
 at Dun-sur-Meuse, one of the last towns captured by 
 the Americans, and at the Verdun citadel. Immediately 
 after the War they undertook the very heartening work 
 of playing to the returning prisoners. They made a spe- 
 cialty of this at Verdun, and many a group of ragged, 
 footsore, soul-weary Britishers, who had been confined in 
 German prison camps for two, three, and four years, got 
 their first welcome into their own world through this fun- 
 radiating pair at the shows in the old Verdun citadel. 
 
 'The Broadway Bunch^' was recruited up to strength 
 again by the addition of Edgar H. LeVan, and, at differ- 
 ent times, Tsianina and Marguerite Perry Bailey. In 
 December, the long triumphal visit to Germany began, 
 which lasted for six months. 
 
 There Miss Francis created a record. She and her 
 partner arrived there in the middle of December, 1918, 
 among the very first of the troops of occupation. How 
 they did it is still more or less of a state secret, but, like 
 the great example of the Americans in the War, they got 
 there in time. On December 13th the American Army 
 crossed the Rhine; and on December 15th Coriime Francis 
 sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Coblenz. This was 
 the first time that song had been heard in Germany since 
 1914. With this send-off. Hunting and Francis played 
 the entire Army of Occupation circuit and in time were 
 given charge of the booking office of the Coblenz Area. 
 Here they came to manage the numerous theatres and 
 entertainment huts in the great leave and administration 
 center around Coblenz. They sang in Luxemburg and 
 Lorraine, along the Saar and the Moselle, and in royal 
 castles under the ancient arms of Rhenish robber barons. 
 
 Corinne Francis again showed the spirit she had mani- 
 fested in action when, under the strain of continuous 
 entertainments and vindictive weather, she found that 
 she still had the will to sing but with a comparatively 
 
PUSHING UP TO THE FRONT 127 
 
 evaporated voice. She might have justly taken six weeks 
 or two months^ leave to safeguard those vocal cords on 
 which depended not only all her joy in life but her liveli- 
 hood. Mr. Steele offered her a leave, but it was returned 
 with thanks. "I can't sing a note," she said to Mr. Steele, 
 ^'but just try me in the soldier show development section 
 as a coach. If I can't put on a show, let me help the boys 
 who can. That's where the need is and I want to be in it.'* 
 Miss Francis was in it for a month or more, during which 
 she carefully nursed her voice back into health again, 
 but gave all her intelligence and skill to the continuous 
 dress rehearsals of the soldier entertainers. When she 
 came back to Coblenz and sang again, tuneful, fresh, and 
 irresistible, she got a reception the like of which was seen 
 on only a few other occasions in the Army. 
 
 Any show that contained Leo Donnelly, Will J. Kennedy, 
 and James F. Kelly just had to be called "The Shamrock 
 Show." Leo Donnelly is one of the best comedians. Will 
 Kennedy is one of the best known funny men on the pop- 
 ular-priced vaudeville circuit known as the Columbia 
 Wheel. James F. Kelly and Emma Pollock, who have 
 toured together for many years in a comedy singing and 
 dancing act, have never failed to captivate the strong 
 Irish and Irish-admiring public wherever they went; Miss 
 Pollock especially has a reputation of long standing in this 
 field as a soubrette entertainer in the good old Irish plays 
 of the Harrigan and Hart management. Helen Goff, the 
 fifth member of the show, has played to Al Jolson and 
 supported Kitty Gordon. 
 
 'The Shamrock Show" arrived in France on August 
 12th, and, controlled by home contracts, stayed abroad 
 during the four crucial months of the emergency period. 
 During that time, however, they accomplished great results. 
 The enthusiasm of the troupe was kept at fighting pitch 
 
128 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 by its inspiring and hard working leader, Leo Donnelly, 
 who wrote home from the thick of things: ^'I never was 
 so dirty, tired, and happy in my life. I wouldn^t change 
 places with any actor in America for the biggest salary 
 ever paid. I am having the time of my life. It is the 
 greatest real work that I have ever done, and believe me, 
 I sure am happy." Donnelly spread a good deal of this 
 happiness about France. 
 
 Will Kennedy had an extraordinary knowledge of the 
 outside appearance and the particular individual quality 
 of every large city in the home country. After a show, 
 the boys would flock aroimd Kennedy just to ask him 
 questions about what the latest news was from Oshkosh, 
 or Little Rock, or Los Angeles, or Portland, wherever they 
 happened to come from. Kennedy would come back with 
 gossip about the folks, the elections, and the record of the 
 local baseball team. As a traveling purveyor of home town 
 gossip, Kennedy was a walking wonder. He could remem- 
 ber the exact situation of the best lunchcart in town; he 
 could describe the local grill room which the real people 
 always patronized; he could discuss the flavor of chile 
 con carne or frijoles or the aroma of the immortal baked 
 bean with equal felicity, and in those days when home- 
 cooked food was the ultimate of all earthly bliss, his after- 
 the-show reminiscence act was a most enduring winner. 
 
 Helen Goff's songs were memorable. ^ 'Helen is a riot 
 with the boys,'^ writes a member of the League, ' 'because 
 she knows how to handle them. Her songs go with a bang. 
 Above all, she is typically American and the boys just 
 love her and her work." And then after this little come- 
 dienne had finished her jazz music, Emma Pollock stepped 
 forward and sang ''Maggie Murphy's Home," with Jimmie 
 Kelly acting as a whimsical foil to this uproarious old 
 melody. 
 
 "The Shamrock Show" got up to the front in the days 
 of the great advance, and started on a tour which the 
 
PUSHING UP TO THE FRONT 129 
 
 Seventy-Seventh Division, the New York National Army 
 Unit, at any rate, will never forget. They played in the 
 Argonne and the Woevre, and they went out on the great 
 circuit from Verdun. In the areas where German bombs 
 and long range artillery — and an occasional leakage of gas 
 — penetrated, 'The Shamrock Show" continued its work, 
 as vital to the success of the division, as one staff captain 
 put it, ''as a regiment of infantry." The armistice period 
 found them "mopping up" in the leave areas; and the 
 beginning of January, 1919, found them embarking at last 
 for the homeland, veterans who had fought a good fight 
 and had added their bit to the war prestige of their pro- 
 fession's honor. 
 
 From the wealth of the war experience of these Over 
 There Theatre Leaguers it is possible, because of space 
 limitations, to give the merest suggestion of what was 
 accomplished with the American Army throughout the 
 area of the War. Take the unit, for instance, called so 
 modestly "A Little Cheer from Home." It set sail from 
 America, August 9, 1918, and was composed of Inez Wilson, 
 famous during the past few years on the Canadian stage; 
 Henry Souvaine, a concert pianist who has accompanied 
 Caruso and Galh-Curci; Eleanor Whittemore, a violinist; 
 and Ethel Hinton, monologuist and reader. 
 
 Their program opened with an ensemble number, fol- 
 lowed by snappy songs by Inez Wilson, violin solos by Miss 
 Whittemore, and monologues and impersonations by Miss 
 Hinton. Mr. Souvaine played the accompaniments. The 
 party got into St. Mihiel ten days after the Germans had 
 been driven out. Here they gave a show in the old Roman 
 fort. Fort du Camp des Romains, to thousands of French 
 soldiers. Miss Wilson sang in French, and the piano was 
 an abandoned Boche instrument. They found meat in the 
 icebox, soup on the stove, and bags of potatoes on the 
 
130 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 floor— real food, which was the surest evidence that the 
 Hun had been caught unawares. During one show a shell 
 dropped 200 yards away; they kept on without a hitch. 
 They entertained on another occasion 8,000 Polish Amer- 
 ican soldiers. The Poles sang their national anthems with 
 heads bared, the most impressive sight the troupe saw 
 during the War. On some nights the whole sky was illumi- 
 nated with fire, and the shelling became so heavy that the 
 Commanding Officer ordered them back. 
 
 The most protected place in the Ford, even in the drench- 
 ing rain, was always given to the old piano. They trav- 
 eled in ambulances and on foot, in trucks, narrow gauge 
 railway cars, and flat cars; and they gave shows in camps 
 which had not seen an American girl in thirteen months. 
 They gave one historic performance on the inmiortal 
 Dead Men^s Hill at Verdun. On another occasion they 
 had a thrilling experience in an advanced American artillery 
 position a few kilometers from the front. 
 
 "The Americans were brigaded with the French,'' Mr. 
 Souvaine writes, "and we had a few hundred Americans 
 sitting around the piano, the French forming a fringe on 
 the outside and hanging all over the roofs of the adjoining 
 huts. All during the show the Boche and French artillery 
 near by gave me a real symphonic accompaniment, which 
 sounded just Hke 'old times' Wagner recitals. Three Boche 
 planes came over to see the show after we had started, but 
 the boys were very poor hosts and sent them home with 
 a barrage of air shells." 
 
 Frequently, when the crowd was too big to get into the 
 hut, Mr. Souvaine took the piano outside and played to 
 the crowd that couldn't get in; he put on this feature at 
 a great Polish American camp where 7,000 men climbed 
 on trees and houses in a vast crowd around him. 
 
 This unit was one of the few parties chosen to tour Italy. 
 During the final stages of the Italians' last great offensive, 
 they followed the Italian Army into Austria. Here they 
 
PUSHING UP TO THE FRONT 131 
 
 rendered magnificent service to the American regiment 
 attached to the Italian /^my and to the ambulance drivers 
 and aviators whom America loaned so liberally to the 
 Italian front. 
 
 January, 1919, found "A Little Cheer from Home'' 
 being dispensed in Germany. They were assigned for a 
 good part of their stay with the Thirty-Second Division, 
 the Ohio National Guard unit — the Red Arrows, as the 
 world has come to know them. Here they circulated 
 throughout the region around Rengsdorf. When they 
 left in February, Major General Lassiter, commanding 
 the Thirty-Second, sat down and wrote this straightfor- 
 ward little tribute, which expresses in its way the finest 
 and most characteristic type of appreciation, such as a 
 real entertainment group unfailingly got from the high 
 American command: 
 
 "I should like you to know," writes General Lassiter, 
 "how much this group of talented people has done in 
 maintaining the cheerfulness and contentment of the 
 officers and men of the Division. They have put up with 
 all sorts of hardships without murmur; they have enter- 
 tained the men of all the little garrisons we maintain through- 
 out the Coblenz Bridgehead; and always they have made 
 light of the difficulties in the way and have won the hearts 
 of our men. The entertainment which they have given 
 has always been of a high class, never appealing to anything 
 but the better instincts of the men, and I think it has been 
 very interesting to observe that this has been the type 
 of entertainment most enjoyed and appreciated by the 
 soldier men. Everyone in the Division hates to see them 
 go. I feel that they have shown a spirit in carrying out 
 their part in this war worthy of the best type of soldier, 
 and I cannot too much thank you and the Y M C A for 
 putting their services at the disposal of the Thirty-Second 
 Division." 
 
 D. C. Mclver was what they called in the British Army 
 
132 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 a "dugout." It took the War to bring him out of the quiet 
 of a new profession and thrust him back behind the foot- 
 lights. For many years Mclver had been an illusionist 
 and magician in vaudeville, but some five years before the 
 War he retired from the stage and went into mining in 
 Arizona. When the War broke out, he figured that he was 
 worth more to the soldiers as a magician than as a mine 
 operator. Abandoning his mining, he assembled a little 
 company called "Magic, Melody, and Music.'' Mclver 
 took over with him his former accompanist. Miss Madeline 
 L. Glynn, and rounded out the quartet with Alfred Armand, 
 the tenor, Hal Pierson, the bass, and Louise Carlyle, of that 
 famous vaudeville organization, the Manhattan Trio. They 
 sailed on August 5, 1918. Mr. Mclver reports early in 
 September: 
 
 "In the seven days since our landing, August 25th, 
 the Magic Unit has given twenty shows, five of which were 
 under shell fire, some with piano and some without. We 
 have given them with fully equipped stages and also on 
 truck bodies, in airplane hangars, hospitals, and stables. 
 Miss Glynn is one of the best soldiers in the world. She 
 goes everywhere we go and undergoes all the inconveniences 
 without a miu-mur. The two boys, Hal Pierson and Alfred 
 Armand, are great, and my own work is going very nicely 
 with the boys. We leave today for the front, with full 
 equipment — tin hats, gas masks, knapsacks, and blankets. 
 No baggage except the egg bag and music rolls." 
 
 In Troyes, about half way between Paris and the front, 
 the Mclver Unit found a wounded American aviator alone 
 in a local hospital. They loaded him into a truck and 
 took him to town to see a real show on a stage, with foot- 
 Ughts and piano. It was the first show he had seen in 
 France. "He was so happy that he cried," reports Mclver. 
 
 Amparito Farrar was a picturesque artist who went 
 over in what afterward came to be known as the second 
 
PUSHING UP TO THE FRONT 133 
 
 wave of entertainers. She sailed August 9, 1918. Miss 
 Farrar is an Oregon girl who spent most of her early life 
 in California; she studied in Paris, Berlin, and London, 
 and became a noted Ijrric soprano. She was of immense 
 service abroad not only because of her beautiful voice — 
 she had sung in grand opera at the Royal Opera in Vienna, 
 and in light opera in New York — but also because of her 
 remarkable fluency in languages. She spoke with equal 
 facility English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. 
 She was accompanied on her trip by her mother, Mrs. 
 Guadalupa Farrar, who is an accomplished pianist. 
 
 Miss Farrar gave a very successful series of Franco- 
 American concerts, specializing in the American troops 
 brigaded with the French, where the mixed audiences 
 welcomed her and fell in love with her on about even terms. 
 "I have sung," she writes home, "in motor camps, huts, 
 bakeries, hospitals, and even at the bedsides of the boys, 
 one at a time; everything from grand opera to 'Tickle Toe.' 
 I even dance a little. Such a spirit! They want to get 
 right out of bed and go back at the Boches. And they 
 want the best you can give them — nothing is too good 
 for them." 
 
 Miss Farrar also sang in municipal theatres, where her 
 European reputation secured her a constant welcome 
 among the French and other Allied soldiers along her 
 itinerary; but always dearest to her heart were the audi- 
 ences of doughboys on whom she centered her efforts as 
 far as possible. "They seem to love us," she writes, "and 
 I know I love them. It never fails to bring a throb to my 
 heart to hear Americans on the street when they catch 
 sight of us as we go by. They always say 'American girls! 
 Gee, those American girls look good to me!' Well, I am 
 certainly glad I am an American girl, and I never was so 
 glad of it before." 
 
i 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 KNIGHTS AND LADIES 
 
 *'The expectancy and rose of the fair state 
 The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
 The observed of all observers!" 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 Many an American girl discovered that there was no 
 place in the world where she was safer than in the Amer- 
 ican Army. It is not to be wondered at that some of the 
 most successful of all the entertainment troupes were those 
 which were composed of women only. These traveled 
 about France with no escort, manager, or male protector 
 whatsoever. 
 
 The experience of these American girls is one of the 
 finest tributes that can be given to the soldiers. More- 
 over, it forms the basis for a psychological study into the 
 character of American youth as it expressed itself under 
 the strain and stress of war. One of the hundreds of Amer- 
 ican girls who could bear such witness is Vera Barstow, 
 who ran the gamut of the A. E. F. up to the firing line; 
 and she declares: "The American doughboy was the truest 
 gentleman I ever met. First, last, and all the time he 
 was a gentleman wherever he met an American girl." 
 
 The unit known as "The Musical Foursome" sailed from 
 New York on the transport Lapland on September 16, 
 1918. It was composed of Miss Barstow, violinist; Maude 
 Allen, soprano; Lucie Babcock, accompanist; and Mildred 
 Evans, reader. Hardly had they passed the Statue of 
 Liberty when, with another unit aboard, they began to 
 entertain the soldiers on deck, most of whom were marines 
 from a camp in Florida. An epidemic of flu broke out, 
 which resulted in much sickness and a number of deaths. 
 
 134 
 
KNIGHTS AND LADIES 135 
 
 Miss Barstow, too, got the flu. In Liverpool the unit gave 
 its first overseas entertainment for American soldiers. 
 From there they went to Paris for two weeks and enter- 
 tained at the hospitals and the near-by camps. 
 
 ^The first day we played/' says Miss Barstow, "was in 
 the hospital at St. Denis; there were two thousand badly 
 wounded cases. We played for the boys three hours and 
 I never can forget how grateful they were, and how their 
 faces lit up. In the evening we went to an anti-aircraft 
 station and played for the men. They had been there 
 six months and had not seen an American woman; in 
 fact, they had seen nothing in the way of entertainment. 
 These boys were so excited over the fact of our being there 
 that they didn't know what kind of an entertainment 
 they wanted — the chief thing to them was that there were 
 four American girls there. When Miss Mildred went on 
 to tell her funny stories they were shouting before the 
 point came out. We shook hands with all the boys. We 
 always made it a point to do that wherever we were. One 
 night while we were in Paris we went out with about fifty 
 other ^Y' girls to dance with an outfit in a near-by camp 
 — and they treated us like long lost sisters. 
 
 'Tn the Argonne Forest we were attached to the Army. 
 The Army had to billet us, feed us, and look after us in 
 every way. When we joined the division we were per- 
 mitted to take with us only one suitcase apiece. We also 
 had an army cot, blankets, and a gas mask. Water was 
 terribly scarce and we didn't have a bath until we got 
 back to Bar-le-Duc — three weeks later. We had very 
 little to drink and occasionally it was a toss-up as to whether 
 we should scrub our teeth or drink the good water that 
 we happened to get. Usually we got up too late for break- 
 fast. We would go straggling along the road until we 
 came to an army kitchen and then make friends with the 
 cooks. In that way we fared very well. Incidentally, 
 this was a good way to become acquainted with the dough- 
 boys, which was part of our duty as entertainers. We 
 had instructions before we left Paris not to favor the officers 
 and we always made it a point from the very beginning 
 to mix with the doughboys. 
 
 ''Once, when we were with the Eightieth Division, there 
 
136 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 was a bunch of men — they were muleteers — who never 
 seemed to be able to hear the entertainment. We told 
 them we would entertain them during their lunch hour 
 and promised there should not be one officer present. 
 Several officers appeared on the scene and we shooed them 
 away, very much to the delight of the men. The buck 
 privates enjoyed immensely our jokes on the officers, 
 especially when the officers were present. 
 
 '^Leaving the Eightieth, we penetrated deeper into the 
 Forest to join the Seventy-Seventh. This was right in 
 the heart of the Argonne. Here we were billeted in German 
 dugouts. We could hardly tell from day to day where we 
 were or what we were doing. The first night we were 
 nearer the front than we realized. We had no cots, but 
 I was completely exhausted and slept all night long and 
 didn't hear a thing. The girls did not sleep at all. 
 
 ^^Our first German dugout was an underground theatre 
 which seated about three hundred people. The walls were 
 whitewashed. They put us in the dressing room. We 
 had a stove and were quite comfortable. This was after 
 we had gone to join the Seventy-Seventh Division; the 
 
 ^ men were all in the line. The Colonel told us he would 
 try to get permission to take us into the field hospitals. 
 They didn't allow women in these hospitals; they did not 
 even have women nurses. We went up there and gave 
 an entertainment. The wounded men seemed to like the 
 violin music. It was quiet and helped to distract their 
 minds from the pain. We played in the treating 'rooms' 
 — it was just a tent, of course. The wounded were brought 
 in on stretchers and the stretchers laid right down in the 
 mud. We took turns going into the shock 'rooms' to write 
 letters and take messages from the dying men. We played 
 three days in succession at this hospital; the second day 
 they brought in the wounded men from the Eightieth 
 Division, and the third day they commenced bringing 
 in German wounded. Most of them were just young boys 
 
 ! and they were very thinly clad. The material in their 
 clothes seemed like fiber. It was bitter cold weather. 
 They wore just a uniform of this fiber-like material and 
 their top coat, neither of which was heavy. I remember 
 one boy with a shattered leg; they ripped open his uni- 
 
 i form and I saw that he had neither socks nor underwear." 
 
KNIGHTS AND LADIES 137 
 
 Many are the stories of their experiences that these 
 girls could tell. One day, while the boys are fighting their 
 way step by step, driving the German invaders before 
 them, we find Miss Sarah Willmer, a Chicago girl, riding 
 ten miles in a terrific storm that was almost a cloudburst 
 to a camp of soldiers where there were to be 5,000 men in 
 her audience. She arrived with her pretty white frock 
 soaked. When she mounted the platform it looked, as a 
 soldier said, "more like a last year's nightdress left out in 
 the rain'' than an evening gown. But there was no time 
 to change, and she gave her show with the abandon and 
 enthusiasm which come when you feel that nothing worse 
 can happen whatever you do. Months afterwards, when 
 she was giving out cigarettes in a hospital back of the 
 lines to the boys who were being unloaded from a fleet 
 of ambulances, an lUinois boy, noticing her uniform, said: 
 
 ''The last 'Y' girl I saw was up in the night before 
 
 the St. Mihiel drive. Her name was Sarah Willmer — I re- 
 member her because she came from my state. I shall 
 never forget as long as I live the blessed white dress she had 
 on the night she recited to us. We had not seen a white 
 dress, it seemed to us, in years. There we were with all 
 our gas masks at alert, all ready to go into the line, and 
 there she was talking to us just like a girl from home. 
 It sure was a great sight, you bet; and don't forget to tell 
 her if you ever see her." 
 
 There was one ward in a big hospital where no enter- 
 tainers had been allowed to go. Many of the men who had 
 been brooding, or muttering, or simply lying despondently 
 on their backs ever since they had been brought out of 
 action were perilously near losing their reason. One day 
 a young singer. Miss Paula Lind Ayers, asked the surgeon 
 if she could sing them some lullabies just to see what they 
 would do. She sat outside the ward and sang the most 
 
138 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 familiar song she knew, 'The Little Grey Home in the 
 West." There was absolute silence inside. Then came 
 another, ''Just a Baby^s Prayer at Twilight." Then she 
 sang old Southern lullabies and Negro melodies which 
 every American knows by heart— "My Old Kentucky 
 Home," "Way Down upon the S'wanee River," "Old 
 Black Joe," and finally "Abide with Me." Before she had 
 finished this wonderful group of heart songs — all of them 
 crooned rather than sung — almost the whole ward was 
 joining in the words. Men who had not spoken since they 
 had been stricken at the front were singing. There were 
 no more incoherent yelling or nerve-racking mutterings 
 for the rest of the day. The doctors had her come back 
 again and again, until the "lullaby cure" came to be one 
 of the most successful medical discoveries of the War. 
 No ragtime or catchy Broadway melodies could have done 
 this. When the boys did want something livelier, the 
 doctors said they were cured, and put them in the evacua- 
 tion ward. 
 
 The work of Miss Ayers was duplicated by scores of others 
 in the big hospitals and constituted one of the great spiritual 
 services of the War. Miss Alice Woodfin, one of the pioneers 
 who came over early in the spring of 1918, gave many 
 song recitals at* hospitals, and used as one of her chief 
 specifics the teaching of dancing to ambitious convalescents 
 who possessed both feet. At the end of one successful 
 evening^s singing. Miss Woodfin sat down at the piano 
 and began to play an enticing air that made everyone 
 want to get up and hop around. 
 
 "This," she said, "is one of the best dance tunes ever 
 written, boys. I am going to teach it to you right on the 
 spot — the music as well as the dance steps that go with 
 it. It is called the 'Tickle Toe.' " 
 
 There was a snicker, then a gale of laughter. Miss 
 
KNIGHTS AND LADIES 139 
 
 Woodfin hesitated, but her audience applauded uproari- 
 ously, so she went on, thinking they were laughing with 
 pleasure at the prospect before them. But the snickers 
 and giggles kept breaking out, and at last, after the lesson 
 was over, Miss Woodfin turned around and said to her 
 accompanist, ''Now tell me what the matter is." 
 
 So they told her she had taught "Tickle Toe" to the 
 Fiat-Foot Camp. 
 
 j 
 Another ''woman party" which upheld • the banner of \ 
 
 self-reliant womanhood was the little unit composed of j 
 Marian Chase Schaeffer and Marian Dana, of Chicago, 
 and Hazel Bartlett of St. Paul. They went over on Sep- 
 tember 24, 1918, on an unwieldy old ship that hit the 
 autumn seas heavy and hard and sprang a leak a few days 
 out. For six days there was water on the lower decks, 
 which finally reached a stable depth well above the ankles. 
 The boys in the bunks below figured that heavy seas and 
 decks awash would keep silk-stockinged entertainers up 
 in their proper places in the passengers' cabins, but these 
 plucky Middle Western girls took off their shoes and stock- 
 ings and went right down. They went down every day, 
 and with their feet covered with brine sang, "If He Can 
 Fight Like He Can Love, Then Good-By, Germany," 
 splashing about in the water to the tune of that rollicking 
 chorus as if they did that sort of thing every day. 
 
 There sailed from New York in October, 1918, a group 
 of four girls, "Just Girls" — Garda Kova, a classic and 
 esthetic dancer who undertook the management; Margaret 
 Coleman, soprano soloist at St. Matthew's, New York; 
 Marguerite Sumner, singer and story-teller; and Diana 
 Kasner, pianist. They landed in England, dividing their 
 time between London and King Llynn. They then went 
 
140 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 to France and were in Paris when the Armistice was signed 
 They entertained the Twenty-Sixth, Seventy-Seventh, and 
 Eighty-First Divisions around Chaumont, then went to 
 the Riviera and Marseilles, back to Paris, and to all the 
 larger camps again. All this was in midwinter. 
 
 If a single group were to be selected for mention as 
 typifying the spirit which sent the entertainers over dan- 
 gerous seas and through sunless days in cheerless billets, 
 none would be more surely representative than ''Just Girls.'' 
 Their engagements were so continuous and so exactly 
 met that the unit was finally destroyed by the illness of 
 two of its members. Margaret Coleman returned to Amer- 
 ica, her health seriously impaired. The unit was later 
 revived by Diana Kasner, with three new members, and 
 it followed the Third Army to Coblenz and played three 
 months in Germany. 
 
 Out of all the companies which remain, let us take a 
 final glance at the unassuming but eventful record of one 
 of the most tireless little units of all, 'The Electric Sparks." 
 Headed by Harry Israel, its membership included Annie 
 Abbott, the Georgia Magnet, who had a jiu jitsu act in 
 which she guaranteed to lift or throw the largest sergeant 
 in the audience (and invariably made good) ; Doris Thayer, 
 a New England girl who did character singing and mono- 
 logue and made the song "Oui, Oui, Marie" universally 
 known throughout the American Army; and Gladys Sears, 
 who did almost any kind of dialogue from Swedish to 
 Italian, but fixed her principal attention on Irish songs, 
 and rose to universal appreciation by the manner in which 
 she rendered the classic lines of "Knox 'Em Down, 
 McCluskey." 
 
 ''The Electric Sparks" went over on October 26, 1918, 
 and Armistice Day found them the big feature on the 
 bill at the gala performance at the Eagle Hut in London. 
 
Y Minstrels in Action 
 
A Royal Stairway 
 
 The Famous Palais de Glace 
 
KNIGHTS AND LADIES 141 
 
 They entered France by means of the much traveled Brest 
 route, and for many weeks played the lonely towns in 
 Brittany surrounding the great Brest embarkation camp. 
 Here they put a new breath of life into the thousands who 
 were chafing under the first disillusion of the long delay 
 in getting transportation home. Brittany was primitive 
 enough for any American quartered there, so ^The Elec- 
 tric Sparks" soon become accustomed to playing on a 
 dirt floor, in bams having no windows and with what the 
 doughboys called 'Ventilated" roofs, to let the Brittany 
 rain in. The pianos universally suffered from that richness 
 of tone which the Brittany sea air and seven days of rain 
 a week gave to mediocre instruments which were never 
 tuned. 
 
 Their long spell of unremitting work took its usual toll. 
 Miss Abbott was forced to remain at Brest to recover 
 from an influenza-threatening cold, while Miss Thayer 
 was operated upon at the same time for an eye affliction. 
 This necessitated the regrouping of the company, but 
 while in Paris Mr. Israel was fortunate enough to enlist 
 in his company the services of Robert WooUey, a Y M C A 
 Secretary from Schenectady, N. Y., who had come over 
 in September as a religious worker and had been through 
 the thick of the War as one of the best known vocalists 
 and song leaders in the battle of the Argonne. 
 
 The show had a lively final number composed of a medley 
 of catchy song hits, working up to a climax in which the 
 whole company, and the whole audience usually, joined 
 in "The Darktown Strutters' Ball." At first Mr. 
 Woolley was off the stage when this great number was 
 put on, but one day he asked if he might not take part 
 in it. So "The Electric Sparks" taught him some dance 
 steps, lively ones but with due regard to his professional 
 restraint, and at the next show Woolley appeared in the 
 center of the stage and danced his steps in the finale. The 
 result was a crashing, smashing hit, and the show closed 
 
142 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 amid the stormiest doughboy approval they had yet seen. 
 Thus did the Church and stage cooperate to the profit 
 and edification of the friendliest critic either of them ever 
 had — the American doughboy. It was a partnership multi- 
 plied in many other sectors, in the give-and-take fraternity 
 of the World War — and many a doughboy got a religious 
 message from a loyal old stage veteran like Will Cressy, 
 and learned what a good laugh really was after seeing 
 Robert WooUey on an A. E. F. stage. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 TWO MAKERS OF ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY 
 
 "// this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it 
 
 as an impossible fiction. ^^ 
 
 Twelfth Night. 
 
 Two events occurred in the autumn of 1918, while the 
 American Army was engaged in the great offensive, which 
 carried the troupers to new conquests. The first event 
 was the arrival direct from America of a dynamic per- 
 sonaUty, a man so charged with magnetism that he be- 
 came loved not only by every entertainer in France, but 
 by every soldier with whom he came in contact. The 
 second event was the arrival in France of a woman who 
 was to "conquer" the Army of Occupation, after it con- 
 quered the Germans. A. M. Beatty arrived in France 
 early in September, 1918; and Dorothy Donnelly, vice- 
 president of the Women's Stage Relief Society, arrived 
 toward the last of September. Both immediately began 
 to make history. 
 
 Beatty is intimately known, perhaps, by more actors 
 than any other man who went to France. Because of 
 this important qualification, and his ability to make new 
 friends, he was placed in charge of the Personnel Section 
 at Entertainment Headquarters in Paris from the time of 
 his arrival until June, 1919, when, at the request of Walter 
 H. Johnson, Jr., who then returned to America, he was 
 appointed his successor as chief of the whole entertain- 
 ment organization. 
 
 Familiarly known everywhere as "A. M.," Albert M. 
 Beatty — theatrical manager by profession, diplomat by 
 training, and a regular fellow, whose friends early dis- 
 
 143 
 
144 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 covered his inexhaustible vein of golden humor — sat on 
 the lid in the entertainment department during all this 
 period. Sometimes the lid rocked, often it was shaken, 
 and there were many rumblings underneath. But when 
 you saw Beatty you knew at least ''one reason'^ why it 
 was held down, and why the energies of hundreds of stage 
 people were so well directed that the whole enterprise came 
 out of the War with the imiversal approval and gratitude 
 of the American Army. 
 
 Beatty 's job was to direct the personnel. These are 
 simple words, but they express a complex maze of duties 
 far too numerous to recapitulate. One can only appeal 
 to the imagination and endeavor to grasp the job of a man 
 who had to fit the tempestuous moods and artistic tem- 
 peraments of actors into a program for entertaining a 
 fluctuating army in a country where transportation and 
 accommodations were the most uncertain quantities in 
 the whole uncertain war. Beatty had to do this, and he 
 had to do it patiently, firmly, uncomplainingly, and suc- 
 cessfully. The fact that he did it, and that everybody 
 in any way connected with the operation acknowledges 
 that he did it wonderfully well, is as great a tribute as 
 can be paid to any man in a responsible position. Beatty^s 
 personal qualifications for his job included a physical frame 
 which should not be omitted in setting before the reader 
 this picture of the man and his work. It was a combina- 
 tion of John Bunny and Irvin Cobb — big, but none too 
 big to contain Beatty's heart, and that is the main point 
 in this story. 
 
 When Beatty first arrived in France, the performers 
 were being sent out on regular schedules and were being 
 capably and methodically handled, but there was no one 
 who really ''belonged" to the actors, who talked their 
 own language, and provided a shoulder broad enough for 
 them to weep out their troubles on. Beatty stepped into 
 this gap and filled it completely. He also attended at 
 
TWO MAKERS OF ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY 145 
 
 once to some very vital details. He found that the enter- 
 tainment troupes consisted mostly of parties too large 
 to be taken in one car on tour. These he broke up into 
 mobile units of not more than five persons. The total 
 number could cover a wider field and entertain more men, 
 and yet the units were big enough to put over something 
 good "even with one member sick." 
 
 Now matching up actors for units is no easy matter. 
 One ship would bring over theatrical recruits with a pre- 
 ponderance of piano players; another would land thirty 
 artists, of whom twenty would be singers, and in Paris 
 getting balanced parties ready for the road was a task to 
 turn a man gray. But Beatty neither grew gray nor lost 
 his avoirdupois. He insisted on keeping his smile. He 
 made it a rule that anyone who couldn't smile at the close 
 of the day's work in the office needed either a rest or a 
 release — and they got one or the other. The units were 
 first sent around the circuit near Paris for a few days, 
 where Beatty could ''dash out of an evening and get a 
 look at their work with the boys." This also gave the 
 players time to quarrel, which, being human, they some- 
 times did, and that called for readjustments. After the 
 try-out was over, and the readjustments had been made, 
 the units were booked for the big circuits and sent forth. 
 
 Expense accoimts are fearful and wonderful things in 
 the hands of theatrical folks. ''They simply don't know 
 and can't understand them," explains Beatty, "and I 
 couldn't deal with that phase of the work at all. But 
 fortunately we had two ' Y' girls who could, and these women 
 handled all our actors' expenses with a finesse that was 
 another modern miracle. They conserved the funds and 
 yet hurt no one's feelings, which was a delicate task. An- 
 other 'Y' girl ran our complex card-indexing system, by 
 means of which we knew the movements of every unit 
 and the records and affairs of every individual actor." 
 
 Let us observe the imperturbable chief awaiting the 
 
146 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 entrance of a typical "actress with a grievance" during 
 the big days of the final drive in October, 1918. She has 
 just come back from a tour in the Argonne, giving four or 
 five shows a day; she is physically worn out and has a 
 long list of grievances of which she says, "I want nothing 
 more than justice, but the moment anybody starts to argue 
 with me there will surely be an eruption." After a few 
 moments' wait in the anteroom enter wornout actress 
 through door at left, determined to blow up the manager, 
 resign, and go home. Business of hand shaking and sitting 
 down for talk. Then Beatty gets in his deadly work. 
 
 "Well, well, I'm mighty glad to see you, but you look 
 tired, and I know you are, because IVe been following 
 you through every mile of that nasty mud. IVe known 
 all about those awful billets. I know the food isn't what 
 you ought to have, and yet they wire me youVe put it over 
 in spite of everything and that you go strong. Now, youVe 
 had a wretched time, but how those boys have laughed! 
 IVe heard about it, and it did my heart good! We're all 
 tickled to know what youVe put up with without a grum- 
 ble and we're going to book you for a run into the S. O. S., 
 w^here you can get a little rest and sleep in a real, honest- 
 to-goodness hotel with a bed in the room and warm water, 
 and have coffee with real sugar in it. Now I can see you're 
 not yourself after this tour at the front, so just go to your 
 hotel, and take twenty-foiu* hours of complete rest. I'd 
 have my meals served in the room. Just lie around and 
 read and rest and have your clothes cleaned and pressed, 
 and then tomorrow, say in the afternoon at two, after a 
 good luncheon, come in and we'll talk things over." 
 
 She had been trying desperately to slip in her kick, but 
 Beatty beat her to it on one long breath. Before she knew 
 it Beatty was shaking her by the hand and patting her on 
 the back, and she was saying: "Mr. Beatty, I wouldn't 
 take a million dollars for my experience. It was too won- 
 derful for anything. I did have a horrid time getting 
 about, but I didn't suppose you knew how awful it was. 
 
TWO MAKERS OP ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY 147 
 
 and I didn't know you were keeping such a sympathetic 
 watch over me. You're a perfect dear, and I'm going back 
 just as soon as you'll let me to give those boys all the songs 
 and dances I can crowd in. Please let me go back as soon 
 as you can." 
 
 Nobody could have blamed these actresses, for, though 
 deep in their hearts they held an unswerving loyalty to 
 the cause they had come to serve, surely this was no easy 
 life for them. The reader who does not know the life of 
 the stage cannot imagine how difficult it was for theatri- 
 cal people suddenly to adapt themselves to the system of 
 booking and traveling which necessarily prevailed in France. 
 
 ''In America, we managers do everything for the actress. 
 They are told to have their trunks packed at five in the 
 afternoon," said Beatty in discussing this problem, "and 
 to be at the station at six. The porter takes the trunk 
 from the hotel room to the sidewalk. The property man 
 takes it to the station. There the manager checks it. 
 He stands on the platform and says, 'Your berth number 
 is 19.' In the morning he furnishes a list of hotels and 
 tells how to reach them, while the property man sees that 
 the right trunks go to the right hotels and rooms. The 
 manager has informed them of the hour of the rehearsal 
 or the curtain raising. The same thing goes on in endless 
 succession. But 'over there' it was different. The actress 
 had to be her own property man and she had to worry 
 about her own transportation — generally in a Ford. No- 
 body had time to worry for her. She studied her own time 
 tables, and they were written in French; she got her meals 
 where she could and more often went without them, and 
 made the circuit on her own luck and initiative, but was 
 held to the schedule. It was all very new and difficult 
 for theatrical people." 
 
 But there was another side to the experience, and Beatty 
 saw this too. He acted on the principle that a good per- 
 sonnel officer should get out into the field to see the con- 
 ditions which his personnel was up against. And so we 
 find Beatty getting away from Paris for a time in the thick 
 
148 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 of the fight, seeing his entertainers at work, watching 
 the last shows given to the boys about to go into the Hne, 
 and meanwhile writing inimitable Httle accounts of his 
 impressions. 
 
 '^One afternoon in the Argonne, I had one of our finest 
 women violinists and a splendid contralto soloist sing and 
 play for the boys of a machine gun battalion. It was in 
 a natural amphitheater, with the women on the bottom 
 of an overturned wagon on the hillside. The lads with 
 their fighting equipment by their sides were pressing close 
 around us — a thousand or more. We knew, and they 
 knew, that at dusk they were going forward, and that in 
 the early hours of the morning they would jump off for 
 the great adventure. Part of the outfit had just come in 
 as replacements and faced their first action. They knew 
 they had taken the places of casuals. The veterans had 
 in mind the fact that a man may go through one or two 
 scraps imscathed, but with every additional zero hour his 
 chances of not being hit grow less. We could hear the 
 rattle of machine guns. Shells were dropping occasionally 
 not far away. Overhead our aviators were patroUng the 
 sky to keep the German observation planes from coming 
 over into our rear. The boys didn't want jazz music then, 
 they didn't want coon songs. The girls gave them the old 
 tender ballads, things the mothers of these boys had loved. 
 Finally the soloist said: ^Boys, I'll sing one more. What 
 shall it be?' And what do you think they wanted? 'The 
 End of a Perfect Day.' 
 
 "I thought that girl would never carry on. I couldn't 
 look at her myself, for fear I'd let her see a quiver of my 
 lip. But she just nodded and to the sweet accompani- 
 ment of the violin sang it as splendidly as if it were at a 
 concert in Carnegie Hall. I knew she was using every 
 ounce of her physical and nervous powers to hold her 
 woman's heart strings from snapping. Then an officer of 
 high conmiand stepped out and said, ^Miss, would you sing 
 just one more? We want awfully to hear ^^The Rosary." ' 
 And then she sang that. It was too much for me, and I 
 went over and got very busy fixing things in the bottom 
 of the automobile." 
 
TWO MAKERS OF ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY 149 
 
 One of the outstanding sentences in Walter Johnson's 
 report in March, 1919, on the whole entertainment organ- 
 ization under his command reads: *'As a result of his 
 (Beatty's) lovable personality and tactful management, 
 he has held a great many entertainers in France whose 
 contracts would otherwise have expired.'' Mr. Steele 
 also goes out of his way in his final report to say: "A. M. 
 Beatty rendered invaluable service both during my tenure 
 of office and that of Mr. Johnson as head of what we might 
 call our Entertainment Personnel Division, receiving the 
 incoming entertainers, grouping them into units, regroup- 
 ing them when necessary, adjusting difficulties, straight- 
 ening out tangles, and acting as a father confessor to many 
 of the temperamental performers. Being a professional 
 theatrical man himself, Mr. Beatty was admirably qualified 
 for this work." 
 
 Consequently, when Mr. Johnson returned to America 
 at the end of June, 1919, A. M. Beatty was the logical 
 choice as the new head of the entertainment organization 
 overseas. At that time the entertainment section had 
 grown to an organization possessing 850 theatres and huts, 
 with a total seating capacity of more than 750,000, 
 181 of which were first class, fully equipped, full-sized 
 theatres. 
 
 It was Beatty who maintained this organization at its 
 highest pitch until the time came to ease off its activities 
 with the rapid demobilization of the American Army. 
 Even then, especially in the Paris and Le Mans areas, 
 new demands for entertainment arose here and there, 
 and the entertainment section was not able to finish its 
 official work until August 16, 1919, remaining to the end 
 as one of the last units of the whole American Army to be 
 demobilized and sent home. It was with a full heart that 
 Mr. Beatty closed the final report on August 30, 1919, 
 with these words of just and proper pride: "We have a 
 sense of having been of real benefit to the personnel of 
 
150 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 the Army and a feeling that our time has been well spent 
 and that we can, in honor, write Finis,' ^ 
 
 Now to our '^second event" — the achievement of Dorothy 
 Donnelly. Of all that army of fine dramatic artists who 
 went to France, it is fair to say that no one labored more 
 diligently and self-sacrificingly, or accomplished greater 
 results than Miss Donnelly, authoress, play collaborator, 
 and one of the real personalities of the American stage. 
 
 Dorothy Donnelly is best known to the American play- 
 going public for her performance a few seasons ago in the 
 title role of "Madame X." Long one of the organizers 
 and leaders of the Stage Women's War Rehef, Miss Don- 
 nelly was slated to go overseas as a dramatic coach and 
 organizer of soldier drama activity as soon as war condi- 
 tions permitted. Unfortunately her plans were subject 
 to the same delays that unavoidably deterred the Over 
 There Theatre League, but Miss Donnelly left on Sep- 
 tember 17, 1918, and spent in France and Germany almost 
 a year of untiring effort which made her one of the best 
 known and best loved figures in the American Army. She 
 took with her as collaborator and confrere, Mrs. Patricia 
 Henshaw, a California girl who was a concert singer, pianist, 
 and ingenue actress of ability and charm, and who became 
 known and adored as Patsy throughout the ranks of the 
 A. E. F. 
 
 Miss Donnelly's activities up to the close of the War 
 chiefly centered aroimd Chaumont, where the General 
 Staff was located. Here she and Mrs. Henshaw originated 
 and put together the first and one of the best soldier shows, 
 known by the irresponsible title of "Ah, Oui, or Y Not?" 
 This production was inspected by General Pershing, who 
 thought so favorably of it that he invited the King of the 
 Belgians and the Prince of Wales and other privileged 
 persons to special performances in their honor, but most 
 
TWO MAKERS OF ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY 151 
 
 of all he recommended his oldest and best friend, the dough- 
 boy, to go and see it. So ''Ah, Oui," had to make a tri- 
 umphal trip to Paris and spent a happy week at the Champs- 
 Elys^es Theatre. It then embarked on a tour of 
 France. 
 
 The most touching performance of "Ah, Oui" was given 
 at Chaumont itself, however, not for General Pershing 
 or for any other American, but as a Christmas ''jazzerina^' 
 — a word patented by the "Ah Oui" company itself — for 
 the kiddies of that little French provincial town. When 
 they arrived they found, not strange American ragtime 
 antics, but a beautiful little Christmas play in French, 
 written for them by Captain Joseph Hanson of the American 
 Army and acted by Dorothy Donnelly herself. At the 
 close of the performance, which had to be put on several 
 times so that all the children could see it, Miss Donnelly 
 presided, also in French, in giving out the presents. 
 
 Her own soldier actors, by now her fast friends, all 
 pitched in and helped her, and formed an awed group of 
 auditors for the little show in French. By this time they 
 regarded Miss Donnelly as their own personal property 
 and James Forbes, who was in the audience, just arrived 
 from America, heard one of them say in a breathless under- 
 tone: "Gee, listen to the way our Dorothy spills that stuff. '^ 
 "It was the best instance I saw while in France," said 
 Mr. Forbes afterward, "of the absolute identity of interest 
 and of 'belonging' to the Army achieved by a member 
 of the Over There Theatre League." 
 
 Besides coaching and staging "Ah, Oui," and providing 
 innumerable dresses, costumes, and lighting effects which 
 helped to make that performance memorable. Miss Don- 
 nelly and Mrs. Henshaw found time to give a series of 
 shows in the camps and army centers which clustered 
 thickly around Chaumont during the closing days of the 
 War. In spite of all their other prepossessions. Miss Don- 
 nelly and Mrs. Henshaw kept up almost a full-time program 
 
152 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 day by day, not excluding Sundays, always entirely sym- 
 pathetic to the audiences they knew so well. 
 
 Mrs. Henshaw had her own approach, which was none 
 the less sure and triumphant. Not only was she one of those 
 rare persons who can sing almost any song that ever has 
 been written, but at one time or another during her stage 
 and concert career she had packed away its words in her 
 memory. Patsy Henshaw would sit down at the piano 
 and play and sing the song you asked for just as the person 
 you had in mind used to sing it on that romantic occasion 
 you never could forget. 
 
 On one occasion there was a crossroads service for a 
 regiment of Negro troops, the last before they went into 
 the line. A Negro chaplain had moved the hearts of his 
 hearers with a stirring war sermon which ended with this 
 fine appeal: "So now you colored soldiers, free citizens 
 of America, at last have the opportunity to justify that 
 freedom which white soldiers fought for and won for you 
 sixty years ago. They are now watching to see if you, 
 too, are worthy of the fight to keep that freedom alive in 
 the world. Go in and win honor for yourselves and vic- 
 tory for America, and God be with you.'' 
 
 Then he announced in the most perfect stillness that 
 "this little lady" was going to sing some of the songs which 
 they had heard at their mothers' knees, their own songs 
 that they could remember as they went into the ordeal 
 ahead of them. Under the spell of this emotion-charged 
 introduction, Mrs. Henshaw stepped forward and sang 
 one after another of the Negro spirituals, arranged by 
 the great Negro composer, Burleigh— "Going to Jerusalem, 
 Just Like John," "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless 
 Child," "Deep River," and the finest of all these primitive 
 melodies, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Little by little, 
 as she sang these beautiful harmonies, other voices stole 
 into the refrain and as she concluded "Swing Low, Sweet 
 Chariot," a choir was following her, singing the eight bar 
 
TWO MAKERS OF ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY 153 
 
 harmony in accurately placed male voices, swelling the 
 melody to a beauty which no one who heard it could ever 
 forget. The auditors stood silent after the song was over, 
 many of them with the tears rolling down their dusky 
 cheeks, but in the yell which arose as the little automobile 
 drove away there was no weakness. It was a real war cry, 
 and it will ring in the little singer's ears forever. 
 
 The American Army was not an army of men alone. 
 There were the army nurses who were fighting a battle 
 of their own, none the less glorious, under conditions where 
 an evening's relaxation and a little unadulterated fun 
 might set up again the tone of the whole hospital personnel. 
 The Roosevelt Hospital Unit from New York, which made 
 up the bulk of the nurses of Base Hospital 15, just out- 
 side of Chaumont, was the first large group of nurses to 
 arrive in France. By Christmas, 1918, it had been in 
 active service for eighteen months and was proudly dis- 
 playing three service stripes among an Army most of 
 whose members could still boast of only one. So when these 
 nurses of Base Hospital 15 wanted to get up a show all 
 their own and turned to Miss Donnelly for assistance, 
 she let everything slip for the time being to help them 
 do it. The nurses' 'Tollies" ensued. It opened with a 
 rousing chorus of ''Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here," com- 
 ing out strong on the second line, much to the joy of the 
 patients and the doctors who crowded the hospital con- 
 cert hall to suffocation. Miss Huntington, a plucky little 
 nurse who had served in the advance dressing station 
 along the Mame, wrote the show, and a wounded lieutenant 
 arranged the music; so it was exclusively a home product. 
 The chorus, diligently coached by Miss Donnelly, grouped 
 itself attractively behind Miss Huntington as she sang, in 
 a natty lieutenant's uniform, "They Go Wild, Simply 
 Wild Over Me." But the most telling number of the 
 
154 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 evening was that of the nurse who dressed up ' 'eagles, 
 mustache, and all/' to look exactly like the Colonel. 
 She rode a bicycle across the stage and called down recreant 
 nurses in a manner exactly like the original, who sat in the 
 audience beneath. It only showed how much ''lady sol- 
 diers" can get away with in war. The show was so funny 
 and so admirably arranged and staged by Miss Donnelly, 
 however, that there was no official aftermath save good- 
 natiu-ed congratulations. 
 
 In January, 1919, after a short rest in Paris, Miss Don- 
 nelly and Mrs. Henshaw went up to Coblenz to under- 
 take the second and last chapter of their service to the 
 American Army. There Miss Donnelly directed for five 
 months the soldier shows of the great Third Army. To 
 say that she directed the theatricals of the Army of Occu- 
 pation, however, is only to suggest the bare outline of 
 the immense work she accomplished during this period 
 which was so trying for all. Miss Donnelly deserves a 
 substantial share of the credit for the sportsmanlike be- 
 havior of the American Army in Germany; for not only 
 did her little stock companies, led by her own Third Army 
 Stock Company of Coblenz, put on a series of plays, but 
 the entertainment program with which the Third Army, 
 largely on Miss Donnelly's initiative, was fairly deluged, 
 had a potent effect in every town in keeping the Amer- 
 icans, figuratively speaking, in step and with their heads up. 
 
 The danger that the Americans in Germany might have 
 to rely on German music and German theatrical com- 
 panies for their entertainment was averted, and the tide 
 of German artists who thought they were going to reap 
 a harvest was successfully rolled back before the widely 
 enlisted array of American stage ability that Miss Don- 
 nelly drew from the Third Army. The boys put on every- 
 thing from "Box and Cox" to "Hamlet," and their own 
 
TWO MAKERS OF ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY 155 
 
 orchestras played everything from ^'Just a Baby's Prayer 
 at Twilight" to chamber music of the highest class. In 
 fact, the little units of the American Army which are still 
 left in Germany continue to reap the benefit from the 
 entertainment program so competently carried on by 
 Dorothy Donnelly. There were many able administrative 
 heads whose cooperative effort made this achievement 
 possible, but the genius, the inspiration, which brought 
 forth the spontaneous response of the great American 
 doughboy, belonged unforgettably to Dorothy Donnelly 
 herself. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 SPREADING JOY ALONG THE LINE 
 
 "/^ would be argument for a week, laughter for a 
 
 month f and a good jest forever.'' 
 
 King Henry IV. 
 
 The examples of endurance along the front would re- 
 quire a Hall of Fame to perpetuate them. Every one 
 of the entertainers faced deprivations and hardships that 
 under ordinary conditions would have interrupted their 
 bookings. There is the "Some Pep^^ Unit, for instance — 
 it went "over'^ in this same autumn of 1918, headed by 
 two of the best known acts on the vaudeville stage, Rita 
 Walker, the dancer, and her partner-husband, Johnnie 
 Cantwell. Traveling with them in this unit were Bessie 
 Carrette of the Hippodrome, "High Jinks" and "The 
 Pink Lady'' and George Botsford, one of the greatest jazz 
 pianists in America. 
 
 The "Some Pep" Unit put on real jazz vaudeville stuff 
 all along the lines. They were waiting one day to catch 
 their train at a big junction on the American line of com- 
 munication. A long freight train came in, full of dough- 
 boys en route for the front. The entertainers on the plat- 
 form were not hard to spot. The boys yelled for an enter- 
 tainment. They got not one, but a series of shows all 
 along the train. Johnnie Cantwell and George Botsford 
 sang all their songs half a dozen times. Bessie Carrette 
 sang and danced, and little Rita Walker danced her jazz 
 from one end of the train to the other. 
 
 Johnnie Cantwell gives an alluring picture in real actor 
 language of the way in which the troupe left for the front 
 early in October, 1918: 
 
 "We left for the field today loaded down with equip- 
 
 156 
 
This is that so famous scene "over there." Arriving in 
 a strange town, preferably late at night, and finding nary 
 a "Y" representative or an army man to meet us — and 
 asking in our best ousjht-to-be French, "Ou est la Amer- 
 ican *Egreck M. C. Ah headquarter i?" 
 
On a Sight-Seeing Trip 
 
 A Few Stadium Champions 
 
SPREADING JOY ALONG THE LINE 157 
 
 ment/^ he says. "Can you imagine Rita Walker loaded 
 down with a blanket roll, five blankets, a grip, banjo, 
 musette bag, canteen, tin kelly, and a gas mask? And 
 she insisted on carrying them all. As she started to walk 
 down the platform to get into one of those trick railway 
 coaches the sight of that blond apparition loaded for bear 
 was too much for the French audience watching her, and 
 the French people as a rule don't pay any attention to 
 you no matter how you are made up. Soon two American 
 doughboys tripped over each other and relieved her of 
 most of her bundles. You will wonder why we did not 
 help her, but the fact of the matter is that we were all 
 loaded down, and if you didn't know George Botsford 
 you would think that he was carrying equipment for a 
 squad of doughboys minus the rifles. Well, we finally 
 got into our compartment, after tripping over a couple 
 of French generals." 
 
 They finally arrived at their destination. To go on with 
 Mr. Cantwell's story: 
 
 "I was standing in the lobby of the hotel while Felix, 
 the porter (by the way, all the porters in France are named 
 Felix for no reason at all) was telling me the history of 
 the War, and I called his attention to some of the shell 
 marks in the lobby. He told me that right where I was 
 standing three people were killed by a bursting shell. 
 Bessie Carrette said, 'Let's get the air,' so we left Felix 
 flat on the spot, before he had a chance to relate some 
 horrible details of the War and spoil our whole day." 
 
 The "Some Pep" Unit fixed up their show so that they 
 could give it on the road, or on top of a box car, or on 
 any sort of trick stage which turned up. This adaptability, 
 backed by their physical exuberance and endurance, cer- 
 tainly served them well, especially in their tours through 
 
 the hospitals. On one occasion, Mr. Cantwell wrote home: 
 
 • 
 
 "We played a big hospital up near the front in the after- 
 noon. It was quite a large place and when we made our 
 entrance into one of the large wards and they realized 
 that we were American vaudeville artists, well, I wish that 
 
158 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 you could have heard the cheering. For a moment, I forgot 
 that I was in a hospital. We put on the show and put 
 all the 'zizz' on, too. After we had gone all through the 
 place, and had counted up the house in every ward, we 
 found that our company in an hour and a half had sung 
 a hundred and twelve songs, and Rita had done her dance 
 twenty-seven times, and when I got through I found out 
 that I had tm-ned into a beautiful tenor.'' 
 
 When they got back to the officers' quarters after giving 
 their show, they heard one of the officers say, ''Well, Sam- 
 mie would certainly have enjoyed this." It turned out 
 that Sammie was an aviator who had started on a dan- 
 gerous mission that morning and had not returned. Just 
 as the entertainers were finishing their sandwiches and 
 coffee preparing to go back to their barracks, a pale face 
 was thrust through the door and a voice said, ''Well, boys, 
 what have we here?" It was Sammie! He had crashed, 
 and come back in a friendly ambulance unhurt save for 
 a few scratches. The returned aviator heard so much 
 about the "Some Pep" show that there was nothing to do 
 but to stage the whole performance all over again just 
 for Sammie. Then the tired quartet went back at last 
 to their hotel to prepare for more shows in the evening. 
 
 "Talking about the morale of the Army," says Mr. Cant- 
 well, "and how our shows affect the boys — we played in 
 a camp where the boys had not seen an American show 
 since their arrival in France. There were about three 
 thousand in the audience, and they were hanging all over 
 the rafters, and looking in the windows. The lights were 
 not working that night and the best we could do was a 
 row of candles for footlights and two lanterns for 'borders' ; 
 then they rigged up an auto lamp for a spot light and 
 away we went after them — and those boys thought that 
 'theatre' was lit up like the Hippodrome. I have never 
 in my life heard such cheers as we all received that night. 
 I happened to meet the colonel who was in charge of that 
 camp in Paris a few days later and he told me almost 
 with tears in his eyes that he would never be able to repay 
 
SPREADING JOY ALONG THE LINE 159 
 
 US for that entertainment we had given the boys; that they 
 were all like new men, happy and contented, and that 
 their efficiency had gone up a hundred per cent, and they 
 were all telling our jokes over again.'' 
 
 When the roll for ''endurance" is called, there is one 
 pair of mere men who should be allotted a substantial 
 share of credit for the extraordinary nerve and pluck they 
 added to an unusually successful and picturesque act 
 overseas. These are Harry H. Perry and Frank A. Vardon, 
 two Denver boys, who went over in October, 1918, and in 
 175 days of practically continuous entertaining gave 335 
 performances, each packed full of an hour of live-wire 
 music and singing. Vardon and Perry were true trouba- 
 dours — wandering minstrels. They produced the music 
 by means of two instruments slung over their backs, a 
 little guitar and a big bull guitar, but every boy will testify 
 that those instriunents certainly did create harmony. 
 Vardon and Perry played to the American troops in England, 
 France, Luxemburg, Germany, Belgium, and even in 
 Holland. Their enthusiasm was so great that the strain 
 and hardships were too much for Harry Perry. He de- 
 veloped a very serious throat disorder on his way home, 
 and the ship's surgeon declared that only by means of an 
 immediate operation could his voice be saved. The opera- 
 tion was successful, and Perry and Vardon came home 
 in June, 1919, a tired but thoroughly rewarded pair of 
 full-time entertainers. 
 
 The unit which went with them through the war zone 
 was known as 'The Live Wires." It included Helen Colley 
 as accompanist, who had accompanied the well-known 
 baritone, Henri Scott; Dora Robeni, vaudeville and stock 
 company actress in the Middle West; and the charming 
 Uttle Kentuckian, Margot Williams, whose over-night 
 success in the first production of "Experience" established 
 her on Broadway some years ago. 
 
160 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Miss Williams gives a little picture of the audiences 
 they played to, in one of her letters home: 
 
 "They told us/' she said, "that one show of the Y M C A 
 was worth a week's leave of absence to the boys, and I 
 can readily understand it when I remember how the boys 
 after each performance had begged us to send some other 
 shows to them as soon as we got back to Paris. The most 
 satisfactory work we ever did was with the sick and wounded. 
 We would go to hospitals and give a performance on each 
 floor and sometimes in each ward. Wounded soldiers 
 would take me by the arm and beg me not to leave with- 
 out singing again. One I remember particularly; he was 
 blind, and our singing, his friends told me, had been the 
 first thing that had interested him in months." 
 
 Another of these original joy spreaders in the Army 
 at this time was Burr Mcintosh — actor, lecturer, raconteur, 
 war correspondent. He went over to France early in 
 November, 1918, just in time to go straight up into Ger- 
 many and become one of the veteran entertainers in that 
 entertainment-hungry sector. A writer who was touring 
 the American Army shortly after it moved into Germany 
 gives this graphic description of the type of entertainment 
 Burr Mcintosh selected from among his talents to give 
 the doughboys: 
 
 "Picture, then, a big room, probably once the dining- 
 room of a hotel where rich Germans and foreigners came 
 as tourists to take a ^cure.' This high, square place is 
 crowded with boys in khaki, sitting on the benches and the 
 window sills, and standing against the wall. 
 
 "Up there on the platform is big Burr Mcintosh and 
 behind him a knot of amateur performers. Big Burr is 
 just talking — ^just rippling along, with here a story full 
 of laughs, there a bit of homely advice which received the 
 tribute of silent attention, then a question about what 
 those boys are going to do with their future which stirs 
 the hearts and ambitions of his listeners. Perhaps he 
 rises up and teaches the audience, 'Will yez all be wid 
 
SPREADING JOY ALONG THE LINE 161 
 
 me when I tackle Paddy Flynn?' Perhaps he shows some 
 of those marvelous card tricks of his which used to im- 
 press King Edward.'* 
 
 Burr Mcintosh varied his program with a lecture which 
 he called *'The Beast Hunters/' a straight-from-the-shoulder 
 warning against anarchy and Bolshevism, which was a 
 serious interlude in the midst of his funny stories. One 
 of his most frequent hits was a little poem he wrote himself 
 called ''The Doughboy." He lectured constantly, never 
 missing a night, and would have been at it all the time 
 if rheumatism had not gotten hold of him. He was ill with 
 rheumatism in Coblenz for five weeks and a half and later 
 in Paris for three weeks and a half. But during the time 
 he was able to be on the road he was an inspiration to the 
 boys, who never failed to admire his type of upstanding 
 adventurous American. 
 
 No reminiscence of this period would be complete with- 
 out a tribute to 'The Laugh Barrage." Here we find 
 Kate Condon as the leading spirit, one of the finest Gil- 
 bert and Sullivan actresses of the American stage. She 
 is ably supported by Amy Horton, formerly pianist at 
 Oscar Duryea's celebrated dancing school; Harry Adler, 
 the vaudeville ventriloquist; Florence Nelson, whom every- 
 body remembers as the "banjo girl"; David Lemer and 
 Paula Sherman. 
 
 Here, too, we meet on the roads of France "The Gloom 
 Chasers," a gallant sextette composed of Ray Walker, 
 Ida Van Tine, Olive Palmer, Hinda Hand, Bonnie Murray, 
 Eddie Fredericks, and Dunbar Averitt, one of the greatest 
 encouragers of sunshine the gloom-infested area of Le Mans 
 ever had. 
 
 Here we greet "The Quaint Quintette," including the 
 twins, Mary and Marie McFarland, who had a splendid 
 interchanging vaudeville act; Jack Cook, one of the best 
 
162 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 chalkologists in vaudeville; and an anonymous (as far as 
 the records go) accompanist. And here, too, we listen to 
 'Tricks and Tunes," which includes the lyric soprano, 
 Nella Allen; the pianologist and magician, Henry Markus; 
 and his charming partner in vaudeville, Erminie Whittell. 
 
 While chronicling, we must follow for a moment one of 
 the breeziest of all the companies that came over — 'The 
 Manhattan Four," headed by Carol McComas, the Broad- 
 way actress who graduated from musical comedy to dra- 
 matic eminence. Walter Dale, formerly one of the ablest 
 juvenile actors on the American stage, supported her, and 
 the two other members of the company were Jane Tuttle, 
 soloist at the Flatbush Congregational Church and Calvary 
 Baptist Church in New York, and Eleanore Rogers, from 
 the Society of American Singers' revivals of Gilbert and 
 Sullivan at the Park Theatre in New York. 
 
 'The Manhattan Four" upon their arrival in France 
 were given the privilege of going straight to Verdun. Here 
 they entertained the many units of the American Army 
 that were in radiating distance of that famous citadel. 
 The most genuine approval of their performance comes 
 from a detachment of the Fourteenth Engineers, who ad- 
 dressed the following little panegyric on the Manhattan 
 Four 'To the Whole World": 
 
 "Never in our experience on this western front has 
 anything pleased us as did the Manhattan Four last evening. 
 Eighteen months' absence from the theatre and entertain- 
 ment may sound like a short time to the average man, 
 but only those who have done without amusement as we 
 have can describe the yearning that comes over one to see, 
 hear, and be thrilled by the songs and patter of clever 
 entertainers. And so we looked forward to the Manhattan 
 Four — and we judged them long before we ever saw them. 
 'Let's go,' we said. 'It will be good just to see American 
 talent but, of course, we cannot look forward to the stuff 
 we had at home.' Well, sir, we take it all back. 
 
SPREADING JOY ALONG THE LINE 163 
 
 'That entertainment was the stuff to give the troops, 
 and it was the stuff that cut the distance from here to the 
 U. S. A. from three thousand miles to zero. Miss Jane 
 Tuttle's songs were rendered with a tone that was as smooth 
 and mellow as that hammock scene she described. Could 
 we hear better at home? We could not! Miss Eleanore 
 Gala Rogers also was very charming, and it will be many, 
 many days before her beautiful voice and those songs, 
 which made such a hit with us, are forgotten. Miss Carol 
 McComas and Walter Dale? Oh, Boy! More action than 
 the British artillery, and if they didn't remind us of the 
 good old days back home, I'll hope something! 
 
 '^Gentle Reader, our words are weak — yes, they are 
 weaker than army coffee — in trying to express our appre- 
 ciation of the Manhattan Four. We are modest and all 
 that, but, outside of boasting of our third gold stripe, the 
 thing we are the most proud of is the fact that we saw the 
 Manhattan Four." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 
 
 ^^This is the very coinage of your brain: 
 
 This bodiless creation ecstasy 
 
 Is very cunning in." 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 November 11, 1918, brought to men and women of all 
 races and religions release from the tension and horror of 
 war. The effect on the soldiers was more indirect, more 
 subtle, but no less positive than had been the dangers 
 of war. 
 
 The American Army, with the rest of the world, dropped 
 down into the long wait before the home-going — the months 
 that dragged on and on before the victorious soldiers be- 
 gan their last, long journey home. The motives which 
 had dominated the lives of officers and men had, in large 
 measure, been removed. All joined in the most popular 
 and appealing refrain of the War, ^'We want to go home." 
 Officers were to be demoted or permitted to resign, men 
 were to be demobilized. The War was over, the motive 
 for training and discipline was gone, but the courage of 
 3,000,000 homesick men had to be maintained 3,000 miles 
 from the homes which some of them were not to see for 
 months to come. 
 
 During these dangerous months of waiting the enter- 
 tainers entered upon their last and greatest campaign. 
 While the days of adventure and danger at the front were 
 over, there was a new enemy to fight — the most dangerous 
 of all — homesickness. "Your work has only just begun," 
 was the order that ran along the lines of the entertain^^. 
 ''You helped to win the War — now help to keep the boys 
 
 164 
 
SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 165 
 
 happy and fit until the great day of the movement home^ 
 ward." 
 
 It was at this crucial moment that the campaign for 
 soldier shows was set in operation — and the whole Army 
 either became players or the willing prisoners of the play- 
 ers to whom they surrendered. There was talent enough 
 in the A. E. F. to furnish an imlimited number of shows. 
 The problem was to discover and assemble that talent, 
 coach and costume the acts, and furnish theatres as soon 
 as the companies were ready to appear behind the foot- 
 lights. So Uncle Sam became the senior partner in "the 
 greatest theatrical business in the world." 
 
 Carl J. Balliet of Buffalo, New York, had first gone 
 overseas in December, 1917, as a Hut Secretary. He was 
 called back to France in November, 1918, and became 
 Entertainment Secretary at Base Hospital No. 1, at St. 
 Nazaire, where he started in organizing soldier shows. 
 General Orders 241, by conmiand of General Pershing, 
 directed "the attention of all concerned to the importance 
 of encouraging the development of all kinds of appro- 
 priate talent." Not only did the order provide for the 
 detailing of an officer from the General Staiff as Army 
 Entertainment Officer, but specified that such officers 
 should be detailed in "each corps and division." It further 
 ordered : 
 
 "Commanders of regiments and other similar units 
 will also detail suitable officers to supervise the entertain- 
 ment activities of their units. All commanders will give 
 every encouragement, consistent with military require- 
 ments, to the development of soldier talent within their 
 commands: First, in the production of theatrical shows 
 within the division or other unit, and second, for the train- 
 ing of small groups of entertainers suitable for giving 
 entertainment in the neighboring units and for touring 
 the A. E. F." 
 
 This order appeared December 29, 1918, and was sup- 
 
166 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 plemented by Bulletin No. 1, January 28, 1919. So prompt 
 was the response that within thirty days 1,000 members 
 of the A. E. F. who had been professional actors had been 
 card indexed and sixty soldier actor units had begun tour- 
 ing France and occupied Germany. 
 
 Here let us give credit where it is due. The notable 
 success of this entertainment campaign is due to the out- 
 standing ability and tireless labors of Colonel John R. 
 Kelly, Army Entertainment Officer, and Lt. Col. R. B. 
 Gamble, Entertainment Officer of the services of supplies. 
 There were no men in the Army better qualified for these 
 responsibilities — and their achievement is one of the finest 
 records in the World War. 
 
 This soldier talent movement had started from a very 
 small beginning. Before the Armistice ''The Crimson 
 Cocoanut," a play by Ian Hay, had been produced by 
 two Englishmen attached to Base Hospital No. 1 in St. 
 Nazaire. Carl J. Balliet had used "The Crimson Cocoanut'^ 
 as the nucleus of a vaudeville show with soldier actors, 
 which gradually worked itself into a musical comedy 
 bearing little resemblance to the original drama. Mr. 
 Balliet's continued utilization of army talent for enter- 
 tainment in the St. Nazaire region provided a model for 
 the entertainment directors of the rest of the areas of 
 France. 
 
 In the fighting days before the Armistice Clarke Silver- 
 nail, who was an actor before he became a soldier, presented 
 the Cohan and Harris show "What Happened to Jones" 
 with soldier talent. This play was a milestone, for it 
 proved that the boys at the front wanted to see shows 
 with "women" in them, even though the "chorus girls" 
 had masculine voices and wore hobnailed shoes. The 
 idea soon spread, until every soldier show had its heroine 
 and some even had pony ballets. Under Army Order 241, 
 not only soldiers and Y M C A girls but Red Cross nurses 
 and Knights of Columbus and Salvation Army workers 
 
SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 167 
 
 could be detailed for entertainment duty, so that real 
 girls were finally secured from these organizations to act 
 in soldier shows, as well as the professional actresses brought 
 over from America. 
 
 The development of dormant talent in the A. E. F. 
 had started during hostilities, but after the Armistice work 
 on a big scale really began. In transforming 15,000 dough- 
 boys and sailors, with now and then an officer, into singers, 
 dancers, and spotlight favorites, George W. Doyle, assistant 
 and successor to Carl J. Balliet, played a prominent part. 
 Under his direction men fresh from the lines, motor me- 
 chanics, marines — in fact, men in every branch of the 
 service — were recruited to play before doughboy audi- 
 ences. The old-fashioned amateur night proved the best 
 means of discovering talent in the Army, not only the 
 professional but the undeveloped talent. 
 
 Under the direction of Colonel John R. Kelly and 
 Lt. Col. R. B. Gamble, all the army entertainment officers 
 in divisions and regiments effected liaison with "Y" secre- 
 taries, having their desks in the same offices wherever 
 that was possible. Through them, under plans developed 
 by Mr. Doyle, announcement was made in every company 
 that there would be a try-out in the local hut, that prizes 
 would be given, and that the men who made good would 
 be chosen for army shows. 
 
 No one was quicker to appreciate and encourage the 
 efforts of a comrade in these try-outs than the soldier, but 
 it was hard to ^'put anything over^* on him. For instance, 
 in one camp a would-be monologuist, whose ancient jokes 
 were received in silence, tried to rally his auditors. 
 
 ''What's the matter?" he said. "Can't you guys fol- 
 low me?" 
 
 ''Speed up, bo, we're fifty years ahead of you," was 
 the prompt retort from a man in the third row. 
 
 Those soldier audiences were competent judges, too, 
 for a large number of able-bodied men of fighting age 
 
168 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 were on the American stage when America entered tlie 
 War. These were not slow about volmiteering, and many 
 of these soldier-actors were men who would not have been 
 in the draft. In nearly every regiment there was at least 
 one man with stage experience and they were eager to 
 get into the work. 
 
 The best talent brought out in a company show went 
 into a regimental show, where it was given professional 
 coaching. When the coach considered the troupe ^'good 
 enough'' it was tried out all through the division. Then 
 if it seemed good enough for the A. E .F. circuit it was 
 outfitted, costumed, and given its traveling orders. The 
 army entertainment officer took the men selected and or- 
 dered them detailed for entertainment duty, supervising 
 their transportation, discipline, and all military matters. 
 The "Y" furnished coaches, costumes, stage sets, musical 
 instruments, plays and parts where they were not written 
 by the soldiers, sheet music, and expense money. 
 
 At the Play Factory at Tours soldier shows were manu- 
 factured almost while you waited. Here, on the side door 
 of one of the buildings which forms the big square of bar- 
 racks and headquarters offices of the Services of Supply, 
 was a sign reading: "Entertaining Training Studios, 
 A. E. F.— Y M C A.'' 
 
 The sign was not misleading. Those studios certainly 
 were entertaining, apparently a riotous scene of turmoil, 
 and a pandemonium of pianists, pirates, dancers, and 
 acrobats. The real name of the place, however, by which 
 it became known to all the A. E. F. entertainment workers, 
 was "The Play Factory." For there, plays for the enter- 
 tainment of all the soldiers in France were originated, 
 written, cast, equipped, rehearsed, and staged, with a 
 speed and effectiveness which would make Belasco or the 
 Shuberts open their eyes in admiration. 
 
 Lt. Col. R. B. Gamble and his staff occupied half the 
 office. In the other half were Howard L. Acton, of New York, 
 
SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 169 
 
 ''Y" Entertainment Director for the Services of Supply, 
 and his assistants. Colonel Gamble and Mr. Acton worked 
 out all the general plans for soldier entertainment in France. 
 With Colonel Gamble's approval, Mr. Acton suggested 
 and created the Play Factory. The soldier talent here 
 was taken in charge by two professional coaches. George 
 Spink, of East Providence, Rhode Island, who used to 
 write sketches for Jesse Lasky and is also a popular song 
 writer, sitting at the piano fired a continual stream of 
 directions, criticisms, and encouragement, and never missed 
 a note. Miss Isabel Kennedy coached not only doughboys 
 but ''Y'' girls, Red Cross nurses, and occasionally French 
 girls. Though the Army was proud of the A. E. F. ^ ^chorus 
 girls" and every regiment was sure it had the greatest 
 boy-girl in the world, yet there was a crying, sometimes a 
 swearing, need of real girls. 
 
 Much of the coaching was done by a twenty-three year 
 old sergeant, Teddy Symans, who before the War turned 
 out vaudeville sketches for the Western circuits. At nine 
 o'clock he would be rehearsing a trio of dancing and sing- 
 ing artists in the ways of jazz; at ten he would be rehearsing 
 a skit on the Russian Bolsheviki written by him the night 
 before; in the afternoon he might train A. E. F. ^ ^chorus 
 girls"; and from seven to ten he rehearsed ''The Black 
 Babies" in a revue written by him on Southern plantation 
 life. "The Black Babies" had offered their own contribu- 
 tion, an original skit entitled "Your Man Friend," but 
 since this plot was hung too lightly on the familiar tri- 
 angle situation, Symans had to rewrite the show. The 
 result was "The Black Babies" in a two-hour revue — cake- 
 walk, jazz, buck and wing, and everything — which prom- 
 ised to be sent forth on the road in a week's time if the 
 piano jazz artist could be released for art and service. 
 For he, it must be stated, was kept from rehearsal by the 
 harsh confines of the headquarters guardhouse. He could 
 play the piano, but he would also fight. "As soon as Henry 
 
170 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 gets out of the guardhouse," explained Symans, "you 
 fellows go on the road.'^ 
 
 Nine complete original soldier shows were produced in 
 the last three months of the Play Factory's existence, and 
 in addition several times that number were reconstructed 
 and freshened with new songs and dialogue. Hundreds 
 of individual acts were tried out. Captain Sadler wrote 
 three librettos — "The Hindustan" produced by the Eleventh 
 Infantry, Twenty-Eighth Division; "One for You and One 
 for Me," produced as the official show of the Services of 
 Supply, and the major part of "She Should Worry," the 
 Twenty-Eighth Division show. Spink was the author of 
 "Home Again," produced by the Thirty-Third Engineers, 
 and "The Moppers Up." The Tours Players, who so 
 pleased General Pershing that he aided the soldier actors 
 in the show to obtain transfer from the Army to the 
 Y M C A, were organized and coached there. The Le Mans 
 Company, famed for its "Wild Fire" production, was also 
 coached there. Both of these organizations were made up 
 entirely of professional players, the men being from the 
 Army and the women from the Over There Theatre League. 
 For the try-outs of shows before soldier audiences, the 
 Trianon Theatre was operated, the largest playhouse in 
 the city. The Play Factory was so successful in raising 
 the standard and increasing the number of army shows, 
 that the idea was expanded and Paris, Bordeaux, and 
 St. Nazaire had similar "factories," all clearing through the 
 head offices in Tours. 
 
 In this vast cooperative theatrical business, there was 
 so great a demand for coaches that a special class at the 
 Carnegie Institute of Technology, in Pittsburgh, gave 
 intensive training to prepare soldier talent directors. When 
 the specially trained coach arrived in France he was sent 
 to a division, taking with him an assortment of costumes 
 
SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 171 
 
 and stage properties suited to the needs of that division. 
 He would then organize a dramatic club, using soldier 
 talent almost exclusively. These shows would visit near-by 
 divisions, which would repeat their performance one after 
 another in turn. And there were "Y'^ girl dramatic coaches, 
 too. In Finisterre Mary Sedgwick and Rose Glass trained 
 the bluejackets of that region for vaudeville and min- 
 strel shows. 
 
 Keen competition was encouraged and many soldier- 
 actor plays were produced. U. S. ambulance sections 
 with the French Army organized jazz bands, and various 
 regiments and divisions put on musical shows and vaude- 
 ville skits. Soon the Soldier- Actor Division had 500 special 
 theatrical units, ranging in size from ten to one hundred, 
 touring the A. E. F. circuit. Each theatrical unit of im- 
 portance went through the Play Factory at Tours, where 
 the finishing touches were given before the road trips 
 began. 
 
 When a show was hammered into shape by the coaches 
 and had gone through some one of the play factories, it 
 was costumed and outfitted. This was a vast business 
 in itself. From March, 1918, to May 1, 1919, 23,138 cos- 
 tumes were provided; musical instruments and accessories 
 18,136, including 1,590 obtained by the Third Army; 
 sheet music 447,908 copies, including 350,000 published 
 by the Third Army; orchestrations 18,100, including 
 8,000 from the Third Army; music books 11,124; and 
 plays 4,205. 
 
 Before the Armistice Orlin Mallory Williams, formerly 
 of Westminster, Colorado, had the always strenuous and 
 often unenviable job in Paris of Y M C A costumer to 
 the khaki troupes. It was his task to see that there were 
 frills for the Elsie Janises of the Army and wigs for the 
 martial chorus girls. Many of these garments were con- 
 tributed by actors and actresses back in the States. Win- 
 throp Ames sent over twenty-six trunks of costumes in 
 
172 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 June, 1918. Here were Indian outfits, period robes. Uncle 
 Sam suits, cowboy rigs, hoopskirts — everything that a 
 khaki actor might require. 
 
 The soldiers had their own wardrobe mistresses, too. 
 A staff of French seamstresses renovated the costumes 
 and other properties, and their task was far from being an 
 easy one. "Ten inches bigger at the waistline this has 
 to be made!" you could hear one of them groaning as she 
 held up the ball gown of a well-known actress back home. 
 "They simply can't learn not to step on their trains," 
 another would say, exhibiting a rent that at first glance 
 looks beyond hiunan skill. "My boys are the finest actors 
 of their kind in the world," asserted Mr. Williams, "But 1 
 have to admit that chiffon floimces don't last very long 
 with them! They forget that they are ladies and take 
 long steps when they have them on!" 
 
 Appeals for supplies were varied. Negro wigs were 
 unknown in France imtil the doughboy came, and thou- 
 sands had to be brought over, enough to camouflage an 
 army corps. Letters like this would come in: 
 
 "The Machine Gim Company wants six ukuleles, 
 
 three bass viols, twenty wigs, lots of grease paint, and 
 six pairs of bones, and the Colonel says the 'Y' will send 
 them. WeVe got the greatest nigger show on earth! Now 
 shoot, Mr. ^Y' man and we'll show you the real thing! 
 (Signed) Private John Henry." 
 
 Then there was the call for gowns for the A. E. F. "chorus 
 girls" — that grew to be a big business. Some of the gowns 
 were creations by the most famous dressmakers — Lucille, 
 Paquin, or Worth. Dimng one month alone (March, 1919) 
 36,118 men were costumed for 4,000 productions, divided 
 into 134 units that played in 281 different theatres. These 
 costumes ranged all the way from poUcemen's uniforms to 
 debutantes' ball gowns. In fact, the A. E. F. debutante 
 of the 1919 model was especially successful. "She" may 
 have fought in the Argonne or Chateau-Thierry as train- 
 
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SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 173 
 
 ing for her ''maiden effort," but her back-of-the-footlights 
 manner retained nothing of the offensive. 
 
 ''Are you a lady?'^ inquires the beautiful young gentle- 
 man in the dress suit. "Gawd, I try to be," she answers 
 in perfect New York. 
 
 "I want a costume for a lady," said the entertainment 
 officer of the 316 F. A. of the Wild Cat Division. "What 
 size?" asked the "Y" costumer. "About a perfect forty- 
 two," he ventured. 
 
 Two "gobs" chorus ladies were sent up to Paris to select 
 their own costumes. They fared very nicely until it came 
 to the choice of the shoes. "Des shoes pour moi," the 
 younger and fairer urged of the shopkeeper. A sturdy 
 pair of hobnailed buckskins were presented. "Non, non, 
 comme ga," he pointed to a pair of high heelers. Then 
 followed an argument in which the sanity of the sailor 
 was openly questioned by the shopkeeper. The chorus 
 ladies departed sans slippers. "Gee, they're a race with- 
 out imagination," he maligned, "they can't even recognize 
 a blushing heroine when she admits it." 
 
 At Nantes, one of the most famous costiuning establish- 
 ments in France worked exclusively for the soldier actor 
 section and at Coblenz a complete German costume house 
 was taken over. Scenery departments were established in 
 every area. In St. Nazaire German prisoners painted 
 scenery for doughboy shows. 
 
 Music was an inseparable part of these soldier shows. 
 Many of them were musical revues, and dancing skits that 
 made music absolutely necessary. There was plenty of 
 musical talent in the Army, but the crying need was for 
 instruments. Because of an army regulation, the boys 
 in general could not take their instruments to France. 
 Instruments were very expensive there, because their 
 manufacture had been suspended during the War, so the 
 
174 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 boys^ pay would not permit their buying them. In the 
 Army of Occupation sheet music was put out in bulk by 
 a photographic process. German composers were hired 
 to make orchestral compositions, which were also photo- 
 graphed and put out in enormous quantities. 
 
 After the Armistice a number of army show units were 
 taken over into the "Y*' service. The American Ambulance 
 Jazz Band saw six months of active service with the Italian 
 Army. It also gave special concerts under the auspices 
 of Ambassador Page and Princess Yolando, appearing in 
 Florence, Rome, Bologna, Naples, and Venice, where it 
 gave a gondola jazz concert on the Grand Canal. Its 
 concerts so amazed and delighted the Italians that the 
 biggest phonograph concern in Italy offered to pay a high 
 price for records. Owing to army regulations, however, 
 the contract was declined, but the band played for fifteen 
 records, which are immensely popular in Italy. Later, 
 they were granted several months of additional time in 
 France to tour the leave areas and base ports. Their fine 
 war record and their ability to put pep into the Yankee 
 troops made them a great attraction. 
 
 General Pershing's "Own Band" of 105 musicians 
 selected from all the combatant divisions, which was at 
 Chaumont for five months under the directorship of Lieu- 
 tenant Fisher, represented the best musical talent in the 
 A. E. F. It delighted many Parisian audiences at the 
 Cirque de Paris, and at concerts for the French Homes 
 Association. It played for the soldier athletes of twenty- 
 two different nations competing at the International Games 
 at the Pershing Stadium near Paris. It made its final 
 appearance in France in the Victory Parade on Bastille 
 Day, marching under the Arch of Triumph with the vic- 
 torious Allied Armies. Later it appeared in triumphal 
 parades in America. 
 
 The famous Scrap Iron Jazz Band, with each member 
 a real artist in jazz, which was composed of members of 
 
SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 175 
 
 Washington University, St. Louis, and Western Reserve 
 University, Cleveland, after being attached for nearly 
 two years to the British forces toured the American camps 
 and leave centers of France for several months. These 
 were only a few of the organizations, large and small, 
 which made American marches and American jazz known 
 and popular throughout France. 
 
 Many of the soldier shows, as we have seen, had former 
 professional stage men in them — actors from the trenches — 
 as well as amateurs; others made much of the fact that 
 not one of the cast had ever been on the professional stage, 
 such as the "O. U. Wild Cats," the Eighty-First Division 
 show which became one of the most popular in the A. E. F. 
 One of the earliest soldier shows was the Argonne Players 
 of the Seventy-Seventh Division. They staged their first 
 performance in the Argonne Forest in a German built 
 theatre, twenty-four hours after it had been wrested from 
 the enemy. Their show, "The Amex Revue, '^ written 
 by Lieutenant Warren E. Diefendorf, was put on by a 
 troupe of thirty soldiers who had had theatrical experience 
 before entering the War. On their first divisional tour 
 the Argonne Players actually performed under shell-fire. 
 In spite of this not a performance was postponed. After 
 its first performance, the revue was presented in ruined 
 cathedrals, tents, underground theatres, chateaux, huts, 
 and on open-air platforms. President and Mrs. Wilson 
 and the members of the Peace Commission attended the 
 performance of the Argonne Players in the Champs Elys^es 
 Theatre, Paris. The boys of the division think that the 
 President hastened their sailing date when he heard their 
 song, "We Would Like to Know Just How Soon Before 
 It's Over, Over Here" — for they sailed soon after appear- 
 ing before him. 
 
 There was plenty of pathos, too, that was inseparable 
 
176 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 from France in those days. In a hospital near Tours, 
 for instance, a show was given ^Tor men on crutches only." 
 The stage was on operating tables. Wings and curtains 
 and scenery were made of sheets. There was no music, 
 lest it disturb other patients. Yet the performance made 
 such a hit that the one-legged men passed their crutches 
 out of the windows so that the soldiers not ''fortunate" 
 enough to have had their legs shot off could get in. 
 
 Then there were "The Convalescent Entertainers," a 
 group of eleven privates organized while all its members 
 were patients in Base Hospital No. 46 at Bazoilles. The 
 men were strangers before they met in the hospital, though 
 all were professionals before their enlistment. One drizzling 
 day, one of the men sat up in bed and asked for an ac- 
 cordeon. When he began to play another man sat up 
 and stared. 
 
 "I may be crazy," he said, ''but you sound a lot like 
 Val Marconi of Marconi's Wireless Orchestra." 
 
 "Discovered," admitted the accordeonist. "And haven't 
 I seen your face on the screen?" 
 
 "I did juveniles for Keystone Comedies a couple of 
 years," confessed the other. "I'm 'Sunshine Hall.' " 
 
 In a few minutes nine others of the listening patients 
 who had been stage professionals introduced themselves, 
 and before they left the hospital they had evolved a show 
 of their own and produced it for the other patients. It 
 made such a hit that, after touring France, they spent a 
 week entertaining at the Palais de Glace and in other 
 Paris centers and hospitals. 
 
 A soldier show contest was held at Is-sur-Tille among 
 all the companies in that camp to determine the best show. 
 More than 150,000 men saw the contests. The choice was 
 made on a percentage basis, taking scenery, costumes, 
 music, and pep into consideration. The winners were 
 Supply Company 321 and A. S. O. No. 1, for the show "A 
 Day in School at Hicksville." They were awarded the 
 
SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 177 
 
 prize which was a dance at the Officers' Headquarters, 
 where all officers were excluded and plenty of American 
 girls were furnished. 
 
 In New York, theatres have been built for stars, but in 
 France one theatre was built for the first presentation of 
 the soldier play, ^'Ah, Oui." "It is apparently much sim- 
 pler to build a whole new theatre than it is to rehearse 
 one play/' observed the coach, Miss Dorothy Donnelly. 
 The auditorium was started on Monday morning and 
 Friday evening it opened its box office. The morning of 
 the performance of the "Ah, Oui," the orchestra looked 
 over the new theatre and revolted. "We have no orchestra 
 pit," they objected. "Then build one," suggested Miss 
 Donnelly. Ten hours is, after all, a long time. Accord- 
 ingly, they dug a pit, cemented it, and when the curtain 
 rose at 8.15 that evening. Lieutenant Fisher rapped for 
 attention in one of the best appointed orchestra pits east 
 of the Mame. 
 
 "Liberty Bells" was the Thirty-Third Division show, 
 which had the distinction of being the first American 
 soldier show to play in Belgium and Luxemburg before 
 French as well as doughboy audiences. A Luxemburg 
 paper said of this musical comedy: "The performance was 
 perfect in every way. The management was that of a 
 field officer. Fifty per cent of the audience stood for an 
 hour and a half, shoulder to shoulder, with stretched 
 necks. . . . And the orchestra was a revelation with its 
 accompaniments; the rhythm was clean cut. I had but 
 one fear — that the head of the orchestra director might 
 drop off from his exertions while leading the music." Evi- 
 dently their American jazz pleased the dramatic critic of 
 Luxemburg's leading paper. 
 
 Largest of all the soldier shows, with its cast of 160, 
 was the Eighty-Eighth Division play, "Who Can Tell?" 
 
178 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 The dialogue was written by Dinnie McDonald and Elbert 
 Moore of the Over There Theatre League, but many of 
 the lines could probably be traced to the uncensored con- 
 versations of one buck with another. 
 
 "Where did you get your training to be a detective?" 
 asks Mrs. Gondrecourt of the would-be searcher for her 
 jewels. 
 
 "I was six weeks with the Salvage Corps/' he replies. 
 
 "Are you from Scotland Yard?" demands the English- 
 man of the detective. 
 
 "Scotland Yard, where?" 
 
 "England." 
 
 "I don't know anything about Scotland Yard in Eng- 
 land," admits the detective, "but IVe slept in every barn- 
 yard in France." 
 
 "I never have any trouble with my French," boasts Mrs. 
 Gondrecoiu-t. 
 
 "No, but the French people do." 
 
 The costume effects of "Who Can Tell?" were of un- 
 usual beauty. The Jewish Welfare Board donated 75,000 
 francs to the show. This was spent entirely on costumes. 
 They played a week's rim at the Champs-Elysees Theatre. 
 President Wilson, General Pershing, and representatives 
 of fifteen nations at the Peace Conference attended. 
 
 As the A. E. F. extended into Germany, the theatrical 
 circuit widened. Soldier units were likewise sent into 
 leave areas and the smallest organization in the A. E. F. 
 had an opportunity to see the soldier actors at work. It 
 was the ambition of every soldier show to play in Paris. 
 This was a leave area for thousands. Here the Palais de 
 Glace, the Theatre Albert Premier, and the Champs-Elysees 
 Theatre, all under lease to the "Y," with a combined seating 
 capacity of 15,000, were turned over on certain nights 
 to the soldier actors and here musical comedies, minstrel 
 
SOLDIER SHOWS AFTER THE ARMISTICE 179 
 
 shows, and vaudeville were given. ^'A Buck on Leave," 
 '^O. U. Wild Cats," the ^'Mo-Kan Minstrels," 'Tet's Go," 
 and hundreds of others were among the attractions, each 
 a complete show, staged, written, and produced by sol- 
 diers. No tickets were issued. The posters announced, 
 ''Your uniform is your pass." 
 
 As a result of this joint entertainment project outlined 
 in General Order 241, nearly 700 soldier shows were organ- 
 ized, ranging all the way from small regimental affairs 
 to such high grade productions as ''Who Can Tell?" and 
 "Liberty Bells." The soldier actors who did duty in these 
 shows numbered over 15,000. In March, 1919, the S. O. S. 
 shows had an attendance of 7,350,000 for 10,158 shows. 
 It would have taken one company five years, giving one 
 show a day and two on Saturday, to have appeared before 
 every audience on the army circuit when it was most ex- 
 tended. Despite the rather cynical observation of a middle- 
 aged and somewhat severe colonel, who remarked that 
 the entire A. E. F. seemed to be made up of masquerading 
 soubrettes, there is no one who would hesitate to affirm 
 that the job of entertainment was the biggest factor in 
 creating contentment in the life of the Army. Let us 
 turn now to the stock companies, the real Broadway suc- 
 cesses that played to the A. E. F. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 BROADWAY SUCCESSES ON THE BIG CIRCUIT 
 
 ^^For it so falls out 
 That what we have we prize not to the worth 
 Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, 
 Why then we rack the value.*' 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 When the Armistice was signed the Over There Theatre 
 League only began to fight the harder. ^'Extensive as the 
 entertainment service had been/^ reports no less an authority 
 than Mr. Carter, ''it was speeded up after the Armistice." 
 
 The vast organization of soldier shows described in the 
 preceding chapter was soon supplemented by a syndicate 
 of first-class stock companies with star castes, including 
 some of the ablest stock actors in America. Many of the 
 most famous shows from old Broadway were taken right 
 into the ranks. If the soldiers could not go home, they 
 could have something of Broadway of their own. 
 
 The legitimate phase of the stock company work began 
 with the John Craig players. Then came John Alexander 
 McKesson, known to Broadway as John Alexander, who 
 organized what was known as "The Hut Players" from the 
 men at Neufchateau. They produced Lord Dimsany's 
 "A Night at the Inn," which was most enthusiastically 
 received, also musical comedy adaptations and one-act plays 
 written by the soldiers themselves. Later he organized 
 a group called ''The American Players," consisting of 
 Theresa Dale, John Rowe, and Rose Saltonstall, who put 
 on sketches to entertain the men in the front areas in the 
 summer of 1918. They were followed by the Margaret 
 Mayo Company, in August, 1918, as already described. 
 
 A star stock company was recruited in New York and 
 
 180 
 
BROADWAY SUCCESSES ON THE BIG CIRCUIT 181 
 
 brought to France by James Forbes, direct from the Over 
 There Theatre League. It included professional actors 
 and actresses headed by Mary Boland. Known through- 
 out the A. E. F. as the James Forbes Stock Company, 
 they presented ^'Kick In," "TraveUng Salesman," and "A 
 Pair of Sixes" at Paris during the latter part of 1918. The 
 company contained many prominent members of the 
 profession — Leo Cutley, Mary Hampton, H. B. Kennedy, 
 Madge West, Homer Miles, Albert Perry, Jack Raymond, 
 Sidney Shields, Walter Yoimg, Howard C. Bliss, and others. 
 They were booked in the larger regions. E. P. Daniels 
 worked ahead of the unit as advance agent and arranged 
 a route in the S. O. S., playing places such as Marseilles, 
 St. Malo, Antwerp, and Brest. They gave a Dramatic 
 Special in Paris on December 21, 1918, at the Th^dtre 
 des Champs-Elys6es with "Kick In" as the play of the 
 occasion. 
 
 Two of the ablest figures in the whole overseas theatrical 
 enterprise appear here in the organization and operation 
 of these stock companies — A. M. Beatty, whom we have 
 already met; and after the Armistice, Oswald Yorke, the 
 well known actor, who built dramatic units in the form 
 of stock companies. Mr. Yorke organized and directed 
 his work from the Paris Headquarters. It took considerable 
 ingenuity to select plays for this purpose. He had to keep 
 in the field as many traveling stock companies as the supply 
 of talent would permit. Often Mr. Yorke was compelled 
 to oversee personally the work these companies were 
 doing in the field and to adjust whatever difficulties menaced 
 the stabiUty of such units. He was aided by a corps of 
 assistants and coaches. Mr. Yorke organized and operated 
 seven stock companies. These companies made their 
 headquarters mostly at St. Nazaire, Brest, Bourges, and 
 Tours. They played "Kick In," "Wild Fire," "Twin 
 Beds," "A Pah" of Sixes," "Stop Thief," and many other 
 Broadway successes. 
 
182 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 One of the most popular stock companies organized by 
 Mr. Yorke was the Brest Stock Company, every soldier 
 in which had seen active service on the front. They offered 
 Eugene Walters's 'Taid in Full," along with their biggest 
 hit, "His Majesty Bunker Bean." The production and 
 staging of the weekly plays of this company were under 
 the direction of Corporal Howard Lindsay, who before 
 the War was stage manager with Margaret Anglin. The 
 cast included three girl entertainers sent over by the Over 
 There Theatre League, the Misses Betty Barnicoat, formerly 
 with Castle Square Theatre in Boston; Irene Timmons 
 of New York, who played with Charlotte Walker in the 
 "Plain Woman," and was the heroine in "When We Were 
 Twenty-One"; and Phyllis Carrington of New York City. 
 Then there were Ruth Garland, Alice Guthrie, and others. 
 From the various branches of the A. E. F. came Sergeant 
 Bernard Nedell, John Alexander, Sergeant Tod Brown, 
 and Private Arthur Kohl. The Municipal Theatre at 
 Brest burned down and they continued their performances 
 on the stage in one of the largest huts. They also appeared 
 at the Champs-Elysees Theatre in Paris. This theatre 
 was reserved for divisional and regimental shows and most 
 of the stock companies appeared at the Albert Premier. 
 
 From the Play Factory which we have described came 
 the Tours Dramatic Theatre at Tours. Maida Davis, a 
 canteen worker, changed her career in France and be- 
 came an actress with this company. Their other offering 
 was "Officer 666." Hugh E. Wallace, Marie Falls, AUce 
 Baxter, Howard Hall, George Leary, Ethel Martin, W. J. 
 Roe, H. B. Turnbull, Mary Lena Wilson, and Howard 
 Wysong were the professional members of this company. 
 
 In the Le Mans region, Madison Corey, New York 
 producer of such successes as Mrs. Fiske in "Erstwhile 
 Susan" and John Barrymore in "Justice," recruited and 
 directed talent for soldier shows and stock companies. 
 Under his direction the Le Mans Stock Company presented 
 
BROADWAY SUCCESSES ON THE BIG CIRCUIT 183 
 
 big successes with a professional caste and soldier talent. 
 This company included Dallas Tyler Fairchild, leading 
 woman and playwright. They also played ^ 'Under Cover^' 
 in various points in the field and gave one week's per- 
 formance at Paris. Walter Bull, F. Esmelton, Frances 
 Golden, Marian Tanner, Elizabeth Paige, Pauline Whitson, 
 and Bertha Alice Wyatt were the professional members. 
 
 The Paris Stock Company was the outcome of the ' 'Play- 
 let Players. '' It was assigned to produce plays such as 
 'The Bishop's Candlesticks" and "Words Mean Nothing." 
 They gave two weeks of performances in Paris in the 
 Palais de Glace before 20,000 soldiers. They played at 
 Aignan, Le Mans, and Coblenz. Annette Tyler, Frances 
 Golden, Harry J. Mates, George P. Smith, Jack Storey, 
 Louise Hamilton, and Jeannette Grant were members 
 of the company. 
 
 The American Players, made up of some of the members 
 of the Craig Stock Company, were sent to the fifth region 
 and played at the leave areas. They were in charge of 
 Frederick Cowley. The company included Ivy Troutman, 
 Rose Saltonstall, Theresa Dale, Rawn Rapsher and W. C. 
 Swain. They presented one act plays such as "Strenuous 
 Rehearsal" by Claude Gillingwater, "Bills" by William 
 Francis, and "After the War" by J. W. Stevens. They 
 were booked at Nice, Nimes, Lamalou-les-Bains, Val-les- 
 Bain, Grenoble, and Aix-les-Bains. 
 
 Dorothy Donnelly organized and rehearsed the Third 
 Army Stock Company composed of professional soldier 
 actors and actresses, which played "Seven Keys to Bald- 
 pate." Harrington Reynolds was the stage manager. 
 Rosalind Fuller, Helen Scott, Patricia O'Connor, and 
 Harriet Sterling were members. 
 
 About April, 1919, Charles Silvernail, an actor, secured 
 permission from Cohan and Harris to present "What 
 Happened to Jones," with soldiers to be used as talent 
 in the cast. They were known as the Paris Players and 
 
184 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 they added to their repertoke such plays as ''Under Cover," 
 ''Officer 666," "ffick In," "A Pair of Sixes," "Hit the 
 Trail Holiday," "The Miss Leading Lady," and "Beverly's 
 Balance," playing before 45,000 soldier spectators at Paris. 
 Frederick Truesdell, Beverly Sitgreaves, and Garda Kova 
 were professional members of the cast. They toured 
 Toul, Marseilles, and Tours, giving one week's performance 
 at each place. Marlyn Brown, Maurice B. Du Marais, 
 J. G. 0. LeClevcy, H. L. Jones, Joseph Diffendal, J. R. 
 Mackay, Guy Bollinger, Gerald Sullivan, Read Rocas, D. 
 Fullam, Harold Grigg, and Paul Sorg were the soldier 
 members. 
 
 Then there was the Caserne-Carnot Stock Company, 
 organized by Clara Blandick, a professional with an Over 
 There Theatre League contract. Miss Blandick had been 
 with May Irwin and under David Belasco's management. 
 This company was formed of enlisted men, two professional 
 entertainers, and members of the Women's Auxiliary 
 Army Corps. They played American plays by well-known 
 American playwrights — real Broadway successes. Cap- 
 tain E. A. Butterfield secured Clara Blandick from Nevers; 
 the American actress was reassigned through the enter- 
 tainment headquarters to Boin-ges to act as stage manager. 
 On February 24, 1919, rehearsals were begim for the first 
 production of "Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway." 
 This stock company opened in the Municipal Theatre. 
 Dorothy Chesmond was reassigned to appear in this play 
 and in the second production entitled "Believe Me, 
 Xantippe." 
 
 The vast cooperative entertainment schedule promul- 
 gated by Order 241 not only organized these well-known 
 actors and actresses from America, but developed the 
 plan originated by Carl Balhet for producing shows written 
 — both lines and music — produced, and acted by soldiers, 
 which the preceding chapter has described. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 FAMOUS CASINOS IN A NEW ROLE 
 
 "Tte castle hath a pleasant seat; the air 
 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 
 Unto our gentle senses.^* 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 The gigantic task of entertaining our Army in the World 
 War expanded to such proportions that it soon became 
 "the greatest enterprise of its kind that the world has 
 ever witnessed.'^ When the Red Triangle went to France 
 it was for but a single purpose — to serve the soldiers wher- 
 ever, whenever, and however the service could be best 
 utilized by the Government and the Army. It was ready 
 and willing to do for the soldiers anything and everything 
 it found to do and to the best of its ability. It never ex- 
 pected, however, to become the Shuberts or the Klaw and 
 Erlangers of Europe and corner the management of all 
 the leading theatres — any more than it ever expected to 
 take over the leave areas for the Army, assume the can- 
 teen burden for the Army, inaugurate the educational 
 system for the Army, institute the unprecedented system of 
 athletic contests which cidminated in the Inter- Allied Games, 
 or conduct a soldiers' remittance and banking business. It 
 assumed the unparalleled task of all these and many more 
 duties whenever the Army called upon it for service, even 
 though it knowingly and willingly undertook the "impossible.'' 
 
 The incomparable record of the leave areas, while a 
 great story in itself, is so interwoven with the entertain- 
 ment service that the two are here inseparable, for it was 
 in the theatres and casinos where the Americans were on 
 leave that the actors played before then- biggest houses. 
 
 It was a glimpse of the Grand Cercle, the big casino at 
 
 185 
 
186 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Aix-les-Bains, while searching for a suitable spot for a 
 leave area, that first started this great syndicate. Imme- 
 diate grasp of its recreational possibilities determined the 
 selection of the place, whose name practically became a 
 synonym for the word furlough throughout the A. E. F., 
 and began the enterprise which proved to be the most 
 successful of all the American undertakings in France. 
 It was a strange fate that this magnificent temple of chance 
 with its splendid theatre should, through the exigencies 
 of war, come under control of the Y M C A, with the 
 result that some of the biggest playhouses in France and 
 Germany were later taken over. 
 
 The night of its formal opening was an auspicious one. 
 E. H. Sothern was there and consented to read Hamlet's 
 soliloquy and a poem from ''If I Were King.'' Among 
 the permissionnaires attending was an artilleryman who 
 was a member of the company which fired the first Amer- 
 ican gun at the Boches. In private life he had been an 
 actor and a member once of Mr. Sothern's companies. 
 He was selected to introduce his former chief. Although 
 he had written out his speech and memorized it, when 
 the time actually came to present Mr. Sothern the young 
 man was seized with stage fright. However, while the 
 audience held its breath, he did manage to declare it was 
 the ''proudest moment of his life" and bow to Mr. Sothern, 
 making probably the hastiest exit of his artistic career. 
 Later there was dancing in the ballrooms, with music by 
 the military band and local French orchestra. 
 
 When owners of rival institutions at other resorts heard 
 of the war-time use of the Aix casino they all seemed eager 
 to have their own serving the cause in similar manner. 
 Many visited this noted watering place to see for them- 
 selves. They were so favorably impressed with the ex- 
 cellent care and management, under the supervision of 
 Mr. Franklin S. Edmonds of Philadelphia, assisted by 
 Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., that nearly all of them 
 
FAMOUS CASINOS IN A NEW ROLE 187 
 
 offered their own casinos to the Association. When the 
 Prince of Monaco saw the Grand Cercle during the Amer- 
 ican occupation of Aix he was convinced that the "Y'' was 
 a good tenant, and expressed a desire to have the famous 
 resorts of his own domain — Monaco, Monte Carlo, and 
 Condamine — leased in similar fashion. But there were 
 international precautions regarding neutral boundaries which 
 prevented any immediate step in accepting the Prince's 
 invitation. The time finally came after the Armistice 
 when Monte Carlo could be taken on; needless to state, 
 it became one of the most popular retreats of the Americans. 
 France has nearly as many casinos as it has watering 
 places. Almost every resort, whether by the seaside or 
 in the mountains, has its amusement center where gambling 
 is a hcensed pastime and theatrical attractions ranging 
 from opera-bouff6 to vaudeville provide continual diversion 
 throughout the season. Thirty-nine such places were 
 taken over for leave centers and entertainment, and the 
 casinos were converted into soldiers' clubs where the little 
 army of entertainers came and went in endless procession. 
 Most of the casino owners and lessees were pleased with 
 the idea, offering their properties without any profit on 
 the same patriotic terms as did the proprietors at Aix. 
 A few were found to be grasping, as is always the case, 
 demanding such high rentals that the French Government 
 stepped in and settled matters. Besides the noted Riviera 
 casinos, the ''Y" conducted the famous St. Malo Casino, the 
 High Life Casino at Dinard, that glittering spot far-famed 
 as the "Nice of the North," and the casino at Bagneres- 
 de-Luchon, the finest in the Pyrenees. Others leased were 
 at Challes-les-Eaux, Lamalou-les-Bains, Eaux Bonnes, Gre- 
 noble, La Bourboule, and Cauterets. At Cauterets the 
 capacity of the big casino was so taxed by the large number 
 of permissionnaires sent on leave to the Pyrenees that it 
 was augmented by the rental of a smaller place near by — 
 the Casino des Oeufs. 
 
188 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 In the resorts of lesser magnitude where there were no 
 casinos, the theatres afforded the principal amusement. 
 These the ''Y" rented, as at Nimes, where the Grand Munic- 
 ipal Theatre, and at Annecy where the Theatre Municipal 
 were taken over in lieu of casinos. And here the American 
 actors were hailed by the crowds. When the Brittany 
 coast area was opened at St. Malo, its famous casino was 
 in use as a French military hospital. Until the French 
 Medical Corps could find other quarters for its patients in 
 order to accommodate its American allies, the mimicipal 
 theatre was rented for soldier entertainments. Of course 
 the great St. Malo Casino was vastly preferable to any 
 theatre, because of the unusual combination it offered in 
 recreational facilities. Under its roof were a beautiful 
 theatre, dining rooms, and dancing halls, besides the big 
 bath house on the beach, the Hotel Jacques Cartier, and 
 other hostelries which went with the lease. 
 
 At some resorts there were hotels with small concert 
 halls or there were storage buildings in which a proscenium 
 arch could be improvised. When Biarritz was opened in 
 February, 1919, the casino owners were fearful lest any 
 lease might cut into their profits of the approaching season. 
 So at much pains and no little expense the building of the 
 Syndicated Initiative, an exhibition building, was taken 
 over. An ample stage was erected to suit the require- 
 ments of almost all the shows and movies routed through 
 the place. 
 
 At Chambery, the Apartement du Boigne was the oniy 
 available place in town besides the Chambery Club. So 
 the entertainment program there was largely confined to 
 the screen and smaller productions. The ground floor of 
 the Hotel Majestic at Chamonix was made to fill all needs. 
 Cinema halls and concert rooms with small stages and 
 limited seating capacities were equipped in the OflScers' 
 and Enlisted Men's Clubs at Nancy and in the building of 
 the famous Nancy Thermal Baths. 
 

 e^^o 
 
@ j^^^-^^,^ r. 
 
 "S ui •-* *^ 
 § I «^1I 
 
 <D O 
 
FAMOUS CASINOS IN A NEW ROLE 189 
 
 When the Stars and Stripes crossed the Rhine in Decem- 
 ber, 1918, the Red Triangle went along — or, rather, tried 
 to be there in advance to receive the troops. In response 
 to a request from General Dickman, sent through W. W. 
 Gethmann, the chief secretary with the Third Army, 
 Mr. Edmonds and the late George W. Perkins hastened 
 to Coblenz for a conference regarding the establishment 
 of leave centers and entertainment at five of the principal 
 points in the zone of American occupation. 
 
 Nine complete divisions comprised the United States 
 forces in Germany. Having just finished a strenuous 
 campaign which closed the War, General Dickman and 
 his commanding officers felt that the men were in real 
 need of relaxation of the proper sort. An universal opinion 
 prevailed that inasmuch as these were all combat divisions, 
 the best was none too good for them. The officers, too, 
 felt concern for their men lest if proper diversion was not 
 provided the enemy might make insidious overtures to 
 fraternize. Entertainment was vitally important. 
 
 At once the great Fest Halle and the Leseverein Theatre 
 at Coblenz and the big Kurhaus at Neuenahr were taken 
 over. The Casino at Andemach was converted into a 
 soldiers' club, and to entertain its overflow two movies 
 a day were run at the Hotel Dahlmann. At Neuwied, 
 the Hotel HohenzoUern was turned into a cinema hall, 
 patronized by the crowds that poured into that center on 
 leave. All these amusement places seated great numbers. 
 The Neuenahr Kurhaus easily accommodated 2,500, while 
 the Coblenz Fest Halle was much larger. On its first floor 
 was a small stage for concerts and there was a large con- 
 cert hall with a splendid organ on the second, where evening 
 gatherings were held. It was soon found that this stage 
 was too small for both professional and soldier talent 
 troupes, so under Tony Hunting a large, finely equipped 
 stage was erected which accommodated the biggest pro- 
 ductions. The Gemeinde Haus, renamed the Little Play- 
 
190 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 house, was rented later for rehearsals of soldier shows 
 during the day and professional vaudeville at night. 
 
 Paris became after the Armistice the American's Mecca. 
 It was a herculean task to keep the boys properly enter- 
 tained during this American invasion. Many thousands 
 pressed in to the city daily. Extensive plans were launched 
 forthwith for their diversion. The Theatre Albert Premier, 
 with only a seating capacity of 700, which had been used 
 for various theatrical productions, was now found entirely 
 too small for growing demands. So the Palais de Glace 
 was taken over. This was one of the biggest single ven- 
 tures. In addition to its theatre, accommodating 4,000 
 seated and 1,000 more standing, it served as a clubhouse 
 and canteen for men and women in any of the uniforms 
 of the Allied nations. Over 1,000,000 persons, mostly 
 soldiers, were entertained here. There was a constant 
 stream of distinguished guests — among them were Pres- 
 ident Wilson, Ambassador Sharp, General Pershing, Premier 
 Lloyd George, Secretary Daniels, and Samuel Gompers. 
 During its period of operation, from March 31 to June 30, 
 1919, its wet canteen served more than 675,000. Over 
 200 theatrical performances were given during the time, 
 and thirteen cinema shows were run every week. Noted 
 actors and A. E. F. boxing champions appeared on its 
 stage. Homer Rodeheaver and other religious leaders 
 conducted services on Sundays. Its closing program on 
 the night of June 30, 1919, was an all-star vaudeville bill. 
 The feature number was the song "America to France" 
 dedicated to Marshal Foch. It was written by Henry 
 Hadley, with words by Louise Ayers Garnett, and sung 
 by Ida Brooks Hunt who had sung ''My Hero" in the 
 original production of "The Chocolate Soldier." 
 
 Another of the mammoth Parisian playhouses conducted 
 by the Entertainment Department was the Theatre des 
 
FAMOUS CASINOS IN A NEW ROLE 191 
 
 Champs-Elysees, one of the most elegant in appointments 
 on the Continent. New, spacious, and elaborate, it was 
 richly decorated and upholstered and had a comfortable 
 seating capacity of 4,000. The stage was so large that 
 an ordinary company was obliged to bring its settings 
 away ''down stage." For the large musical show it was 
 ideal, and for general equipment it was unsurpassed. It 
 delighted the A. E. F. chorus "girls" who complained that 
 other surroundings cramped their style. The opening per- 
 formance was a gala night — "A Buck on Leave" earning 
 the sobriquet of "the big Winter Garden Show of France," 
 with seventy-five American soldiers in the company, fifty 
 in the band, and an orchestra of thirty. It was put on 
 by the Motor Transport Reconstruction Park of Vemeuil. 
 The next attractions were "The G. H. Q. Players of Chau- 
 mont," "The Merry Makers" and "The Ordnance Review." 
 
 The Cirque de Paris capped the climax so far as accom- 
 modations were concerned. Its seating capacity of 6,000 
 was increased to 8,000, entertaining in two performances 
 15,000 men a day. The stage was equipped with facilities 
 for large and small productions. There was also a regu- 
 lation boxing ring besides many rest rooms. With the 
 seating capacities of all the amusement places under the 
 management in Paris, including the Hotel Pavilion with 
 its 450 chairs in its concert hall, about 25,000 soldiers were 
 entertained every day between March 31 and June 30, 1919. 
 
 At various other points theatres were taken over, espe- 
 cially at Chaumont, Tours, Le Mans, and Treves. All were 
 fairly well equipped with curtains, lights, scenery, and 
 commodious auditoriums. At Toul the municipal theatre 
 was engaged and outfitted and it made a splendid show 
 house for the Second Army productions. The Trianon 
 Theatre at Tours gave long and valuable service, housing 
 at different times every important A. E. F. attraction. 
 
 The largest theatre in France under the control of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association was one it constructed 
 
192 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 itself, the Victory Theatre, at Bordeaux. It covered three 
 acres of ground in the Embarkation Camp and could be 
 seen for miles. Besides a large stage and auditorium with 
 boxes and graduated seats, there was a huge dancing floor. 
 The equipment included eleven dressing rooms, four flood- 
 lights, two spotlights, numerous ''sets," and a curtain on 
 which was painted the most colossal eagle in France, the 
 work of Lieutenant Robinson. Franklin Hall was another 
 theatre in Bordeaux. 
 
 The large municipal theatre at Le Mans was secured 
 whenever there were no French shows billed. There were 
 regular performances there, too, at the Salle des Concerts. 
 At Antwerp, the Theatre des Variet^s was transformed 
 into an American amusement place, which was operated 
 under the supervision of Captain Donovan, entertainment 
 officer for the area embracing Antwerp, Brussels, the Hague, 
 Rotterdam, and Apa. Here the Knights of Columbus 
 furnished the theatre, the Y M C A the entertainment and 
 costuming, and the Jewish Welfare Board the orchestra. 
 
 The greater part of the entertainment work in Italy was 
 carried on in hospitals. A few theatres were rented such 
 as the playhouse at Treviso, the Teatro Sociale di Palazzola 
 sull 'Oglio, the Teatro Politeama di Como, the Teatro 
 Politeama di Monza, and the Teatro Lirico — all in Milan. 
 A medieval palace in Florence containing a private theatre 
 was probably the most pretentious place taken in Italy. 
 Near Bologna, Castel Maggiore was rented for enter- 
 tainments. 
 
 The actor in the World War was always on duty: his 
 ''cue" was twenty-four hours a day wherever the dough- 
 boy "called" him; and his theatre was wherever he could 
 find an audience from front line trench and dugout to 
 some of the finest houses in Europe. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMPS AT HOME 
 
 *'You shall have better cheer 
 Ere you depart; and thanks to stay and eat itJ^ 
 
 Cymbeline. 
 
 Let us now review the reserve army of entertainers who 
 were holding the ''fort" back home in America. 
 
 More than half the American soldiers called to the 
 colors never left our shores. Nearly 3,000,000 men, whose 
 service stripes are of silver, share the honor in which America 
 holds all who donned the olive drab. So among the enter- 
 tainers it is estimated that more than 20,000 actors, pro- 
 fessional and semi-professional, with lyceum workers, sing- 
 ers, and amateur entertainers, appeared before the soldiers 
 in American camps. 
 
 The need of entertaining the Army at home was almost 
 equal to that in France — and the American stage rallied 
 to the home service. It must be remembered that every 
 soldier, whether he went across or not, spent some time 
 in one of the thirty-two cantonments. The whole Army, 
 5,000,000 strong, passed through these camps. This called 
 for a volume of entertainment — an army of artists, singers, 
 and actors — exceeding the numbers needed overseas. If 
 there was drudgery in France, there was also novelty; 
 if there was discomfort and danger, there was also excite- 
 ment and activity. It may be doubted if any man was 
 ever more homesick in France than he was in those first 
 days when, fresh from the comfort of home, he was thrown 
 into the roughness of training camp life. The process of 
 reshaping American individualism into a harmonious unit, 
 of adjusting widely differing personalities into a disciplined, 
 smoothly working machine, was not accomplished without 
 
 193 
 
194 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 painful experiences. The best medicine was a good laugh, 
 a clean hour of distraction and forgetfulness. 
 
 In these American camps we find thousands who volun- 
 teered at the historic Palace Theatre meeting when the 
 Over There Theatre League was organized and who, un- 
 able to get overseas because of restrictions, limitations, 
 contractual obligations, or other obstructions, literally 
 invaded the American camps — still eagerly waiting for the 
 opportunity to go abroad with the soldiers. 
 "Come and hear Madam Schumann-Heink.'' 
 "Madam Louise Homer will sing at the Big Y tonight." 
 "Free concert by the New York Clef Club Orchestra." 
 That was the sort of invitation extended night after 
 night to the boys in the home camps. It was possible be- 
 cause the greatest artists of the American stage and con- 
 cert would give their time and talents freely for the enter- 
 tainment of the Army. The roll would fill this volume 
 and make of it a catalogue and directory of the profession. 
 Think of any form of entertainment you like — it was 
 given by its foremost exponents before soldier audiences. 
 Vaudeville, in all its variety of monologue, dance, sketch, 
 acrobatics, juggling, tight and slack rope dancing; opera 
 and concert; musical comedy and farce; instrumental 
 music of every sort from the soloists to the greatest bands 
 and orchestras — whatever the American public has stamped 
 with its approval by crowding the theatres of America, 
 that the soldiers of America saw in the great auditoriums 
 or in the huts of the welfare societies scattered through 
 the camps. 
 
 The list is endless. Nothing wa.s too good to show be- 
 fore the soldiers. Mischa Elman and his magic violin, 
 Harry Lauder, David Bispham, Evan Williams, Reinald 
 Werrenrath, Freda Hempel, Nora Bayes, Irving Fisher, 
 Richard Carle, Grace Van Studdiford, Maud Powell, Andrew 
 Mack, Maude Adams, Jefferson de Angelis, are only a few 
 of the names which come to mind. The Coburn Players, 
 
ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMPS AT HOME 19g 
 
 the New York Symphony Orchestra, and the New York 
 Philharmonic Orchestra were some of the organizations 
 whose names are famihar. The French Veterans' Band, 
 every one of whom had seen active service and most of 
 whom had been wounded and decorated, was brought to 
 America and toured the cantonments, financed and routed 
 by the ''Yr 
 
 The places for entertainment comprised an immense 
 variety of buildings and improvised stages out of doors. 
 There were the great Liberty Theatres, thirty-two of them, 
 erected by the Commission on Training Camp Activities. 
 In these, metropolitan successes were booked. Bookings for 
 the Liberty Theatre at Camp Dix during the month of 
 February, 1918, included William Courtenay and Thomas 
 A. Wise in "General Post" from the Gaiety Theatre, New 
 York; the Liberty Comedy Company in "Baby Mine," 
 and "Kick In," "Flora Bella," "The Beauty Shop," "Fair 
 and Warmer," "Turn to the Right," "Princess Pat," 
 "Daddy Longlegs," "Prince of Pilsen," and "Mary's 
 Ankle." For these shows the Commission fixed a nom- 
 inal charge of twenty-five and fifty cents. 
 
 Then there were the big "Y" auditoriums seating several 
 thousands, designed like the Liberty Theatres, for audi- 
 ences drawn from the whole camp. Here great concerts 
 were given by artists of international fame. The Phila- 
 delphia Orchestra, the New York Clef Club Orchestra, 
 The Elsa Fischer String Quartet, and the Edna White 
 Trumpet Quartet were among the organizations which 
 were thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated, while a number 
 of university glee clubs, and such organizations as the 
 Tuskegee Singers and the Fisk University Jubilee Singers 
 gave their always popular programs. 
 
 In many camps what was called "the outdoor Y" was 
 added to the big auditorium. This was usually a stage 
 so arranged that thousands of men could gather about 
 it on all sides. It served equally well for a boxing match. 
 
196 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 an acrobatic exhibition, a speech, or a concert. With a 
 booth erected for the movie machine, and with a screen 
 of boughs and flags along one side for a background, it 
 enabled larger audiences to watch the pictures or a vaude- 
 ville program than could be gathered in any building. 
 
 At Camp Sheridan, an old state fair ground auditorium 
 known as the Buckeye Coliseum was repaired and used 
 for entertainment. This was capable of accommodating 
 12,000 men, and ex-President Taft addressed there a crowd 
 that filled the building. This is but a sample of the audi- 
 diences that were addressed by Mr. Taft at other canton- 
 ments. Under the auspices of the ^^Y" he visited all but 
 two of the cantonments in America, addressing a total of 
 over 300,000 men. He presented before his soldier audi- 
 ences the case of America vs. Germany from the standpoint 
 of an international lawyer, presenting both sides of the 
 case and drawing his conclusion so that there could be no 
 possible doubt in the minds of his audience of the justice 
 of their cause. 
 
 Just as space does not permit mention of all who enter- 
 tained in the camps, so the names of the many organiza- 
 tions and individuals who arranged bookings, got together 
 troupes, and conducted parties of entertainers to the 
 camps far outrun the possibility of adequate record. Mr. 
 John D. Sullivan of the United Booking Office, New York, 
 the manager of the Keith Orpheum Circuit, Mother Davison, 
 Amelia Bingham, Sophie Tucker, The Stage Women's 
 War Relief, the New York Mayor's Committee of Women, 
 and many others in every part of the country will be long 
 remembered for such services. Mr. Charles D. Isaacson, 
 of the New York Globe, served faithfully and persistently 
 in providing concert parties of the highest quality, and 
 what he saw of the response of the men as he went from 
 camp to camp led him to predict again and again that the 
 War would develop an appreciation of music such as Amer- 
 ica had never known. 
 
ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMPS AT HOME 197 
 
 The Stage Women's War Relief extended a service that 
 will never be forgotten by the soldiers. Here we find serving 
 the Army such distinguished artists as Rachel Crothers, 
 Elizabeth Tyree Metcalf, Louise Closser Hale, Dorothy 
 Donnelly, May Kirkpatrick, Mrs. Shelley Hull, and Minnie 
 Dupree. Here, too, in our American war relief we find 
 Blanche Bates, Jessie Bonstelle, May Buckley, Bijou 
 Fernandez, Mrs. Joseph Grismer, Gladys Hanson, Florence 
 Nash, Mrs. Chauncey Olcott. There are also Mrs. Otis 
 Skinner, traveling from camp to camp; Chrystal Heme 
 directing the work in New York; Mrs. Walter Vincent 
 recruiting the vaudeville world; Mrs. William Famimi 
 recruiting the cinema stars; Fanny Cannon in charge of 
 soldiers' welfare; Mrs. Daisy Humphreys directing pub- 
 licity; Felice Morris as executive secretary; Anna L. Faller 
 as auditor; and Mrs. Eula S. Garrison as manager of all 
 camp entertainments. Here, also, we greet Mary Boland 
 and Carol McComas, Florence Gerrish, Virginia Fox 
 Brooks, Lillian Albertson, Margaret Dale, Georgia Caine 
 Hudson, and Hope Latham Keniper — every name men- 
 tioned being an officer of this vast organization, the rank 
 and file of which enrolled practically every stage woman 
 in America. 
 
 ''We gave 1,430 shows and entertained in more than 1,000 
 wards in hospitals," says Mrs. Garrison. "We played in 
 61 different hospitals, 58 camps and training stations, 
 67 clubs and service houses, and on 14 battleships. We 
 cooperated with the Y M C A and every organization — 
 the Red Cross, Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare, 
 War Camp Community Service, and Salvation Army — 
 and with individuals." 
 
 No profession was more largely represented in the Army 
 itself than the theatrical. In the very first days, when 
 entertainment was wholly impromptu, men would be dis- 
 
198 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 covered in almost every audience who could do ji song, 
 dance, or monologue with all the finish of the experienced 
 performer. As one entertainment director described it: 
 "The hall would fill up after the evening mess and some- 
 thing had to be done to entertain the boys. We would 
 get a pianist somewhere, I would usually start with a few 
 songs, and then the performers would be dragged, pushed, 
 or lifted on to the stage by their buddies. Everybody 
 was goodnatured and all seemed to enjoy the evening 
 whether the show was good or not, and usually it was 
 surprisingly good.'' 
 
 Men were found who were experiencied in producing 
 plays, canvasses were made to discover soldiers who had 
 dramatic talent or experience, and elaborate plays were 
 written, staged, and produced before enthusiastic audiences. 
 At Camp Dix Mr. Leopold Lane, legitimate and movie 
 actor, had charge of entertainment. The first play was 
 a one-act comedy "One Hundred Dollars Reward,'' written 
 by Private Roland Southerland, 1st N. Y. Field Artillery 
 and presented by Company A. 311 Infantry, October 29, 
 1918. This was quickly followed by "My Turn Next" 
 presented by Company E of the 311th. Numerous others 
 followed, among them "You'll Like It," with a cast in- 
 cluding Private William Sully formerly of the Ziegfeld 
 Follies, Jack de Graff well known in musical comedy, 
 Eddie Flynn from the vaudeville stage, and several others 
 familiar to Broadway. 
 
 At Camp Upton, the well-known song writer Sergeant 
 Irving Berlin produced "Yip Yip Yaphank," which not 
 only scored a hit in camp, but was eventually produced on 
 Broadway with great success by its soldier cast. At Camp 
 Zachary Taylor, Foxall Daingerfield organized and trained 
 the "Soldier Players," who not only toured the huts of 
 the camp, but were sent on tours through several states 
 by the Government, in connection with the Liberty Loan 
 drives. At Camp Shelby the "Thirty-Eighth Division 
 
ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMPS AT HOME 199 
 
 Players" were organized and directed by Marston Allen, 
 and at Camp Gordon the ''Army Entertainers' Ijeague," 
 at one time numbering more than 150 men, gave high class 
 vaudeville in all parts of the camp. At Camp Sherman, 
 for four months, the Ohio Federation of Musical Clubs 
 furnished the entertainment. Chambers of Commerce, 
 Rotary Clubs, and other organizations did their part, 
 and hardly a city or town within a half day's journey of 
 one of the big cantonments or smaller camps could be 
 found without some organization or individual who had 
 assumed responsibility for securing talent for shows or 
 concerts. 
 
 This is not to say that there were no difficulties. It 
 took strenuous days and nights on the part of those re- 
 sponsible to keep the stream flowing smoothly so that 
 every point would be regularly served. Many a cold ride 
 in street car or automobile was taken by performers, to 
 keep engagements in out-of-the-way places. Sometimes 
 the eagerness of soldiers for more, and ever more, put a 
 severe strain upon endurance. During the quarantine at 
 Camp Dix, on a single evening one group of vaudevillians 
 repeated their thirty-minute sketch seven times at different 
 barracks, and the Orpheus Quartet sang more than 
 eighty selections. This record was soon passed by another 
 group of singers who gave ninety songs in one day. 
 
 Opportunities for heroism, mounting even to the last 
 full measure of devotion, presented themselves. At Camp 
 Lewis, two members of the Metropolitan Opera Quartet, 
 Misses Linnie Love and Lorna Lea, arrived for a return 
 engagement just as the camp was going under quarantine 
 for influenza. Both girls volunteered to remain and undergo 
 quarantine for the sake of entertaining the men. As a 
 result of overwork and exposure, both were stricken with 
 the disease and taken to the hospital. Miss Lea recovered, 
 but Miss Love was so exhausted by her untiring efforts 
 that she rapidly failed and died in the hospital, the only 
 
200 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 worker with the Y M C A who died as a result of the epi- 
 demic in that camp. No braver or more loyal heart ever 
 went over the top in France. 
 
 There was an informality and personal exchange be- 
 tween artist and audience such as never could be possible 
 under other conditions. Again and again the entertainers 
 stayed for greetings after the show, and the shout would 
 rise, "No seconds, boys. You can't shake hands but once,'' 
 as enthusiasts tried to slip into the line for a second greet- 
 ing. When Sue Harvard, singing for the first time ''Have 
 You Seen Them in France?" ended by throwing copies of 
 the song, with a package of Bull Durham attached to 
 each, among the audience, there was a small riot. Often 
 the camp songleader would spring to the platform at the 
 end of a concert and say, ''Shall we sing a couple of songs 
 to entertain our entertainer?" Choruses would rise in 
 "The Long Trail" and "Over There," until the artist 
 whose voice had held thousands spellbound confessed that 
 she had received more than she had given. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 SINGING THEIR WAY TO VICTORY 
 
 ^'The man that hath no music in himself 
 Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds j 
 Is Jit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils J' 
 
 The Merchant of Venice. 
 
 America has never been a singing nation, yet in each 
 great national emergency songs have appeared that in 
 words, melody, and rhythm expressed the emotion of the 
 time. No one who has heard the veterans of the Grand 
 Army of the Republic sing their songs has failed to realize 
 what those songs meant to another generation. The great 
 drawback in those songs was that they were sectional 
 and tended to sharpen memories which should be softened 
 with the passing of time. 
 
 The Spanish-American War was too short to develop 
 a mass of songs, as true folk songs are the product of time. 
 "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here," and "There'll Be a Hot 
 Time in the Old Town Tonight" had all the care-free 
 enthusiasm of American youth volunteering for an adven- 
 ture. "The Blue and the Gray" indicated the end of 
 sectionalism for a new generation. The one song which 
 came out of the Spanish-American War as a national 
 song was old when that war began, but "Dixie" is un- 
 questionably the most popular song in America today. 
 The interim between the Spanish-American War and the 
 Great War did not produce a single addition to our folk songs. 
 
 While the Anglo-Saxon stock and traditions are pre- 
 dominant with us, the growth of our great cities, with their 
 colonies of foreign blood not fully Americanized, has hin- 
 dered the development of an art form so dependent on 
 
 201 
 
202 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 common standards as the folk song and folk singing. Be- 
 fore the Great War this was recognized by a few musicians 
 and attempts had been made to promote block parties and 
 commmiity singing. Tentative efforts had also been made 
 at sing-songs in the Plattsburg camps organized before 
 we went into the War. It was here that the first new song 
 appeared — 'The Last Long Mile'' — of all those which 
 came to express the various feelings and emotions of Amer- 
 ica's soldiers in the camps at home and overseas. George 
 M. Cohan's vigorous march song, ''Over There," was 
 even more popular with the public outside the canton- 
 ments, and both were constantly used by the soldiers at 
 home and overseas. 
 
 The French had a single song, the melody of which was 
 so inflammatory that prior to the Great War it had become 
 the song of insurrection and anarchy all over Europe. 
 It was then known as "The International" but the essen- 
 tial part, the fiery melody, had a century before been sung 
 by "Marseillaise Battalion" when it toiled northward toward 
 Paris to hearten the sinking spirits of those who were 
 struggling for a new repubUc. The Marseillaise has always 
 been dangerous to the enemies of freedom and liberty. 
 It was sung by all the AlUed Armies in France more 
 generally than any other song. 
 
 There were other songs, not so powerful, which were 
 heard by all Americans overseas. The whole French 
 nation sang the fine old song, "Chant de Depart," the 
 greatest bond between the glorious men of France who 
 went to the front and the bereaved country which sent 
 them. Then there was the most romantic of all the Na- 
 poleonic marching songs, "Le Reve Passee," and the present- 
 day song "Verdun," which sets the phrase "They shall 
 not pass" to music for generations of French to come. 
 One new song our overseas Army brought back as charac- 
 teristic of the France they knew. Naughty and philander- 
 ing, brave and sacrificial, with a rush of wondrous marching 
 
SINGING THEIR WAY TO VICTORY 203 
 
 meter, ^^Madelon" was the most generally popular of 
 all the new war songs. With its French words and a half 
 dozen English versions, "Madelon" became as familiar to 
 the Americans as any of their own songs. 
 
 The Americans had little chance to hear or learn the 
 British songs aside from 'Tipperary," which had become 
 well known long before we went into the War and went 
 straight to the heart of every city man whether he had 
 ever before heard of Piccadilly or Leicester Square or not. 
 Later, the Americans took up ^^Blighty,'^ "I Want to Go 
 Home,^' and "Keep Your Head Down, Fritzy Boy." 
 
 When the great training camps began to be organized, 
 it was decided to have a singing member on each of the 
 ''Y" staffs, a policy which was adopted after careful investi- 
 gation and in accord with the wishes of Mr. Lee F. Hamner 
 of the Fosdick Commission on Training Camp Activities. 
 The early song leaders were highly trained musicians, 
 whose professional efficiency made unnecessary any special 
 training for their new work. The intention was to send 
 a singing army to France and keep it a singing army. Mr. 
 Marshall Bartholomew, a trained musician, who had been 
 in prisoner-of-war work overseas, was placed in charge at 
 New York Headquarters. Professor Harold C. Knapp of 
 Northwestern University prepared a list of songs and 
 music to be used by the American Army. Mr. Robert 
 Lawrence was at the head of the classes for musical leader- 
 ship at the Columbia University conferences held in New 
 ^ York during the summer and fall of 1918 and all prospec- 
 tive overseas workers were given daily drills in singing. 
 The methods developed at New York Headquarters were 
 used in the five other training schools, the intention being 
 to produce a standardized method of song leadership for 
 a limited list of the best known hymns, patriotic and senti- 
 mental songs. 
 
204 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 General Pershing, in speaking of the most inspiring 
 moments in the War, once remarked: ''I think they were 
 when I heard my Army singing/' From that historic mo- 
 ment when General Pershing, with his First American 
 Expeditionary Forces, stepped on French soil, and the 
 strains of 'The Star-Spangled Banner" greeted them, 
 throughout their months in France until they embarked 
 for home a victorious army, the Americans sang their way 
 through the War. 
 
 "Keep the Army singing!" This was the constant order, 
 not only from General Pershing in France but from Gen- 
 eral March throughout the army camps in America. It 
 is recognized by the ablest military minds that song is 
 one of the most potent factors in warfare; and how they 
 did keep the men singing! More than 200 song leaders 
 were sent overseas, more than 1,000 athletic directors 
 were trained as song leaders, and every one of the 25,000 
 workers ''got the boys to singing" whenever the oppor- 
 tunity occurred. These song leaders followed the Army 
 into Italy, Germany, Russia, Siberia — they actually fol- 
 lowed the Stars and Stripes around the world. 
 
 So great was this sing-song campaign that printing 
 presses in America, England, France, and wherever they 
 could be secured in Europe, were humming off songbooks 
 and song leaflets by the millions for distribution to the 
 Army. It would probably be difficult to find a doughboy 
 who did not at sometime carry one of these songbooks in 
 his khaki pocket. A bag of "makings" and a soiled copy of 
 the paper-covered "Popular Songs of the A. E. F." bearing 
 the slogan, "Give me the man who goes into battle 
 with a song in his heart," were like Captain Kidd's 
 treasures to the doughboy. This songbook, sent out along 
 the front by the A. E. F.-Y MCA, carried the words of 
 143 popular songs with the message: "It's the songs 
 we sing and the smiles we wear that make the sunshine 
 everywhere." 
 
--A 
 
 vl- 
 
 ^NTg:i;)TAiNF:\x5 
 
 When for weeks you've had performances morning, noon, and night, and 
 at last comes an afternoon with nothing to do but three weeks' laundry, a few 
 letters, a bit of mending, some socks to darn and maybe wash your hair and file 
 a nail or two — and along comes Jimmy something-or-other, aged nineteen, from 
 Tulamasoo, Idaho, to pay you a call (knowing you must be lonesome!), and he 
 stays and stays and stays and tells you of all his love affairs (oh what a devil with 
 the ladies he is!) of the last sixteen years, but vows no girl holds a candle to 
 you! — wouldn't you just like to forget you're a nice '"Y" lady and say some- 
 hing in "shavetail" language? 
 
0) o . 
 
SINGING THEIR WAY TO VICTORY 205 
 
 A transport, crowded with soldiers, is on the ^'road to 
 France." The shores of America have faded from the 
 vision and the ship is plunging on its way toward mid- 
 ocean and the submarine danger zone. We hear the rhyth- 
 mic echo of voices — thousands of voices: 
 
 ^'Good-by Broadway, hello France — 
 WeVe ten million strong — 
 Good-by sweethearts, wives, and mothers. 
 It won't take us long — 
 Don't you worry while we're there — 
 It's for you we're fighting, too — 
 So good-by Broadwaj^, hello France — 
 We're going to square our debt to you!" 
 
 And on that memorable morning when the shores of 
 France first loom into view — what an outburst of song: 
 ''Hail! Hail! the Gang's All Here!" ^^It's a Long Way 
 to Berlin, but We'll Get There." "When We Wmd Up 
 the Watch on the Rhine." 
 
 The great job finally became to prevent the soldiers 
 from singing at a critical point or to stop them once they 
 got started. The song leaders who went over to France 
 found lots of work to do, but on the whole they found 
 that the intensive work done in America in teaching the 
 soldiers the words of the real songs they wanted to sing, 
 and impregnating them with confidence and the love of 
 real singing, resulted in much singing and some new songs. 
 
 The songs will not always bear textual repetition, but 
 their melodies, even those which sprang spontaneously 
 out of war conditions, were pure music. Over and over 
 again on going up to the line in the cold dawn, or in the 
 equally wretched hours just after midnight, officers would 
 
 frequently have to call out, "Cut out that d singing!" 
 
 For the American doughboy had that type of buoyant 
 courage which can be properly expressed only in a chorus. 
 
 Coming back from the lines it was often one continuous 
 sing-song all the way. In the huts, where men would 
 
206 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 occupy the seats hours before the performance began so 
 as to make sure of getting their share in these always 
 crowded show-houses, the natural thing was to sing. Some- 
 body would start, and ofif they would go. Far and away 
 the most frequently sung of all the American tunes, a 
 song that hypnotized the American doughboy in his leisure 
 moments, was that languorous ditty: 
 
 "I'm sorry, dear — so sorry, dear — 
 I'm sorry I made you cry! — 
 Won't you forget, won't you forgive? 
 Don't let us say good-by! 
 One little word — one little smile — 
 One little kiss — won't you try? 
 It breaks my heart to hear you sigh — 
 I'm sorry I made you cry!" 
 
 An entertainer who could start this song was as sure 
 of her house in the rain-soaked, primitive conditions of 
 wartime France, as was George Cohan in a patriotic flag- 
 waving on Broadway. They would go on to 'Toor Butter- 
 fly," "The Broken Doll," "Ireland Must Be Heaven" and 
 "Oh, You Beautiful Doll." 
 
 Then there was that other splendid group of songs, 
 the home sentiment songs: "There's a Long Long Trail 
 Awinding" — it lifted the soldiers' hearts as clearly as the 
 inspiration of any victory. "Hark! Hear the Soldiers 
 Singing," "The Rose of No Man's Land," "My Belgian 
 Rose," "Lorraine," "Keep the Home Fires Burning," 
 "The Little Gray Home in the West," and "The End of 
 a Perfect Day" — what visions arose before their eyes, 
 what irresistible repose and confidence the music brought! 
 
 And how these memories in melody started the hearts 
 of thousands of boys beating — how the eyes moistened 
 as they fell into the melody of 
 
 "It's a long way to dear old Broadway — 
 But we're coming back to you!" 
 
SINGING THEIR WAY TO VICTORY 207 
 
 How the feet began to beat time with the heart, and 
 bodies swung into the rhythm of ''I Want to Go Back to 
 Michigan — I Want to Go Back to the Farm," or ''Back 
 Home in Tennessee," ''My Old Kentucky Home," "Carry 
 Me Back to Old Virginny." But how those voices rose 
 and the starlit skies of France threw back the echoes when 
 they sang 
 
 "I wish I was in de land of cotton. 
 Old times dar will never be forgotten, 
 Look-a-way! Look-a-way! Look-a-way! Dixie Land! . . . 
 
 Den I wish I was in Dixie, Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! 
 
 In Dixie Land 1^11 take my stand 
 
 To lib and die in Dixie — 
 
 Away, away, away down South in Dixie — 
 
 Away, away, away down South in Dixie!" 
 
 In all this spontaneous singing the entertainers, espe- 
 cially the trained professional singers, who "put over" 
 songs with the zest and in the atmosphere that one gets 
 only through a lifetime of practice, should be given their 
 tribute. Elsie Janis's singing of "Over Here," and "When 
 Yankee Doodle Learns to Parlez-Vous Francais," a song 
 that was tremblingly laid before her by a doughboy with 
 the faint hope that she might "give it a try," went like 
 wildfire throughout the Army. The records will never 
 tell how many a little entertainer came to be known among 
 their chosen units as the "Smiles" girl just because she 
 popularized and connected unforgettably with her own 
 personal charm that Ulting ditty, "Pack up Your Troubles 
 in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile!" There 
 were others who created a saucy atmosphere with "N' 
 Everything," or built up a fine heroic mood around a song 
 which Margaret Wilson did most to popularize, "The 
 Americans Have Come." Irving Berlin covered himself 
 with glory by launching upon the world, "Oh, How I 
 Hate to Get Up in the Morning," and "How You Going 
 to Keep Them Down on the Farm?" 
 
208 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 But the doughboys' greatest joy was to sing those spon- 
 taneous authorless songs that rose in the unique atmos- 
 phere of the A. E. F. itself. Most famous of all these was 
 that classic which served through the War and is still 
 going strong wherever A. E. F. men get together, ^'Hinky 
 Dinky Parlez-Vous." It had an infinite number of verses, 
 but it always started out with this one, which gives the 
 full flavor of a real doughboy ditty: 
 
 *'The General got the croix de guerre, parlez-vous, 
 The General got the croix de guerre, parlez vous, 
 The General got the croix de guerre. 
 But the son of a gun, he was never there, 
 Hinkyy Dinky ^ Parlez-Vous.^' 
 
 Then there was that self-indulgent privates' chanson 
 entitled "I Know Where They Are/' which, after describing 
 in various stanzas that the officers were ^^down in Rosie's 
 bar"; the sergeants were ' 'eating the soldiers' grub"; the 
 corporals were ' 'mending the old barbed wire"; ended with 
 this glorious tribute to the privates, with all voices at 
 top pitch: 
 
 "If you want to know where the privates are, 
 
 I know where they are, 
 I know where they are, I know where they are, 
 If you want to know where the privates are, 
 
 I know where they are — 
 Up to their necks in micdy I saw them, I saw them, 
 Up to their necks in mvd^ I saw them, 
 Up to their necks in rmidJ^ 
 
 Of course, the characteristic quality of these songs is 
 absent unless you were there to hear the spanking music 
 that linked up with the words and made them the most 
 tuneful marching songs that ever were sung. 
 
 The Army was just as rich in parodies. Of these, ''Do 
 We Go Home or Do We Hesitate?" probably evoked the 
 most hearty and general approval of all. The most ironic 
 lines of this song ran, 
 
SINGING THEIR WAY TO VICTORY 209 
 
 "Twenty years from now General Pershing, he'll say, ^Gee! 
 I forgot about those boys in Germanee/ 
 Do We Go Home—Or Do We Hesitated 
 
 The Alabama boys, who provided the wildest contingent 
 of the Forty-Second Division, just naturally had a song 
 all their own, the full effect of which unfortunately cannot 
 be given here, but which struck a touching ironic note at 
 the end of each stanza, '^Oh, This Beautiful War!" This 
 song, like many others of the great popular songs of the 
 War, never has been and probably never will be com- 
 mitted to paper. In fact, many of the best known dough- 
 boy songs cannot be bought and perhaps have not been 
 seen in their written form by most of those who know 
 them and sing them on every provocation at their reunions. 
 Anyhow, this is as good a time as any to include the words, 
 to the tune of "The Ole Gray Mare,'' of the best known 
 parody of them all, "Good-by Kaiser Bill." They went: 
 
 "Uncle Sammy he's got the infantry, 
 He's got the cavalry. 
 He's got the artillery. 
 And so by gosh we'll all go to Germany 
 Good-hy Kaiser Bill, 
 
 "Good-by Kaiser Bill, good-by. Kaiser Bill, 
 For Uncle Sammy, he's got the infantry. 
 
 He's got the cavalry. 
 
 He's got the artillery, 
 And so by gosh we'll all go to Germany, 
 
 And good-by Kaiser BiUJ^ 
 
 For over a year in America Marshall Bartholomew had 
 charge of the Music Department. He went to Paris about 
 the middle of January, 1919, but it was necessary for him 
 to leave for America early in March, 1919, as there were 
 problems to be solved in the cantonments at home. It 
 was at Mr. Bartholomew's request that Ernest B. Cham- 
 
210 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 berlain wa^ urged to return to France. He was previously 
 an instructor in music at the University of Wisconsin. 
 On February 1, 1919, the Song Leaders' Bureau of the 
 Entertainment Department A. E. F.-Y MCA was for- 
 mally inaugurated by Mr. Chamberlain as director. 
 
 Louis N. Cushman appeared in the Le Mans Area in 
 the latter part of February, 1919, to do sing-song work 
 as a song leader in the camps. There he organized teams, 
 with a song leader and accompanist. One team went into 
 Tonnerre, where it spent a month with the Thirty-Sixth 
 Division. Mr. Cushman had the hearty support of Colonel 
 James, through whose interest singing classes were ar- 
 ranged among the soldiers. Men were chosen from the 
 Army and sent to the classes one hour a day for eight 
 days. The Lawrence Course for Song Leaders used at 
 Columbia was curtailed to meet the necessity for a short 
 course. These soldier song leaders of chosen ability took 
 a deep interest in the work. Nightly a song leader would 
 go out to different towns in the surrounding territory, 
 accompanied by a folding organ to work the singing up to 
 its proper pitch. At La Suze, Mr. Cushman recalls one 
 evening when he managed to coax eight or nine men about 
 him to sing songs of a popular style. It was not long before 
 this small group grew to about 800 soldiers, and sprinkled 
 among them were French children and civilians. He 
 asked the French to sing ''Madelon^' and then the ''Mar- 
 seillaise.'' When they had finished the soldiers cheered. 
 The soldiers were eager to return the compliment and sang 
 a number of American popular songs. The French ap- 
 plauded them in their usual manner. In this way, through 
 sing-songs, the Entente Cordiale was promoted and it 
 had a great deal to do in strengthening the relations among 
 the American soldiers and the French people. 
 
 One interesting experience is that of a song leader on a 
 motor truck, accompanied by a rolling canteen in the 
 Twenty-Ninth Division at Le Mans. Pauline Hayes was 
 
SINGING THEIR WAY TO VICTORY 211 
 
 assigned to begin at Tours, where she reported to Mr. 
 Hazenburg, song leader. Together they had sing-songs 
 until the army division moved from J ussy to Le Mans 
 concentration camp on March 26, 1919. Here it was that 
 Miss Hayes had her happy thought. She asked permis- 
 sion to have a piano placed on an army motor truck. A 
 canteen worker was asked to join them, a rolling canteen 
 was enlisted, and these combined forces went out into the 
 camps. There they served lemonade and cookies — and 
 started the whole camp on an orgy of song. 
 
 The song leaders began to invade all sectors of the Army. 
 There was Fred H. Balmond at Le Mans; Frances Black- 
 ney, who was at Semur as assistant song leader; 'Louise 
 Robins Curry, who went from Semur to St. Gervais; Charles 
 M. Clear who was sent to Coblenz, and later on to Biarritz 
 and Luchon Cauterets; Leo Charles Demack, choir leader 
 at St. Peter's Church, Beverly, Mass., who was with the 
 Third Army at Coblenz and then went to Bordeaux; Flor- 
 ence Eis at Semur; C. C. Gleason at Le Mans; Robert 
 Good; Ira M. Grey, song leader with the Religious Work 
 Department; C. F. Lamb, an entertainment secretary in 
 the Eighth Region, at Dijon, who later joined Mr. Thrush 
 at Coblenz; Edward Havens at Mentone; Milford Witts, 
 entertainment director at Dijon; J. L. Newhall at St. 
 Nazaire, one of the great successes as a song leader; W. Stan- 
 ley Hawkins who after January 1, 1919, was sent to Coblenz 
 to take charge of the Music Department in the Third Army; 
 Eugene Foulke; Arthur K. Wyatt of the Kirk Entertain- 
 ment Unit; A. W. Ely at St. Nazaire; and G. J. Edwards, 
 who was sent to the Leave Areas. These are but a few of 
 the song leaders in the field. 
 
 The experience of Hope G. Carrell is typical of the 
 service. Transferred from the Women's Bureau she became 
 a lecturer, soloist, and violinist. She interspersed the 
 entertainment program with sing-songs, leading the audi- 
 ence of soldiers by starting the song. She started the work 
 
212 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 around Bordeaux, where she was assigned for two weeks 
 and then went to Le Mans. Here the soldiers were usually 
 encamped in their tents in the large fields. On a motor 
 truck or a Ford, equipped with a folding organ, she led 
 the sing-songs right there in the field. 
 
 In view of the rapid movement of the American troops 
 for home, the assignment of song leaders to the field was 
 discontinued at the end of May, 1919. The singing of 
 these songs will continue at camp fires and reunions for 
 fifty years to come, and some of the songs will remain 
 when the Great War has become a part of America's tra- 
 dition of humor and buoyancy under danger and difficulty. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 ENLISTING EMINENT LECTURERS 
 
 ^ 'Charm ache with air and agony with words J^ 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 Not only did the actors and song leaders follow the 
 armies — there were still others. Famous American au- 
 thors, travelers, jurists, psychologists, clergymen, his- 
 torians, journalists, lawyers, publicists, educators, play- 
 wrights — more than 500 of them, 200 of whom were in 
 regular service — became lecturers to the American soldier. 
 They, too, were equipped with gas masks and the para- 
 phernalia of campaigning along the lines behind the front. 
 It was their duty to instruct the doughboys in the prin- 
 ciples for which they were fighting; to keep them posted 
 on affairs ''back home''; and to take advantage of this 
 opportunity to instill the value of knowledge and self- 
 development into the youth of the nation. Their first duty, 
 however, was to entertain; and it is from this viewpoint 
 that their service is here recorded. 
 
 American celebrities of the platform and pulpit were 
 not the only ones offered to the American doughboy. 
 There were famous men of letters and science from England, 
 who crossed the Channel to speak; a few from France, 
 whose mastery of English was sufficient to carry the in- 
 terest of an American boy through an evening; and such 
 personages as might possibly be recruited from other 
 countries, such as Dr. Wellington Koo, Minister from 
 China to the United States, head of the Chinese delegation 
 at the Peace Conference, himself a Columbia graduate. 
 
 Early in December, 1917, Mr. Carter had proposed a 
 plan to General Pershing to exchange the best American 
 speakers with the British, in order to strengthen the mu- 
 
 213 
 
214 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 tual interests of the two countries. The suggestion won 
 immediate approval and in this way the United States 
 troops gained the opportunity of Hstening to some of the 
 foremost figures in Great Britain's pubHc hfe. There were 
 Lord Bryce, Former British Ambassador at Washington, 
 Viscount Northcliffe, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Johnston 
 Forbes Robertson and Lady Robertson, H. G. W^ells of 
 ''Mr. Britling'' fame, Ian Hay (Major Beith), author of 
 the 'The First Hundred Thousand,'' John Masefield, the 
 poet. Rev. Sidney Berry, Rev. B. T. Butcher, Professor 
 C. S. Terry, Professor F. Morse Simpson, Professor H. F. 
 Stewart, Ben Greet, Louis Casson, Sylvia Thorndike, 
 Professor W. P. Paterson of Edinburgh University, Dr. 
 MacMillan, Glasgow's noted Presbyterian divine, and 
 Rev. Mr. Ferguson, one of the greatest lecturers on polit- 
 ical subjects in the British Empire. Rudyard Kipling 
 addressed American troops at Winchester and in other 
 British camps. In exchange for this galaxy of stars some 
 of the American speakers sent into the British lines were 
 Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation 
 of Labor, Edward Bok, for many years editor of the Ladies^ 
 Home Journal, Dr. Albert Shaw, long noted as the editor 
 of the American Review of Reviews, Professor J. A. Field 
 of the University of Chicago faculty, and Ernest Hamilton 
 Abbott, correspondent for The Outlook. 
 
 This service was first instituted by Arthur Gleason, 
 the magazine writer, early in September, 1917. The first 
 American lecturer to appear in France — three days after 
 the arrival of General Pershing — was Norman Hapgood, 
 later sent by President Wilson as Minister to Denmark. 
 He lectured in Paris as early as July 7, 1917, before the 
 lecture service was organized. James Hazen Hyde, long 
 an American resident of France, was another of the early 
 speakers, addressing about 300 American soldiers stationed 
 in Paris in July, 1917, on "Franco- American Relations 
 Since 1776." 
 
ENLISTING EMINENT LECTURERS 215 
 
 From the arrival of the first American troops on foreign 
 soil the demand for lecturei's was continuous. Due to the 
 dearth of American speakers in France at that date, it 
 was necessary for a while to utilize soldier talent. Many 
 a soldier was an accomplished orator and entertained his 
 comrades in the huts with convincing speeches on the 
 superior merits of his home city or his home state, rising 
 to glowing eulogies of the greatness of America. This was 
 the kind of spirit which laid the germ that created the 
 lecture service. It became so popular with the boys that 
 it was found necessary to place it in a department of its 
 own. Already Mr. Gleason was burdened with so many 
 duties that he found it difficult to devote the time required 
 by the increasing needs of this newer field. This important 
 service was committed to the guidance of Dr. John Gay- 
 lord Coulter, a Chicago editor and lecturer. 
 
 The cry for facts about the War — the all-absorbing topic 
 of the moment — its underlying causes, its political effect 
 upon the future, was so great among the American soldiers 
 arriving on the scene of conflict that when Dr. Coulter 
 became Director of the Department of Entertainment and 
 Lectures, he set about at once to recruit speakers who 
 could talk convincingly on these matters. Thus began the 
 long '4ine" of celebrities in American public life which 
 stretched out into various divisions of the Army to imbed 
 deeply in the minds of the soldiers all the things for which 
 they had gone to war, and to promote the American point 
 of view and the fighting spirit of the men. 
 
 Dr. Coulter scoured the city of Paris for Americans of 
 note, engaged in some other form of war service, who 
 might be willing to address the soldiers. He was fortunate 
 in finding a number who proved of inestimable value during 
 those early days. Dr. Paul van Dyke, professor of English 
 Literature at Princeton, was in Paris as head of the Prince- 
 ton Division of the American University Union. George 
 Henry Nettleton, professor of English at Yale, was pre- 
 
216 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 siding as chairman of the University Union's executive 
 board. Charles W. Veditz, the economist and sociologist, 
 was attache of the Department of Commerce at the Amer- 
 ican Embassy. These and many others willingly con- 
 tributed their time and talent to the cause, speaking when- 
 ever called upon. 
 
 A trio of French notables in the persons of the Comtesse 
 de St. Maurice, Mme. Gilles Darmyl, the writer, and 
 Hughes le Roux, all with a perfect command of English, 
 joined the lecture forces. The Comtesse related the expe- 
 riences of the French during the German invasion of 1914. 
 Dr. Woods Hutchinson, the American medical authority, 
 extended advice to the soldiers. Other able American 
 speakers in this original volunteer group were Will Irwin, 
 the writer, Professor Mark Baldwin, Professor John Hunter 
 Sedgwick, and Charles A. Prince, a conspicuous member 
 of the Boston bar. Mr. Prince's lecture on ''What the 
 Boche Really Is," was very effective during the dark days 
 of 1917 and 1918. 
 
 Dr. Coulter soon was able to add other speakers arriv- 
 ing from America. Among them were Professor Arthur 
 H. Norton, Vice-President of Elmira College; Dr. Wilson 
 S. Naylor of the Lawrence University faculty at Appleton, 
 Wisconsin; George Palmer of Superior, Wisconsin; Harry 
 C. Evans, a Des Moines editor and Chautauqua lecturer; 
 and Robert P. Shepherd of Grand Rapids, well known 
 to the Chautauquas. 
 
 The cordial reception accorded to all these early speak- 
 ers by the soldiers wherever a lecture was given proved 
 how hungry the American fighting force was for knowledge 
 of European affairs and the background of the struggle. 
 Winthrop Ames had noted this, too, on his tour of inspec- 
 tion among the camps and reported it to Paris. Dr. Coulter 
 requested the headquarters officials to assign him every 
 arriving secretary who could address an audience, whether 
 professional lecturer, pulpit orator, educator, psychologist. 
 
ENLISTING EMINENT LECTURERS 217 
 
 scientist, statesman, politician, historian, dramatist, or 
 actor — all who were accustomed to appearing in public 
 and addressing audiences. Men who had been college 
 presidents, clergymen, editors, authors, judges, platform 
 orators went out into the camps, dotted like points on a 
 spider's web, appearing before their soldier audiences un- 
 heralded, with no reference whatever to their positions 
 in life — each delivering a vigorous message of patriotism 
 and purpose. 
 
 As soon as it was learned that Anson Phelps Stokes of 
 Yale had arrived in Paris, early in January, 1918, with a 
 view to drafting an educational program for the Y M C A, 
 Dr. Coulter pressed him into service in the lecture depart- 
 ment. Choosing the subject of ^'America and France," 
 he probably was the first speaker to give an illustrated 
 lecture along the American front. A tour was arranged for 
 Paris, Chaumont, Langres, Bourmont, Neufchateau, 
 Chalons, and Gondrecourt. 
 
 Dr. Coulter himself was a speaker of ability, and his 
 powers of entertainment were proved on frequent occa- 
 sions when substituting for others who at the last minute 
 could not appear. Moreover, he was anxious to get out 
 into the field where he felt a more intimate association 
 with the soldiers awaited him. Mr. Carter accordingly 
 released him to serve in his desired field. To fill his place 
 was a perplexing problem. Happily, however, he remem- 
 bered reading the reports of some clever impromptu enter- 
 tainments which had been staged out at Beaumont, a 
 battered French village standing right on the edge of No 
 Man's Land. He felt that the man who was capable of 
 arranging such good programs under those trying condi- 
 tions ought to make the new department "go." So he sent 
 for him — Charles Steele, who achieved the notable success 
 related in a preceding chapter. Mr. Steele was a true 
 American; he was willing to serve his country in any capac- 
 ity, so he left the field where it was all excitement, and 
 
218 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 came into Paris, where for a year he ran the entertainment 
 service. 
 
 It was not long before Mr. Steele had a line of lecturers 
 moving regularly about his war camp Chatauqua circuit. 
 There were Harry Emerson Fosdick the author-clergyman, 
 President William H. Crawford of Allegheny College, 
 Rheta Childs Dorr the author. Judge John Garland Pollard 
 of Richmond, Bishop Rogers Israel of Erie, Rev. Chester 
 Emerson of Detroit, Judge Tod B. Galloway of Columbus, 
 President Carl G. Doney of Willamette University, former 
 Senator Le Roy Percy of Mississippi, Dan Poling, Robert 
 George Paterson, Captain Beekman, Chaplain Monod, 
 Eunice Tietjens, and Burges Johnson, professor of English 
 at Vassar College, who gave his lecture ''American as It 
 Is Spoken in Forty-Two Different States." Each one 
 met with overwhelming success, proving the truth of 
 Winthrop Ames's statement that the men were hungry 
 for serious and educational talks. 
 
 Great crowds gathered nightly to hear these speakers 
 at such large troop centers as Rimaucourt, St. Blin, Treveray, 
 Givrauval, Boucq, Minil-le-Tour — the last place on the 
 Toul front where one could go without a gas mask — and 
 at Colombey-les-Belles. Here the boys were so hungry 
 for an American speaker that when Mr. Paterson appeared 
 there on the night the big offensive began he was greeted 
 by an enormous audience which packed the place, standing 
 and squatting in the aisles, and was introduced by Major 
 Frank Copeland Page, son of Walter Hines Page, late 
 ambassador to Great Britain. Later, on the night of April 
 10, 1918, Mr. Paterson was in a gas attack at Beaumont, 
 beyond Dead Man's Curve, and could lecture but little 
 in France after that. Dr. Crawford followed into this 
 region and met with overwhelming success. Rheta Childs 
 Dorr, on her way back to the United States from Russia, 
 spoke in many huts in French Lorraine, venturing as far 
 toward the firing line as a woman was permitted. Bishop 
 
ENLISTING EMINENT LECTURERS 219 
 
 Israel did most effective work along the Toul front in the 
 early spring of 1918, when the Germans were making 
 their terrific drives. Dr. Doney, of Oregon, offered his 
 audiences a variety of good subjects: "German Kultur vs. 
 CiviHzation," "What We Shall Get out of the War," and 
 "The French and Anglo-Saxon Mind." Senator Percy, 
 a member of the special Harbison Commission investigating 
 the Y M C A in France, was always called upon in the 
 huts visited by Mr. Harbison and his other associates. 
 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox went to France in the spring of 
 1918, to work in the canteens and render what assistance 
 she could. Immediately she was pressed into lecture 
 service and consented to read her own poems to the sol- 
 diers in the base hospitals, who received her with great 
 enthusiasm. As was revealed by her untimely death not 
 long after, her health broke down in the service and com- 
 pelled her return to America long before she could make 
 the rounds of the camps that were clamoring for her ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 John Kendrick Bangs and Irvin Cobb were two big 
 drawing cards for the lecture bureau. Both kept their 
 audiences convulsed. Unfortunately Mr. Cobb's time was 
 too limited to spare many days to the lecture department, 
 though he devoted every evening possible to some soldier 
 audience in Paris. Mr. Bangs always was ready whenever 
 he was called upon, taking several extensive trips to the 
 front. 
 
 "I spoke in many ^Y' huts and once in a barn," com- 
 mented Mr. Bangs on his return from his first lecture 
 trip to the front. "I had spoken to the boys of the motor 
 transport service before and that little cheering did them 
 a great deal of good. So I went out there again with only 
 the starlight to illuminate the roads ahead. I spoke to the 
 soldiers with the cannon roaring steadily a few miles away 
 and with shells passing overhead. I told them funny 
 stories and then gave them a serious talk about what 
 America was doing to win the War. While at another 
 
220 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 place I reached the ruins of what had been a village. There 
 in a tent, on the edge of No Man's Land, I found Norton, 
 Vice-President of Ehnira College, who was devoting his 
 vacation to serving the soldiers in France.'' 
 
 William Arnold Shanklin, President of Wesleyan Uni- 
 versity at Middletown, Connecticut, was one of the most 
 interesting speakers in France. The reputation of his 
 talks on everyday problems traveled before him and he 
 was greeted by crowds. One of the features of his lec- 
 tures was the open forum he conducted afterward in which 
 the soldiers participated, not only questioning the speaker 
 but addressing the audience themselves. These discus- 
 sions grew immensely popular. 
 
 Captain George C. Pidgeon was recruited from the 
 Canadian Army, speaking on ^The North American Spirit." 
 Professor John Erskine of Colimibia, later head of the 
 educational department, lectured at the base ports on 
 "Our Neighbors the French." Dr. John Deans, a well- 
 known lecturer from Brooklyn, capitalized his first six 
 months' experience as a hut secretary at the front and 
 addressed the incoming soldiers at the base ports during 
 the summer of 1918 on ''My Experiences with the French 
 People." 
 
 By the spring of 1918, Messrs. Steele and Johnson were 
 sending out into the field a list of celebrities that would 
 have been the envy of the American lecture bureaus. This 
 included Lorado Taft, the American sculptor, who drew 
 crowds at the Palais de Glace; Mme. Enuna Nevada, 
 the celebrated American diva who delighted Metropolitan 
 audiences two decades ago; Ray Stannard Baker, American 
 author and journalist; Edward A. Filene, the Boston 
 merchant, active in The League to Enforce Peace; Henry 
 Morgenthau, former Ambassador to Turkey; General W. 
 W. Hard of the A. E. F.; and Reginald Wright Kaufmann, 
 the writer. Mrs. Richard Mansfield lectured on ''The 
 Merchant of Venice," Euphemia Bakewell of Pittsburg 
 
ENLISTING EMINENT LECTURERS 221 
 
 gave talks on "Joan of Arc'' and the "The Streets of Paris" 
 with illustrated slides, and Mrs. August Belmont enter- 
 tained with brilliant readings and talks. 
 
 Then there was a group of eminent American divines: 
 Bishop Brent, before he became Senior Chaplain of the 
 A. E. F., Bishop Luther B. Wilson, Rev. Robert Freeman of 
 Los Angeles, Rev. Floyd Irving Beckwith of Chicago, 
 Rev. E. B. Edworthy of Montana, John F. Babb of Haver- 
 hill, Mass., George Wood Anderson, the evangelist from 
 Bellefontaine, Ohio, President Henry Churchill King of 
 Oberlin College, Joseph E. Appley of Hancock, N. Y., 
 Rev. August E. Bamett of Millbrook, N. Y., Rev. William 
 E. Ice of Versailles, Ohio, Rev. James W. Smith of Man- 
 chester, N. H., and Rev. William Dent Atkinson of Grove 
 City, Ohio, were conspicuous figures in this list. All these 
 pulpit orators crowded the huts and tents wherever they 
 appeared. 
 
 When the actors began to crowd into Paris, the duties 
 of Messrs. Steele and Johnson reached such proportions 
 that it became necessary to transfer the lecture forces, 
 with the latest recruits — including Dr. Raymond Knox of 
 Columbia, Professor Frank C. Lockwood, Dean of Litera- 
 ture of the University of Arizona, and others — to the educa- 
 tional department. Dr. Lockwood taking charge, although 
 in Mr. Steele's own province he continued to send lecturers 
 out into the field to talk on historical, industrial, and social 
 subjects of general interest. 
 
 After Mr. Steele's return to America following the Ar- 
 mistice he was succeeded by Mr. Johnson, who had con- 
 tributed so much towards the general success of the whole 
 undertaking. Along in April, 1919, when the entertain- 
 ment field grew out of all boimds, it was decided to place 
 the lecture service in the hands of a professional Chau- 
 tauqua manager, recruited especially for the piupose from 
 the United States in the person of the late Chauncey D. 
 Brooks. Mr. Brooks began auspiciously with a corps of 
 
222 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 helpers, rendering an excellent service during the time he 
 was permitted to give it supervision. Lamentably this 
 was not for long, for his life was cut short on June 14, 1919, 
 when he passed away after a brief illness, and his depart- 
 ment reverted to the management of Mr. Johnson and 
 later of A. M. Beatty, where it remained until the close 
 of the overseas work. 
 
 Among the lecturers secured by Mr. Brooks were Major 
 Rene Martial, the distinguished French medical authority, 
 publicist, and author, to whom Premier Clemenceau gave 
 permission to address the Americans. Major M. Chad- 
 boimie was another speaker of the Peace Conference days, 
 taking for his topic ^The League of Nations — Will It Work?'^ 
 Others were Firman Roz of the French War Office, Baron 
 de Detrich, a prominent Alsatian, and Captain S. N. Dancy, 
 a Canadian. 
 
 And there were many others — some 500 in all — ministers, 
 editors, educators who helped out over France wherever 
 they happened to be serving. The demand for hut secre- 
 taries exceeded everything else, so only a comparative few 
 could be spared for assignment to this special work. 
 
 The lecturers did a big work; they deserve great credit. 
 They kept the boys inspired from start to finish. After 
 an invigorating address the soldiers felt like going out into 
 the front line and whipping the whole German army single- 
 handed. As one lecturer was told by an earnest American 
 lad after he had concluded at Givrauval and received three 
 lusty cheers from his vast soldier audience: 'That talk 
 was worth a dozen bayonet drills." As they are instructors 
 of the public in secular life, so were the lecturers the in- 
 structors of the American Expeditionary Forces. They 
 kept the Army informed on topics of general interest both 
 at home and abroad, they helped to entertain them during 
 the restless days when every unit was anxious to set sail 
 for the good old U. S. A., and thus they did their part. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 "MOVIES TONIGHT!" 
 
 "A kind of excellent dumb discourse.'^ 
 The Tempest. 
 
 One day at the front when Elsie Janis was having one 
 of her unusually buoyant fits of optimism, she slung her 
 fountain pen under the impulse of an uncontrollable idea, 
 and started to compute just how long it would take to 
 play to every doughboy in the A. E. F. After covering 
 about six sheets of writing paper with estimates computed 
 at her present rate of speed, she sighed and leaned back 
 in the deepest despair. "Holy Shrapnel," she exclaimed, 
 "who'd have thought it would have taken five years! Gee, 
 I guess I'll leave it to the movies." 
 
 The good old movies! Every entertainer in France 
 thanked his lucky star hundreds of times that they were 
 there to fill in when mere flesh and blood actors could go 
 no farther. From the trenches to the base ports, in every 
 hut or shack big enough to have entertainment activities, 
 there might or might not be entertainers, but there were 
 movies. The movie screen, in the doughboys' mind and 
 in the mind of those who "put over" the entertainment 
 program, was the dependable, unfailing amusement for 
 the American Army. From the unforgettable series of 
 pictures, which hundreds of community agencies in America 
 had cooperated in sending to their home divisions, wherein 
 home faces and home sights flickered on the screen, the 
 news digests and topical reviews, and the educational and 
 travel pictures, to the Homeric antics of Charlie and Doug 
 — the movie was an immense success. 
 
 Immediately on our entrance into the War, the Com- 
 
 223 
 
224 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 munity Motion Picture Bureau offered its services to the 
 YMCA. This Bureau had been organized in 1911 by 
 Warren Dunham Foster, one of the first to grasp the value 
 of the moving picture as an instrument in social welfare 
 and higher citizenship. In the six years of its existence 
 up to the time when America entered the War, it had 
 put on a nation-wide basis the idea of choosing and ex- 
 hibiting motion pictures for community education and civic 
 value. It thus precisely fitted the need of a clearing house 
 for the YMCA and other welfare organizations in putting 
 movies on the huge scale desired before the soldiers of 
 the American Army. It was in touch with the film pro- 
 ducers and had at its command men and women trained 
 in the complicated motion picture business. Its services 
 to the soldiers were offered without profit and were at once 
 accepted for the work rapidly opening in the home camps. 
 
 The first agreement between the National War Work 
 Council and the Community Bureau dates from May 15, 
 1917, although the latter had functioned informally even 
 before that date. The Community Bureau took over the 
 responsibility for showing moving pictures at the student 
 camps at Plattsburg and elsewhere. By July this service 
 was well organized, with ninety machines in operation 
 and nearly 2,000,000 feet of film running weekly. By the 
 end of the year it was showing at practically every camp 
 and cantonment, and by February, 1918, when the great 
 movement of troops to France was ready to get under 
 way, the soldier audiences were numbering almost 1,000,000 
 men a week, and from 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 feet of film 
 a week had been fitted into programs and was in constant 
 circuit throughout the camps. 
 
 The arrangement of the Bureau with the War Work 
 Council and with the other welfare agencies on this side 
 was, to quote Dr. Mott, '^unselfish, if not sacrificial." 
 The Bureau was determined that the soldiers should have 
 plenty of pictures and to their ta^te. The president, Mr. 
 
"MOVIES TONIGHT!" 225 
 
 Foster, himself made a round of the camps, watching the 
 audiences to get an idea of the type of pictures that were 
 most popular. He came back to tell his editorial board 
 to omit sentimental pictures of mother and home and of 
 heroic soldier lads. Romances, however, and real war 
 pictures and farces — these were popular all over the land. 
 In order to test their programs more thoroughly, the Bureau 
 also used reaction coupons which brought reports from 
 a million audiences. 
 
 The task of the editorial committee was heavy. Their 
 business was to see all films and find enough that were 
 healthful and vigorous in tone. They could never lose 
 sight of the fact that the soldier was entitled to simple, 
 unvarnished fun, and to plenty of comedy, even of the 
 most violent slap-stick variety. That they succeeded in 
 their task may be guessed on the one hand by the satis- 
 faction of the men, and on the other by the fact that in 
 their two years' service only three people characterized as 
 objectionable any of the films that were sent out. 
 
 General Pershing in the summer of 1917 authorized the 
 Y M C A to take charge of the entire moving picture 
 service for the A. E. F. Seventy-five machines were sent 
 in the late summer of 1917, twenty-four hours after the 
 receipt of this order. The Cinema Department in Paris 
 was in one matter even more handicapped than other 
 bureaus in that first difficult six months of finding them- 
 selves in France. The moving picture business is tech- 
 nical and complicated always, and it needed then, more 
 than ever, those trained to the business. The first films 
 sent over had one virtue. They were as poor in material 
 as in matter, and, used by amateurs and under the worst 
 conditions, they were nearly at the end of their careers 
 when the work of the department was put into the hands 
 of the Community Motion Picture Bureau in April, 1918. 
 These, with what films it had been possible to buy in France, 
 were all the Army had seen up to Mr. Foster's arrival 
 
226 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 in February. Mr. Foster's comment, after looking over 
 the field and considering the enormous problems of trans- 
 portation and equipment, must have heartened the secre- 
 taries who had struggled against overwhelming odds to 
 get pictures into the field. ''I am more and more filled 
 with admiration," he said, ^^at what our predecessors have 
 accomplished in spite of their many handicaps." 
 
 Up to the middle of March, 1918, with the tonnage 
 shortage and the torpedo that sunk the largest ship- 
 ment, only 372 showings had been given. Two weeks 
 later, when the Community Motion Picture Bureau had 
 become the Motion Picture Department of the ''Y," 700 
 showings were made each week and twenty-one portable 
 machines were with the troops on the march, giving a 
 hundred shows a week, often on the roadsides at the nightly 
 bivouacs. The colonel of a regiment that had seen as 
 hard fighting as any of our forces was asked what he most 
 wanted for his men after they entered the French sector. 
 He said, ''Three things: Motion pictures; more motion 
 pictures; still more motion pictures." 
 
 April saw the beginnings of what was to be a colossal 
 cinema enterprise. A force was building of chauffeurs, 
 mechanics, operators, photographers, editors, and super- 
 visors, and branch offices within the year were to cover 
 the ground from Brest to Coblenz, and from Brussels to 
 Nice. In the spring of 1918 there were seven Americans 
 and twenty French on the staff. A year later, the force 
 numbered 115 Americans directly under the Motion Picture 
 Department, and more than 1,400 soldier details, French 
 aids, and secretaries working under its supervisors. 
 
 In the meantime, the first group of motion picture spe- 
 cialists had been seized on the way through England, where 
 American camps were clamoring for movies. The outfit 
 in England at that time consisted of eight films. Since 
 half of the A. E. F. was to pass through England, and 
 men of the Navy and the Merchant Marine were crowd- 
 
"MOVIES TONIGHT!" 227 
 
 ing the ports, something must he done and done quickly. 
 One man was left in England. In two months he had 
 managed to get equipment, films, and helpers enough to 
 show what might be done, and his office was asked to 
 supply films for the British Association, for the prisoners 
 of war, and for the Colonials. London being one of the 
 greatest film markets of the world, time and money were 
 saved by forming there a second editorial and purchasing 
 bureau. Meantime to the ''Y'^ headquarters in Paris came 
 demands for help from Italy, and arrangements were 
 also made to serve through the Association the Foyers, 
 the Chinese Labor Camps, and other welfare organiza- 
 tion work with the A, E. F. in France, and the internment 
 camps in Switzerland. 
 
 This enormous business, carried on under the constant 
 difficulties of war time, gave rise to all sorts of odd de- 
 velopments. In England a school was opened to train 
 disabled British soldiers as operators. In France it was 
 necessary to open classes for training the amateur care- 
 takers of the precious Delco machines, on which not only 
 the movies but the lighting of most of the huts depended, 
 for in the path of the motion picture camera there followed 
 a lighting system which meant a cheery well-lit hut where 
 candles and smoking lamps had cast gloom before. 
 
 The transportation problem was for the cinema, as for 
 everything else, the toughest problem. The express service 
 of France had entirely broken down. The only way to 
 get the films out was to carry them out by train with special 
 messenger, by motor, or by motorcycle. The moving pic- 
 ture men solved this difficulty in a unique way which, 
 originally designed by Mr. Foster and his very able suc- 
 cessor in charge of the work in France, Elmo Lowe, met 
 all the difficulties of what looked at first to be an impossible 
 situation. There was never enough gasoline, to say nothing 
 of Ford trucks, to carry a regular supply of films around 
 to the five thousand odd showing points from which the 
 
228 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 moving pictures radiated throughout the American Army. 
 So early in the game the Department organized a Uttle 
 army of its own of French civilians, ineligible for army 
 service, to act as special couriers carrying American films 
 throughout France. The idea worked out remarkably, 
 and not only was every feeding point which itself might 
 be a center for transporting machines through an entire 
 area supplied for the omnivorous doughboy, but the courier 
 service itself was used by army officers and by certain 
 sections of the "Y" as the most trustworthy and regular 
 transport service that could be found. These French 
 civilians traveled by the railways, armed with a formid- 
 able array of passes and special permits, and although at 
 first, among the sections of the French Army that did 
 not like to see civilians abroad on any mission whatsoever, 
 they traveled from guardhouse to guardhouse, eventually 
 all these difficulties were ironed out and American movies 
 circulated throughout the Army with a speed which even 
 staff couriers envied. 
 
 The routing of the programs was most carefully planned, 
 in order that all points should be served and no films left 
 idle. Each program was to be used four times a week, 
 and in the height of the service nearly 5,000 points were 
 to be supplied, so that a failure in delivery at one point 
 might break up the plans of a circuit for a week, and error 
 in any one of the seventeen operations necessary to each 
 program meant that the soldiers were disappointed. This 
 was no small matter if men had tramped kilometers through 
 the mud for the promised pictures, or were setting forth 
 to the Argonne at daylight, or had just had word of another 
 delay in their transport. The men and women on this 
 part of the task took it much in the spirit of that famous 
 rider who "brought the good news from Ghent to Aix." 
 *'I had promised Vemeuil, 130 kilometers from Bourges, 
 that I would take them three films on a certain Friday," 
 writes one woman. "I left Bourges in the flivver at 1: 15 
 
"MOVIES TONIGHT!" 229 
 
 and twelve miles out the car refused to go. I walked on 
 to St. Just where I phoned to the Motor Transport Depart- 
 ment, but the French central cut us off, and it took two 
 hours and a half to get the call through the second time. 
 By this time only a motorcycle could possibly get the films 
 to Verneuil in time for the boys." Absolute precision 
 throughout the whole organization was the ideal. If this 
 were not humanly possible under the circumstances, yet 
 the Motion Picture Department did so well that even early 
 in its service Mr. Ewing, Chief Y M C A Secretary for 
 Great Britain, said, "It is the best organized institution 
 in the war zone." 
 
 From the commencement of active operations in France 
 the motion picture played a dominating part in the sol- 
 diers^ life. When the Second Division went into its first 
 action near Mondidier in May, sixty motion picture out- 
 fits were operating with them on full time, with the cordial 
 approval of General Bundy. One of the screens, which 
 was set up in an old quarry, is still preserved, riddled with 
 German shrapnel, as a mute testimony to how far up to 
 the front these operators carried their work. When the 
 Germans came over the top unexpectedly, one of the things 
 they were likely to capture was a motion picture outfit. 
 At Soissons, during the bitter fighting in May, one set 
 of films changed hands three times and was a prize exhibit 
 throughout the fighting divisions durmg the summer. 
 The movie man and his battered Ford followed the troops 
 wherever they went and gave shows in ruined churches, 
 in gullies and old quarries, in mills and abandoned chateaux, 
 in the underground chambers of artillery positions, and 
 on the whitewashed walls fronting the village square. 
 Often these movie shows were given before groups of men 
 lying on the ground just out of action and too tired even 
 to stand up. The operators of the Third Division went 
 with these troops in their weary march to the Rhine, setting 
 up their screen each night. 
 
230 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 By the time the leave areas were in full operation, and 
 the Le Mans forwarding camp and the embarkation ports, 
 it was comparatively easy to supply these regions and 
 the cities, though it still meant working into the night, 
 and called for endless persistency and ingenuity. When 
 the Le Mans Area was at its height there were about thirty 
 shows a day, with eighteen trucks busy delivering reels 
 and caring for machines, and a force working from ten 
 in the morning around the clock till three, and one of the 
 office women always ready to take a car for an absent 
 driver. It was in this region that a driver came late into 
 the town where he was to give a show. The officers were 
 away, a sergeant in command, and the men had turned 
 in. Nothing daunted, the secretary asked if they could 
 not be "turned out,'' which they promptly were. The 
 machine was set up in the street, a screen rigged on a side 
 of a barn, and ''those crazy Americans" poured out of 
 their billets for a performance. The comment of the officers 
 on this remarkable proceeding was permission to the sec- 
 retary to do it as often as he wished. 
 
 In the French villages the movie machine was often 
 set up in the market place, with the side of a building for 
 a screen, and the entire population gathered with the 
 soldiers. This outdoor cinema was indeed necessary in 
 the villages, for many of the French country folk had never 
 before seen a movie. They crowded the small huts to 
 bursting, leaving little room for soldiers, yet when one 
 saw the pleasure this gave to the war-harried people one 
 could not turn them away. The Third Division went 
 with these troops in their weary march to the Rhine, setting 
 up their screen each night. 
 
 Outdoor screens were not the only makeshifts. For 
 instance, with the Salvage Department at Bordeaux the 
 only chance for movies was when some portion of a ware- 
 house could be cleaned out. Whenever such a moment 
 arrived the garage men, whose work went on day and 
 
"MOVIES TONIGHT!" 231 
 
 night, turned in to prepare the place. Wherever, as 
 with the colored battalions at Le Rochelle, work went on 
 throughout the night, movies were given in the afternoon. 
 As to hours, the one unvarying rule that the Department 
 followed was to tuck in a movie wherever men had time 
 for it. When the Twenty-Eighth Division was entraining 
 at Columbey-les-Belles, it was learned that most of the 
 men would probably have to wait hours in the middle of 
 the night at the station. Traveling in France was hard 
 enough at best for soldiers, and the enterprising secre- 
 taries who appeared on the scene at eleven o'clock at 
 night, with a moving picture machine competent to run 
 until five in the morning, had a warm welcome. 
 
 Perhaps nowhere did the cinema do better than at 
 Romagne, where the colored troops were working in one 
 of our great cemeteries. There in the great hangar, where 
 both white and colored men gathered to forget the terri- 
 ble tasks of the day, something was doing every night. 
 Entertainers came twice a week, perhaps, but if there were 
 nothing else, there were movies always. At Dom-sur- 
 Meuse, the American films packed with khaki the theatre 
 the Germans had built for their own enjoyment. At the 
 Marseilles delousing station, where the boys were held 
 a week away from their comrades, pictures were given 
 nightly. When the weather permitted, these were out 
 of doors with the boys perched in trees and on the bar- 
 rack roofs. In some of the hospitals and in the sick bays \ 
 of the transports the pictures were thrown on the ceiling ! 
 for the men in the beds, while, of course, they were every- / 
 where supplied in connection with the Red Cross for pa- j 
 tients who could be moved out into the recreation rooms. • 
 The movies on the transports alone deserve a whole chap- 
 ter to themselves. On some ships they began at six in 
 the morning and ran steadily until three and four the next 
 morning, so that all shifts and ratings could see them. 
 Due to this intensive program, there were actually more 
 
232 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 separate showings on shipboard than in France itself. 
 A curiously varied service was at Mirimas, where the "Y" 
 supplied a British detachment, some British Indians, a 
 French foyer, a foyer for the Algerians, a Chinese labor 
 hut, and our own Knights of Columbus. The Chinese 
 were especially interested in industrial pictures and com- 
 edies, and as they could not read the legends on the pic- 
 tures, the screen was hung in the center of the hall and 
 space saved by seating the audience on either side. 
 
 With the Italian Army the traveling cinema camion 
 service was most effective, carrying entertainment out 
 into the devastated regions where no other diversion was 
 possible, and where the officers were as keenly eager as the 
 men. The Polish Legion in France had had movies along 
 with all the other units, and when in March they arranged 
 that the Y M C A secretaries go with them to Poland, 
 they saw to it that a full cinema equipment and men to 
 operate it were included. Films were, of course, being 
 supplied for the work with the A. E. F. in Siberia, 
 and men and pictures sent to aid the Americans and 
 British in that dreariest adventure of the whole War, 
 that in Northern Russia. Here the machines were taken 
 on sledges across long wastes and welcomed at isolated 
 posts with an appreciation beyond words. The effect on 
 the Russians who saw them was so marked that one of 
 the secretaries wrote asking for captions in Russian, as an 
 incentive to illiterates to learn to read. He said, '^In my 
 opinion this would do more to assist the rising generation 
 of this unfortunate country than any other work under- 
 taken up to the present by any association whatsoever.'' 
 
 The Department was early in the business of produc- 
 ing films in France itself. In May it had two French pho- 
 tographers at the front. In October it was asked by the 
 Army to aid the Aviation School Office in the taking of 
 pictures of aeroplanes to be used for instruction in firing. 
 Its aid had been asked also in making the whole Army 
 
"MOVIES TONIGHT!" 233 
 
 better acquainted with the work of the S. O. S. Out of 
 this request from Headquarters grew one of the most 
 interesting of the movie activities, *The Overseas Weekly," 
 a film prepared especially with the idea of keeping the 
 soldiers in touch with events in the War. These pictures 
 were for the most part taken by the Signal Corps, and 
 the representative of the Department worked in that office, 
 choosing films and making the programs, directly under 
 the officer in charge. These were sent out each week with 
 a similar film on current events in the United States, ^'The 
 World Today." 
 
 First of all in popularity and morale-stiffening quality, 
 however, were the wonderful ''home folks" pictures, organ- 
 ized during the summer of 1918 through the initiative of 
 the Community Bureau and with the cooperation back 
 in America of the Committee on Public Information and 
 scores of newspapers and community agencies throughout 
 the country. To a soldier in France the most thrilling 
 picture he could fancy would be a scene in his own town. 
 So imagine his feelings when the dream really came true 
 and he could sit in a hut in France and see a procession 
 of the mothers and sisters of the doughboys in his own 
 home town pass across the screen, and yell his head off 
 as his mother or his girl waved a hand of greeting at him 
 right on Main Street opposite Joneses drug store. A pic- 
 ture that showed the ferry-boats plying about New York 
 harbor with the old Statue of Liberty rising in the middle 
 distance, or one of the shop girls coming out of the Chicago 
 department stores in the evening, or a view of the Golden 
 Gate or Mobile Bay, or the squat old State House rising 
 on Beacon Hill, Boston — these had more thrills to the 
 foot than all the desperate adventures of William S. Hart 
 in the celluloid Wild West. These home pictures circulated 
 among the Twenty-Sixth Division, for instance, which 
 probably had the world's record for homesickness, imtil 
 they were literally worn out. 
 
234 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 j Next in appeal came the great Charlie ChapUn. Every 
 division had to have Charlie just so often, usually at inter- 
 vals of about two weeks, and in size of audience, noisy 
 approval, and number of showings throughout France, 
 it must be conceded that he beat all records. 
 
 German propaganda films, which began to be captured 
 by the score when the summer drive got under way, con- 
 stituted another prime attraction. One of the greatest 
 of these was a picture designed to prove to the German 
 I Army the results of unrestricted submarine warfare, but 
 which proved nightly to thousands of American soldiers, 
 I as they saw one good ship after another blown to a terrible 
 j death by the undersea wolves of German piracy, the urgent 
 i need of going in next day and killing more Germans. 
 
 One of the movie producers made it especially her 
 business to search out ^'unadvertised heroes," that is, 
 units of which no one knew, and army work yet unheralded. 
 In her wanderings she came across a row of ''75's" on 
 which were the words painted in red, white, and blue, 
 ^ ^America's first shot." 
 
 "What does this mean?" she asked. 
 
 "This is C Battery, 6th F. A.," replied a soldier, "and 
 those are the guns with which we fired Americans first shot." 
 
 "How many hundred times have you been photo- 
 graphed for the movies?" 
 
 "Well, Miss, if you photograph us, it will make our 
 grand total one time. We've never even looked at a movie 
 camera." 
 
 America's first shot was fired at 6: 05 a. m., October 23, 
 1917, at Limeville. These were indeed the very guns, 
 and no picture had ever been taken of them. 
 
 A fine example of the many educational films which 
 were prepared is that on Paris, arranged, as the producer 
 said, so that when the soldier came to the great city, "he 
 should be prepared to find in it the beautiful and not the 
 ugly." 
 
"MOVIES TONIGHT!" 235 
 
 From the point of view of the staff, surely there were 
 no welfare workers with the Army better paid for stren- 
 uous days and often strenuous nights than those of the 
 movie staff. They worked at top speed. They were also 
 under pressure, but there was always waiting for them an 
 eager welcome, while never were there more amusing 
 audiences for which to labor. Before the entertainers 
 soldier frankness was kept a bit in check by some holdover 
 of conventionality, but before the movies, khaki could 
 say what it pleased — and it did. Joy was uproarious when 
 suddenly some recognized scene flashed on the screen; 
 cheers welcomed an animal in a circus parade; sobs were 
 likely to assist an over-sentimental romance; and no one 
 forgets such evenings as that where the advertised villain 
 of the play chanced to be the machine operator. His every 
 appearance on the screen was greeted with reproof, execra- 
 tion, jeers, admonitions, and fatherly advice, that made 
 an evening funnier than any ever caused by Charlie Chaplin. 
 
 The value of the wartime motion picture service is, 
 like all else in the War, impossible to compute. Owing to 
 the technical training of this personnel, and to its connec- 
 tions, it was able to get films at a tremendous saving. Film 
 producers were, for the most part, generous in their arrange- 
 ments, foregoing their film rights and taking payment 
 only for the use of the films themselves. It was estimated 
 that this meant a saving of $1,000,000. Because the Bureau 
 was doing the work without profit, it was able to rent 
 films at from ten to fifty per cent below the commercial 
 rates. 
 
 Out of the A. E. F. in France alone there were more 
 than 94,000,000 men in movie audiences. Counting in j 
 the shows given in the United States, the gross attendance 
 reached more than 210,000,000. If, as under ordinary 
 conditions, the soldier had paid a minimum admission 
 fee, say of fifteen cents a show, this single item in his en- 
 tertainment would have cost him the trifle of $32,000,000. 
 
236 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 As a matter of fact, the Motion Picture Department of the 
 '*Y" actually succeeded in giving this program at a cost of 
 something around two cents per show per man — and this 
 in spite of the fact that it was administering during the 
 War a moving picture business forty times larger than 
 it or any other organization had ever undertaken in the 
 history of the cinema profession. 
 
 The value of the service, however, lay not in the amount 
 received for the money, though that under the conditions 
 is extraordinary; it lay in the fact that the movies were 
 on the spot, whether that spot were a San Francisco navy 
 yard, a Scotch lumber camp, or a French village. It lay 
 yet more, as the experience of the first months in France 
 showed, in the work of the Editorial Department in the 
 choice of films, and in the prevention, by its satisfactory 
 service, of the entrance into the camps of the purely com- 
 mercial movie theatres. Without such professional service 
 as was made available, this could hardly have been pre- 
 vented. Today in Germany the Bureau is still with the 
 "Y," giving a thousand shows a month in the Rhineland to 
 the Army of Occupation in Germany; it has its place in 
 every army camp in America and wherever American 
 soldiers are. In other words, the wartime movie service 
 is going on. It is one of the enduring features of the enter- 
 tainment experience of the Great War. 
 
CURTAIN 
 
 Americans have grown more used to being entertained 
 and less used to entertaining themselves than any other 
 people. Take five million young men away from home 
 and community restraints and, no matter how they are f 
 drilled and hedged about with rules and regulations, the ' 
 time will come when all but a few of the most exceptional > 
 individuals will seek diversion. The history of war is that j 
 the forms of diversion which have followed armies did '. 
 more to destroy the armies than did the actual fighting. : 
 From the days of the Civil War and the Sanitary Commis- 
 sion those interested in the welfare of our Army have been 
 feeling their way toward some solution of the problem of 
 keeping the fighting man normal under abnormal conditions. 
 
 In the opinion of some old-time officers and of some 
 individuals uninformed on all the conditions of the soldier's 
 life, the work of the welfare organizations was uncalled 
 for and tended to coddle those who should be above such 
 softening influences. That the real military leaders, men 
 like Generals March, Pershing, and Wood, were not of 
 this opinion is proved by repeated orders and promulga- 
 tions urging the proper entertainment of soldiers. They 
 recognized that soldiers were not super-men, no matter 
 how well drilled and equipped, but were, because of the 
 deadly monotony of drills and the nerve-racking of active 
 service, in greater need of entertainment than the amuse- 
 ment-loving public at home. 
 
 When an army was created out of the boys of our own 
 firesides, the folks at home, the welfare organizations, and 
 the generals realized that our soldiers were men with the 
 same needs, the same wishes, the same tastes as ourselves, 
 but that there would be none of the old ways of using 
 leisure and that many of them would be thousands of 
 miles from home under new conditions in strange lands. 
 
 237 
 
238 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 It was certain that these millions of American youths, 
 whether in the Army or out, would get amusement. They 
 were accustomed to games, sports, movies, theatres, music, 
 athletics, and all forms of recreation. Our business, then, 
 was to see that the amusements accessible in home camps 
 and overseas were healthful and decent as well as enter- 
 taining. 
 
 The American people were willing that their boys should 
 face hardship and danger, but determined that they should 
 have the best and be returned sound in body and mind. 
 It was this resolution which put public opinion back of 
 the draft and made it a democratic and successful under- 
 taking. Experiments had been begim in connection with 
 the British and French Armies, and it had already been 
 proved that healthful recreation increased men's fighting 
 power and willingness to carry on. The testimony of all 
 who worked with the soldiers, and of their officers, as well 
 as the condition in which our troops came back, proves 
 the correctness of this theory and the success with which 
 it was carried out. 
 
 The most striking example of the effect of plenty of 
 the right sort of fun is shown in the story of the leave areas. 
 At the time of the Armistice we had overseas 2,000,000 
 men. The greater part of these were still fresh from civilian 
 life, utterly unused either to army discipline or to travel. 
 They were left suddenly without any object for their labor. 
 Their task was done. All they wanted was to go home. 
 True to human nature, their enthusiasm for their hosts, 
 the French, and for the country in which they were forced 
 to wait, cooled. The French, with nerves tense after 
 four years such as our men, even those who had been in the 
 fighting lines, could not conceive of, were tired of strangers 
 in their streets. They wanted to see the last of British, 
 Chinamen, Indians, Russians, Portuguese, and Itahans, 
 but most of all, they wanted to see the last of Americans. 
 Here were two states of mind that bade fair to make a fine 
 
"MOVIES TONIGHT!" 239 
 
 international situation. The army officers asked, not for 
 stricter discipline, but for movies, athletics, dances, enter- 
 tainments, sight-seeing trips. That those dangerous months 
 of waiting passed off safely is more due to the fact that 
 the monotony was broken, and the leisure filled by all 
 sorts of entertainment, than to any other one agency. 
 We all know how our boys came home and are proud of 
 their condition and the way they readjusted themselves 
 to civilian life. Officers from other lands watching this 
 undertaking had no doubt of its effect. They certainly 
 had no sentimental attitude toward their men. Yet the 
 Y M C A was asked to introduce or to continue and de- 
 velop its work in the armies of Poland, Portugal, Roumania, 
 Czechoslovakia, and Greece. This would not be the case 
 were not the military and civilian authorities of these 
 countries convinced that such entertainment as the welfare 
 organizations provided for the soldiers in France made 
 better fighting men and better citizens. And our own 
 army officers are of the same belief. The case has been 
 proved under actual conditions. Whether it is carried on 
 by welfare organizations or the Army itself, there will 
 always be entertainment for our Army because of the 
 success of the entertainment campaign in the Great War. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 HEADQUARTERS STAFF— NEW YORK 
 
 Overseas Entertainment 
 Thomas S. McLane, Chairman 
 
 Eimice A. Rogers 
 Ruth Buchenholz 
 Helen James 
 Helen Pratt 
 
 Fanny Baldwin 
 Mary Reiter 
 Emily O. Nelson 
 Madeline B. Campbell 
 
 America's Over There Theatre League 
 
 James Forbes 
 Johnson Briscoe 
 
 Virginia Chauvenet 
 Rose Schiff 
 
 HEADQUARTERS STAFF— PARIS 
 
 Dr. J. G. Coulter 
 Charles Moore Steele 
 Walter H. Johnson, Jr. 
 Gerald Reynolds 
 A. M. Beatty 
 Joseph Lindon Smith 
 John W. Beattie 
 Oswald Yorke 
 Carl J. BalUett 
 Wm. H. DufF, 2nd. 
 James W. Evans 
 George W. Doyle 
 C. A. Braider 
 W. H. Caldwell 
 C. A. Mayne 
 A. M. Richards 
 S. H. Crawford 
 R. N. Henry 
 J. I. Bond 
 H. M. Collins 
 James Forbes 
 T. F. Winters 
 
 Jack Gallagher 
 Harold Ross 
 Marion N. T. Carter 
 Marian M. Haley 
 Olive Johnson 
 Jane M. Thomas 
 Edith G. Walker 
 Linnie Nuckolls 
 Maude Utter 
 Florence Goodell 
 Enid Watkins 
 Louise Overacker 
 Sara Furman 
 Mme. Vignon 
 Mile. Marcelle 
 Elizabeth Hugus 
 Helen Lucas 
 Iva Rider 
 Josie Ricks 
 Myrtle Ash 
 Emita Jewell 
 Marion Morse 
 Gladys Ross 
 240 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 241 
 
 OVERSEAS PERSONNEL 
 Coaches and Producers 
 
 Abbott, Eleanor 
 Acton, Howard L. 
 Allen, Mary 
 Anderson, E. L. 
 Anthony, Charles P. 
 Armitage, Laura E. 
 Armstrong, Frank 
 
 Bakewell, Euphenia 
 Ballam, Frank 
 Balliett, Carl J. 
 Barkley, J. R. 
 Beatty, A. M. 
 Berkey, Hilda G. 
 Berry, Walter M. 
 Black, Gladys 
 Blandick, Clara 
 Blue, John D. 
 Bressak, Harry 
 Brocklebank, Blanche 
 Buck, J. 
 Buxton, Ethel 
 
 Cameron, E. Malcolm 
 Chamberlain, Alice 
 Chapman, C. J. 
 Chesmond, Dorothy 
 Corey, Madison 
 Gushing, C. C. S. 
 
 Darrah, Chas. B. 
 Davis, F. M. 
 Donnelly, Dorothy 
 Duskkin, Samuel 
 
 Edwards, G. J. 
 Evans, James W. 
 
 Farquhar, Marion 
 Forbes, James 
 
 Gates, Perle E. 
 Geoghegan, Harold 
 Glass, Rose 
 
 Goss, Aletta 
 Grimball, Elizabeth 
 
 Hall, Eugene J. 
 Hathaway, Louis E. 
 Henry, Grace 
 Hickox, Laura C. 
 Hicks, Lavelle 
 Holmes, Lucy T. 
 Howry, Elizabeth 
 Hudson, Ava B. 
 
 Jack, Edwin Booth 
 Jennings, W. L. 
 Johnson, Burgess 
 Johnson, Walter H., Jr. 
 
 Keith, Edna G. 
 Kennedy, Isabel Parker 
 Kennedy, Katherine F. 
 Kimball, Frederick 
 
 Lamb, Frances 
 Leopold, Fred 
 
 McDonald, Dinnie 
 
 Mays, Ora Lea 
 Moore, Elbert 
 Moore, Olive 
 
 Nash, John W. 
 
 Pabst, Norman 
 Porter, Chas. R. 
 Pumell, Anna 
 
 Quinn, Esther 
 
 Rawlinson, H. E. 
 Rochford, W. H. 
 
 Sage, Helen Amelia 
 Scherer, Maud 
 Schuler, Mabel R. 
 
242 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Coaches and Producers — Continued 
 
 Schumaker, Edwin Bolden 
 Sedgwick, Mary L. 
 Sherry, Laura 
 Shipp, Clark 
 Smith, Jos. Lindon 
 Smithfield, Geo. F. 
 Steele, John Moore 
 Stevens, Thos. Wood 
 Stillman, Lila B. 
 Stubblefield, Henry T. 
 Swinburne, L. T. 
 
 Tappen, C. S. 
 Tichenor, Juanita 
 Truax, Harry A. 
 Twyman, James 
 Tyler, Dallas 
 
 Velsey, Graham 
 
 Walters, Sara 
 Wand, Clarence Cary 
 Waters, Wilford 
 Weadon, Frank P. 
 Wermer, Blanche H. 
 White, Jessie 
 White, W. A. 
 Wilkes, Willamene 
 Willard, Aleeth 
 Williams, Florence 
 Williams, Orlin M. 
 Williams, W. E. 
 Wilson, Hugh 
 Witte, Parvin 
 Witts, Milford 
 Woolston, F. Pate 
 
 Young, Jane H. G. 
 
 Lyceum 
 
 Adams, Guila 
 Adams, Lucille 
 Alexander, Enid 
 Allen, Martha Marie 
 Allen, Maud 
 Anderson, Harry N. 
 Arnold, Beattie D. 
 Arnold, Pauline 
 Atlee, Carolyn 
 Aves, Ethelreda 
 Avirett, Donnell 
 
 Bailey, Marguerite 
 Barber, Jane 
 Bargeldt, Evelyn 
 Bamhard, Agnes 
 Bartlett, Hazel 
 Bassett, Ella May 
 Beatty, Earl 
 Beatty, Roberta 
 Beatty s, Adele M. 
 Beaudry, Maud 
 Beckwith, Florence 
 Benjamin, Wm. A. 
 
 Bennett, Eva L. 
 Bennett, Helen F. 
 Bertram, Helen 
 Besler, Helen 
 Betz, Joseph 
 Bewley, Irene 
 Bingham, May 
 Blackney, Frances 
 Blake, Wm. H. 
 Bloomquist, Myrtle 
 Boardman, Wm. J. 
 Bohannon, Jean 
 Bohannon, Ord 
 Bolander, AUce 
 Bolander, Elise 
 Bolander, Mabel 
 Bolander, Pearl 
 Booth, Maud Ballington 
 Bourne, Olive E. 
 Bowcock, Evie Lee 
 Bowman, Billie Miss 
 Boyd, Hilda 
 Bradley, Frank 
 Bradley, Lucie 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 243 
 
 Lyceum — Continued 
 
 Brovm, Dorothy Spencer 
 Buchbinder, Lucy 
 Bulley, Carolyn 
 Bumstead, Gladys P. 
 Burr, Borden 
 Bush, Charlotte 
 
 Call, Dora 
 Call, Lucy Lee 
 Call, Zela 
 Cameron, Mary 
 Capelle, Angle 
 Carpenter, Elizabeth 
 Carpenter, Laura 
 Carr, Joe 
 Carroll, Elsa 
 Carstensen, Amelia 
 Carter, Annie Louise 
 Carter, Maybelle 
 Case, Chas. 
 Chester, Randolph 
 Chester, Lillian 
 Chisolm, Jessie 
 Chivvis, Ruth 
 Christie, Joe 
 Churchill, Estelle 
 Clark, Marguerite 
 Clinton, Margery H. 
 Coates, Helen J. 
 Cobb, Fredericka 
 Cogswell, Mynn 
 Cole, Alonzo D. 
 Coleman, Margaret 
 Colet, Madeline 
 Collette, Lucille 
 Combs, A. B. 
 Collins, Ernest C. 
 Condit^ Albert Rae 
 Cookingham, Edna 
 Corey, Gladys M. 
 Cowperthwaite, Alfred 
 Cox, Edw. Eugene 
 Cox, Maybelle 
 Cox, Mary 
 Crabb, Addison W. 
 
 Craig, Jeannie 
 Critcherson, Samuel 
 Crofoot, Beulah 
 Crosby, Anna Gertrude 
 Crosby, C. Zelia 
 Culbertson, Sascha 
 
 Dalgren, Ada 
 Damon, Vera 
 Dana, Marion 
 Daniel, E. P. 
 Davis, Eliz. G. 
 Davis, Maida 
 Davies, Jos. 
 Dealy, Creswell 
 Dean, Lulu Richardson 
 Dilling, Mildred 
 Dillon, Jane 
 Draper, Ruth 
 Dudley, Ruth 
 Dunham, Herbert 
 Duval, Marguerite 
 
 Earle, Hetty 
 Easton, Elsie 
 Edgar, Elizabeth W. 
 Edgar, Geraldine 
 Eichom, Anna 
 Enmierson, Mary 
 Emery, J. C. 
 Euwer, Anthony 
 Evans, Cannon 
 Evans, Mildred 
 Everett, Geo. I. 
 
 Farley, Gilbert C. 
 Famsworth, Jessie 
 Faulkner, Georgene 
 Fay, J. W. 
 Field, Josephine 
 Fisher, Ethel 
 Flesh, Chas. E. 
 Ford, Gene 
 Foster, Bertha 
 Foster, Frohman 
 
244 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Lyceum— Continued 
 
 Fox, Lois 
 Frost, Alfred 
 
 Gailey, Mary 
 Gale, Albert 
 Galloway, Judge Tod B. 
 Gardner, Stephen 
 Garton, S. B. 
 Gasaway, Adelaide 
 Gates, Harriet May 
 Geffen, Yetta 
 Gemmill, Chas. Walker 
 Genunill, Paul 
 Gill, Ruth Dudley 
 Gilliam, Florence 
 Ginn, Clara T. 
 Girton, Eleanor M. 
 Godfrey, Mildred 
 Gold, Pauline 
 Goodrich, Gertrude D. 
 Goodsell, Virginia 
 Gordon, Mary Belle 
 Gorrell, Edith Tilton 
 Grey, Clara 
 Griffin, Elizabeth 
 Gross, Estelle 
 
 Haggerty, Elizabeth 
 Hall, Jeanne 
 Hall, Opal 
 
 Harbeson, Lindamira 
 Hardy, Lois 
 Harney, Eleanor 
 Harrison, Fred W. 
 Harrison, Inez 
 Hartman, June 
 Harvey, Maleva 
 Hass, E. M. 
 Hatch, Dorothy 
 Hausman, S. A. 
 Hays, Estelle B. 
 Hedges, Freddie 
 Hemmick, Marie 
 Hiltebrandt, Elsa 
 Hinton, Ethel 
 
 Hoatson, Jack 
 Hoes, Adele 
 Holtzschue, Mabel 
 Hope, Barbara 
 Howard, Clarence H. 
 Howe, Chas. E. 
 Howe, Chas. M. 
 Howe, R. T. 
 Howe, Warren T. 
 Hoyt, Frances 
 Hoyt, Grace 
 Hubbard, Chas. 
 Hughes, Anna 
 Hulbert, Winifred 
 Hull, Margaret 
 Humphrey, Cora 
 Huntington, Blanche 
 Huntington, Catherine S. 
 Hutchinson, Elizabeth P. 
 Hutton, Hugh 
 
 Irvin, Frances 
 Irwin, Chas. Jasper 
 Irwin, Robert 
 
 Jack, Julia 
 Jackson, Lillian 
 Jackson, Mary 
 Janauschek, Wm. 
 Jerge, J. 
 
 Johnson, Burgess 
 Jones, Mrs. Paul 
 Jones, Wm. S. 
 Jordan, Elizabeth 
 
 Kasner, Diana 
 Kendall, Marie 
 Keniston, Wilhemena 
 Kennedy, Pearl M. 
 Kennedy, Will J. 
 Keppie, Elizabeth 
 Kerns, Grace 
 Kilboum, Henry J. 
 Kimmel, Frank S. 
 Knapp, Harold 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 246 
 
 Lyceum — Continued 
 
 Knight, Robert F. 
 Konecny, Josef 
 Kova, Garda 
 
 Landon, Cornelia 
 Lanham, Cora Belle 
 Lawry, Justin 
 Lawry, Winifred 
 LeRoy, Merritt 
 Lewis, Chas. Allen 
 Lewis, Julia B. 
 Lewis, Lottie 
 Lineback, C. A. 
 Littlefield, Edith Gould 
 Loar, Lloyd A. 
 Lord, Marguerite 
 Lord, Marion 
 Lorraine, Joe 
 Lucas, Charlotte 
 Lyon, Roger 
 
 McAdams, Ivy 
 McCain, Leoda 
 McCartney, Eliz 
 McClure, Emily 
 MacCue, Beatrice 
 McDermott, Mary 
 McGehee, Ethel 
 McGreal, Roberta 
 Mack, Archie Roy 
 McKay, Mary Elizabeth 
 McLinn, Ruby 
 McKnight, Alex G. 
 McSweeney, Margaret 
 Maddox, Betty 
 Mathews, Muriel 
 Maydwell, Mary Alice 
 Mayer, Viola 
 Merritt, J. A. 
 Miller, Jeanne 
 Monaghan, Robert 
 Montgomery, Mina Belle 
 Moore, Earle A. 
 Morris, Kathleen 
 Morris, Mildred 
 
 Morrison, Margery 
 Munson, Margaret 
 Murray, Bonnie 
 
 Nattkemper, Leonard G. 
 Nelson, Florence 
 Newell, Fenwick 
 Newell, Mary J. 
 Neumam, Herman 
 Niedringhaus, Wallace C. 
 
 Odell, Cornelia 
 Olp, Lou S. 
 Owens, Hughetta 
 
 Palmer, George 
 Parker, Harry E. 
 Parker, Salem 
 Parkhurst, Anita 
 Parmalee, Cleo 
 Parmenter, Edward C. 
 Parnell, Charles T. 
 Paine, Cordelia Ayer 
 Payne, Howard M. 
 Payne, John Howard 
 Payne, Sally Landis 
 Pierik, Marie 
 Pike, Carolyn 
 Pearce, Corinne 
 Pease, Edward 
 Pease, Zuelettia 
 Peckham, Charlotte 
 Perkins, Lois 
 Peters, A. N. 
 Pettit, Gladys 
 Powell, Rosa C. 
 Pratt, Charles F. 
 Price, Katherine G. 
 Price, John W. 
 Provan, John S. 
 
 Quay, Gertrude 
 Quincy, Samuel 
 
 Rachford, Hugh K. 
 Ramsey, Lillian 
 
246 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AM^ERICAN ARMY 
 
 Lyceum — Continued 
 
 Raymond, Harold A. 
 Raymond, Katharine 
 Reynolds, Sarame 
 Redell, Harry 
 Redfield, Florence A. 
 Rees, May E. 
 Reiner, May Louden 
 Revare, Edna 
 Rich, Gladys 
 Richards, Helen 
 Richards, Irene 
 Richardson, C. O. 
 Ricker, Bessie B. 
 Robertson, Alice 
 Robertson, Genevieve 
 Robertson, Olive F. 
 Robertson, Robert 
 Rogers, Calista 
 Rogers, Faith Helen 
 Rogers, Francis 
 Rogers, Cornelia B. 
 Rogers, Mabel 
 Rogh, Charles 
 Romans, Beth 
 Rose, Jonsa Jonga 
 Ross, Roxana 
 Rossuck, Ruth 
 Rubel, Edith 
 Rundquist, Ethel 
 Rutherford, Althea J. 
 Rutherford, Forrest S. 
 Ryan, Ruth 
 
 Saleeman, T. J. 
 Satterfield, Alyce Lee 
 Scales, Carmon 
 Scandrett, Rebecca 
 Schochm, Arminta 
 Schwinn, Rose N. 
 Scott, Edith H. 
 Scotty, Jack 
 Scudder, Janet 
 Sears, Aline 
 Seller, Mary 
 Selby, Ida M. 
 
 Selby, L. J. 
 Selby, Pearl 
 Shafer, Claude 
 Shanklin, Malvena 
 Shields, Milan 
 Shirey, R. W. 
 Shirley, Frances 
 Shoemaker, Frances 
 Shurtleff, Oliver 
 Smart, Henry C. 
 Smith, Dorothy 
 Smith, Elma 
 Smith, Em. E. 
 Smith, Helen E. 
 Smith, Marie 
 Smith, Norma L. 
 Smith, William P. 
 Smythe, A. H. 
 Soares, Geraldine 
 Southall, Patty 
 Souvaine, Henry 
 Spaulding, Art 
 Spear, Helen M. 
 Spencer, Laura Zoe 
 Stanley, James 
 Stanley, Eleanor 
 Stark, Robert 
 Steel, John W. 
 Stelzel, Charles F. 
 Stephenson, Elsie 
 Stevenson, I. C. 
 Stirling, Robert 
 Strong, Theo. 
 Strong, Walter W. 
 Struble, Marion 
 Struder, Mabel 
 
 Tabor, Robert 
 Teale, Agnes R. 
 Thayer, Maud 
 Thomas, Sara 
 Thompson, Alex. 
 Thompson, R. R. 
 Thorp, Evelyn L. 
 Threadgill, Lois 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 247 
 
 Thrower, Theresa 
 Tibbitts, Beatrice 
 Todd, NelHe 
 Torrence, Marie 
 Towne, Charles W. 
 Townsend, Betty 
 Townsend, Ellen 
 Trevett, Frances L. 
 Tromley, E. L. 
 Truitt, Beulah 
 Tuttle, Ada 
 Tuttle, Nina 
 
 Waddell, Elizabeth 
 Wakeman, Alice 
 Walker, Clifford 
 Walker, Corinne 
 Walker, Lucille 
 Wallace, Martha 
 Wallace, Wm. G. 
 Walter, R. B. 
 Ward, Elizabeth 
 Washburn, Carolyn 
 Washburn, Eleanor 
 
 Waters, Crystal 
 Watkins, Katryn 
 Webster, Harold 
 Weller, Beatrice 
 White, Harry C. 
 White, Mary 
 White, Winifred 
 Whittemore, Eleanor 
 Williamson, Marj'^ Ruth 
 Willmer, Sarah M. 
 Wilson, Inez 
 Wilson, M. J. 
 Woblert, Louise D. 
 Wolcott, Helen L. 
 Wood, Elizabeth 
 Wood, Ellerbe 
 Woodberry, Frances 
 Woodfin, Alice 
 Woodward, Roy 
 WooUey, Robert 
 Wyatt, Arthur K. 
 
 Yeager, Edith 
 
 Musical 
 
 Adkins, Morton 
 Adler, David 
 Armand, Alfred 
 
 Benton, Ruth 
 Brice, Elizabeth 
 
 Coburn, Vera Ross 
 Coffey, Louise 
 Colley, Helen 
 Condon. Kate 
 
 Dallas, Gertrude - 
 Davis, Helen 
 
 Elbert, Tracey 
 Ewell, Lois 
 
 Gold, Belle 
 Golden, Frances 
 
 Hand, Hinda 
 Hoban, Stella 
 Humphreys, Neida 
 Hunt, Ida Brook 
 
 Janis, Elsie 
 Jarman, Margaret 
 
 Lane, Camille Seygard 
 Larkin, Carolyn 
 Lyon, Wanda 
 
 McGibney, Mignon 
 May, Ida 
 
 Frease-Green, Rachel 
 
 Perry, Fayette 
 
248 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Reed, Elsa 
 Rogers, Eleanore 
 
 Sehaeffer, Marion 
 
 Musical — Continued 
 
 Sweyd, Lester 
 Temple, Paula 
 White, Tommy 
 
 Allen, Edward 
 Aug, Edna 
 
 Bamicoat, Betty 
 Barry, Tom 
 Baxter, Alice 
 Boland, Mary 
 Bourne, Olive 
 Brown, Marlyn 
 Burke, Fan 
 
 Carrington, Phyllis 
 Chobb, Bronwen 
 Clear, Charles M. 
 Clifton, Ethel 
 Craig, John 
 Craig, Mary Young 
 Crane, Hal 
 Curley, Leo 
 
 Dale, Theresa Malloy 
 Dale, Walter 
 Davis, Maida 
 Diffendel, John 
 Dodge, Jeanne 
 Dupree, Minnie 
 
 Emmons, Gladys 
 Esmelton, Frederick 
 
 Falls, Marie 
 Fisher, Grace 
 Fitts, Harriett 
 Fleming, Charles 
 Florence, Katherine 
 Fuller, Rosalind 
 Fullum, Dewey 
 
 Garland, Ruth 
 Goff, Helen 
 
 Dramatic 
 
 Grant, Jeannette 
 Grigg, Harold 
 Guthrie, AHcia 
 Guy, Eula 
 
 Henley, Rosina 
 Harris, Sidney A. 
 Haslett, Doris 
 Hamilton, Louise 
 Hampton, Mary 
 Hawthorne, Milton 
 
 Ives, Judith 
 
 Jones, Nancy Gordon 
 
 Kennedy, H. Bratton 
 Kimball, Florence P. 
 
 Lawton, Mary 
 Leake, Doris 
 Linwell, Delia 
 
 McComas, Carol 
 Mcintosh, Burr 
 Mackey, Ralph 
 McMein, Neysa 
 McMillan, Lida 
 Martin, Alice 
 Martin, Ethel 
 Mates, Harry J. 
 Mayo, Margaret 
 Meredith, Lois 
 Miles, Homer 
 Milliken, Ralph 
 Mitchell, Mabel Ruth 
 Montgomery, Victoria 
 MulUcan, Charles M. 
 Mulligan, William F. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 249 
 
 Dramatic — Continued 
 
 O'Connor, Patricia 
 
 Paige, Elizabeth 
 Paterson, Agnes 
 Perry, Albert 
 Powell, Charles F. 
 
 Raymond, Jack 
 Read, Charlotte L. 
 Roach, John F. 
 Rocap, Read 
 Rochester, Mary Xouise 
 Rowe, John 
 
 Schenck, Katherine 
 Scott, Helen 
 Seymour, Blanche 
 Shields, Sidney 
 Sitgreaves, Beverly 
 Smith, George Porter 
 Smith, Rita 
 Sothern, E. H. 
 Sothem, Julia Marlowe 
 Sterling, Harriet 
 
 Storey, Jack 
 Sullivan, Gerald 
 Sumner, Margaret 
 
 Tannerhill, Muriel 
 Tanner, Marion 
 Taylor, Ethel 
 Tinmions, Irene 
 Troutman, Ivy 
 Truesdale, Fred C. 
 Tyler, Annette 
 Tyler, Dallas 
 Wallace, Hugh E. 
 West, Madge 
 Whitson, Pauline 
 Williams, Fritz 
 Williams, Margot 
 Wilson, Mary Lena 
 Wyatt, Alice Bertha 
 
 York, Oswald 
 Young, Walter 
 Young, Winifred 
 
 Concert 
 
 Adams, Edgell 
 Aehle, Elsie 
 Albert, Minerva 
 Aldridge, Rachel 
 Ayres, Paula 
 
 Babcock, Lucie 
 Baird, Martha 
 Baldwin, Marie 
 Barr, Winifred 
 Barstow, Vera 
 Benham, Emily 
 Bierly, Neva 
 Bolton, Mary 
 Botsford, George 
 Brazeau, Marie 
 Brazeau, Henrietta 
 Brockway, Helen 
 
 Brown, Pauline 
 Browne, Kathryn 
 Bush, Ruth 
 
 Cannell, Frank 
 Carey, Florence 
 Carkeek, M. T. 
 Case, E. Romayne 
 Chesley, A. M. 
 Corbin, LeRoy 
 Coulter, Joe 
 Craig, Mary Adeline 
 Gushing, C. C. S. 
 
 Damrosch, Walter 
 David, Ross 
 David, Mrs. Ross 
 Davies, Jos. 
 
250 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Con cert — Continued 
 
 Devereaux, Marie 
 DeVore, Jessie 
 Dickinson, Ruth 
 Dismukes, Cornelia 
 Dixon, Jessica 
 Dodge, Beulah Chase 
 Donn, Betty- 
 Dowdy, Leta Clark 
 Duddy, Frank 
 
 Everett, George I. 
 Everts, E. B. 
 Ewing, Grace 
 
 Farrar, Amperito 
 Farrar, Guadalupa 
 Ferguson, Helen 
 Ferguson, Israel Harry 
 Ferguson, Sara 
 Flood, Paul T. 
 Frost, Avon 
 
 Gamble, Ernest 
 Gideon, Constance 
 Gideon, Henry 
 Gluck, Margel 
 Glynn, Madeline 
 
 Harris, Floyd 
 Hartwell, Josephine 
 Harvey, Harold 
 Hasbrouch, Elsie 
 Haynes, Dorothe 
 Hearons, Anna 
 Hearons, Winifred 
 Hibbard, Susan 
 Hibbard, William 
 Hixon, Blanche 
 Hoople, William 
 Horisberg, Kate R. 
 Hunter, Ruth 
 
 Irving, Lydia Isabel 
 
 Jacobs, Irene 
 
 Jarett, Daniel 
 Jones, Edward C. 
 
 Karla, Constance 
 Kessel, Helen 
 Klein, Nell J. 
 Kuhn, Aline 
 Kurtz, Ada 
 
 Laughlin, Flora 
 Lee, Jack 
 
 Los Kamp, Virginia 
 Lippi, Edward 
 Luckey, Ann 
 
 McLinn, Ruth 
 Mackey, Ethel 
 Marple, Harriett 
 Mead, Frank L. 
 Meek, Edith 
 Meek, Edward 
 Moore, Jason 
 Mullen, Mary White 
 Myers, Edith Luckstone 
 
 Noar, Adeline Patti 
 
 Oglesby, Frank 
 Oliver, William M. 
 Ormsby, Ethel 
 
 Packard, Adeline 
 Paulsen, Hortense 
 Planel, M. 
 Plasschaert, Camille 
 Porter, Marguerite 
 Poston, C. E. 
 Potter, Florence 
 Present, Rata 
 Prosser, Eunice 
 
 Rabinowitz, Clara 
 Randolph, Muriel 
 Rea, Ethel 
 Rosser, Catherine 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 251 
 
 Concert — Continued 
 
 Schupac, Marcia 
 Scott, Grace L. 
 Sellers, Samuel Nelson 
 Smith, Jack 
 Stanley, James 
 Stanley, Eleanor 
 Starkey, Julia Meade 
 Stevens, Nella 
 Stucki, Enmia 
 Sybert, Marie 
 
 Thomas, Edna 
 Tilson, George 
 
 Tris, Mary Adelaide 
 Tsianina, Princess 
 Tuttle, Jane 
 
 Walsh, Marie 
 Watkins, Enid 
 Watson, Edward 
 Weston, Isabel 
 Weston, Mary 
 Whitehead, Frank 
 Wiederhold, Albert 
 Wilson, Margaret 
 
 Vaudeville 
 
 Abbott, Annie 
 Adams, Mabelle 
 Adams, Rex 
 Adams, Berta Bell 
 Addison, Mae 
 Adler, Harry 
 Anderson, Christopher 
 Arica 
 
 Arnold, Hazel 
 Arnold, Pauline 
 Aubrey, Helen 
 Aubrey, Jane 
 Austin, Tossing 
 
 Bailey, Bill 
 
 Baker, Patricia 
 
 Baldwin, John 
 
 Bannister, Joe 
 
 Barber, Jane 
 
 Bartell, Harry 
 
 Bell, Arthur 
 
 Bell, Leah 
 
 Black, Edward B. Flester 
 
 Blondell, Libby Arnold 
 
 Bloom, Irving 
 
 Bluefeather, Princess 
 
 Bordeau, Sim 
 
 Boston, Billy 
 
 Bradbrook, Geo. E, 
 
 Broad, Billy 
 Brown, Dixie 
 Brown, Himmie 
 Buford, Blanche 
 Buford, Ina 
 Burke, Eddie 
 Bums, Billy 
 Bums, Eleanor 
 
 Campbell, John 
 Cantwell, John 
 Carlton, Louise 
 Carlyle, Louise 
 Carman, F. Barrett 
 Carrette, Bessie 
 Carter, Jack 
 Caveny, J. Franklin 
 Caveny, Marie 
 Chalbert the Great 
 Chalfonte, Lola 
 Chaplin, Arthur 
 Chase, Frank 
 Childs, Emily 
 Churcher, Anita 
 Claire, Josephine 
 Clark, Solomon H. 
 Clifford, George 
 Clyde, Ora 
 Coe, Edward 
 
252 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Vaudeville — Continued 
 
 Coe, Lillian 
 Collins, Howard T. 
 Corbin, Gilmore 
 Coulter, Theo. 
 Cowley, Frederick K. 
 Cressy, Will 
 Cristle, Joe 
 Cudlipp, Chandler 
 Cunningham, Elizabeth 
 
 Dacey, Billy 
 Daly, Mary 
 Darcy, Harry 
 Dayne, Blanche 
 Dell-a-Phone 
 Delroy, J. B. 
 De Mar, May 
 De Mont, Frank 
 De Mont, Gracia 
 Denish, Paul 
 Dermotti, Thos. 
 Deumm, Hettie 
 Deyo, Howard N. 
 Deyo, Jeane 
 Dietrich, Rene 
 Doherty, Leo. Jos. 
 Doherty, Mrs. Viola 
 Donnelly, Leo 
 Downing, Arthur 
 
 Edwards, Jack 
 Egan, Joe 
 Elliott, Agnes 
 Elliott, Del 
 Elliott, Edna 
 Elwood, Robert J. 
 Erickson, Knute 
 Evans, Jean 
 
 Fein, Laurence 
 Findlay, Al 
 Fischer, Arthur 
 Fivey, Robert W. 
 Florence, Katherine 
 Frances, Corinne 
 
 Franklin, Irene 
 Fredriks, Eddie 
 Freeman, AUyne N. 
 
 Gardner, A. F. 
 Gardner, Dave 
 Gibson, Gertrude 
 Gilmour, Boyd J. 
 Golden, Mabel 
 Goode, Nat. 
 Gray, Thos. J. 
 Green, Burt 
 Gregory, Gilbert 
 Guder, Carl 
 
 Haber, Eleanor 
 Haley, Harry 
 Hall, Jack 
 Hanson, Jack 
 Harrington, Jean 
 Haslam, Hazel 
 Hawley, Walter 
 Hayes, Pauline 
 Hazelton, Faynetta 
 Herbert, Roy 
 Hoier, Thos. 
 Horton, Amy 
 Howard, Clara 
 Hubbard, Nona 
 Hunting, Tony 
 Hutchinson, Mary L. 
 Hutton, Forrest 
 
 Irwin, James 
 Israel, Harry 
 
 Jackson, Jerome 
 James, Ada G. 
 Johnson, Dave 
 
 Kayne, Agnes 
 Kellogg, Mary H. 
 Kelly, James F. 
 Kennedy, John J. 
 Kessler, Mae 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 253 
 
 Vaudeville — Continued 
 
 Kinsley, Frederick 
 Kouns, Nellie 
 Kouns, Sara 
 
 La Tour, Catherine 
 Laurence, George 
 Laurence, Jack 
 Laurence, Thelma ^ 
 La Violete, Victor 
 Lazell, Milly 
 Lea, Will 
 Leonard, Bessie 
 Leonard, Mike 
 Lemer, David 
 Lewis, Andru 
 Lile 
 
 Link, Pauline 
 Lombard, John 
 Lombard, Richard 
 
 McCrea, Lottie 
 McCuUough, Wm. T. 
 McDonald, Madeline 
 McFarland, Marie 
 McFarland, Mary 
 Mcintosh, John 
 Mclver, Daniel C. 
 Mack, Joseph P. 
 Mackay, J. Wallace 
 Maine, Lucy 
 Maillard, Chas. 
 Maillard, Fred 
 Manley, Walter 
 Marshall, Edward 
 Mills, Phil 
 Mills, Volney Ladd 
 Mohonga, Sergeant 
 Montgomery, James S. 
 Moore, George A. 
 Moran, Hazel 
 Morris, Bertha 
 Moms, Billy 
 Morrison, Maurie 
 Morrissey, Will 
 Moulton, Bessie 
 
 Murley, Josephine 
 
 Neumann, John 
 Nicola, The Great 
 Northland, Edna 
 Northlane, OUie 
 Norton, Helen 
 
 O'Brien, James E. 
 O'Clare, Wm. 
 O'Clare, Madeline S. 
 O'Zav, Annie 
 O'Zav, William 
 
 Paley, Herman 
 Palmer, Olive 
 Paul, Eddy 
 Perry, Harry 
 Pierson, Hal 
 Pollack, Emma 
 Porray, Edmund 
 Pryor, Ethel 
 Pryor, Wm. 
 Primrose, Helen 
 Primrose, Louise 
 
 Ramsey, Lillian 
 Raymond, Catherine 
 Rhodes, Russell M. 
 Riano, Jack 
 Rice, Lew 
 Ride, Wille E. 
 Roberts, Annie N. M. 
 Rochester, Claire 
 Rogers, Jonathan 
 Roger, Charles 
 Ronca, Dora 
 Root, Esther 
 
 Sanders, Edith 
 Sanford, Jerry 
 Saltonstall, Rose 
 Sargent, Mamie 
 Savoie, Blanche 
 Sears, Gladys 
 
254 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Sherman, Paula 
 Skeel, Ruth 
 Snow, Bert 
 Spink, George 
 Stanford, Max 
 Stead, Sue 
 Storm, Joan 
 Storts, Grace 
 Storts, Harvey D. 
 Sturtevant, Adele 
 
 Tabor, Stuart 
 Tan (May E. Flester) 
 Tanean, Harry 
 Tate, Helen 
 Teed, James W. 
 Temple, Irene 
 Thomas, Vera 
 Townley, Phillip 
 
 Underwood, Will Lea 
 
 Van Tine, Ida 
 Vaughn, Minnie 
 
 Vaudeville — Continued 
 
 Verdon, Frank 
 Verdon, Vera 
 
 Waldo, R. L. 
 Waldron, Joe 
 Walker, Reta 
 Walker, Raymond 
 Walter, Annie 
 Walton, Beulah 
 Warwick, George H. 
 Wheelock, Esther 
 Whitell, Ermine 
 Wilber, Jack 
 Willard, Clarence E. 
 Williams, Dorothy 
 Woillard, Hazel 
 Woodbridge, Margaret H. 
 Woodelton, Jane 
 Wrenn, Helen 
 Wright, Horace 
 
 Yvette 
 
 Zenita 
 
 Lecturers 
 
 Anderson, John F. 
 Appley, Jose E. 
 Atkinson, William Dent 
 
 Babb, J. Franklin 
 Bakewell, Euphemia 
 Bamett, Augustus Edw. 
 Beckwith, Floyd J. 
 Beene, Dow Bunyon 
 Billingsley, Dr. James J. 
 Bingham, Guy M. 
 Boyer, Edw. E. 
 Brown, Frank E. 
 
 Cambridge, Dr. Arthur A. 
 Candler, Walter E. 
 Carman, J. Ernest 
 Cave, Robert Lord 
 
 Cochran, Fred 
 Cochran, I. M. 
 Cockrell, Ewing 
 Cook, J. Hunt 
 Curry, Elvin J. 
 
 Dancey, Capt. S. H. 
 Deans, Dr. John 
 Dixon, Royal 
 Downs, Geo. W. 
 
 Eason, Isaac W. 
 Eason, Samuel R. 
 Eliot, Willard Ayres 
 Estabrook, Nina 
 
 Gale, Albert A. 
 Gibson, Lemuel E. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 255 
 
 Grant, My ran Louise 
 Grimes, Frederic 
 Grose, Arthur W. 
 
 Lecturers — Continued 
 
 Perry, Edw. Russell 
 
 Risner, Henry Clay 
 
 Halsey, Don Peters 
 Hamilton, Frank M. 
 Hildreth, Melvin D. 
 Hulbert, Homer B. 
 Hussey, Dr. John M. 
 
 Ice, William Edward 
 
 Kelley, Frank B. 
 Kilbourne, Henry J. 
 Kline, A. D. 
 Kuonen, E. M. 
 
 La Follette, William 
 
 MacNeil, Alan B. 
 Mansfield, Beatrice 
 Mathed, E. T. 
 
 Oldys, Henry 
 
 Palmer^ Asher F. 
 
 Snudden, Benj. D. 
 Spencer, E. W. 
 Spencer, Wm. S. 
 
 Taft, Lorado 
 Taylor, Gordon J. 
 
 Victor, Rae 
 
 Ward, John Albert 
 
 Directing Staff 
 C. D. Brooks 
 W. Bedford Moore 
 W. C. McCroskey 
 JuHa E. Ashburn 
 Helen B. Yenney 
 A. E. Whitney 
 Wells, Smith 
 E. A. Brown 
 Elizabeth C. Hamilton 
 
 Lecturers — Les Foyers du Sold at 
 Horatio E. Smith — Director Greene, N. L. 
 
 Borgerhof, J. L. 
 Blanpied, D. R. 
 Brandon, E. E. 
 
 Cole, R. J. 
 Coleman, A. 
 
 Cranberry, J. C. 
 
 Anderson, Lawrence R. 
 Armstrong, Orland K. 
 
 Balmond, Charles 
 Bumham, Charles 
 
 Hart, C. R. 
 
 Lingle, T. W. 
 
 Merrill, T. C. 
 Muyskens, J. H. 
 
 Williams, H. C. 
 
 Song Leaders 
 
 Carroll, Hope 
 Clarke, Kenneth 
 Cushman, Lewis N. 
 
 DeMach, L. C. 
 
256 
 
 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 Song Leaders — Continued 
 
 Echols, H. O. 
 Eis, Florence 
 
 Foulke, Eugene H. 
 
 Gleason, C. G. 
 Good, Robert 
 Grey, Ira M. 
 
 Hall, Orrington C. 
 Havens, Edward 
 Hawkins, Stanley 
 Hunn, Jessie M. 
 Hedger, J. A. 
 
 Jones, W. H. 
 
 Keller, Herman 
 Kinney, Miller E. 
 Kirck, C. M. 
 
 Lamb, C. F. 
 Lewton, J. E. 
 Likes, P. H. 
 
 McMichael, J. W. 
 Maier, Guy S. 
 
 Naftzger, Earle 
 Nelson, John L. 
 Newhall, J. L. 
 
 Strong, Jervis A. 
 
 Thayer, W. A. 
 
 Vincent, Wallace D. 
 
 Watson, Ed. A. 
 Winslow, H. E. 
 
 Recruited Soldiers 
 
 Addleman, Raymond W. 
 Allen, James E. 
 Angelotta, Albert 
 Atchley, Hooper 
 
 Bigelow, Bryant 
 Bitzer, Thos. F. 
 Budd, Wm. H. 
 Bull, Walter 
 
 Coe, Sterling 
 Collins, Monte 
 Crider, John 
 Currier, Harold 
 
 Dakin, Edwin F. 
 Dottore, Chas. A. 
 Demming, Robert 
 
 East, Edwin S. 
 
 Gallagher, Jack 
 Glover, Wendall 
 
 Goff, Guy B. 
 Gott, Thos. 
 Grupey, Paul 
 
 Hall, George 
 Hall, Howard R. 
 Hammersla, W. S. 
 Hamp, Chas. W. 
 Hauslieb, W. R. 
 Hicks, LaVelle E. 
 Hicks, Ray 
 Horn, Sylvester 
 
 Kilpatrick, Elmer 
 Knoff, Aubrey 
 Knoff, Harry 
 
 Ladd, Schuyler 
 Lane-Hefferman, Jack 
 Leary, Nolan 
 LeClerq, J. C. 
 Levy, Russell 
 
Mitchell, Albert 
 McCusker, Stanley 
 
 Nushaw, A. K. 
 
 Orr, Victor M. 
 Oswald, John G. 
 
 Parmelee, Fred M. 
 Paulsen, Arvid 
 Peters, Newton 
 
 Reed, Carl 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Recruited Soldiers — Continued 
 Russell, Samuel 
 
 257 
 
 Scotty, Jack 
 Silvemail, Clark 
 Sorg, Paul 
 Swain, W. C. 
 
 Tumbull, H. B. 
 
 Ward, Jack 
 Wysong, H. R. 
 
 Zapp, Albert 
 
 Stock Companies 
 
 Beune Stock Company 
 Bourges Stock Company 
 Brest Stock Company 
 Golden Players 
 James Forbes Stock Company 
 Le Mans Stock Company 
 
 Tours Stock Company 
 
 Little Theatre Players 
 
 (Gievres) 
 Little Theatre Stock Company 
 
 (Coblenz) 
 Lone Star Stock Company 
 Silvemail Company 
 
 Units 
 
 A Little Cheer from Home 
 
 All American Four 
 
 American Players ^ 
 
 Bulley Party 
 
 Bumham Party 
 
 Caveny Company 
 
 Clipper, Comedy 
 
 Comedy Cut-Ups 
 
 Cressy and Dayne 
 
 Draper Party 
 
 Electric Sparks 
 
 Fifth Avenue Follies 
 
 Four in a Ford 
 
 Four Willing Warblers 
 
 Gloom Chasers 
 
 Gould Party 
 
 Hearon Sisters Concert Party 
 
 Hixon Party 
 
 Home Folks 
 Horisberg Party 
 Hunting and Frances 
 Jazzophiends 
 Just Girls 
 Khaki Trio 
 Kirk and Wyatt 
 Konecny Concert Party 
 Liberty Belles 
 Liberty Show 
 Little Bit of Everything 
 Live Wires 
 Luckey Trio 
 McFarland Sisters 
 Manhattan Four 
 Man Who Grows 
 Margaret Wilson Party 
 Mayo Shock Troupe 
 
258 ENTERTAINING THE AMERICAN ARMY 
 
 Units — Continued 
 
 Merry Mary Anns Some Pep 
 
 Mills Party Songs and Skits 
 
 Musical Foursome vSongs N' Everything 
 
 Musical Maids Souvaines Party 
 
 N*Everything Strollers 
 
 Playlet Players Three M. Company 
 
 Rainbow Quartette Those Three Girls 
 
 Ramblers Uncle Sam Quintette 
 
 Scrap Iron Jazz Band Vardon and Perry 
 
 Shamrock Five Vaudeville Four 
 
 Some Home Folks Warwick Unit 
 
 Y's Four 
 
 Professional Entertainers 
 
 The records of the New York office show that a total of 828 
 entertainers were sent overseas, divided as follows: Overseas 
 Theatre League 180 men and 274 women, and as regular "Y" 
 entertainers 87 men and 287 women. In comparing these figures 
 with the list of names given, it must be borne in mind that the 
 personnel in France was changed somewhat owing to recruiting 
 from the Army and other branches of service. It is estimated 
 that it would take one person 325 years to cover the same period 
 of service as did those that went overseas. 
 
 Where the entertainers employ stage names, these have gen- 
 erally been used in the list. 
 
 The number of entertainers from the various states is as fol- 
 lows; Alabama 3, Arizona 2, Arkansas 4, California 31, Colorado 6, 
 Connecticut 11, Delaware 2, Florida 2, Georgia 11, Idaho 0, 
 Illinois 61, Indiana 16, Iowa 12, Kansas 16, Kentucky 14, Lou- 
 isiana 4, Maine 7, Maryland 12, Massachusetts 56, Michigan 28, 
 Minnesota 7, Mississippi 3, Missouri 23, Montana 1, Nebraska 6, 
 Nevada 0, New Jersey 21, New Hampshire 3, New York 228, 
 New Mexico 1, North Carolina 1, South Carolina 2, North Da- 
 kota 2, South Dakota 3, Ohio 45, Oklahoma 6, Oregon 8, Penn- 
 sylvania 63, Rhode Island 7, Tennessee 9, Texas 11, Utah 3, 
 
APPENDIX 259 
 
 Vermont 3, Virginia 2, Washington 5, West Virginia 1, Wiscon- 
 sin 10, Wyoming 0, District of Columbia 6, and from outside 
 the United States Norway 1, Italy 2, Ireland 2, Scotland 2, 
 Russia 3, Panama 1, Canada 15, Roumania 2, Holland 2, P'rance 1, 
 England 10, Bavaria 1, China 1, Bohemia 1, Belgium 1, Swit- 
 zerland 1, Russian Poland 1, Cuba 1, Sweden 1, Denmark 1. 
 This table indicates the division of talent as relates to their age: 
 
 Age 
 
 No. 
 
 Age 
 
 No. 
 
 Age 
 
 No. 
 
 18 
 
 1 
 
 34 
 
 24 
 
 50 
 
 10 
 
 19 
 
 3 
 
 35 
 
 30 
 
 51 
 
 6 
 
 20 
 
 5 
 
 36 
 
 29 
 
 52 
 
 6 
 
 21 
 
 1 
 
 37 
 
 37 
 
 53 
 
 3 
 
 22 
 
 5 
 
 38 
 
 30 
 
 54 
 
 7 
 
 23 
 
 23 
 
 39 
 
 35 
 
 55 
 
 4 
 
 24 
 
 26 
 
 40 
 
 22 
 
 56 
 
 5 
 
 25 
 
 75 
 
 41 
 
 13 
 
 57 
 
 1 
 
 26 
 
 44 
 
 42 
 
 14 
 
 65 
 
 1 
 
 27 
 
 49 
 
 43 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 28 
 
 55 
 
 44 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 39 
 
 45 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 40 
 
 46 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 31 
 
 28 
 
 47 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 32 
 
 36 
 
 48 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 33 
 
 30 
 
 49 
 
 2 
 
 
 
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