1 THE FORE AND AFT **%«V\# oU« cV\ "Plays are put up in packages and sold at the delicatessen shops" THE FOOTLIGHTS FORE AND AFT BY CHANNING POLLOCK WITH 50 FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY WARREN ROCKWELL RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON Copyright ign by Richard G. Badgei All Rights Reserved The articles that make up this volume orig- inally appeared, at various times, in Collier's Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post, The As- sociated Sunday Magazines, The Smart Set, Munsey's Magazine, Ainslee's Magazine, Smith's Magazine, and The Green Book Album. The author desires to thank the editors of these periodicals for permission to republish. The Gorham Press Boston, U. S. A. . . . . • i . • • , t , . t • . . a ' • ' ■ • ■ . ' ..... » . i > i'- i - cr or CD TO THE LADY WHO GOES TO THE THEATER WITH ME 2^ is*.' S26 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Wherein, at union rates, the author per- forms the common but popular musi- cal feat known as "blowing one's own horn" 13 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE Being a correspondence school education in the business of the playhouse that should enable the veriest tyro to be- come a Charles Frohman or a David Belasco . . 19 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT Being reminiscences of the author's nefari- ous but more or less innocuous career as a press agent . . . . ., 48 THE WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS Being a discussion as to which pursuit is the more painful, with various enter- taining and instructive remarks as to the method of following both 90 THE PERSONALITIES OF OUR PLAYWRIGHTS Being an effort to outdo Ernest Thomp- son Seton and Charles G. D. Rob- 7 CONTENTS erts at their own game— which is speaking literally 122 STAGE STRUCK Being a diagnosis of the disease, and a de- scription of its symptoms, which has the rare medical merit of attempting a cure at the same time . 164 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY Being an account of intrepid explorations in the habitat of the creatures whose habits are set forth in the preceding chapters 192 WHA T HAPPENS A T REHEARSALS Being something about the process by which performances are got ready for the pleasure of the public and the profit of the ticket speculators 221 THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" Being the sort of title to suggest a treatise on suicide, whereas, in point of fact, this chapter merely confides all that the author doesn't know about acting 262 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS Wherein is shozvn that the opening of a new play is more hazardous than the 8 CONTENTS opening of a jack-pot, and that thea- trical production is a game of chance in comparison with which roulette and rouge-et-noir are as tiddledewinks or old maid 284 IN VAUDEVILLE Being inside information regarding a kind of entertainment at which one requires intelligence no more than the kitchen range 316 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK Concerning Camille, ice cream, spirituality , red silk tights, Blanche Bates, Thom- as Betterton, second-hand plays, paro- chialism, matinee girls, Augustin Daly, and other interesting topics. . ., 347 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH THE GODS Being an old manuscript with a new pre- face — the former dealing with a lost art, and the latter subtly suggesting who lost it 378 THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE Wherein the author considers comedies of manners, and players who succeed illy in living up to them 408 9 .» ILLUSTRATIONS Page Plays are Put up in Packages Frontis First catch your play 23 // actors roamed about at will 31 A Stalwart Individual pushing a church 45 The guild of Annanias 51 Anna Held bathing in milk 55 Sometimes things really do happen to actors. ... 67 The Theatrical Women's Parker Club 79 It is very difficult to identify a good play 103 A woman cut her play in half 109 Clyde Fitch's ability to work 129 Augustus Thomas shouts instructions 137 Eugene Walter was lodging upon a park bench 143 Margaret Mayo built a villa 161 The malignant disease 165 "You're William A. Brady, ain't you?" 171 A wrinkled old lady confided her desire 175 How sweet to meet one's own image 183 The Great White Way is a recumbent letter I . . 193 The actor and the rest of the world 199 Allan Dale came three nights running 203 Gets eighteen dollars 209 // actors really "felt their parts'' 229 The first time the director has seen them 251 The interruption came on the spot 255 II ILLUSTRATIONS Page Matches that cannot be lit 259 Ensconced in a swing and two silk stockings .... 263 Thought seems as material a thing as a handball 267 Gillette flicked the ashes from his cigar 271 Lady Macbeth swore that he grew during the per- formance 281 A playwright whose stock has soared a hundred points in a single evening 289 A Boston audience at train time 295 Trilby died in every known way 299 The author — as you imagine him, and as he is. . . . 303 Venus rose from the sea 3 J 9 Danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her 323 You need bring to a vaudeville theatre nothing but the price of admission 327 Their agents search every capital of Europe. . . . 335 Known as a stock company 349 Master Betterton had his nerves shaken 357 The actress giving time to dress-makers 361 Evening up matters on his books 369 The great actors of an earlier time 385 A play censor with a club 391 Reputable scoundrels kill by machinery 399 Comsteckians wear blinders 4° 3 The peculiarities of royal love-making 413 The lady may have come to prepare a rarebit . ... 419 Why women sin 4- 2 5 // simply isn't done 433 12 AN INTRODUCTION Wherein, at union rates, the author performs the com- mon hut popular musical feat known as "blowing one's own orn. a GOOD wine", according to the poet, "needs no bush." With the same logic, one may argue that a good book needs no introduction . . . But then — how be sure that it is a good book? Hallowed custom provides that every vol- ume of essays— especially of essays on the thea- ter — shall begin with a preface in which some celebrated critic dilates upon the cleverness of the author. However, celebrated critics are ex- pensive, and, moreover, no one else seems to know as much about the cleverness of this au- thor as does the author himself. In conse- quence of which two facts, I mean to write my own introduction. One obstacle appears to be well-nigh insur- mountable. It will be easy to inform you as to 13 INTRODUCTION my merits and my qualifications, but I don't quite see how a man can speak patronizingly of himself. And, of course, the patronizing tone is absolutely essential to an introduction. No- body ever wrote an introduction without it. I shall do my best, but I hope you will be lenient with me in the event of failure. "Of the making of books there is no end." And, even to the most enthusiastic student of the stage, it must seem that a sufficiently large number of these books deal with the theater. At least, they deal with the drama — which is slightly different. It is in this difference that one finds some excuse for the appearance of "The Footlights — Fore and Aft." Here are a collection of papers in which the reader finds no keen analysis of plays and players; no learned review of the past of the playhouse, no superior criticism of its present, no hyperbolean prophecy for its future. The book, in fact, is unique. One might wish, indeed, that there were more substance to these essays, which reveal the 14 INTRODUCTION impressions of a reporter rather than the ex- cogitations of a thinker or a philosopher. Mr. Pollock severely lets alone the drama of Greece and Rome. His field is the drama of Forty-sec- ond Street and Broadway. He has rendered unto Brander Matthews the things that are Bran- der Matthews', and unto William Winter the things that are William Winter's. "The Footlights — Fore and Aft" contains nothing that might not have been set down by anyone with a sense of humor and the author's opportunities of observation. It is true that, in his case, these opportunities have been excep- tional. Born in 1880, Mr. Pollock's contact with the theater began as early as 1896, when he became dramatic critic of the The Washing- ton Post. Subsequently, he served in the same capacity with various newspapers and maga- zines, was reporter for a "trade journal" of "the profession", and acted, for a considerable period, as press agent and business manager. The practical side of play-making and play-pro- ducing he has learned in eight years' experience 15 INTRODUCTION as a dramatist, during which time he has written ten dramatic pieces, among them "The Pit", "Clothes", "The Secret Orchard", "The Lit- tle Gray Lady", "In the Bishop's Carriage", and "Such a Little Queen." Considering the narrow confines of the world he describes, its comparatively small population and its rather meager language, Mr. Pollock should not be blamed too much for a certain same- ness throughout "The Footlights — Fore and Aft." There are not more than a dozen promin- ent managers and a score of well known play- wrights in America; whoever elects to write a hundred thousand words about the theater must choose between mentioning these names repeat- edly and inventing new ones. Nor is it possi- ble to avoid the recurrence of explanations and instances. You will find something about stage lighting in "The Theater at a Glance", because it belongs there, and something more about it in "What Happens at Rehearsals", because much that follows in this account would not be clear without it. The author did not flatter 16 INTRODUCTION himself that you would carry his first descrip- tion with you through a hundred pages, and, perhaps, he didn't want you to spoil a nice book by thumbing back. In articles written at various times for vari- ous readers, there is no reason to suppose that he devised two phrases where one would serve or searched for two examples where one would do the work. Undoubtedly, many of these re- iterations were weeded out in the course of com- pilation, and, as undoubtedly, many of them re- main. All collections of stories by the same author — especially when they treat of one sub- ject—are marred by similarity. The remedy for this rests with the reader, who is recom- mended to take such books in small doses — say, one essay every night at bedtime. Generally speaking, the matter that follows will not be found unpalatable. At least, the au- thor gives us no reason to suspect that he is displeased with it or with himself. "The capi- tal IV, as someone has said of another series of articles, "flash past like telegraph poles seen 17 INTRODUCTION from a car window." Mr. Pollock scolds con- siderably, too, though, for the most part, in perfect good humor. Indeed, whatever their faults, it must be said that these essays display some wit, and a rather delightful lightness of touch and brightness of manner. They pene- trate the recesses of the topic, giving an agreea- ble impression of confidence, of familiarity, and of authority. Books and plays are judged by their price and pretence. With the price of this book neither the author nor the prefacer has anything to do. It pretends to very little, and, judged by that standard, it may be acquitted. Channing Pollock. The Parsonage, Shoreham, L. I., August 25, 191 1. 18 THE FOOTLIGHTS FORE AND AFT I THE THE A TER AT A GLANCE Being a correspondence school education in the business of the playhouse that should enable the veriest tyro to be- come a Charles Frohman or a David Belasco. A MAN who passed as the posses- sor of reasonable intelligence — he "traveled for" a concern that man- ufactured canning machinery, and his knowl- edge of tins was something beautiful— once said to me: u Are plays written before they're produced?" "No," I replied, indulging myself in a lit- tle sarcasm; "they're put up in packages and sold at the delicatessen shops. Comedies cost twenty cents a box and dramas from twenty- five cents to half a dollar. It would be a great field for you, old chap, if you could induce a 19 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT fellow like Augustus Thomas to pack his plays in cans." Even my friend the "drummer" saw through that. I'm afraid my wit lacks subtlety. Still, two or three other people of my acquaintance would have been a bit uncertain whether to take me seriously or not. Most laymen, though they wouldn't believe in the package explana- tion, cherish a vague idea that theatrical pre- sentations are miracles brought into being by the tap of the orchestra conductor's wand. Managers are quite willing to foster this opin- ion, agreeing with the late Fanny Davenport, who felt that the charm of the playhouse lay in its mystery, and that to elucidate would re- sult in loss of patronage. In this verdict it is impossible for me to concur. I learn something new about the theater every day, and the more I learn the more I love it. You can't interest me in a thing of which I am ignorant — at least, not unless you start to clear up my ignorance. Henry Arthur Jones, writing about "The Renascence of the English Drama," observes: 20 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE "I wish every playgoer could know all the tricks and illusions of the stage from beginning to end. I wish that he could be as learned in all the devices and scenic effects of the stage as the master carpenter. . . . Compare the noisy, ill-judged, misplaced applause of provincial au- diences with the eager, unerring enthusiasm and appreciation of the audience at a professional matinee, where, so far as the acting goes, every- one knows the precise means by which an effect is produced, and, therefore, knows the precise reward it should receive." That's warrant enough for me. The theater is an extremely curious blending of art and business. Its art is lodged back of the curtain line and its business in front of the footlights. Between these two boundaries the manager stands when he is directing rehearsals, and, since his work is a mixture of both things, that four feet of cement constitutes a sort of in- tellectual no-man's-land. The people of the stage and the people in "the front of the house" have little in common, that little being chiefly 21 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT a mutual feeling of contempt for each other. You know the recipe for cooking a rabbit — "first catch your rabbit." The same recommen- dation applies in the matter of producing a play. Good plays are the one thing in the world, except money, the demand for which exceeds the supply. Consequently, dramatic works cost a trifle more than "twenty cents a box." Most managers think they cost alto- gether too much, but there never has been ad- vanced a completely satisfactory reason why an illiterate little comedian should be paid more for appearing in a piece that makes him a suc- cess than the author should be paid for provid- ing a piece that all the illiterate little comedians on earth couldn't make a success if the vehicle itself weren't attractive. . . . Kyrle Bel- lew in "The Thief" drew $10,000 a week; Kyrle Bellew in "The Scandal" didn't draw $4,000; that's the answer. If you were a manager and wanted a play by a well-known author you would go to his agent -Elisabeth Marbury or Alice Kauser — and ask 22 'First catch your play" THE THEATER AT A GLANCE if he had time to write it. Should his reply be in the affirmative, you probably would pay him $250 for attaching his name to a contract stipu- lating that the manuscript must be delivered on such and such a date. Before that time, he would send you a scenario, or brief synopsis, of his story. If you accepted that, you would give the author another $250; if you rejected it, all would be over between you. The acceptance of the completed '"script" would be likely to cost you an additional $500, and the whole $1,- 000 would be placed to your credit and deducted from the first royalties accruing to the drama- tist. Authors' royalties usually are on "a sliding scale." Such a one as we have in mind might get 5 per cent, of the first $4,000 that came into the box office; 7 per cent, of the next $3,000, and 10 per cent, of all in excess of that total. Thus, the playwright's income from a produc- tion that "did $8,000" a week would be $510. The agent would take 10 per cent, of this sum. Some dramatists receive better terms than these 25 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT and some get worse; I have given the average. It is possible for an author to profit by such a property as "The Lion and the Mouse," which has been acted pretty constantly by two or more companies, to the extent of a quarter of a mil- lion dollars. Occasionally, a shrewd manager and an author without experience or self-confi- dence make a deal by which a play is sold out- right. This is an unpleasant subject. "How does the dramatist know the receipts of his play?" you ask. From a copy of the statement by which the manager knows. Did you ever hear of the operation called "count- ing up?" About an hour after the performance begins, the affable young man who takes your money through the box office window counts the tickets he has left, and subtracts the number of each kind from that which he had originally. The result is the number sold. That number is written on a report handed to the manager of the company appearing in the theater by which the young man is employed. He and the young man then count the sold tickets taken from the 26 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE boxes into which you see them slipped when you give them to the official at the door. That result should be precisely the figure on the report. If it is greater the young man pays for the differ- ence; if it is less nothing is said, since some peo- ple who bought tickets may have remained away. The statement of what has been dis- posed of, at what price, and with what total, is then signed jointly by the representative of the house and the representative of the company. Each keeps a copy of this statement and an ad- ditional copy is sent to the agent of the author. The transaction seems simple, but, if you will think the matter over, you will see that it is a nearly perfect method of preventing dishonesty. The contract made between manager and au- thor ordinarily provides that a play must be performed before a given date and so many times a year thereafter, in default of which all rights revert to the dramatist. One of the first requisites of a production now-a-days is scenery. Consequently, supposing still that you are the manager, you turn over your manuscript, act by 27 THE FOOTLIGHTS-^FORE AND AFT act, to a scene painter, or to a number of scene painters, expressing your ideas on the subject, if you have any. TKe scene painter reads the play, formulates some ideas of his own, famili- arizes himself with the time and place treated, and makes a model of each setting. The model is a miniature, usually on the scale of an inch to a foot, and it incorporates the necessaries de- scribed by the author with the luxuries imagined by the manager. Moreover, it is as accurate and beautiful as skill can make it. If the pro- ducer approves of the model a bargain is struck, a builder constructs the frame work which is to hold the scenery, the painter covers the canvas, and, for a while, at least, the matter of settings is off your mind. The setting of an act may cost $500 and it may cost $5,000. Generally, it comes to about $1,000. In a play of modern life the actors are sup- posed to furnish their own costumes. Some- times, when the dresses are to be exceptionally elaborate, this rule is varied. Should your prop- erty be a romantic drama or a comic opera, 28 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE however, you have a conference with a costum- er. The great producers, like the Shuberts and Klaw and Erlanger, maintain their own estab- lishments, but this hardly will apply in your case. Now you will see costume plates instead of scene models — little paintings on card-board that frequently are exhibited in front of the theater in which the piece is running. These once passed upon, the contract for making the clothes will be let. Naturally, the cost is gov- erned by the number of persons to be clad and by the nature of their garb. The gowns worn by one woman in the production of a Clyde Fitch society comedy came to $3,100. The costumes for a comic opera may foot up $20,000, irre- spective of tights, stockings, slippers and gloves, which principals and chorus girls are obliged to find. Engaging a company is a simple matter in comparison to what it used to be. A few years ago you would have been compelled to choose from thousands of applicants and to make per- sonal visits to an actors' agency— say, Mrs. 29 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Packard's or Mrs. Fernandez'. Now metro- politan casts are composed chiefly of well known people. You have seen these people of- ten, you know what they can do," you select them with an eye to round pegs and square holes, and you write to them or their representatives. In a week your cast is ready. Salaries range from $400 a week, paid to a popular leading man or woman, to $20 a week, the stipend of a player of bits. Chorus girls usually get $18, though especially handsome "show girls" are worth as much as $60. Your star probably insists on having from $300 to $500, and a percentage of the profits. A stage manager is the man who does the thinking for actors. He directs rehearsals, de- vises "business" and effects, and often has a great deal more to do with the play than the au- thor himself. Any author will tell you that this was true in the case of a failure; any stage manager will tell you it was true in the case of a success. In all seriousness, a stage manager is a mighty important individual. If actors 30 "If actors roamed about at will you couldn't tell a first night performance from a football game" THE THEATER AT A GLANCE roamed about at will in a play, as most laymen suppose they do, you couldn't tell a first night performance from a foot-ball game. Every ac- tor in a piece knows just where he must stand when a certain line is spoken, and when, how, where and in what manner he must move to get in position for the next line. Smooth premieres are not accidents; they are designs. Sometimes, as in the case of David Belasco, producers are their own stage managers. Frequently, as with Charles Klein, authors stage their own plays. Almost always they have something to do with it. The chorus of a musical comedy or a comic opera rehearses apart from the principals, and begins earlier. Putting on a piece like this is more difficult than putting on a legitimate com- edy or a drama, and such a director as Julian Mitchell or R. H. Burnside may be paid $15,- 000 a year. The production of a "straight play" often is piece work, bringing about $500 for each piece. Costumes, scenery and properties are unknown until the last rehearsal. 33 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Two chairs represent a door or a sofa or a bal- cony in the minds of everyone concerned. "What is the woman doing on the bench?" I inquired once at a stock company rehearsal of "Mr. Barnes of New York." "That isn't a bench," the manager replied. "That's a train of cars just leaving the railroad station at Milan." While these things are going on in borrowed theaters or rented halls, two departments in your enterprise are preparing other details of the business. First, there is your booking agent. His task, like the matter of engaging a com- pany, has been simplified. Formerly, he wrote to the manager of the theater you wanted in every city you wanted to play, and kept on writing until he had contracted for a route that would not involve your jaunting from Philadel- phia to Chicago and then back to Baltimore on your way to St. Louis. Railway fares, even at two cents each per mile and one baggage enr with every twenty-five tickets, eat up profits. Now-a-days your booking agent goes to the 34 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE booking agent of one of the two big syndicates, each of which represents half of the theatres in the country, and that gentleman arranges a route while you wait. Sometimes it may not be a route worth waiting for, but that is de- termined by your importance and the estimated drawing power of your attraction. Theaters are "played on shares", the shares depending again upon the drawing power of your attrac- tion and upon the size of the city booked. In Chicago you will get 50 per cent, of the re- ceipts; in Newark 60 per cent; in Springfield or New Haven 70 per cent. A New York house keeps 50 per cent, and, unless your production seems promising, you will be obliged to guaran- tee that the theater's share will not fall below a certain figure. Next, there is your press agent. He used to be a newspaper man, and he is worth $100 a week or not more than a dollar and a quarter. In his office is a stenographer, a mimeograph- ing machine, and a list of six hundred daily newspapers. If he is worth $100 he knows 35 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT just what each of those newspapers will print and what it will not. It is his business to cover a pound of advertising so completely with an ounce of news that the whole parcel will not be consigned to the waste-basket. Out in Milwau- kee and over in Boston you have observed jour- nalistic items like these : Augustus Thomas is at work on a new play for Charles Frohman. The piece is to be called "The Jew," and will be pro- duced in September. That's the press agent! He also designs bills, gets up circulars, sends out photographs, invents "fake stories", and takes the blame for whatever happens that shouldn't have happened. If you have several attractions you will need a press agent in New York and one with each company on the road. In the parlance of the profession, the road press agent is "the man ahead of the show," while the acting manager is "the man back with the 36 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE show." The terms are self-explanatory. "The man back with the show" keeps the books, "counts up," pays salaries, "jollies" the star, and maintains communication with his princi- pal. During the course of your connection with the theatrical business you will have dealings also with the advertising agent, who supervises the posting of bills; the transfer companies, which haul your production to and from play- houses and railway stations; and scores of other people. You must learn about them from ex- perience. The stage is a land of wonders the geography of which must be pretty thoroughly understood before you can receive any idea as to the work- ing of the miracles that occur in the ten min- utes the curtain is down between acts. Of course, you know that the opening through which you witness the performance of a play is called the proscenium arch. The space be- tween the base of this arch and the footlights is known as the "apron." That region into which you have seen canvas disappear when it is 37 258826 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT hauled up from the stage is the "flies." Direct- ly under the roof is a floor or iron grating from which are suspended the pulleys that bear the weight of this "hanging stuff," and that floor, for obvious reasons, is called the "gridiron." The little balcony fastened to the wall at one side of the stage or another is the "fly gallery." The loose ends of the ropes attached to the "hanging stuff" are fastened here, and it is from this elevation that the "stuff" aforesaid is lifted and lowered. Scenery is of two kinds— "drops" and "flats." Of the latter more anon. "Drops" are curtains of any sort on which are painted the reproductions of exteriors or interiors, and one of the ordinary size weighs about two hun- dred pounds. In common with everything else suspended in the "flies," these "drops" are coun- terweighted, so that a couple of men can move them with ease. The other things suspended may be "flies," or "borders," which are painted strips that prevent your seeing any farther up than you are expected to see; "ceiling pieces," platforms, and "border lights," which are tin 38 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE tubes as long as the stage is wide, open at the bottom, and filled with incandescent globes of various colors for illuminating from above. "Flats" are pieces of painted canvas tacked on a framework of wood. In the old days these were held in position by "grooves," or combina- tions of little inverted troughs that fitted over the tops of the "flats." These "grooves" were in sets four or five feet apart running along both sides of the stage, and their position gave to various parts of that platform designations that are used still in giving directions in play manu- scripts. Thus, "L.2.E.," or "Left second en- trance," is the space between the first and second of these sets on the left of the stage. The long "flats," slid in to join in the center and make the rear wall of a dwelling, for example, constituted "the flat" and the short ones on your right or left were "wings." Then a room could be no other shape than square or oblong, and the doors and windows had to be in cer- tain specified places, no matter where they would have been in a real house. It is laughable now 39 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT to consider how this purely physical condition limited the dramatist. At the present time the building of a house with "flats" is not unlike building one with cards. Each "flat" is placed where it is desired and held up from behind by a "brace," one end of which is screwed to the setting and the other to the floor. That particular "flat" is then lashed to its neighbors with a "tab line," much as you lace your shoes. When the walls have been constructed in this way, with doors and windows wherever they are wanted, a ceiling is lowered from the "fly gallery," and the dwell- ing is complete. If you are supposed to see a landscape through the window, a "drop" on which a landscape has been painted is lowered t'other side of the rear wall. An "interior backing," representing the wall of another room, usually is in the form of a large screen standing behind the door where it is needed. Corners of this kind are illuminated by "strip lights," or electric lamps placed on a strip of wood and hung in place. 40 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE Stage lighting has undergone a complete revolution in the past few years, the step from incandescent lamps to calciums meaning even more than the step from gas to electric lamps. Formerly, the illumination came from the foot- lights and the "borders" exclusively; the sun rose and set directly over-head in open defiance of the Copernican theory. Now the stage is full of minature trap doors, and to the metal beneath these may be attached wires that will throw light from anywhere. There is a "bridge" in the "first entrance" on the "prompt side" on which sits a man with apparatus to re- produce almost any effect known to Nature. You have seen the busy and important individ- ual who controls "lamps" in the dress circle or the gallery, and without doubt you have ob- served that nowadays there is very little to keep such a stage manager as David Belasco from doing whatever he pleases with his electricity. There are five classes of men at work on the stage, all under the direct supervision of the master carpenter. The men in these classes are 41 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT known as "flymen," "grips," "clearers," "prop- erty men" and electricians. Each of these has his own labor to accomplish, and goes at it without loss of time or regard to the others. The "flymen" haul up and lower whatever hangs in the "flies." The "grips" attend to any scenery that must be set up or pulled down. The "clearers" take away the furniture and ac- cessories that have been used, and the "property men" substitute other furniture and accessories from the "property room." The work of the electricians has been explained. In these days of elaborate calcium effects, there must be a man at each "lamp." All these matters are attended to as though by machinery. When the curtain has fallen on the star's last bow, the stage manager cries "Strike 1" This cry means labor trouble of a very different sort from that usually created by a call to strike. The stage immediately be- comes a small pandemonium. The crew in the "fly gallery" works like the crew on a yard arm during a yacht race, hauling wildly at a greater 42 THE THEATER AT A GLANCE number of ropes than were ever on a ship. In consequence of their energy, trees and houses soar into the air as though by magic. Sam- son wasn't such a giant, after all. He only pulled down a building — these fellows pull buildings up! They are not mightier, however, than their colleagues, the "grips." There walks a stal- wart individual carrying a folded balcony or pushing along the whole side of a church. An- other permits a porch to collapse and fall into his out-stretched arms. How useful these "grips" would have been in San Francisco! Meanwhile, the "clearers" and "property men" have been mixing things up in great shape. The last act was an interior; the next is to be an ex- terior. Consequently, you note a fine spot of lawn growing directly under a horsehair sofa and the trunk of a huge oak reclining affection- ately against a chest of drawers. Gradually, the signs of indoor life disappear, and then, sud- denly, springing out of absolute chaos, you see a forest or a broad public square. The "lamps" 43 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT sputter a moment and blaze up, bathing the scene in the warm red of sunset or the pale blue of moonlight. "Second act!" screams the call-boy, running from dressing room door to dressing room door. The stage manager presses a button connected with a signal light in front of the or- chestra conductor, and you hear the purr of the incidental music. He presses another button once — twice. "Buzz!" hisses something in the "fly-gallery," and "buzz!" again. The curtain lifts and the play is continued. Every- thing has been done in perfect order. Even now the stage manager stands in the "first en- trance," pencil in hand, noting the exact mo- ment at which the act began, the minute at which each song was sung, and how many en- cores it received. You — my friend, the man- ager — will get that report to-morrow morning. Here, omitting a dictionary of details, you have the theater at a glance. I feel tempted, like the magician after he has garbled some ex- planation of a difficult trick, to say: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you can go home and do 44 "A stalwart individual pushing along the side of a church!' THE THEATER AT A GLANCE it yourselves." But you can't. I couldn't. The thousands of important trifles, the thousands of quick decisions that must be made and of clever things that must be done — these are the results of genius and work and of long, long experience. Many an American who has "French at a Glance" on the tips of his fingers, so to speak, has to cackle in imitation of a hen when he wants to get a soft-boiled egg in Paris. 47 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT Being reminiscences of the author's nefarious, but more or less innocuous career as a press agent. A PRESS agent, as you may have gathered from the preceding article, is a person employed to obtain free newspaper advertising for any given thing, and the thing usually is a theatrical production. This advertising he is supposed to get as the Quaker was advised to get money — honestly, if possible. Since it isn't often possible, the press agent may be described in two words as a pro- fessional liar. There is neither malice nor "muck rake " in this assertion. The press agent knows that his business is the dissemination of falsehood, and he is proud of it. Go up to any member of the craft you find on Broadway and say to him: "You are a liar!"; you will see a smile of satis- faction spread itself over his happy face, and his horny hand will grasp yours in earnest grati- 48 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT tude. Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray were liars, too, according to his way of thinking, and not overly ingenious or entertaining liars, at that. Their fiction was spread upon the pages of books, as his is spread upon the pages of the daily jour- nals, and their mission, like his, was the enliven- ing of a terribly dull little planet. This altruis- tic motive really lurks behind the prevarications of the press agent with imagination. He con- ceives his philanthropic duty to be the making of news to fill a demand largely in excess of the supply. If the pursuit of this purpose brings him an income hovering about that of a United States Senator he cannot be blamed. I became one of the guild of Annanias some ten or eleven years ago, coming fresh from the position of dramatic critic on The Washington Times, and I think I may say without undue egotism that, during the period of my member- ship, I lied industriously, conscientiously and with a fair degree of success. There have been and are more able falsifiers than I, but the con- 49 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT fessions of one man cannot in honor include the deeds of another, and so I must omit them from this chronicle. Suffice it to say that the stories of Anna Held's bathing in milk, of Mrs. Patrick Campbell having tan bark spread in the street in front of the Theater Republic to deaden the rumbling that annoyed her during perform- ances, and a score similar in nature remain con- spicuous examples of the cleverness manifested by brilliant press agents in attracting attention to the actors and actresses in whose behalf thev labored. The successful launching of a "fake" — so they are known to the profession— like these is not at all the simple matter it would appear to be. The mere conception of the story is only the beginning of the task. It is not enough to decide that such and such a thing might hap- pen, or to swear that it has happened; it must be made to happen. Moreover, the occurrence must be so natural, and the plans leading to it so carefully laid and concealed, as to prevent suspicion and baffle investigation. Whenever 50 " The guild of Annanias" SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT it is possible, the press agent should be ostensi- bly unconnected with the affair, and, whenever it is not, he must hide his knowledge behind a mask of innocence in comparison with which the face of Mary's little lamb looks like a selec- tion from the rogues' gallery. There are other requisites to the spinning of a yarn which shall be valuable in an advertising way. In the first place, it is necessary that the story shall not injure the reputation or lower the standing of its hero or heroine, and equally desirable that it shall have no "come back" that may make enemies for the press agent. The announcement that Mrs. Patrick Campbell had won a large sum from society women at bridge whist, made during an engage- ment of the star in New York, was given all kinds of space in the newspapers, but it brought down upon Mrs. Campbell's devoted head such scathing denunciation from press and pulpit that she lost no time in sending out a denial. The publicity given the matrimonial enterprises of De Wolf Hopper, through no fault of his 53 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT advertising staff, seriously injured that capable .comedian for a time. A good "fake" is bizarre and picturesque enough to be interesting, will defy the prober after truth, hurts no one and so creates no journalistic grudges to be fought down in the future. There must be no limit to the number of times that the press agent can stir up excitement when he calls "Wolf!" So many of the stories invented by theatrical Munchausens possess the qualification first mentioned that it is by no means unusual for the inventor to take the newpaper man into his confidence. Of course, before doing this he wants to feel sure of his newpaper and of his man. Dailies there be that prefer fact to fic- tion, however prosaic the former; that treat the stage in so dignified a manner that, if the Em- pire Theater burned to the ground, they prob- ably would print the information under a head reading "The Drama"; that scorn the press agent and have only contempt for his handi- work. The most rabid of these, strangely enough, is the very paper that once, for its own 54 'Anna Held 's bathing in milk" SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT amusement, tried a "fake" about wild animals escaping from Central Park Zoo which succeed- ed so well that for twenty-four hours business was practically suspended in New York. At least half the journals in town do not inquire too closely into a tale that is likely to appeal to their readers, especially if the tale in question is obviously harmless. When the publicity pro- moter conceals his machinations and buries clues leading to his connection with a story — "and the same with intent to deceive" — he must plot with great care, for woe betide him if the truth leaks out. An excellent example of the kind of "fake" in accomplishing which one may rely upon the co-operation of the Fourth Estate is the inci- dent of Margaret Mayo writing a play in twen- ty-four hours. Miss Mayo, who since then has written many plays, notably "Baby Mine" and "Polly of the Circus," at that time was appear- ing with Grace George in "Pretty Peggy" at the Herald Square Theater. The season had been dull, if profitable, and I was casting about 57 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT for any item likely to get into print, when the idea of having someone go Paul Armstrong two better in rapidity of accomplishment occurred to me. Obviously, it was impossible to involve Miss George in the episode without making her appear ridiculous, and so I cast about for a like- ly member of her company. Miss Mayo's name suggested itself to me be- cause of the fact that, even then, she was at work on several plays, and I obtained her con- sent to my plan. Shortly afterward it was an- nounced from the Herald Square that Miss Mayo had wagered a supper with Theodore Burt Sayre, author of numerous well known dramas, that she could begin and complete a four act comedy in the space of a single day. The test was to be made on the following Sun- day at the residence of Miss Mayo, who was to have the benefit of a stenographer, and, to guard against her using an idea previously worked out, the advantage of a synopsis fur- nished by Mr. Sayre. This synopsis was to be delivered in a sealed envelope at six o'clock one 58 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT morning and the play was to be finished at six o'clock the next. Mr. Sayre, an intimate per- sonal friend, had been furnished with these de- tails over the telephone, and affirmed them when called up by the reporters. Our announcement was printed by nearly every newspaper in town. The stenographer provided Miss Mayo on that eventful morning was my own — a bright, quick-witted Irish girl, whose name, unfortu- nately, I have forgotten. The synopsis of the play was Miss Mayo's. She had it made from an old piece of her own, which had been freshly typed a day or two before. Saturday night, sheets from this manuscript were generously distributed about the room, the remaining sheets were hidden in a bureau drawer, the typewriter was put in position, and our scenery was ready. Business took me to Philadelphia on a late train, and the beginning of our two little comedies — that to be written and that to be acted — was entrusted to Miss Mayo. I got back from the Quaker City shortly af- ter noon on Sunday and went direct to the 59 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT scene of action. I rang the front bell, the door opened automatically, and I climbed the stairs to the apartment. From the hall I heard a nervous voice and the click of a typewriter. Somebody admitted me and mine eyes beheld as excellent a counterfeit of fevered energy as it has ever been their luck to fall upon. Miss Mayo was pacing the floor wildly, dictating at least sixty words a minute, while the stenog- rapher bent quiveringly over her machine. That portion of a manuscript which Arthur Wing Pinero might possibly prepare in six months lay on the table. The typist broke the charm. "Why!" she exclaimed; "it's Mr. Pollock!" "Oh!" said Miss Mayo. " I thought you were a newspaper man. Sit down and have a biscuit." This pretence was continued all day. When reporters came we struggled with the difficulties of rapid-fire composition; when they didn't we ate biscuits and manifolded epigrams which af- terwards were sent to waiting city editors and quoted as being from the twenty-four hour play. 60 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT Miss Mayo was photographed several times and we had a delicious dinner at six. After- ward, we named our product "The Mart" and separated for the night. Despite our thin his- trionism, there wasn't a newspaper man among our visitors who didn't know in his secret soul that the whole thing had been cooked up for ad- vertising purposes, yet, a newsless Sunday aid- ing and abetting us, we had more space the next morning than might have been devoted to the outbreak of a revolution in France. Similarly, no intelligent person could have questioned for a moment the purpose of the matinee which De Wolf Hopper gave "for wo- men only" soon afterward at the Casino Thea- ter. "Happyland," the opera in which Mr. Hopper was appearing, made no especial ap- peal to the gentler sex, while the presenting company included so many pretty girls that a performance "for men only" would have been infinitely more reasonable. As a matter of fact, I first conceived the idea in this form, but swerved from my course upon taking into ac- 61 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT count two important considerations. The an- nouncement of an entertainment "for men only" must have created the impression that there was something objectionable about the presentation — an impression we were extremely anxious to avoid— and it would not have given the oppor- tunities for humorous writing which we hoped would serve as bait to the reporters. Foresee- ing that upon the obviousness of these oppor- tunities would depend the amount of attention paid to so palpable an advertising scheme, we took care to guard against a dearth of incident by providing our own happenings. Among the number of these were the entrance of a youth who had disguised himself as a girl in order to gain admittance, the appearance of a husband who insisted that his wife must not remain at a performance from which he was barred, and one or two similar episodes. We found, in the end, that these devices were superfluous. On the afternoon selected, the interior of the Casino fairly grinned with femininity, the audience looked like a Mormon mass meeting multiplied 62 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT by two, and even so dignified and important a news-gathering service as the Associated Press condescended to take facetious notice of the "Women's Matinee." If you recollect what you read in newspapers, it is not at all impossible that, even at this date, you will find something familiar about the name of Marion Alexander. You don't? Per- haps your memory can be assisted. Miss Alex- ander was the chorus girl supporting Lillian Russell in "Lady Teazle" who sued the late Sam S. Shubert for $10,000 because he had said she was not beautiful. The story of this slan- der and of the resentment it provoked went all around the world, though it is unlikely that any- one who printed it was deceived as to the genu- ineness of the lady's fine frenzy. The Marion Alexander tale had all the journalistic attrac- tions of the "Women's Matinee," in that it was unique and admitted of breeziness in narration, but it had in addition an advantage that no press agent overlooks — it was susceptible to il- lustration. Newspapers always are eager to 63 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT print pictures of pretty women. The average New York journal had rather reproduce a stun- ning photograph of Trixie Twinkletoes than the most dignified portrait of Ellen Terry or Ada Rehan. Miss Alexander was pretty — I haven't the least doubt that she still is — and, while this story was running its course, the Shuberts paid nearly $300 for photographs used by daily pa- pers, weekly papers, periodicals, magazines and news syndicates. In the course of the controversy Miss Russell took occasion to side with Mr. Shubert— she didn't know she had done so until she read her paper the next morning — and ventured the opinion that no brunette could possibly be beau- tiful. As had been expected, this statement aroused a storm of protest. There are a mil- lion brunettes in New York, and to say that we succeeded in interesting them is putting it mild- ly. When "Lady Teazle" departed for the road they were still writing indignant letters to The American and Journal, and nearly every letter gave added prominence to Miss Russell. 64 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT I wrote a few indignant letters myself and had them copied in long hand by the telephone girls and stenographers in the building. It is quite needless to say that Miss Alexander's suit never came to trial. Twice during my career of prevarication, managing editors became interested in my hum- ble efforts at the creation of news and demand- ed proofs that were not easily manufactured. While "Fantana" was running at the Lyric Theater, I discovered a chorus girl whose dog wore an exquisite pair of diamond ear-rings. To be quite accurate, neither the chorus girl nor the dog had thought of any such adornment when we three became acquainted, but a ten cent pair of jewels stuck to the animal's head with chewing gum and the popular belief that "the camera does not lie" were expected to make the discovery seem convincing. An iconoclast on The World made it necessary for us to bor- row ear rings from Tiffany's and bore holes in the flesh of a poor little canine that might never have known what suffering was but for the 65 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT shocking skepticism mentioned. If the beast in this case was martyred in the interest of science — the science of advertising — the staff of the press department at the Lyric had its share of agony a little later on. We had sent out ingenuously a trifling story about what we were pleased to call a "chorus girls' rogues gallery", detailing the manner in which the rec- ords of the young women were kept on the backs of photographs filed away in a room ar- ranged for that purpose. The World wanted the tale verified and inquired blandly if it might send up a reporter to inspect. We replied with equal politeness that it might — the next day. That afternoon we bought a rubber stamp and nearly a thousand old pictures, and all night long six of us worked on a "chorus girls' rogues' gallery" that would live up to its reputation. Our reward was a page in colors. Sometimes things really do happen to actors and actresses, and so, not infrequently, there is a grain of truth in the news printed about them. Onlv a grain, mind you, for if a tenth of the 66 ALAS... POOR YORICK HU "Sometimes things really do happen to actors" SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT events in which they are supposed to take part were actual, the inevitable end of life on the stage would be death of nervous prostration. The wide-awake press agent is quick to plant the grain of truth aforesaid, growing there- from stories no more like the originals than a radish is like a radish seed. Grace George once telegraphed me to Chicago that she would not open at the Grand Opera House in "Pretty Peggy" on a Sunday. She felt, quite rightly, that eight performances a week was the limit of her endurance. Staring at a pile of printed bills announcing an engagement beginning on the Sabbath, I concluded that this ultimatum had reached the limit of mine. Then an inspiration. Up went the original bills, to be covered a day later with others advertising the first perform- ance for Monday. The newspapers were curi- ous as to why the change had been made and we were willing, not to say eager, to satisfy their curiosity. Miss George did not believe in giv- ing theatrical performances on Sunday. At least a dozen clerygmen read this and told their con- 69 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT gregations about it the day before the post- poned advent of "Pretty Peggy." Caught in a blizzard at Oswego, N. Y., eight years ago, I was informed that the only chance of my joining Miss George that night at Syracuse lay in making the trip in a special lo- comotive. That necessity got printed through- out the country a vivid description of Miss George driving an engine through banks of snow in order to reach Syracuse for her per- formance of "Under Southern Skies." The woman who actually made the trip was a wait- ress from an Oswego hotel and she received $10 for it. William A. Brady wanted a thousand girls in September, 1902, for his Woman's Exhibi- tion at Madison Square Garden. They could have been obtained without the knowledge of the police, but secrecy was not the desideratum. "Wanted — 1000 Women at Madison Square Garden at 8 P. M. on Friday" was an advertise- ment which brought down upon us nearly thrice that number, together with a small army of 70 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT newspaper reporters and photographers. This was the first gun fired in a campaign of adver- tising for a show during the existence of which we obtained nearly six hundred columns of space in New York. Truth is never important in a press agent's story, and there are some occurrences that he actually suppresses. Accounts of small fires, accidents, thefts and quarrels do not get into type if he can help it. Several kinds of news items have been "faked" so often that no one would attempt to have them mentioned journalistically should examples of their class really happen. He would be a brave publicity promoter, for instance, who sent to an editor the tale of his star stopping a runaway, no mat- ter how firmly the tale might be based on fact. Miss George had stolen from her a valuable diamond necklace while she was playing in "Pretty Peggy" and knew better than to per- mit my sending out an announcement of the theft. "An Actress Loses Her Diamonds!" You laugh scornfully at the very idea. The pa- 7i THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT pers no longer publish accounts of people stand- ing in line before box offices all night in order to secure good seats in the morning, though I succeeded in obtaining mention of this feature of Sarah Bernhardt's last engagement but one in New York by injecting into the yarn a few drops of what theatrical managers call "heart interest." Five dollars and a little careful coach- ing secured for me a picturesque looking old woman who convinced her inquisitors that she once had acted with the Divine Sarah in Paris. Her vigil in the lobby of the Lyric received more attention than did the bona fide line of three thousand persons that I rose at five to have photographed on the morning following. This imposter's husband afterward figured at the Casino in the role of a man whose visit to "Happyland" was the first he had made to a theater since the night on which he had wit- nessed the shooting of Abraham Lincoln. The tale we told was that this spectacle had so affect- ed him that the soothing influence of forty years was required to bring him again into the pre- 72 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT cincts of a playhouse. Interviewed by the rep- resentatives of several journals, he made a com- parison between theatrical performances of ante bellum times and those of today that could hardly have been more convincing had my con- federate's price not included two seats for the preceding evening at another place of amuse- ment under direction of the Shuberts. This story, which went the rounds of the country, cost, all in all, ten minutes work and three sil- ver dollars. I mention it as an instance of the simple "fake" that sometimes proves most ef- fective. An equally simple story, used almost simul- taneously, came near being less inexpensive. Henry Miller was about to produce "Grier- son's Way" at the Princess Theater, and, re- hearsals not progressing to his satisfaction, he determined to postpone the scheduled date of opening. This determination we resolved upon turning to our own account. We advertised widely that Mr. Miller had lost the only ex- isting manuscript of the play, without which 73 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT the performance could not be given, and that he would pay $500 reward for its restoration. Two days afterward Mr. Miller called me up on the telephone. "An awful thing has hap- pened!" he said. "I've actually lost a manu- script of 'Grierson's Way.' " "What of it?" I inquired. "What of it!" echoed Mr. Miller. "Sup- posing somebody brings the 'script to me and. demands that $500?" Fortunately, "Grierson's Way" was found by a stage hand who was satisfied with a small bill and an explanation. It seems hardly probable that anyone will recall how a barber once delayed the beginning of a performance of "Taps" until half past eight o'clock, yet that tale was one of the most successful of simple stories. The only prepara- tion required was posting the chosen tonsorial- ist and holding the curtain at the Lyric. Her- bert Kelcey, according to the explanation given out, had been shaved when he discovered that he did not have the usual fee about him. "I'll 74 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT pay you tomorrow," he had remarked. "I'm Herbert Kelcey." "Herbert Kelcey nuttin' I" his creditor had replied. "Dat gag don't go! You stay here until you get dat fifteen cents!" A messenger, hastily summoned, was said to have released the actor shortly after the hour for "ringing up." The idea that a barber could keep a thousand people waiting for their en- tertainment was both novel and humorous, and, in the vernacular, our story "landed hard." The strike of the Helen May Butler Military Band at the Woman's Exhibition was arranged with equal ease and proved equally good. That exhibition was wonderfully fruitful. Almost anything the women did seemed amusing, and the show itself was so extraordinary that its smallest features were interesting. As elaborate a tale as, for example, the fa- mous Anna Held milk bath story, to which I have referred, requires more plotting and ar- ranging than would the founding of a revolu- tionary society in Russia. One may spend 75 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT weeks of work and hundreds of dollars on such a "fake," only to trace its subsequent failure to some trifling flaw in the chain of circumstance. Widely though a successful story of this sort may be chronicled, the reward is absolutely in- commensurate with the labor involved, and I think few press agents would ever attempt one were it not for a gambler's love of excitement. It was during Judge Alton B. Parker's pres- idential campaign that I evolved what I con- sider my most magnificent "fake." At that time I represented several attractions in New York, chief among the number two musical comedies, entitled "The Royal Chef" and "Piff, Pan", Pouf." I wired Judge Parker's secretary that the choruses of these productions had formed a club, which was to be known as The Theatrical Women's Parker Association, and the purpose of which was to induce male per- formers to go home to vote. Would Judge Parker receive a delegation from this society? The wire was signed "Nena Blake," and, in due time, Miss Blake received a courteous and 76 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT conclusive reply. Judge Parker would not. That message was a stunner. In the face of it, there was only one thing to do — send along our delegation on the pretence that no an- swer to our communication had ever been re- ceived. Nine chorus ladies were picked out in a hurry, placed in charge of a shrewd newspa- per woman who passed as another show girl, and the whole outfit was dispatched to Aesopus. The newspaper woman had instructions to reg- ister at a prominent hotel as a delegation from the Theatrical Women's Parker Association, and to parade herself and her charges before all the alert correspondents in the little town on the Hudson. That done, we who had stayed behind got ready photographs of the pilgrims and waited. The wait was not long. By nine o'clock that night the bait had been swallowed at Aesopus, and my office was crowded with reporters anxi- ous to verify the story wired from up the river. Judge Parker, with characteristic kindness, had lunched the party, allowed it to sing to him, 77 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT and sent it away rejoicing. Most of the boys "smelled a mouse," but the thing was undenia- bly true and much too important to be ignored. The Theatrical Women's Parker Club, "Piff, Paff, Pouf" and "The Royal Chef" were well advertised the next morning. It was the failure of a prominent newspaper to mention either of our plays by name that drove me to further utilization of this scheme. Such an omission is always unfair and unjust. A story is good enough to be printed or it is not: if not, nobody has cause for complaint, if it is, there is no reason why a newspaper should deny the expected compensation. Resolving that [ would compel this payment, I immediately ar- ranged for a public meeting of the Theatrical Women's Parker Club. The Democratic Na- tional Committee furnished us with a cart-load of campaign literature and with three speakers, one of whom was Senator Charles A. Towne. The other orators we provided. They were Eddie Foy, Dave Lewis, Nena Blake, Grace Cameron and Amelia Stone. The juxtaposi- 78 "A public meeting of The Theatrical Women's Parker Club" SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT tion, I felt confident, was sufficiently grotesque to provoke comment. I wrote nine political speeches for the occa- sion, held two rehearsals, and, when our ad- vertisements failed to draw an audience, secured a fine one by sending to such congregating places as the Actors' Society. The affair passed off beautifully, Senator Towne adapting him- self to circumstances and making one of the most graceful and agreeable addresses imagin- able. I heard it from a nook in the fly gallery, where I remained until the meeting was ad- journed. This "fake" accomplished its purpose, the delinquent newspaper falling in line with the others in publishing the story. It would tax your patience and your faith in the existence of modesty were I to go into de- tail regarding a score of similar "fakes" which come to mind. How this same Nena Blake was kidnapped from the Garrick Theater, Chicago, and sent to New York in the costume she wore in "The Royal Chef"; how her sister, Bertha, was sent to Zion to kiss the unkissed son of 8i THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT John Alexander Dowie; how a supposed Ger* man baron threw across the footlights to Julia Sanderson a bouquet from which dropped an $18,000 diamond necklace; how a chorus girl named Thorne created a sensation at a Physi- cal Culture Show in Madison Square Garden by declaring the costume she was expected to wear "shockingly immodest"; how a niece of Adele Ritchie changed her name to Adele Ritchie Jr., and Miss Ritchie herself was sought in marriage by a Siamese millionaire — all of these anecdotes must pass with the mere men- tion that they were successful "fakes." The manner in which a good story may go wrong merits more extended description. While an extravanganza, yclept "The Babes and the Baron", was in town, T resolved upon a news event so complicated that I wonder now at my temerity in undertaking it. The idea was that some well known doctor should find on his door- step one morning a young and pretty girl, fash- ionably dressed and intelligent-looking, but quite unable to recall her name or to give an account 82 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT of herself. The doctor, naturally enough, would report the affair to the police, who, in turn, would give it to the reporters. These gen- tlemen, deceived by the fact that no possible ad- vertising could be suspected in the case of a wo- man who looked untheatrical and who did not even know her own name, were expected to give untold space in the evening papers to the mys- tery. After the journals in question had been published, the girl was to be identified, so that her name and that of "The Babes and the Baron" might be printed in the morning. It was necessary that, at this time, the vic- tim should be able to give a good reason for her condition. The reason selected was as fol- lows: During the performance of the extrava- ganza, some question had arisen as to the young woman's courage or cowardice. To prove the former, she had volunteered to hide in the Eden Musee and to remain all night in the "chamber of horrors." The terrible sights of this place had frightened her into hysteria; the porter, hearing her scream and believing her to be in- 83 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT toxicated, had ejected her; a kindly old gentle- man had found her in the street and started to drive her to a hospital, when, becoming alarm- ed, he had decided instead to place her on the doorstep of a physician's house, ring the bell, and get away. Anyone will tell you that the first essential to having roast goose for dinner is to get your goose. At least twenty chorus girls must have been interrogated before I found one willing and competent to try the experiment. Mabel Wilbur, afterward prima donna of "The Mer- ry Widow", was chosen, and she spent eleven days being instructed in the symptoms of the mental disease known as asphasia. The offi- cials of the Eden Musee, glad to share the ad- vertising, carefully coached the porter in the story he was to tell. The stage manager of 'The Babes and the Baron" was admitted into the secret and a bright journalist was engaged to hover about and superintend affairs. Of course, my appearance in the neighborhood of the sickroom would have been fatal to the 84 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT "fake." Miss Wilbur was left on the doctor's door- step shortly after four o'clock one mild morn- ing. From that time until night the scheme worked like a charm. Miss Wilbur, bravely enduring all sorts of physical and mental tests, passed the scrutiny of a dozen detectives and medical men. After vainly buying a dozen edi- tions of the evening papers in an anxious effort to learn how matters were progressing, I sud- denly found the journals filled with the affair. "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab — Pretty Girl Left on Doctor's Doorstep in Dying Condi- tion" and "Police Have New Problem" were headlines that flared across front pages. Up to that point the story had been a huge success. There remained only the matter of identifica- tion to connect with the other story, like two ends of a tunnel meeting, and this promised to be a delicate matter. Say "chorus girl" to a newspaper man and he immediately becomes suspicious. Our hardest work was before us. At nine o'clock the stage manager of "The 85 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Babes and the Baron" was sent around to recog- nize Miss Wilbur. It was he who had chal- lenged her courage, and, alarmed at her failure to report for the performance, he had hastened to pick up the clue given him by the evening pa- pers. Miss Wilbur's identity was established in the presence of a score of reporters and photographers, none of whom seemed to sus- pect anything. "At the hour of going to press" we all felt certain that we had "pulled off" the biggest theatrical "fake" known to history. Every paper in town had the story the next morning — but it was the true story. A City News Association man had recognized my bright journalist, at that time passing himself off as a brother of Miss Wilbur, and the net re- sult of our fortnight's toiling and moiling was some six columns of ridicule. These confessions would be incomplete if I did not admit here and now that this story was the most ill-advised of my career. It brought discomfit and discredit to a dozen persons, it in- volved an attempt to deceive some of my best 86 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT friends, and it put me in a bad light at the very time that the approaching premiere of a play from my pen made that most undesirable. A great many city editors have never forgiven me my part in this particular "fake," although the owner of an evening paper wrote me the next day: "I was fooled from first to last. You're a wonder. Congratulations." Another bad mistake was my story regard- ing the willingness of the management to pay $50 a week for exceptionally beautiful chorus girls to appear in "Mexicana." The story was printed all over the world, but it caused critics to stamp as ugly one of the most attractive en- sembles ever brought to New York. "If any of these girls," said The Sun, "gets $50 a week her employers are entitled to a rebate." I can- not place in the same catalogue Madame Bern- hardt's appeal to the French Ambassador at Washington to protest against her exclusion from playhouses controlled by the so-called Theatrical Syndicate. Madame denied this over her own signature, but, from a press 87 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT agent's point of view, it was an exceedingly creditable falsehood. It is possible to discuss at endless length the real value of the "fake" and its place in thea- trical advertising. Perhaps no one ever went to a theater merely because one of the per- formers at that theater was supposed to have bathed in milk or to have stopped a runaway horse. On the other hand, I am sure that no one ever went to a theater because he or she had seen the name of the play acted there posted conspicuously on a bill-board. The mission of the bill-board is to call attention to the fact that there is such-and-such an entertainment and that it may be seen at such-and-such a house. There is no question in my mind but that this much is done for a production by "fake" stories concerning it. In rare instances, where the story accentuates the importance of the pre- sentation and its success, or awakens interest in some member of the presenting company, the service performed may be even greater. At all events, the average manager expects this kind of 88 SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT advertising from the publicity promoter to whom he pays a salary, and, naturally, the publicity pro- motor feels that it is "his not to reason why." The press agent realizes that to any failure on his part will always be attributed the misfor- tunes of the management with which he is con- nected. Productions do a good business be- cause they are good productions, and a bad bus- iness because they have bad press agents. Every theatrical newspaper man knows the anecdote of the German cornetist en tour with a minstrel company. The organization was toiling up a steep hill that lay between the rail- way station and the town. The cornetist was warm and he was tired. "The camel's back" broke when at last he stubbed his toe against a stone. Picking up the obstruction, he threw it as far away as he could. "Ach!" he exclaimed. "Ve got a fine advance agent!" 89 THE WRITING AND READING OF • PLAYS Being a discussion as to which pursuit is the more pain- ful, with various entertaining and instructive remarks as to the method of following both. AT my side lies an advertisement reading: "I will teach you to write plays for $10!" If the professor means that he can teach you to write plays that will bring you ten dollars, he may be speaking the truth. If he means that for ten dollars, or a hundred dollars, or a hundred thousand, he can teach you to write plays, he is a liar! Aunt Emma, who represents the palmy days of the stage, and "used to be with Booth and Barrett", once gave me her opinion of schools of acting. "One can learn to fence", she said, "and to walk and articulate properly. But one cannot learn to think or to feel, and without thinking and feeling there is no acting." Pre- 90 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS cisely the same thing may be said of playwrit- ing. Of course, there is a great deal that the dramatist must know about drama. W. T. Price's interesting volume on the subject con- tains about a hundred iron-clad principles that should be read, and re-read, and then forgot- ten. Such of the number as cling to your sub- consciousness can't do you any harm, and prob- ably will do you a lot of good. The others might help to make you a capable mechanic. Rostand's rooster, once he had been told how to crow, couldn't crow — fell to the ground, as it were, between two schools. Bronson How- ard, asked to compile a book of rules for play- writing, declined on the ground that he feared being tempted to follow them. To learn to do anything — do it! If you would know how to write plays write them, read them, go to see them. Then think a while, and write some more. If you feel sure you have a big idea — and sometimes it seems to me that the big ideas come most often to people who 9i THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT can't use them — pool it with the skill of some- one who is willing to give craftsmanship for in- ventive genius— and watch him. Avery Hop- wood collaborated on "Clothes" before he went single-handed at "Nobody's Widow", and, mid- way, he leased his experience to the novelist who furnished the plot of "Seven Days." Harriet Ford helped Joseph Medill Patterson write "The Fourth Estate", and now Mr. Patterson is exhibiting signs by which one may predict that he will do something alone. Wilson Miz- ner worked with George Bronson Howard on "The Only Law", and with Paul Armstrong on 'The Deep Purple", and we may expect soon a piece that will bear only the name of Wilson Mizner. "What a lucky fellow !" we say occasionally of some new author who springs into notice. "His first play, and a huge success!" But every pro- fessional reader in town could tell you that this success wasn't "his first play." While I was reading for the firm of Sam S. & Lee Shubert, I saw three or four manuscripts from the pens 92 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS of Rachel Crothers and Thompson Buchanan. "The Three of Us" did not surprise me, nor "A Woman's Way." I knew, and every man in my profession knew, that Miss Crothers and Mr. Buchanan had spent years turning out pieces they could not sell. They worked, and they studied, and they went to the theater thoughtfully until they could write pieces that would sell. Poets may be born or made, according to the field they occupy, but playwrights must be born and made. However, there isn't the least use of dwelling on this fact. To the end of time men and women who wouldn't think of trying to fashion a horseshoe without first having served an apprenticeship with some blacksmith will go on endeavoring to create comedies and tragedies without having made the least effort to shape their talents — even to whet their in- stincts. Once upon a time, in a speech delivered somewhere, I said that, everything else being equal, the author who had never produced a 93 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT play had the best chance of producing a good one. I was wrong. It is true that the new- comer is likely to have fresher ideas than the old stager, and that generally he dramatizes a lifetime of experience, instead of dramatizing only what he has gleaned between contracts. That accounts for the fact that some tyros never repeat their primal successes. But, even in this period of the novice, when appreciation of novelty submerges appreciation of skill, statis- tics prove that a majority of the pronounced hits are the work of established authors. We believe the contrary, as we believe that most marriages turn out badly, because begin- ners at authorship and enders of matrimony at- tract attention. Much was said of the novices who won laurels last season, and yet every sin- gle piece that ran a hundred nights or so on Broadway was by an Avery Hopwood, a Win- chell Smith, or a David Belasco. Any number of brilliant young men flashed into view, and probably will remain in view, but, as yet, of necessity, they are conspicuous for promise 94 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS rather than for fulfillment. The greatest orig- inality, the most synthetic ingenuity, and the sharpest wit were displayed by H. S. Sheldon, in "The Havoc"; by Philip H. Bartholomae, in "Over Night"; by Anne Caldwell, in "The Nest Egg"; by Tom Barry, in "The Upstart"; by Al Thomas, in "Her Husband's Wife", and by George Bronson Howard and Wilson Miz- ner in "The Only Law." The danger faced by new men is that they may be snuffed out by their first failures. Such an ungenerous reception as was given "The Up- start", for example, might well discourage an author to the utter ruin of his career. Mana- gers, too, are likely to judge by the box office rather than by the play — an exceedingly short sighted policy in a "business" whose future de- pends upon the proper nursing of its infants. The fluttering fledgling of today is the eagle of tomorrow. Porter Emerson Browne, Jules Eck- ert Goodman, Edward Sheldon, Thompson Buchanan, Avery Hopwood, James Forbes, the debutants of yester-year, are the leading drama- 95 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT tists of this. Naturally, everybody is trying to duplicate their experience. Everybody writes plays. Some time ago an ambitious individual walked into my office and announced that he had come from Rochester to submit a tragedy in blank verse. I suggested that he need not have gone to so much trouble and expense. "It wasn't any trouble or expense", he replied. "I had to come anyway. I'm a conductor on the New York Central." Theodore Burt Sayre, who wrote "The Com- manding Officer", and who is the reader for Charles Frohman, told me not long ago that his most persistent visitor was a policeman, who had composed a farce in six acts. He also showed me a letter the author of which de- clared"! seen menny plays that cost a doler and wasnt won-too-three with my play." Every manager in New York has received a Brooklyn shoemaker who feels certain he has produced a comic opera infinitely superior to the best efforts of (iilbcrt and Sullivan. Of the would-be 96 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS dramatists in the learned professions, I should say that physicians are rarest as playwrights, that journalists provide the best material, and that clergymen produce the most and the worst. With so many Cinderellas attempting to crowd their feet into the shoes of Pinero and Jones, there can be no limit to the number of manuscripts submitted each week to well known producers. The general idea, I believe, is that managers are quite buried beneath piles of plays. This is not absolutely true. Such an office as that of Henry B. Harris, in the Hudson Thea- ter, or of The Liebler Company, in Fifth Ave- nue, may be the destination of from six to ten manuscripts a week. About a third of this num- ber come from agents, and these are likely to receive quickest consideration, since the reader knows that, if they were utterly without prom- ise, they would not have been sent him. The crop of flat and cylindrical packages fluctuates with altered conditions. The manager who makes money out of the work of an unknown author is sure to receive far more than his share 97 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT of contributions during the next year or two. William A. Brady got a thousand plays a month from obscure aspirants immediately after the production of " 'Way Down East." It is a fallacy widely current among new writers that their "copy" is returned unread. One of the first theatrical stories I ever heard concerned a woman who put sand between the pages of her rolled manuscript and found it there still when the piece came back to her. Nowadays, when the demand for material so far exceeds the supply as to have become al- most frantic, it is true not only that every play is looked into, but that almost every play is looked into by every manager. Round and round the circle they go, being judged from a hundred viewpoints by a hundred men who know that a lucky strike means a for- tune, and who are eager in proportion. It is my firm belief that all the good plays, not to speak of a fair number of bad ones, have been or are about to be produced. Any piece that is not utterly, hopelessly valueless is sure to find some 98 '-• WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS appreciator in the end. There are instances of manuscripts that, like "My Friend From India", travel up and down Broadway for years, only to be accepted and staged at last. I have said that the dramatist who "arrives" generally has announced himself first through various rolled and typewritten visiting cards. The parcel that comes from Findlay, Ohio, or Omaha, Nebraska, bearing the address of some one of whom the reader never heard before, is pretty certain to be without promise. Usually, the manuscript betrays itself in its first ten pages, and what follows rarely contains an idea that might have been valuable even if its owner had learned his trade. When the manager does discover a story worth while, or the suggestion of a story, usually he is quick to put its origina- tor in touch with a literary manicure. Charles Frohman, who frequently is styled "The Napoleon of the Drama", takes no such Napoleonic chances. If you will look over one of Mr. Frohman's budgets you will find that two-thirds of the plays he announces have been 99 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT presented abroad, and that the other third are from the pens of such celebrities as Augustus Thomas. Naturally, this is the safe, sane, and more-or-less sure method, and yet, even when judged from a purely commercial view-point, it has its disadvantages. If the system does not entail such losses as other managers suffer, neither does it render possible such gains. Mr. Frohman paid George Ade royalties for "Just Out of College", which was a failure, far in ex- cess of those granted by Henry W. Savage for 'The County Chairman." Popular dramatists turn out pretty poor stuff at times, as Mr. Froh- man was reminded when he produced William Gillette's "Electricity", and excellent material may come from an unexpected source, as Wag- enhals & Kemper discovered when they pur- chased "Paid in Full" from a man whose only previous work had been the unlucky "Sergeant James." As to the invariable wisdom of offer- ing here plays that were hits in Paris and Lon- don, I can say only that sometimes we in Amer- ica differ with our cousins in France and Eng- ioo WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS land. We differed widely in the cases of "The Speckled Band", "The Scarlet Pimpernel", and "The Foolish Virgin." It would appear to be a much safer expedient to turn over doubtful pieces to stock companies in one provincial city or another and then to abide by the result. This expedient, by the way, has the advantage of be- ing inexpensive. It is very difficult to identify a good play. When I was sixteen years old, and didn't know whether manuscripts were an inch thick or a mile, I felt quite sure that the manager who produced a bad play was a fool. I used to say this frankly in the newspaper on which I was employed, just as a lot of other cock-sure young men have been doing ever since. Latterly, how- ever, I have observed that a great many experi- enced producers average about three failures to every one success, and I leave the superior at- titude to the literatti whose cleverness is valued by their employers at from fifteen to fifty dol- lars a week. The late A. M. Palmer, after a long life-time of experience, said to me: "There IOI THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT does not live a man who can tell a good play from a bad one by reading it. If there were such a Solomon he would be worth half a mil- lion dollars per annum to any manager in New York. Personally, I have refused so many money-makers and accepted so many money- losers that I select material now-a-days by guess work. I tossed a coin once to decide whether or not I should buy what afterward proved to be one of the biggest hits of my career." I have said that it is difficult to indentify a good play; it should not be difficult to pass upon a bad one. Some of the things that reach our stage are so very bad that nothing in the fore- going paragraph excuses or explains their pro- duction. Several years ago there was referred to me a romantic drama, written by a visiting Englishman. I advised against it, but my em- ployers were determined in its favor, and the piece was presented soon afterward at the Prin- cess Theater. On the opening night, just after the second act, Louis De Foe, dramatic critic of The 102 "// is very difficult to identify a good play" WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS World, came to me, and said: "I got here late, and so lost the thread of the story. Can you tell me what the play is about?" I tried and failed. One of my employers stood nearby. "Let's ask him?" I suggested. We did — and he didn't know. "Haven't you seen it?" inquired Mr. De Foe. "Yes", quoth the manager, "and I've read it, and — and it has something to do with love, but I — I forget the details." He suggested that we wait until after the performance and speak to the author. That gentleman told us that the story con- cerned a soldier of fortune, who was about to do something or other — I don't remember what — when he received a letter that altered his in- tentions. "So I observed", said Mr. De Foe. "But why should it have altered them ? What was in the letter?" The author looked at him blankly. "By Jove!" he explained. "I don't know. I never 105 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT thought of that!" The next day he drafted a letter that would explain matters and asked me to have it printed in the program. But, as the piece was to close the following night, it didn't seem worth while. Of course, no play as bad as this should ever find its way to the footlights, and yet I am obliged to confess that a great many do. In fact, fifteen years of observation have forced me to the conclusion that the finer the texture of a play, the more unusual its theme, the smaller the author's chance of finding a manager for it. Also, one must admit, the smaller that man- ager's chance of finding a public. Though they are not so numerous as one would like to see them, we have producers of keen artistic sensi- bilities; some of them, like Charles Frohman, George Tyler, Henry B. Harris, David Belasco, Henry Miller and Wagenhals & Kemper, men who are not averse to losing money on a worthy enterprise or, at least, to taking a long chance of making it. For these men we should be grateful, and, though the New Theater has 106 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS brought out nothing remarkable from an un- tried pen, we should be grateful, too, for an in- stitution whose purpose is producing the best, whether the best is profitable or not. So many mental qualities are essential to the correct appraisal of a play. For one thing, the manager must see not only what it is but what it may become. Often the hardest work in play- writing has to be done after the play has been produced. Pieces that seemed hopeless when they were acted initially have been turned into huge successes. Scenes are switched about, lines changed, often whole acts reconstructed. I know a woman who was compelled to cut her play in half after it was produced. Ordinarily one minute is required to act each page of type- written manuscript, but this work, which con- tained only one hundred and fifty pages, ran nearly five hours. Difficult as such condensa- tion must have been, the task that confronted the author in question was not to be compared with that of lengthening a play. It is not advis- able for embryonic dramatists to cut too close- 107 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ly according to pattern. To tone down a strong play or shorten a long one is easy; to build up a weak play or successfully pad out a short one is impossible. Most of the manuscripts that come to the desk of the reader do not prompt sufficient doubt for any manager to be willing to try them. A great many would seem to be the product of lunatics. Not long ago I had a dramatization of a Russian novel that contained eleven acts and twenty-one scenes. The adapter simply had melted down the whole six hundred pages of fiction and was trying to pour it onto the stage. Another offering, called "The Dogs of Infidel- ity", proved to be an argument against atheism in five acts and seven scenes. The scoundrel of this masterpiece was Robert G. Ingersol, and the play was accompanied by a cartoon showing the agnostic fleeing from two police officers, marked "Logic" and "Sarcasm", who were pur- suing him at the bidding of Justice, in the per- son of the author. Beneath this picture were typewritten the favorable opinions of a number 108 "A woman who was compelled to cut her play in half WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS of people who claimed to have read the piece. Standing in the center of the stage, the villain of a melodrama still in my possession is supposed to commit suicide by exploding a dynamite car- tridge in his mouth. Beneath the directions for this bit of business, the author has written: "The performance concludes here." I should think it might! Of course, it is not often that one gets plays as absurd as these. If it were, the reading of manuscript would not be so dull and profitless a task. The ordinary play is notable only for its crudity, its artificiality, its lack of color, and its hopeless failure to rise above the conventional and the commonplace. Dramatists follow each other like sheep, and the smaller the dramatist happens to be the more closely he follows. Thus it is that whenever somebody produces a piece with a situation that creates comment, every second manuscript one reads from that time on contains exactly the same situation. A long while ago I grew so much interested in the like- ness between plot and plot that I catalogued two in THE FOOTLIGHTS-FORE AND AFT hundred plays according to their general char- acter. The result was as follows: Dramas in which woman goes to man's rooms at midnight 37 in which woman betrays man and then saves him 19 in which wronged woman gives evi- dence at end of play 6 in which man unwittingly falls in love with woman meant for him 9 in which woman unwittingly falls in love with man meant for her 3 in which wealth is unexpectedly derived from a mine or a patent 22 built on the question of "love or duty" 24 built on the question of the fitness of a reformed man or woman to marry 16 in which man or woman reforms the person he or she loves 3 Comedies in which husband or wife ends 1 12 << u (C It WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS the philandering of wife or husband by seeming to condone it 20 Farces based on mistaken identity 31 built around the necessity of a man lying to his wife 28 The total of the table is not two hundred, be- cause several of these plays had none of the features mentioned, while others had more than one. Of course, it is well-nigh impossible for any dramatist, no matter how well-meaning, to de- vise unparalleled characters, situations and stor- ies. Just as the fact that there are only so many notes in the scale has been urged as an excuse for composers whose music is reminiscent, so I would insist that there are only so many strings in the heart. There is a limit to the number of situations that can be brought about in real life, and, of course, there is a much more definite limit to the number of these situations which have dramatic value. In certain elemental facts all plays must be alike. For example, it 113 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT is inevitable that a large number of plays shall have what is known as the "dramatic triangle" —which means the conflict of two men and a woman or of two women and a man. It is in- evitable that a great majority of plays shall deal with that one great elemental emotion— love. Once, when I was very young indeed, I experi- mented in writing a comedy in which nobody was in love. The piece was presented in Wash- ington, and, to the best of my recollection, it lasted two consecutive nights. This convinced me that there might be a line beyond which one could not go in the effort to be unique. There are a great number of things, however, that are so hackneyed and conventional that it is no longer possible for an author to attempt them. I do not think any manager would buy another play in which the crucial situation was the concealment of the heroine in the apartments of the hero or the villain. From time immemor- ial this has been the stock episode for the third act climax in a four act play, and audiences have begun to expect it as they expect supper af- 114 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS ter the fourth act. Personally, I am free to con- fess that I should not be likely to recommend the purchase of any drama in which the conclusion of the third act did not bring a surprise calcu- lated to make an audience sit up and take notice. No author of today would dare begin his work with a conversation between a maid and a butler. Neither would he care to conceal one of his characters behind a screen or to conclude his play with the finding of a bundle of papers. The cigarette is still the hero of the society drama, and it is still true on the stage that the happy conclusion of the love affair between the juvenile and the ingenue usually is coincident with the conclusion of the love affair between the leading man and the leading woman. We begin to have heroes who are not too angelically good, however, and villains who have motives more human than the mere desire to be beastly and draw a hundred and fifty dollars a week for it. Very slowly and gradually the perfect woman, the high-hatted knave, the wronged girl, the comic Irishman, the naval lieutenant of 115 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT comic opera, the English butler and their asso- ciates are passing from our midst. Peace to their ashes ! Plays have their epochs, just as books do, and there are fashions in the drama as pronounced as those in dress. Always one successful work of a particular class brings about a host of imi- tations, and, for a time, it seems as though the public would never tire of that particular kind of entertainment. "The Prisoner of Zenda" was responsible for a hundred romances laid in mythical kingdoms; "Lady Windimere's Fan" brought drawing room comedy into vogue ; " 'Way Down East" bred a perfect epidemic of pastorals; "Sherlock Holmes" created a demand for plays concerning criminals. All of these varieties of entertainment, save possi- bly the last, have been laid on the shelf, and we now are going in vigorously for frothy farce and comic opera in long skirts. The manner in which one author follows the lead of another, as demonstrated above, extends beyond the se- lection of such important things as stories, and 116 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS reaches even to titles. Ten years ago we couldn't have a name without the word "of" in it. On the bill-boards were advertised "The White- washing of Julia", "The Manoeuvres of Jane", "The Superstitions of Sue", "The Stubborn- ness of Geraldine" and a score of others. Then somebody christened a charming sketch "Hop- o'-My-Thumb", and for a while it seemed that we could get nothing but hyphenated titles, such as "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire" and "All-of-a-Sudden- Peggy." Now-a-days the vogue seems to be the combination of an article and a noun — "The Boss", "The Nigger", "The Gamblers" and "The Concert." Please do not understand that, in calling at- tention to these similarities, I intend to accuse anyone of plagiarism. Deliberate theft of ideas from contemporary offerings is likely to result in law-suits, and I don't believe that there are left in the printed dramas any ideas worth steal- ing. I used to hear an interesting story of Paul Potter's writing original plays in the Boston Public Library, but it seemed to me that much of 117 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT his work was too good to have been filched from the old fellows whose publishers bound their vulgarity, their leaden dialogue and their uningenious situations in yellow covers. It is very difficult, as I have said, to squeeze new sit- uations out of a dull world, from the manners and morals of which about four hundred dramas have been pressed every year during the past half century. It is especially hard to devise original material in America, where prudish re- strictions hedge us about and anything deep and vital in life immediately is set down as immoral. American authors cannot wring novel in- cidents from the emotions; they must profit by such circumstances as the invention of wireless telegraphy and the automobile. The telephone and the motor car are speedily becoming bul- warks of the drama in the United States! The possibility of giving subtle and original treatment to familiar phases of life, together with the attendant possibility of revealing human nature in the theater, hold forth the chief prom- ise along this line. Clever twisting and turn- 118 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS ing will make a new incident from an old one, as is best demonstrated in what Beaumont and Fletcher did with Lope de Vega when they adapted "Sancho Ortez" into "The Custom of the Country", and playwrights are learning to turn little things to vital account in the construc- tion of their plays. A glance at a photograph now-a-days is made to convey all what was in- dicated in a five-minutes talk between butler and maid twenty years ago. As to the matter of heart interest, that, after all, is the thing that counts most, and that is eternal and inexhaustible. Charles Klein, author of "The Music Master", put this to me neatly not long ago in an attempt to prove the advan- tage of the realistic drama over the romantic. "Supposing a man comes to you", he remarked, "and says that his wife has just fallen out of a balloon. You're not sorry, because you can't understand why his wife should have gone up in a balloon. Let the same man say to you, how- ever, that he is out of a position and that his family is starving, and see how quickly the tears 119 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT will come into your eyes. So far as modern au- diences are concerned, the old duel-fighting, hose-wearing romantic heroes are up in a balloon. We want sorrows and joys we can compre- hend." It is this creed that makes the new drama- tist an entity worth seeking. If it proves diffi- cult to discover him among the thousands who write plays, it at least is worth while to culti- vate him when he is found among those who write promising plays. "By their works ye shall know them" is particularly applicable to the men who will some day succeed Barrie and Pinero. They will bear watching. If I were a producing manager I should keep in touch with the men whose first pieces indicate the possession of ability. I would set them at work, not at tailoring plays to fit personalities, but at real- izing their ideas and their ideals. Certainly this great country is full of material waiting for dramatization, and it must be equally true that it is full of authors capable of accomplishing the task. They will not be the illiterate glory- 120 WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS hunters who deluge theatrical offices with their manuscripts, nor will they be the celebrities whose brains have been pressed dry. It were wise to look for them among the people whose professions draw them into close touch with the real world and the theater; among the news- paper men and the enthusiastic play-lovers; among those whose first and second efforts are now the financial failures on Broadway. 121 THE PERSONALITIES OF OUR PLAY- WRIGHTS Being an effort to out do Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G. D. Roberts at their own game— which is speak- ing literally. NOT long ago an intelligent young man walked into a meeting of the Society of American Dramatists and Composers, at the Hotel Astor, and, after scanning the faces about him, inquired: "Is this the Cloak and Suit Manufacturers' Asso- ciation?" Don't blame the young man. If tomorrow you undertook on a wager to tell a prosperous tailor from a celebrated author, your safest plan would be to select the individual who look- ed more like a tailor, and say: "That is the author!" Among persons whose acquaintances do not figure in the public prints, except as "Old Subscriber" or "Vox Populi", the play- wright is still supposed to be distinguishable by 122 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS long, curly hair, a flowing tie, a high hat, and a frock coat, worn with the right hand inserted in the space between the first and second but- tons. As a matter of fact, this description fits only the quack doctor and the vender of patent med- icines. There are flowing-tie playwrights, but generally they belong in the ranks of the inef- fectual and the unproduced. One sees them of- tener at studio teas than at "first nights." In whatever other respects they may differ, our dramatists are pretty much alike as regards the commonplaceness of their manner and appear- ance. Most of them regard the writing of plays as a business, and go about it as a baker goes about making his loaves or a plumber about mending a pipe. On the whole, it is easy to understand the disappointment of a hero-worshipper to whom a companion pointed out Charles Klein. The author of a dozen successful pieces tells the story with great gusto. "It was on a ferry boat," he relates, "and two young chaps were 123 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT standing near the forward doors. As I strolled past, one of them remarked: 'That's the fel- low that wrote "The Gamblers." ' "My chest had already begun to expand when I caught the rejoinder. 'Him !' exclaimed the other. 'Well, I'll be damned!' " Augustus Thomas and David Belasco are two dramatists who would rob no layman of his illusions. Mr. Belasco, whose clerical collar and spiritual face have been pictured in num- berless newspapers and magazines, looks every inch a poet, and his soft voice and far-away manner help sustain the impression. Mr. Thomas more evidently belongs to our own mundane sphere; he is a man of the world, dis- tinguished by his poise and polish, by the suav- ity, reserve and equilibrium that come with con- fidence and after long experience. The late Clyde Fitch had these qualities, too. He was an artist to his finger tips, a thinker of fine thoughts and a dreamer of great dreams. This article originally began with an account of him, and, since Clyde Fitch was much more than a 124 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS transient figure in our theater, I see no reason why he should be left out of it now. "Mr. Fitch", I wrote the day he sailed for France, never to return, u is the son of a fomi- er army officer, forty-four years old, graduated from Amherst College, and has spent much of his life traveling about Europe. He is quite tall, rather thickly built, and has a heavy, dark mustache. My acquaintance with him dates from the performance of my first original com- edy, 'The Little Gray Lady', and is due to a friendly feeling for the new-comers in his pro- fession that is one of his finest traits. " 'The Little Gray Lady' was being present- ed in the Garrick Theater, and I was some- what excited, the morning after its premiere, at learning that a box had been secured for Mr. Fitch. That night I stationed myself across the auditorium, so that I might judge how he en- joyed the entertainment. My heart almost stopped beating when, soon after the curtain lifted, the object of my interest arose from his seat, and manifested every intention of depart- 125 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ing- 'Good heaven !' I exclaimed to myself. 'Is the piece as contemptible as that? And, even if it is, what an affront; what a rude thing to do!' My mortification was short-lived. Mr. Fitch and his party did walk out of their box, but only to take orchestra chairs, from which they had a better view of the stage. The next morning I received a generous letter. ' "The Little Gray Lady" is a big "Little Lady", I think.' And would I lunch tomorrow at Mr. Fitch's town house, in East Fortieth Street? "This house has afforded a wide-open outlet for it owner's constitutional lavishness, and is, perhaps, as luxuriously appointed and as ex- quisitely fitted as any residence of its size in New York. Mr. Fitch loves beautiful things, and invests in them with a prodigality that would frighten the heirs of a copper king. 'It doesn't matter how much money I make,' he said to me one afternoon. 'I spend a big in- come as quickly as a little one.' The Fortieth Street domicile is literally crowded with paint- ings, carvings, ceramics, and other objects of 126 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS art. A gentleman who dined there recently had his attention attracted by three curiously wrought cigarette cases that stood on the table, one at each plate. He supposed them to be beaten brass, set with rhine stones, and was amazed when his wife discovered that they were of solid gold and diamonds. 'Their in- trinsic worth,' he said, 'could not have been less than ten thousand dollars. Imagine my horror when I remembered that I had been on the point of inquiring whether they were meant to be dinner favors V "Mr. Fitch maintains two establishments be- side the place in New York; one at Greenwich, called Quiet Corners— a young woman I know insists upon speaking of it as 'Cozy Corners' — and the other an estate of two hundred acres at Katohna, in Westchester County. James Forbes, who wrote 'The Chorus Lady' and 'Th^ Travelling Saleman', relates an experience of a visit to the former residence. Here he found a stable, which, in lieu of horses, held hundreds of masterpieces in marble and bronze which the 127 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT collector had not been able to resist purchasing, but for which he had no room in his house ! "Managers who make contracts with Clyde Fitch will tell you that he appreciates the value of money, but that commodity certainly doesn't cling long to his fingers. However, a responsi- ble man can afford to be irresponsible, and an industrious man to be extravagant. Mr. Fitch has written fifty-four plays in less than twenty years, an average of one play every four months ! When you stop to consider that an ordinary manuscript consists of about one hun- dred and thirty typed pages, and that each piece must be thought out, drafted and re-drafted, rehearsed and produced you will admit that the labor involved in making such a record must have been Herculean. "Nevertheless, Mr. Fitch never seems to be hurried or worried. He entertains a good deal, goes to the theater frequently, and takes a boyish interest in trifles. It is this interest that fills his work with human touches, the small topicalities of the moment. I saw him one 128 'Clyde Fitch's ability to work under any circumstances" PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS night at The Three Twins', and he commented laughingly upon the catchiness of the song, 'Cuddle Just a Little Closer.' Two months la- ter I found that air as the motif, almost the Wagnerian theme, of his comedy, 'The Bache- lor.' "The secret of the Fitch productiveness un- doubtedly lies in his ability to work under any circumstances, in odd moments. Austin Strong, author of 'The Toymaker of Nuremberg', and one or two other guests were spending a rainy week-end in the living room at Katohna, when their host excused himself, and, sitting at a desk the other side of the room, began writing. 'Go on talking', he said; 'you don't bother me.' He had plunged into the second act scene between Mabel Barrison and Charles Dickson in 'The Blue Mouse', and he finished it that afternoon. Mr. Forbes saw him one morning in Venice, gliding about in a gondola and scribbling as fast as his pencil could cover the pages. That ex- quisite bit of 'The Girl Who Has Everything', in which Eleanor Robson punished little Don- 131 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT aid Gallagher by compelling him to strike her, was indited upon a pocket pad while the chauf- feur was repairing the playwright's car, which had broken down between Greenwich and New York. "Mr. Fitch abrogates to himself the task of producing his works, taking personal charge of everything, from the selection of the com- pany to the designing of color schemes and the purchase of five and ten cent articles of bric-a- brac. Most people have heard of his skill at rehearsal. He and Mr. Thomas are two of the best stage managers in America. Seated quietly in a corner of the auditorium, or stand- ing just back of the footlights, Mr. Fitch gives the directions that make his performances per- fect mosaics of marvelously life-like minutae. Of stories bearing upon his quick perception, his instinct for detail, and his understanding of cause and effect there are enough to make a saga, but one anecdote will serve the purpose of this article. "It was at the dress rehearsal of 'Girls', to- 132 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS ward the end of the first act, when the young women were climbing into their roosts and say- ing 'good night.' A property man appeared with a radiator, which the author had insisted upon having in the setting, 'because I never saw a flat without one.' The stage hand set down his burden and was about to tip toe into the wings, when he was stopped by a sharp command. 'Wait!' exclaimed Mr. Fitch. "The property man waited. 'Excuse me', he muttered. 'I didn't mean to interrupt — ' "'Never mind that!' the dramatist con- tinued. 'Look here ! Miss Maycliffe says "Goodnight!" You wait two seconds and then hammer like blazes on a piece of iron behind that radiator. I want the noise that steam makes in the pipes — ' "'I'm on!' grinned the property man. So were the others. Everybody in that house had been awakened in the dead of night by the mali- cious clanking of the steam pipes, and everybody recognized the bit of every-day. The audience the next night was not less quick of perception, and J 33 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT • the diversion proved, as you probably know, to be one of the most effective bits of comedy in 'Girls.' " All this was written two years ago. Quiet Corners and The Other House are deserted now, and the beautiful things that filled them, and the residence in Fortieth Street, have been distributed. A part of the collection was willed to the Metropolitan Museum. It is pathetic to reflect that the first Fitch play to win unquali- fied praise from the critics was produced after the death of its author. Yet "The City" was not a better piece than "The Climbers", or "Her Own Way", or "The Girl With the Green Eyes", or "The Truth." Clyde Fitch was dead; therein lay the difference. The liv- ing Clyde Fitch always was treated by the jour- nalistic reviewers as a sort of malefactor, as a man whose deliberate intent was to do bad work. Only his intimates know how keenly he felt this. "Newspaper praise," he said to me once, "is for the dramatist on his way up or his way down; never for the dramatist at the top." 134 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS Clyde Fitch was the most brilliant man who ever wrote for the stage in America. Heaven rest his soul ! Augustus Thomas conducts rehearsals from an orchestra stall in the body of the theater, whence he shouts instructions through a mega- phone. I have often printed the story of the retort courteous which he is said to have made to J. J. Shubert when that impressario inter- rupted a rehearsal of "The Witching Hour", but, in this connection, perhaps the tale will bear repetition. According to my informant, the author of "Arizona" was intent upon a serious scene when Mr. Shubert, who was financially interested in the production, stopped the players, and, turn- ing to Mr. Thomas, remarked: "I think this would be a good place for some witty dia- logue." "Yes?" replied Mr. Thomas. "As for in- stance?" He is a bold and a foolish man who throws himself upon the point of the playwright's ver- 135 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT bal poignard, for, among those who know him, Mr. Thomas is as famous for his skill with speech as for his skill with the pen. He smiles as he thrusts, but the results are none the less sanguinary. "I thought Thomas was a man", Paul Armstrong is reported to have said of him, "until I saw him take a handkerchief from his sleeve. Men have hip pockets for their handkerchiefs." "I had," quoth Mr. Thomas, when he heard the remark, "until I began to have my clothes made by a good tailor 1" This ready wit makes the dramatist one of the best, if not the best post prandial speaker in New York. Never a banquet at which he talks but the street rings the next day with quips of his making. "The trouble with amateur car- vers", he said at the Friars' dinner to John Drew, "is that the gravy so rarely matches the wall paper." On another occasion he charact- erized a fatuous argument as being "like a chorus girl's tights, which touch every point and cover nothing." 136 "Augustus Thomas shouts instructions through a megaphone 1 ' PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS Mr. Thomas finds time for many activities outside of his profession. Everyone knows of his energetic work for the cause of William Jennings Bryan. Throughout the three Bry- an campaigns the dramatist made speeches, organized political meetings, and otherwise labored beneath the standard of the Com- moner. Mr. Thomas' long suit is organ- izing. Upon the death of Bronson Howard, he succeeded to the presidency of the American Dramatists' Club, which he has metamorphosed into the Society of American Dramatists and Composers. The parent body was deep in the slough of despond, seeming to have no other purpose than proving that genius really is an infinite capacity for taking food. Mr. Thom- as awakened the fraternal spirit, got commit- tees to work on suggestions for plan and scope, benevolently assimilated a club of women play- wrights, and created an association that is like- ly to be a power, instead of being merely a pow- wow, in the land. The greater part of the year, Mr. Thomas 139 THE FOOTLIGHTS^FORE AND AFT lives at New Rochelle, but during the summer he goes frequently to his cottage, The Dingle, at East Hampton. He is a man fifty years old, and of particularly striking appearance. Tall, finely proportioned, smooth-shaven, with reso- lute face and hair just beginning to turn white, he would be observed in any gathering. As I have said, his manner is marked by complete self-possession, and a good deal of self-satisfac- tion. To this he certainly is entitled. A close friend of his believes that Mr. Thomas dram- atized himself when he created the part of the quiet, masterful gambler, Jack Brookfield, in "The Witching Hour." Charles Klein is of very small stature — a fact that probably accounts for the anecdote re- lated earlier in my article. None of his family has been a sky-scraper. Manuel Klein, the composer, is not above five feet six, and Alfred Klein, another brother, who originated the role of the elephant tamer in "Wang", owed much of his success as a comedian to his brevity — that being, as you know, the soul of wit. 140 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS Charles is the embodiment of dignity, and takes himself and his work most seriously. I think I have never seen a photograph of him that did not show him in his library, either writing or reading some ponderous tome. He has a fine head, with a lofty brow that grows to be a lit- tle loftier every year. No estimate of Mr. Klein could be called complete which did not take account of his grit and stick-to-it-iveness. Connected with the theater from his earliest youth — he was call boy in the company with a relative of mine — he produced his first play when he was hardly more than twenty. His misses were many, and his hits few and far between, but he kept on trying, until, with David Warfield's first star- ring venture, "The Auctioneer", he struck the bullseye of public approval squarely in the mid- dle. Today he probably is the wealthiest of our dramatists, and a couple of years ago it was estimated that his income could not be less that $3,000 a week. He owns a charming home, called Shirley Manor after the principal 141 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT female character in "The Lion and the Mouse", at Rowayton, Conn. In the same town he oper- ates a hat factory of which his son until recent- ly was the manager. In the adamantine quality of his "hard luck story", no one far surpasses Eugene Walter, whose income used to hover about that quoted as Mr. Klein's. It is told that this young man was lodging upon a park bench when Wagenhals & Kemper produced his "Paid in Full", but, personally, I am inclined to regard this tale as more picturesque than ac- curate. In need of money he may have been, but the parental Walters, who live in Cleve- land, were quite able to prevent his lacking real necessities, and 'Gene himself has always been in the way of earning a living in the newspaper or the theatrical business. He served an ap- prenticeship as press agent of various attrac- tions, and it was while both of us were acting in this capacity that we met at the Walnut Street Theater, in Philadelphia. Mr. Walter's initial effort, "Sergeant James", 142 "Eugene Walter was lodging upon a park bench when W agenhals & Kemper produced his 'Paid in Full' PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS had just been produced, and had scored an un- questionable failure. He told me the story of the piece, and "it listened good", but I could not believe it possible that the man opposite me was capable of winning place in a profession of letters. Eugene Walter is not impressive to the naked eye. I had him in mind chiefly when I spoke of the ease with which one might mis- take a dramatist for a prosperous tailor. Mr. Walter looks more like a neat and gentlemanly mechanic. He cannot be above thirty years of age, and his height and weight — he is five feet five and tips the scales in the neighbor- hood of a hundred and forty— make him seem to be about twenty-four. My recollection of his dress is that he usually wears a flannel shirt. I may be wrong as to this detail, but, in any event, his style and general appearance are such as to create the impression. His demeanor suggests neither culture nor education, though, as I have said, he comes of a good family and had excellent schooling. The value of erudition, even so far as it concerns the *45 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT technique of the drama, in the writing of plays he denies absolutely. In fact, I believe that his horror of being thought what he calls "a high brow" leads Mr. Walter to assume a contempt of art and letters, though he has it not. He has an intuitive appreciation of the beautiful, and yet, at a recent exhibition of the paintings of a great Spaniard, his only comment was, "Don't let's waste any more time in here !" "Playwrights are born" , he has gone on record as observing. "You can't learn anything about playwriting." If genius is the quality of doing by instinct, without great thought or labor, obeying the commands of a something outside of one's self, Eugene Walter is certainly a genius. If it is, as some philosopher has said, "an infinite capac- ity for taking pains", he is nothing of the sort. He works by fits and starts, idling unconscion- ably for months at a time, and then completing a play in a fortnight. "The Easiest Way" was written in ten days. Mr. Walter's method of composition really is nothing more nor less than 146 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS improvisation — the method childern employ when they "make things up" as they u go along." The tools necessary to the process are one large room, one outfit of furniture, and one ex- ceptionally rapid stenographer. Mr. Walter and the stenographer enter the room. The door is locked, and work is begun by placing the furniture as it is to be placed on the stage — in other words, by setting the scene. Then the young dramatist begins to act. He is all the characters in his play. He rushes about the apartment, quarreling with himself, making love to himself, now standing here as one per- son and then racing to the opposite end of the apartment to be another. All the time he is speaking the words that come into his mind as natural under the circumstances, and the stenog- pher is taking them down at top speed. At the end of an hour or two an act is finished, an in- visible curtain is rung down, and, if the amanu- ensis hasn't fainted, as two did in one day of labor on "Paid in Full", the stage is set for the 147 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT next act. Of course, you understand that, before the play reaches this point, the story, the situations, and even some details of dialogue must have been carefully thought out. In connection with Mr. Walter, I should say that they must have had time to assemble in his mind, having pop- ped in, like Topsy, already grown. He goes about with what he himself described to me as "a seething mass of stuff in my head" until the "seething mass" cries for release, and then — the impromptu performance before the audi- ence of one. The quickness of Mr. Walter's conception, the instantaneousness with which drama is formed for him, is illustrated by an experience of last winter. We had been to witness a bad play — one doomed to close the following Saturday. "I lopeless!" I said, as we left the theater. "Hopeless", repeated Mr. Walter, "but not without possibilities. If that idea had been mine, I should have commenced with the big situation of the third act. Then I should 148 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS have worked backward, using the story of the-" In five minutes he had sketched a new play, constructed around the theme of the old one, and it was a corker 1 As everyone knows, Eugene Walter was married recently to Charlotte Walker, the ac- tress, and it is common knowledge, too, that both were bitterly disappointed at David Bel- asco's refusal to assign the principal role in "The Easiest Way" to Miss Walker. For this disappointment her husband tried to atone by fit- ting her with "Just a Wife", but the piece failed sadly at the Belasco Theater. The Walters live in the Ansonia Apartments, in upper Broadway, but they are contemplating the erection of a home near Long Island Sound. The man who writes plays, or, for that matter, any other man who performs labor requiring close concentra- tion, finds it impossible to do his best in New York. "The very air is laden with distrac- tion", says George Broadhurst, author of "The Man of the Hour." "When I want to 149 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT work I get as far as possible from Forty-second street." A dramatist of a pattern with Eugene Wal- ter's, though drawn in bolder, blacker lines, is Paul Armstrong, to whom theater-goers owe "Salomy Jane", "The Heir to the Hoorah" and "Alias Jimmy Valentine". Mr. Arm- strong's contempt for the ordinary amenities, the graces of every-day, is own big brother to Mr. Walter's. He is a big, fine-looking fel- low, characterized by tremendous vigor and virility, by what he himself would call "the punch." He is aggressively self-confident, where Augustus Thomas is only passively so; combative by disposition and much inclined to talk in superlatives. His broad-brimmed hat and his black imperial suggest the Westerner, though most of his life has been spent in New York. He was formerly a well-known au- thority on pugilism, writing for the Evening Journal under the nom de plume of "Right Cross." Mr. Armstrong's hatred of theatrical man- 150 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS agers used to be a by-word, but it has been less so since he himself undertook the production of his own melo-drama, "Society and the Bull- dog." His experience with one impressario, A. H. Woods, to whom he sold "The Supersti- tions of Sue", is as amusing a story as I know. "The Superstitions of Sue" already had been accepted by the two senior members of the firm of Sullivan, Harris & Woods, and Mr. Armstrong had an appointment to read the piece to the junior member at eleven o'clock one bright Sunday. Promptly at that hour, he appeared at the Woods residence, in Riverside Drive, accompanied by two friends. Introduc- tions followed, and the friends sat down, with Mr. and Mrs. Woods, to hear the new farce. Mr. Armstrong had hardly begun when the visitors burst into a roar of laughter. They howled afresh at every line, including descrip- tions of characters and "business", and the ren- dering was concluded with the pair rolling 151 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT about in a perfect ecstacy of mirth. Mr. Woods regarded them with sober suspicion. His risi- bles hadn't been touched, but, when Mrs. Woods joined in the merriment, he determined that he didn't know humor when he met it, and, the seance being over, closed a contract to pre- sent "The Superstitions of Sue." When the men had gone, Mr. Woods said to Mrs. Woods: "I suppose I'm dull, but I thought that play duller still. Of course, Armstrong's friends were brought to laugh, but when you began laughing, too, I knew the piece must be funny." "Why", responded Mrs. Woods, "I only laughed because the others did. I wanted to be civil." "The Superstitions of Sue" was one of the worst failures of its year. I have spoken of Eugene Walter's method of work, but that method is not more remark- able than the faith in a special environment held by James Forbes. Even while he smiles at his own credulity, Mr. Forbes believes firm- ly PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS ly that he can put forth his best effort only in Room 371 of the Bellevue Hotel, in Boston. Whenever he "feels a play coming on", he boards a train, journeys to The Hub, and locks himself up in the apartment which bears that number. There he composed the scenarios of "The Chorus Lady", "The Travelling Sales- man," and "The Commuters." "I can think more clearly on a railway train than anywhere else", declares Mr. Forbes. "A chair car is the ideal place for concentration." This young fellow differs from his colleagues in his inability to work in the country. He owns and occupies a veritable palace at Croton- on-Hudson, but he never attempts anything im- portant there. He says: "I find my surround- ings too alluring. Only conscience keeps me at a desk anyway, and conscience is weaker than the charm of outdoors." One rather fancies that Jimmie's conscience — he is "Jimmie" to his friends — is pretty rigid. He comes of Scotch ancestry, and was reared in a Scotch Presbyterian community in Canada. "The 153 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT theater was held up to my youthful attention as a dreadful place", he told me one night, when we were lingering over supper. "The stock story in my family concerned a playhouse in Edinboro, which, being used sacreligously for the representation of a scene in heaven, was promptly burned, with every soul in it, as a di- vine judgment. "This tale stuck fast in my memory. At the age of nine I stole away to see 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and, when the transformation showed Little Eva in Paradise, I slipped out and wait- ed in the street for the theater to burn down. 1 was terribly disappointed that nothing of the sort happened, and, after hanging around for the better part of the afternoon, I went home a confirmed agnostic." Jimmie drifted from Scotch Presbyterianism into dramatic authorship by easy and natural stages. First he was employed in a wholesale grocery store, then he became an actor, a news- paper man, a press agent, a manager, and, fin- ally, a playwright. A short story, which he had 154 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS published under the title of "The Extra Girl", suggested "The Chorus Lady", and an ac- quaintance with Rose Stahl, who had been lead- ing woman of a company in which he had acted, lead to her being chosen for the principal role in the one act play of that name. Mr. Forbes soon saw the possibility of amplifying the sketch into a four act comedy, and, though Miss Stahl was not enthusiastic about the idea at first, he induced her to assume the part in which she has since appeared more than a thousand times. Mr. Forbes is a boyish-looking young man, small in stature, nervous in manner, with a swarthy skin, and an ocean of forehead into which descends a peninsula of glossy black hair. He is general manager for Henry B. Harris, and has numberless business duties to perform in his comfortable little office in the Hudson Theater. He writes exclusively for Mr. Har- ris, and has an interest in the profits of his plays, besides the regular royalties, so that he has made a considerable fortune out of three big successes. Mr. Forbes probably is the only 155 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT dramatist in the world who, in addition to writ- ting his play, stages it, attends to the details of business management, plans the advertising campaign, and supervises the press work. Winchell Smith, who made the comedy, "Brewster's Millions", and who is author of "The Fortune Hunter", says he chose dramatic authorship "because you don't have to be gram- matical in plays." "I couldn't write a maga- zine article for a millon dollars", he adds, "but dialogue comes easy to me." However, Mr. Smith, like many others of his cult, hates "the drudgery of composition." He likes to plan a new piece, but wishes that the manuscript "could be got out of my head by a surgical operation." Mr. Smith is a tall, slender, diffi- dent young man, with a keen sense of humor and a varied experience. He began life in the grain and feed business in Hartford, and acted for many years in support of that still more cel- ebrated llartfordian, William Gillette. Lang- don Mitchell, author of "The New York Idea", and John Luther Long, author of "Madame l 5 6 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS Butterfly", both are Philadelphians. Mr. Mit- chell won fame as a poet, under the pseudonym of John Philip Varley, before "Becky Sharp" brought him to the attention of theater-goers. Mr. Long, whose ethereal fancies are so charm- ing, pretends to practice the prosaic profession of law at 629 Walnut street. Eugene Presbrey, grey-bearded, vibrant, in- tense, devotes himself mainly to the adaptation of novels. "I want the novel that can't be dramatized!" he declares, and, for this reason, he found much pleasure in doing "Raffles." It seemed a hopeless task to win sympathy for a confirmed criminal, and Mr. Presbrey had about abandoned the task, when, one evening in Seventh Avenue, he saw a man running at top speed, a crowd in pursuit, and heard the cry: "Stop thief!" "The fellow was just be- hind me", says the author, "and, turning around, I got a good view of his hunted, des- perate expression. Before I knew what I was doing, I whispered: 'Get up the alley!' And I didn't tell the policeman. 'No sympathy for 157 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT a criminal !' I exclaimed to myself, when I had leisure to analyze my action. 'Why, every hu- man being is a criminal at heart ! He knows that, under certain circumstances, he might be the fugitive, and he feels sorry for the other fellow in proportion.' " Mr. Presbrey wrote "Raffles" in three weeks, and it has been acted in every country that boasts a theater. I have at my side a list of some thirty men and women who write plays and of whom I could chat indefinitely. Each of these authors is so interesting, all of them have lived so many stories, that it is hard for me to admit a space limit and forebear being their Boswell. There is George Broadhurst, lean and business-like, who made a reputation by his farces, and then, when that had been forgotten, made another by his serious dramas. There is Paul Potter, white-haired, rotund, genial, the intimate friend of Charles Frohman, and the adaptor of "Tril- by." There are earnest young William C. De Mille, author of "Strongheart" ; Paul Kester, a wisp of a lad, timid and self-conscious, who 158 PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS glories in swashbuckling melodramas and who did "When Knighthood Was in Flower"; Thompson Buchanan, newspaper reporter to his finger tips, who landed a big success in U A Woman's Way" and afterward wrote "The Cub"; Sydney Rosenfeld, the wit and dreamer, one time editor of Puck, who refused to turn out a book sub rosa with Augustus Thomas be- cause he objected to any scheme "which involved pooling our separate fames to become anony- mous" ; and there are a whole army of brilliant young chaps, like William J. Hurlbut, of "The Fighting Hope", who lives a stone's throw from me at Shoreham, L. I., and Avery Hop- wood, who collaborated with me in producing "Clothes", and with Mary Roberts Rhinehart in producing "Seven Days." I should like to tell you about pretty Mar- garet Mayo, who has built a villa from the pro- ceeds of "Polly of the Circus", and whose first fame as a playwright was achieved under circumstances described elsewhere in this book. Rachel Crothers is a sedate, New Englandish 159 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT young woman, who used to teach acting in the Wheatcroft School, and whom I met when she was going from office to office with the manu- script of "The Three of Us." Rida Johnson, famed for "Brown of Harvard" and "The Lot- tery Man", is tall, dark, fine-looking, and her professional career began when she was lead- ing woman for her husband, James Young, in her first play, "Lord Byron." I can't make you acquainted with people in a line — only Kipling can do that — and a proper description of all our playwrights would fill a volume. They are, for the most part, a quiet, unas- suming lot, constituting, of course, the brains of the theater, and lacking wholly the pose and self-importance of their creature, the actor. They are of the stage, and yet singularly apart from it, the glare of the footlights being merged for them with the soft red glow of the library. I am glad to have been their press agent this little time, for the majority of them are almost unknown to the very throngs they entertain vi- cariously. The wig-maker has his name on the 1 60 "Margaret Mayo built a villa from the the proceeds of 'Polly of the Circus' .} >> PERSONALITIES OF PLAYWRIGHTS program in larger letters than they, and the chorus girl receives infinitely more attention from the newspapers. More than any other class of men, I believe them to be actuated by the desire to do fine things. "I want to write plays that add to the joy of life I" exclaims one of the cult, looking over my shoulder. "I shall never write a play that does not contain some- thing of hope and happiness!" 163 STAGE STRUCK Being a diagnosis of the disease, and a description of its symptoms, which has the rare medical merit of attempting a cure at the same time. ROM the stern life of an officer in Uncle Sam's Navy to a merry job carrying a spear in the chorus of a musical comedy may be a far cry", but that is the step which a metropolitan newspaper re- cently recorded as having been taken by a young man named in the story whose beginning is quoted above. On another page of this same newspaper was an article which announced that "because pink teas, bridge whist, and dances no longer amused her", a certain "society woman" had joined the chorus of a company appearing at the Casino. These two cases composed a single day's list of casualties from the malignant disease known as stage- fever. When my eye had finished its journey over 164 DANGER STAGE FEVER The malignant disease" STAGE STRUCK the accounts of the "society woman" and the naval officer, I paused to wonder whether either of these aspirants would be checked by irr'ng spread-headed over the first page of the journal in question the horrid details of a the- atrical suicide. The night before, an actress of reputation — a woman who had won everything that these new-comers had but a faint chance of winning — had killed herself in an hotel in Bal- timore. Of course, it had not been shown that this "star" was influence i by my rircumstar.ee connected with her work. and. of course : s true that people of various professions are x .:• slain, and yet — I wondered If the naval officer was restrained in his re- solve it was not for long. A week ;r so later I saw this impetuous youth, who couldn't stand "being bottled up on a battle-ship", on the s:age oi an up-town thea:er. He was srir.i r.g near the middle of a row of young men, wav- ing his hands at s:a:ed intervals, and singing "yes — yes" at the end of every se;; nd I ne ren- dered by the principal comedian. He had but 167 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT to wave his hands a moment too soon or too late in order to incur a fine or a reprimand. Perhaps by this time he has discovered that there are worse misfortunes than being "bot- tled up on a battleship." Whether he does or not, the stream of the stage-struck will continue to flow like the brook poeticized by Tennyson. There is no stopping it. Youth has a better chance of missing measles or scarlet-fever than of escaping that consuming passion to "go on the stage." Near- ly everyone struggles with the mania for a time; the wise conquer it, the foolish make up the comic opera choruses, the unimportant road companies, and the stage-door-keeper's list of "extra ladies and gentlemen." From every class and walk of life, from every town and city troop the victims, abandoning their voca- tions and their homes, as though they had heard the witching notes of a siren song. They come with high hopes and bright dreams, most of them to the great, gay city of New York, where they besiege the agencies, and the managers, 168 STAGE STRUCK and the teachers of acting until their dreams fade, or their money gives out, or they are smit- ten with realization. There is hardly a com- munity in the country so small as to be with- out its "amateur dramatic club", and no one even distantly connected with the theatrical pro- fession has lacked his or her experience with the innoculated unfortunate who knows that "I could succeed if I only had a chance." Some time ago I happened to be in Syracuse, and used the long-distance telephone to com- municate with New York. My conversation over, I sat down in the hotel lobby, and had just lit a cigar when a page announced: "Long dis- tance wants you." I returned to the booth. "Yes?" I inquired. A woman's voice replied: "I overheard enough of your talk with New York to judge that you're in the theatrical bus- iness." "I'm indirectly connected with it", I replied., "Well", said the voice, "I'm the long-dis- tance operator, and I want to go on the stage. Please get me an engagement." 169 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT I explained my misfortune in being acquaint- ed with no manger who was likely to consider extensive training in enunciation of "hello" and "busy" sufficient education for the stage. The lady probably didn't believe me, for it is the popular impression that anyone concerned in the business of the playhouse has only to ask in order to receive a contract for whomever he wishes to assist. That song-heroine, who de- clared herself "an intimate friend of an inti- mate friend of Frohman", has her prototype in real life. Moreover, no aspirant to footlight honors ever can be convinced that actors must be made as well as born, and that there may be a few people in the world, who, given the op- portunity, would not become Modjeskas and Mansfields. William A. Brady once was served at dinner by a waitress whose surliness astonished him. He made no remark, however, and at last the waitress addressed him. "You're William A. Brady", she said; "ain't you?" Mr. Brady confessed. 170 " 'You're William A. Brady, ain't you?' " STAGE STRUCK "Well", exclaimed the duchess of dishes, "my name's Minnie Clark. I've been a waitress since I was fourteen years old, and I think I can stand it until about next Wednesday. Give me a job, will you?" David Belasco had a less amusing experience with a chambermaid in Attleboro, Mass., where he spent a night with the organization support- ing David Warfield in "The Auctioneer." This girl, whose tap at the door interrupted the wizard producer while he was blue-penciling a scene, had just heard of his presence in town, and lost no time approaching him. She had been stage-struck since childhood. Hearing of Mr. Belasco's success in teaching dramatic art, she had determined to visit him in New York. "I saved my money for three years", she said, "and then I went up to you. I called at your office every day, but they wouldn't let me in. When all my money was spent I came back home, and began saving again. I had about half enough when I found that you were com- ing to Attleboro." Mr. Belasco was unable to A !73 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT give the girl the least encouragement. She was wholly illiterate, and, moreover, her death war- rant was writ on her face. She was suffering from an incurable disease of the lungs. Collin Kemper, one of the managers of the Astor Theater, recently had a letter from an elderly priest, who, after twenty years in the pulpit, felt that he wanted "a larger field of ex- pression", and yearned to play Shakespeare. A wrinkled old woman of sixty sought the late Edward Marble, when he was conducting a school of acting in Baltimore, and confided in him her desire to be seen as Juliet. This de- sire she had cherished nearly half a century when the death of a relative gave her the means of gratifying her ambition. Daniel Frohman once received a young man, who laid on his desk a letter of introduction from an acquaintance in the West. "Ah!" said Mr. Frohman. "So you wish to become an actor?" "Yes", replied the young man. "I'm puh- puh-puh-perfectly wa-wa-willing to ba-ba-ba-be- gin at the ba-bottom — " 174 "A wrinkled old woman confided her desire to be seen as Juliet STAGE STRUCK He stuttered hopelessly. The most astonishing feature of stage fever, however, is that its ravages are not confined to the ranks of people who would be bettered by success in their chosen profession. My wealthi- est friend, a silk importer, who owns a charm- ing home in Central Park West, dines alone while his wife stands in the wings of a dirty lit- tle theater in Paris, where their only daughter earns a hundred francs a week by dancing. A successful literary man of my acquaintance, who would cheerfully devote his entire income, something more than fifteen thousand a year, to making his young wife happy in his cozy apartment yields per force to her wish to ap- pear in vaudeville. The most valuable mem- ber of the staff of an out-of-town newspaper, recipient of a big salary, suddenly threw up his position two years ago, since when he has been employed seven weeks, and that seven weeks in an organization presenting "The Chinatown Trunk Mystery." A. L. Wilbur, at the time when he con- 177 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ducted the well-known Wilbur Opera Com- pany, printed in the program of his perform- ances an advertisement for chorus girls. Suc- cessful applicants were paid twelve dollars a week, yet recruits came by the dozens from the best families in the territory through which the aggregation was touring. Scores of the young women who play merry villagers on Broadway today are well born and bred victims of the virus. "Society" has contributed even to the ranks of the chorus men, whose caste is far be- low that of their betighted sisters. When Maybelle Gilman opened her metropolitan sea- son in "The Mocking Bird" a male chorister, whose weekly stipend was eighteen dollars, electrified the management by purchasing nine boxes. This Croesus of the chorus proved to be "Deacon" Moore, a Cornell graduate and son of one of the biggest mine operators in the West. The germ of stage fever frequently is as slow to .get out of the system as it is quick to enter it. Douglas Fairbanks is a clever come- l 7 8 STAGE STRUCK dian, who, after a long apprenticeship, has been elevated to the stellar rank by William A. Brady. Mr. Fairbanks fell in love with the daughter of Daniel J. Sully, and, according to report, was given parental permission to marry her if he would abandon his profession. Mr. Fairbanks retired from the stage, and was out of the cast of "The Man of the Hour" for a trifle less than two months. Margaret Ful- ler came to town a few years ago with an am- bition to star. She enlisted the help of a well- known manager, who told her that he would give her a chance to play Camille if she could get rid of twenty pounds of superfluous flesh. Miss Fuller presented "Camille" at a special matinee, and has not been heard of since. She is still in the theatrical profession, content with minor roles, but clinging tenaciously to the vo- cation. There are hundreds of men and wo- men haunting the agencies in New York, prom- enading that graveyard of buried hopes, The Great White Way, who might be enjoying the comfort of luxurious homes and the affection- 179 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ate care of doting relatives. In nine cases out of ten the mania to go on the stage is prompted by pure desire for glori- fication. Love of excitement, and the fallaci- ous notion that the profession is one of com- parative ease and luxury, may be alloying fac- tors, but the essence of the virus is vanity. No other field offers the same quick approval of successful effort, and no other climber is quite so much the center of his eventual triumph. In the other arts, approbation follows less prompt- ly and is less direct. The fortunate player hears the intoxicating music of applause a dozen times every evening and two dozen times on matinee days. He struts about his mimic world, the observed of all observers, con- scious of the strained attention of the thousands who have paid to see him, profiting not only by his own achievements but by those of the author, the director, the scene-painter and the orchestra. The newspapers are full of his praise and his photographs, recording his slightest doing and giving to the opinions cx- 180 STAGE STRUCK pressed by him, or by his press agent, an im- portance scarcely less than might be accorded the President of the United States. In the course of time he even begins to arrogate to himself the heroic virtues of the characters he impersonates. It is sweet to see one's name on the cover of a novel, sweet to scrawl one's autograph in the lower left-hand corner of a painting, but O, how doubly and trebly sweet to meet one's own image lithographed under a laudatory line and posted between advertise- ments of the newest breakfast food and the latest five cent cigar! The temptation is the stronger, as the re- wards are more numerous, if the aspirant hap- pens to be a woman. The gentler sex may not have greater vanity than the stronger, but it takes greater delight in commendation and it has keener appreciation of luxury. If the much-mentioned "society belle" longs for the glitter and gaud supposed to exist behind the footlights, how can one blame the daughters of poverty and squalor who make up the rank 181 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT and file of the chorus? James Forbes has em- bodied the minds of these girls in his Patricia O'Brien in "The Chorus Lady." What won- der that they try to escape the sordid common- places of their poor lives for the glory of the theater, and delight to strut their "brief hour" in a palace, even if that palace be of canvas and scantling? The prospect of diamonds and au- tomobiles cannot exert a stronger appeal to the men and women who dwell in dreary drudg- ery than does the hope of becoming somebody, of enjoying even a temporary illumination of their obscurity. Charles Dickens vividly explained the psy- chology of this longing for prominence in his chapter on "Private Theaters" in "Sketches by Boz." In his day there were scores of these institutions in London, each "the center of a little stage-struck neighborhood." In the lob- by of each was hung a placard quoting the price for which willing amateurs might play certain desirable parts. To be the Duke of Glo'ster, in "Richard III", cost £2, the part being well 182 "How sweet to meet one's own image" STAGE STRUCK worth that amount because "the Duke must wear a real sword, and, what is better still, he must draw it several times in the course of the piece." We have no such private theaters on this side of the water, but there are nearly two hundred amateur dramatic clubs in Brooklyn, while other communities possess these organiza- tions in proportion to their size. There are three well-trod roads to the stage. One wanders through membership in a society like those mentioned, another and straighter is by way of the dramatic schools, while the third, and most frequented, goes direct from the home to the office of agent or manager. Of dramatic schools the number is legion, but only those conducted by dishonest adventurers prom- ise employment to the enrolled student. "Be an actor for $i", is the alluring caption of an advertisement carried weekly by a number of periodicals, but the aspirants who make it profitable for that institution to go on advertis- ing must be exceptionally gullible. New York has many "academies" in which useful techni- 185 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT calities of the art are carefully taught, and the managers of several of these "academies" keep in close touch with the producing interests of the country. While they guarantee nothing, they frequently are able to place their gradu- ates in small parts. Grace George, Margaret Illington, and other well-known stars have come out of these schools. The direct path to which reference has been made is full of difficulties and obstacles. Agencies are established with the purpose of helping communication between managers and the actors most in demand. They are busy places, with little time to devote to the novice, and the average impressario is not more nearly inaccessible than their executive heads. Every year the producing manager is less inclined to see applicants or to make opportunities for people of whom he knows nothing. It is all very well to be recommended by some acquaint- ance of the man who "presents", but friend- ship is only friendship, and nobody will risk the success of a production that has cost thou- 186 STAGE STRUCK sands of dollars merely to please an associate. The current method of selecting a company is quick and simple. A copy of the play's cast is sent to the manager, who writes opposite each character the name of the actor whom he thinks most likely to interpret that role to advantage. Then the manager's secretary sends for the fortunate Thespian. This system is undeniably hard, and perhaps unjust to the beginner, but such sentiment as gets into the theater comes in manuscripts, and, in these days of severe criti- cal judgment, the investor in drama has the fullest right to minimize his risk. Out of every hundred tyros who come to town in search of an engagement ten may secure the coveted prize, and not more than one person out of that ten makes a decent living from his or her adopted profession. It is too much to say that one aspirant in a thousand achieves real success. The average salary in the chorus is $18, and for speaking parts in dramatic performances it cannot be more than $40. No one is paid dur- ing the period devoted to rehearsal, and a long 187 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT season lasts somewhere between thirty and thir- ty-five weeks. The sane way of computing wages in the theatrical business, therefore, is to multiply by thirty and divide the result by fifty-two. Following this system, it will be seen that the seeming $40 a week really is only $23. The most ardent and ambitious among the stage-struck will admit that this is not an in- come permitting the employment of a chauffeur or the purchase of a palatial residence on Ri- verside Drive. Nor is the matter or remuneration the only disappointment connected with entrance into the theatrical profession. This is the one vo- cation in which the worker must begin again every year. If the fairly-successful actor "gets something" for the current season, he will find almost equal difficulty in getting something else for the season to follow. Unless he has made a prodigious hit — and prodigious hits are very rare — he finds himself no farther advanced next June than he was last September. Should he be lucky enough to remain in New York, he 188 STAGE STRUCK occupies a hall room in a boarding house, and, failing in this doubtful good fortune, he faces a long term on "the road." Excepting only solitary confinement in prison, the world prob- ably holds no terror surpassing that of touring the "one night stands." Lost to his best friends and companions, travelling at all hours of the day and night, grateful for board and lodging that would not be tolerated by a domestic ser- vant, the player with a small road company has ample reason to repent his choice of a career. To illustrate the universal dread of this fate, 1 quote the lines printed under a comic picture in the Christmas issue of a prominent dramatic weekly : DOCTOR— You're pretty badly run down, my friend. I should advise change of scene. PATIENT— (Just returned from thirty weeks of "one night stands" with the Ripping Repertoire Company). Heaven have mercy on me! (He dies). Of course, it is quite futile to recite facts like 189 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT these to the victim of stage fever. That un- happy individual is certain that he or she will positively enjoy such discomforts as your feeble fancy can paint, and doubly sure that the ugly present Avill fade into a roseate future just as it does in the transformation scene at the end of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Tell this adventur- er that one histrion in a thousand succeeds and your reply is bound to be: "I'll be that one." And, to speak truth, he or she may be that one. Celebrated actors are made from queer material sometimes, and the roster of well-known people on our stage includes the names of men and women who were originally plumbers, waitresses, floor-walkers and cloak-models. The beginner may be positive, however, that these players did not advance while they still had the intellects and the training required in the occu- pations mentioned. No person can possibly succeed on the dramatic stage without the foun- dation of genuine talent and a superstructure of culture and education. A woman whose pro- nunciation betrayed the baseness of her early 190 STAGE STRUCK environment could not win enduring fame if she had the temperament of a Bernhardt. Generally, however, the woman who thinks she has the temperament of a Bernhardt really has only anaemia and a great deal of vanity. If she has not mistaken her symptoms, and, be- sides genuine ability, has a good education, some money, infinite patience, an iron constitu- tion, and a mind made up to the bitterness of long waiting and constant disappointment, she may eventually win a position half as important and a fourth as agreeable as that which she pictured in her imagination. She is far luckier if her desire to go on the stage proves akin to and as fleeting as the aver- age small boy's desire to be a burglar. 191 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY Being an account of intrepid explorations in the habitat of the creatures whose habits are set forth in the preceding chapters. THE Great White Way is a recum- bent letter I. It is recumbent be- cause the habitues of the Rialto have used it to the point of exhaustion, and because streets are never vertical except in Naples. The Rialto is the name by which The Great White Way was known before the present reckless mania for electric signs suggested the more sig- nificant appellation. In that long-ago time one who spoke of the district in question referred to Broadway between the Star Theatre and the office of The Dramatic Mirror. The Great White Way is bounded on the South by the Flatiron Building, on the West by the Metro- politan Opera House, on the North by an enor- mous incandescent spread-eagle advertising a certain kind of beer, and on the East by the 192 "The Great White Way is a recumbent letter I" ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY Actors' Society. Around these material land- marks runs an invisible but insurmountable wall of clannishness and complacent self-sat- isfaction. To be on the Great White Way you have only to leave the Subway at Times Square; to be of it you must follow the Biblical camel through the eye of a needle. There isn't another Great White Way on the face of the earth. Paris has its Place d' l'Opera, London its Strand, and Vienna its Ringstrasse, but these resemble New York's theater path only as a candle resembles an arc light. They are streets given up to seekers af- ter pleasure; the Rialto is a street given up to seekers after pleasure, and to seekers after seekers after pleasure. It is not the moths at- tracted to the flame that lend particular inter- est to the Great White Way; it is the flame it- self, coruscating, scintillant, multi-hued and glowing. Broadway, within the limits set down, is a street of players and playhouses; the only mile of pavement in the world devoted entirelv to the members of one profession. 195 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Two newspaper buildings rear themselves defiantly in this portion of New York. They seem out of place, though newspaper men are night-workers, too, and come nearer than any other class of men to being of The Great White Way. A few tailors and haberdashers have in- truded themselves into the district, settling be- side wig makers and sellers of grease paint, but they are neither numerous nor ostentatious. Broadway, as you walk from Twenty-third Street to Forty-seventh, unfolds itself to the view as a line of theaters, theatrical offices, agencies and all-night restaurants. Outsiders go there to see performances and to eat; in- siders make of it a world of their own— a queer little, blear little world of unclear visions, ab- normal instincts, unreal externals and astig- matic sense of proportion. Parisians call their actors "AV as-tu-vu" , which means "Have you seen me?" That is because the first question a French actor asks is "Have you seen me in such-and-such a role?" Your true American actor doesn't waste 196 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY time with a question of that sort. He feels a peaceful certainty that not to know him argues yourself unknown, and he wouldn't like to hint at such obscurity for an acquaintance. Take all the talk of all the year on The Great White Way, run it through a wringer, and you will have that same letter I, with vanity dripping from every inch of the texture. Such egotism as the rest of creation entertains is watered brandy to that of the Thespian. He thinks of only one thing, he can talk of only one thing, all the affairs in the world are inconsequential in comparison with that one thing, and that one thing is himself. Stand at my elbow while I halt my friend Junius B. Starr at the corner of Fortieth and Broadway. "How are you, old man?" say I. "Fine", is his reply. "Been playing the 'heavy' with Florence Rant since November. Everybody said I 'hogged the show.' " Half a block farther along we will have oc- casion to mention a business matter to Sue Brette. "My agent tells me you would go into 197 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT vaudeville if you had a 'sketch.' She mentioned the possibility of my writing one for you." "Yes. I spoke to her about your giving me a part like the one I played in 'The Great- ness of the Small.' You know that was the engagement I lost because I was so much better than the leading woman. She took the piece off and revived 'Across the Divide', and I handed in my notice. The play ended with me dancing on the table — " Twenty minutes later we saunter on with a store of minute information regarding Miss Brette's performance, and how it was enjoyed by the world at large, but with our minds still in Darkest Africa so far as the business of the meeting is concerned. Most people are self-conscious when they speak highly of themselves. Not so actors, to whom such statements as "Everybody said I was the best they had ever seen" or "Alan Dale came three nights running just to watch me" are simply a matter of course. Long thought in this strain has so accustomed the people of the 198 "The actor sees himself so large, and the rest of the world so small" ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY stage to talking in the same fashion that they find nothing extraordinary about it. Then, too, his distorted sense of proportion makes the actor see himself so large and the rest of the world so small that he cannot conceive of any mind which will not grasp, with unalloyed de- light, at first-hand information regarding him- self. Newspapers have flattered your average his- trion into the idea that an eager humanity waits impatiently for accounts of his most unimportant doings. During the term of my press agency, a certain comedienne whose specialty is burnt cork ran after me along Broadway one after- noon, crying: "Stop! I've got a great news 'story' for you." I stopped. "What is it?" I inquired. "A man came up to me as I was leaving the stage door and said: 'Why, you're not really colored, after all!' " A star of my acquaintance recently dismissed an excellent business manager because that in- dividual mentioned the author of the play in his advertising. "You're not working for 201 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Scribble; you're working for me", was his com- ment. Another has ceased to be a friend be- cause I told him that I didn't care for his per- formance. A third has clippings of the criti- cisms that have treated him best pasted on the inside of his card case and shows them to you if he can get your ear and your button-hole. Everybody talks shop a good deal, but shop is the only thing talked on The Great White Way. Art and science and literature, politics and wars and national calamities have no in- terest, if they have so much as existence, for the player. "Awful catastrophe that earthquake in 'Frisco!" I exclaimed to an intimate I met at breakfast five or six years ago. "By George, yes!" said he. "Costs me twenty weeks I had booked over the Orpheum Circuit." , Your shoe dealer, though he converses about shoes from eight in the morning until six at night, at least drops the subject during the evening. The typical histrion reads nothing in the papers except the theatrical news and re- 202 "Alan Dale came three nights running" ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY fuses steadfastly to discourse on aay other sub- ject. This is equally true of the manager. The theatrical world is as much of and to itself as though the Rialto were a tiny island isolated in the waters of the Pacific. It has its own language, its own daily journal, its own celebrities and its own great events. The jar- gon spoken would be absolutely unintelligible to a layman. "I doubled the heavy and a char- acter bit because the Guv'ner said cuttin' every- thing down was our only chance to stay out. We hit 'em hard in Omaha, and it looked like a constant sell out to me, but the Guv'ner swore 4ie show was a frost and we was playin' to pa- per." What would be your translation of this, gentle reader? Doesn't sound like English, does it? Yet it is — English as you hear it on Broadway. The Telegraph is the organ of the theatrical profession. It is a morning paper published at midnight for the benefit of a clientele that has plenty of time for reading between that hour and bed time. The Telegraph is the connecting 205 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT link between the last editions of the "yellow" evening papers, most of which, by the way, are pink, and the "bull dog editions" of the regu- lar morning papers. It is the one daily in the world devoted exclusively to sport and the thea- ter. To its editorial staff and its readers a decla- ration of war between England and France wouldn't be worth half the space given to a street fight between two matinee idols. The followers of this journal might be a trifle shakey as to the identity of Christopher Wren, but they could answer without hesitation any question relating to "Ted" Marks. They are awake to conditions, physical and domestic, utterly strange to outsiders, and understand personal allusions that would be Greek to the best-informed editorial writer on The London Times. If you picked up a newspaper and read "Famous Sayings of Great Men — Charles Hepner Meltzer: 'If it's hair it's here' " you would be mystified, yet fifty thousand theatri- cal people read that quip on the day of its pub- lication and laughed at it heartily. 206 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY The populace of The Great White Way is not more sharply individual in its mentality than in its personality. You could not possi- bly mistake the types that congregate on street corners or shuttle to and fro on business bent. The stoutish, smooth-shaven, commonplace- looking young fellow who passes you with a stride is a well-known dramatic author whose latest play is in its third month at a near-by thea- ter. The long-haired man behind him whom you notice because of his deep-set eyes, his ta- pering fingers and his important bearing is not the great genius that you may suppose him, but an ambitious provincialcome to town to market his first comedy. Sybilla Grant, whose real name is Carrie O'Brien, and who gets eighteen dollars per week for wearing a five hundred dollar gown conspicuously in the chorus at the Casino, drives to the door of Rector's, while the most prosperous and profitable woman star in Amer- ica walks quietly down Broadway, a demure lit- tle figure in a gray tailor-made gown. The old actor, with frayed linen and threadbare suit, 207 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT idles about, a trifle the worse for liquor, inquir- ing after opportunities; the young actor flaunts along in company with a well known theatrical lawyer or a soubrette conspicuous for the fear- fulness and wonderfulness of her millinery and her coiffure. Dogs you see in plenty, attached and unattached, but no children. The Great White Way is a childless path. There are so many celebrities on Broadway that, if you are a familiar of the street, you cease to regard them with awe. Men and wo- men whose names fill newspapers and whose pictures crowd magazines meet you at every turn. During the hour's time required for lunching I have seen in one hotel eating room Henry Arthur Jones, Charles Klein, John Ken- drick Bangs, Winthrop Ames, George Ade, Paul West, Edgar Selwyn, Roy McCardell, Victor Herbert, Reginald De Koven, Ray- mond Hubbell, Manuel Klein, Archie Gunn, Hy. Mayer, David Warfield, Frank Keenan, Robert Hilliard, William Faversham, Wilton Lackaye, Theodore Roberts, Henry Miller, 208 "Gets eighteen dollars per week for wearing a five hundred dollar gown" ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY Arnold Daly, W. H. Crane, Francis Wilson, Edmund Breese, Henry Woodruff, Sam Ber- nard, Charles J. Ross, Daniel Frohman, Hen- ry B. Harris, Lee Shubert, Fred W. Whitney, Charles B. Dillingham, J. W. Jacobs, Ben Roe- der, David Belasco, Joseph Brooks, Marc Klaw and Abraham L. Erlanger. The gentle- man who was sharing my table called attention to the gathering and remarked that if the build- ing should tumble about our ears, the result would be temporary paralysis in theatricals. The Great White Way has certain hostelries at which certain classes in "the profession" lunch, dine and sup habitually. Nearly every manager of importance in New York goes to the Knickerbocker, the Madrid, or to Rec- tor's, the former place being popular also with the better sort of actors. Shanley's, the Astor, the Cadillac, Browne's Chop House and Keene's, which is in the old home of the Lambs Club, also are popular, while the faster set, notably including the well known women of musical comedy, affect Churchill's. In the vi- 211 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT cinity of The Times Building, and again in the neighborhood of The Herald, are a number of little restaurants in which unlucky players and very busy managers can get food cheaply and quickly. These places are to be recognized generally by the white enamel lettering on their windows and by the fact that they employ wo- men as waiters. The busy manager aforesaid goes into them fearlessly; the unlucky player contents the inner man in the rear of the room and then stands complacently smoking his five cent cigar in front of the more expensive eating- house next door. There is the same divergence of character in lodging places on the Rialto. Above Forty- second Street one finds fashionable apartment houses in which prominent players keep rooms the year around. Farther down are hotels in which the less-successful histrion stops when he is in town, and the cross streets still closer to the foot of the The Great White Way are full of theatrical boarding houses, in which a good room may be had at four dollars per week and 212 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY food and lodging at sums varying from seven to ten dollars. The four clubs that appeal es- pecially to "the profession" are the Lambs, the Players, the Greenroom and the Friars. The first of these is the most expensive, the most luxurious, and the most liked by the gilded set. It occupies a new and beautiful building on Forty-fourth Street near Broadway. The Players, founded by Edwin Booth, is quiet, con- servative and elegant, inhabiting now, as it did in the beginning, an old-fashioned structure in Gramercy Park. The Greenroom Club and The Friars are younger and crowd themselves into less pretentious quarters on Forty-seventh and Forty-fifth Streets. The Greenroom caters especially to managers, and The Friars was founded by press agents. The theaters near Broadway are too well known to call for much comment. They in- clude all the playhouses of the better class, about thirty-five in number, beginning with Wallack's and ending with the New Theater. A great majority of the big— I'm not alluding to 213 THE FOOTLIGHTS-FORE AND AFT physical appearance — producers have their ex- ecutive offices in these Temples of Thespis. The Knickerbocker Theater Building shelters many of them, as do the Broadway Theater Building, the Gaiety Theater Building and the Putnam Building. Charles Frohman works in a tidy and well furnished apartment in the Empire Theater Building, which is tenanted al- most exclusively by his staff. The Shuberts have headquarters in what was once the Audu- bon Hotel, opposite the Casino, at Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street, and Klaw and Erlan- ger transact their business in the New Amster- dam Theater Building. The New York Thea- ter Building, the Hudson Theater Building, the George M. Cohan Theater Building, the Astor Theater Building, and even that home of bur- lesque, the Columbia Theater Building, all are honey-combed with offices. The word "honey-combed" is used advised- ly. All day long, all year 'round these offices are veritable hives of business. The layman has not the least conception of the amount of 214 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY activity necessary to theatrical production. It is not too much to say that such an office as that of Klaw & Erlanger is visited by no fewer than two thousand persons per diem and that as many letters are dispatched from it. Such buildings as those mentioned are most crowded from July to December. Regardless of the fact that theatrical companies are made up now- adays almost entirely by the process of sending for the players who are wanted, thousands of men and women in search of work begin their annual promenade late in June. They wait patiently, hour after hour, in outer offices, where the men usually find seats and the women generally stand. The matinee idol who last season nightly shouldered the blame for a great crime in order to shield the brother of the girl he loved, pushes past scores of girls somebody loves in order to be first before the desk of the manager. Through the long summer months, The Great White Way, whiter than ever in the dazzling heat of the sun, is thronged with seekers after employment in the most over- 215 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT crowded profession in the world. From place to place they go, from manager's office to agency, securing nothing more definite than the suggestion that they leave their names and ad- dresses. Of late the Rialto in summer has been so crowded with loungers that a special squad of police has been required to keep the way open to ordinary pedestrains. Knots of players, the men recognizable by their smooth-shaven faces and mobile mouths, the women by that peculiar independence of convention which characterizes the feminine portion of "the profession", group themselves everywhere. Seeing a hub of peo- ple, with projecting spokes made up of dogs on strings, you may be quite sure of the conversa- tion. "I could 'a' been with 'Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford', but everybody had it touted for a failure, so I signed for stock in Minneapolis. We only lasted two weeks. If the manager'd had any nerve, I think we'd 'a' won out. The whole town was talking about my work in 'Salomy Jane', and, my dear, you know what I 216 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY could V done in 'Brewster's Millions' 1" The soil most favorable to the growth of these groups is in front of the Actors' Society, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Knicker- bocker Theater Building, and the Putnam Build- ing. The "sportier" class of men congregate before the Hotel Albany, where they cooly ogle the women who pass. Never by any chance does one find a manager in a gathering like this — not even a salaried manager or a press agent. "Hold themselves aloof", you think; and they do, not only from these folk of the lower crust, but from the best class of actors as well. Race hatred and political prejudice are as nothing in comparison with the feeling between the busi- ness man of the theater and the player. Each despises the other, more or less secretly, and, except on the neutral ground of the Lambs', each "herds" alone. The Great White Way is most nearly de- serted at nine in the morning. Then the rounder has gone to bed and the workman has not yet risen. Surface cars laden with human- 217 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ity pass and repass, but they do not disgorge in the Rialto. The shop doors yawn widely, dis- playing blank faces to the straggling typists who wander by. Hotel dining-rooms are de- serted, chairs piled upon the tables, and sleepy waiters leaning disconsolately against the walls. Lowered curtains betray the tardiness of the people whose duty it is to open the offices of agents, play-brokers, and managers. Even the theater lobbies are vacant. Ten o'clock brings prosperous-looking men, hustling to and fro; and eleven sees the beginning of the actors' par- ade. By noon Broadway is a river of human- ity, flowing steadily to the sea of Ambition. It is not until night, however, that it becomes clear why the street should have the name that has been given it. Then the hundreds of queer- looking signs you have seen through the day suddenly take on light and life; burning blue birds fly "for happiness", glittering chariot- horses race beneath illuminative memoranda of the virtues of table waters, sparkling wine pours itself iridescently into a glowing glass; 218 ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY millions of little electric jewels flash in the darkness; whole buildings burst into premedi- tated flame; facades blaze like giant fireworks ignited for a festival; and Broadway becomes in truth The Great White Way. Standing be- side The Herald Building and staring north- ward, one sees a horizontal tower of glistening globes, the "river of humanity" with a won- derful electric display on its banks. The cars now begin to give up throngs from their light- ed interiors, pedestrians block the sidewalks, policemen shrill their regulation of traffic, at Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue the crush of carriages is well-nigh impassible. Fif- ty thousand people pour into the playhouses, to pour out again three hours later, super-man to become supper man, and to add his grandeur, and his lady's, to the crowded lobster palaces that line this dazzling path of pleasure. These are darkened in time, and there are left only the all-night restaurants. The streets grow quiet, and the pink dawn, unseen save by the watch- men, unfolds itself over the house-tops. One 219 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT by one the stars disappear, fading into the day, as will those other stars, so little, so infinites- imal, so transient a part of that tiny world which they in their vainglory have christened The Great White Way. 220 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS Being something about the process by which perform- ances are got ready for the pleasure of the public and the profit of the ticket speculators. OU see, I've been fishing, too." "Hello! Only you-" "Wait! Mr. Leeds, I've told you a dozen times to count five before that en- trance !" "I thought I—" "Never mind what you thought! Go back! Now 1" "Hello! Only you two here! What's be- come of — " "Wait! . . . Flynn, take this entrance for the sunset cue. Dim your borders and throw in your reds. . . . Now, Mr. Leeds, once more !" Doesn't make sense, does it? Yet this is a commonplace passage from an ordinary dress rehearsal. Anybody really connected with thea- 221 THE FOOTLIGHTS-FORE AND AFT tricals could translate the extract at a glance, but intimate knowledge of the stage, and its language, is gained only by actual experience. Of the method of producing plays, more has been written and less is generally understood than of any other common process. The out- sider who devotes an hour to watching a re- hearsal is as well qualified to describe that func- tion as you or I, after seeing a ship steam down the bay, would be to pen a treatise on the sci- ence of navigation. Most laymen have a vague idea that theatri- cal performances spring into being full-fledged, like birds which prestidigitators hatch by the simple expedient of shooting at the cage. If this statement seems far-fetched, you have but to read the stories of the playhouse written by clever men, like O. Henry and Hamlin Garland, whose wide knowledge of most things under the sun does not seem to extend to things under the calcium. Rehearsals are much more than aimless walk- ing and talking, as navigation is more than 222 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS the turning of a wheel. Their direction is a fine art, a very fine art, not the least unlike the painting of a miniature, and one must compre- hend something of this art to explain or de- scribe it. There are many points of similarity between a performance and a painting, which must create an impression without reminding the spectator of the brush-strokes which made that impression possible. The preparation of a play is a succession of details. It is astonishing how small a thing can cause the success or failure, if not of the whole work, at least of an incident or an episode. A pause, a movement, an ex- pression, a light or a color may defeat or carry out the intention of the dramatist. William Gillette's melodrama, "Secret Ser- vice", has a scene in which a telegraph opera- tor, dispatching military orders, is shot in the hand. When the piece was given its initial hearing, Mr. Gillette, in the role of the opera- tor, upon receiving the wound ( i ) bandaged his hand with a handkerchief, (2) picked up 223 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT his cigar, and (3) went on "sending." There was no applause. The second night the "bus- iness" was changed. The operator ( 1 ) picked up the cigar, (2) bandaged his hand, and (3) went on "sending." The audience was vocifer- ous in its approval. This particular instance of the importance of trifles is easily explained. That a wounded man's first thought should be to care for the wound is not remarkable, but that his first thought should be of his cigar sug- gests pluck and intrepidity which the spectators were quick to appreciate. Frequently, how- ever, author and actors experiment for months before finding the thing that makes or mars a desired effect. The play-goer who believes himself a free agent does not understand the art of the thea- ter. That art being perfect, he restrains his laughter and waits with his applause until the precise moment when the stage director wants him to laugh or applaud. It often happens that a laugh may spoil a dramatic situation, or that applause may not be desirable at a par- 224 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS ticular time. For example, if an audience is permitted to vent its enthusiasm over some stir- ring incident just before the end of an act the applause after the act will be appreciably less, and the number of curtain calls will be smaller. It is a simple matter of mechanics to "kill" a laugh or a round of applause, just as, in many cases, the impression made by an actor in a situ- ation may depend, not upon himself, but upon a detail of stage direction. When two actors have an important dia- logue, each wants to stand farther "up stage" — which is to say farther from the footlights — than the other, because the person fartherest "up stage" is most likely to dominate the scene. "It's no use", I once heard William A. Brady say to a veteran, who was rehearsing with a young woman star. "She knows the tricks as well as you do, and she'll back through the wall of the theater before she'll give you that scene !" The position of the player being of such consequence, it will be seen at once that actors do not, as is commonly believed, roam about 225 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT the stage at will. In point of fact, they are practically automata, reflecting the brain-pic- tures of the director and working out his scheme. It is not unusual for the man in charge of a rehearsal to instruct one of his puppets to "take six steps to the right at this speech", or to "come down stage four steps." No person in a performance ever "crosses" another per- son — that is, passes behind or in front of that other person — without having been told just when and how to do so. That movement which seems least premeditated often has been most carefully planned, and you may be sure that, at the performance you are witnessing, everybody on the stage knows to the fraction of a yard where he or she will be standing at a given mo- ment. Edwin Booth's reply to a novice who inquired where he should go during a long speech — "Wherever you are I'll find you" — would not be possible from a stage director of today. While this pre-arrangement may appear to the layman to be opposed to any semblance of 226 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS life and spontanaeity, it is absolutely necessary to the giving of a smooth performance. If ac- tors really "felt their parts" they would be about as dependable as horses that "feel their oats", and the representation in which they took part would soon become utterly chaotic. Fancy the awkwardness of Bassanio, in the trial scene of "The Merchant of Venice", looking around to find Shylock before inquiring: "Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?" Nor would this uncertainty be the worst ef- fect of such unpreparedness. On the stage every move, every gesture means something; conveys some impression. Thus, in a dialogue in which one character is defying another, a single step backward will produce the effect of cowardice, or at least of weakness and irresolution, in the person who retreats. The whole tension of a scene may be lost if one of the parties to it so much as glances down or reaches out for some necessary article. In the enactment of "The Traitor", a dra- matization of the novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr., 227 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT we found that a certain passage between the "lead", or hero, and the "heavy", or villain, failed of its intended effect. The hero, John Graham, is brought into court handcuffed, and seated in the prisoners' dock. Steve Hoyle goes to him with a taunt. It was thought veracious, even suggestive of manliness, that Graham, hearing the taunt, should rise angrily, as though prevented only by his bonds from striking his foe. After two weeks of guessing and experi- menting, we discovered that this very natural movement, for some reason still inexplicable, gave the impression of weakness. It is minutae like this that must be considered at rehearsal, and taught so carefully that the actor moves, as it were, in a groove, swerving from the de- termined course only as a needle in a sewing machine swerves in its downward stroke. Accent and facial expression are planned by the stage director with the same absolutism that marks his attention to manouvrc. Few actors can be counted upon to read every line intelli- gently, and frequently the person in charge must 228 'If actors really 'felt their parts' " WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS stop a rehearsal to point out an underlying thought. "You blur that speech", the director may say to the actor. "You don't define the changes of thought which it implies. See here ! Jones says: 'I'll go to her with the whole story.' You listen. Your first emotion is sur- prise. 'You will?' Suspicion enters your mind. 'Then you ' The suspicion becomes cer- tainty. 'Then you love her, too !' " Thus, more frequently than will be believed by the hero- worshipper, the much admired tone in which some big speech is delivered is the tone of the teacher. So much, so very much, may depend upon the emphasis given a single word. The art of speak- ing, however, is not more part and parcel of a perfect performance than the art of listening. The director not only rehearses the manner of giving a sense, but the manner of receiving it. He must note pronunciations, too, and, if there is an odd or foreign name in the play, he must take care that all his people pronounce it alike. The length of pauses, the tempo of comic or se- 231 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT rious conversations, the light and shade of the entire representation depend upon his compe- tence. Drama is the Greek word for action, and so, in a play, what the people do is even more im- portant than what they say. Practically every motion made on the stage, except that of walk- ing, comes under the head of what is known technically as "business." Laymen who believe that mummers act on their own initiative, even "making up" lines as they go along, will be sur- prised to learn that the manuscript of a work- manlike play contains more "business" than dia- logue. The performer picks up a photograph or lights a cigar or toys with a riding whip, not because it has occurred to him to do so, but be- cause the author has written down what he must do, and how and when he must do it, and the stage director has taught him properly to interpret the author. Here is a page from the "prompt copy" of "Clothes." The unbracketed sentences are dia- logue; those in parenthesis are "business": 232 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS WEST. I'm going to marry you in spite of (Checks himself suddenly. Gets his hat and brushes it with his sleeve. Laughs a lit- tle.) Pardon me. My temper is a jack-in-the-box. The cover is down again. Goodnight. (Walks quickly to door L. C, and exits. OLIVIA stands still a moment, then throws herself into chair R., of table, and indulges in a torrent of tears. The bell rings. She sits upright and listens. It rings again. She rises and runs to door L. 2. E. The MAID enters.) The capital letters — L. C, R., and L. 2. E. are abbreviations of terms that indicate ex- act spots on the stage. You see, it is not left to the discretion of West by which door he shall leave the room, nor of Olivia into which chair she shall throw herself. This "business" the director works over at rehearsal, elaborating, amplifying, making clear. West is told precise- 233 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ly where he must find his hat, with which arm he must brush it, in what tone he must laugh. If this were a case where a pause would height- en the effect of an entrance, the maid would be informed, as was the mythical Mr. Leeds in my opening paragraphs, how many she must count, which is to say how long she must wait, before entering. The more experienced an author, the more definite, exhaustive and significant his "busi- ness." When a play goes into rehearsal, how- ever, there are always places where speech may be exchanged for action, and often, after a dramatist has seen his work on the stage, he is able to cut whole pages, the sense of which is made clear by the appearance, the manner, or the "business" of his people. There are various kinds of "business", and of different purpose. The old-fashioned stage director used to invent dozens of meaningless things for actors to do, merely to "fill in", or give the appearance of activity. It is related that, when the farce, "It's All Your Fault", was 2.34 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS being rehearsed, the man in charge insisted that Charles Dickson, who was supposed to be call- ing at the room of a friend, should "fill in" a long speech by taking a brush from a bureau drawer and brushing his hair. "But", protested Mr. Dickson, "I'm simply visiting. I can't use another man's brush." "Can't help that I" said the director. "There are long speeches here, and you must do some- thing while they are being spoken." This kind of stage management, however, is no longer general. It is understood now that the best way to make a speech impressive is to stand still and speak it, so that actors are not often given by-play without some good reason. "Business" may supply "atmosphere", as the spectacle of a man rubbing his ears and blowing on his hands helps create the illusion of intense cold. In the original production of "In the Bishop's Carriage", Will Latimer, imperson- ated by a very slight young fellow, was supposed to cowe Tom Dorgan, a thug of enormous bulk. The scene never carried conviction, until our 235 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT stage director hit upon an ingenious bit of "business." He put a telephone on the table that stood between the two men. Dorgan made a movement toward Latimer. Latimer, without flinching or taking his eyes from Dorgan's face, laid his hand on the telephone. That gesture suggested a world of power, the police station within reach, law and society standing back of Latimer. It saved the situation. Much "business" is obvious and essential, as Voysin's fumbling in his wife's dressing table, in "The Thief", since this fumbling leads to the discovery of the bills upon the purloining of which the play is built. If a small article is to be used importantly in a performance it must be "marked", so that the audience will know what it is and so that it will not seem to have ap- peared miraculously to fit the occasion. The pa- per cutter falls off the table in the first act of 'The Witching Hour", not by accident, but by carefully thought out design, so that the au- dience will know where the instrument is and recognize it when Clay Whipple uses it to kill 236 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS Tom Denning. "Business", in a word, may be the smashing of a door or the picking up of a pin. It is the adornment that makes an other- wise bald and unconvincing narrative seem real ; that translates mere dialogue into the semblance of every-day life. Many plays — even most plays — are substan- tially altered at rehearsal. Dion Boucicault, the great Irish dramatist, said: "Plays aren't writ- ten; they are rewritten." It has been proved utterly impossible to judge the effect of a play from the manuscript, to know the merit of any story or episode until it is visualized, translated into action. Some time ago, William Gillette finished a farce, "That Little Affair at Boyd's", to which he had devoted the greater part of a year, and in which, therefore, he must have had considerable faith. Yet, after a week's rehears- al, he dismissed the company engaged and aban- doned the idea of producing the piece. The soundness of his judgment was demonstrated lat- er when this farce, re-christened "Ticey", was revived and failed utterly. 237 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT When defects manifest themselves at re- hearsal, the director does not hesitate to make or to suggest changes, the directness of his course depending upon the standing of his author. No dramatist is a hero to his stage director. Al- so, while we're parodying maxims, it's a wise author that knows his own play on its first night. The playwright is quick to learn humility. "Who's that meek-looking chap?" somebody once asked Augustin Daly during the course of a trial performance. "That!" returned Daly. "Oh, that's only the author!" If a di- rector is employed, the writer makes his sugges- tions through that gentleman. Sometimes the experience of the producer, who brings a fresh mind to the subject, is surer than the instinct of the author, who may easily have lost sense of perspective from long association with his work. "The Three of Us", a well-known domestic comedy, depends for its chief interest upon a scene in the third act, where Rhy MacChesney pays a midnight visit to Louis Berresford. When the piece was put into rehearsal, the idea was 238 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS that Berresford, hearing a knock at the door, bade the girl hide herself, which she did, only to be discovered later. George Foster Piatt, the stage director, who recently filled that post at the New Theater, objected that this was trite, conventional, unnecessary. "Why shouldn't the young woman tell the truth — that she came on a perfectly legitimate errand, meaning no harm, and that she has nothing to fear — and refuse to hide?" The author adopted his view, a new scene was written, and the play, largely because of the unexpectedness of this turn of affairs, ran for an entire year at the Madison Square. The knowledge of the stage director must cover the mechanical features of production as well as the literary. It is essential that he should understand the full value of light and scenic effects, and how to produce them. A stage may be, and generally is, illuminated by means of five different devices — from the "borders", which are directly overhead; from calciums, in the bal- cony or on either side of the stage; from spot lights, which really are calciums whose light is 239 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT focused upon one spot; from footlights, and from "strips", which are placed wherever light from more remote sources would be obstructed. The "borders" are long, inverted troughs, stretching from the extreme left of the stage to the extreme right and suspended from the roof of the theater. When it is said that the light coming from the "borders", or, indeed, from anywhere else, may be raised or lowered, may be white or blue or red or amber, or a combina- tion of these colors, reproducing the glow of a lamp, or the first gray glimmer of sunrise, it will be understood that the director has a wide range of effects at his command. Just as the reading of a line may alter the impression created by an entire passage, so may the least variation in illumination. Comedy scenes, for example, must be played in full light, as sentimental scenes are helped by half lights. If you could witness the second act of "Charley's Aunt" performed in the steel blue of moonlight, and the last act of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in the glare of "full up", you would be amazed 240 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS at the result. Color has as subtle an influence. I have seen the people in a play fairly melt into the back- ground of a yellow setting, causing their action to seem vague and illy-defined. Augustus Thom- as' "The Harvest Moon" had a scene in which the same subject matter was repeated succes- sively in different settings. Unless you had wit- nessed this performance, you would hardly be- lieve how wholly unlike were the impressions produced. Costumes and music have an equal portence, and both call for the exercise of nice discretion. The personality of the stage director, and his manner at rehearsal, are vital considerations. In acting, more than in any other art, the feeling of the artist reaches through his work. Everyone who has watched rehearsals has come to the con- clusion, at one time or another, that actors are something less than human. As a matter of fact they are simply children, calling for the patience, the forbearance, and the flexibility of view-point necessary in a nursery. Wholly self-centered, hav- 241 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ing little contact with the outside world, their standards, their emotions, their false valuations make constant difficulties for the man who has to play upon them as upon a piano. The dramatic instinct and the egregious ego form a provoking blend. I have known an ac- tress, at a dress rehearsal, the night before the public performance of a play, to go into violent hysterics, apparently reduced to a nervous wreck by the strain of her work. "Great heavens!" I have said to the director; "she won't be able to appear tomorrow." "Acting, my boy", that gentleman would reply. "Acting for our bene- fit and her own. She'll be all right in ten min- utes." And in ten minutes this same woman, done with her scene, would be advancing most logical reasons why she should have somebody's dressing room and why somebody else should have been given her's. I don't know exactly what temperament is, but most actors think they have it. Player folk are full of superstitions, and many of these relate to rehearsal. Few actors will 242 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS speak the "tag", or last line, of a play until its premiere. If that line were spoken the play would fail. Managers are not exempt from sim- ilar ideas, a mixture of ignorance and experience. A good final rehearsal is supposed to forecast a bad first performance, and this notion is not without reason, since the people, made sure of themselves, are pretty certain to lose the tension of nervousness. When the actors like a play at rehearsal the manager grows fearful. An actor usually likes best the play in which he has the best part, and that is not invariably the best play. Small, indeed, is the share of glory that goes to "the power behind the throne." His name adorns no bill-boards, and, on the program, you will find it most frequently among the announce- ments that the shoes came from Hammersmith's or that the wigs are by Stepner. The manager knows the stage director, though, and respects him, reputation of this kind being more profit- able than reputation with the great, careless pub- lic. 243 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Some few managers, like David Belasco and Collin Kemper, attend to the staging of their own productions, and, indeed, are most noted for their skill in this work. Many authors, among the number Augustus Thomas, James Forbes and Charles Klein, "put on" their own plays. Then there are "General Stage Directors", like William Seymour or J. C. Huffman, employed at so much per annum by big firms like those of Charles Frohman or the Shuberts. There are also detached directors, who contract to stage a play here or there at sums varying from five hundred to a thousand dollars for each piece. Julian Mitchell, R. H. Burnside and George Marion head the list of men who make a spe- cialty of producing musical comedy, which is a field in itself. A broad distinction exists between the stage director and the stage manager, the province of the latter being only to carry out the plans of the former. A dramatic composition is rehearsed from two to four weeks, the rehearsals usually lasting from ten o'clock in the morning until five in the even- 244 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS ing, with an hour for luncheon. The play be- ing finished and accepted, the manager turns the manuscript over to the stage director. This gentleman reads it carefully, realizing possibili- ties and devising "business." I have known auth- ors to write, and directors to read, with a minia- ture stage beside them. On this stage, pins would take the place of people, being moved here and there as one situation followed another. The exact location of the characters at every speech was then marked on the manuscript, so that lit- tle or no experimenting was necessary at rehears- al. After he has read the play, the director con- sults with the author and the manager and the scene painter. He helps the manager decide what actors had best be engaged, and the four de- termine every detail of the settings to be built and painted. Miniatures of these settings are afterward prepared by the artist and officially O. K.'d. The manager interviews such people as he thinks he may utilize, and comes to terms with them. Actors are not paid for time spent 245 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT in rehearsal, and, if they prove unsatisfactory before the initial performance, may be dismissed without notice and without recompense. It is an old custom, now in the way of being revived, to begin operations by reading the play to the company. The first rehearsals may take place in a hall, but, whenever it is possible, a stage is brought into requisition. In the centre of the stage, directly back of the footlights, is the prompt table, at which sit the author, the direc- tor, and the stage manager. The players, when they are not at work, lounge in remote corners, leaving the greater portion of the floor space cleared for action. There is no scenery, no fur- niture, no "properties." Two stools, with a space between them, may stand for Juliet's bal- cony, for the Rialto Bridge, or merely for a window in a modern apartment house. The casual observer may be puzzled at hearing some Thespian harranguing to four vacant chairs, un- til it is explained that these four chairs mark the corners of a jury box in which twelve good men and true — same being "supers" yet to be em- 246 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS ployed — are to try the hero for his life. In the beginning the actors read lines from their parts. A "part" contains the speeches and "business" of the actor for whom it is intended, with "cues", or the last few words of each speech preceding his, so that he may know when to speak. An extract from the "part" of the Queen in "Hamlet" (Act m; Scene i) would look something like this: (You enter L. 3. E.) Did he receive you well? free in his reply. Did you assay him to any pastime? he suffers for. I shall obey you. Etc. The director shows the actor where he shall stand, and where go, at every speech, and the stage manager notes on the manuscript such "business" as is not already written in it. Al- so, he sets down memoranda for the raising and "dimming" of lights, the ringing of bells, and other things to be done "off stage." 247 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT After a couple of days' rehearsal the players may be told that they must have the lines of the first act committed to memory within a certain time. "Letter perfect on Thursday!" says the director. "Don't forget; I want to hear every 'if, 'and', and 'but' spoken on Thursday!" So, act by act, the piece is learned, and, within a week, "parts" are put away, and the real work of rehearsal begins. By this time, the "rough- ing out" of the production has been done, posi- tions have been taught, and the director begins devoting himself to details. Throughout the first fortnight he interrupts frequently; compels the people to go back a dozen times over this scene or that; halts, thinks out trifles, suggests and experiments. When the rehearsals are two- thirds done, however, he and the author break in less and less often. They sit, notebooks in hand, jotting down their observations, which are read aloud to the company at the end of each act. Meanwhile, the director has attended to sev- eral important matters with which the cast has no immediate concern. He has made out a list of 248 WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS "properties", or small articles to be handled in the performance, and has given it to the man- ager. This list requires care. For example, if matches are needed in the play, it must be as- certained what kind of matches were used at that period, and sulphur, parlor, or "safety" matches must be specified. The manager must also be given lists of furniture and draperies. Later on, a table of "music cues" must be made out for the orchestra, and one of "light cues" for the electrician. The play must be timed, so that it may be known to a minute at what hour the cur- tain will rise and fall on every act. Generally, a page of typewritten manuscript will occupy a minute, but guess work on this point does not suf- fice for the director. The players begin to con- sult him about their costumes, too, and he must take into account the blending of colors, the fashions of the period, and the personal charac- teristics likely to manifest themselves in attire. I wish I could make you see a theater during the progress of a rehearsal. The great auditor- ium is dark and vacant, but for two or three 249 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT cleaners, who may be sweeping and dusting. White cloths cover the seats, and hang over the facades of the boxes. Through the center of the stage, just behind the footlights, a gas pipe rears itself to a height of five or six feet, and a single jet burns at the end of it. Close beside this pipe is the table I have mentioned, where, with their backs to the auditorium, sit three very busy, very attentive gentlemen. Farther on the stage, which is bare except for a couple of tables and a few chairs, stand two or three actors, attired in street dress, talking in a fashion utterly out of keeping with their every-day appearance. And on all sides are little groups of men and women, who pay no attention to the people in the scene and to whom the people in the scene pay no attention, who laugh and chat in subdued tones until some "cue" brings them into the action. One day a notice appears on the call board. The company will leave from the Grand Central Station the next morning at 7 :20 o'clock. The destination may be Syracuse, N. Y. The hotels in that city are so-and-so. The theater is the 250 "This is the first time the director has seen them 'made up,' and he is likely to have many suggestions'* WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS New Wieting. There will be a dress rehearsal there tomorrow night at 8. "Everybody will please be made up half an hour earlier." The dress rehearsal is the crowning ordeal in the business of producing plays. It is the sum- ming up of everything that has gone on before; the concentration into one evening of all the work and nervous strain of the past month. It is safe to say that in no other profession is so much labor and agony crowded into a single ef- fort. Very often dress rehearsals last from eight o'clock at night until eight the next morn- ing. Sometimes they last longer. The dress re- hearsal of "The Burgomaster", at the Manhat- tan Theater, New York, began at noon on Sun- day and continued, without intermission, un- til eleven o'clock Monday. Frequently, cof- fee and sandwiches are served in one of the dressing rooms, or on the stage, and the tired players snatch a bite or two between scenes. The director has been in the theatre all the afternoon, superintending the setting of scenes and the "dressing" of the stage, which means the 2 53 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT placing of furniture and the hanging of curtains. Half an hour before the rehearsal begins, the members of the company come from their rooms, one by one, for an inspection of costumes. This is the first time the director has seen them "made up", and he is likely to have many sug- gestions. This wig isn't gray enough, that beard is too straggling, the dress over there isn't in character. Back go the actors to remedy these defects, and after a time the rehearsal is started. Dress rehearsals invariably are 'prefaced by the managerial announcement that there will be no interruptions, but I have never seen an unin- terrupted dress rehearsal. The leading man stops in the middle of a love scene to inquire what he shall do with his bouquet, or the leading woman to complain that the property man hasn't placed a bundle of letters where it ought to be. I re- member that, when we came to the final rehearsal of "The Little Gray Lady", the manager, Mau- rice Campbell, finished his remarks about inter- ruptions, and called upon the orchestra to be- gin the overture. The orchestra promptly struck 2.54 ^- "The interruption came on the spot' WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS up "The Dead March from Saul", and the for- bidden interruption came on the spot. A dress rehearsal is supposed to be an ordin- ary performance without an audience. But it isn't. There is no excitement, no enthusiasm, no inspiration. Speeches fall flat, dialogue seems inordinately long and wearisome, bits of "busi- ness" that have appeared all right before look wholly different in changed surroundings. The actors, finding themselves for the first time in the setting to be used, are utterly lost. By-play with small articles, rehearsed twenty times, is blun- dered over when the player finds the "prop" ac- tually in his hands. To observe the most ex- perienced actor, and man of the world, handle a tea cup or a card case at a dress rehearsal you would swear that he had never seen such a thing before in his life. And, O, the wickedness of inanimate things — doors that will not shut, matches that cannot be lit, table drawers that positively refuse to open ! Whenever something of this sort goes wrong, the carpenter or the property man has to be called 257 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT upon, and the scene stops, to be resumed later with a flatness commensurate with the length of the halt. Above all other sounds rings the clari- on voice of the director, shouting to electricians, stage hands, actors. Everybody makes notes, to be quietly gone over with the company on the morrow, just before the actual performance. At last, when the gray dawn is peeping in at the windows, when everyone concerned has reached the ultimate stage of exhaustion, the re- hearsal is dismissed. The director makes a few remarks — sufficient censure to prevent over-con- fidence, mixed with enough hope to give cour- age. "Pretty bad", he says, "but I look for you to pull up tonight. We'll get together for a lit- tle chat at four o'clock in the smoking room of the theater." Thus ends the period of rehearsal — a period of hard work, trials, tribulations, constant ner- vous strain. And it may all go for nothing. In three short hours the labor of years on the part of the author, of months on the part of the man- ager, of weeks on the part of the players, may be 258 •\ s -JV"y*'^y "Matches that cannot be lit" WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS proved utterly worthless and without result. This, however, depends upon the public; those concerned have done all they know, all that can be done, not by random and haphazard work; but by skillful following of what is at once an exact science and a variable art. The philosophic author shrugs his shoulders as he leaves the theater. "Well?" inquires the stage director. "Well", he replies. "We've done our best. It's on the knees of the gods." 261 THE ART OF ''GETTING IT OVER" Being the sort of title to suggest a treatise on suicide, whereas, in point of fact, this chapter merely confides all the author does not know about acting. E VEN in a dictionary of slang, inquisi- tive reader, you will not find the phrase, "getting it over." "Art has its own language," and the language of dramatic art sometimes is fearful and wonderful to con- template. In this particular idiom, "it" stands for an impression or expression, and the precise boundary that the impression or expression "gets over" is the footlights. Do I make my- self clear? As to the art of "getting it over," that is a thing about which no two people are likely to agree. When, on the first night of F. Ziegfeld's "Follies of 19 10," a lady named Lil- lian Lorraine, ensconced in a swing and two gorgeous silk stockings, was projected into the tobacco smoke above the third row of orchestra seats, a great many star-gazers united in the 262 Sn JJ" "/^ /«dy, ensconced in a swing and two gorgeous silk stockings, was projected above the third row of orchestra seats" THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" idea that her manager had solved the problem. Paul Potter's comedy, "The Honor of the Family," was a melancholy failure at 8.40 o'clock on the evening of its premiere in the Hudson Theater. At 8.42 Otis Skinner, in the character of Colonel Philippe Bridau, his ag- gressive high hat tilted at an insolent angle, his arrogant cane poking defiance, had walked past a window in the flat, and the piece was a suc- cess. Without speaking a word, without doing the least thing pertinent to the play, Mr. Skin- ner had reached out into the auditorium and gripped the interest of sixteen hundred bored spectators. This is so fine a demonstration of the thesis that my article really should be ad- vertised as "with an illustration by Otis Skin- ner." "In that instant," the rescuer said after- ward, "I knew I had them." Any actor would have known. "Getting it over," vague as "the phrase may be to a layman, is almost a physi- cal experience to the man or woman who ac- complishes it. The thought sent out seems as 265 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT material a thing as a handball, "and," once re- marked Richard Mansfield, "I can see it go smashing past the footlights and into the brains of my auditors, or striking an invisible wall across the proscenium arch and bouncing back to the stage." The ability to send the thought smashing is surprisingly separate from the art of acting. Many schooled and skilled performers, whose names are omitted from this chronicle because I don't want to swell the waiting list of my enemies, have never got into an auditorium without coming through the door back of the boxes. Knowledge may be power, but it isn't propulsion. Nothing is more brainless than a mustard plaster, yet it draws. George W. Lewes wrote several illuminative works on his- trionism, and we have the word of A. B. Walk- ley that his Shylock made tender-hearted per- sons glad that Shakespeare died in the seven- teenth century. On the other hand, there are mediocre mimes who possess the faculty of establishing immedi- 266 "The thought sent out seems as material a thing as a handball. Sometimes, I can see it striking an invisible wall and bouncing back to the stage" THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" ate communication with an audience. All of us have applauded the chorus girl who, while endeavoring conscientiously to put her best foot forward at the exact moment and in the precise manner that thirty other best feet advanced, has scored a distinct individual success. A young woman did that on the first night of Peter Dailey's "The Press Agent" at the Hack- ett. She was fined $5 for it, but another chor- ister, whose name is Elsie Ferguson and who at- tracted attention in "The Girl From Kay's," is starring this year under direction of Henry B. Harris. Call it art, truth, intelligence, personality, magnetism, telepathy, hypnotism — Edwin Ste- vens, in a recent interview, called it hypnotism — or the wanderlust of a personally-conducted aura, the fact remains that there is a something by which some actors, without visible effort, convey a distinct and emphatic impression. We have seen John Drew step upon the stage, and, even while the applause lingered over his en- trance, shed a sense of elegance, manner and 269 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT mastery. We have responded to the charm of John Barrymore and A. E. Matthews before they opened their mouths to speak. We have absorbed the radiance of May Irwin's good hu- mor, we have felt unbidden the piquancy of Marie Tempest, we have laughed at a look from Bert Williams, and we have been awed when William Gillette, walking on as though there was nothing in the wind, has portentously and with sinister purpose flicked the ashes from the tip of his cigar. No, friends and fellow dramatic critics, this is not acting. The art and experience of acting may go into it, but acting can not be held to ac- count for what happens before a man begins to act. The curtain rising on the second act of "Such a Little Queen" discloses two girls, a telephone operator and a stenographer, chatting obliviously while a clerk, at the other end of the office, robs the mail. It is important that the robbery should register, else much that fol- lows can not be understood. For a long time, when we were rehearsing, it seemed impossible 270 "William Gillette portentously flicked the ashes from his cigar" THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" to get this theft over the footlights. The girls were pretty, their dialogue was breezy, and, for catching the mind, a word in the mouth is worth two conveyed by pantomime. Our clerk, a capable enough young fellow, simply could not get the attention of the audience. After he had failed to do so at several trial perform- ances, Frank Keenan, who was staging the play, mounted the rostrum and took his place. Mr. Keenan did exactly what had been done by his predecessor. His movements, like the other man's, were according to the book; his facial expression was the same, and, of course, he did not speak. But he held us — Heavens, how he held us ! Every eye was on him the instant the curtain lifted, and, for all the notice they got, the girls might as well have been painted on the proscenium arch. Even after that, the original couldn't do it. While he was robbing the mails, we had to rob the females of every distracting line of dialogue. Wherever Frank Keenan sits is the center of the stage. If you ask me— and we'll assume that you 273 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT have asked me — what is responsible for this sort of an achievement, I shall answer "self." T don't mean personality. I mean that, whether he wishes it or not, what "gets over" isn't so often what a man thinks or desires, but what he is. The same thing is true of painters and sculptors and novelists — -"For," said Walter Bagehot, "we know that authors don't keep tame steam engines to write their books" — and how much more likely is it to be true of the art- ist who is himself the expression of his art. In the footlight trough of a burlesque theater in the Bowery, invisible to the audience but staring the performers in the face, is the legend: "Smile, ladies, smile!" Yet these ladies, thus perpetually reminded, never spread the conta- gion of merriment and good humor for which a Puritan community would have quarantined Blanche Ring. Don't tell me Miss Ring is an artist. She isn't, but she's jolly! The board of governors, or the house com- mittee, or whatever it is that directs the des- tinies of the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau 274 THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" isn't far wrong, if, as is reported, it insists upon purity in its Madonna and beneficence in its Man of Sorrows. Imagine a woman of notori- ously evil life, or even of evil life that wasn't notorious, impersonating Sister Beatrice in the marvelous miracle play of Maeterlinck's. A gentleman who had driven four Avives — tandem — to death or the divorce court would have been an offense as Manson in "The Servant in the House." Mr. Forbes-Robertson is an ad- mirable artist, but it was his spirituality, his as- ceticism that "got over" in his delightful por- trayal of The Third Floor Back. Certainly, it isn't the frankness of lines, verbal or anatomi- cal, that makes the difference between a musi- cal comedy and a salacious "girl show." It's the intention; the character of producer and produced. "Robert Loraine isn't a good actor," Wil- liam A. Brady said to me once, "but he's sure to be a popular star, because of the vigor, the viril- ity, the fresh young manhood, the breath of out- doors that he sends over the footlights." Con- 275 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT sider the lilies in the cheeks of Billie Burke, and then, if you can tear yourself away from that floricultural exhibition, consider the box-office value of the youth that spills itself from the lips of Wallace Eddinger and Douglas Fair- banks. All the genius of Mrs. Fiske couldn't make an audience believe in her motherhood in "The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch"— "I wouldn't trust her with a baby of mine," whispered a woman in the first-night audience at the Man- hattan — but how we felt the maternalism of Jennie Eustace in "The Witching Hour," and, in another way, of Jessie Millward in "The Hypocrites." Hedwig Reicher is a capital ac- tress, but she is also a self-reliant woman, and her skill couldn't win sympathy for her sup- posed helplessness in "The Next of Kin." Two years ago T was trying terribly to make prospective audiences sense the pitiful plight of poor little Anna Victoria in "Such a Little Queen." I wrote a dozen lines as to the dis- comfort of starvation, the inconvenience of being put into the street. They were things that 276 THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" thought, and then I remembered that, when I came to New York with nothing but my "cheek" a woman might say under the circumstances, I and two dollars in money, I used to look out of the windows — the window — of my top-story room and think: "In all this great city there isn't a human being who cares whether I live or die." These very words I put into the mouth of Anna Victoria, and, of all my fine speeches, that was the only one that really "got over." It "got over" because it was true, and be- cause, whatever else truth may be — has any one ever satisfactorily answered Pontius Pilate? — it is the best bullet one can shoot across the foot- lights. Vicarious experience sometimes does the trick, but only for persons of highly devel- oped mimetic faculty. I remember a woman in a play who was supposed to receive her death blow with an "Oh, my God I" She was par- ticularly requested not to scream it, or to groan it, or to do anything else conventional with it. It was to be a helpless "Oh, my God!", a hope- less "Oh, my God!", an "Oh, my God!" that 277 THE FOOTLIGHTS-FORE AND AFT sounded like the thud of a hammer at the heart. One night she got the tone. "How?" we asked. "I heard a woman say it in the street. An am- bulance surgeon had told her her baby was dead." The first principle of "getting it over," then, is being, feeling, believing. It is a principle that draws interest. Believing is very import- ant. Do you think John Mason could have held his audience through the episode under the electrolier in "The Witching Hour" if he hadn't believed in it? I don't. Perriton Carlyle, in "The Little Gray Lady," made a mistake. It was a bad mistake, composed chiefly of a hun- dred dollars that didn't belong to him. I never knew any one in my life who hadn't stolen some- thing sometime, and many of my friends are pretty respectable now. I believed that Car- lyle's foot had slipped, and that, in spite of the accident, he might walk straight the rest of his days. I couldn't get an actor to believe it. Ed- gar Selwyn didn't, and Eugene Ormonde didn't, and, while they played the part, nobody did. 278 THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" John Albaugh, Jr., an actor inferior to both of them, felt sure of the inherent goodness of Car- lyle, and so made possible the success of a piece that could not have succeeded without universal sympathy for its hero. Well, we've ridden a long way astride of a hobby. Let's get back, and admit that we like sugar on our strawberries, which is to say art with our nature. For, after all, a generous ad- mixture of skill is required in the expression of instinct, just as the peach-bloomiest complexion, displayed in the high light of the theater, must have rouge upon it to seem what it really is. Every stage manager knows the genuine so- ciety girl who is engaged to lend verisimilitude to a drawing-room drama, and who, at rehears- als, regards her teacup as though it were some strange and savage animal. Edwin Booth's Othello was the triumph of an artist. He made audiences forget that his embodiment of the Moor was a thin-chested, undersized student of sensitive face and dreamy eyes. Charles Kean's first appearance in Lon- 279 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT don was as Macbeth, and his Lady Macbeth, a great woman in both senses of the word, re- fused to play opposite a leading man who "looked like a half-grown boy." Afterwards, she swore that he grew during the performance. Salvini drawing tears from an audience ignor- ant of his tongue by counting from one to an hundred; Bernhardt scolding an actor in the death tones of Camille; Margaret Anglin re- peating "Poor little ice-cream soda" until her hearers broke down sobbing— these are exam- ples of pure artistry, of "getting over" impres- sions without even a thought behind them. No one who knows the first thing about the theater can underrate, be it never so slightly, the value of training, of experience; the effectiveness of carefully-thought-out "business", of inflection, of nuance, of pitch, of rhythm, of all the things that require years of study, labor, and persever- ance. Tully Marshall, whose Hannock in "The City" was the finest, and seemed the most in- spired, acting of last season, tells me that he 280 "Lady Macbeth swore that he grew during the performance THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" worked out, almost mechanically, every thrill in his big scene at the end of Act III. Mr. Mar- shall made so convincing the degeneracy, the besottedness of the character that I have heard laymen insist he must be a drug fiend. Yet this actor knows exactly how he produced his effects. Ethel Barrymore, on the other hand, knew only that she had striven for years, and had never quite felt herself "go smashing past the foot- lights and into the brains of her auditors." Then, on the first night in New York of John Galsworthy's "The Silver Box," when, as Mrs. Jones, charwoman, she stepped down from the witness stand, silent, but thinking with all the force that was in her of the wretched, squalid home to which she was returning alone, and the curtain fell between her and the vast stillness of the awed audience, she knew that at last she had "got it over." "And, oh!" says Ethel Barrymore, "I found the knowledge sweet." 283 SOMETHING ABOUT "FIRST NIGHTS" Wherein is shown that the opening of a new play is more hazardous than the opening of a jackpot, and that theatrical production is a game of chance in comparison with which roulette and rouge-et-noir are as tiddledewinks or old maid. WHILE the curtain was rising and falling after the third act of "Sev- en Days", then being given its in- itial performance in New York at the Astor Theater, a woman behind me remarked: "I'll bet Hopwood is the happiest man in town at this moment 1" The person to whom she alluded was Avery Hopwood, collaborative author of the play in question, and almost any auditor in the house would have declined to take the other side of the wager. "Seven Days" was an obvious suc- cess, an unexpected success, and a sucess that had arrived something after schedule time. Mr. Hopwood had shared with your humble servant the credit for his first work, "Clothes", and his 284 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS second and third works, "The Powers That Be" and "This Woman and This Man", had not called the fire department to the Hudson River. Those watchful gentlemen, the managers, who measure a dramatist by the line in front of his box office, were beginning to wonder whether "Hopwood really can write a play." Here was a vociferous answer to the question — an answer destined to be repeated, with greater emphasis, a year later in "Nobody's Widow." "Certain- ly", I thought, "Hopwood is the happiest man in town at this moment!" Subsequently, on my way out of the Astor, I came within an ace of running into "the happiest man." He was standing on the curb, half a block north of the theater, and he didn't "look the part" with which he had been invested. His tace was white and set, his brow puckered into deep wrinkles, and his chief occupation seemed to be the nice one of nibbling the skin from his knuckles without actually lacerating them. "Well", he inquired, with agonized anxiety, "how did it go?" 285 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT "A knockout!" I replied, in the vernacular. "On the level?" he asked. "You're not try- ing to jolly me?" There was no suggestion of insincerity in the query. It was evident that Diogenes, if he had returned to look for the happiest, instead of for an honest man, must needs have gone farther than the author of "Seven Days." From contact with other victims and from personal experience, I feel qualified to say that the most terrible ordeal known since the days of the inquisition is a theatrical "first night." Dramatist, manager, actors and even stage hands are tortured by it, and their sufferings are not to be gauged by the number of times they have undergone the horror. The "first night", more- over, is a thing unique in art. A painting may hang for weeks before the painter learns whether he has succeeded or not; a book may be on the market nearly a year without its author knowing the result of his effort. In either case, criticisms are many and varying. The verdict on a play, however, is given with the suddenness and force 286 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS of a blow, and sometimes it is equally conclu- sive. Failure in any other field leaves something in the way of assets; theatrical failure sweeps away everything. Realize this, put yourself in the place of those most concerned, and you will understand the effect of a "first night." Suppose that all your possessions, representing the labor of a life-time, were tied together and suspended by a string over a bottomless abyss. The feel- ing with which you would watch that string as it stretched to the breaking point would be akin to the feeling with which the dramatist watches the audience come to pass judgment on his work. Of course, it is not always, or often, true that a single production either makes or breaks those concerned in it, but even a single production is so large an element in this making or breaking that it becomes of vital importance. Sometimes, too, "first night" gatherings are wrong, and per- formances which they condemn afterward prove great artistic and financial hits. This, however, is rare; the say of the initial audience, made up of professional reviewers and experienced thea- 287 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ter-goers, is likely to be conclusive. Henrietta Crosman, then an unknown actress from the West, came to New York with "Mistress Nell" on October 9, 1900, and opened to receipts un- der two hundred dollars. A single day later the sums being paid into the box office were limited only by the seating capacity of the house. Hel- en Ware, after years of unrecognized good work in small parts, achieved stellar honors within the three hours of her first metropolitan appear- ance as Annie Jeffries in "The Third Degree." No chronicle short of a six-volume book could begin to give an account of the playwrights and players whose stock has soared a hundred points during the course of a single evening on Broad- way. Failures determined with equal promptitude have been so numerous during the past few sea- sons that it seems idle to recapitulate. One night proved a sufficiently long time in which to guess accurately at the future of "Septimus", "Drift- ing", "A Skylark', "Mr. Buttles", "Miss Pat- sy", "The Heights", "The Upstart", "The Scan- 288 'A playwright whose stock has soared a hundred points in a single evening" SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS dal", "The Young Turk", "The Foolish Vir- gin", "The Next of Kin", 'The Fires of Fate", "Children of Destiny", "Welcome to Our City", and "A Little Brother of the Rich." Two or three of these had been great triumphs in Lon- don and Paris, half a dozen were by famous Englishmen and Americans, nearly all represent- ed extravagant expenditure on the part of ex- perienced managers, but neither precedent nor prominence disturbed the "first night" jury in New York. Augustus Thomas' "The Ranger" was voted impossible a few years ago at Wal- lack's with as little hesitation as though it had been written by John Jones instead of by the author of "Arizona." Frank McKee cancelled the bookings of Hoyt's "A Dog in the Manger" while the second act was in progress at Washing- ton, and "The Narrow Path", offered for a run at the Hackett, never had another performance there — or anywhere else. With such possibilities as these before his eyes, with "Mrs. Dane's Defence" at one end of the pendulum's reach and "The Evangelist" at 291 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT the other, do you wonder that the playwright is nervous on a "first night?" Unfortunately, it is not alone the be- havior of the "death watch" in front of the foot- lights that gives cause for anxiety. Actors and actresses are uncertain creatures, while inanimate objects seem to have a perfect genius for going wrong at critical times. No amount of rehears- ing can be depended upon to prevent a moon wobbling as it rises at an initial performance, or to make the crash of thunder sound unlike Bridget taking it out of the pots and pans after dinner. A laugh at a serious moment may decide the fate of a play, the fate of a play may make a difference of several hundred thousand dollars to its manager, and, this being true, what the manager says to the property man or the elec- trician after a faux pas like either of those men- tioned is a problem you can solve in half the time you once devoted to discovering the age of Ann. I remember vividly the primal performance at Hartford of Paul Arthur's melodrama, "Lost 292 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS River." One of the mechanical effects in this piece was a bicycle race, during which the con- testants pedaled wildly on stationery machines. The effect of passing landscape was given by a panorama and a fence that moved rapidly in the opposite direction. At least, they were supposed to move in the opposite direction, but on the oc- casion of which I speak, they didn't. The race became one between the bicyclists and the sur- rounding country, and the surrounding country was far in the lead when an irate stage manager rang down the curtain. This accident never happened again, but, had the "first night" been in New York instead of on the road, once would have been enough. The late A. M. Palmer used to tell a story il- lustrative of the fact that players, under stress of "first night" excitement, often share "the wickedness of inanimate things." Mr. Palmer produced "Trilby" when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb, and upon the consequences of the performance depended his immediate fu- ture. Paul Potter's dramatization opened in 293 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Boston, and gave no cause for worry except in the matter of its extreme length. Half the pop- ulation of Boston is also the population of su- burban towns, and Sarah Bernhardt, George Cohan and a Yale lock couldn't keep 'em from leaving a theater at train time. Consequently, when eleven o'clock came and the last act of 'Trilby" had just begun, a frown settled on the classic brow of the ordinarily imperturbable Mr. Palmer. Virginia Harned, neither as experienced nor as clever then as now, was playing Trilby, and she felt that her portrayal had been more or less overshadowed by the Svengali of Wilton Lack- aye. There is no better part in the drama than that of the hypnotist, while the opportunities of the name role are limited. Miss Harned's first chance to make her talent conspicuous came with trie death of the model in the last act. "Trilby began to die at 11:10", declared Mr. Palmer. 'The audience had already commenced looking at its watches, and a photograph of my thoughts would have developed into a blue print. Miss 294 "Sarah Bernhardt, George Cohan, and a Yale lock couldn't keep a Boston audience from leaving at train time" SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS Harned, on the contrary, approached the scene with joy, too wrought up to take into consider- ation the fact that the people in front had begun to be more interested in Newton than in the af- fairs of Little Billee. Trilby died in every way known to medical science and the art of acting. She died of heart disease and consumption and cerebral spinal meningitis. She died a la Bern- hardt and Marlowe and Clara Morris. She died on the sofa and the piano stool and two of the rugs, and, just when I thought she had breathed her last against the door R. I. E., she found strength to take a few steps and do it all over again in the center of the stage. Little Billee was waiting in the wings, but, as you will under- stand if you remember the play, no one could come on until Trilby had shuffled off her mortal coil. And Trilby, on this occasion, simply would not shuffle. It was nearly 1 1 130 when she finally gave up the ghost on a davenport L. C, in the presence of that portion of the audience suf- ficiently Yankee to be determined upon missing nothing it had paid to see. That death scene, 297 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT abridged and expurgated, afterward became a most powerful and effective bit of acting, but I confess that on the evening in question the qual- ity of it was somewhat obscured by the quantity." Dramatic authors, likely to be the victims of incidents of this sort, cannot be blamed for mani- festing marked peculiarities as regards "first nights." When my best and least successful play, "The Secret Orchard', was given its pre- miere at the Lyric, I trotted off to see "A Knight for a Day" at Wallack's. James Forbes spends his evening behind the scenes. After the open- ing of "The Commuters", which ran six months at the Criterion, he locked himself in a dressing room, convinced that the piece was a dismal fail- ure, and refused to come out, even when im- plored to do so in order that the leading woman might get into her street clothes. Throughout the performance of his maiden effort, "Her Hus- band's Wife", "Al" Thomas walked up and down the block in front of the Garrick. Few men are able even to assume the insouciance of Harry B. Smith, who, at the primal presentation 298 "Trilby died in every way known to medical science and the art of acting" SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS of his "The Bachellor Belles", smoked a cigar in the lobby throughout the first act and went home in the middle of the second. Until constant ridicule broke up the practice, most authors needed little urging to induce them to address their audiences on "first nights." As recently as the fall of 1909, during the per- formance of "On the Eve", Martha Morton, its adapter, made a speech from her box at the Hud- son. The man behind the pen has so little chance to get into the limelight — poor fellow ! — that to speak or not to speak will always be a mooted question with him. Either course is likely to be mistaken by the critics, who put down the unfortunate scribe as a vainglorious person if he appears and as a poseur if he does not. Personally, I feel that the average author is much more favorably represented by what he writes than by what he says, and that neither he nor the player has any real justification for mix- ing his own personality with those of the pup- pets he creates. It is disillusioning, after having spent som.? time in witnessing stirring deeds and 3 QI THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT hearing high-sounding words, to be confronted with a little, stoop-shouldered man, his face white in the glare of the footlights and his hands anxiously seeking a refuge in his ill-fit- ing and pocketless dress trousers, and to realize that this grotesque figure is that of the inventor of all the splendid beings you have seen. New York audiences are almost the only ones in the country that ever manifest any particular desire to gaze upon the dramatist. I heard a man cry "Author!" once at a "first night" in Chicago, and the ushers were about to eject him when the manager explained to them that the enthusiast was acting with perfect propriety. I have told you, in another part of this book, of the oratorical talent of Augustus Thomas, who is the most impressive of before-the-curtain monologists. He makes a fine appearance on the stage, self-possessed and well-dressed, and his little talks invariably are brief and witty and well-rounded. So, too, are those of Eugene Pres- brey. Paul Armstrong's undiplomatic words have been known to prove a "last straw" on the 302 The author — as you imagine him, and as he proves to be" SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS graves of his failures, and Edith Wharton and Charlotte Thompson, clever women both but not prepossessing, almost turned into burlesque the "first night" of "The Awakening of Helena Richie." Charles Klein is not big enough phys- ically to fill the eye, and David Belasco, with his trick of being pushed violently to the front and of fingering his forelock, creates an impression of insincerity and preparedness. William Gil- lette has all an actor's skill in appealing to an au- dience, and, I am told, saved the day — or, rath- er, the night — for his "Sherlock Holmes" in London. George Ade and Sydney Rosenfeld are amusing on "the apron", but other brilliant men, like Edwin Milton Royle and Richard Harding Davis, are not at their best when obliged to say "thank you." Mr. Davis figured in a neat bit of good humor in New Haven, where, after the third act of Mr. Thomas' adap- tation of his "Soldiers of Fortune", Mr. Thom- as assumed his identity and he pretended to be Mr. Thomas. English playwrights are much more at ease 305 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT than are American. Henry Arthur Jones, A. W. Pinero, Henry V. Esmond, and even young Hu- bert Henry Davies look well and talk well when they have occasion to "speak out in meeting." George Bernard Shaw's witticism when some- body in the gallery hissed while he was making a curtain speech has become famous. The Irish Voltaire had just referred to the play of the evening, the third act of which had been con- cluded, when this sound of disapprobation cleft the circumambient atmosphere. "Ah !" said Mr. Shaw to the disturber, "you and I are quite agreed, but we seem in the minority." I cannot pass by the subject of "first night" addresses without relating to what extent Wash- ington is indebted to me for a chatty five minutes with Mr. Thomas on the occasion of the produc- tion of "The Hoosier Doctor." At that time, I was dramatic critic of The Washington Post. I was riding horseback, and, at five in the after- noon, found myself six or eight miles from town, and in the presence of Mr. Thomas. He had been bicycling and his machine had broken down. 306 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS "Lend me your horse, like a good fellow", he begged, when we came together. "I want to get back for the performance of 'The Hoosier Doc- tor. "Can't!" I replied. "I've got to write a re- view of that same play." "Well", returned the author, smiling in the midst of his perplexity, "my claim is the strong- er. 'The Hoosier Doctor' can be performed whether your criticism is written or not, but your criticism cannot be written unless 'The Hoosier Doctor' is performed." In the end, the public was obliged to forego neither play nor review, since Mr. Thomas gal- loped to the city on my horse and I was picked up soon after by a farmer in a wagon. A list of the "first nights" that have gone down into histrionic history would vie in length with a record of the bits of the true cross on view in Europe. Primarily, one would be obliged to record premieres at which riots have occurred, and since, at one time a century ago, it was easier to hold an Irish election without 307 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT a fight than to give an initial dramatic per- formance without one, this would take much space and research. The initial representations of great works, such as those of Shakespeare and Moliere, and the professional debuts of celebrat- ed actors, like Thomas Betterton and Peg Wof- fington, would baffle the descriptive powers of so humble a chronicler as myself. Assuredly, a whole book might be written about the re- ception originally accorded "Hamlet," and I am certain that we should all like to know pre- cisely what happened at the Boston Theater on the evening of Monday, September 10, 1849, when Edwin Booth made his first bow to the public. Nearly everyone remembers the interesting story of the "first night" of "A Parisian Romance" at the Union Square Thea- ter on January 10, 1883, when an obscure young man named Richard Mansfield made the minor role of Baron Chevrial the biggest part in the play and himself the most-talked-of actor in America. My own most notable "first night" was at 308 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS Rome, some time in May, 1890, when, as a youngster, I heard "Cavalleria Rusticana" sung for the first time on any stage. My recollec- tion of the event is not vivid, but I recall that the composer, Pietro Mascagni, wept, and that the audience joined him, having already done every other emotional thing you could call to mind. This sort of enthusiasm is not excep- tional among the Latins, and "first nights" in Madrid, Naples, Brussells and Paris always are likely to be extremely spectacular. Berlin, Vienna and Prague are less excitable, though I witnessed rather a remarkable demonstration at a performance of an opera called "Die Hexe" in the metropolis last mentioned, and saw a crowd draw home Charlotte Wolter's carriage one evening in Vienna. The stalls in a London playhouse hold men and women as reserved and conservative as any in the world, but the pit, which signifies ap- proval by the conventional applause, has made its disapprobation dreaded at premieres. The "boo!" of the Cockney who has paid "two and 309 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT six" for his place and is resolved upon getting his money's worth or knowing the reason why is a potent damper. Disorder in the pit may not even have been caused by the poorness of a production; persistent enthusiasm on the part of a claque or the appearance of a foreign star often provoke it. I shall never forget how near several patriotic Americans, myself among them, were to provoking a riot against Nat Goodwin at the opening of "The Cowboy and the Lady" in the Duke of York's Theater. New York, which never commits itself with a "Boo!" or a "Bis!", which never hisses and somewhat rarely applauds, provides the most terrible ordeal in the world for author, actor and manager. The "first nighter" is as much a type here as in London. A small per cent- age of him are the tired and idle rich, the ma- jority being made up of wine agents, book- makers, professional "dead-heads", ladies of uneasy virtue, and dramatic critics. Of an opening audience at Weber & Fields' it was said once that "there wasn't a woman in the 310 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS house who hadn't changed her hair and her husband within the year." These boulevardiers have seen everything produced in town during a decade, or perhaps two decades, and are absolutely pleasure-proof. Their attitude expresses the defiance: "I dare you to satisfy me." One of their number, asked as to the fate of a comedy, is reported to have replied : "I'm afraid it's a success." If it were only that these people knew everything, and were hard to please, nobody would have the right to object to them. The trouble is that they are pleased with the wrong fare. Witty lines and subtle construction, delicate sentiment and simple sincerity, except for their appeal to the reviewers, must wait for recognition until the second night. Legs and lingerie, double entendre and bald suggestion, the wit of the slap stick and the melody of the street piano are the chosen diet of this "death watch", which "sits in solemn silence", with impassive faces and row after row of masculine shirt bosoms rearing themselves in the darkness like 3ii THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT tombstones in a pauper graveyard. How to avoid this chilling influence is a puz- zle that has agitated every producer on Broad- way. Your New York manager has a list of the seats regularly occupied by the critics, and these go out first. Then the wine agents and book-makers aforesaid buy the tickets laid aside for them. Next the general public has an op- portunity, of which it is slow to take advantage, and then whatever has been left is given away. Nobody ever saw a small "first night" audi- ence in Manhattan, nor one in which there were not at least three hundred enthusiastic per- sons. This enthusiasm deceives no one — least of all the newspaper men for whom is it in- tended — and it rebounds like a ball against the hardness of the general imperturbability. Many a time, while the gallant three hundred were splitting their gloves and callousing their hands, I have seen traveling from critic to critic that glance of understanding and disapproval which has sealed the fate of so many thousand plays. 312 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS The New York critics are about a score in number, and, during the past few years, there have been many changes in the corps. Its dean, William Winter, resigned from The Tribune, where his post is filled by Arthur Warren. Alan Dale, of The American, continues to be the most widely known of our writers on theatrical topics, and we still have with us, as stand-bys, Adolph Klauber, of The Times; Louis De Foe, of The World; Rennold Wolf, of The Tele- graph; Acton Davies, of The Evening Sun; Charles Darnton, of The Evening World; Rankin Towse, of The Post, and Robert Gil- bert Welsh, of The Evening Telegram. The Press has been carrying on a lively theatrical war, and, perhaps for that reason, its reviews manifest not only ignorance but the most bump- tious disregard of general and expert opinion. Arthur Brisbane having declared against "abuse", The Evening Journal finds good in everything; The Sun has had no regular critic since it lost Walter Prichard Eaton, and The Herald boasts that it prints only "reports" of 313 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT performances. "First nights" are arranged, when that is possible, on different evenings, so that all the critics may be present at each, but, when there is a conflict, every man picks out the opening he considers most important and either lets the others go until later in the week or sends his assistant. There are thirty or forty reviewers who rep- resent magazines and periodicals, but, for the most part, these are de classe. They flock alone in the lobbies during intermissions, when the men from the daily newspapers congregate in groups to exchange a word or two about the play and to discuss other matters of common interest. These foyer gatherings pronounce a verdict that, as we have seen, is seldom— per- haps too seldom — overruled. Many a man- ager has leaned against his box office after the third act of a new piece, eavesdropping to learn what intelligence, experience, keen judgment and careful reading and rehearsing have not told him. For there are two "anxious seats" on a "first 314 SOMETHING ABOUT FIRST NIGHTS night" in New York: One in the author's box and one in the manager's. 315 IN VAUDEVILLE Being inside information regarding a kind of entertain- ment at which one requires intelligence no more than the kitchen range. VARIETY is the spice of life. So is vaudeville. If you doubt it, consider Gertrude Hoffmann, Valeska Suratt, Eva Tanguay, and other beauties unadorned of "the two a day." Time was when "continuous performances" offered the best means of convincing Aunt Jane that there were harmless theatrical entertain- ments besides "The Old Homestead." Variety, of course, had been a word to excite horror. But vaudeville — well, vaudeville was to variety what "darn" is to "damn!" And, as the advertisements have it, there was a reason. B. F. Keith, when he took, the curse off a type of amusement generally associated with dance halls, "stag" houses, minstrel shows and "The Black Crook", had his eye on Aunt 316 IN VAUDEVILLE Jane. Vaudeville, born in France during the Fifteenth Century, and named after Les Vaux de Vire, the home of its father, Oliver Basselin, stood for something just a little more ribald than variety. Mr. Keith resolved to stand for noth- ing of the kind. Beginning in Boston, he soon invaded Philadelphia and New York with shows so religiously expurgated that they couldn't have drawn the slightest protest from a Presbyterian Synod. Oaths might not be spoken at Keith's. Be- tighted damsels were banned and barred — for- bidden fair. Short skirts were permitted under certain rigorous restrictions. One of the restric- tions was that ladies who wore short skirts must not wear silk stockings. I remember wondering wherein the silk worm was more immoral than the cotton-gin, and concluding that, despite the phrase "ugly as sin", Mr. Keith had defined sin as anything attractive. Virtue and vaudeville were synonymous for something over a decade. I don't know precise- ly when people stopped going to hear the new 317 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ditties, and began going to see the nudities. "Living pictures" began it. "Living pictures", you may recollect, were ladies in pink union suits. They were supposed to be popular be- cause of artistic draping and grouping, but the minimum of drapery always brought about the maximum of popularity. It was but a step from union suits to non-union suits; from fleshings to whitewash and bronze varnish. In 1906 Lon- don went quite mad over a Venus whose entire wardrobe was applied with a paintbrush. Event- ually Venus rose from the sea in America, but, by the date of her arrival, our own performers had so far outstripped her that she didn't cre- ate even a mild sensation. Koster & Bials' had paved the way with Charmion, who disrobed while seated upon a flying trapeze. Oscar Hammerstein had done some astonishing things at his Victoria Theater. Salome, driven out of the Metropolitan Opera House, had taken refuge in vaudeville, garbed — if one may use the word in connection with a costume somewhat less extensive than a porus 3i8 "Venus rose from the sea" {With apologies to Botticelli) IN VAUDEVILLE plaster — in a fashion that made it easy to under- stand why John the Baptist lost his head. Maud Allen, in England, and Ruth St. Denis, in the United States, were reconciling the authorities to the nude in art, and making possible any sort of display that had dancing or diving as an ex- cuse. Annette Kellarman, attired in a bathing suit that clung to her like a poor relation, wak- ened wonderful interest in aquatic sports, while Lala Selbini showed herself to be of the opin- ion that clothing was inconsistent with good juggling, and a female person whose name es- capes me demonstrated that bare legs were a great help in playing the violin. The Princess Rajah, an "Oriental" dancer who had attracted attention at Huber's Mu- seum, journeyed to Broadway, where an excuse for her undress, and her wrigglings, was found in the faint pretence that she impersonated Cle- opatra. "Placing a snake in her bosom", read a note on the program, "she danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her." Remarkable as this behavior may seem on the part of a Ro- 321 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT man General, it was not wholly incomprehensi- ble to theatre-goers who witnessed the antics of Cleopatra. According to Rajah, the Queen of Egypt demonstrated her sorrow chiefly by seiz- ing a kitchen chair and whirling round and round with it in her teeth. Of the degeneration of vaudeville the most regrettable feature is that it has brought about no change in the character of vaudeville audi- ences. Perhaps I should say in their personnel, since their character must have been affected by all this tawdry bawdry and sensationalism. True, one or two of the down-town theaters have be- come noted for the "sporty" aspect of their au- diences, and, necessarily, all these houses have lost the patronage of women shoppers, country people and stay-at-homes that once were so as- siduously courted. Mostly, however, the crowds that flock to such performances are made up of young girls, shop assistants, and respectable mid- dle-class folk who look and listen unblushingly at sights and to sentences they would not toler- ate in their own circles. It does not seem pos- 322 "Danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her" IN VAUDEVILLE sible that this sort of thing can be without its influence upon their lives. When vaudeville was written down as "spice", however, I had in mind not so much its offences against propriety as its appeal to palates that would reject solid food. Vaudeville addresses itself to amusement seekers incapable of giving, or unwilling to give, concentrated and continuous attention. This kind of entertain- ment calls for orderliness of mind no more than does the newspaper headline. There is no se- quence of thought to be preserved, no logical procession of ideas to be kept in line; the im- pression of the moment is sufficient and supreme. Naturally, such a performance is attractive to undisciplined brains, to empty brains, and to lazy brains. You need bring to a vaudeville theater nothing but the price of admission. . It is this same asking little that has made the popularity of moving pictures. Vaudeville has about the same relation to the "theatrical business" that insurance bears to oth- er business. When a business man has failed 325 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT at everything else he tries selling insurance; when a prominent actor has "closed" twice or three times in rapid succession he "goes into vaudeville." The better element is infused with- out fusing. The regulars are inclined to look askance at these volunteers, resenting the fact that the latter use as a make-shift what they have adopted as a profession, and insisting, often not without justice, that, "while big names may draw the crowds, it is our work that holds 'em." I'm afraid the attitude of many recruits does not tend to lessen this friction. "Is there a 'star dressing room?' " a well-known prima donna inquired loftily as she entered the thea- ter where she was to make her debut in "the two a day." The juggler to whom the question was put, replied: "Yes ... for falling stars!" However, many of these "falling stars" per- form the strange astronomical feat of climbing back into the heavens. A very large number of the men and women at present heading their own companies have descended into vaudeville, 326 "You need bring to a vaudeville theatre nothing but the price of admission IN VAUDEVILLE as Antaeus occasionally descended to earth, to renew their strength. One attractive play and Mr. V. Headliner becomes Mr. Broadway Star. Robert Hilliard had been in the varieties for years when he was restored to "the legitimate" by Porter Emerson Browne's "A Fool There Was." Sarah Bernhardt, as everybody knows, appeared at a music hall in London en route to fill her latest engagement in America. Here we have no "Divine Sarah", but vaudeville has sung its siren-song successfully to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Lily Langtry, Charles Hawtrey, Hen- rietta Crosman, Henry Miller, Arnold Daly, Lillian Russell, and numberless other mimes of great reputation. This song is most aggravat- ing to producers of musical comedy, whose per- formers, when the librettist insists upon the pres- ervation of some of his text or when their names do not appear in sufficiently large type on the program, always are ready to "go into vaude- ville." A list of people at present offering one-act plays discloses no fewer than twenty actors and 329 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT actresses of recognized ability. There is Marietta Oily, who did capital work in "The Whirlwind" at Daly's, and Nat C. Goodwin, who, truth to tell, draws a big salary less because of his his- trionic than because of his matrimonial versa- tility. Frank Keenan, Edward Abies, and Mac- lyn Arbuckle, who has made a hit in Robert Davis' clever comedietta, "The Welcher", have been stars within the twelvemonth and are now in vaudeville, as are also Amelia Bingham, W. H. Thompson, Charles Richman, William Courtleigh, George Beban, Lionel Barrymore, McKee Rankin, Edwin Arden, Sam Chip and Mary Marble. Vaudeville produces its own luminaries, too — Cissie Loftus, for example, and Elsie Janis, who "did a specialty" for years be- fore she was taken up by Charles Dillingham. Many of the cleverest entertainers in the world are identified exclusively with the varie- ties. There are Yvette Guilbert, Albert Cheva- lier, Harry Lauder, and Alice Lloyd, each of whom has a following as large and apprecia- tive as that of Maude Adams or John Drew. 330 IN VAUDEVILLE Other players, less widely known, go round the circuits year after year, making themselves solid with a class of theater-goers that has come to depend upon them for half an hour of amuse- ment. Cressy and Dayne are among these, as are Mr. and Mrs. Perkins D. Fisher, Clayton White, Carrie de Mar, Irene Franklin and Tom Nawn. George Cohan's career began in vaude- ville, and no one who has owed twenty minutes of laughter to his ability as a racounteur will ever forget the late Ezra Kendal. Such men as Jesse Lasky and Joseph Hart, recognizing the opportunities of "the two a day", have made elaborate productions of what really are little musical comedies, and have presented them as part of regular variety bills. Mr. Lasky's "The Love Waltz" and "At the Country Club" were as pretentiously staged as any single act in a comic opera. It is not my desire or disposition to deny the cleverness of these people or the attractiveness of their "turns." I doubt that today the most wearied theater-goer could find a vaudeville bill 33i THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT without one or two numbers that would enter- tain him. The point is that this amusement- seeker would be obliged to take a vast quantity of chaff with his wheat, to review an endless pro- cession of clog dancers, trick bicyclists, wire walkers, trained animals, tramp comedians, acro- bats and equilibrists before coming to that part of the program which might interest him. Most of these fillers-in are notable chiefly for the awe- inspiring quality of their English, and for their persistence in performing dangerous feats that, when performed, add nothing to the sum total of human happiness, knowledge or pleasure. I haven't been able to discover why anybody should want to see a lion stand on its head, or a gentleman tie his legs in a true lovers' knot, and I shall never understand the public penchant for hearing "The Anvil Chorus" played on tin cans, since it can be played so much better on a piano. One always thinks of the wit who, being in- formed enthusiastically that some stunt or other was "very difficult", replied: "I wish it were impossible." 332 IN VAUDEVILLE The worst of the matter is that, there being comparatively few performers of merit, the same people, doing the same things, return again and again to the same theaters. I remember having seen one team of comedy acrobats, Rice and Pre- vost, seven times in the space of a single sea- son, at the end of which period I had ceased to laugh uproariously when one of the two humor- ists fell from a table and struck his face violent- ly upon the floor. Half the "turns" at the Vic- toria this Saturday may be at the Colonial next Monday, so that, unless you wish your entertain- ment, like your wine, well-aged, you would do well to make your vaudeville excursions to one theater. It is too much to expect the average variety performer to change his act more often than once in a decade, and then he is likely to retain everything that has been especially well received. Of course, you remember George Ade's friends, Zoroaster and Zendavesta, who, at the end of five years, substituted green whisk- ers for red, and advertised: "Everything New." 333 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT The managers certainly are doing their best to be rid of Zoroasters and Zendavestas. Their agents search every capital of Europe for new talent, and no one makes a hit in the music halls of London or Paris or Berlin without immedi- ately receiving an offer to come to America. Nor is there any limit to the figures mentioned in such an offer. The salaries paid, both for im- ported and for native talent, were supposed to have reached their utmost height in the palmy days of Keith and Proctor, but they have doubled since Oscar Hammerstein announced on his billboards that he was paying $1,000 a week to Marie Dressier. There are half a dozen performers now who get $2,000, and one or two who are reputed to receive even more. Any number of headliners earn five hundred dollars, or seven hundred and fifty dollars, which, you must remember, probably is in excess of the amount tucked into the yellow envelopes of Otis Skinner or Ethel Barrymore. There is one important difference between the salaries paid in vaudeville and those paid "legit- 334 "Their agents search every capital of Europe" IN VAUDEVILLE imate" players. The former cannot consider their earnings as "net", since they are obliged frequently to engage small companies, some- times numbering twelve or sixteen people, whose wages come out of the sum given their princi- pal. Variety performers defray their own trav- elling expenses, too, and those of their assist- ants, together with such other expenses as agents' fees, advertising bills, and similar inci- dentals. Formerly a great deal of time was lost in long jumps, and between engagements, but managerial combinations have considerably les- sened this waste. The successful vaudevillian rarely experiences a break in his bookings now- a-days, and, especially if his act does not depend upon acoustics, he fills out his season with roof gardens, summer parks, and perhaps a circus. Variety people make up an individual nation in the theatrical world. They have their own language, their own view-point, their own ambi- tions and grievances, besides their own clubs, hotels and newspapers. The most important of these societies are The Vaudeville Comedy Club, 337 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT which has rooms in Forty-sixth Street and gives an annual benefit, and The White Rats, an ag- gressive organization that has conducted spunky fights against greedy agents and the black- list of the United Booking Offices. The White Rats publish a weekly periodical, yclept The Player, but the real trade paper of the pro- fession is issued in a green cover and called Va- riety. The vaudeville performer — he insists upon al- luding to himself as "the artist" — actually ap- pears on the stage about forty minutes a day. His labor, however, is not quite so light as these figures make it seem. He must put on and take off his makeup afternoon and evening, and he must be in the theater during a good deal of the time that he is not engaged. Monday morning he rehearses with the orchestra, and is assigned a number on the program of the week — vaude- villians, like convicts and hotel guests, being identified by numbers. His place in the bill de- pends upon the length of his "turn", the stage room required for it, and its nature. Acts that 338 IN VAUDEVILLE can be given in front of a drop "in one" must be sandwiched between "full stage" acts, so that scenes may be set for the latter without inter- rupting the performance, and the experienced stage manager arranges his material with a keen eye to variety. As important as the star dressing room to a leading woman, as vital as full-faced type to a star is his place on the bill to a vaudevillian. By their numbers ye shall know them. Headliners are given a position midway in the entertain- ment, and insist upon it as "legitimate" actors upon the center of the stage. Minor acts open or close a show, and the prejudice against being assigned to either end is so great that many stage managers must sympathize with the Irish- man who, being informed that a large per cent- age of the victims of railway accidents are pas- sengers in the last car of the train, inquired: 'Then, bedad, why don't they leave off the last car r A layman may ask reasonably how the man- agers of variety houses are able to pay double 339 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT the salaries that prevail in other theaters, while they exact only half the price of admission. The explanation is simple. In the first place, as has been explained, they pay nothing but salaries— neither railway fares nor the cost of costumes and paraphernalia. They are not compelled to make big and expensive productions, to remu- nerate authors, or, most important of all, to split returns with the managers of theaters in which their shows are given. Hen- ry B. Harris, or Frederic Thompson, presenting "The Country Boy" or "The Spendthrift" at the Chestnut Street Opera House, Philadelphia, or the National Theater, Washington, must di- vide equally, or nearly equally, with the lessees of those places of amusement. The vaudeville impressario assembles his own show in his own theater, and takes the entire amount paid in at the box office. Even in these times, an exceed- ingly good bill can be put together for $3,000, and, if the running expenses of the theatre are $2,000, there remains a wide margin of profit. The United Booking Offices, which do busi- 340 IN VAUDEVILLE ness at 1495 Broadway, is as complete a trust as any in America. The "offices" are maintained by a combination that includes all the powerful vaudeville managers, and all the big vaudeville circuits, from New York to San Francisco. There has been sporadic opposition, like that recently made by William Morris, who had the American and Plaza Music Halls in New York and a few others throughout the country, but the end of this opposition always has been com- promise or defeat. Performers claim that they are not permitted to play for rival managements under pain of being placed on the dread "black- list", and that, once so placed, they may as well retire from the business. Whether this be true or not — it probably is true — and however high- handed the conduct of the combination, the ob- server must concede that business-like system, economical methods and complete order have been established by the United Booking Of- fices. This combination includes the Hammersteins, father and son, who have the Victoria Theater in 341 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT New York; Percy Williams, who controls the Colonial, the Alhambra, the Bronx, and two the- aters in Brooklyn; B. F. Keith, who operates theaters in the metropolis, in Boston, in Phila- delphia, and in Providence; and the heads of great circuits like the Orpheum, and Sullivan and Considine's. There are eight handsome vaudeville theaters on Manhattan Island, not counting the burlesque houses and the places at which moving pictures form a large part of the bill, and it is easy to estimate that, if each of these holds fifteen hundred persons at a per- formance, twenty-four thousand men, women and children witness a variety entertainment every week in New York. This estimate does not include the "sacred concerts", which, in spite of clerical and legal opposition, continue to flourish. On the Sabbath, apparently, the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of song and dance, and every vaudeville theater in town runs full blast on Sunday. However bitterly their success may be resent- ed, it is to the newcomers, to the recruits from the 342 IN VAUDEVILLE "legitimate", that vaudeville owes its steady ad- vancement. One may sympathize with the acro- bat who, after a life time spent in acquiring proficiency in his specialty, sees the big salaries being paid to men who devoted a week to re- hearsing some sketch, and who couldn't turn a handspring to save their souls. The fact re- mains that vaudeville's claim to the considera- tion of intelligent people rests largely upon these tabloid comedies and dramas. The vogue of such clever little plays as "At the Telephone", "The Man From the Sea", "Circumstantial Ev- idence", "In Old Edam", "When Pat Was King", "The Welcher" and "The Flag Station" — which, by the way, was written by Eugene Walter, author of "The Easiest Way"— marks a step forward in the possibilities of "the two a day." It enables such men as Will Cressy, whose whole output has been of sketches, to venture upon higher ground, and it banishes more surely the mixture of buffoonery and maudlin sentiment that formerly passed as play- lets. 343 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT The progress made in this sort of entertain- ment is indicated by the unequivocal success of Frank Keenan in "The Oath", an intense little tragedy, founded upon a theme used by Lope de Vega. Only ten years ago this same Frank Keenan suffered complete lack of appreciation of his fine work in an adaptation of Poe's "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather/' Many well-made sketches, logically planned and skillfully written, still owe their presence in vau- deville wholly to the reputation of their stars. "The Walsingham", as Walsingham Potts used to say in Madison Morton's farce of "A Regu- lar Fix", "is a sort of guava jelly in which you swallow the bitter pill, Potts." Other one act dramas of great merit fail altogether. London successes like "The Monkey's Paw", and Paris successes, like "The Submarine" and "After the Opera", have ended miserably in New York. Such authors as Clyde Fitch have seen their work retired after a fortnight's trial. Two tabloid pieces, "Dope" and "By-Products", from the pen of Joseph Medill Patterson, auth- 344 IN VAUDEVILLE or of "The Fourth Estate", after scoring tri- umphs of esteem in Chicago, have not been given bookings in the East. It is not yet true that any three one-act plays in vaudeville, if given continuity and put together, would make a pass- able three act play, but there are optimists among us who feel that that time will come. We be- lieve that, without being less entertaining, less diversified, or less easily enjoyed, vaudeville will come to be made up of fewer "Jewish" or "Irish" comedians, fewer "sister acts", fewer trained seals, and a greater number of people who have something really clever to offer in song or speech or impersonation. The place of the tabloid drama is secure, since it bears the same relation to the ordinary drama that the short story does to the novel. One day we shall have a Theatre Antoine or a Theatre des Capucines in New York. The popularity of the short play, with all its opportunities for skillful construction and good acting, will fol- low as the night the day. The nudities and lewdities of last year and this are but a passing 345 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT phase. Whatever vaudeville was in the past, or is in the present, it offers endless promise for the future. 346 >> WITH THE PEOPLE "IN STOCK Concerning Camille, ice cream, spirituality, red silk tights, Blanche Bates, Thomas Betterton, second-hand plays, pa- rochialism, matinee girls, Augustin Daly, and other inter- esting topics. HY is a resident theatrical organ- ization known as a stock com- pany?" Blanche Bates repeated after me one afternoon when she was playing in 'The Dancing Girl" at the Columbia Theater, Washington. "Simply because the people in it work like horses." Miss Bates, whose name at that time prob- ably was as unfamiliar to David Belasco as any word in Arabic, knew whereof she spoke. She had been for several seasons with T. Daniel Frawley in San Francisco, she had had four roles and a row with Augustin Daly inside of two months in New York, and finally she had cast her lot with a combination that was whiling away the summer months by producing a new piece 347 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT every week in the hottest city in America. Af- ter a little time I'm going to tell you just what labor is involved in producing a new — or, rath- er, a different— piece every week. For the pres- ent, suffice it to say that Miss Bates' witticism was founded on a whimsical view of facts, and that the modern stock company is exclusively re- sponsible for the existence of that amazing anom- aly, a hard-working actor. Most actors are kept fairly busy three weeks each year, that period being devoted to rehears- ing the one play in which they appear during the course of a season. Throughout the remainder of eight months they are actually occupied about four hours per diem, and at the end of these eight months they count on having four months for rest, recreation and relaxation. This is not at all true of the man or woman "in stock", who, in the language of the street, "is on the job" twenty-four hours a day and, when there is spe- cial need of exertion, gets up an hour earlier in the morning to make it twenty-five. The great bulk of New York theater-goers, 348 "Known as a stock company because the people in it work like horses" WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK with the parochialism that characterizes them, know practically nothing about stock companies. Perhaps, the chief reason of this is that within the memory of man they never have had fewer than five at one time. Stock companies in Phil- adelphia or Boston they might have studied at long distance as curious institutions, but never stock companies so unappealingly near as Fifty- eighth Street and Lexington Avenue. Your blithe Broadwayite leaves such places of amusement to the people in their neighborhood, and sticks to musical comedy in the vicinity of Times Square. Broadway used to keep close track of stock companies when the two Frohmans had fine or- ganizations at the old Lyceum and at the Em- pire — when John Drew and Henry Miller and Georgia Cayvan were seen in such new pieces as "The Grey Mare" and "The Charity Ball." Fifth Avenue is beginning to re-make an ac- quaintance with the scheme of resident or- ganizations, through the medium of that at the New Theatre, and Charles Frohman re- cently has announced his intention of estab- 35i THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT lishing an important stock company under the directorship of William Gillette. This announce- ment brings with it high hopes; the very sug- gestion calls to mind the departed glories, not only of the Empire and the Lyceum, but of the Union Square, Daly's, and the Madison Square. The stock company with which we have be- come familiar of late has been a very different kind of affair. Its field has been limited, and the purpose of its managers merely the giving of old plays at popular prices. If you have been in the world long enough to learn that whatever is cheap in price is cheap in quality — that no mer- chant deliberately sells at a loss — you will have little difficulty in understanding that, with rare exceptions, the performances offered have been mediocre. Sixteen, eighteen or twenty fairly competent actors and actresses are' formed into a cast that prepares a different play every week in its season. The plays generally have had their day in the hands of regular travel- ing organizations. It is not often that the result has in it more than three letters from the word 352 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK "artistic." Such aggregations have held forth in Gotham at various times on the stages of the American, the Fifty-eighth Street, the One Hun- dred and Twenty-fifth Street, the Yorkville, the Fifth Avenue, the Murray Hill, the West End, the Plaza, and other theaters. They used to be particularly indigenous to that portion of our metropolitan soil known as Harlem, but now are confined almost entirely to Brooklyn. This brand of stock company, which we may as well label "The Contemporary Brand", had its origin in some large Eastern city where an enterprising theatrical manager planned to pro- vide summer amusement for such of his patrons as wanted to stay in town through the hot weath- er — and for the husbands of those who didn't. The traveling troupes had all shut up for a few months, so this manager was obliged to form an organization of his own. I'll bet that, at the same time, he originated the story about install- ing a pipe system for distributing cool air throughout his house — a pleasant little Christian Science lie that since has become classic. How- 353 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ever that may be, the venture paid. Imitation is called initiative in the theatrical business, and the following year there were fifty "summer stock companies." Then somebody discovered that these combinations, playing at low prices, had attracted a clientele of their own, that they drew people whose purses would not permit their visiting the best theaters, and whose taste stood between them and the other houses. So somebody else tried running a stock company all through the season, and succeeded. Within a little time there were enterprises of this sort in most cities of the size of Pittsburg or Cincinnati ; then they crept into towns like Hartford and Providence; now-a-days any village populous enough to boast of two saloons, a church and a dry goods store has also its opera house and its stock company. In the big cities these aggregations of histri- onic talent generally offer a fresh play every week; in some of the smaller places two are giv- en in the course of seven days. One play a week is the usual thing, however, and the amount of labor it involves is stupendous. Not only must 354 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK that one play be prepared in the time mentioned, but simultaneously the company must be thinking of and acting another play — that already being performed for the benefit of the public. Dr. Doran, in his "Annals of the Stage", speaks of the hard work accomplished by actors in the Eighteenth Century, when Thomas Betterton "created a number of parts never equaled by any subsequent actor — namely, one hundred and thirty." The good doctor, who waxes quite en- thusiastic over Betterton, adds: "In some single seasons he studied and represented no less than eight original parts — an amount of labor that would shake the nerves of the stoutest among us now." Dr. Doran's esteemed friend, Master Betterton, probably would have had his own nerves a good deal shaken had he found himself in this year of our Lord 191 1 — say at the Chest- nut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. Vitcory Bateman, a charming actress whose health recently was reported to be seriously af- fected by the strain of the work she had done in stock companies, played twenty leading roles 355 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT in five months. Of these and the number of words in each she gives the following account in a book she wrote in collaboration with Ada Patterson : Mrs. Winthrop in "Young Mrs. Winthrop" 7,000 Floradilla in "A Fool's Re- venge" 6,750 Louise in "The Two Orphans" 7,250 Cecile in "David Laroque" . . . . 6,500 Adrienne in "A Celebrated Case" 7>°°° Camille in "Camille" 7i300 Carmen in "Carmen" 7,200 Portia in "Julius Caesar" 6,500 Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". 7,500 Ruth in "The Wages of Sin" . . 6,000 Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet" . . . 7,500 Dora in "Diplomacy" 6,900 Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" 7>6oo Ophelia in "Hamlet" 7,000 356 •<■ <, fcoas^E MONIV TUESI 1FW7GD ©I ^ nn WEDN r 1 ^i A gf "Master Betterton would have had his nerves a good deal shaken" WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK Mrs. Gregory Graxin in "The Tragedy" 6,500 Desdemona in "Othello" 7,000 Alice in "In Spite of All" 7,500 Frou-Frou in "Frou-Frou". . . . 7,000 Vera in "Moths" 6,000 Roxane in "Cyrano" 8,000 Total 140,000 words Some of the details of this statement strike me as being erroneous. I do not believe, for example, that Roxane is a longer part than Ju- liet. One thing I do not doubt — that the aver- age stock leading woman learns 140,000 words in a season. And 140,000 words, we must un- derstand, are the number contained in two fair- sized novels or "fourteen pages of a large news- paper." The mere statement that so much matter has to be committed to memory does not give a fair idea of the amount of work that has to be ac- complished by the actor or the actress — espe- 359 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT cially the actress — under these conditions. In addition to learning each role she must rehearse it. These rehearsals will occupy every morning of the six days whose afternoons and evenings are devoted to the public performance of anoth- er part. In addition, the actress must figure on giving time to dressmakers, since each character must be properly costumed; to wig makers and to allegedly unavoidable social duties. The in- evitable result is a crudity and carelessness in the interpretation of plays that would not be toler- ated by any theater-goers in the world except those that do tolerate it. This can be better understood when one learns that the average time spent in the preparation of a piece to run in New York is something like three weeks— three weeks in which the players have nothing else to occupy their minds. The members of the ordinary stock company scarcely pretend to know their lines before the third repetition of the comedy or drama in hand. John Findlay, a fine old actor, used to complain to me that always he "had just begun to under- 360 l(M hi "The actress must figure on giving time to dressmakers" WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK stand what a piece was about when they took it off and put on another." I remember an amus- ing incident in connection with a rendering of a certain light comedy by a stock company in Bal- timore. A scene in this comedy was divided between two men, one of them seated at a desk and the other standing before that article of furniture with his hat in his hand. Both actors having forseen opportunities of concealing their manuscripts where they could see them and the audience could not, neither had learned a single word of the dialogue. The first player had his part on the desk; the second hid it in his hat. But the second man had forgotten that, at a critical moment, the office boy was supposed to take that hat. The moment arrived, the boy took the hat, and the unlucky Thespian, at his wits' end, could think of nothing better to do than read the remainder of his speeches over the shoulder of his colleague. Opening nights with stock companies would be dreadful affairs, but for that kindly provision of Fate, "the old stock actor." There usually 363 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT are three or four of this man and woman In an organization, and each of the three or four, at one time or another, has played nearly every part known to his or her "line of business." Your "old stock actor", who need not be old as to years, will be familiar with half the roles en- trusted to him or her in a season, so that a lit- tle study serves to prompt recollection of the lines, and even such memory of details as may be of great assistance when communicated to the stage director. Unfortunately, scenery and other accessories cannot share this advantage. The small town stock company possesses eight or ten regular settings and a scene painter, whose efforts usu- ally are confined to retouching shabby spots on the canvas and to coloring furniture, cannon, trees and similar trifles. Occasionally he paints new wall paper and pictures, which, with the blessed aid of the stage carpenter, who can change windows from left to right and doors from right to left, transform the banquet hall of some Roman noble (Period 40 B. C.) to the 364 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK front room of a Harlem apartment (Period 191 1 A. D.) A week doesn't allow much time for accuracy, and mine eyes have seen the tent of Mark Antony electric lighted, Louis XVI chairs in the palace of Macbeth, and a Queen Ann cottage occupied by Shylock and his daugh- ter Jessica. When melo-drama is produced worse horrors than this are likely to intrude themselves upon first nights. Balky locomotives will refuse to run over prostrate heroines, and I once witnessed a premier matinee of "The Gunner's Mate" at which the jib boom displayed a most distressing penchant for knocking off the helmet of the ship's Captain. Stage management frequently is responsible for even worse blunders. The theater-goers who frequent the homes of stock companies — they are, for the most part, wives of sign painters and journeyman printers — don't seem to mind things of this sort in the least. Early in the season they begin to pick fa- vorites in the organization, and they follow the annual progress of such play-acting pilgrims with 365 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT great care. The value of a man or woman to his or her stock company depends largely upon his or her personal following, and I have known leading men to be so sure of this following that, upon being dismissed, they have harangued crowds on the street in front of their theaters. This very episode, by the way, occurred only a few years ago in New York. Matinee idols achieve popularity, not accord- ing to their own deserts, but according to the he- roism of the folk they impersonate in the course of a season. It might be estimated safely that one opportunity at Sydney Carton, one at Ar- mand Duval, and one at Romeo would establish the least prepossessing of leading men in the marshmallowy affections of the stock company matinee girl. These young women and their neighbors have singularly distorted ideas of good acting, and their partizanship makes them blind to the imperfections of their favorite players. In Brooklyn it used to be a common thing to hear that Cecil Spooner was much better than Mrs. Leslie Carter as Zaza, and a little time ago 366 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK Pittsburg did not hesitate to put Sarah Truax above Mrs. Fiske for her impersonation of Nora. The manager who successfully pilots a stock company through the shoals and shallows of forty weeks must have uncommon perspicacity. Not alone must he secure players who are likely to become popular, but, more important still, he must select plays that will appeal to all of his patrons all of the time. Too much tragedy and he is quite sure to lose the men in his gallery; too much comedy and the girls in the orchestra begin to thin out. Then, too, his purse must be considered. The rental of popular plays is high. When first the piece was released for stock the royalties asked for "Peter Pan" were a thousand dollars per week. Few plays bring as much as this, but royalties rarely are under one hundred dollars and generally range between two hundred and fifty and four hundred. Of course, there are many dramatic works whose age makes them anybody's property, and the skillful manager balances his profit and loss 367 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT neatly by sandwiching these in with the costly ones. When you see that your pet stock com- pany is to follow "Salomy Jane" with "Camille" you may be sure that its manager is evening up matters on his books. The same degree of skill that is required in other theatrical advertising is required of the man who conducts a stock company. Various odd schemes have been tried with effect, the best seeming to be that of giving things away. There are now various theaters at which food and drink is served between acts, generally eliciting real evidences of appreciation. Personally, I cannot see how a bad performance of "Too Much Johnson" with ice cream would be more endura- ble than the same performance without, but ap- parently this failure on my part indicates a unique state of mind. Receptions on the stage, at which the public meets the players, have proved an attraction, and they have the addi- tional merit of helping to establish the necessary entente cordiale. The distribution of actors' photographs, the inauguration of guessing and 368 ®&m t b^0®ffi "Evening up matters on his books" WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK voting contests, and similar features, keep alert the brain of the man at the helm of the small town "stock." To the most casual reader even this very casual article must have made apparent the dis- advantages of the average resident aggregation. First among these, perhaps, is the impossibility of producing new plays under a system which re- quires the presentation of fresh material so fre- quently. A new play cannot possibly be re- hearsed in a week. This is a misfortune to the company, which must develop its best talent in unhackneyed vehicles; a misfortune to the pub- lic, which must tire of seeing second-handed com- edies and tragedies; and most of all a misfor- tune to the inner circle of theatrical folk, to whom the stock organization should offer un- rivalled opportunities for the quick and inexpen- sive testing of untried manuscripts. Since new plays are not within the range of these organizations, it seems a pity that they cannot be allowed more leisurely preparation of the old. Performances never can be good, much 37i THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT less artistic, while they are made ready as rapidly as is necessary at present. Neither can they be good so long as a certain small body of peo- ple must divide among them whatever parts of- fer, regardless of equipment or natural tenden- cies. Because Minnie Jones is suited to the in- genue role in this week's farce it does not fol- low that she will be ideal in the ingenue role of the tragedy done next week. We hear that this sort of thing means excel- lent histrionic training, but there is no law com- pelling audiences to attend training schools, and the results of putting square pegs into any old sort of hole are often too ludicrous. It is appalling to reflect that the lady who plays ' Mrs. Micawber today may be cast for Du Bar- ry tomorrow. I remember one poor little girl who had been engaged to "do" soubrettes at the National Theater, Washington. She was a charming little thing, and for a whole season she successfully met all comers of her weight and age. In "Esmeralda" I recall having thought her the most ethereal of women. Two weeks later 372 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK she became the comic opera star in "All the Comforts of Home," and I discovered that what was spirituality in "Esmeralda" became emacia- tion in red silk tights. Much as I have harped on the disadvantages of the stock company, I believe most solemnly that its advantages are over-balancing. Even bad bread is better for the system than good whiskey, and a crude performance of "Romeo and Juliet" is to be preferred to the best possi- ble performance of "The Girl and the Outlaw." The prices for these "attractions" are about the same, and the people who now go to see "Romeo and Juliet" are precisely the people who other- wise would go to see "The Girl and the Out- law." Slowly but surely, even the current stock company interpretations educate the taste of theater-lovers, until they begin asking for bet- ter things, and, seeking, find. In addition, there seems no doubt that these organizations provide exceptional schooling for young actors, who, by their aid, play two or three hundred parts in a period during which otherwise they 373 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT would play five. It has been urged against this that they also acquire habits of haste and care- lessness, but I always have found actors with stock experience superior to those without it. The consequence of this particular phase of the stock system must be of inestimable value to the theater in America. Then, too, it is a kind of interchangeable cause and effect that the quality of stock perform- ances improves with the taste of their patrons. Of late years, fewer autographed photographs have been distributed among audiences, and more money has been spent in the painting of proper scenery. Manner has been less frequently re- quired for stage receptions, and more frequently for drawing room drama. The combination of several organizations under one management, like that of the Baker Chain, in Seattle, Port- land and Spokane, with consequent possibili- ties of reciprocal borrowing, has accomplished wonders in the way of betterment. "Out West", where touring companies are rarer than this side of the Missouri, and where 374 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK metropolitan successes arrive tardily, notably fine stock aggregations have come largely to take the place of visiting stars. There are two excellent companies located in Los Angeles, and I have heard that the superiority of their performances has seriously injured the business of the "first class" theaters. John Blackwood, at the Belasco, and Oliver Morosco, at the Burbank, make com- plete productions of every piece offered, and often they are able to give Los Angelites their first view of some much-discussed triumph of Broadway. In such cases, it is not unusual for the play to last six or eight weeks, and George Broadhurst's "The Dollar Mark", initially pre- sented at the Belasco, had a longer run there than in New York. It will be seen at once how such public support enables a company to be worthier of support — a kind of beneficent perpetual mo- tion. While the East is not yet so far advanced, nor so nearly rid of the stock company that has been made typical in this article, there are fine organ- izations in half a dozen of our larger cities. It 375, THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT can be only a matter of time before enforced haste and economy in staging stock performances will disappear before the demands of a more and more enlightened clientele. There will be a greater number of rehearsals and a smaller num- ber of matinees. The people who patronize these presentations now will have got ahead in the world, and will be able and willing to pay more generously for their entertainment, and it is to be hoped that the people who turned to moving pictures from cheap melodrama— which, in its whilom prosperity, we are to consider in our next chapter — in due time may turn from mov- ing pictures to adequate representations of clas- sic, standard and popular plays. All this will come in the nature of evolution. The movement will be accelerated if Charles Frohman keeps his promise of giving us in New York such a stock company as his brother main- tained at the old Lyceum, and which, at the same time, included Edward J. Morgan, William Courtleigh, George C. Boniface, Mary Man- nering, Elizabeth Tyree, Mrs. Charles Walcot, 376 WITH THE PEOPLE IN STOCK Hilda Spong, Grant Stewart, Mrs. Thomas Whiffen, and John Findlay. 377 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH THE GODS Being an old manuscript with a new preface — the former dealing with a lost art, and the latter subtly suggesting who lost it. THE article that fills the following pages was written in 1905. Origin- ally printed as a protest and a proph- ecy, it is reprinted here as history. Melodrama is dead. It died of poor circula- tion and failure of the box office receipts. There were no flowers, and there need be no regrets. Neither is there reason to fear resuscitation. I should like to think that popular priced melodrama had been killed by a general desire for better things. That, however, is not the case. The death blow was struck when the in- ventor of moving pictures supplied a form of entertainment that demanded even less of the spectator than had been demanded by such classics as "Through Death Valley" and "The 378 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS Millionaire and the Policeman's Wife." The people who patronized these plays are not now patronizing worthier plays; they are attending performances that appeal to them wholly through the medium of the eye. Of the seven theaters mentioned in this article at present three are devoted to moving pictures, two to burlesque, one to vaudeville, and one to drama in Yiddish. A few cheap companies are presenting melodrama in the provinces, but not a single place of amusement shelters it in New York. Requiescat in pace. "Sitting in Judgment With the Gods" is re- published as a contemporary opinion of a lost art. It was my intention to alter the wording somewhat, substituting more recent examples for those mentioned, but I found the result was apt to be like a history of Rome brought "up-to- date" by introducing gattling guns at the Bat- tle of Pharsalius. So here is the story as it was set down in the beginning, and may you find amusement in reading it. 379 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Melodrama, according to my dictionary, is "a dramatic performance, usually tragic, in which songs are introduced." The encyclopedia adds that the name was bestowed first upon ''the opera by Rinuccini", and that it was derived from two Greek words meaning song and drama. This is extremely awesome and im- pressive, but I'm afraid I can't allow you to accept it as applying to offerings in our popu- lar-priced places of amusement. Melodrama isn't a bit like that in New York. It was the dictionary that started me on a tour of investigation which comprehended vis- its to all of the seven theaters in town that habit- ually present melodrama. There are so many classes of people in this big city, and each class has so many characteristic ways of working and playing, that no one hundredth of the popula- tion can be expected to know how any other one hundredth lives. The men and women who go to see "Man and Superman" don't go to see "No Mother to Guide Her", and I think I am quite safe in saying that most of the men and 380 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS women who witness "No Mother to Guide Her" are conspicuous by their absence at "Man and Superman." Sitting in judgment with the gods leaves me in doubt as to why the latter part of this state- ment should be true. The plays of the "No Mother to Guide Her" type are so hopelessly bad, so obviously false, so absolutely vicious, that it is hard to comprehend a mind that can prefer them, if not to "Man and Superman", at least to such better melodramas as "The Lion and the Mouse" or "The Squaw Man." The matter of money is no explanation at all. Harry and Harriet might have excellent seats in the balcony of the Lyceum or Wallack's for the price of orchestra chairs at the American, and, if it comes to pride, what choice is there between the gallery, politely disguised as "the second balcony," of the Belasco, and a box at the Thalia? Melodrama today not only differs from the melodrama of day-be fore-yesterday defined in the dictionary, but it differs too from the melo- 38i THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT drama of yesterday. Bartley Campbell and Dion Boucicault have given way to Theodore Kremer and Martin Hurley, while sterling old plays like "Siberia" and "The Octoroon" have been supplanted by such monstrosities as "Why Girls Leave Home" and "Too Proud to Beg." Our dramatic literature knows no finer exam- ples of play-building than "The Two Orphans" and "The Rommany Rye", but these pieces are popular no longer with the people who fre- quent the Fourteenth Street and the Third Avenue. Fading interest in works of that kind led to a falling off in the patronage of "popular- priced" houses which was arrested only by an immediate appeal to the lowest and basest pas- sions of which mankind is capable. It is on the power of pandering to these passions that the present vogue of melodrama is founded. Emile Zola, that great photographer of souls, would have found in a visit to one of New York's low-priced theaters unlimited scope for analysis of character, comment on decay, and description of dirt and squalor. The Murray 382 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS Hill Theater, the Third Avenue, the Thalia, the American and the Metropolis, five of the seven local places of amusement given up to sensational plays, are relics of in- finitely better days. The Thalia was known formerly as the Bowery Theater, and its stage has supported nearly all the great actors of an earlier time. McKee Rankin, in his palmiest period, directed the fortunes of the Third Avenue, while each of the other three houses was intended originally for the best class of productions. The New Star, alone among buildings of its class, has no history except that it is making now. The Thalia, where I began my travels, is full of contrasts. Evidences of departed grandeur elbow old dirt and new gaudiness. In the lob- by, with its marble floor and lofty ceiling, stand hard-faced officials in uniforms that glitter with gold braid. Lithographic representations of various kinds of crime and violence hang on the walls, advertising the attraction to follow that holding the boards. The auditorium is archi- 383 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT tecturally stately and old fashioned, bearing an outline resemblance to the colosseum at Rome. The ground floor is a succession of steps, on each of which is a row of seats, while three balconies of horse-shoe shape afford opportuni- ties to the patron whose financial limit is ten, twenty or thirty cents. There are queer little boxes on either side of the stage, which slopes perceptibly and has in its middle a prompter's hood — survival of the days when parts were so long, and so many had to be learned each week, that no actor could be trusted out of sight of the man with the manuscript. The Thalia is a theatrical anachronism, dilapidated, decay- ed and degraded. It is a royal sepulchre con- taining rags and old iron, a family mansion utilized as a boarding house, a Temple of Thes- pis managed by "Al" Woods and devoted, on the night of my visit, to the representation of a stirring comedy drama in five acts, entitled "Lured From Home." The audiences at the Thalia are composed principally of peddlers, 'longshoremen and girls 384 "The Thalia's stage has supported nearly all the great actors of an earlier time" SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS from the sweat shops. Farther up town one sees sailors and mechanics, with a sprinkling of families large enough, numerically and physi- cally, to delight Roosevelt. Everywhere small boys abound and Jews predominate. Perched aloft in the gallery, one picks out scores of types and observes dozens of humorous incidents. Down town there were men who took off their coats and kept on their hats, probably for no better reason than that they were supposed to do neither. A fat negress sat next to a loudly dressed shop girl, who was too absorbed to draw the color line while the performance was in pro- gress, but glared furiously between acts. The contention that the Third Avenue is " a family theater" was supported by a mother who nursed her baby whenever the curtain was down and the lights up. Two precocious youths discussed the "form" of certain horses that were to race next day, while their "best goils", one on either side, alternately stared at each other and at their programs. Reference to this bill of the play, printed by the same firm that supplies pro- 387 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT grams for the better class of theaters, dis- closed the fact that a large part of the pamphlet was devoted to articles on "What the Man Will Wear" and "Chafing Dish Suggestions." It seemed to me that these indicated utter lack of a sense of humor on the part of publisher and manager. "The Man" at the Third Avenue probably wears whatever is cheapest, and I can't fancy the woman feeling a keen interest in oyster pan toast or orange mousse. Barring a little difference in millinery and a difference of opinion as to the indispensability of neckwear, the audiences at all these theaters are very much alike. They read pink papers assid- uously before the play begins and eat industri- ously throughout the intermissions. Melo- drama seems to affect the American appetite much as does an excursion. You may have no- ticed that lunches appear the moment a pleasure trip begins, and every cessation of histrionic ac- tion at a popular-priced house is a signal for the munching of apples, candy, pop-corn, pea- nuts or chewing gum. Most of the material for 388 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS these feasts is furnished by small boys who be- gin the evening selling "song books" and con- clude it dispensing provisions. Just as the orchestra emerges from under the stage the merchant appears, taking his place at the foot of an aisle and unburdening his soul of a care- fully prepared announcement. "I wish to call your attention for just about a few minutes to the company's 'song book' ", he commences. These volumes invariably are marked down from ten to five cents, and, for good measure, the ven- dor throws in an old copy of The Police Ga- zette. Sweets are his stock in trade between acts, though one also has the pleasure of hear- ing him announce: "Now, friends, I've a pos- tal card guaranteed to make you laugh with- out any trouble." Reserve is not a characteristic of these gath- erings. They hiss steamily at what they are pleased to consider evil, and applaud with equal heartiness that which seems to them good. Es- pecially remarkable instances of virtue also bring out shrill whistles, verbal comment and the 389 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT stamping of feet. The management maintains in the gallery a play censor with a club, who knocks loudly against the railing when he feels that these evidences of approval are passing bounds. What would not your two dollar im- pressario give if he could transplant this en- thusiasm to Broadway? How gladly Charles Frohman or Henry W. Savage would trade his surfeited first night audience for one of those which requires only an heroic speech to wear out its individual hands in frenzied applause ! They are a queer, child-like lot — the people who compose the clientele of the Murray Hill and the Third Avenue. Intermissions have to be made short for them, because they have not the patience to wait for setting scenery, and he would be an intrepid dramatist who would put sufficient faith in the intensity of a situation to trust to its keeping them quiet in the dark. To an assembly at the Thalia the turning out of the lights for the husband's confession in "The Climbers" would have proved only an oppor- tunity for making weird noises without danger 390 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS of being "spotted" by the "bouncer." Their tastes are primitive and their sympathies ele- mental. They have no time for fine distinctions between right and wrong; a character is good to them or it is bad, and there's an end to the matter. Ready and waiting with their pity, one cannot help believing that they feel only on the surface, since they are quite able to forget the tragedy of one moment in the com- edy of the next. I have seen them sob like babies at the death of a child in the play and break into uproarious laughter a second later at the intrusion of the soubrette. Their preju- dices are explicable, but unexpectedly strong, favoring the unfortunate under any circum- stances and finding vent in bitter hatred of the prosperous. They are the natural enemies of the police officer, and, by the same token, friends to the cracksman or the convict who expresses a particle of decency. Physical heroism is the only kind these men and women recognize, and emphasis rather than ethics influences their ver- dict on questions of virtue and vice. Appar- 393 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT ently the element of surprise is not a dramatic requisite with them, since every habitual play- goer of their class must know by heart every melodramatic theme in existence, together with its incidents and its outcome. Undivided in their approval of the noble and their disap- proval of the ignoble, one soon learns that their ideas on the subject are theories not intended for practice. The man who most loudly ap- plauds defence of a woman on the stage is not always above disciplining his wife vigorously when he gets home. "Zash right!" I heard an inebriate call to a melodramatic hero who had spurned the glass offered him. "Zash right! Don't you tush it!" I have said that the stories and situations of melodrama must be familiar to the folk who at- tend such performances, and I speak advisedly. One melodrama is as much like another as are two circuses. Drifting into the American one night just as the players were indulging them- selves in that walk before the curtain which is their traditional method of acknowledging a 394 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS "call", I might easily have mistaken the prin- cipal pedestrians for the characters I had seen fifteen minutes before at the Third Avenue. There they were without exception — the sailor- hero, the wronged heroine in black, the high- hatted villain, the ragged child, the short-skirted soubrette, the police officer, the apple woman, the negro and the comic Jew. Some of these types, notably the apple woman and the negro, are as old as melodrama, while others are but recently borrowed from vaudeville. Whatever their origin, they are the handy puppets of the man who writes this kind of play; identified the moment they step on the stage and hissed or applauded according to the conduct expected of them. This sameness of character is paralleled by a sameness of dialogue that is amazing. Few melodramatic heroes do very much to justify their popularity, but all of them have a pugilis- tic fondness for talking about what they are going to do. Certain phrases favored by this class of playwright have been used so often that 395 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT the most casual theater-goer will be able to re- call them. "I can and will", "my child", "stand back", "on his track", "do your worst", "you are no longer a son of mine" and "if he knew all" are convenient terms for expressing a vari- ety of violent emotions. Most of them mean nothing specific, and herein lies their recommen- dation. It is so much easier to say "if he knew all" than to figure out precisely what part of a purple past is of sufficient theatrical value to be dilated upon in a speech. Apropos of purple pasts and of heroines in black, it is worthy of note that propriety in the hue of one's garb is another of the inviolable conventions in the cheap theaters. Olga Neth- ersole probably thought she was doing a won- derfully original thing some years ago when she announced that she would wear various col- ors to typify the regeneration of Camille, but a chromatic index to character antedates the English actress by many decades. To anybody acquainted with sensational plays a white dress means innocence, a black dress suffering and a 396 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS red dress guilt just as infallibly as the cigarette habit had a penchant for sitting on the arms of chairs indicates utter depravity in a female. If you told an Eighth Avenue amusement-lover that good women sometimes smoke and often sit on the arms of chairs he wouldn't believe you. With puppets and speeches to be had ready- made, the receipt for writing a melodrama would not seem to be particularly complicated. The favorite story for a piece of this sort con- cerns two men — one poor and good, the other wealthy and bad — who love the same girl. For that reason and because the hero "stands be- tween" him and "a fortune", the villain plans to "get him out of the way." The soubrette saves the intended victim from death, the would-be assassin is disgraced, and the play "ends happily." There may be a dozen varia- tions of this theme, such as an effort to send the hero to prison "for another's crime", but, until managers found a gold mine in the lechery of their low-browed patrons, it formed the central thread of four offerings out of five. The stock 397 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT plot now-a-days is the frustration of sundry at- tempts to sell women to waiting despoilers; the dramatization of what the newspapers describe, hideously enough, as "white slavery." This is an unpleasant subject in any form, but the part it plays in current melodrama is so gross and evil that I shall risk referring to it again in an- other paragraph. The "fortune" that serves as bone of conten- tion in the tale related above never happens to be less than a million. Such trifling sums as fif- ty thousand pounds or a hundred thousand dol- lars are given very little consideration in melo- drama. Everyone of importance lives in a "mansion" and carries about huge rolls of greenbacks. When the villain tries to murder the hero he resists the temptation to stab or shoot him quickly and quietly, having found the expedient of binding him across a railway track or throwing his insensible body on a feed belt more conducive to a thrilling rescue. Hand- made murder has no place in melodrama; all reputable scoundrels do their killing by machin- 398 'All reputable scoundrels do their killing by machinery" SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS ery. The strongest situation possible in the sen- sational play is that in which the comedienne flags the train or stops the belt. Next to this "big scene" is the inevitable encounter between the villain with a knife, the unarmed hero, and the heroine, who arrives with a revolver at what Joseph Cawthorne calls "the zoological mo- ment." I have seen the superiority of the pis- tol over the dagger demonstrated five times in a single melodrama, yet the villain never seems to profit by experience. One would think he would learn to carry a "gun", just as one would think that the hero would learn not to leave his coat where stolen bills might be placed in the pockets, but the playwrights of the popular- priced theaters seem to model their people on the dictum of Oscar Wilde, who said: "There are two kinds of women — the good women, who are stupid, and the bad women, who are dan- gerous." Notwithstanding their crass improb- abilities, many melodramas of the better sort are interesting and not without occasional evi- dences of clumsy originality and crude strength. 401 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT I enjoyed eight or ten genuine thrills in the course of my tour of inspection. If I was thrilled ten times, however, I was sickened and disgusted a thousand times at the appeal to low animalism that has become the dominant factor in these houses. Remembering the legal obstacles put in the path of "Mrs. Warren's Profession," I could not help wonder- ing whether the Comstockians wear blinders that shut from their view everything East and West of Broadway. Even if their mental har- ness includes this visage-narrowing accoutre- ment it is difficult to understand why the bill- boards scattered about town have not indicated to these censors the trend of the popular-priced theaters. Do not the titles of the pieces pre- sented indicate the truth of the situation? What may one suppose is the character of such plays as "Her First False Step", "Dealers in White Women", "Why Women Sin", "Queen of the White Slaves" and "New York by Night"? "Dangers of Working Girls", a piece of this type which I saw at the American, might easily 402 "Comstockians wear blinders that shut from their view everything East and West of Broadway" SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS be set down as one of the worst of the "Dan- gers of Working Girls." The principal figure in the play was Doctor Sakea, whose profession was Mrs. Warren's and whose assistants were Chinamen hired to lure maidens into a place of evil resort. The production was full of such lines as "Don't spoil her beauty; it means money to us" and "Ah ! More pretty girls for the mas- ter's cage", while its principal situation was the auctioning of a number of half-dressed women to the highest bidder. For this scene a crowd of bestial degenerates attracted by the posters waited with gloating eyes and open jaws. There was no sugar-coating over the pill — no bright dialogue, no philosophy, no hint at a "moral les- son." It was simply a ghastly, hideous, de- grading appeal to everything that is vile and loathsome in the under side of human nature. The financial success of such pieces as these seems to decide once for all the question as to whether public taste influences the drama or the drama public taste. With clean and clever plays a stone's throw away, at prices by no 405 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT means prohibitive, no one need attend such per- formances as that I have described unless he really delights in that form of entertainment. I have always insisted that nothing is more im- moral than bad art, and, this being true, the in- fluence of the popular-priced theater appears to be a very grave subject, indeed. The people who go to such places of amusement have so lit- tle pleasure in their lives that it would seem a pity to take away whatever they may crave, yet it is not improbable that these very peo- ple might be inclined toward an appreciation of better things in the playhouse. We who object to the description of crime and violence in the daily papers certainly may be expected to find evil in its depiction on the stage; we who fear the discussion of delicate topics before audi- ences of cultured men and women can find noth- ing to excuse morbid emphasis upon distressing scenes before ignorant and impressionable boys and girls. Whether or not they really believe that such plays reflect life, whether or not they are directly influenced, there certainly can be 406 SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH GODS nothing beneficial to them in constant observa- tion of coarse humor, silly pathos, and a dis- torted code of conduct. I wonder if there is any method by which these play-goers can be made to understand that cleverness is not in- compatible with entertainment nor good drama with interest. 407 THE SMAR? SET ON THE STAGE Wherein the author considers comedies of manners, and players who succeed illy in living up to them. " T H~~"^ ^^ theater has its own aristocra- cy", declares the author of a book about families that, generation af- ter generation, have given actors to that in- stitution in America. It is not of "its own aris- tocracy" that I intend writing, but of the aris- tocracy it mimics. When I speak of "The Smart Set on the Stage", the reference is to those men and women who trail their cigarette smoke and their gowns through the modern society play. There are fashions in drama, just as there are in dresses, and managerial modistes begin to sense a return to favor of the tea cup comedy. Fifteen years ago, during an era of romance, the tinsmith superceded the tailor. A decade later, "guns" were more worn than girdles, and 408 THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE the prevailing mode in millinery was the Mexi- can sombrero, with a leather belt in place of a band. The hero of a play was the male who could shoot straightest. Now, once again, the hero is the gentleman who can successfully bal- ance, at one and the same time, a punch glass, a plate of biscuits, and the arguments for and against running away with his friend's wife. Within the past few months we have had such examples of their school as "Electricity", "Smith", "The Gamblers", "Nobody's Widow", "Getting a Polish" and "We Can't Be as Bad as All That", the last by that inveterate dramatizer of the social whirl, Henry Arthur Jones. With Jones in his heaven, all's right with the whirl'd ! Nor do these six compose a complete list. Mary Garden is still "wallowing", and surely Salome belonged to one of the best families of the East! Lady Macbeth and her husband — not the Macbeths who make lamp chimneys; O, dear no! — must have been in the blue book of their day. We met some very nice people with Mary Magdalene, too, and Prince Bellidor, in 409 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT "Sister Beatrice", behaved like one of the idle rich, but inasmuch as their conduct in society, ancient or modern, was not the theme of the works in which they appeared I shall omit furth- er mention of these works. The rich we have always with us. That is why Thackeray is more popular than Dickens, and that is why the smart set has been paraded theatrically since Thespis took the first wagon show on a tour of Greece. We are a lot of Pomonas — particularly the women among us — and we cannot help revelling in the doings of dignitaries whose place in life, but for fear of making this article sound railroad-y, I should describe as an elevated station. The more hum- ble we are the greater the craving and the de- light. Lizzie Brown, who measures ribbon be- hind a counter from breakfast 'til dinner, natur- ally extracts infinite pleasure from spending her evenings with only a row of footlights between herself and wonderful beings who toil not and spin nothing but yarns. That is almost like moving in the best circles oneself; it is being 410 THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE transported to a world millions of miles from the brass tracks in the ribbon counter. Miss Brown half believes herself a great lady by morning, as you may judge by her manner if you go to her for a yard of baby blue. Everyone of us has something of Lizzie Brown in his or her make-up. The same instinct that moves us to marry our daughter to the Prince of This or the Duke of That causes us to remember "East Lynne" when we have forgotten "Hazel Kirke." Most of us outside the charmed circle have ideas of good society quite as exaggerated as the Biblical idea of Paradise. We may not fancy that fashionables go about with crowns of light and golden harps, but we do insist that on the stage they hehave as little as possible like or- dinary human beings. That is why it is so difficult to write society plays. If the characters you create do not feel and think normally they become puppets, and if they do you are accused at once of having failed to suggest smartness. One night I stood in the lobby of the Criterion Theater as the au- 411 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT dience came out after having seen "Her Great Match." A woman who passed me remarked: "I think it was charming, but that man didn't make love at all like a Prince." Just what are the peculiarities of royal love-making the lady didn't explain, and the idiosyncracies that got the only prince I ever knew into jail had to do, not with the way he courted, but with the number of times. In any event, it was proved afterward that my friend really was descended from a re- spectable veterinary surgeon, which disqualifies me as an authority on the subject. When I mentioned the matter to him, Mr. Fitch ob- served that he had been quite chummy with a prince or two, and that, while he never actually had seen them make love, he judged from their consorts that their powers of amatory expres- sion were quite ordinary. "However", quoth Mr. Fitch, "you can't expect the public to believe that." It used to be a pretty general impression that nobody who had more than twenty thousand a year ever indulged in a show of emotion. I say 412 '.The peculiarities of royal love-making' THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE "nobody", although, of course, you are aware that wealthy parents in society plays always are exceptions to the rule of good breeding. Other- wise, imperturbability of the John Drew kind was supposed to be a trade mark of culture blown in the bottle. Common folk might laugh or cry under stress of circumstances, but the souls of the elect were sheathed in ice. The approved manner of translating a crisis into the dialogue of the drawing room was something like this : Lord Dash: Good afternoon! Rippin' weather, isn't it? (Bus. of stroking mustache.) I've a bit of disagreeable news for you. Lady Blank: Indeed? Will you have a cup of tea, Lord Dash? What is it? Lord Dash: No, thank you; I never take tea. Your eldest son, havin' been detected in an act of forgery, has just blown out his bally brains. Lady Blank : Poor lad 1 He was always im- pulsive ! I hope he isn't seriously hurt, Lord Dash ? Dead ? Ah ! Now you really must let me pour you a cup of tea. 415 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Having to combat that sort of folly was the thing that made it hard to write a society play. It was like dramatizing a novel and trying to create a heroine who would agree with the ten thousand notions of her cherished by the ten thousand readers of the book. Gradually, as the mirror held up to nature has become more near- ly true, we have grown to understand that, in the grip of a great joy or grief, a nobleman behaves very much like a bricklayer; sometimes a trifle better, and sometimes, as in the case of the ba- zaar disaster in Paris, a good deal worse. One fact not universally understood by per- sons who criticize the smart set on the stage is that there are many kinds of society. The group depicted in "Gallops" or "Lord and Lady Algy" is antipodally different from that shown in "The Way of the World" or "His House in Order." The self-made men of "The Pit" and "The Lion and the Mouse" are miles removed from the aristocrats of "The Idler" or "A Royal Fam- ily." The gambling males and cigarette-smok- ing females of "The Walls of Jericho" and "The 416 THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE House of Mirth" have very little in common with the conservatives of "The Hypocrites" and "The Duke of Killicrankie." All society looks alike to the assistant dramatic editor, however, and, if some girl delivers herself of a slang phrase, he is quick to realize that the playwright who created her can know nothing of good form. The man who deals with fashionables on the stage fingers a pianoforte with a single octave. More than half of the conditions that produce sentiment and sensation in Harlem never get as far down town as Fifth Avenue. That is why most drawing room dramas are worked out with the same characters and about the same stories. Someone has said that there do not exist more" than three plots for farce; certainly, not more than ten have been used in society plays. Of these, the favorite is the tale of the good-for- nothing gentleman who goes away with the wife of the studious or hard-working hero. Some- times, he is only about to go away with this mal- content when the hero aforesaid finds her at mid- 417 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT night in the "rooms" of his rival. The places in which a woman is found at midnight are al- ways "rooms"; never, by any chance, cham- bers, or apartments, or a flat. Occasionally, the lady, or the gentleman, or both, are quite inno- cent of wrong-doing. The lady may have come to save the reputation of another lady, or to pre- pare a rarebit, but when the husband has track- ed her by the fan that years of Wilde have not taught such callers to hide with them, he gets into a towering rage and does not get out again until the end of the fourth act. Henry Arthur Jones calls tea the prop of our drama. I dis- agree with him. It is the careless lady with a penchant for nocturnal visits who makes the theater possible in England and America. You don't believe it? Well, some of the comedies produced in New York during one season in which this incident figured were "Popularity", "Man and His Angel", "The Chorus Lady", "The Three of Us", "The House of Mirth", "Daughters of Men", "The Straight Road", and "All-of-a-Sudden Peggy." James M. Barrie 418 ' The lady may have come to prepare a rarebit" THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE satirized the situation in "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire'\ and then employed it seriously for his most ef- fective scene. Of course, one or two of the pieces in the list given do not come strictly under the head of drawing room drama, but the fact remains that a majority of the young women who go calling on the stroke of twelve dive into indiscretion un- der Marcel waves. The coveting of his neigh- bor's wife is supposed to be a specialty of the so- ciety man, and thus it is that so many comedies of manors are founded on that theme. The marriage of convenience is much used in plays of this type, too, as well as the mesalliance that afterward turns out well. Divorce is coming more and more into vogue as a subject. Then there are satires in which the follies of the smart set are held up to ridicule and execration; come- dies in which the vulgarisms of a very rich man, usually an American and father of the heroine, are contrasted favorably with the culture of the aristocracy of Europe; and plays in which the wronged girl figures, wearing a wan expression 421 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT and a becoming black dress. Add to these va- rieties that class of composition in which society is only the background for contests in politics, diplomacy, business, or detective work, and we have pretty well come to the end of our possi- bilities. Whatever else happens in the society play, there always is a dance at which the juvenile lovers flirt, and the serious people discuss such tragic things as ruin and sudden death, while an orchestra "off at R." fiddles through "Love's Dream After the Ball." Next to elopements, ruin and sudden death are the chief necessities of the society play. Whenever a gentleman gets on the wrong side of the market, or has the misfor- tune to possess a wife whose lover is the hero of the piece, instead of the villain, he promptly kills himself. After reading a succession of dramas like "The Climbers" and "The Moth and the Flame" one is amazed to discover that in the United States only about one hundreth of one per cent, of the population cashes in its checks self-endorsed. 422 THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE If you have followed so far, patient peruser, you probably will join me in the conclusion that the society play is nothing on earth but melo- drama in a frock coat. The effectiveness of the play depends upon the completeness of the dis- guise; with the dramatic tailor rests the ques- tion whether you sniff or sniffle. Undraped melo- drama treating of fashionable folk is the fun- niest entertainment in the world, excepting "Charley's Aunt." Fine evenings, when my brain cells were closed for repairs and I was weary of musical comedy, I used to go over to Eighth Avenue and see "Why Women Sin" and "A Working Girl's Wrongs." I found that our class is responsible alike for the sins and the wrongs; that gentility is a thing to move virtu- ous burglars, comic green grocers and other hon- est men and women to a passion of righteous in- dignation. "I was ne'er so thrummed since I was gentleman", wrote Thomas Dekker in an ancient comedy of unprintable title, and it is my opinion that he penned the line after seeing his kind through the astigmatic glasses of Theodore 423 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT Kremer. Small wonder, indeed ! On Eighth Avenue, in the old days, everyone sufficiently prosperous to be opposed to an income tax wore a silk hat and lived in a "mansion." Apparently "mansions" were not places in which privacy was to be had, since the Eighth Avenue million- aire invariably came out into the street when he wanted to exhibit "the papers." Eighth Avenue millionaires always were white-haired, drank cold tea and soda, plotted "dirty work", and had closets so full of skeletons that any physician might have mistaken them for anatomical mu- seums. "Little children", I used to say to the progeny of a friend of mine, "when you grow up be careful not to be an Eighth Avenue mil- lionaire." The smart set have rather a hard time of it on any stage, and, for that matter, so does the author who dallies with the subject. If there is one thing in which the dramatic grand monde are lucky it is their servants. Nowhere else un- der the blue canopy of heaven are such perfectly trained menials as one sees through the pros- 424 "Why women sin" THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE cenium arch. They would make the fortune of any of those agencies misnamed "intelligence bureaus." I already have commented on the difficulties of the man who writes drawing room drama. I have said that, if he has a stirring story to tell, he must disguise it. On the other hand, if it be his ambition to compose comedies of manners, like "The Liars", he must master the very fine art of interesting an audience for two hours without actually doing anything; of making a vacuum shimmer. The people in such society plays must talk like ordinary people who have been seeing society plays. Their dialogue must be cynical and clever, and just a bit what a witty Frenchman called "sans chemise." A society play excellently exemplifies the truth of the adage: "Nothing risque; nothing gained." Should the conversation be truly bright the crit- ics may be counted upon to observe that real people never talk that way; but it is better to beard the critics than to bore the audience. If I may add to a line from "Clothes" : "Hell and 427 THE FOOTLIGHTS-FORE AND AFT the stage drawing room are two places where there are no stupid people." It is no easy matter for the average play- wright to reproduce the atmosphere of Fifth Avenue. Many of the nabobs one glimpses in the theatre fall about three hundred and sixty short of the "four hundred." Every second com- edy of manners we see is a comedy of very bad manners. Men born with gold spoons in their mouths find it hard to articulate, and few of our fashionable families produce dramatists who "speak in a voice that fills the nation." Only the most successful of the craft get an oppor- tunity to study society at first hand. Perhaps that is fortunate. "The drawback to realism", says Wilton Lackaye, "is the fate of the realist. If he goes into the slums he becomes base; if he goes into society he becomes soprano." The average social lion being the sort of man one could push over, we ought to be glad of the barrier between the pen, which only writes, and money, which talks. Vigor and virility are more essential to good drama than absolutely 428 THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE faithful atmosphere. All other things being equal, the individual who would make the best pugilist would make the best playwright. A good many of our society plays are marred by gaucheries of a serious nature. Glance over your mental list of tea-cup pieces. Clyde Fitch, who rarely offended in this respect, had one wo- man giving orders to the servants of another wo- man in "The Truth." Jack Neville, in the El- sie de Wolfe performance of "The Way of the World", whistled merrily while waiting in her parlor for his hostess. True, he didn't whistle very noisily, but that palliation only makes one think of the retort courteous supposed to have been made by a well-bred woman after she had complained of a gentleman who whistled in her ball room. "It was very low", plead the gen- tleman. "It was", answered the lady; "very low." Cynthia, in the comedy of that name, re- ceived her husband while the hairdresser and the manicure were employed with her. Dick Craw- ford, in "Caught in the Rain", tips a servant 429 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT in the home of his friend, Mr. Mason. Every- body who visits Montgomery Brewster in the first act of "Brewster's Millions" comments most vulgarly on that hero's newly acquired wealth. Richard Burbank in "Clothes" mis- takes Miss Sherwood's piano for a hat rack, while that lady permits herself to be led away from a dance without bidding farewell to her hostess. In "The House of Mirth", a sandless- souled hero, named Lawrence Selden, literally thrust himself past a protesting servant and into the rooms of Augustus Trenor. The young wo- man impersonated by Edna May in "The Catch of the Season" was given tiffen consisting of a hunk of bread an inch thick and tea in a cup that bore all the ear-marks of belonging to that fam- ily of unbreakable things that are used in the second cabin of ocean liners. These, of course, are "trifles light as air", but what shall be said of Charles Richman in dress clothes and light boots in "Mrs. Dane's Defence", of Margaret Dale in decollette and walking hat in "Delancy", and of Mrs. Fiske's laying her handkerchief on 430 THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE the luncheon table in "Becky Sharp?" Above all, what shall be said of the gentleman in "The Triangle" who stabbed his better half with a carving knife at dinner. I may be ignorant of what I seek to teach and quite wrong about these other faux pas, but that certainly cannot be con- demned too forcibly. It simply isn't donel "Popularity", George Cohan's play that after- ward became "The Man Who Owns Broad- way", was a perfect mine of ill breeding. In the first place, the Fuller drawing room, as shown, was a flaring red, with a piano on which the manufacturer's name was painted in letters two inches high. During the evening there were sev- eral callers, whom the Fullers left quite alone for a period of fifteen minutes. The butler atoned for this rudeness by shaking hands with one of the guests, a young gentleman unfortunately crossed in love, and expressing sympathy for him. The young gentleman said he was much obliged. The climax of this singular exhibition was reached when a "matinee idol", dropping in without invitation on Papa Fuller, whom he 431 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT had never met, lit a cigar, instructed the sympa- thetic butler to bring him spirituous liquor, and told his host a few things about gentlemen in general and the host himself in particular. The familiarity of the butler in "Popularity" was as nothing to the behavior of the servants in "Forty-five Minutes From Broadway", where several menials seemed to subscribe heartily to Paul Blouet's dictum that "America is a country in which every man is as good as his neighbor and a damned sight better." The mother in the noisy farce of "Julie Bonbon" who objected to having her son marry a milliner might have im- proved her own manners in any millinery shop on Fifth Avenue. A chambermaid in "Susan in Search of a Husband" introduced to each oth- er two guests of her hotel; Vida Phillimore in "The New York Idea" received in her boudoir a nobleman who had been presented to her only the day before; Mrs. O'Mara addressed her daughter and ignored the visitor who was chat- ting with her in "All-of-a-Sudden Peggy." The reception room revealed in "The Daughters of 432 "It simply isn't done!" THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE Men" looked like the interior of a jewel box, and served as the abiding place of a wonderful col- lection of amusingly stiff-backed men and wom- en, representing the smart set as, at that time, it was imagined by Charles Klein. Fortunately, errors of taste in staging society plays become fewer and less conspicuous every day. They are practically obsolete now in the- aters like the Empire, the Lyceum, the Hudson, and the Belasco. With them has gone the time in which every fashionable apartment was fur- nished in exactly the same way and had doors in exactly the same place. The producer who "dresses" a stage today buys precisely as though he had a commission to "dress" the home of a wealthy and intelligent client. Under these cir- cumstances, it is particularly fortunate that the comedy of manners and the drama of the draw- ing room have come to stay. Cultured people are pleasant companions in everyday life, and doubly pleasant when they have been idealized and super-refined for library or theater. We may be glad of the evident fact that plays may 435 THE FOOTLIGHTS— FORE AND AFT come and plays may go, but the society play goes on forever. 436 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below M JL 2 1 1943 DEC *° 194S ' MAY 2 31950 m 9 1952' DEC 6 1951 J*te * • .*- RECEIVED 0- UR AM 7-4 JUL 22 1)65 4-9 L 9-15ffl 2,'86 REC'O LO-URL ""**- MAR 8 13^ DEC 8198 PM 9-fO UNIVERSITY OF CALffOKM AT TCLES ARY 3 1158 00492 9609 RAVEN BOOK SHOP UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 412 297 4