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 CINCINNATI, U. S. A.
 
 THE TRUTH 
 ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 BY ONE OF THE BEST KNOWN 
 THEATRICAL MEN IN NEW YORK 
 
 CINCINNATI 
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 1916
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 COPYRIGHT IN ENGLAND
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 The author of this book is one of the best 
 known theatrical men in New York. For ten 
 years he has enjoyed the confidence of his business 
 associates and the respect of the thousands of men 
 and women of the stage who have been in the 
 employ of his firm. His word with all of these is 
 as good as his bond. What he says here he has 
 said deliberately, after long reflection, and with 
 the sole idea of telling the truth that the truth may 
 help those who need to know it most. Young men 
 and women ambitious to go on the stage, to write 
 plays or to associate themselves in some other 
 manner or capacity with the theater will find 
 in what he has written the plain facts as he 
 knows them without adornment, exaggeration 
 or excuse. 
 
 202134!
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I FACING FACTS i 
 
 II PEGGY APPEARS 7 
 
 III BROADWAY AS IT Is 12 
 
 IV ON THE STAGE 22 
 
 V THE PATH OF THE PLAYWRIGHT ... 32 
 
 VI SUBMITTING A PLAY 42 
 
 VII TEARS AND SMILES 50 
 
 VIII WITH THE PRODUCER 68 
 
 IX THE MEN IN POWER 77 
 
 X THE ADVENTURE TYPICAL 85 
 
 XI A BACKWARD GLANCE 91 
 
 XII THE LAST ACT 107
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT 
 THE THEATER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FACING FACTS 
 
 I AM the general manager of one of the best- 
 known firms of theatrical producers in the country. 
 Ten years ago I left my home in a city of the 
 Middle West to enter the theatrical business. I 
 did what many a young man before and since has 
 done I stepped from the newspaper to the 
 theatrical field. I was young and ambitious and, 
 by degrees, from one position to another, I fought 
 my way upward. I began at seventy-five dollars 
 a week; today I receive four hundred a week and 
 I earn three times what I am paid. Ten years ago 
 I was the dramatic editor of a quiet, dignified, in- 
 fluential daily newspaper of my home city. It 
 was a comfortable, secure berth, paying me fifty 
 dollars a week and promising, when my days of 
 usefulness were at an end, a fair pension provision 
 for my old age. 
 
 Perhaps I should have been satisfied. What
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 planted the seed of discontent I do not know. I 
 awoke one morning to find myself longing for 
 broader opportunities and common sense immedi- 
 ately counselled that there was only one other line 
 of work for which I was adapted that would af- 
 ford the broader opportunities I wanted. It was 
 the theatrical business. I had come in contact 
 with it and with men employed in it and I knew 
 it about as well as a close observer could know any 
 business in a general way without actually engag- 
 ing in it. 
 
 So, without more ado, into the theatrical busi- 
 ness I went. A manager of more than national 
 prominence was in need of a press agent I think 
 he called it general director of publicity and 
 with the exchange of some half-dozen telegrams, 
 his choice finally settled on me. I resigned my 
 position with the newspaper; I closed my desk for 
 the last time ; I bade old friends and surroundings 
 good-by, and I departed. 
 
 I arrived in New York and began my work with 
 high aspirations. I knew the stage, or, to be ex- 
 act, I thought I knew the stage, and the theater to 
 me was an institution of art. I had read Lamb 
 and Lewes and Arnold and others that I no longer 
 recall, and I had been inspired by them with re- 
 spect and reverence for its purpose and its achieve- 
 ment. I believed in the theater with all my heart 
 and soul; I loved it. And I entered upon my new 
 2
 
 FACING FACTS 
 
 field of work with something more and worthier 
 than mere increase of salary as the propelling mo- 
 tive. I would serve the theater; I would devote 
 my life, thenceforth, to its cause. My labor 
 would be for its art and it would be a labor of love. 
 
 All this seems odd to me now, but there is no 
 exaggeration in the statement. On the contrary, 
 I am scarcely doing full justice to the faith and 
 feelings I entertained at the time. With ten 
 years of experience back of me, it is difficult to re- 
 call all the ardor and enthusiasm of that novitiate 
 period. But I do recollect and memory paints 
 the picture vividly the sober-faced young man 
 who went at his first day's work with the high re- 
 solve to be worthy of the service to which he had 
 dedicated himself. 
 
 Today, with this decade behind me " long ago 
 and far away," indeed I reflect upon those ideas 
 and ideals of yesterday and smile at them. I am 
 forty years old and, perhaps, the illusions have de- 
 parted only naturally with the advance of the 
 years. I am afraid, though, that they vanished 
 too early in my experience for this to account for 
 their disappearance. 
 
 They were gone, as a matter of fact, before I 
 had been half a year in New York. At the end of 
 that period, I had come to a readjustment of ideas 
 my ideals I had put away. My idol was shat- 
 tered; the respect and reverence I had felt for 
 3
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 the theater were dead. The sentiment went out 
 of my heart and I bit my teeth together on the 
 hard fact that I was engaged in a crushing, grind- 
 ing, soulless business that made obeisance to 
 money and not to art. Thereafter I took things as 
 I found them; I entertained no more illusions; I 
 cherished no more sentiments. I went into the game 
 with my jaws set, to play it by the rules as they 
 were, and, win or lose, to play it to the bitter end. 
 
 In a few more weeks my name will be erased 
 from the door of the office that has been mine for 
 five years. With the beginning of a new season, 
 another name will replace mine above the title 
 " General Manager." I do not know who my 
 successor will be, but, here and now, I wish him 
 God-speed. My employers will soon be in receipt 
 of my resignation and, unless, perchance, their eyes 
 fall on this and they recognize the writer, the resig- 
 nation itself will be the first intimation of my in- 
 tention to withdraw from the executive direction 
 of their affairs. 
 
 I am finished, and I return whence I came. 
 Not, to be sure, to the critic's desk of ten years 
 ago, but back to my old home city, back to its joy 
 of old friends and to the delight of its happier, 
 more genuine life and living. I retire with a 
 modest capital not much, but enough at least to 
 insure independence. A few months ago, my em- 
 ployers lost on three unsuccessful theatrical ven-
 
 FACING FACTS 
 
 tures in less than sixty days a sum as large as the 
 total amount of my small savings, and it would be 
 a poor season, indeed, when any two of their 
 merely average successes failed to return in profits 
 alone an amount much greater than the value of 
 all I possess. But I am satisfied. 
 
 And a part of the immediate satisfaction I feel 
 comes from finding myself in a position at last to 
 tell the truth about the theater and the theatrical 
 business. The public, to put the fact squarely, 
 has not had the truth, or, at most, it has had only 
 a little truth, possibly a background of truth, 
 but never the plain truth. What it gets is cold- 
 creamed, painted and powdered like an actress's 
 face in make-up. It is fiction. Perhaps I ought 
 to let it go at this and say no more, accepting it 
 as something the public likes and demands else 
 there would be less of it published and some- 
 thing it reads eagerly and apparently without 
 harm. But the harm is there and I have been so 
 placed that I could see it and estimate it and I 
 know it for what it is and what it does. It is 
 serious more serious than the public suspects 
 and I make only a conservative statement when 
 I say that it has brought ruin to hundreds and 
 misery to thousands. 
 
 I do not allude, of course, to the journalistic 
 criticism of current plays in which the productions 
 are viewed entirely upon the basis of their intrinsic 
 5
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 merit. I refer to the superficial, gilding comment 
 written about and around the stage and its stars, 
 the senseless, truthless, panegyric sort that con- 
 veys wrong impressions of theatrical life, gives 
 only its sunny side, stimulates the futile ambitions 
 of stage-struck Mary Jones, draws Herbert Smith 
 away from his job at the haberdashery counter to 
 join the ranks of chorus men, and leads the Browns 
 of both sexes to waste their time trying to write 
 plays. 
 
 The other day, I sat with one of the most 
 prominent critics in New York City, a man whose 
 judgment is excellent and whose veracity and 
 honesty have never been and never will be 
 doubted. I asked him if he did not think some 
 one ought to tell the truth about the theater. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Every day for fifteen years 
 I have encountered reason after reason why the 
 truth should be told." 
 
 " Why not do it? " I demanded. 
 
 And very frankly he replied : " I don't dare." 
 
 Only a few days after I had decided to retire 
 from the business, a friend put the same question 
 to me. 
 
 "Why don't you tell the truth about the 
 theater? " he asked. 
 
 " Some day," I replied, " perhaps I shall." 
 
 And today I do not wonder if I dare; I only 
 wonder if I can. 
 
 6
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PEGGY APPEARS 
 
 I HAVE said that I am forty. Those who know 
 me probably think I am fifty. Ten years ago my 
 hair was black; today it is white. Ten years ago 
 I stood straight and held my shoulders square. 
 Today I stoop and I am not particular whether my 
 shoulders are squared or rounded. Ten years 
 ago my friends said I had nerve. Today I have 
 nerves. Ten years ago the same friends said I 
 showed promise of a good future as a writer; to- 
 day all the writing I do is to sign my name and 
 whatever I have to set down on paper is dictated 
 to a stenographer. All the " knack " of writing 
 has gone from me. It is not easy, in other words, 
 considering mental and physical state and habit, 
 to undertake what men better qualified than I for 
 the work have declined to do. But there are 
 times when I think a good deal about the Joneses 
 and Smiths and Browns, and then I am inclined to 
 go on with the task regardless of everything. 
 
 The whole thing was brought home to me about 
 
 the time I made up my mind to spend another 
 
 season in the business and then retire. It was 
 
 late one afternoon and I was sitting in my office 
 
 7
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 talking to a gentleman whose guest I was to be 
 that evening at dinner. A note was placed on my 
 desk and I tore open the envelop to recognize at 
 a glance the signature of my old friend, Ned Scott. 
 Back where I came from, Ned and I had grown 
 up together, and a letter from him meant some- 
 thing more than routine. 
 
 This will be presented to you, [it ran], by Dick 
 Hall's daughter, Margaret. We call her Peggy. 
 Dick died a year ago and Peggy and her mother 
 are compelled to support themselves. They have 
 looked to me for advice and I have done what- 
 ever I could to help them. But Peggy has lately 
 concluded that she ought to go on the stage and 
 that is a matter concerning which I can't, of course, 
 advise her at all. People who ought to know tell 
 me she has talent, and I shouldn't be surprised if 
 she has. Dick had, you'll remember. Anyway, 
 Peggy can play the piano a little, recite a bit and 
 sing^a bit, all as well as Dick himself could, and 
 she is ambitious and eager to try. She has come 
 to New York for that purpose and I am sending 
 her direct to you. If she doesn't succeed, there 
 will always be a place in my office here for her and 
 she will be welcome to return. I hope you'll do 
 what you can to help her. 
 
 With best regards, I am, 
 
 Yours as ever, 
 
 SCOTTY." 
 
 I read the letter in silence. Poor old Dick! 
 He too could " play the piano a little and sing a 
 8
 
 PEGGY APPEARS 
 
 bit." That was his trouble. He was too much 
 the " goodfellow," too willing all his life to 
 " oblige " with his little scattered talents. In busi- 
 ness hours, Dick's mind was on the snare drum; 
 and when he was playing the snare drum his mind 
 was on something else. So it went; he couldn't 
 concentrate. And now was come his daughter 
 who could " play the piano a little and sing a bit," 
 and Fate and Scott had combined somehow to 
 direct her to me. 
 
 I pushed the button and told the office boy to 
 show her in. She came through the door timidly, 
 a girl of nineteen or twenty. There was some- 
 thing about her that was pathetically appealing 
 she seemed so dependent, so lonely, so bewildered. 
 For half an hour I talked to her as I have never 
 talked to anyone before or since. I told her what 
 she faced, what lay beyond the stage door, what 
 she must be prepared to endure. I begged her 
 to go back home. 
 
 She heard me in silence, tinged with that sug- 
 gestion of twenty's ill-concealed contempt for 
 forty's fears, that youth shows and tries not to. 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I'll stay and try," she said. 
 
 " Look here," I replied, " I knew your father. 
 
 He and I were boys together. If neither reason 
 
 nor fact will move you, just go back because your 
 
 father's old friend begs you to. Mr. Scott tells 
 
 9
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 me there's a place for you in his office. Take it, 
 and a few years from now, you'll be mighty glad 
 you did." 
 
 It was useless. Peggy Hall would have none 
 of my counsel. A week later, she was " singing a 
 bit " at the rehearsals of a musical comedy and 
 telling me, proudly, her face aglow with her pride, 
 that she had won the place for herself and suc- 
 ceeded without assistance from me. But Peggy 
 was wrong. As she stood on the stage at the 
 Circle with a hundred other applicants, chance 
 brought me to the theater. Lips apart, eyes big 
 and round and cheeks flushed with excitement and 
 hope, I saw her standing in the line and, unob- 
 served, I spoke to the stage director. Thus she 
 came to a place in the chorus, but I did not tell 
 Peggy so. 
 
 This was, as I say, a year ago. Of Peggy I 
 shall have occasion to speak later. Just now I 
 must go back to the gentleman waiting patiently in 
 my office while I delivered my lecture to Dick 
 Hall's daughter. He was a silent auditor of what 
 I said, and when she was gone, he turned to me. 
 
 " See here," he asked, " were you telling the 
 truth to that girl?" 
 
 " No," I replied, " not half of it, not a quarter 
 of it. I couldn't. She'd never grasp it. Why, 
 I'd never be able to put it in words that she'd 
 even understand." 
 
 10
 
 PEGGY APPEARS 
 
 " Then," he said, " somebody surely some- 
 body ought to tell the truth about the theater." 
 
 " Meaning me? " I asked. 
 
 "Why not?" he rejoined. 
 
 And why not, indeed? Still, I'm reminded of 
 the old story of the lobster. One man, you re- 
 member, swore it was green; another swore it 
 was red. Both were right, but neither believed 
 the other and neither was more than half right. 
 What seems to be true to one man may seem to be 
 false to another. It depends on when and how 
 one sees the lobster green on the cook's table 
 with seaweed clutched in its claw or red on the 
 waiter's tray with a parsley sprig to trim it. For 
 ten years I have lived in the life of the theater 
 and, I might say, I know it red and I know it 
 green, and I know it is both. 
 
 ii
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BROADWAY AS IT IS 
 
 THE producer with whom I began my career in 
 the theatrical business was then and still is one of 
 the foremost managers in the country. I shall 
 call him Bingo near enough to his real name 
 to suggest it and, if names have any descriptive 
 significance at all, certainly characteristic of the 
 man himself. Bingo was known to be changeable 
 in opinion and plan, abrupt and rough in manner 
 and language and not by any means as temperate 
 as his own good demanded. By sheer force of 
 industry, assisted now and then by surprisingly 
 good judgment which was generally called " Bingo 
 luck," my employer had risen to an enviable posi- 
 tion in the theatrical world. Behind him, extend- 
 ing back to his orphaned boyhood days, lay a pic- 
 turesque trail of obstacles overcome, opposition 
 conquered and success retrieved from failure. 
 Defeat was something that Bingo's dauntless 
 spirit never recognized and, in his eventful career 
 he had made and lost a dozen fortunes and, 
 though he is now on the shady side of fifty, I 
 
 12
 
 BROADWAY AS IT IS 
 
 should not be surprised if he lost and made an- 
 other fortune or two before he retires. 
 
 I no sooner entered Bingo's office and reported 
 ready for work than I sat down to a desk piled 
 high with matters demanding immediate attention 
 and from that day to this, I have never seen the 
 bottom of the pile nor the top of my desk. Since 
 then I have changed from one employer to an- 
 other half a dozen times, always for the better 
 and always with the idea that a position a little 
 higher up could be had if I went after it hard 
 enough. Now for five years I have been at the 
 top, with nothing higher in sight. With each 
 change, the work increased, the pile on the desk 
 grew taller and the top of the desk became more 
 remote. The salary steadily advanced, of 
 course, but, as I look back over the period, I still 
 suspect that I have paid too much and far too 
 much for my whistle. 
 
 I don't believe I could have entered the thea- 
 trical business, despite the adverse conditions pe- 
 culiar to his office, under better direction than 
 that of Bingo. While he knew very well that I 
 came to him without any previous experience, ap- 
 parently he never gave this fact the slightest con- 
 sideration. Others might have assumed that I 
 knew nothing and needed to be taught every- 
 thing; Bingo assumed that I knew everything and 
 needed to be taught nothing. As a matter of fact, 
 13
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 in spite of my association with the playhouse as a 
 critic, of the commonest affairs of its business side 
 I was densely ignorant, but I felt instinctively 
 that he was testing my patience, my endurance and 
 my ability. 
 
 They were heart-breaking days, those first five 
 or six weeks. And to this hour so well do I re- 
 call the suffering I went through then that even 
 time and Broadway working together have not 
 entirely dulled my sympathy for others who un- 
 dergo a similar experience. My work was made 
 the harder because of my ignorance and my anx- 
 iety was always the greater because I found my 
 work so hard. 
 
 Only once during this period did I ever send 
 out a call for assistance and then, fortunately for 
 the sake of my record at least, I never voiced it. 
 I telephoned to another press agent, a man for 
 whom I had performed more than one friendly 
 service and who was under some obligation to me 
 but his greeting over the wire was so emphati- 
 cally frigid and forbidding that my question never 
 left my lips. 
 
 Then and there, I learned one of my first 
 lessons that theatrical Broadway is without 
 heart or soul. There are exceptions, of course, 
 but too few in number to affect the general fact, 
 and while Broadway can be generous on occasion, 
 its generosity nine times out of ten is more hys-
 
 BROADWAY AS IT IS 
 
 terical than genuine. Its sympathy, too, is largely 
 'simulated and its expressions of interest, what- 
 ever their nature, are without sincerity. Ab- 
 sorbed in its own affairs, selfish, self-centered and 
 self-conscious, it exhibits some of its very best 
 play-acting when it pretends to be otherwise. 
 
 Every year there is a small army of men and 
 women who must learn this as I learned it in those 
 weeks in Bingo's office through experience. 
 And to few of them indeed will the experience be 
 any kinder or gentler than it was to me. If 
 others who have come to New York as I came 
 making not only an abrupt departure from asso- 
 ciations both familiar and friendly but engaging 
 at the same time in a new business were to add 
 their confessions to mine, I am sure they would 
 only reiterate what I have said. 
 
 For the women, though, rather than for the 
 men, and for the young women particularly, who 
 come as strangers to a strange city and often to a 
 strange business, is the ordeal most trying and 
 the experience bitterest. 
 
 They arrive as Peggy arrived, unprepared, and 
 Peggy in a good many respects is typical, but she 
 came possessed of one advantage at least that few 
 enjoy she had a friend at court. The other 
 girls whose feet tread the same path must depend 
 upon themselves. They come no one knows 
 whence and they go no one knows whither. But 
 15
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 in passing, whether the transit is long or short, 
 girlish innocence and sweetness vanish from their 
 faces and in their place comes a hardness that 
 only one other kind of experience that I know of 
 will set on the countenance of a young woman. 
 
 The beginning of each theatrical season brings 
 its new army of these girls to Broadway and by 
 far the greater part are without the slightest 
 knowledge of the conditions they will encounter. 
 Hope burns high in their breasts and the optimism 
 of youth minimizes risks and hazards, magnifies 
 opportunity and construes chance into certainty. 
 They are always confident, and the last thing, ap- 
 parently, that they ever dream they may require 
 is one of the things they are most likely, sooner 
 or later, to need and to need desperately a re- 
 turn ticket home. 
 
 Only a few have forethought enough to equip 
 themselves with this simple means of insurance 
 against the unhappy hour when all other resources 
 are exhausted. The others, only too often long- 
 ing for it in vain, their little capital fast dwindling 
 away, are soon numbered among those pathetic 
 applicants who besiege the offices of managers and 
 agents, forcing mirthless smiles through their 
 tears, suffering as no one can fancy and living no 
 one knows how. 
 
 A recital of the discouraging facts, however, is 
 about as futile as it is thankless. It is heeded by 
 16
 
 BROADWAY AS IT IS 
 
 others no more than it was heeded by Peggy. 
 Still, every girl who comes to New York with the 
 definite intention of going on the stage ought to 
 come with her eyes open. Whether it dissuades 
 her or not, she ought to know that theatrical 
 Broadway knows chastity only to prey upon it if 
 it can and that the atmosphere of the stage is in- 
 sidiously and persistently demoralizing. It takes 
 more than mere strength of resolution to with- 
 stand the former; it takes vigilance, shrewdness, 
 even diplomacy. And to resist the influence of 
 the latter it takes all these and more besides a 
 sophistication that can detect sophistry in its most 
 plausible form, unmask it and reject it and a will 
 of adamant to resist insistent temptation. Inno- 
 cence that is without knowledge can fight only a 
 losing fight against Broadway; against the other, 
 innocence even when armed with knowledge has 
 a poor weapon until it learns when and how and 
 whom to fight. And by that time the fight is 
 often useless there is nothing left to fight for. 
 
 A statement like this is likely to meet with the 
 charge that the maker of it is " preaching." 
 Broadway hates this kind of " preaching " and 
 hates the " preacher " and a person does not live 
 a year on Broadway until he resents being called 
 a " preacher." But this is not " preaching." It 
 is a plain statement of fact. I am not moraliz- 
 ing; I am no reformer. I am simply telling the
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 truth. Broadway is bad, but bad as it is, the stage 
 is worse. This is true, of course, provided so- 
 ciety's accepted code of morals is right and the 
 stage's defiance of the code is wrong. I defend 
 neither and attack neither. They are at opposite 
 extremes, and if one is good the other is bad, but 
 which is which I am not presuming to say. I am 
 only describing my lobster. 
 
 It is said by way of excuse for the number of 
 players' scandals, intrigues and divorces exposed 
 in the press that, being in the public eye, their af- 
 fairs of this sort are unduly exploited that they 
 are not, in fact, greater in number or worse in 
 character than similar affairs of others in other 
 walks of life but are only made to seem so through 
 the unfortunate but unavoidable publicity. This 
 is part of the truth but not all of it. The fact is, 
 we hear so much about the scandals mainly be- 
 cause there are so many scandals to hear about and 
 even then what we hear is as nothing compared to 
 what we might hear. The stage or the pro- 
 fession, to be exact is honeycombed with what 
 society, rightly or wrongly, calls immorality. 
 And that, to be candid, is calling it by as mild a 
 term as possible. 
 
 But to return to the girls who come to New 
 York to go on the stage. In their own little 
 circles in their own homes these girls are gener- 
 ally the most attractive, the brightest, the most 
 18
 
 BROADWAY AS IT IS 
 
 vivacious; they can sing, dance, play the piano 
 better than their companions. And, generally, 
 they are the most popular. Their leadership is 
 natural; it is won by virtue of their abilities and 
 their talents. But, when the stage-struck days 
 come and come they do they forget that 
 New York is not home and they overlook the 
 very important fact that when they arrive on 
 Broadway they will be thrown not with girls they 
 led at home, but with girls who were also the 
 leaders back in their own various communities. 
 
 They cease to shine then by contrast and the 
 very things that formerly distinguished them are 
 possessed in common by the thousands of girls 
 who are seeking precisely what they are seeking. 
 It might not be so bad even then for all the Peggys 
 and her sisters, the Mary Janes and the Elizabeth 
 Anns who make perennial pilgrimage to New 
 York if producing managers made intelligence 
 and mental training tests for fitness. But they 
 don't and they won't and it is doubtful if they 
 could if they would. Above everything else they 
 demand good looks, good figure, good propor- 
 tions and that mysterious, indefinable something 
 that is called " personality." These the manager 
 seeks first, and what is meant by them, save, per- 
 haps, the last, it is needless to explain. And in 
 choosing first on this basis he is merely giving the 
 theater-going public what the theater-going public 
 19
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 wants; he is interpreting its demand and supply- 
 ing it. 
 
 As for " personality," I don't believe it has 
 ever been adequately defined probably it never 
 will be. It differs in different persons, but its ef- 
 fect is practically the same. It is a kind of in- 
 tangible, elusive radium emanation that defies 
 analysis, but it can do more to convert a sow's 
 ear into a silk purse than anything else in the 
 world. Under its magic spell, downright ugli- 
 ness may seem to be beauty and stupidity may 
 easily enough be mistaken for brilliance. It is 
 the quality that every successful actor and actress 
 possesses and without which no actor and no 
 actress rises to any appreciable height in the pro- 
 fession. It flashes across the footlights more ef- 
 fectively than beauty, ability and experience com- 
 bined and, while the spectator himself, perhaps, is 
 not aware of the fact, he applauds it more than 
 he applauds anything else. 
 
 The Peggys and Mary Janes have personality, 
 but, except in rare instances in the case of one 
 in a thousand they haven't enough, unfor- 
 tunately, to do them any good. They have only 
 enough to do them harm. It is like a little knowl- 
 edge a dangerous thing. It attracts and it is 
 attracted and it is thrown into an environment 
 where the restraint of convention is disregarded 
 and where the very first thing a woman who 
 20
 
 BROADWAY AS IT IS 
 
 enters it abandons is the thing that protects her 
 most her modesty. The exigencies of the 
 profession itself frequently force her to lay this 
 aside. 
 
 21
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON THE STAGE 
 
 EXPERIENCE has taught me that the girl who 
 succeeds in the theatrical profession to no greater 
 extent than to remain in it in the capacity of 
 member of the chorus or singer or player of a 
 small and unimportant part must have the quali- 
 ties I have named good looks, good figure, 
 good proportions and personality. In addition, 
 she must have Youth or the appearance of it 
 strength, energy, vivacity and almost perfect 
 health. 
 
 " What most impresses you about these girls? " 
 I once asked an acquaintance who sat with me 
 during the final rehearsals of a musical comedy 
 chorus. 
 
 My companion thought a moment. 
 
 " Why," said he, " it's their everlasting super- 
 abundance of physical energy." 
 
 The girls in question had rehearsed for a week 
 nearly twelve hours every day dancing, sing- 
 ing, marching, counter-marching, hopping, jump- 
 ing, leaping. On this particular day they had 
 been at it more than fourteen hours when we 
 22
 
 ON THE STAGE 
 
 dropped in at the rehearsal. Yet, even when 
 they might have rested, they didn't ; they were on 
 their feet, tireless, teaching each other the latest 
 Tango steps or the newest evolutions of the Hesi- 
 tation Waltz. 
 
 Put two and two together. Add to the 
 11 superabundance of physical energy " vivacity, 
 youth, freedom from convention's restraint and 
 take this combination plus conditions that make 
 for familiarity, subtract modesty and add tempta- 
 tion, unlimited opportunity and youth's inevitable 
 desire for a " good time " and see what the result 
 is. You don't need algebra to work it out. 
 Then remember, too, that indiscretions, to use the 
 mildest term possible, and worse than indiscre- 
 tions, are not punished in professional circles by 
 ostracism. If they were, precious few players 
 today, men or women, would be on speaking 
 terms with each other. Moral laxity is con- 
 doned; it is even sanctioned. No one cares what 
 anyone else does and glass houses are too com- 
 mon for any indulgence in stone-throwing. 
 
 41 1 was in a certain producer's office several 
 years ago," said a New York dramatic critic to 
 me the other day, " and he introduced me to a 
 young woman who, since then, has attained con- 
 siderable importance on the stage. * She's the 
 most unsophisticated girl I've seen in a long time,' 
 said the manager and there was something in his 
 23
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 way of saying it that meant more than the words 
 themselves conveyed. A moment later, I was 
 left alone with the girl. 
 
 " * Mr. Blank is the finest man I ever met,' she 
 confided. 4 And his attitude toward me certainly 
 shows that managers aren't what they're said to 
 be. Why, he says he'll be a father to me I ' " 
 
 " Unsophisticated, indeed! ' See here,' I said, 
 ' Just take a tip from me. Beware of the man- 
 ager who is going to be a father or a brother or 
 an uncle or a cousin or anything else of the kind. 
 Accept no favors ; get where you can by yourself 
 and on your own resources.' 
 
 " Two or three years later, after this girl had 
 scored a big success that practically made her be- 
 tween sunset and sunrise, I met her at a dinner 
 party. I'd forgotten about the advice I'd given 
 her and I doubt if I ever would have thought 
 about it again if she hadn't come to me and re- 
 minded me of it. 
 
 ' ' I never forgot what you said that day in 
 Blank's office,' she said, recalling the incident, 
 ' and I've acted on it ever since.' 
 
 " ' Well,' said I, ' did Blank engage you? ' 
 11 ' No,' she laughed, ' he didn't! ' " 
 This suggests another indictment to be brought 
 against the conventional matter that is usually 
 written about the stage and its players. The 
 writers of this light, glittery, superficial stuff gen- 
 24
 
 ON THE STAGE 
 
 erally confine themselves to the exploitation of 
 men and women who have achieved a fair degree 
 of success. They say absolutely nothing about 
 the thousands who have failed. The reader, 
 therefore, is led to believe that success is general, 
 that it is far more common than it is or can be or 
 ever will be, and that it comes without effort, 
 without labor, without sacrifice. Nothing could 
 be further from the truth. Even a very slight 
 amount of success is purchased at a tremendous 
 cost and, oftentimes, it proves far less profitable 
 after it is gained than the public has been led to 
 believe. 
 
 Employment is precarious and engagements 
 are indefinite. So when it is said, or whispered 
 about knowingly, that this actor or that actress re- 
 ceives $200 or $400 a week, the sum seems large 
 beautifully large. But I know a score of 
 actors and actresses who command this salary 
 and who have drawn it in the last six months only 
 twice the rest of the time they were idle or re- 
 hearsing. It's one thing to be down on the pro- 
 ducer's list as a player receiving $200 a week and 
 quite another thing to be getting it. Managers 
 are perfectly willing to pay it, to be sure, if they 
 have to and if their production is a success. But 
 if the production is a failure, it is withdrawn and 
 the player is out of employment. Another en- 
 gagment, with more dreary rehearsing, may fol- 
 25
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 low immediately or not for half a season or, pos- 
 sibly, not until a new season is begun. 
 
 The government, in short, is not going to fill 
 its coffers with income tax paid by actors and 
 actresses. So, when Mary Jane and Elizabeth 
 Ann see pictures of Miss Footlight's summer 
 home and more pictures of her Riverside Drive 
 apartment and read details of the routine of her 
 life with maids and butlers and chauffeurs at her 
 command, let them do a little thinking. Pur- 
 veyors of this tinselled literature very likely know 
 full well that Miss Footlight has other means of 
 support besides acting they know it, but they 
 ignore it. 
 
 Girls in the chorus receive about fifteen dollars 
 a week in New York some, here and there, a 
 little more perhaps. On the road, or out of 
 town, their salary is increased to eighteen. If 
 this weekly wage were received regularly, every 
 week in the year, it might be worth considering. 
 But, unfortunately, it is not. Nothing at all is 
 paid during rehearsals, and rehearsals, fre- 
 quently, last for five or six weeks and even longer. 
 I know one company that recently rehearsed nine 
 weeks and played two. The chorus girls re- 
 ceived two weeks' salary, thirty dollars not a 
 very large sum, it must be admitted, with which 
 to pay for board and lodging and clothing, to say 
 nothing of other necessary expenses, for eleven 
 26
 
 ON THE STAGE 
 
 weeks. And some of the girls who appeared in 
 this short-lived production were without employ- 
 ment for two months following its withdrawal. 
 If you are eager to go on the stage and are per- 
 fectly willing to begin in the lowly capacity of 
 " extra " woman or chorus girl, by way of con- 
 vincing yourself that the life is all you believe it 
 to be, try living nineteen weeks on thirty dollars. 
 But, you say, you have talent and ability and 
 managers are always looking for these. You are 
 wrong. That is merely another illusion that the 
 false literature fosters. It may be true that man- 
 agers think they are looking for them but I doubt 
 whether they ever succeed in fooling themselves 
 to the extent of really believing it. When players 
 have scored successes in various roles, then it is 
 quite true, managers want them. Seeing is be- 
 lieving. But managers are not discovering 
 talent; talent is discovering itself. If you were 
 an unknown Mrs. Fiske, your only chance to 
 demonstrate it would come to you by accident. 
 Untried is unknown to the theatrical producer and 
 he is making no experiments. You may be pos- 
 sessed of all the ability necessary to make you a 
 great star in a few seasons, but, to do anything or 
 to get anywhere in the profession, you will first 
 have to be lucky enough to get a small part that 
 will enable you to attract attention to your acting 
 and thus to your ability. But, when choice falls 
 27
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 between a girl with experience and without talent, 
 and a girl with talent and without experience, the 
 former wins. 
 
 I have heard no less a manager than Lee Shu- 
 bert bemoan the fact that he could not find the 
 players he wanted. William A. Brady has sadly 
 shaken his head over the prospect and declared 
 again and again in my presence that there are no 
 more competent actors and actresses. At the 
 time Shubert was bewailing the paucity of players, 
 there were fifty young men and women in his re- 
 ception room, all asking nothing more than an op- 
 portunity to show what they could do. And 
 Brady, at the same time, was deliberately remain- 
 ing away from his office in order to avoid a long 
 line of ambitious applicants. If any of these pa- 
 tient waiters had come with a letter of introduc- 
 tion from some man or woman of influence an 
 audience might have been granted, but even that 
 is by no means a certainty. 
 
 What I have said of these two producers is 
 true of the others as well. There is no open 
 front door into their presence. The applicant 
 must tarry by the way until he or she has culti- 
 vated acquaintances who can shunt them in by the 
 back-door entrances. 
 
 I remember not long ago when a prominent 
 producer Lee Shubert, to be explicit was 
 sighing for "acts" for a vaudeville program. 
 28
 
 ON THE STAGE 
 
 " I can't find them," he moaned. Two days later, 
 I happened to be out of town, and my attention 
 was drawn by a member of one of our companies 
 to a young woman among the " extras." She was 
 a dancer, and one of unusual ability and training. 
 Immediately my mind reverted to the producer 
 who was in need of just such a specialty. In- 
 deed, he had particularly mentioned his desire for 
 a dancer of precisely this girl's class. 
 
 I gave her a letter of introduction, not only 
 to the producer, but to two or three of his impor- 
 tant lieutenants. Several weeks later, the girl 
 came to see me. For more than a fortnight she 
 had called almost daily at the producer's office 
 but, despite her hours of waiting, she had never 
 been able to get beyond the secretarial guardian 
 at the threshold of the Shubert office. 
 
 This is not an exceptional instance but a typical 
 case. This girl, ready to " go on " at a moment's 
 notice, possessed of youth, ambition, attractive 
 features, good figure and a charming personality, 
 cannot gain even an opportunity to display her 
 wares. She must remain hidden in a chorus until, 
 if she is lucky, she can cultivate influences that 
 will obtain for her what her talent cannot get by 
 'itself. And in cultivating these influences, which 
 are not in the habit of doing something or giving 
 something for nothing, in most instances, she 
 pays with the only sort of pay they want or will 
 29
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 accept or that she has to give. This is frank. It 
 is not pleasant and it will not be found in those 
 alluring and deceptive articles that Mary Jane 
 and Elizabeth Ann read and believe and build 
 their dreams on, but it is fact. 
 
 The morals of individuals are no affair of mine 
 and, to be candid, I have been in the theatrical 
 business so long that I personally don't care a rap 
 what anybody does or how or why they do it. 
 The atmosphere itself begets this sort of indif- 
 ference and it works its way, somehow, into one's 
 system, gradually, insidiously, but thoroughly, like 
 a habit-forming drug. The dose of it that sickens 
 today is tomorrow's necessity. Behind the cur- 
 tain, the familiarity, the innuendo, the suggestion 
 that shock the novice tonight go unheeded tomor- 
 row night and so on, night by night, week by 
 week, until the time comes when old standards no 
 longer prevail, when nothing shocks and nothing 
 seems improper or wrong or immoral. And, for 
 all I know, nothing is. One can hope so, at least. 
 
 The girl who wants to go on the stage ought 
 to know this, whether it deters her or not. Igno- 
 rance on her part will not help her any and it cer- 
 tainly will afford her no protection. I venture to 
 say that Peggy Hall, in her first week at the 
 Circle, suffered more shocks than in all the pre- 
 vious years of her life put together. But that 
 was bound to occur, for I have never yet seen the 
 30
 
 ON THE STAGE 
 
 chorus and I have seen a good many in 
 which there was not at least two or three girls 
 who were coarse and vulgar beyond description. 
 Even a drunken sailor would be astonished at 
 their command of indecent language, and as for 
 their morals God help them they appar- 
 ently never had any. Their influence, however, 
 is not half so bad for the novice as that of the 
 purring little cat who is seemingly all virtue and 
 gentleness and modesty, but whose sophistica- 
 tion at twenty is not surpassed by that of the fifty- 
 year-old rounder in whose company she dines 
 after the performance.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PATH OF THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 THERE was one thing about Peggy Hall that 
 was in the nature of a pleasing surprise. It was 
 a novelty. She never tried to make capital out 
 of the circumstances that had brought her to my 
 office. She never tried to make use of my posi- 
 tion. She stood squarely on her own feet. She 
 had delivered her letter of introduction, had 
 placed herself in a way under my guardianship, 
 but she had gone forth then to do for herself, 
 to win on her own merit and it never occurred to 
 her, I am sure, that my influence was in any way 
 responsible for her first employment. Nor did I 
 enlighten her. I admired her pluck and inde- 
 pendence for I know only too well the tendency of 
 all of Broadway to make the most out of circum- 
 stances and wrest every advantage possible out of 
 an influential friendship. 
 
 It is the habit of Broadway to presume on ac- 
 quaintance and so often have I seen friendship 
 abused through attempts to convert it into capital, 
 that I have made it a rule to be especially guarded 
 in the matter of meeting players except on a busi- 
 32
 
 THE PATH OF THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 ness basis. It is mighty hard to refuse employ- 
 ment to anyone in need of it, but it is a great deal 
 harder to refuse it to an old friend when every sign 
 proclaims his necessity. Many a time, a slight 
 friendship, made in a quarter where all seemed 
 snug and safe, has turned out to have unforeseen 
 embarrassments. 
 
 No one can tell, for instance, when an appar- 
 ently sane and level-headed man, who talks busi- 
 ness with you sensibly and who proves to be a 
 person worth knowing, will go stark, raving mad 
 and begin to write a play. Indeed, it sometimes 
 seems, everybody begins. Fortunately, only 
 about ten thousand a year finish. Most of these 
 undertake the writing of a play after seeing some 
 good play performed for seeing a good play, 
 for some strange reason, immediately inspires 
 playwriting. It has the effect of making play- 
 writing seem easy. This is due, no doubt, to the 
 fact that it moves along gracefully from first act 
 to last and is simple, direct and logical with a cer- 
 tain inevitableness about its sequence of scenes and 
 incidents. 
 
 " Why," thinks the spectator, " I could do that 
 myself." But he forgets that the very qualities 
 which make the task of playwriting seem easy are 
 the most difficult to supply. Nor dees he realize 
 that even if he succeeds in writing a play it is far 
 from likely that he will ever see it produced. For 
 
 33
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 there is no product of the human brain harder to 
 market than the manuscript of a play. Pro- 
 ducers pretend to be in a feverish quest for ma- 
 terial but that is nothing more than a pose. The 
 fact is, the offices of American producers are shel- 
 tering hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts that 
 never have been read and never will be read. In 
 Bingo's office when I first went to work for him, 
 there was a pile of manuscripts that could not have 
 contained less than five hundred plays. The 
 other day I visited Bingo and, in the same old of- 
 fice, in the same old corner, was the same old pile, 
 and I should not be surprised to learn that the 
 pile contained some of the same old manuscripts. 
 This is true to a greater or less extent of every 
 producing office in New York City. 
 
 Algernon Smith, reading the apparently sin- 
 cere effusion of Bingo's press agent, in which 
 Bingo is made to say that he is always eager to 
 have 'scripts sent to him, that he reads them care- 
 fully and thoroughly, rushes to the Greentown 
 postoffice and hopefully forwards to Bingo's 
 headquarters the latest product of his pen. 
 Bingo's secretary signs the registered package re- 
 ceipt and, two or three months later, in answer to 
 a demand from Algernon for some verdict on his 
 'script, the same employe wearily picks Algernon's 
 play from the dusty pile, where it has reposed un- 
 disturbed from the moment of its receipt, and 
 34
 
 THE PATH OF THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 with a polite note of rejection signed by 
 Bingo's name but which Bingo never sees re- 
 turns it to its owner. 
 
 It may happen and more than once it has 
 happened that Algernon has submitted an ex- 
 ceedingly valuable property for Bingo's inspec- 
 tion. But, a year or two later, when, per- 
 haps the play is running on Broadway and " turn- 
 ing 'em away," Bingo will be surprised to read 
 some morning that the 'script had been in his 
 hands and by him rejected. To deny this is to 
 confess that he never read it, and Bingo cannot af- 
 ford to do that. He remains silent, therefore, 
 though he smarts under the charge that his judg- 
 ment was bad. 
 
 The producer lives to produce and he produces 
 to live. His indifference to the possibilities of 
 'scripts is therefore all the more difficult to under- 
 stand. It is true, of course, that some producers 
 employ play-readers, but their reading is more of 
 a formality than anything else. Still, in the last 
 two or three seasons, there has been some im- 
 provement in the matter of the attention paid 
 to the unsolicited play, and though it falls far 
 short of being in any sense commensurate with the 
 demand for improvement, it is a movement in the 
 right direction. Nothing of substantial value, 
 however, will be accomplished until the producer 
 assumes a more encouraging attitude toward the 
 
 35
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 playwright, and this he never will do until he first 
 comes to a realization of what fair treatment to a 
 playwright's manuscript demands. At present he 
 is neither fair nor courteous; he is indifferent, 
 careless, evasive and rude. 
 
 Striking an approximate average, I should say 
 that five manuscripts a day are received by each 
 of the prominent producing managers of New 
 York. Some receive more and some fewer, but, 
 day in and day out, this figure is not far from the 
 mark. Only one in the five is copyrighted, and 
 since the records of the copyright office show that 
 about two thousand manuscripts are registered 
 annually, it is safe to assume that the total pro- 
 duct amounts to ten thousand a year. Of this 
 annual output, less than one hundred reach the 
 stage in the course of a season so it is apparent 
 that only one per cent at the most, one out of 
 every hundred, is possessed of sufficient value to 
 appeal to the producer. But it should be remem- 
 bered that not a few of the plays produced are of 
 foreign origin or have been written to order 
 a fact which still further reduces the meager 
 chances of the unknown American writer who 
 submits an unsolicited manuscript to a producer. 
 
 It is easy to make an assertion and it is easy to 
 
 deny it, but experience convinces me that not a 
 
 fifth of the manuscripts submitted are read. A 
 
 leading producer who comes forward with the 
 
 36
 
 THE PATH OF THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 perennial statement that he reads a thousand 
 manuscripts a year has just delivered himself of 
 his latest effusion on the subject. I lunched with 
 him a day or two ago. 
 
 " See here," I said, " do you really mean what 
 you say about reading a thousand 'scripts a 
 year?" 
 
 41 Of course not," he frankly admitted. " I 
 don't read a hundred. How could I? Where'd 
 I find the time? " 
 
 " Then why do you make the statement? " 
 
 " Oh," he continued, unabashed, " that story is 
 always good for half a column, more or less, in 
 every big paper from New York to San Fran- 
 cisco. Dramatic editors will print that when it is 
 impossible to get anything else by them." 
 
 And so Algernon Smith, biting the end of his 
 pencil in his Greentown library and reading the 
 half-column falsehood, decides to decline the 
 clerkship in the Granger Dry Goods store and to 
 devote another year to the pursuit of his profes- 
 sion. 
 
 I talked recently with a young man who came to 
 New York two years ago to sell a play. Today 
 he does not complain because he has sold none but 
 because he has been denied the privilege of show- 
 ing his goods. By some devious path, he made 
 his way finally to me. Play-reading is not a part 
 of my duties thank Heaven ! but the modest 
 37
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 sincerity of the young man impressed me and I 
 took two of his plays to read. One of them 
 seemed to me to be unusually good and I sent it, 
 with a note expressing my opinion, to a member 
 of the firm. He read it while on a train en route 
 to Washington and accepted it by wire. That 
 manuscript had been in his office twice, once for a 
 month, when it was voluntarily withdrawn by the 
 author for revision, and again for seven months, 
 when it was returned after he had written half a 
 dozen letters asking for a verdict. On the latter 
 occasion, while the 'script came back, his courteous 
 notes of inquiry elicited no response. 
 
 When a playwright sells a play he sells it in the 
 face of the most unfriendly and discouraging 
 market in the world. It is all very well to say 
 that genius thrives on adversity and that rebuff 
 spurs it on to greater effort, but I believe that 
 some persons are naturally too timid, too retiring 
 and too impractical to wage a successful fight for 
 a hearing. They may have the best plays in the 
 world but the world will never know it. Some 
 others, with more influence than ability, more sell- 
 ing-sense than dramatic skill, will succeed where 
 the more worthy fail. 
 
 My young playwright acquaintance tells me 
 that some managers held copies of his manu- 
 scripts longer than we did and that not only did 
 they fail to reply to his letters but they failed also 
 38
 
 THE PATH OF THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 to return the manuscripts. Nor could he obtain 
 them, or satisfaction of any sort, even by applying 
 in person. He was treated with contempt as 
 often as not and never by any chance with the 
 slightest degree of encouragement. 
 
 I know a prominent fiction writer unknown 
 as a playwright who has written what strikes 
 me as an excellent farce. A manuscript sent from 
 his pen to any editor or publisher in this country, 
 or even England, for that matter, would com- 
 mand immediate attention whether it was finally 
 accepted or not. But the novelist's farce, sub- 
 mitted to a prominent producer and in response 
 to his personal request, too, has been in the pro- 
 ducer's hands for eighteen months and the author 
 has never had as much as a letter acknowledging 
 its arrival. If he did not possess a registry re- 
 ceipt signed by an employe of the firm and did 
 not have the letter from the manager himself, 
 bearing his signature, requesting that the play be 
 submitted, he would hardly be able to believe, he 
 says, that he had actually sent it to the producer. 
 
 This is nothing, however, compared to Thomp- 
 son Buchanan's experience. He told me once 
 that a play of his, " According To Fate," if I re- 
 call the title, remained with a manager eight 
 years. Indeed, he showed me correspondence 
 to prove it. Where had the manuscript been all 
 that time? " I believe," Buchanan said, " that it 
 39
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 reposed in a dusty vault with several hundred 
 other plays and was brought to light when the 
 firm moved its offices recently." Charles Neid- 
 linger, who wrote " The World and His Wife," 
 and several other plays, used to tell how the 
 former lay in one manager's office nine months 
 before he received any word regarding it. The 
 manager then asked him how he wished the manu- 
 script returned. " Never mind returning it," 
 Neidlinger replied. " It is playing in a theater 
 not half a block from your office." Later the 
 playwright learned that the manager himself 
 never knew the manuscript was in his office. 
 
 A young author writing me recently to ask my 
 help in obtaining a hearing for him, said that he 
 had proved to his own satisfaction by repeated 
 trial that it was worse than useless to try to 
 market a play by mail. " I have spent," his let- 
 ter says, " about two years of actual working time 
 writing plays and trying to get them read. I 
 have spent in money to the same end $3500. I 
 quote the rest verbatim : 
 
 " I could tell you dozens and scores of things 
 that have ground my pride and almost crushed my 
 hopes for a decent consideration, but to recount 
 them only serves to make me feel that it is not 
 worth while. If I ever should win, and I feel 
 confident that I will, that which will have carried 
 me through is that quality which other playwrights 
 
 40
 
 THE PATH OF THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 with finer imagination and a keener feeling have 
 not got, courage. 
 
 " I have had plays returned unopened, some so 
 insecurely wrapped that the manuscript was ab- 
 solutely ruined; and some, a dozen or more, never 
 returned at all. 
 
 " And here is another experience : an actor told 
 a play agent that I had written a good play from 
 a short story of mine, which was originally pub- 
 lished in a leading magazine. The actor was so 
 enthusiastic that the agent came to see me, re- 
 mained to Sunday dinner with my family, and 
 went away with the 'script under his arm. 
 
 " Two months later I called on him, not having 
 had any replies to my letters asking how things 
 were going, and he told me he had not had a 
 chance to read it. I took it away in the package 
 in which I had given it to him. He meant all 
 right, but ye gods ! what can a playwright do ? 
 
 " Then this very same play was read by . 
 
 Changes were suggested and made, and I received 
 a letter from the general manager, enclosing a 
 copy of the report of the readers, and telling me 
 
 , the principal play reader, was enthusiastic 
 
 about it. Mr. told me so himself. But a 
 
 press agent thought it wasn't quite the thing. 
 However, two plays on the same subject have since 
 made a lot of money in New Yorkl
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SUBMITTING A PLAY 
 
 IT seems to me, in view of the adverse condi- 
 tions, that it is not to be wondered at that we 
 have so few really good plays. The wonder is 
 that we have good plays at all. Publishers and 
 magazine editors, I am informed, are always on 
 the lookout for new and promising authors. The 
 editor-in-chief of a leading publishing firm told 
 me the other day with pride how he and his as- 
 sistants " discovered " some of the prominent 
 fiction writers of the day. The list was a long 
 one and certainly interesting. 
 
 " We used to see an occasional short story by 
 Blank," he told me, " printed in some of the more 
 obscure magazines. Something in Blank's style 
 impressed me with the idea that he could write a 
 novel and write a good one. I wrote to him, 
 urged him to try his hand at it and, finally, he 
 consented. The result was one of the season's 
 six best sellers." 
 
 He told of many such instances, and from 
 others I have heard the same thing how, every- 
 where, the author who displays the slightest genu- 
 ine ability is encouraged and his products con- 
 42
 
 SUBMITTING A PLAY 
 
 structively criticised until he finally develops into 
 an experienced and successful writer. " Discov- 
 eries " are eagerly sought and, when found, are 
 hailed with delight. How different is the experi- 
 ence of the "unknown" playwright! The door 
 is deliberately shut in his face and if he gets in at 
 all he must break in or sneak in. 
 
 It is quite true that the manager is a busy man, 
 and that he cannot afford to waste his time in un- 
 profitable interviews with fledgling writers. But, 
 while he hastens to present this as an excuse, no 
 one is asking or expecting it of him. Publishers, 
 I assume, are also busy men, but, long ago, they 
 learned that it pays and pays handsomely to be on 
 the lookout for new material from new authors. 
 
 A woman playwright who came from the 
 Pacific coast to sell a play, devoted a year to the 
 task and then returned home to find her 'script 
 accepted by a producer who hails from her own 
 city. Everywhere she went in New York, the 
 play-readers she saw were almost insultingly con- 
 temptuous. 
 
 " They invariably told me," she confided, 
 " that I was not ' in the profession.' One man 
 declared that in all the years he had been reading 
 'scripts he could not remember one instance where 
 the play of an inexperienced playwright had been 
 accepted." 
 
 That statement, of course, was stupid and ob- 
 43
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 viously untrue, for there must be a beginning to 
 everyone's career and the first 'script from any 
 author is certainly a 'script from an inexperienced 
 writer. 
 
 " Clyde Fitch was not born * in the profes- 
 sion,' " the playwright responded. The play- 
 reader looked at her. 
 
 " But," he said, deliberately, " you're not a 
 Clyde Fitch, you know." 
 
 Perhaps not; then, again, perhaps yes. Who 
 knows ? 
 
 "We're always looking for Clyde Fitches," 
 said another play-reader to me one day. 
 
 "You didn't find Clyde Fitch," I replied. 
 11 He found you." 
 
 It is my opinion that the play-readers engaged 
 by New York producers are, for the most part, 
 incompetent. Indeed they seem to be employed 
 more for the purpose of disposing of the play- 
 wright than for appraising his work. 
 
 I would not give a dollar for the opinion of all 
 of them put together and I am inclined to the 
 belief that this is also what most of their em- 
 ployers think of them. Some of them have actu- 
 ally so expressed themselves, in confidence, of 
 course. 
 
 Many of these readers have no breadth of 
 view at all. With possibly an occasional excep- 
 tion, they are all narrowly provincial and are, or 
 44
 
 SUBMITTING A PLAY 
 
 appear to be, utterly oblivious of the fact that 
 there is a great area of our country lying west 
 of the Palisades. A good many managers are 
 similarly circumscribed in view, and this largely 
 accounts for the fact that, in recent seasons, many 
 plays have been failures " on the road " that 
 have been at least fair successes in New York. 
 
 Now and then a big, broad, comprehensive 
 play makes its way to the stage, reflecting, as 
 every play should, the thoughts and feelings and 
 emotions of the great public generally, and proves 
 to the manager, or ought to prove to him, that 
 it pays to remember that New York is only a 
 small dot on the map after all and that there is a 
 large, a very large population, that is geographi- 
 cally and even emotionally and intellectually re- 
 mote from Manhattan Island. The firm that 
 employs me knows nothing of the country west of 
 the Alleghanies. To be sure, its members think 
 they do, but, unfortunately, that does not make a 
 fact of their theory. They came from up-state 
 New York; Broadway was their goal and, before 
 they came, when they came and after they came, 
 Broadway was the beginning and end of their 
 thoughts, hopes and aspirations. Today they 
 live Broadway and think Broadway and produce 
 for Broadway. 
 
 Someday, a producer will appear who will pay 
 more attention to this end of his business. He 
 45
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 will realize its importance. He will have not 
 one reader only but three or four, or half a dozen 
 for that matter, and the reports from these on 
 the manuscripts they read will be carefully con- 
 sidered by the manager. He will attach some 
 value to unanimity of opinion among his readers, 
 who will be chosen not for their Broadway 
 sophistication, but solely for their ability to judge 
 and appraise with fair degree of accuracy. And 
 all 'scripts will be promptly considered as 
 they are in the publishing business. When this 
 policy has prevailed a year the manager who 
 adopts it will find that he is getting his choice of 
 plays by known playwrights as well as those by 
 unknown playwrights. He will find that he is 
 receiving the plays first with first chance to select 
 from them. And if his readers are men and 
 women of good judgment and he himself is a 
 manager of good judgment he will monopolize the 
 best of the business because he will monopolize 
 the best of the plays. 
 
 On every producer's staff of readers there 
 should be a representative of the West of the 
 remote and despised " provinces," some one who 
 is too Western in taste and thought and habit to 
 be easily Broadwayized. For the West can give 
 New York something that New York does not 
 seem to be able to give itself a clearer, kindlier 
 view of humankind. It can supply this because it 
 46
 
 SUBMITTING A PLAY 
 
 has a keener, readier, sincerer sympathy for 
 humankind. It is interested in people. A family 
 out in my native city knows all the other families 
 in the neighborhood; the children are playfellows 
 and the parents are friends. Sickness brings im- 
 mediate offers of assistance; joys and griefs are 
 shared. This makes for the cultivation of inter- 
 est in men and women real interest and 
 New York does not know it or feel it. What it 
 mistakes for interest is curiosity. 
 
 I believe this sympathy, this human interest, 
 has its value in writing drama, and appraising 
 drama. I think it is essential for the playwright 
 and for the play-reader and, incidentally, for the 
 professional play critic. Publishers have found 
 it so and employ it accordingly. But the pro- 
 ducer is at least a quarter of a century behind the 
 publisher in turning it to account. 
 
 A change will come, I am sure; it is inevitable. 
 But, in the meantime, I am afraid that many a 
 good play will go unread and many a hopeful 
 young dramatist will be cruelly discouraged. I 
 have never written a play myself and, strangely 
 enough, since I have been in the theatrical busi- 
 ness, I never thought of writing a play. I began 
 one, it is true, some twelve or fifteen years ago, 
 but I got no further than a scenario. I say this 
 because I do not want anyone to labor under the 
 suspicion that I am, in any measure, a disap- 
 47
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 pointed playwright myself. I am not, and my 
 attitude toward " unknown " playwrights is 
 Broadway's attitude. I don't want them around 
 me ; I don't want to be disturbed by them. I have 
 enough to do as it is. But I am aware, neverthe- 
 less, that my attitude is entirely wrong and, 
 largely because I soon shall have left Broadway 
 and the theatrical business far behind, I can in- 
 dulge in the satisfaction of the confession. 
 
 Playwrights are not prone to take advice. On 
 the other hand, they are too prone to grasp at 
 straws. But if it fell to my lot to advise a young 
 dramatist what to do with his product I would 
 counsel him to send his play but only after he 
 is satisfied that it is as perfect as he himself can 
 make it to some play-broker or agent. There 
 are two or three reliable agents and they are alive 
 to the demands of the producers, know what they 
 want, know their needs, know to whom the play 
 should be submitted and how to submit it and how 
 to obtain immediate consideration. Producers re- 
 spect these agents, place faith in their judgment 
 and pay some heed to their recommendations. 
 The reliable agent will not submit a manuscript to 
 a producer when he knows the work to be with- 
 out merit. Oftentimes, too, through the agent's 
 advice and suggestion and criticism of a play an 
 unpromising 'script has been converted into a 
 salable and valuable property. 
 48
 
 SUBMITTING A PLAY 
 
 Another effective means of getting a manu- 
 script promptly before a producer is to interest 
 some prominent player. A good actor or ac- 
 tress with a good manuscript in hand is welcome 
 in any producer's office and will gain immediately 
 a ready ear. This is a procedure, however, that 
 is hardly practicable for the writer who is not 
 a resident of New York. For those remote from 
 Broadway, the other course is the safest, surest 
 and quickest. Seeing the producer personally is, 
 of course, best of all, but that is practically im- 
 possible for the unknown writer. If he gains the 
 audience, however, by some means or other, he 
 will serve his cause best if he submits a brief 
 scenario rather than a completed play. The 
 manager might read this, because of its brevity, 
 where he would not read the play as a whole. 
 
 The firm that employs me began this last season 
 with nineteen plays ready for production. It 
 may interest prospective playwrights to learn that 
 of these, five came from abroad, seven more were 
 musical productions " built up," for the most part, 
 in rehearsal, four were by playwrights each of 
 whom has at least two previous successes to his 
 credit, two by playwrights whose first plays 
 neither of which was a success were produced 
 the previous season, and the remaining play was 
 by a new dramatist, her first production, whose 
 'script came to us from the office of a play-broker. 
 49
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 " THE melancholy days are come," I always 
 quote to myself about the first week in September. 
 And the remark has nothing at all to do with the 
 weather. The weather, as a matter of fact, is 
 usually ideal, but, in early September, theatrical 
 Broadway begins to stage its dramas in real life. 
 They are not apparent to the inexperienced eye, 
 for it is only when the drama suddenly twists it- 
 self into grim and ugly tragedy that the casual ob- 
 server is made aware of its existence. To one 
 who is possessed of knowledge and experience, 
 however, the curtain is drawn aside. He sees 
 what is concealed from the less sophisticated eye. 
 
 On my desk are lists of players employed and 
 unemployed. I know fairly well from frequent 
 perusal of the names who is engaged and who, to 
 use that ominously euphonious phrase of theater- 
 dom, is " at liberty." And so, when I walk on 
 the streets these days, and pass the players I 
 know, the smiles they wear convey no false im- 
 pression to me. I know who smiles by right and 
 who smiles by force. The man who seems to be 
 50
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 merriest, who appears to know neither care nor 
 worry, is very frequently the man whose anxiety 
 is the greatest, whose condition is the most des- 
 perate and whose heart is the heaviest. 
 
 The actor believes that, prosperous or not, he 
 must appear prosperous. And he is right, for in 
 no profession do appearances count for so much. 
 To some of them, though, there comes a time 
 when, strive as they may, appearances can no 
 longer be maintained. Their necessity betrays 
 itself and nothing worse could befall an actor. 
 Thereafter he fights, not any longer to get to the 
 top, but to keep from going to the bottom. His 
 professional career is on the decline and the 
 descent is rapid. He seldom recovers and, as long 
 as life remains, he faces the bitter necessity of 
 hunting desperately for any sort of employment 
 he can find. 
 
 I was standing on Broadway the other day, talk- 
 ing for a moment with one of the most prominent 
 leading men of the day. A man shabbily dressed 
 but still spotlessly clean approached us and asked, 
 politely, for a word with me. He wanted work; 
 he had heard that we needed extra men for a spec- 
 tacular production we were rehearsing and he 
 begged for a place in the ranks. 
 
 When first I came to New York, this man occu- 
 pied a position similar to that held today by the 
 high-salaried actor to whom I was talking. The
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 contrast was sharp, and almost unconsciously, my 
 gaze went from one to the other. 
 
 " Ten years from now," I thought to myself, 
 " where will both these men be? " 
 
 Players are improvident. Only a few of them 
 save. The actor, when employed, spends freely 
 and lives well, and his fidelity to the theory that 
 he must always appear prosperous compels him to 
 go on living at the same high rate when his in- 
 come ceases. What he manages to save, there- 
 fore, is soon exhausted if he is long out of work 
 and that is oftenest his condition and when 
 the savings are gone, as long as credit can be had, 
 his style of living remains unchanged. When 
 again an engagement provides him with an income, 
 old debts must be settled and old accounts squared 
 before more money can be laid away. With nine- 
 tenths of the most prominent players today their 
 liabilities exceed their assets; they are bankrupt. 
 
 " He was a fine actor in his day," said my com- 
 panion, as the figure of the old player disappeared. 
 
 " He was indeed," I replied. 
 
 I have heard the phrase so often that it strikes 
 me now less impressively than formerly. But, 
 back of it, there is yet to me a more poignant 
 drama than any that fancy can devise. The 
 phrase is at once a biography and an epitaph. 
 
 " He was a fine actor in his day." What glory 
 of achievement, what pride, what memories, what 
 52
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 disappointments, what grievous heart-aches, what 
 hopelessness, and, finally, what helplessness the 
 expression suggests I " In his day," he heard the 
 theater ring with applause; " in his day," he acted 
 with the best, his services were in demand, he was 
 respected, he was admired; " in his day," his name 
 was familiar from coast to coast, his portrait ap- 
 peared in newspapers and magazines and adorned 
 bill-boards, he was famous. But the " day " 
 ended, the twilight fell and after it the darkness 
 and obscurity. And now the pitiful, pitiless fight 
 in the night. The tragedy of such failure, it 
 seems to me, is that it does not kill. 
 
 " I want to rub out and fade away," said to- 
 day's leading man to me, " with my last good suit 
 of clothes." 
 
 " You will," thought I to myself, " profession- 
 ally, at least." 
 
 My sympathies, however, are always keenest 
 for the women of the profession, and for the young 
 as well as for the old. Somehow, the men can 
 manage and do manage, but the women, with 
 youth and beauty and strength departed, can find 
 no employment even in the ranks of the extras. 
 And the young girl, with hope leaping high, whose 
 confidence is unshaken and who has youth's faith 
 in life and in the certainty of success how bit- 
 terly heavy is the hand that disappointment lays 
 on her. 
 
 53
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 In the " melancholy days," one sees her on 
 every side, smiling, always smiling, fighting 
 bravely to keep her head above water and doubly 
 sorrowful through it all, no doubt, because she 
 must forego that solace which women find in re- 
 citing their woes to sympathetic ears. But the 
 unwritten law of the profession which forbids the 
 player to admit his need seals her lips. With the 
 last little frock frayed and worn, washing today's 
 shirtwaist for tomorrow's wear, with the few re- 
 maining nickels too precious to spend for street- 
 car fare, with hunger driving her on, each day she 
 makes her weary rounds of the theatrical employ- 
 ment agencies, holding fast to her courage, and 
 hopeful even in the face of repeated failure. At 
 night she smiles her way back to her wretched 
 little room and not until its door is closed and she 
 is safe in its solitude does the smile vanish. The 
 tears may come then if they will for no one is 
 there to see. Hope made strong by necessity sup- 
 ports the searcher in the day, but what of the 
 hours of the night, when sleep refuses to come, 
 and despair sits ever by her side and refuses to be 
 driven away ? 
 
 Writing home for money, even when money is 
 there to be had which is too seldom the case 
 is a final and last resort. To acknowledge even 
 temporary financial straits seems to the sorely 
 tried girl to be equivalent to a confession of fail- 
 54
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 ure, and there is no place on earth where an ac- 
 tress, young or old, recruit or veteran, wants to 
 have the appearance of success and affluence more 
 than at home in her own native town. Many a 
 girl has paid dearly for this pride and, I dare say, 
 many another one will pay as dearly in the future. 
 
 The other morning I went to our Garden 
 theater where, next week, the new spectacular pro- 
 duction opens its engagement. The time had ar- 
 rived for the hiring of the supers. I stood a few 
 moments and watched as the stage director in- 
 spected the applicants and made his selections. 
 The leading man of yesterday, he who had been 
 " a fine actor in his day," was there with a hun- 
 dred more of his kind, men and women, all human 
 derelicts, floating rudderless wherever the chang- 
 ing, shifting currents of life happen to send them. 
 A few nights hence, they will surge and crowd on 
 the stage to give the semblance of reality to a 
 mimic street fight. 
 
 To the spectator in his comfortable seat in the 
 front of the house, they will represent nothing 
 more than a theatrical spectacle. At the sound of 
 a cue they come and go. But, to the observer 
 who reflects, they represent the real tragedy of the 
 stage. They are the castaways of the profession 
 the men unshaven, unkempt, or shabbily gen- 
 teel, and the women, pathetically faded, some in 
 tawdry finery and others modestly and unassum- 
 55
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 ingly dressed. On the very stage where now they 
 appear as supers, it may be that once, in other 
 days, they played leading roles in famous suc- 
 cesses. 
 
 In the group was an actor, whose name was 
 familiar the country over when I was still dra- 
 matic critic in the Middle West. The face even 
 now was notably distinguished, despite the deep 
 lines, set by want and hardship, and the red and 
 watery eyes. Before I arrived in New York to 
 enter the theatrical business, an American man- 
 ager had brought him to this country from Lon- 
 don at a salary of $400 a week. Today, with less 
 than a decade passed, he is a super for $4 a week. 
 Wine and women versus career that was the 
 conflict and the former won. From leading 
 man to " bits " and from " bits " to nothing, the 
 descent had been rapid and the end inevitable. 
 And another in the group, who looked for all the 
 world as though she had come that moment from 
 an East Side pushcart, ten years ago was a " fea- 
 tured " beauty of the musical comedy stage, petted, 
 pampered, wined and dined by the roving million- 
 aire buccaneers of the Broadway main. 
 
 " How do you do? " a little man said, coming 
 to my side with an outstretched hand. He spoke 
 in a husky whisper. He, too, had been " a fine 
 actor in his day." 
 
 " You wonder, perhaps," he continued, speak- 
 
 56
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 ing with the precise enunciation of the actor of 
 other years, " what I am doing here? " 
 
 " Yes? " I responded, at a loss what to say. 
 
 " It's the voice," he went on smiling. " But I 
 am told it will come back. In the meantime 
 I must work; I must live. But I shall have my 
 old place in the profession again before the season 
 is over." 
 
 The eyes looked hopefully into mine. 
 
 " I've no doubt of it at all," I lied, cheerfully. 
 
 11 It's a great contrast, isn't it? Why, I have 
 played before audiences everywhere, before Queen 
 Victoria, Victor Emmanuel of Italy, Alexander II 
 of Russia in all the Courts. I have visited all 
 the nations of the world; I have been on the stage 
 sixty-five years and I am sixty-six years of age." 
 
 He smiled again, at the flood of recollections. 
 
 " But I'll be back where I belong before the 
 season is half gone." 
 
 Poor chap ! Before the season is half gone he 
 will have played the final scene of all. Death al- 
 ready stalks by his side. 
 
 In one of our companies last year there were 
 twenty extra men and women, not one of whom 
 had a line to speak. Each received a salary of 
 $18 a week on the road, $15 in New York. 
 Fourteen of the twenty eight men and six 
 women no longer than a dozen years ago were 
 comparatively prominent in the profession and 
 57
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 found employment readily at not less than $75 a 
 week. One, whose feelings I shall not further 
 wound by mentioning by name, has charmed thou- 
 sands throughout the country with his sweet tenor 
 voice, now lost to him forever. Memory of him 
 still abides and reference to him is still frequent 
 but I doubt whether the public at large, which so 
 often applauded him in his prime, ever asks itself 
 what has become of him. 
 
 Another was for years one of the foremost im- 
 personators of women characters of a more 
 or less burlesque nature and his antics in petti- 
 coat garb have brought laughter to a million 
 spectators. When the company played in Boston, 
 business brought me there, and the company ward- 
 robe mistress, herself formerly a musical comedy 
 actress of no mean ability, called my attention to 
 the fact that he was ill and helpless. I found him 
 suffering from inflammatory rheumatism, lying 
 alone and unattended in a wretched lodging house 
 hovel, in dirt and filth, his money exhausted and 
 the slatternly landlady threatening to evict him 
 unless he paid for a week's lodging in advance. 
 Nor were matters improved by the fact that an 
 invalid wife at home in New York was dependent 
 on the meager remittances he could send her from 
 time to time. I laughed in the face of an actor 
 who made the most of my presence on this occa- 
 sion to ask for an increase in salary, on the basis, 
 
 58
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 as he carefully explained, that with his income of 
 $250 a week he could not make both ends meet. 
 Perhaps, though, there was more reason in his 
 complaint than appears on the surface, for the 
 principals, and he among them, had rehearsed 
 eight weeks without a penny of salary save what 
 they were able to induce a cautious and reluctant 
 manager to advance them. 
 
 I returned to New York from this trip to learn 
 of the death of an actor whose end was hastened, 
 I have no doubt, if not directly caused by anxiety 
 due to unfair treatment on the part of a prominent 
 manager. The manager, himself, however, was 
 merely following a general custom prevailing in 
 managerial circles and practiced by myself, I must 
 confess, whenever occasion seems to warrant it. 
 But, as I said before, I have followed the rules of 
 the game as I found them already laid down; I 
 have followed them because I had to, for, alone 
 and I should have been altogether alone I 
 could not change what custom had established 
 and practice sanctioned. In this instance, the 
 manager had contracted with the player, engag- 
 ing his services and, making small advances from 
 time to time, had thereby placed the actor in his 
 debt. No part, however, was forthcoming 
 only empty promises. Employment seemed al- 
 ways just ahead only a week or two away at the 
 most. Finally, the advances ceased and when the 
 59
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 actor made bold to complain, his complaint was 
 greeted with sneers. He threatened legal pro- 
 cedure and was told to go ahead. But going 
 ahead without money was easier said than done 
 and application to the other offices was met with 
 a disinclination to interfere with a player under 
 contract to serve another employer. When he 
 sought a release, it was not granted and, finally, 
 the strain told so heavily that death came sud- 
 denly to put an end for all time to the actor's per- 
 plexities and anxieties. And when it claimed him, 
 a little woman heard the news dry-eyed and sobless 
 and that night perished by her own hand that she 
 might be, as she explained in the brief note she 
 left behind, with the man she loved. 
 
 And I might pile tragedy on tragedy. No 
 other profession in the world writes so many pages 
 of it. No other profession shows contrasts as 
 startling. It has its ups and downs, but the ups 
 seem superlatively high and the downs super- 
 latively low. 
 
 " But where is the bright side of theatrical 
 life? " you ask. " Isn't there any? " 
 
 Indeed there is. The bright side is the 
 audience's side. The public has a singularly slip- 
 shod method of converting an exception into a 
 glittering generality. It hears of the marvelous 
 profits a successful production makes and imme- 
 diately concludes that all productions are profit- 
 60
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 able. It hears what a theater makes and is eager 
 to build another theater to duplicate the financial 
 success of the first, forgetting that it is increasing 
 the number of playhouses a hundred per cent in 
 a year while the theater-going population has not 
 increased twenty per cent, in the country in ten 
 years. It learns on good authority that this actor 
 or that actress receives $500 a week or two or 
 three times that sum and leaps to the conclusion 
 that this exceptional success is relatively true 
 throughout the profession. 
 
 I never see the stage electricians at work with 
 their bunch lights and strips and spots striving 
 to obliterate shadows by flooding the stage with 
 light from all angles, without reflecting that this 
 is precisely what the average observer does men- 
 tally so far as the theater is concerned. He sees 
 the high lights and forgets the shadows. The 
 chorus smiles at him from across the magic foot- 
 lights and he forgets that the chorus is paid to 
 smile and that behind the smile there may be and 
 generally is such misery as he little dreams of. 
 Perhaps it is not amiss, then, to lay some emphasis 
 on the other side, the side of which it is neither 
 profitable nor pleasant to write nor scarcely enjoy- 
 able to read. But there it is nevertheless and di- 
 recting attention to it may be the means of staying 
 the incautious feet of Mary Jane from straying 
 down a path that too often proves only a treach- 
 61
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 erous by-way. I am trying to establish a sign on 
 the road Proceed Slowly ; Dangerous Turn 
 Ahead. 
 
 It has been six years since I have encouraged 
 anyone to go on the stage, and I wish today with 
 all my heart that the young woman I then advised 
 to enter the profession had never heard the coun- 
 sel from my lips. I found her in an Ohio city. I 
 was making a tour of inspection of theaters and in 
 the city where she lived I had finished my business 
 and gone to the station only to find my train sev- 
 eral hours late. It was an evening in early 
 spring, unseasonably warm, and I boarded a street 
 car for a ride to the outskirts of the city and back. 
 When I alighted to catch a returning car, a sud- 
 den shower caused me to seek shelter in the only 
 place that offered a moving picture theater. I 
 stood in the rear with my attention on the audi- 
 ence more than on the screen until I was suddenly 
 aware that a young girl had appeared on the rude 
 platform stage and was singing. Her voice was 
 remarkable, untrained though it was, strikingly 
 impressive and it was immediately apparent that 
 behind it was a singularly fascinating personality. 
 Despite the fact that she had selected songs not 
 at all calculated to appeal to her hearers, the audi- 
 ence liked her, applauded her and demanded an 
 encore. I saw in her, to be brief, that rare com- 
 bination of youth, magnetism, talent and beauty 
 62
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 that gives success in such liberal measure to those 
 fortunate enough to possess them. She was a 
 " find," a " discovery." I sought the manager, 
 made a few cautious inquiries, learned her name 
 Alice Carey I shall call her and gathered the 
 additional information that she was paid a dollar 
 a night for her singing. More about her he did 
 not know and most certainly he was not aware 
 that the girl had more than ordinary ability. 
 
 " Will she sing again? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes once more and then she's done for the 
 night." 
 
 A little later, before the second song was ended, 
 I slipped away and stood in the shadows in the 
 rear of the little theater until I saw the door open 
 and the singer emerge. She was alone and with- 
 out more ado I walked up to her and spoke. She 
 was frightened but I hastened my explanation 
 and, though still suspicious when together we 
 boarded an inbound car, I had reassured her par- 
 tially at least. She was entirely convinced, I 
 think, of the truth of my explanation when we left 
 the car at the entrance of our local theater and she 
 found herself witnessing the final scenes of the 
 light opera that was the week's attraction. 
 
 There was method in my procedure, for I had 
 
 great respect for the opinion of the orchestra 
 
 leader of the company and, for that matter, for 
 
 the verdict also of the stage manager. Not at all 
 
 63
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 abashed, little Alice Carey consented to sing for 
 these gentlemen at the conclusion of the perform- 
 ance and their judgment confirmed my own. 
 
 The upshot of it all was a contract with the girl 
 and an agreement for her to join the company a 
 week later when it passed through the city again 
 enroute eastward. A month afterward the com- 
 pany a new production breaking in on the road 
 for its New York opening reached Broadway, 
 and was an immediate success. Alice Carey, 
 singing a minor part, was favorably remarked by 
 the critics and well started, it seemed to me, on 
 the road to success and fame. 
 
 Seasons come and go and crowd their events 
 fast on the heels of those preceding. Time is 
 short and the days and nights full of work. In a 
 year I had forgotten Alice Carey and even the 
 part I played in her life had faded from my 
 memory. 
 
 I was seated in a Broadway cafe one night with 
 a newspaper man who reported theatrical news 
 for his paper. We were eating a midnight lunch 
 when my attention was attracted by a girl who 
 was sitting alone at a nearby table. Once or 
 twice, when our eyes met, I thought she was about 
 to nod her head in recognition, but the movement 
 was too slight to be depended upon and, as her 
 face was strange to me, I concluded I was wrong. 
 But I could not help noticing that she was drink- 
 64
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 ing and drinking heavily. Her loneliness, the fact 
 that she was loudly dressed in the extreme of the 
 day's most extreme fashion, the tired, wearied, 
 haunted look on her face that rouge and powder 
 did not conceal and her frequent orders to the 
 waiter made passing record on my mind and would 
 have stopped at that, no doubt, if I had not seen 
 the head waiter address her, assist her to her feet 
 and politely, but firmly, send her away. She was 
 ejected. 
 
 " It's too bad about that girl," said the re- 
 porter, when she had lurched unsteadily past our 
 table. " Two years ago she gave promise of do- 
 ing fine things." 
 
 I was not interested and I made no reply. 
 
 " Somebody picked her up," he gossiped on, 
 " in a town out West. She came here in a musical 
 comedy, and because she'd never been thirty miles 
 away from her home before, had never seen the 
 inside of a Pullman or eaten on a diner before she 
 stepped out of a moving picture house to a $50 
 job on the stage, I gave her a column." 
 
 Latent memory stirred to life. 
 
 "What'dyousay?"Iasked. 
 
 He repeated his information. 
 
 " She would have made good, too," he went on, 
 " if the lights hadn't dazzled her. But it's the 
 same old story I get tired hearing it. Broad- 
 way got her and she's no better now than the 
 65
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 worst. I'm not surprised they put her out; I'm 
 more surprised she had the nerve to come in. 
 Made bold by drink, I suppose," he concluded. 
 
 Gradually, there came before my eyes a half- 
 forgotten scene. I saw a stuffy, close, crowded 
 moving picture house in a little city in Ohio. A 
 flashing spotlight threw its glare on the face of a 
 young girl who stepped forward to sing. The 
 audience heard her and applauded and I saw a 
 man standing in the rear suddenly become alert 
 and attentive as he also heard the girl's voice. It 
 was enough. 
 
 " Waiter," I called, " the check." 
 
 And I went out into the night. 
 
 I sometimes wonder how much personal re- 
 sponsibility attaches to the influence we bring to 
 bear on the lives of others. And what is it, after 
 all, which, for good or for ill, warps us from old 
 courses to follow new ? Why, for instance, when 
 I awoke one morning years ago to discover to my- 
 self that I wanted more room and broader oppor- 
 tunity did Bingo, at that very moment, a thousand 
 miles away, stand in need of a publicity agent? 
 What force created his necessity and my desire 
 and made them fit each other? What delayed 
 my train on the spring evening in the Ohio city 
 and then placed me aboard a street car to bring 
 me, willy nilly, within the range of the voice of 
 Alice Carey? 
 
 66
 
 TEARS AND SMILES 
 
 I have reached the age, I suppose, when most 
 men have arrived at some fairly well defined idea 
 of these controlling forces. But I find that I am 
 strangely without a philosophy of life. I have 
 not thought about it. In ten years I have done 
 the work of twenty and I have had little time, 
 even if I had been possessed of the inclination, to 
 reflect on a matter so abstract. But I think that 
 the subconscious part of my mind has all along 
 been considering the problem and is prepared to 
 lay before me the evidence it has gathered. 
 What it all points to I cannot say, but, from 
 the array of half-forgotten incidents and expe- 
 riences brought forward now by the busy agency 
 that has served me without my knowledge, I can 
 come quickly to one conclusion at least. We may 
 call it what we will, ignore it, evade it or rebel 
 against it, fear it or worship it, there is some 
 power beyond us and above us that directs us 
 more surely than we realize. As bits of broken 
 glass whirl in a kaleidoscope to combine into new 
 designs, so incidents and circumstances and ac- 
 cidents shift and join to shape life's pattern. 
 But what force turns the wheel?
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WITH THE PRODUCER 
 
 IN the public mind there is a good deal of mys- 
 tery associated with the production of plays. But 
 the mystery begins there and ends there. There 
 is none in the business itself. I have just come 
 from the witness stand where I gave what the 
 lawyers call " expert " testimony in a suit brought 
 by a young man to recover some money lost in a 
 theatrical venture. If the young man in the case 
 had not shared the public's credulity, the proba- 
 bilities are that he would still have his money, or 
 at least a good part of it. 
 
 His main trouble was a readiness to accept with- 
 out question all he heard and all he read about the 
 cost of producing plays. He believed that when 
 a manager advertised a production's cost as $100,- 
 ooo, it was $100,000 it cost! The fact that it 
 really cost considerably less than half that sum 
 never occurred to him. He was ready to invest 
 on the basis of what he believed the cost to be. 
 So, when he put up $10,000 for a half-interest in 
 a production, a half interest was all he got, but his 
 capital paid for the whole of the production and 
 68
 
 WITH THE PRODUCER 
 
 in addition put some money in his partner's 
 pocket. Naturally, when this began to dawn on 
 him, he wanted an accounting. He will probably 
 get his accounting; the Court will allow him that, 
 and, possibly, a judgment against the partner 
 the Court may even allow him that. However, 
 he can rest assured he will not get back any of 
 his money. But he has had what Hattie Williams 
 used to sing about " Experience." 
 
 Speaking of hundred thousand dollar produc- 
 tions leads me to remark that there never has 
 been a hundred thousand dollar production. The 
 most expensive production I know of cost $60,- 
 ooo ; and it cost that much because the producer 
 who put it on had no storehouse filled with old 
 scenery to draw from. Klaw and Erlanger, Wil- 
 liam A. Brady or Lee Shubert, to mention only 
 three, could have staged the play, and staged it 
 as completely, for half that sum. All of these 
 producers are well stocked with old sets and prop- 
 erties and they know how to use them. Not long 
 ago, I saw the same interior set in three new 
 Broadway productions, and the three of them, 
 moreover, appeared in rapid succession. Of 
 course, the first two were failures, each playing 
 only a fortnight or less, so it was altogether prac- 
 ticable, though first nighters found it a little 
 monotonous, to use the same set in all three. Nor 
 was it new even to begin with ; it had seen service 
 69
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 the season before. There is something like a 
 million dollars' worth of this old scenery in the 
 storehouses of New York unknown to the 
 novice but available to the man who knows the 
 business. 
 
 Cost, it might be said, is invariably exagger- 
 ated. I have seen some of our own productions 
 advertised as costing $50,000 when the entire out- 
 lay, with every bill audited and paid every one 
 of them passing through my own hands would 
 not have totaled $15,000. But exaggeration of 
 one sort or another is a peculiarity of the theat- 
 rical business. From producer to usher, from 
 star to super, everybody speaks in hyperbole. It 
 is a childish sort of thing to do, but the only per- 
 son deceived by it is the person outside of the pro- 
 fession or the beginner who has just entered it. 
 Unfortunately, though, it is the cause of a lot of 
 unnecessary disappointment and unhappiness. 
 
 Peggy Hall, for example, is just emerging from 
 that credulous period when she, like all the rest 
 before her, evinced an ingenuous readiness to be- 
 lieve everything she heard. It is the period in 
 the beginner's career when the theater is still what 
 it is to the public in general a place of fascinat- 
 ing mystery. But stern reality is already invad- 
 ing Peggy's land of dreams and the illusions are 
 retreating. She is beginning to perceive that 
 what seemed from afar so enchanting bears, on 
 70
 
 WITH THE PRODUCER 
 
 closer inspection, a far different aspect. It is like 
 the cosmetic beauty of the actress the closer 
 it is observed the less attractive it appears. It is 
 only genius that never loses the enthusiasm of its 
 illusions or counts the way too rough or dark so 
 long as it leads onward toward the goal of its as- 
 piration. 
 
 There is excitement in this life behind the scenes 
 and Peggy has had the fever of it and, I might 
 say, the delirium of the fever. But, while the 
 business side of the theater is not without a stimu- 
 lation of the same sort, this department cannot in- 
 dulge itself in the excitement that the players ex- 
 perience and even cultivate. It must try to re- 
 main calm, preserve its mental equilibrium and 
 sharpen its wits rather than its emotions. It must 
 be all the more coldly calculating and shrewdly 
 judicial, too, for the very reason that at the other 
 end of theatrical affairs, there is this feverish de- 
 lirium. 
 
 And for the most part calculating and judicial 
 it is. It is commercial. Producers produce plays 
 because they think the plays will make money. 
 Plays are not produced merely because they are 
 artistic or because they may serve some reform 
 purpose. Statements to such effect are pure bun- 
 combe. They are press agents' fiction. Plays 
 are produced because they promise profits to the 
 producer and for no other reason in the world.
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 And if by chance they are ever anything more than 
 profitable, they are so incidentally, if not accident- 
 ally. Getting money out of them is the man- 
 ager's business; getting art into them must take 
 care of itself. When a manager gets his hands 
 on a play that he thinks will interest the public 
 sufficiently to draw the public's patronage and 
 dollars his first procedure, of course, is to sign 
 a contract with the playwright. If the play- 
 wright happens to be a new writer without the 
 prestige of name or success, he will be doing well 
 if the producer agrees to pay him a royalty of five 
 per cent, of the weekly gross receipts up to $5000, 
 seven and one-half per cent, up to $10,000 and ten 
 per cent, of all over that. These terms are emi- 
 nently fair to both parties. But the playwright 
 will make no mistake if he insists that everything 
 promised verbally is set down in black and white 
 in his contract. He should take nothing for 
 granted and nothing on faith. Later on, if the 
 play is a success, he should permit no departure 
 even in the slightest detail from the spirit and the 
 letter of his contract. He will regret it if he 
 does. 
 
 For the man of limited capital the business 
 world in general affords a thousand good oppor- 
 tunities to one that may be found in the theatrical 
 field. There the chances are all against him. It 
 is astonishing, though, how many there are who 
 72
 
 WITH THE PRODUCER 
 
 will risk everything they have to get into the busi- 
 ness. Even women are no exceptions. I heard 
 a young matron only the other day recite the 
 doleful tale of her own experience. She wanted 
 to act; with her the stage-struck period had come 
 later in life than usual. She had escaped it at 
 sixteen only to be attacked at twenty-six, and, like 
 measles delayed beyond childhood, when it 
 " took," it " took " hard. 
 
 She knew a young producer who had gained a 
 passing reputation through one successful pro- 
 duction which, by the way, made him very little 
 money and to him she went, check book in 
 hand. When the negotiations were finished, 
 $10,000 had passed from her account to his and 
 she had for her money a contract in which 
 the manager agreed to produce a certain play 
 within a year, place her in the leading role and 
 give her a fifth interest in the production. This 
 signed and sealed, promptly the young man ex- 
 changed the woman's gold for letters of credit 
 and set off to Europe in romantic pursuit of an 
 actress who had captured his susceptible heart. 
 He returned minus the money and minus the lady, 
 but not especially worried over the outlook for he 
 had the comforting reassurance that the play had 
 only one set for all its three acts and could be re- 
 hearsed and staged entire for a cost not to exceed 
 $2,000. So, for a chance to act and a fifth inter- 
 73
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 est in an unproduced play an interest worth 
 $500 at the most the woman had paid $10,000. 
 
 The play, it ought to be remarked, is still un- 
 produced and the same manager, I happen to 
 know, is under contract with another person, a 
 young man this time, to produce the same play 
 within another year. When the first partner, act- 
 ing on a suggestion that followed her tearful re- 
 cital to me, demanded the return of her money, 
 the second partner was annexed, together with 
 $5,000 he possessed, and this sum was turned over 
 to the first partner with a note for the balance. 
 Peter has been robbed to pay Paul but who will be 
 robbed to pay Peter remains to be seen. 
 
 One might enumerate half a hundred producing 
 managers, big and little, but if the number really 
 reaches this total, I will wager that forty of them 
 are doing business on borrowed capital. Some 
 of the biggest, as a matter of fact, put precious 
 little of their own money in their productions. 
 They get their capital from " silent " partners. 
 And profits that may accrue do not go back into 
 the producing business, either; they may go into 
 the purchase or building of theaters now and 
 then, but for the most part, they go into invest- 
 ments of an entirely different kind. Klaw and 
 Erlanger are rich men but the bulk of their money 
 is in investments outside of the theater. They 
 know the hazard of the business, and, fortunately 
 74
 
 WITH THE PRODUCER 
 
 for themselves, they are in a position to let others 
 take the risks. The two Shuberts pursue the 
 same course. A. H. Wood's fortune is so dis- 
 tributed that only a small portion is represented 
 by his theatrical enterprises. William Harris, 
 Henry Savage, Winthrop Ames, John Cort and 
 two or three more all depend for their substantial 
 incomes on investments that are far more reliable 
 than play producing. 
 
 I could name half a dozen millionaires who, 
 for one reason or another, are silent partners of 
 various producing managers. Why they go in 
 for this sort of thing is not as perplexing as it 
 might seem to be. Some of them want a finger 
 in the pie not especially because of any possible 
 profits but merely to gratify a desire to be as- 
 sociated with the stage. For two dollars they 
 can buy a seat in the front of the house but to 
 gain entrance through the stage door sometimes 
 costs a fortune. 
 
 A few of them, too, and not always the young- 
 est, either, are promoting the ambitions of vari- 
 ous captivating young actresses whose blandish- 
 ments excel their talents and whose return for 
 the money spent on them and for them is cer- 
 tainly never made in kind. Most persons high 
 up in the business, and many others not so high 
 up, know who is putting up for whom, and why. 
 And practically everybody in the profession knows 
 75
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 that the profession is full of this sort of thing 
 knows it and discusses it and gossips about it and 
 accepts it as a matter of course, something to be 
 expected and quite natural.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MEN IN POWER 
 
 THEATRICAL producing in the last eight or ten 
 years has come to be more than ever the business 
 for the man with large capital. To produce in 
 wholesale is the only safe way to produce. 
 
 " If I get three successes out of ten produc- 
 tions," Lee Shubert said to me one day, " I am 
 satisfied." That season Shubert got no more 
 than two successes out of ten productions and the 
 two came, one after six successive failures and 
 the other as the ninth production of the series. 
 The man with limited means would have been 
 bankrupt before he could have staged the play 
 that was the first of that group of ten to prove 
 profitable. He might argue, of course, as I 
 heard a young producer argue the other day, that 
 he would be able to select more wisely. But the 
 fact remains that, after all, few do. 
 
 As for the man who wants to " break into the 
 
 game " as an independent producer, he will find 
 
 it about as difficult as breaking into a modern 
 
 bank vault. The theatrical affairs of the country 
 
 77
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 rest in the hands of four men Marc Klaw and 
 Abraham Erlanger and Lee and J. J. Shubert. 
 These men, through ownership, leases or book- 
 ing contracts of one kind and another, control the 
 first class theaters of the country. To the long 
 and bitter fight between the " syndicate " Klaw 
 and Erlanger and their allies on the one hand, 
 and the " independents," as they were pleased 
 to call themselves the Shubert Brothers and 
 their allies on the other, I need hardly refer. 
 I went through that fight and I wear its scars, 
 figuratively speaking, today. It is ancient history 
 now, however, for a truce exists at present and 
 bids fair, as the combatants learn to trust each 
 other more and to forget the old bitterness, to 
 develop into a permanent peace that will entirely 
 eliminate such cut-throat competition as may still 
 remain. 
 
 I have heard some producers express unquali- 
 fied approval of the present arrangement and its 
 future promise. But I disagree with them. I 
 am " on the inside"; I see the trend of things. 
 And I am absolutely certain that if the Shuberts 
 and the syndicate get any closer together than 
 they are today there will be many a producer, 
 manager, playwright and actor clamoring for a 
 return of old conditions. Nothing worse, in my 
 opinion, could befall the theater. 
 
 The only thing that stands now in the way of 
 78
 
 THE MEN IN POWER 
 
 a tightening of the grip is the Shubert fear of 
 syndicate retaliation and the syndicate dread of 
 Shubert reprisal. Let them combine, however, in 
 a hard and fast amalgamation of interests, work- 
 ing together without suspicion of each other, and 
 I will wager that everybody connected with the 
 profession or the business, except the trust itself, 
 will be only too willing to exchange peace for war. 
 
 There is little, even as things are now, to en- 
 courage the young producer. It is all very well 
 to produce, but what about the theaters in which 
 to show what is produced? The Shuberts and 
 the syndicate control the playhouses. Every first 
 class play that tours the country must be booked 
 through one agency or the other. If it happens 
 that neither agency sees any merit in the produc- 
 tion submitted for booking, it will not be booked. 
 It will die for the lack of a roof to shelter it. 
 Such a fate may be deserved; on the other hand, 
 it is barely possible that it may not be. 
 
 The trouble lies in the fact that Klaw and Er- 
 langer and the Shuberts take no pains to find 
 out. They act as judge, jury and executioner and 
 not in person, either, but usually by proxy, and 
 not by very intelligent proxy at that. Perhaps 
 some inner voice of discretion warns them to 
 avoid the personal appraisement and so escape 
 any subsequent embarrassment. And in thus pro- 
 viding themselves with an alibi they disclose again 
 79
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 that native, Hebraic shrewdness which has char- 
 acterized all their business procedure and which 
 is at once the despair and envy of those who have 
 suffered by it or profited from it. They know, 
 in other words, from experience, no doubt 
 that ignorance betrays itself utterly only through 
 display. So they remain discreetly in the back- 
 ground and send forward a substitute on whose 
 unfortunate head, if necessity arises, blame can 
 later fall. 
 
 I have known these men for ten years, I have 
 worked with them and against them, my associa- 
 tion with them has enabled me to form a fairly 
 accurate estimate of their tastes and of the scope 
 and reliability of their judgment, and I do not 
 hesitate to say that only one of the four has ever 
 exhibited to me any indication of possessing in 
 the slightest degree any sense of apreciation for 
 real dramatic art. What knowledge they may 
 have, or profess to have or what they may think 
 or feel about any other art, I do not pretend to 
 know. My business with them has been confined 
 to the field of art in which our mutual interests 
 lay and my experience with them there was never 
 of a sort to encourage me to go further. It was 
 sufficient in itself like a bad oyster. And as 
 for the one I except I have never known his 
 pocketbook to pay tribute to any craving of his 
 artistic soul. He has never sacrificed a nickel to 
 80
 
 THE MEN IN POWER 
 
 indulge his taste for art. He has proceeded on 
 the policy that art is all right if it is profitable 
 but that profits, first and last, are the final and 
 only end and aim, art or no art, or, to use his 
 own words often repeated, " art be damned." 
 
 Fresh in my memory is an incident that illus- 
 trates their method of procedure. A producer, a 
 young man and ambitious, staged a play, with 
 barely enough money to see him through to the 
 first performance. This took place in Philadel- 
 phia and when the curtain rose on the opening 
 night, the producer had all his money in the pro- 
 duction and his notes out for more. He had fol- 
 lowed the usual custom and had asked Klaw and 
 Erlanger to send some one to see his play. The 
 man sent in response to the request was picked 
 up at the last minute. He was utterly incompe- 
 tent to judge anything. He was both ignorant 
 and coarse. He went, he saw, he condemned. 
 To hear his account of the plot was ludicrous. 
 He had missed the most obvious points, but he cer- 
 tainly had missed nothing at a nearby bar. 
 
 The Shuberts sent a woman stenographer. She 
 was of higher grade, to be sure, but she thought 
 it was safer to condemn than to recommend, and 
 condemn she did. The producer was in despair. 
 He had faith in his property; he believed in its 
 ultimate success. But all the faith in the world 
 without a theater to play in would profit him noth- 
 81
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 ing. Some one suggested that a man controlling 
 three New York theaters stood in need of some 
 kind of an attraction to fill at least one of them. 
 He was a syndicate ally, but known to enjoy some 
 personal freedom of action. So the producer' 
 borrowed some more money, took the train to 
 New York and finally persuaded the theater man- 
 ager to accompany him back to Philadelphia. In 
 the end, this man agreed to admit the production 
 to one of his houses. Two days later, every critic 
 in New York acclaimed the play a success, and it 
 remained on Broadway for half a year. 
 
 During that period, Klaw and Erlanger tried to 
 buy an interest in the production. The Shuberts 
 repeatedly made the same attempt. The syndi- 
 cate wanted to book it on the road and so did the 
 Shuberts. There was not, at that time, an agree- 
 ment of any kind between the two offices and the 
 producer could have got concessions worth while. 
 But the protocol was signed while the negotiations 
 were pending and thereafter, the producer found 
 himself obliged to take what he was offered 
 that or nothing. 
 
 Nor was that all. He was pressed here and 
 pressed there, in a manner that completely baffled 
 him, and the pressure never ceased until he sold 
 out his interest to one of the quartette which 
 one I shall not say for a sum that was far be- 
 low its value. Having nothing more at the time 
 82
 
 THE MEN IN POWER 
 
 that anyone else could possibly covet, he was then 
 left in peace. From these plain facts, anyone is 
 at liberty to draw his own conclusions. It only 
 remains to be said that this is no isolated, excep- 
 tional case used to point an argument. It is, on 
 the contrary, a thoroughly typical instance. Only 
 the big producers and not all of them, either 
 escape experiences of this sort. 
 
 In the old days, before the Shuberts strung out 
 a chain of theaters in opposition to the syndicate 
 houses, managers protested bitterly against various 
 alleged abuses. The Shubert competition, how- 
 ever, tended to relieve conditions. But, as the 
 Shuberts gradually grew stronger until finally they 
 were as strong as the syndicate, complaints were 
 again heard. Then managers began shifting 
 their bookings from the syndicate office to the Shu- 
 bert office and from the Shubert office to the syndi- 
 cate office and back again. Competition, taking 
 this form, once more afforded relief. Now the 
 two syndicates are working together to a consider- 
 able extent and to their own interests, to be sure, 
 but not especially after all, to the interest of any- 
 body else. And there is good reason to believe 
 that they will get still closer together. In that 
 case, competition will be the first thing eliminated. 
 After that, a good many other things will be elimi- 
 nated among them, some producers. For 
 three or four, I can already read the handwriting 
 
 83
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 on the wall. Perhaps they see something in the 
 prospect to rejoice over but if I were in their 
 shoes, I should feel more anxious than pleased. 
 
 To my mind, the long and short of the whole 
 matter is this : If a man wants to go into the busi- 
 ness let him go into it alone. If he has not $10,- 
 ooo to lose he would better stay out of it alto- 
 gether and save his money. At best the odds are 
 all against him. But when he acts as " angel," 
 even to a limited extent, turns his money over to 
 some one else and relies on another person's judg- 
 ment, business sense, honesty, integrity and econ- 
 omy, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he will 
 lose. If he is a millionaire and can afford to lose, 
 well and good. If his capital is small, he will get 
 more out of it down town in Wall Street than he 
 will up town in Times Square. 
 
 84
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE ADVENTURE TYPICAL 
 
 IT has been my custom for the last half a dozen 
 years or so to drop in at night at a certain Broad- 
 way cafe. There, about midnight, I have a bite 
 to eat before I go on to my home. It is a 
 gay place, frequented by gay people actors, ac- 
 tresses, men-about-town and the omnipresent 
 chorus girl whenever fortune favors her and she 
 falls in with an escort who is rash enough to ask 
 her where she prefers to dine. I like it because it 
 is gay because it is even excessively, garishly 
 gay; I go there on that account. There is blessed 
 relaxation in being a part, albeit only a passive, 
 silent part, of the gayety. It takes my mind off 
 the affairs of the day. 
 
 Here as usual I came one Saturday night, and 
 took my accustomed place in a corner, gave my 
 order and then, in a leisurely way, proceeded to 
 take casual census of the guests. My eye had not 
 travelled far, however, when it came to a sudden 
 stop at sight of Peggy Hall. Should I have been 
 surprised? Perhaps still I was not. The real
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 surprise in some things that we think ought to be 
 surprising is the fact that they are not surprising 
 at all. As soon as my gaze rested on Peggy, I 
 was aware only that I had even foreseen it, antici- 
 pated it and that now, when I beheld it actually be- 
 'fore me, there was nothing surprising about it. 
 Why should it have been? I knew the life behind 
 the curtain; I knew the atmosphere there; I knew 
 what they produced; I knew the results. And I 
 had known all along that Peggy was bound sooner 
 or later to encounter just such an experience as 
 was confronting her at that very moment that 
 she, in common with other girls in her situation, 
 must come at last to the inevitable ordeal of this 
 acid test. 
 
 She was one of a group of half a dozen, three 
 men and, herself included, three girls. Like 
 Peggy? her companions were from the chorus at 
 the Circle ; the men were young and of the familiar 
 Broadway type. They were near at hand, 
 Peggy's back toward me, and, with only a little ef- 
 fort, I could follow fairly well the drift of their 
 talk. In front of them were cocktail glasses, 
 Peggy's half empty, and on this their conversa- 
 tion turned. 
 
 " Come on, drink up. Be a reg'lar fellow," 
 one young man kept saying in monotonous reitera- 
 tion. 
 
 It was plain that he and his two companions had 
 86
 
 THE ADVENTURE TYPICAL 
 
 been drinking before the group had assembled at 
 the cafe. 
 
 " Go on, Peg," urged a girl, " we're all waitin' 
 for you." 
 
 Peggy sipped sparingly. The other girl whis- 
 pered something to the man nearest her. He 
 shook his head, incredulous. But the girl whis- 
 pered again. 
 
 " That so ? " he asked, still doubting. 
 
 The girl nodded. 
 
 " Can't you see? " she demanded. 
 
 He shot an appraising glance at Peggy and then 
 leaned toward her across the table. 
 
 " Go ahead, Peggy," he said. " It's always the 
 first swallow or two that you feel. We all feel it 
 then. But it disappears when you've drunk it 
 all." 
 
 She smiled and shook her head. 
 
 " No," she protested, " I don't want any more. 
 Thank you just the same." 
 
 " Aw, come on, be a reg'lar fellow," the first 
 man repeated. 
 
 " The rest of you order won't you? Don't 
 mind me; just let me finish this." 
 
 " She don't like it," interrupted the third man. 
 " She'd rather have something else. Here, Peg, 
 let me order you some wine. Give me that card." 
 
 He took the wine list and handed it to Peggy. 
 
 " Hurry up, little girl. The gas wagon's 
 8?
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 waitin'. Pick out what you want and we'll have 
 another roun' and then spin out the Drive and 
 back." 
 
 So it went five against one. But Peggy, 
 somehow, seemed to realize her situation. Her 
 intuition warned her. 
 
 The whispers of the girl were not necessary to 
 inform a close observer that Peggy was new to 
 such things. That was obvious. And that ex- 
 plains the part that liquor plays on such occasions 
 it is not offered simply as a convivial cup and 
 nothing more. It is given for the information it 
 will impart. Any experienced man-about-town 
 can learn more about a woman after she has had 
 two or three drinks in his company than he could 
 learn in a week without their assistance. They 
 line the track of the hours immediately ahead with 
 infallible signals and these, in turn, tell him plainly 
 what to expect and how to proceed. They flash 
 their lights, red, green or white, and he reads them 
 and heeds them and acts accordingly. 
 
 It was evident that Peggy instinctively felt the 
 danger in the cocktail. The others knew she felt 
 it, too, and they wanted the drink inside where it 
 would fight her and not outside where it would 
 fight them. It was their ally only when it was 
 drunk. But Peggy fenced gracefully and success- 
 fully. Still, I could fancy she was wondering how 
 the contest would end and was feeling, brave 
 88
 
 THE ADVENTURE TYPICAL 
 
 though her appearance, the need for help. I 
 watched unobserved the old, old game, Broad- 
 way seeking its prey, stalking its quarry, running 
 it down. I watched until I thought I could tell, 
 from the tired droop of Peggy's shoulders, that 
 she was about at the end of her resources, and 
 then I made up my mind to interfere. But no 
 way suggested itself until one of the men provided 
 me with a plan by going to the telephone booth. I 
 slipped out and followed him. At the door of the 
 booth I accosted him. I said to him in substance 
 that I wanted to avoid any embarrassing scene, but 
 that one of the young women in his party would 
 have to be excused. He was immediately and 
 completely and bristlingly belligerent. I am not 
 a small man, however, and there is nothing frail 
 looking about my physique; so he thought better 
 of it and changed his attitude. Besides, I ached to 
 hit him, I fairly shook with the desire to seize him, 
 shake him, wipe up the floor with him and then 
 kick him out. Probably I showed it, too. At 
 any rate, he became very tractable and agreed to 
 see Peggy to a taxi and to send her home. 
 
 I watched him return to the table and whisper 
 to Peggy and I saw her rise, say good-by and fol- 
 low him to the door. He did what he agreed to 
 do and Dick Hall's daughter went home alone in 
 the motor car. I smiled when I saw the expres- 
 sion of amazement on the faces of his companions 
 89
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 when he returned to the table without her. What 
 he told them I do not know and I do not care. 
 
 Three days later, Peggy was in my office. 
 
 " I am going home," she said. 
 
 And that was all. I did not press her for any 
 explanation nor did I, on my part, volunteer any 
 information. If Peggy reads this she will learn 
 for the first time how her temporary guardian, re- 
 miss as he was most of the time, came to her 
 rescue on one occasion at least. 
 
 " Peggy," said I in answer, " I am going home 
 too. Stay on until it's time for me to leave and 
 we'll all go back together." 
 
 There is no accounting for the whims of young 
 women. Peggy Hall stepped around my desk and 
 kissed me. 
 
 90
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 CHANGES come rapidly in the theater. For 
 the most part, they are improvements, too. To 
 be sure, the more recent years have developed no 
 transcendent geniuses among either playwrights or 
 players, but they have added some names to the 
 theatrical roll of honor that will gain in impor- 
 tance, I think, as time provides a better per- 
 spective for our judgment of them. They have 
 done more for the stage than we can realize until 
 a new decade comes to apprise us with its inevi- 
 table reflection of their influence. Then again, 
 taking everything into consideration, the general 
 average of plays and playing is better; the general 
 standard is higher. More ability is required to- 
 day to gain substantial success as playwright or 
 player than was required fifteen or twenty years 
 ago. This is due undoubtedly to a more exacting 
 public taste and a more discriminating public judg- 
 ment, which is to say that the spectator also has 
 progressed. He is not so easily satisfied. 
 
 I see these things not as critic, nor as play- 
 wright, player or spectator ; they come to me in my 
 91
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 capacity as manager. They come directly, day by 
 day, as returns in the form of box office state- 
 ments. I get them not as opinions but as figures. 
 This may seem to be a surprising confession to 
 come from a manager and if it seems a little con- 
 fusing also it might be remembered that while our 
 stage is commercialized to the last degree, it does 
 not follow that it is wisely commercialized. It 
 makes money for those who control it but if those 
 in control were more competent to understand the 
 signs and interpret the facts and proceed accord- 
 ingly, it might increase the profits considerably. 
 Indeed the real reactionary influence of the last 
 ten years, the check to progress, the handicap, has 
 been not so much the mere commercialization of 
 the stage as the manner of the commercialization 
 and the character and ambition of the men who de- 
 vised the manner. 
 
 However, bad as the system is, some good has 
 come out of it. It did much, for instance, to de- 
 velop our native drama. Those in control, of 
 course, had no definite intention of encouraging the 
 native drama. What they did in this respect they 
 did by accident. They had tried to outdo each 
 other in the matter of playhouse control and they 
 came abruptly one day to the realization that they 
 had many playhouses and few plays and that Lon- 
 don and Paris and Vienna could not supply the 
 demand. So the native dramatist began to get his 
 92
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 hearing. They tried him as a desperate remedy 
 for a desperate situation. And since then he has 
 gained a position of his own. He has established 
 his drama and it stands today distinguished and 
 recognized for qualities entirely peculiar to itself 
 and unmistakably characteristic of its nationality. 
 Whether, as a whole, it is the equal of the con- 
 temporaneous British drama, I will not presume to 
 say. I only pronounce it different a distinct 
 school. It has developed its own style and its own 
 details of technique and these in turn have brought 
 about changes in the style and the technique of 
 acting. 
 
 So much for this aspect of it. In the ten years 
 that I have been in the business I have seen an 
 amazing improvement in the mechanics of the 
 stage. For that matter, in the last decade even 
 the architecture of our playhouses has been 
 changed. We incline today toward the smaller 
 and more " intimate " theater, with the gallery 
 abolished and a pronounced disposition to abolish 
 the balcony also. Of course, the gallery really 
 abolished itself; it left us. It went away to the 
 movies, and the balcony now is showing signs of 
 similar desertion. So it, too, may pass. 
 
 These same ten years have also witnessed the 
 
 wonderful development of the movies. They 
 
 have seen them come and conquer, the greatest, 
 
 swiftest, most astonishing conquest in the whole 
 
 93
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 history of the world's amusements. And if any- 
 one imagines that the movies have not brought 
 changes to the legitimate theater and to the tech- 
 nique of player's and playwright's art he is no in- 
 terpreter of the signs to be seen on every hand. 
 
 I used to hear it said and I said myself 
 that the movies would not draw patronage from 
 the theater but, on the contrary, would add to its 
 patronage. I still hear the same thing said but 
 long ago I abandoned the theory. Facts disprove 
 it. The patronage that the movies have made has 
 been for the movies. It begins there and ends 
 there. The legitimate theater has not benefited; 
 it has suffered instead. And I think it will suf- 
 fer still more in the future. It only remains for 
 some enterprising manager to stretch a chain of 
 movie theaters across the country, book them as 
 the syndicate or the Shuberts book their houses, 
 establish a reputation for showing in them only 
 the best pictures produced throughout the world, 
 keep the standard high and the prices low and the 
 small legitimate theater, minus gallery and minus 
 balcony, too, will be as ample in seating capacity 
 as it is now intimate in atmosphere. I shall not 
 be surprised when such a system of movie theaters 
 is organized. It is bound to come. I am sur- 
 prised now that it has been delayed as long as it 
 has. 
 
 In the ten years there have been improvements 
 94
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 in scenery. American scene painters here and 
 there are beginning to be artists. Some even are 
 bold enough to exhibit signs of incipient rebellion 
 against precedent and, while it is, perhaps, a 
 good deal to hope for, it is barely possible that 
 they may yet emancipate themselves from their 
 slavery to models and methods of the past and in 
 its place establish independence and originality. 
 Something to the same effect is to be said of the 
 few men who profess to be experts on stage light- 
 ing. They are too easily satisfied. Still, prog- 
 ress in this important department of the theater 
 has been marked and there is promise of more im- 
 provement to come. 
 
 So, in brief, a few of the changes. They are 
 more substantial than enumeration makes them 
 appear. If anyone doubts this let him attend a 
 revival of some old play popular a dozen years 
 ago. William A. Brady has a singular fondness 
 for occasionally supplying a curiosity of the sort 
 by preference something that he once acted in 
 himself. One of them that I recall was " Rose- 
 dale," the most popular play of its day. But its 
 day was fifty years ago. Lester Wallick pro- 
 duced it and played it in the early 6o's. Brady 
 played in it years later when it was still a reliable 
 standby in stock. His associations with " Rose- 
 dale " were probably pleasant ones and recollec- 
 tions of these no doubt influenced his judgment. 
 95
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 He thought Broadway would be as pleased as he 
 to see the old play once more played. But it was 
 not. Brady came very near enjoying a monopoly 
 of the pleasure supplied by " Rosedale " without 
 anybody's showing the slightest disposition to dis- 
 pute it with him. He had it to himself. 
 
 Very quickly he wrapped it up and sent it to 
 the storehouse. And when I think of this Brady 
 venture I am reminded of the ubiquitous old 
 gentleman who is always gravely shaking his head 
 and sighing for " those good old comedies " of 
 yesterday. Compared with the comedies of to- 
 day they were probably very bad old comedies but 
 there is no convincing him of this. He is a very 
 obstinate old gentleman who, like as not, thinks 
 that if he could only sit down to the sort of meal 
 that was served to him in his youth he would eat 
 with the relish of youth. But that is only an illu- 
 sion; he sighs for a cook when he ought to be 
 sighing for an appetite. And when he grieves 
 for the old comedies what he really craves is his 
 old capacity for enjoyment, the zest of ready 
 laughter and the freshness of youth. 
 
 As the seasons come and go, there are changes, 
 too, in the ranks of the players. Some go for- 
 ward and some go backward only a few stand 
 still. Protest against the practice as the actors 
 may and do managers still fill roles and will 
 continue to fill them by selecting players of a
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 " type " corresponding to the " type " of the part 
 to be played. This increases the changes among 
 the players; it adds to the inevitable changes that 
 time and circumstances are bound to make. 
 Actors, of course, think that managers ought to 
 choose talent instead of type, but the actors are 
 wrong and the managers are right. Audiences 
 today demand verisimilitude; they do not want a 
 tall man in a short man's part nor a fat man cast 
 in a lean man's role. No more do they want 
 feminine forty playing ingenue twenty. Nor will 
 they have it. 
 
 But managers are in error when they assume 
 that an actor who makes a success in a certain role 
 of a certain type can play no other role. And the 
 actor's protest against this phase of the subject 
 is well founded. However, managerial risks are 
 numerous enough at best and if managers decline 
 to experiment they are not without excuse. It is 
 hard, though, on the actor who needs employment 
 but finds no market for his talent because he has 
 established a reputation for one particular line of 
 parts and that " type " is not at the moment in de- 
 mand. 
 
 It is especially hard on the ingenue. I have 
 seen many of them come and many of them go, 
 Time's relentless hand ringing down the curtain 
 for all of them as girlishness passes and the bloom 
 fades. It is a sad time for any woman when she 
 97
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 suddenly realizes that youth has departed, but for 
 the actress of the ingenue roles it is both sad and 
 tragic. It means as often as not the end of her 
 career. She could play other roles, no doubt, and 
 play them well, but the managers know her only 
 as an ingenue. She has a reputation as an in- 
 genue; as an ingenue the public accepted her and 
 applauded her and pronounced her a success. 
 The manager is afraid to tamper with what Fate 
 has decreed and the public has endorsed. So the 
 curtain descends, sometimes, it is true, to rise 
 again on a new career newly begun with the in- 
 genue in maturer parts as prominent as those aban- 
 doned. But that is the exception and not the 
 rule. 
 
 Managers, also, come and go. With many the 
 stay is short; some linger hopefully though pain- 
 fully through a season or two and some pass de- 
 spairingly though mercifully in a single night. 
 They are managers at eight p. M. and bankrupts 
 at eleven. Some, on the other hand, weather the 
 vicissitudes and rise to positions of importance. 
 Yet of all those who were leaders in the business 
 ten years ago, whose fame was national or even 
 international, only a few continue in the same 
 prominence today. Among them, of course, and 
 the most conspicuous are David Belasco, George 
 C. Tyler, William A. Brady, Henry W. Savage, 
 the Shuberts and Klaw and Erlanger.
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 Of these, Belasco is the master. Time, I think, 
 will write his name large in the history of the 
 American theater for, ridicule him as we may for 
 what we consider his posing and posturing, no 
 producer in America, past or present, has done 
 more for the art of the playhouse than he and none 
 so far has contributed more than he to its future 
 development. He has been to the technique of 
 production what Ibsen was to the technique of 
 drama. And if I were asked to sum up his 
 achievement briefly, I should say that it rests in 
 his discovering to producer, player and playgoer 
 the tremendous value of detail. By giving proper 
 emphasis no more and no less to a single de- 
 tail, I have known Belasco to build up a scene in 
 rehearsal where others saw nothing at all and I 
 have known that scene to make a success of the 
 production. 
 
 Tyler, whose individual personality was long 
 concealed in the firm name of Liebler and Com- 
 pany, is second only to Belasco as master of detail. 
 And Tyler, I believe, is Belasco's logical successor. 
 Comparatively young, from the Middle West and 
 still of it, he is a man of high ideals and big ideas. 
 With these he combines good sense, originality, 
 ability and daring; he believes in producing plays 
 worth while and plays of real merit. That he has 
 encountered a good many financial difficulties is not 
 in my opinion a reflection upon Tyler but upon the 
 99
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 theater-going public. I remember meeting him 
 one afternoon and hearing from his lips some 
 surprisingly high praise for a play he had just 
 read. 
 
 " It's bound to make a fortune," he said. 
 
 " When do you put it on? " I asked. 
 
 " I'm not putting it on," he replied. " It's a 
 big melodrama and I'm getting away from melo- 
 drama. I've put my standard up a notch and I 
 mean to keep it there." 
 
 And keep it there he did. His opinion of the 
 manuscript he had read was more than justified for 
 there has not been in a quarter of a century a 
 greater success financially. " Within the Law," 
 for that was the melodrama, has made I suppose, 
 a million dollars. 
 
 To show how even the most astute of the pro- 
 ducers occasionally go far astray in judgment, 
 Brady produced " Within the Law " and, after a 
 few weeks of indifferent business, lost his confi- 
 dence in it and sold it outright to Selwyn; and 
 Selwyn who is himself one of the newcomers 
 in the field and a producer of exceptional promise 
 reaped the golden harvest that Tyler had pre- 
 dicted, that Brady doubted and that Selwyn, with 
 clearer vision in his turn, foresaw. But Brady, if 
 he missed it in this instance, does not miss it often. 
 Melodrama has made a fortune for Brady. Yet I 
 believe he will go down in the theatrical annals as 
 100
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 the producer of his day who did more than any of 
 the others to keep old-fashioned sentiment on the 
 stage. Brady, personally, has a deep regard for 
 this homely sentiment and he has, too, a genuine 
 reverence for the theater as an institution. He 
 would probably deny this, gruffly and immediately, 
 but there is a good deal of pose about Brady's 
 gruffness. He likes to be known as a kind of 
 rough diamond, but my acquaintance with him has 
 been long enough and intimate enough to convince 
 me that most of the roughness is assumed. It is 
 nine-tenths bluff and extends no deeper than the sur- 
 face. No matinee girl ever had a tenderer heart. 
 
 Charles Frohman, I believe, will be written 
 down simply as the great importer. No manager 
 has translated to the American stage more foreign 
 productions than did he before his tragic and un- 
 timely death and none has done less for the Ameri- 
 can drama than did he. As a producer, he was 
 more a trader than a creator, though, in recent 
 years, largely because available foreign products 
 have been scarce and competition for them keen, 
 he occasionally produced a play of domestic origin. 
 That was not his policy, however. Savage has 
 done his share of importing, too, but he will be 
 known in years to come not for this so much as for 
 genuine good he has done for the musical produc- 
 tions of his day. 
 
 As for the Shuberts, they are wholesale pur- 
 101
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 veyors of entertainment nothing more and 
 nothing less. They produce whatever promises 
 to be profitable from vaudeville to Shakespeare. 
 They have proceeded on the principle that if they 
 can have quality with quantity, very good but quan- 
 tity they must have in any event. 
 
 Klaw and Erlanger are the theatrical organi- 
 zers. They were the first to nationalize the 
 playhouse business and to them belongs the credit 
 of evolving system out of chaos and the conse- 
 quences. As producers they count for little, but 
 their service to the box-office has been inestimable 
 to the art of the theater it has been insignifi- 
 cant. 
 
 Among the producers of today whose advent in 
 the field is of later date, George M. Cohan is pre- 
 eminently the leader. Winthrop Ames is another 
 of proved ability, but Ames, it strikes me, has al- 
 ready shown us not only what he can do but the 
 best he can do, while Cohan, with remarkable 
 achievements both as playwright and as producer 
 already to his credit, seems to be only beginning to 
 show what he can do. Incidentally, I know of no 
 men in the business who show greater contrast than 
 these two. Their differences appear, of course, in 
 their works. Ames' productions have a finished 
 but feminine quality; Cohan's are like the adoles- 
 cent youth, virile, strong, with a strength not yet 
 under full control and crude on that account but 
 102
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 still powerful and rich in promise. Ames is the 
 aristocrat; Cohan is the democrat. 
 
 But all this is merely opinion only my per- 
 sonal estimate of these men. It counts for noth- 
 ing more. Nor have I mentioned all the promi- 
 nent producers, either I do not know enough 
 about some of them to justify forming an opinion. 
 But this I do know about all of them they begin 
 to fail as producers as they leave their youth be- 
 hind them. To grow old means disaster for them 
 no less than for the player. And this is only 
 logical after all, for the playhouse is more for the 
 young than for the old the average age of the 
 playgoer is under twenty and it demands of 
 those who write for it, produce for it and act for 
 it that they have the eyes and the hearts and the 
 visions and the feelings of youth. 
 
 Returning to fact, the last ten years have re- 
 corded still another change in the theatrical situa- 
 tion that is both significant and important. I have 
 spoken briefly of the change in the public's taste 
 and judgment. Its attitude has changed as well 
 and now it is interesting itself in a serious study 
 of the art of the theater. Today many colleges 
 and some high schools include a study of the drama 
 in their curriculums. Clubs for the same pur- 
 pose have been formed and, as further evidence 
 of the scope of the movement, we have the Drama 
 League. 
 
 103
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Good has been accomplished by the Drama 
 League and no doubt much more good will come 
 of it in the future. But if it entertains the notion 
 that it wields any influence through the box-office, 
 it is deceived. Whether it could do so now and 
 fails because it is not efficiently managed or 
 whether it may later on as its membership increases 
 and it learns better how to apply its influence I 
 cannot say. I only know that, from the box-office 
 point of view, managers neither respect it nor fear 
 it. They laugh at it. 
 
 There is reason for this, too. Personally, I 
 have known it to bulletin productions of ours with 
 unqualified approval and praise without the slight- 
 est encouraging effect on the box-office receipts. 
 In Chicago, on one occasion, we produced a play 
 that gained a bulletin endorsement of the most en- 
 thusiastic sort. Before the League issued it, we 
 were playing to $200 and $250 a performance 
 not enough to pay the salaries of the company. 
 After the League issued it we kept on playing to 
 $200 and $250 a performance. And we sent the 
 production to the storehouse. On another occa- 
 sion, in a city famed for its culture, we employed 
 unusual measures to interest the members of the 
 local Drama League. We had a production of 
 which we were genuinely proud from the pen 
 of an author of international repute, played by an 
 excellent company and produced with scenery that 
 104
 
 A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 reflected for the first time on the American stage 
 the method and style of the German impression- 
 istic school. Besides acquainting League members 
 with these facts by special letters addressed to 
 them personally, the author was induced to lecture 
 and the members were invited to hear him. 
 
 They came fifteen hundred of them. And, 
 passing out, the fifteen hundred bought exactly 
 $i i.oo worth of tickets. We spent over $300.00 
 on the League and the $11.00 represented about 
 all of the returns on the investment. Of course, it 
 may have been a bad lecture. I did not hear it 
 but I know the author better now and I am per- 
 fectly willing to admit it was a bad lecture. But, 
 even so, the results were disappointing. The 
 League bulletin praised the play, players and 
 production and even producers praised them 
 highly but the League members paid the bulle- 
 tin no heed. We played two weeks to a weekly 
 loss of $2500, went next to a city not famed for 
 its culture and where no Drama League has 
 yet appeared to guide the benighted public and 
 played several weeks to good business and enthusi- 
 astic audiences. 
 
 But, commendable as these two plays were, they 
 were not popular. The Drama League did not 
 endorse them unwisely ; it merely endorsed them to 
 no avail. Nor are these two cases exceptions; I 
 could name a score like them. But all lead to the 
 105
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 same conclusion and this in turn squares with the 
 history of the theater all the way from Bankside to 
 Broadway there is no popularizing an unpopu- 
 lar play. It may be ** artistic," it may be 
 " ethical," it may " deserve success " and so on 
 throughout the whole list of the conventional re- 
 marks applying to such cases, but if the public does 
 not like it the public will not go to see it. It 
 wastes its sweetness on the desert air. On the 
 other hand, a popular play, one that has caught 
 the public's fancy, devoid of every vestige of art 
 and ethics though it may be, may go unbulletined 
 or it may even be condemned and the box-office 
 will never be aware that it has been either ignored 
 completely or damned utterly. 
 
 106
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE LAST ACT 
 
 INTELLIGENT criticism in the columns of the 
 daily press and in the pages of the nation's peri- 
 odicals is, in the final analysis, the drama's truest 
 friend and the public's most reliable guide. One 
 fair criticism, recording the judgment of an ex- 
 perienced critic, is worth a whole season's output 
 of bulletins. It carries more weight, reaches more 
 people, speaks with greater authority and is usu- 
 ally of more immediate and permanent value both 
 to the playhouse and to the public. 
 
 I have known a good many critics in my time 
 not personally, but by their works. Some of 
 these have been able men, wise men, performing 
 a good service and performing it well. Some 
 have been fools. I know a good many critics to- 
 day, and I divide them now as in the past the 
 wise on one hand, the fools on the other. For 
 the critic who knows his business, who knows what 
 he is writing about, who has authority because he 
 has knowledge and experience as well as taste and 
 judgment, I have the deepest respect. I value his 
 opinion and I envy his influence. Few positions 
 107
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 in the whole field of journalism are more impor- 
 tant or more responsible than his. Critics of 
 music, pictures and literature can never do as 
 much for their readers nor do it as quickly as the 
 critic of the drama. And that is why his position 
 is important and his responsibility great. 
 
 There is one criticism of critics, however that 
 I want to make and in making it I voice the opinion 
 of the playwright and the player as well as that 
 of the producer. Too few of them know the 
 stage. They do not know its mechanical possi- 
 bilities or its mechanical limitations. Yet it is 
 their duty to know both and, if they did know 
 both, stage effects, lighting and scenery on the 
 American stage would be improved a higher 
 standard would be set. They would know acting 
 better, too, and nine-tenths of them, as their criti- 
 cisms show, are in need of vast improvement in 
 this respect. Their practice is to devote half a 
 column or more to a critical resume of the play 
 and not more than a meager paragraph to the 
 playing. They are adept in judging the play- 
 wright's work but they are evidently pitifully in- 
 competent to appraise the player's. Apparently 
 they do not know acting at all that is, as an art. 
 
 To give one more humble opinion. I look 
 
 upon Louis V. DeFoe, of the New York World, 
 
 and James O'Donnell Bennett, still, I hope, the 
 
 critic of the Chicago Tribune, as the best dramatic 
 
 108
 
 THE LAST ACT 
 
 critics in America. Honest, fair, sympathetic, al- 
 ways serving the higher ideals of the theater, these 
 two men, through many seasons, have held firm to 
 the best and the most substantial and permanent 
 while others have been misled by passing fads. 
 Since I know the first only slightly and the latter 
 not at all I think I have seen him once I 
 judge them wholly by what they have been writing 
 for the last ten years. Both could be more con- 
 structive than they are; neither could be more sin- 
 cere. And it seats me more firmly than ever on 
 my hobby when I reflect that both are products of 
 the Middle West whence comes because it is 
 still a " cleaner, greener land" the most of all 
 that is best in our theater today. I have a high 
 regard for these men, and all such men, and for 
 the work they do and the service they render. 
 
 But, for the man who writes about the theater 
 without knowing the theater; for the man who 
 would rather be clever in style than thorough in 
 judgment; for the man who glorifies theories and 
 spurns facts; for the man with no honest opinion 
 of his own, right or wrong, but who cravenly para- 
 phrases the opinion of another; for the man who 
 thinks but is afraid to say what he thinks; for the 
 little man of big conceit who never thinks at all; 
 for the man who would be critic, who poses as 
 critic, who serves as critic, but who does not know 
 and who knows that he does not know and never 
 109
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 will know and never can know, yet who lives and 
 writes the lie of pretending to know for all 
 these and they are numerous I have only 
 contempt. And it is only contempt, too, that I 
 have for the player who says he never reads what 
 the critics say of his acting, but who does never- 
 theless and only fails to profit from what he reads, 
 for the producer who fawns on them when they 
 praise his successes and denounces them as knaves 
 or fools or both when they condemn his failures, 
 and for the playwright who pretends to believe 
 only so long as they decline to endorse him that 
 critics cannot judge plays at all until they have 
 written plays. 
 
 But from all of this and further thought of it 
 as part of my daily work, from consideration of it 
 and analysis of it only to the practical end that the 
 conclusions may somehow be transmuted into dol- 
 lars, I turn finally away. I have given to the 
 theater in the only way it was open to me to serve 
 it, the best I had in me. I have crowded twenty 
 years' work into ten. I am weary and I am 
 done. 
 
 I went the other day to a playhouse that was 
 completed and opened ten years ago. I remem- 
 ber its first night it was also my first night. I 
 recall the play, the players, the audience. Today 
 its seats are empty, its doors are closed. To- 
 morrow it becomes a picture house. I sent the 
 no
 
 THE LAST ACT 
 
 man with me to the stage and, for a moment, I sat 
 alone in one of the dusty seats the very one I 
 occupied on that opening night. I could recall 
 its location and pick it out as though it were only 
 yesterday that I occupied it. All was quiet and I 
 fell into a revery . . . 
 
 " Are you there, sir? " called the man from the 
 stage. 
 
 " Yes," I replied. 
 
 " Shall I give you any light? " he asked. 
 
 " No," said I, " drop the curtain and go home." 
 And in the shadows and the silence I thought my 
 words were echoed back to me drop the cur- 
 tain and go home. 
 
 THE END 
 
 III
 
 A SELECTED LIST 
 
 OF 
 
 DRAMATIC 
 LITERATURE 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 CINCINNATI
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 Four Plays of the Free Theater 
 
 Francois de Curel's The Fossils 
 Jean Jullien's The Serenade 
 
 Georges de Porto-Riche's 
 
 Francoise' Luck 
 
 Georges Ancey's The Dupe 
 
 Translated with an introduction on Antoine and Theatre 
 Libre by BARRETT H. CLARK. Preface by BRIEUX, of the 
 French Academy, and a Sonnet by EDMOND ROSTAND. 
 
 The Review of Reviews says: 
 
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 Handsomely Bound. I2mo. Cloth Net, $1.50
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 Contemporary French Dramatists 
 
 By BARRETT H. CLARK 
 
 / "Contemporary French Dramatists" Mr. Barrett H. 
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 "The British and American Drama of Today," translator 
 of "Four Plays of the Free Theater," and of various plays 
 of Donnay, Hervieu, Lemaitre, Sardou, Lavedan, etc., has 
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 The book contains numerous quotations from the chief rep- 
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 be found anywhere. 
 
 This book gives a study of contemporary drama in 
 France which has been more neglected than any other 
 European country. 
 
 Independent, New York: 
 
 "Almost indispensable to the student of the theater." 
 
 Boston Transcript: 
 
 " Mr. Clark's method of analyzing the works of the 
 Playwrights selected is simple and helpful. * * As 
 a manual for reference or story, 'Contemporary French 
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 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 The Antigone of Sophocles 
 
 By PROF. JOSEPH EDWARD HARRY 
 
 An acting version of this most perfect of all dramas. 
 A scholarly ivork In readable English. Especlallly 
 adaptable for Colleges, Dramatic Societies, etc. 
 
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 "European Dramatists" 
 
 By ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 
 
 Author of "George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works." 
 In the present work the famous dramatic critic and 
 
 biographer of Shaw has considered six representative 
 
 dramatists outside of the United States, some living, some 
 
 dead Strindberg, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Wilde, Shaw and 
 
 Barker. 
 
 Velma Swanston Howard says: 
 
 "Prof. Henderson's appraisal of Strindberg is cer- 
 tainly the fairest, kindest and most impersonal that 
 I have yet seen. The author has that rare combina- 
 tion of intellectual power and spiritual insight which 
 casts a clear, strong light upon all subjects under his 
 treatment." 
 
 Baltimore Evening Sun: 
 
 "Prof. Henderson's criticism is not only notable for 
 its understanding and good sense, but also for the 
 extraordinary range and accuracy of its information." 
 
 Jeanette L. Gilder, in the Chicago Tribune: 
 
 "Henderson is a writer who throws new light on 
 old subjects." 
 
 Chicago Record Herald: 
 
 "His essays in interpretation are welcome. Mr. 
 Henderson has a catholic spirit and writes without 
 parochial prejudice a thing deplorably rare among 
 American critics of the present day. One finds 
 that one agrees with Mr. Henderson's main conten- 
 tions and is eager to break a lance with him about 
 minor points, which is only a way of saying that he is 
 stimulating, that he strikes sparks. He knows his age 
 thoroughly and lives in it with eager sympathy and 
 understanding." 
 
 Providence Journal: 
 
 "Henderson has done his work, within its obvious 
 limitations, in an exceedingly competent manner. He 
 has the happy faculty of making his biographical 
 treatment interesting, combining the personal facts and 
 a fairly clear and entertaining portrait of the indi- 
 vidual with intelligent critical comment on his artistic 
 work." 
 
 Photogravure frontispiece, handsomely printed and 
 bound, large J2mo Net, $1.50
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 At Last 
 
 You May Understand 
 G. B. s. 
 
 Perhaps once in a generation a figure of commanding 
 greatness appears, one through whose life the history of 
 his time may be read. There is but one such man to- 
 day. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORKS 
 
 A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY (Authorized) 
 
 By 
 ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, M.A.Ph.D. 
 
 Is virtually the story of the social, economic and 
 aesthetic life of the last twenty-five years. It is a sym- 
 pathetic, yet independent interpretation of the most po- 
 tent individual force in society. Cultivated America will 
 find here the key to all that is baffling and elusive in 
 Shaw; it is a cinematographic picture of his mind with a 
 background disclosing all the formative influences that 
 combined to produce this universal genius. 
 
 The press of the world has united in its praise; let us 
 send you some of the comments. It is a large demy 8vo 
 volume cloth, gilt top, 628 pages, with 35 full page illus- 
 trations in color, photogravure and halftone and numerous 
 pictures in the text. 
 
 $5.00 Net
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 A FEW CRITICAL REVIEWS OF 
 
 George Bernard Shaw 
 
 His LIFE AND WORKS 
 A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY (Authorized) 
 By ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, M.A., PH.D. 
 The Dial: 
 
 "In over five hundred pages, with an energy and 
 carefulness and sympathy which deserve high com- 
 mendation, Dr. Henderson has presented his subject 
 from all conceivable angles." 
 The Bookman: 
 
 "A more entertaining narrative, whether in biog- 
 raphy or fiction, has not appeared in recent years." 
 The Independent: 
 
 "Whatever George Bernard Shaw may think of his 
 Biography the rest of the world will probably agree 
 that Dr. Henderson has done a good job." 
 Boston Transcript: 
 
 "There is no exaggeration in saying it is one of the 
 most entertaining biographies of these opening years 
 of the Twentieth Century." 
 Bernard Shaw: 
 
 "You are a genius, because you are somehow sus- 
 ceptible to the really significant and differentiating 
 traits and utterances of your subject." 
 Maurice Maeterlinck: 
 
 "You have written one of the most sagacious, most 
 acute and most penetrating essays in the whole mod- 
 ern moment." 
 Edwin Markham: 
 
 "He stands to-day as the chief literary critic of 
 the South, and in the very forefront of the critics of 
 the nation." 
 William Lyon Phelps: 
 
 "Your critical biography of Shaw is a really great 
 work." 
 Richard Burton: 
 
 "In over five hundred pages, with an energy and 
 carefulness and sympathy which deserves high com- 
 mendation, Dr. Henderson has presented his subject 
 from all conceivable angles. * * * Intensely interest- 
 ing * * sound and brilliant, full of keen insight and 
 happy turns of statement. * * This service Professor 
 Henderson's book does perform; and I incline to call it 
 a great one."
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 Short Plays 
 
 By MARY MAC MILLAN 
 To fill a long- felt ivant. All have been successfully 
 
 presented. Suitable for Women's Clubs, Girls' Schools, 
 
 etc. While elaborate enough for big presentation, they 
 
 may be given very simply. 
 
 Review of Reviews: 
 
 "Mary MacMillan offers 'SHORT PLAYS,' a collec- 
 tion of pleasant one to three-act plays for women's 
 clubs, girls' schools, and home parlor production. 
 Some are pure comedies, otherg gentle satires on 
 women's faults and foibles. 'The Futurists,' a skit 
 on a woman's club in the year 1882, is highly amus- 
 ing. 'Entr' Act' is a charming trifle that brings two 
 quarreling lovers together through a ridiculous pri- 
 vate theatrical. 'The Ring' carries us gracefully back 
 to the days of Shakespeare; and 'The Shadowed Star,' 
 the best of the collection, is a Christmas Eve tragedy. 
 The Star is shadowed by our thoughtless inhumanity 
 to those who serve us and our forgetfulness of the 
 needy. The Old Woman, gone daft, who babbles in 
 a kind of mongrel Kiltartan, of the Shepherds, the 
 Blessed Babe, of the Fairies, rowan berries, roses and 
 dancing, while her daughter dies on Christmas Eve, is 
 a splendid characterization." 
 
 Boston Transcript: 
 
 "Those who consigned the writer of these plays to 
 solitude and prison fare evidently knew that 'needs 
 must' is a sharp stimulus to high powers. If we find 
 humor, gay or rich, if we find brilliant wit; if we 
 find constructive ability joined with dialogue which 
 moves like an arrow; if we find delicate and keen 
 characterization, with a touch of genius in the choice 
 of names ; if we find poetic power which moves on 
 easy wing the gentle jailers of the writer are justi- 
 fied, and the gentle reader thanks their severity." 
 
 Salt Lake Tribune: 
 
 "The Plays are ten in number, all of goodly length. 
 We prophesy great things for this gifted dramatist." 
 
 Bookseller, News Dealer & Stationer: 
 
 "The dialogue is permeated with graceful satire, 
 snatches of wit, picturesque phraseology, and tender, 
 often exquisite, expressions of sentiment." 
 
 Handsomely Bound. I2mo. Cloth Net, $1.25
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 The 
 
 Gift 
 
 A POETIC DRAMA 
 By MARGARET DOUGLAS ROGERS 
 
 A dramatic poem In t<wo acts, treating in altogether 
 new fashion the world old story of Pandora, the first 
 woman. 
 New Haven Times Leader: 
 
 "Well written and attractive." 
 Evangelical Messenger: 
 
 "A very beautifully written portrayal of the old 
 story of Pandora." 
 Rochester Post Dispatch: 
 
 "There is much poetic feeling in the treatment of 
 the subject." 
 Grand Rapids Herald: 
 
 "THE GIFT, dealing with this ever interesting 
 mythological story, is a valuable addition to the dramas 
 of the day." 
 St. Xavier Calendar: 
 
 "The story of Pandora is so set down as to bring 
 out its stage possibilities. Told by Mrs. Rogers in 
 exquisite language." 
 Salt Lake Tribune: 
 
 "The tale is charmingly wrought and has possibil- 
 ities as a simple dramatic production, as well as being 
 a delightful morsel of light reading." 
 Cincinnati Enquirer: 
 
 "The love story is delightfully told and the- dra- 
 matic action of the play is swift and strong." 
 Buffalo Express: 
 
 "It is a delightful bit of fancy with a dramatic and 
 poetic setting." 
 Boston Woman's Journal: 
 
 "Epimetheus and Pandora and her box are charm- 
 ingly presented." 
 Worcester Gazette: 
 
 "It is absolutely refreshing to find a writer willing 
 to risk a venture harking back to the times of the 
 Muses and the other worthies of mythological fame. 
 * * * The story of Pandora's box told in verse by a 
 woman. It may be said it could not have been better 
 written had a representative of the one who only as- 
 sisted at the opening been responsible for the play." 
 Handsomely bound silk cloth .................. Net, $l.oo
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 Lucky Pehr 
 
 By AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 Authorized Translation by Velma S<wanston Howard. 
 
 An allegorical drama in five acts. Compared favorably 
 
 to Barrie's "Peter Pan" and Maeterlinck's "The Blue 
 
 Bird." 
 
 Rochester Post Express: 
 
 Strindberg has written many plays which might be 
 described as realistic nightmares. But this remark does 
 not apply to "Lucky Pehr." * This drama is one 
 of the most favorable specimens of Strindberg's 
 genius. 
 
 New York World: 
 
 "Pehr" is lucky because, having tested all things, 
 he finds that only love and duty are true. 
 
 New York Times: 
 
 "Lucky Pehr" clothes cynicism in real entertain- 
 ment instead of in gloom. And it has its surprises. 
 Can this be August Strindberg, who ends his drama 
 so sweetly on the note of the woman-soul, leading up- 
 ward and on? 
 
 Worcester Gazette: 
 
 From a city of Ohio comes this product of Swedish 
 fancy in most attractive attire, attesting that the pos- 
 sibilities of dramatic art have not entirely ceased in 
 this age of vaudeville and moving pictures. A great 
 sermon in altruism is preached in these pages, which 
 we would that millions might see and hear. To those 
 who think or would like to think, "Lucky Pehr" will 
 prove a most readable book. * * * An allegory, it is 
 true, but so are ^sop's Fables, the Parables of the 
 Scriptures and many others of the most effective les- 
 sons ever given. 
 
 Boston Globe: 
 
 A popular drama. * * * There is no doubt about 
 the book being a delightful companion in the library. 
 In charm of fancy and grace of imagery the story may 
 not be unfairly classed with "The Blue Bird" and 
 "Peter Pan." 
 Photogravure frontispiece of Strindberg etched by 
 
 Zorn. Also, a reproduction of Velma Swanslon Howard's 
 
 authorization. 
 
 Handsomely bound. Gilt top Net, $1.50
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 Easter 
 
 (A PLAY IN THREE ACTS) 
 AND STORIES BY AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 Authorized translation by Velma Sivanston Howard. 
 In this ivork the author reveals a broad tolerance, a rare 
 poetic tenderness augmented by an almost divine under- 
 standing of human frailties as marking certain natural 
 stages in evolution of the soul. 
 Louisville Courier-Journal: 
 
 Here is a major key of cheerfulness and idealism 
 a relief to a reader who has passed through some 
 of the author's morbid pages. * * * Some critics find 
 in this play (Easter) less of the thrust of a distinctive 
 art than is found in the author's more lugubrious 
 dramas. There is indeed less sting in it. Neverthe- 
 less it has a nobler tone. It more ably fulfills the 
 purpose of good drama the chastening of the spec- 
 tators' hearts through their participation in the suf- 
 fering of the dramatic personages. There is in the 
 play a mystical exaltation, a belief and trust in good 
 and its power to embrace all in its beneficence, to bring 
 all confusion to harmony. 
 The Nation: 
 
 Those who like the variety of symbolism which 
 Maeterlinck has often employed most notably in the 
 "Bluebird" will turn with pleasure to the short stories 
 of Strindberg which Mrs. Howard has included in her 
 volume. * * * They are one and all diverting on ac- 
 count of the author's facility in dealing with fanciful 
 details. 
 Bookseller: 
 
 "Easter" is a play of six characters illustrative of 
 human frailties and the effect of the divine power 
 of tolerance and charity. * * There is a symbolism, 
 a poetic quality, a spiritual insight in the author's 
 work that make a direct appeal to the cultured. * * 
 The Dial: 
 
 One play from his (Strindberg's) third, or sym- 
 bolistic period stands almost alone. This is "Easter." 
 There is a sweet, sane, life-giving spirit about it. 
 Photogravure frontispiece of Strindberg etched by 
 Zorn. Also, a reproduction of Velma Sivantton Howard's 
 authorization. 
 Handsomely bound. Gilt top Net, $1.50
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 On the Seaboard 
 
 By AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 The Author's greatest psychological novel. Author- 
 ized Translation by Elizabeth Clarke Westergren. 
 A merican-Scandinavian Review: 
 
 "The description of Swedish life and Swedish scen- 
 ery makes one positively homesick for the Skargard 
 and its moods. 
 Worcester Evening Gazette: 
 
 "Classes in Psychology in colleges, and Medical stu- 
 dents considering Pathology would derive much infor- 
 mation from the observations and reflections of the 
 commissioner who holds the front of the stage whereon 
 are presented sciences as new to the readers of to-day 
 as were those which Frederick Bremer unfolded to the 
 fathers and mothers of critics and observers in this 
 first quarter of the Twentieth Century." 
 Detroit Tribune: 
 
 "Hans Land pronounced this novel to be the only 
 work of art in the domain of Nietzschean morals yet 
 written which is destined to endure." 
 Cincinnati Tlmes~Star: 
 
 "It requires a book such as 'ON THE SEABOARD' to 
 show just how profound an intellect was housed in the 
 frame of this great Swedish writer." 
 New Haven Leader: 
 
 "His delineations are photographical exactness with- 
 out retouching, and bear always a strong reflection of 
 his personality." 
 Indianapolis News: 
 
 "The story is wonderfully built and conceived and 
 holds the interest tight." 
 American Review of Reviews: 
 
 "This version is characterized by the fortunate use 
 of idiom, a delicacy in the choice of words, and great 
 beauty in the rendering of descriptive passages, the 
 translation itself often attaininq; the melody of poetry 
 * * * You may read and re-read it, and every read- 
 ing will fascinate the mind from a fresh angle." 
 South Atlantic Quarterly: 
 
 "Only a most unusual man, a genius, could have 
 written this book, and it is distinctly worth reading." 
 Handsomely bound, uniform with Lucky Pehr and 
 Easter Net, $1.25
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 The Hamlet Problem and Its Solution 
 
 By EMERSON VENABLE 
 
 The tragedy of Hamlet has never been adequately in- 
 terpreted. Tivo hundred years of critical discussion has 
 not sufficed to reconcile conflicting impressions regarding 
 the scope of Shakespeare's design in this, the first of his 
 great philosophic tragedies. We believe that all those 
 students who are interested in the study of Shakespeare 
 will find this volume of great value. 
 The Louisville Courier-Journal: 
 
 "Mr. Venable's Hamlet is a 'protagonist of a drama 
 of triumphant moral achievement.' He rises through 
 the play from an elected agent of vengeance to a 
 man gravely impressed with 'an imperative sense of 
 moral obligation, tragic in its depth, felt toward the 
 world.' " 
 E. H. Sothern: 
 
 "Your ideas of Hamlet so entirely agree with my 
 own that the book has been a real delight to me. I 
 have always had exactly this feeling about the char- 
 acter of Hamlet. I think you have wiped away a 
 great many cobwebs, and I believe your book will 
 prove to be most convincing to many people who may 
 yet be a trifle in the dark." 
 The Book News Monthly: 
 
 "Mr. Venable is the latest critic to apply himself 
 to the 'Hamlet' problem, and he offers a solution in 
 an admirably written little book which is sure to at- 
 tract readers. Undeterred by the formidable names 
 of Goethe and Coleridge, Mr. Venable pronounces un- 
 tenable the theories which those great authors pro- 
 pounded to account for the extraordinary figure of 
 the Prince of Denmark. * * * Mr. Venable looks in 
 another direction for the solution of the problem. 
 * * * The solution offered by the author is just the 
 reverse of that proposed by Goethe. * * From Mr. 
 Venable's viewpoint the key to 'Hamlet* is found in 
 the famous soliloquies, and his book is based upon 
 a close study of those utterances which bring us with- 
 in the portals of the soul of the real Hamlet. The 
 reader with an open mind will find in Mr. Venable a 
 writer whose breadth of view and searching thought 
 gives weight to this competent study of the most inter- 
 esting of Shakespearean problems." 
 idmo. Silk cloth Net, $l.oo
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 HOW TO WRITE 
 
 Moving Picture Plays 
 
 By W. L. GORDON 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 What is a motion picture? How are moving pictures 
 produced? What is necessary to write photoplays? 
 Prices paid for plays. Kind of plays to write. Kind 
 of plays to avoid. Single reels, double reels, etc. Prepa- 
 ration of manuscript. The plot and how to obtain it. 
 Title of play. Synopsis. Cast of characters. Scenario. 
 Leaders of Sub-Titles. Letters, Clippings, etc. What 
 constitutes a scene. Continuity of scenes. Stage settings 
 and properties. Entrance and exit of characters. Cli- 
 max. Limitations of camera. Length of play. Review. 
 Time required to write a play. How and where to sell 
 plays. A complete sample play illustrating every point 
 treated upon in the instructions. A full list of over 
 twenty prominent film-producing companies wanting and 
 buying plays. 
 
 The following extracts from letters of satisfied writers, 
 addressed to the author, are very convincing and be- 
 speak the value of this exhaustive treatise: 
 
 " Have been successful in placing three plays, and am 
 awaiting news of two additional ones. Am certain I 
 would never have had that much success if I had not fol- 
 lowed your instructions." 
 
 " Your instructions entirely satisfactory. I think that 
 any one with common sense can make a very nice income 
 through moving picture play-writing. My first scenario 
 has been accepted, and I desire to thank you." 
 
 " You might be interested to know that my first scenario 
 completed according to your instructions was accepted by 
 the Essanay Film Co." 
 
 " Instructions well worth the money. Sold my first 
 scenario to the Edison Co." 
 
 Handsomely bound in DeLuxe Cloth Net, $1.00
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 The Truth 
 
 About The Theater 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 Precisely what the title indicates facts as they 
 are, plain and unmistakable without veneer of any 
 sort. It goes directly to the heart of the whole 
 matter. Behind the writer of it who is one of 
 the best known theatrical men in New York are 
 long years of experience. He recites what he 
 knows, what he has seen, and his quiet, calm, au- 
 thoritative account of conditions as they are is with- 
 out adornment, excuse or exaggeration. It is in- 
 tended to be helpful to those who want the facts, 
 and for them it will prove of immeasurable value. 
 
 " The Truth About the Theater," in brief, lifts 
 the curtain on the American stage. It leaves no 
 phase of the subject untouched. To those who are 
 ambitious to serve the theater, either as players or 
 as playwrights, or, again, in some managerial ca- 
 pacity, the book is invaluable. To those, too, who 
 would know more about the theater that they may 
 come to some fair estimate of the worth of the in- 
 numerable theories nowadays advanced, the book 
 will again prove its value. 
 
 Net $1.00
 
 .' M new ' . '.i. - nwn ; ' 
 
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