This episode became one of the many marvelous features of the memorable run of "Peter Pan" at the Empire. Nearly every child in New York—and subsequently, on the long and successful tours that Miss Adams made in "Peter Pan," their brothers everywhere—became acquainted with the episode and longed impatiently to have a part in it. On one occasion, fully fifteen minutes before Miss Adams made her appeal, a little child rose in a box at the Empire and said: "I believe in fairies."
"Peter Pan" recorded the longest single engagement in the history of the Empire. It ran from November 6, 1905, until June 9, 1906.
But "Peter Pan" did more than give Miss Adams her most popular part. It became a nation-wide vogue. Children were named after the fascinating little lad Who Never Would Grow Up; articles of wearing-apparel were labeled with his now familiar title; the whole country talked and loved the unforgettable little character who now became not merely a stage figure, but a real personal friend of the American theater-going people.
It was on a road tour of "Peter Pan" that occurred one of those rare anecdotes in which Miss Adams figures. Frohman always had a curious prejudice against the playing of matinÉes by his stars, especially Maude Adams. A matinÉe was booked at Altoona, Pennsylvania. Frohman immediately had it marked off his contract. The advance-agent of the company, however, ordered the matinÉe played at the urgent request of the local manager, but he did not notify the office in New York. When Charles got the telegram announcing the receipts, he was most indignant. "I'll discharge the person responsible for this matinÉe," he said.
In answer to his telegraphed inquiry he received the following wire:
The matinÉe was played at my request. I preferred to work rather than spend the whole day in a bad hotel.
Maude Adams.
In connection with "Peter Pan" is a curious and tragic coincidence. Of all the Barrie plays that Charles produced he loved "Peter Pan" the best. Curiously enough, it was little Peter himself who gave him the cue for his now historic farewell as he stood on the sinking deck of the Lusitania.
At the end of one of the acts in "Peter Pan" the little boy says:
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
These words had always made a deep impression on Frohman. They came to his mind as he stood on that fateful deck and said:
Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.
Having made such an enormous success with "Peter Pan," Miss Adams now turned to her third boy's part. It was that of "Chicot, the Jester," John Raphael's adaptation of Miguel Zamaceis's play "The Jesters." This was a very delightful sort of Prince Charming play, fragile and artistic. The opposite part was played by Consuelo Bailey. It was a great triumph for Miss Adams, but not a very great financial success.
Now came the first of her open-air performances. During the season of "The Jesters" she appeared at Yale and Harvard as Viola in "Twelfth Night." She gave a charming and graceful performance of the rÔle.
But Maude Adams could not linger long from the lure that was Barrie's. After what amounted to the failure of "The Jesters" she turned to her fourth Barrie play, which proved to be a triumph.
For over a year Barrie had been at work on a play for her. It came forth in his whimsical satire, "What Every Woman Knows." Afterward, in speaking of this play, he said that he had written it because "there was a Maude Adams in the world." Then he added, "I could see her dancing through every page of my manuscript."
Indeed, "What Every Woman Knows" was really written around Miss Adams. It was a dramatization of the roguish humor and exquisite womanliness that are her peculiar gifts.
As Maggie Wylie she created a character that was a worthy colleague of Lady Babbie. Here she had opportunity for her wide range of gifts. The rÔle opposite her, that of John Shand, the poor Scotch boy who literally stole knowledge, was extraordinarily interesting. As most people may recall, the play involves the marriage between Maggie and John, according to an agreement entered into between the girl's brothers and the boy. The brothers agree to educate him, and in return he weds the sister. Maggie becomes John's inspiration, although he refuses to realize or admit it. He is absolutely without humor. He thinks he can do without her, only to find when it is almost too late that she has been the very prop of his success.
At the end of this play Maggie finally makes her husband laugh when she tells him:
I tell you what every woman knows: that Eve wasn't made from the rib of Adam, but from his funny-bone.
This speech had a wide vogue and was quoted everywhere.
Curiously enough, in "What Every Woman Knows" Miss Adams has a speech in which she unconsciously defines the one peculiar and elusive gift which gives her such rare distinction. In the play she is supposed to be the girl "who has no charm." In reality she is all charm. But in discussing this quality with her brothers she makes this statement:
Charm is the bloom upon a woman. If you have it you don't have to have anything else. If you haven't it, all else won't do you any good.
"What Every Woman Knows" was an enormous success, in which Richard Bennett, who played John Shand, shared honors with the star. Miss Adams's achievement in this play emphasized the rare affinity between her and Barrie's delightful art. They formed a unique and lovable combination, irresistible in its appeal to the public. Commenting on this, Barrie himself has said:
Miss Adams knows my characters and understands them. She really needs no directions. I love to write for her and see her in my work.
Nor could there be any more delightful comment on Miss Adams's appreciation of all that Barrie has meant to her than to quote a remark she made not so very long ago when she said:
Wherever I act, I always feel that there is one unseen spectator, James M. Barrie.
Maude Adams was now in what most people, both in and out of the theatrical profession, would think the very zenith of her career. She was the best beloved of American actresses, the idol of the American child. She was without doubt the best box-office attraction in the country. Yet she had made her way to this eminence by an industry and a concentration that were well-nigh incredible.
People began to say, "What marvelous things Charles Frohman has done for Miss Adams."
As a matter of fact, the career of Miss Adams emphasizes what a very great author once said, which, summed up, was that neither nature nor man did anything for any human being that he could not do for himself.
Miss Adams paid the penalty of her enormous success by an almost complete isolation. She concentrated on her work—all else was subsidiary.
Charles Frohman had an enormous ambition for Miss Adams, and that ambition now took form in what was perhaps his most remarkable effort in connection with her. It was the production of "Joan of Arc" at the Harvard Stadium. It started in this way:
John D. Williams, for many years business manager for Charles Frohman, is a Harvard alumnus. Realizing that the business with which he was associated had been labeled with the "commercial" brand, he had an ambition to associate it with something which would be considered genuinely esthetic. The pageant idea had suddenly come into vogue. "Why not give a magnificent pageant?" he said to himself.
One morning he went into Charles Frohman's office and put the idea to him, adding that he thought Miss Adams as Joan of Arc would provide the proper medium for such a spectacle. Frohman was about to go to Europe. With a quick wave of the hand and a swift "All right," he assented to what became one of the most distinguished events in the history of the American stage.
Schiller's great poem, "The Maid of OrlÉans," was selected. In suggesting the battle heroine of France, Williams touched upon one of Maude Adams's great admirations. For years she had studied the character of Joan. To her Joan was the very idealization of all womanhood. Bernhardt, Davenport, and others had tried to dramatize this most appealing of all tragedies in the history of France, and had practically failed. It remained for slight, almost fragile, Maude Adams to vivify and give the character an enduring interpretation.
"Joan of Arc," as the pageant was called, was projected on a stupendous scale. Fifteen hundred supernumeraries were employed. John W. Alexander, the famous artist, was employed to design the costumes. A special electric-lighting plant was installed in the stadium.
Miss Adams concentrated herself upon the preparations with a fidelity and energy that were little short of amazing. One detail will illustrate. As most people know, Miss Adams had to appear mounted several times during the play and ride at the head of her charging army.
This equestrianism gave Charles Frohman the greatest solicitude. He feared that she would be injured in some way, and he kept cabling warnings to her, and to her associates who were responsible for her safety, to be careful.
Miss Adams, however, determined to be a good horsewoman, and for more than a month she practised every afternoon in a riding-academy in New York. Since the horse had to carry the trappings of clanging armor, amid all the tumult of battle, she rehearsed every day with all sorts of noisy apparatus hanging about him. Shots were fired, colored banners and flags were flaunted about her, and pieces of metal were fastened to her riding-skirt so that the steed would be accustomed to the constant contact of a sword.
Although the preparations for her own part were most exacting and onerous, Miss Adams exercised a supervising direction over the whole production, which was done in the most lavish fashion. She had every resource of the Charles Frohman organization at her command, and it was employed to the very last detail.
"Joan of Arc" was presented on the evening of June 22, 1909, in the presence of over fifteen thousand people. It was a magnificent success, and proved to be unquestionably the greatest theatrical pageant ever staged in this country. The elaborate settings were handled mechanically. Forests dissolved into regal courts; fields melted into castles. A hidden orchestra played the superb music of Beethoven's "Eroica," which accentuated the noble poetry of Schiller.
The first scene showed the maid of Domremy wandering in the twilight with her vision; the last revealed her dying of her wounds at the spring, soon to be buried under the shields of her captains.
The battle scene was an inspiring feature. It had been arranged that Miss Adams's riding-master should change places with her at the head of the charging troops and ride in their magnificent sweep down the field. It was feared that some mishap might befall her. When the charge was over and the stage-manager rushed up to congratulate the supposed riding-master on his admirable make-up, he was surprised to hear Miss Adams's voice issue forth from the armor, saying, "How did it go?" Strapped to her horse, she had led the charge herself and had seen the performance through.
"Joan of Arc" netted $15,000, which Charles Frohman turned over to Harvard University to do with as it pleased. There was unconscious irony in this, for the performance aroused great admiration in Germany, and the proceeds were devoted to the Germanic Museum in the university; in the end, the Germans were responsible for his death.
Accentuating this irony was the fact that Charles Frohman had made a magnificent vellum album containing the complete photographic record of the play, and sent it to the German Kaiser with the following inscription:
To His Majesty the German Emperor. This photographic record of the first English performance in America of Friedrich von Schiller's dramatic poem, "Jungfrau von Orleans," given for the Building Fund of the Germanic Museum of Harvard University under the auspices of the German Department in the Stadium, Tuesday, twenty-second of June, 1909, is respectfully presented by Charles Frohman.
There is no doubt that "Joan of Arc" was the supreme effort of Miss Adams's career. She was the living, breathing incarnation of the Maid. When she was told that Charles Frohman had refused an offer of $50,000 for the motion-picture rights, she said:
Of course it was refused. This performance is all poetry and solemnity.
The following June, in the Greek Theater of the University of California, at Berkeley, Miss Adams made her first and only appearance as Rosalind in "As You Like It." Ten thousand people saw the performance. Her achievement illustrates the extraordinary and indefatigable quality of her work. She rehearsed "As You Like It" during her transcontinental tour of "What Every Woman Knows," which extended from sea to sea and lasted thirty-nine weeks.
Most managers would have been content to rest with the laurel that such a performance as "Joan of Arc" had won. Not so with Charles Frohman. Every stupendous feat that he achieved merely whetted his desire for something greater. He delighted in sensation. Now he came to the point in his life where he projected what was in many respects the most unique and original of all his efforts, the presentation of Rostand's classic, "Chantecler."
It was on March 30, 1910, that Charles crossed over from London to Paris to see this play. It thrilled and stirred him, and he bought it immediately. He realized that it would either be a tremendous success or a colossal failure, and he was willing to stand or fall by it. In Paris the title rÔle, originally written for the great Coquelin, had been played by Guitry. It was essentially a man's part. But Frohman, with that sense of the spectacular which so often characterized him, immediately cast Miss Adams for it.
When he announced that the elf-like girl—the living Peter Pan to millions of theater-goers—was to assume the feathers and strut of the barnyard Romeo, there was a widespread feeling that he was making a great mistake, and that he was putting Miss Adams into a rÔle, admirable artist that she was, to which she was absolutely unsuited. A storm of criticism arose. But Frohman was absolutely firm. Opposition only made him hold his ground all the stronger. When people asked him why he insisted upon casting Miss Adams for this almost impossible part he always said:
"Chantecler" is a play with a soul, and the soul of a play is its moral. This is the secret of "Peter Pan"; this is why Miss Adams is to play the leading part.
Miss Adams was in Chicago when Frohman bought the play, and he cabled her that she was to do the title part. She afterward declared that this news changed the dull, dreary, soggy day into one that was brilliant and dazzling. "To play Chantecler," she said, "is an honor international in its glory."
The preparations for "Chantecler" were carried on with the usual Frohman magnificence. A fortune was spent on it. The costumes were made in Paris; John W. Alexander supervised the scenic effects.
The casting of the parts was in itself an enormous task. Frohman amused himself by having what he called "casting parties." For example, he would call up Miss Adams by long-distance telephone and say:
I've got ten minutes before my train starts for Atlantic City. Can you cast a peacock for me?
Whereupon Miss Adams would say:
Ten minutes is too short.
Never, perhaps, in the history of the American stage was the advent of a play so long heralded. The name "Chantecler" was on every tongue. Long before the piece was launched hats had been named after it, controversies had arisen over its Anglicized spelling and pronunciation. All the genius of publicity which was the peculiar heritage of Charles Frohman was turned loose to pave the way for this extraordinary production. It was a nation-wide sensation.
For the first time in his life Charles had to postpone an opening. It was originally set for the 13th of January, 1911, but the first night did not come until the 23d. This added to the suspense and expectancy of the public.
The demand for seats was unprecedented. A line began to form at four o'clock in the afternoon preceding the day the sale opened. Within twenty-four hours after the window was raised at the box-office as high as $200 was offered in vain for a seat on the opening night.
The Empire stage was too small, so the play was produced at the Knickerbocker Theater. A brilliant and highly wrought-up audience was present. Extraordinary interest centered about Miss Adams's performance as Chantecler. "Will she be able to do it?" was the question on every tongue. On that memorable opening-night Frohman, as usual, sat in the back seat in the gallery and had the supreme satisfaction of seeing his star distinguish herself in a performance that in many respects revealed Miss Adams as she had never been revealed before. She was recalled twenty-two times.
Chantecler literally crowed and conquered!
Just how much "Chantecler" meant to Charles Frohman is attested by a remark he made soon after its inaugural. A friend was discussing epitaphs with him.
"What would you like to have written about you, C. F.?" asked the man.
The brilliant smile left Frohman's face for a moment, and then he said, solemnly:
"All that I would ask is this: 'He gave "Peter Pan" to the world and "Chantecler" to America.' It is enough for any man."
The last original production that Charles Frohman made with Maude Adams was "The Legend of Leonora," in which she returned once more to Barrie's exquisite and fanciful satire, devoted this time to the woman question. In England it had been produced under the title of "The Adored One."
It was in the part of Leonora that James M. Barrie saw Maude Adams act for the first time in one of his plays. He had come to America for a brief visit to Frohman, and during this period Miss Adams was having her annual engagement at the Empire Theater.
Of course, Barrie had Miss Adams in mind for the American production, and it is a very interesting commentary on his admiration for the American star that about the only instructions he attached to the manuscript of the play was this:
Leonora is an unspeakable darling, and this is all the guidance that can be given to the lady playing her.
On her last starring tour under the personal direction of Charles Frohman, Miss Adams combined with a revival of "Quality Street" a clever skit by Barrie called "The Ladies' Shakespeare," the subtitle being, "One Woman's Reading of 'The Taming of the Shrew.'" With an occasional appearance in Barrie's "Rosalind," it rounded out her stellar career under him.
Charles Frohman lived to see Maude Adams realize his highest desire for her success. She justified his confidence and it gave him infinite satisfaction.
Miss Adams's career as a star unfolds a panorama of artistic and practical achievement unequaled in the life of any American star. It likewise reveals a paradox all its own. While millions of people have seen and admired her, only a handful of people know her. The aloofness of the woman in her personal attitude toward the public represents Charles Frohman's own ideal of what stage artistry and conduct should be.
It is illustrated in what was perhaps the keenest epigram he ever made. He was talking about people of the stage who constantly air themselves and their views to secure personal publicity. It moved him to this remark:
"Some people prefer mediocrity in the lime-light to greatness in the dark."
Herein he summed up the reason why Miss Adams has been an elusive and almost mysterious figure. By tremendous reading, solitary thinking, and extraordinary personal application she rose to her great eminence. With her it has always been a creed of career first. Like Charles Frohman, she has hidden behind her activities, and they form a worthy rampart.
The history of the stage records no more interesting parallel than the one afforded by these two people—each a recluse, yet each known to the multitudes.
Chief among the insurgents was Mrs. Fiske, who had returned to the stage in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," a dramatization of Thomas Hardy's great novel. Her husband and manager, Harrison Gray Fiske, was editor and publisher of The Dramatic Mirror, which became the voice of protest. Mrs. Fiske refused to appear in Syndicate theaters, and she hired independent houses all over the country. Such places were few and far between in those days, and she was forced to play in public halls, even skating-rinks.
Mansfield became one of the leaders of the opposition to the Syndicate. He made speeches before the curtain, denouncing its methods. His lead was followed by Francis Wilson, and subsequently by James K. Hackett, David Belasco, and Henry W. Savage. The fight on the huge combination became a matter of nation-wide interest.
All the while the Syndicate was growing in power and authority. Gradually the revolutionists returned to the fold because desirable terms were made for them. Only Mrs. Fiske remained outside the ranks. In order to secure a New York City stage for her Mr. Fiske leased the Manhattan Theater for a long term.
It was during these strenuous years, and as one indirect result of the Syndicate fight, that a whole new theatrical dynasty sprang up. It took shape and centered in the growing importance of three then obscure brothers, Lee, Sam, and Jacob J. Shubert by name, who lived in Syracuse, New York. They were born in humble circumstances, and early in life had been forced to become breadwinners. The first to get into the theatrical business was Sam, the second son, who, as a youngster barely in his teens, became program boy and later on assistant in the box-office of the Grand Opera House in his native town. At seventeen he was treasurer of the Weiting Opera House there, and from that time until his death in a railroad accident in 1905 he was an increasingly powerful figure in the business.
Before Sam Shubert was twenty he controlled a chain of theaters with stock companies in up-state New York cities and had taken his two brothers into partnership with him. In 1900 he subleased the Herald Square Theater in New York City and thus laid the corner-stone of what came to be known as the "Independent Movement" throughout the country. He had initiative and enterprise. Gradually he and his brothers and their associates controlled a line of theaters from coast to coast. In these theaters they offered attractive bookings to the managers who were outside the Syndicate. The Shuberts also became producers and encouragers of productions on a large scale.
For the first time the Syndicate now had real opposition. A warfare developed that was almost as bitter and costly in its way as was the old disorganized method in vogue before the business was put on a commercial basis. It naturally led to over-production and to a surplus of theaters. Towns that in reality could only support one first-class playhouse were compelled to have a "regular" and an "independent" theater. Attractions of a similar nature, such as two musical comedies, were pitted against each other. In dividing the local patronage both sides suffered loss.
During the last year of Charles Frohman's life the Syndicate and the Shuberts, wisely realizing that such an uneconomic procedure could only spell disaster in a large way for the whole theatrical business, buried their differences. A harmonious working agreement was entered into that put an end to the destructive strife. Theatrical booking became an open field, and the producer can now play his attractions in both Syndicate and Shubert theaters.
Charles Frohman's activities were now nation-wide. Just as Harriman built up a transcontinental railroad system, so did the rotund little manager now set up an empire all his own. The building of the Empire Theater had given him a closer link with Rich and Harris. Through them he acquired an interest in the Columbia Theater, in Boston, and subsequently he became part owner of the Hollis Street Theater in that city. His third theater in Boston was the Park. By this time the firm name for Boston operation was Rich, Harris, and Charles Frohman. Their next venture was the construction of the magnificent Colonial Theater, on the site of the old Boston Public Library, which was opened with "Ben-Hur." With the acquisition of the Boston and Tremont playhouses, the firm controlled the situation at Boston.
Up to this time Frohman had controlled only one theater in New York—the Empire. In 1896 he saw an opportunity to acquire control of the Garrick in Thirty-fifth Street. He wrote to William Harris, saying, "I will take it if you will come on and run it." Harris assented, and the Garrick passed under the banner of Charles Frohman, who inaugurated his rÉgime with John Drew in "The Squire of Dames." He put some of his biggest successes into this theater and some of his favorite stars, among them Maude Adams and William Gillette. To the chain of Charles Frohman controlled theaters in New York were added in quick order the Criterion, the Savoy, the Garden, and a part interest in the Knickerbocker.
During his early tenancy of the Garrick occurred an incident which showed Frohman's resource. He produced a play called "The Liars," by Henry Arthur Jones, in which he was very much interested. In the out-of-town try-out up-state Frohman heard that the critic of one of the most important New York newspapers had expressed great disapproval of the piece on account of some personal prejudice. He did not want this prejudice to interfere with the New York verdict, so he went to Charles Dillingham one day shortly before the opening and said:
Dillingham said he could.
"All right," said Frohman; "I want you to plant one on either side of Mr. Blank," referring to the critic who had a prejudice against the play.
This was done, and on the opening night the "prop" laughers made such a noisy demonstration that the critic said it was the funniest farce in years.
Charles Frohman's first foreign star, who paved the way for so many, was Olga Nethersole. His management of her came about in a curious way. A difference had arisen between Augustin Daly and Ada Rehan, his leading woman. Miss Rehan had decided to withdraw from the company, and in casting about quickly for a successor had decided upon Olga Nethersole, then one of the most prominent of the younger English actresses. While the deal was being consummated Daly and Miss Rehan adjusted their differences, and the arrangements for Miss Nethersole's appearance in America were abrogated.
Miss Nethersole was left without an American manager. Daniel Frohman, then manager of the Lyceum Theater, stepped in and became her American sponsor, forming a partnership with his brother Charles to handle her interests. Jointly they now conducted an elaborate tour for her covering two years, in which she appeared in "Denise," "Frou-Frou," "Camille," and "Carmen."
The sensational episode of her tour was the production of "Carmen." The fiery, impetuous, emotional, and sensuous character of the Spanish heroine appealed to Miss Nethersole's vivid imagination, and she gave a realistic portrayal of the rÔle that became popular and spectacular. In all parts of the country the "Carmen Kiss" became a byword. The play, in addition to its own merits as a striking drama, and its vogue at the opera through Madame CalvÉ's performance of the leading rÔle, became a very successful vehicle for Miss Nethersole's two tours. Miss Nethersole was the first star outside of Charles Frohman's own force who appeared at the Empire Theater, where she played a brief engagement with "Camille" and "Carmen."
From his earliest theatrical day Charles believed implicitly in melodrama. His first production on any stage was a thriller. The play that turned the tide in his fortunes was a spine-stirrer. He now turned to his favorite form of play by producing "The Fatal Card," by Haddon Chambers and B. C. Stephenson, at Palmer's Theater. He did it with an admirable cast that included May Robson, Agnes Miller, Amy Busby, E. J. Ratcliffe, William H. Thompson, J. H. Stoddart, and W. J. Ferguson.
A big melodrama now became part of his regular season. He leased the old Academy of Music at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place in New York, where, as a boy, he had seen his brother Gustave sell opera librettos, and where he became fired with the ambition to make money. Here he produced a notable series of melodramas in lavish fashion. The first was "The Sporting Duchess." This piece, which was produced in England as "The Derby Winner," was a sure-enough thriller. The cast included E. J. Ratcliffe, Francis Carlyle, J. H. Stoddart, Alice Fischer, Cora Tanner, Agnes Booth, and Jessie Busley.
Charles Frohman's next melodrama at the Academy was the famous "Two Little Vagrants," adapted from the French by Charles Klein. In this cast he brought forward a notable group destined to shine in the drama, for among them were Dore Davidson, Minnie Dupree, Annie Irish, George Fawcett, and William Farnum, the last named then just beginning to strike his theatrical stride.
Still another famous melodrama that Charles introduced to the United States at the famous old playhouse was "The White Heather," in which he featured Rose Coghlan, and in which Amelia Bingham made one of her first successes. With this piece Charles emphasized one of the customs he helped to bring to the American stage. He always paid for the actresses' clothes. He told Miss Coghlan to spare no expense on her gowns, and she spent several thousand dollars on them. When she saw Frohman after the opening, which was a huge success, she said:
"Why?" he asked.
"Nonsense!" said Frohman. "You did very wisely. You and the gowns are the hit of the piece."
Frohman here established a new tradition for the production of melodrama in the United States. Up to his era the producer depended upon thrill rather than upon accessory. Frohman lavished a fortune on each production. Any competition with him had to be on the same elaborate scale.
Fully a year before Maude Adams made her stellar dÉbut Frohman put forth his first woman star in Annie Russell. This gifted young Englishwoman, who had appeared on the stage at the age of seven in "Pinafore," had made a great success in "Esmeralda," at the Madison Square Theater. Frohman, who was then beginning his managerial career, was immediately taken with her talent. She appeared in some of his earlier companies. He now starred her in a play by Bret Harte called "Sue." He presented her both in New York and in London.
Under Frohman, Miss Russell had a long series of starring successes. When she appeared in "Catherine," at the Garrick Theater, in her support was Ethel Barrymore, who was just beginning to emerge from the obscurity of playing "bits." In succession Miss Russell did "Miss Hobbs," "The Royal Family," "The Girl and the Judge," "Jinny the Carrier," and "Mice and Men."
In connection with "Mice and Men" is a characteristic Frohman story. Charles ordered this play written from Madeleine Lucette Ryley for Maude Adams. When he read the manuscript he sent it back to Miss Ryley with the laconic comment, "Worse yet." She showed it to Gertrude Elliott, who bought it for England. When Charles heard of this he immediately accepted the play, and it proved to be a success. The moment a play was in demand it became valuable to him.
Spectacular success seemed to have taken up its abode with Charles. It now found expression in the production of "Secret Service," the most picturesque and profitable of all the Gillette enterprises. The way it came to be written is a most interesting story.
Frohman was about to sail for Europe when Gillette sent him the first act of this stirring military play. Frohman read it at once, sent for the author and said:
"This is great, Gillette. Let me see the second act."
Gillette produced this act forthwith, and Frohman's enthusiasm increased to such an extent that he postponed his sailing until he received the complete play. Frohman's interest in "Secret Service" was heightened by the fact that he had scored two tremendous triumphs with military plays, "Held by the Enemy" and "Shenandoah." He felt that the talisman of the brass button was still his, and he plunged heavily on "Secret Service."
It was first put on in Philadelphia. Even at that time there obtained the superstition widely felt in the theatrical business that what fails out of town must succeed in New York. Frohman, who shared this superstition, was really eager not to register successfully in the Quaker capital.
But "Secret Service" smashed this superstition, because it scored heavily in Philadelphia and then had an enormous run at the Garrick Theater in New York. In "Secret Service" Maurice Barrymore had the leading part, and he played it with a distinction of bearing and a dash of manner that were almost irresistible.
William Gillette always proved to be one of Charles Frohman's mascots. Practically whatever he touched turned to gold. He and Frohman had now become close friends, and the actor-author frequently accompanied the manager on his trips to London.
During their visit in 1899, "Sherlock Holmes" had become the literary rage. Everybody was talking about the masterful detective of Baker Street.
"We must get those Doyle stories," said Frohman to Gillette.
"All right," said the author.
Frohman personally went to see Conan Doyle and made a bid for the rights.
"Certainly, Mr. Frohman," replied Doyle, "but I shall make one stipulation. There must be no love business in 'Sherlock Holmes.'"
Frohman now engaged Gillette to make the adaptation, but he said absolutely nothing about the condition that Doyle had made. Gillette, as most American theater-goers know, wove a love interest into the strenuous life of the famous detective.
A year later, Gillette and Frohman again were in England, Gillette to read the manuscript of the play to Doyle. The famous author liked the play immensely and made no objection whatever to the sentimental interest. In fact, his only comment when Gillette finished reading the manuscript was:
"Sherlock Holmes" proved to be another "Secret Service" in every way. Gillette made an enormous success in the title rÔle, and after a long run at the Garrick went on the road. Frohman revived it again and again until it had almost as many "farewells" as Adelina Patti. The last business detail that Charles discussed with Gillette before sailing on the fatal trip in 1915 was for a revival of this play at the Empire.
The Frohman Star Factory was now working full time. Next in output came William Faversham. This brilliant young Englishman had started with Daniel Frohman's company at the Lyceum in a small part. At a rehearsal of "The Highest Bidder" Charles singled him out.
"Where did you get your cockney dialect?" he asked.
"Riding on the top of London 'buses," was the reply.
This was the first contact between two men who became intimate friends and who were closely bound up in each other's fortunes.
During his Lyceum engagement Faversham wanted to widen his activities. He read in the papers one day that Charles was producing a number of plays, so he made up his mind he would try to get into one of them. He went to Frohman's office every morning at half-past nine and asked to see him or Al Hayman. Sometimes he would arrive before Frohman, and the manager had to pass him as he went into his office. He invariably looked up, smiled at the waiting actor, and passed on. Faversham kept this up for weeks. One day Alf Hayman asked him what he wanted there.
"I am tired of hanging round the Lyceum with nothing to do. I want a better engagement," was the answer.
Hayman evidently communicated this to Frohman and Al Hayman, but they made no change in their attitude. Every day they passed the waiting Faversham as they arrived in the morning and went out to lunch, and always Frohman smiled at him.
Finally one morning Charles came to the door, looked intently at Faversham, puffed out his cheeks as was his fashion, and smiled all over his face. Turning to Al Hayman, who was with him, he said:
"Al, we've got to give this fellow something to do or we won't be able to go in and out of here much longer."
In a few moments Frohman emerged again, asked Faversham how tall he was. When he was told, he invited Faversham into his office and inquired of him if he could study a long part and play it in two days. Faversham said he could. The result was his engagement for Rider Haggard's "She." Such was the unusual beginning of the long and close association between Faversham and Charles Frohman.
Faversham became leading man of the Empire Stock Company, and his distinguished career was a matter of the greatest pride to Charles. He now was caught up in the Frohman star machine and made his first appearance under the banner of "Charles Frohman Presents," in "A Royal Rival," at the Criterion in August, 1901.
Charles not only made Faversham a star, but provided him with a wife, and a very charming one, too. In the spring of 1901 an exquisite young girl, Julie Opp by name, was playing at the St. James Theater in London. Frohman sent for her and asked her if she could go to the United States to act as leading woman for William Faversham.
When Frohman let loose the powers of his persuasiveness, Miss Opp began to waver.
"I don't want to leave my nice London flat and my English maid," she protested.
"Take the maid with you," said Frohman. "We can't box the flat and take that to New York, but we have flats in New York that you can hire."
"I hate to leave all my friends," continued Miss Opp.
"Well, I can't take over all your friends," replied Frohman, "but you will have plenty of new admirers in New York."
Miss Opp asked what she thought were unreasonable terms. Frohman said nothing, but sent Charles Dillingham to see her next day. He said Frohman wanted to know if she was joking about her price. "Of course," he said, "if you are not joking he will pay it anyhow, because when he makes up his mind to have anybody he is going to have him."
This shamed Miss Opp. She asked a reasonable fee, went to the United States, and not only became Faversham's leading woman, but his wife. Frohman always took infinite delight in teasing the Favershams about having been their matchmaker.
Charles, who loved to create a sensation in a big way, was now able to gratify one of his favorite emotions with the production of "The Conquerors." Like many of the Frohman achievements, it began in a picturesque way.
During the summer of 1897, Frohman and Paul Potter, being in Paris, dropped in at that chamber of horrors, the Grand Guignol, in the Rue Chaptal. There they saw "Mademoiselle Fifi," a playlet lasting less than half an hour, adapted by the late Oscar Metenier from Guy de Maupassant's short story. It was the tale of a young Prussian officer who gets into a French country house during the war of 1870, abuses the aristocrats who live there, shoots out the eyes of the family portraits, entertains at supper a number of loose French girls from Rouen, and is shot by one of the girls for vilifying Frenchwomen. Frohman was deeply impressed.
"Why can't you make it into a long play?" said Frohman.
"I can," said Potter.
"How?" queried Frohman.
"By showing what happened to the French aristocrats while the Prussian officer was shooting up the place," answered the author.
"Do it," said Frohman, "and I'll open the season of the Empire Stock Company in this drama, and get George Alexander interested for London."
As "The Conquerors" the play went into rehearsal about Christmas. Mrs. Dazian, wife of Henry Dazian, the costumier, was watching a scene in which William Faversham plans the ruin of Viola Allen, the leading woman.
"Well," said Mrs. Dazian, "if New York will stand for that it will stand for anything."
Frohman jumped up in excitement. "What is wrong with it?" he cried. "The manuscript was shown to a dozen people of the cleanest minds. They found nothing wrong. I've done the scene a dozen times. I have it up-stairs on my shelves at this moment in 'The Sporting Duchess.'"
Mrs. Dazian was obdurate. "It is awful," she said.
The first night approached. Potter was to sail for Europe next day. Frohman had provided him with sumptuous cabin quarters on the New York. After the dress rehearsal, Potter appeared on the Empire stage, where he found Frohman. The latter was worried.
"Paul," said he, "the first three acts are fine; the last is rotten. You must stay and rewrite the last act."
Potter had to postpone his trip. At ten next morning the new act was handed in; the company learned and rehearsed it by three in the afternoon, and that night Frohman and the author stood in the box-office watching the audience file in.
"How's the house, Tommy?" demanded Frohman of Thomas Shea, his house manager.
"Over seventeen hundred dollars already," said Shea.
"You can go to Europe, Paul," said Frohman. "Your last act is all right. We don't want you any more."
The American public agreed with Mrs. Dazian. They thought the play excruciatingly wicked, but they were just as eager to see it on the Fourth of July as they had been six months earlier.
A dozen details combined to make "The Conquerors" a storm-center. First of all it was attacked because of its alleged immorality. In the second place the author was charged with having appropriated some of Sardou's "La Haine." In the third place, this play marked the first stage appearance of Mrs. Clara Bloodgood, wife of "Jack" Bloodgood, one of the best-known men about town in New York. Mr. Bloodgood became desperately ill during rehearsals, and his wife divided her time between watching at his bedside and going to the theater. Of course, the newspapers were filled with the account of the event which was agitating all society, and it added greatly to popular interest in the play.
Thomas was so convinced that D'Orsay was the ideal man that Frohman made this characteristic concession:
"I think well of your play, and it will probably be a success," he said, "but I do not believe that D'Orsay is the man for it. If you can get another manager to do it I will turn back the play to you, and if you insist upon having D'Orsay I will release him from his contract with me."
Frohman produced a whole series of Thomas successes, notably "The Other Girl," "Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots," and "De Lancey." To the end of his days the warmest and most intimate friendship existed between the men. It was marked by the usual humor that characterized Frohman's relations. Here is an example:
Thomas conducted the rehearsals of "The Other Girl" alone. Frohman, who was up-stairs in his offices at the Empire, sent him a note on a yellow pad, written with the blue pencil that he always used:
"Great!" scribbled Thomas.
The next day when he went up-stairs to Frohman's office, he found the note pinned on the wall.
Such was the mood of the man who had risen from obscurity to one of commanding authority in the whole English-speaking theater.
THE RISE OF ETHEL BARRYMORE
W hile the star of Maude Adams rose high in the theatrical heaven, another lovely luminary was about to appear over the horizon. The moment was at hand when Charles Frohman was to reveal another one of his protÉgÉs, this time the young and beautiful Ethel Barrymore. It is an instance of progressive and sympathetic Frohman sponsorship that gave the American stage one of its most fascinating favorites. Some stars are destined for the stage; others are born in the theater. Ethel Barrymore is one of the latter. Two generations of eminent theatrical achievement heralded her advent, for she is the granddaughter of Mrs. John Drew, mistress of the famous Arch Street Theater Company of Philadelphia, and herself, in later years, the greatest Mrs. Malaprop of her day. Miss Barrymore's father was the brilliant and gifted Maurice Barrymore; her mother the no less witty and talented Georgia Drew, while, among other family distinctions, she came into the world as the niece of John Drew.
Despite the royalty of her theatrical birth, no star in America had to labor harder or win her way by more persistent and conscientious effort. At fourteen she was playing child's parts with her grandmother. A few years later she came to New York to get a start. Though she bore one of the most distinguished and honored names in the profession, she sat around in agents' offices for six months, beating vainly at the door of opportunity. Finally she got a chance to understudy Elsie De Wolfe, who was playing with John Drew, in "The Bauble Shop," at the Empire. One day when that actress became ill this seventeen-year-old child played the part of a thirty-two-year-old woman with great success. Understudies then became her fate for several years. While playing a part on the road with her uncle in "The Squire of Dames," Charles Frohman saw her for the first time. He looked at her sharply, but said nothing. Later, during this engagement, she met the man who was to shape her career.
About this time Miss Barrymore went to London. Charles had accepted Haddon Chambers's play "The Tyranny of Tears," in which John Drew was to star in America. She got the impression that she would be cast for one of the two female parts in this play, and she studied the costuming and other details. With eager expectancy she called on Frohman in London. Much to her surprise Frohman said:
"Well, Ethel, what can I do for you?"
"Won't I play with Uncle John?" she said.
"No, I am sorry to say you will not," replied Frohman.
This was a tragic blow. It was in London that Miss Barrymore received this first great disappointment, and it was in London that she made her first success. Charles Frohman, who from this time on became much impressed with her appealing charm and beauty, gave her a small rÔle with the company he sent over with Gillette to play "Secret Service" in the British capital. Odette Tyler played the leading comedy part. One night when Miss Barrymore was standing in the wings the stage-manager rushed up to her and said, excitedly:
"You will have to play Miss Tyler's part."
"But I don't know her lines," said Miss Barrymore.
"That makes no difference; you will have to play. She's gone home sick."
"How about her costume?" said Miss Barrymore.
"Miss Tyler was so ill that we could not ask her to change her costume. She wore it away with her," was the reply.
Dressed as she was, Miss Barrymore, who had watched the play carefully, and who has an extremely good memory, walked on, played the part, and made a hit.
When the "Secret Service" company returned to America, Miss Barrymore remained in London. She lived in a small room alone. Her funds were low and she had only one evening gown. But she had the Barrymore wit and charm, her own beauty, and was in much social demand. By the time she prepared to quit England the one gown had seen its best days. She had arranged to sail for home on a certain Saturday. The night before sailing she was invited to a supper at the home of Anthony Hope. Just as she was about to dress she received a telegram from Ellen Terry, who was playing at the Lyceum Theater, saying:
Do come and say good-by before you go. When she arrived at the Lyceum, the first thing that Miss Terry said was, "Sir Henry wants to say good-by to you."
On going into the adjoining dressing-room the great actor said to her:
"Wouldn't you like to stay in England?"
"Of course," said Miss Barrymore.
"Would you like to play with me?" he asked.
Coining at her hour of discouragement and despair, it was like manna from heaven. Her knees quaked, but she managed to say, "Y-e-s."
"All right," said Sir Henry. "Go down-stairs. Loveday has a contract that is ready for you to sign."
With this precious contract stuffed into her bosom, Miss Barrymore now rode in triumph to the Hope supper-party.
"What a pity that you have got to leave England," said Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
"But I am going to stay," said Miss Barrymore.
A gasp ran around the table.
"And with whom?" asked Tree.
"With Sir Henry and Miss Terry," was the proud response.
Miss Barrymore played that whole season most acceptably with Irving and Terry in "The Bells" and "Waterloo," and afterward with Henry B. Irving in "Peter the Great."
When she returned to America in 1898 she had a new interest for Charles Frohman. Yet the Nemesis of the Understudy, which had pursued her in America, still held her in its grip, for she was immediately cast as understudy for Ida Conquest in a play called "Catherine" that Frohman was about to produce at the Garrick Theater. She had several opportunities, however, to play the leading part, and at her every appearance she was greeted most enthusiastically. Her youth and appealing beauty never failed to get over the footlights.
Frohman was always impressed by this sort of thing. It was about this time that he said to a friend of his.
"There is going to be a big development in one of my companies before long. There's a daughter of 'Barry' [meaning Maurice Barrymore] who gets a big reception wherever she goes. She has got the real stuff in her."
Miss Barrymore's first genuine opportunity came when Charles cast her for the part of Stella De Gex in Marshall's delightful comedy "His Excellency the Governor," which was first put on at the Empire in May, 1899. The grace and sprightliness that were later to bloom so delightfully in Miss Barrymore now found their first real expression. Both in New York and on the road she made a big success.
While rehearsing "His Excellency the Governor," Charles sat in the darkened auditorium of the Empire one day. When the performance was over he walked back on the stage and, patting Miss Barrymore on the shoulder, said:
"You're so much like your mother, Ethel. You're all right."
Frohman was not the type of man to lag in interest. He realized what the girl's possibilities were, so early in 1901 he sent for Miss Barrymore and said to her:
"Ethel, I have a nice part for you at last."
It was the rÔle of Madame Trentoni in Clyde Fitch's charming play of old New York, "Captain Jinks." Now came one of those curious freaks of theatrical fortune. "Captain Jinks" opened at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, and seemed to be a complete failure from the start. Although the Quakers did not like the play, they evinced an enormous interest in the lovely leading woman. From the gallery they cried down:
"We loved your grandmother, Ethel, and we love you."
It was a tribute to the place that Mrs. John Drew had in the affections of those staid theater-goers.
Despite the bad start in Philadelphia, Charles believed in Miss Barrymore, and he had confidence in "Captain Jinks." He brought the play into New York at the Garrick. The expectation was that it might possibly run two weeks. Instead, it remained there for seven months and then played a complete season on the road.
Now came the turn in the tide of Ethel Barrymore's fortunes. She was living very modestly on the top floor of a theatrical boarding-house in Thirty-second Street. With the success of "Captain Jinks" she moved down to a larger room on the second floor. But a still greater event in her life was now to be consummated.
During the third week of the engagement she walked over from Thirty-second Street to the theater. As she passed along Sixth Avenue she happened to look up, and there, in huge, blazing electric lights, she saw the name "Ethel Barrymore." She stood still, and the tears came to her eyes. She knew that at last she had become a star.
Charles had said absolutely nothing about it to her. It was his unexpected way of giving her the surprise of arriving at the goal of her ambition.
The next day she went to Frohman and said, "It was a wonderful thing for you to do."
Whereupon Frohman replied, very simply, "It was the only thing to do."
Ethel Barrymore was now a star, and from this time on her stage career became one cycle of ripening art and expanding success. A new luminary had entered the Frohman heaven, and it was to twinkle with increasing brilliancy.
Her next appearance was in a double bill, "A Country Mouse" and "Carrots," at the Savoy Theater, in October, 1902. Here came one of the first evidences of her versatility. "A Country Mouse" was a comedy; "Carrots," on the other hand, was impregnated with the deepest tragedy. Miss Barrymore played the part of a sad little boy, and she did it with such depth of feeling that discriminating people began to realize that she had great emotional possibilities.
Her appearance in "Cousin Kate" the next year was a return to comedy. In this play Bruce McRae made his first appearance with her as leading man, and he filled this position for a number of years. He was as perfect an opposite to her as was John Drew to Ada Rehan. Together they made a combination that was altogether delightful.
It was while playing in a piece called "Sunday" that Miss Barrymore first read Ibsen's "A Doll's House." She was immensely thrilled by the character. She said to Frohman at once: "I must do this part. May I?"
"Of course," he said.
Here was another revelation of the Barrymore versatility, for she invested this strange, weird expression of Ibsen's genius with a range of feeling and touch of character that made a deep impression.
Charles now secured the manuscript of "Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire." He was immensely taken with this play, not only because it was by his friend Barrie, but because he saw in it large possibilities. Miss Barrymore was with him in London at this time. Frohman told her the story of the play in his rooms at the Savoy, acting it out as he always did with his plays. There were two important women characters: the mother, played in London by Ellen Terry, who philosophically accepts the verdict of the years, and the daughter, played by the popular leading woman Irene Vanbrugh, who steps into her place.
"Would you like to play in 'Alice'?" asked Frohman.
"Yes," said Miss Barrymore.
"Which part?"
"I would rather have you say," said Miss Barrymore.
Just then the telephone-bell rang. Barrie had called up Frohman to find out if he had cast the play.
"I was just talking it over with Miss Barrymore," he replied.
Then there was a pause. Suddenly Frohman turned from the telephone and said:
"Barrie wants you to play the mother."
"Fine!" said Miss Barrymore. "That is just the part I wanted to do."
In "Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire" Miss Barrymore did a very daring thing. Here was an exquisite young woman who was perfectly willing to play the part of the mother of a boy of eighteen rather than the younger rÔle, and she did it with such artistic distinction that Barrie afterward said of her:
"I knew I was right when I wanted her to play the mother. I felt that she would understand the part."
"Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire" was done as a double bill with "Pantaloon," in which Miss Barrymore's brother, John Barrymore, who was now coming to be recognized as a very gifted young actor, scored a big success. Later another brother, Lionel, himself a brilliant son of his father, appeared with her.
The theater-going world was now beginning to look upon Ethel Barrymore as one of the really charming fixtures of the stage. What impressed every one, most of all Charles Frohman, was the extraordinary ease with which she fairly leaped from lightsome comedy to deep and haunting pathos. Her work in "The Silver Box," by John Galsworthy, was a conspicuous example of this talent. Frohman gave the manuscript of the play to Miss Barrymore to read and she was deeply moved by it.
"Can't we do it?" she said.
"It is very tragic," said Frohman.
"I don't mind," said Miss Barrymore. "I want to do it so much!"
In "The Silver Box" she took the part of a charwoman whose life moves in piteous tragedy. It registered what, up to that time, was the most poignant note that this gifted young woman had uttered. Yet the very next season she turned to a typical Clyde Fitch play, "Her Sister," and disported herself in charming frocks and smart drawing-room conversation.
Miss Barrymore's career justified every confidence that Charles had felt for her. It remained, however, for Pinero's superb if darksome play "Midchannel" to give her her largest opportunity.
When Frohman told her about this play he said: "Ethel, I have a big play, but it is dark and sad. I don't think you want to do it."
After she had heard the story she said, impulsively: "You are wrong. I want to play this part very much."
"All right," said Frohman. "Go ahead."
In London, as in New York, the theater was his life and inspiration. Almost without exception he went to a performance of some kind every evening. At most of the London theaters he was always given the royal box whenever possible. He liked the atmosphere of the British playhouse. He always said it was more like a drawing-room than a place of amusement.
To Charles, London meant J. M. Barrie, and to be with the man who wrote "Peter Pan" was one of his supreme delights. The devotion between these two men of such widely differing temperaments constitutes one of the really great friendships of modern times. Character of an unusual kind, on both sides, was essential to such a communion of interest and affection. Both possessed it to a remarkable degree.
No two people could have been more opposite. Frohman was quick, nervous, impulsive, bubbling with optimism; Barrie was the quiet, canny Scot, reserved, repressed, and elusive. Yet they had two great traits in common—shyness and humor. As Barrie says:
"Because we were the two shyest men in the world, we got on so well and understood each other so perfectly."
There was another bond between these two men in the fact that each adored his mother. In Charles's case he was the pride and the joy of the maternal heart; with Barrie the root and inspiration of all his life and work was the revered "Margaret Ogilvy." He is the only man in all the world who ever wrote a life of his mother.
There was still another and more tangible community of interest between these two remarkable men. Each detested the silk hat. Frohman had never worn one since the Haverly Minstrel days, when he had to don the tile for the daily street parade. Barrie, in all his life, has had only one silk hat. It is of the vintage of the early 'seventies. The only occasion when he wears the much-detested headgear is at the first rehearsal of the companies that do his plays. Then he attires himself in morning clothes, goes to the theater, nervously holds the hat in his hand while he is introduced to the actors and actresses. Just as Charles used to hide his silk hat as soon as the minstrel parade was over and put on a cap, so does Barrie send the objectionable headgear home as soon as these formalities are over and welcome his more comfortable bowler as an old friend.
Curiously enough, Frohman and Barrie did not drift together at once. When the little Scotchman made his first visit to America in 1896 and "discovered" Maude Adams as the inspired person to act Lady Babbie, he met the man who was to be his great friend in a casual business way only. The negotiations for "The Little Minister" from England were conducted through an agent.
But when Frohman went abroad the following year the kinship between the men started, and continued with increasing intimacy. The men became great pals. They would wander about London, Barrie smoking a short, black pipe, Frohman swinging his stick. On many of these strolls they walked for hours without saying a word to each other. Each had the great gift of silence—the rare sense of understanding.
Barrie and his pipe are inseparable, as the world knows. There is a legend in London theatrical lore that Frohman wanted to drive to Barrie's flat one night. He was in his usual merry mood, so the instruction he gave was this:
"Drive to the Strand, go down to Adelphi Terrace, and stop at the first smell of pipe smoke."
Frohman never tired of asking Barrie about "Peter Pan." It was a curious commentary on the man's tenacity of interest and purpose that, although he made nearly seven hundred productions in his life, the play of the "Boy Who Would Never Grow Up" tugged most at his heart. Nor did Barrie ever weary of telling him how the play began as a nursery tale for children; how their insistent demand to "tell us more" made it the "longest story in the world"; how, when one pirate had been killed, little Peter (the original of the character, now a soldier in the great war) excitedly said: "One man isn't enough; let's kill a lot of them."
No one will be surprised to know that in connection with "Peter Pan" is one of the most sweetly gracious acts in Frohman's life. The original of Peter was sick in bed at his home when the play was produced in London. The little lad was heartsick because he could not see it. When Frohman came to London Barrie told him about it.
"If the boy can't come to the play, we will take the play to the boy," he said.
Frohman sent his company out to the boy's home with as many "props" as could be jammed into the sick-room. While the delighted and excited child sat propped up in bed the wonders of the fairy play were unfolded before him. It is probably the only instance where a play was done before a child in his home.
As most people know, Barrie, at his own expense, erected a statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens as his gift to the children of London who so adored his play. It was done as a surprise, for the statue stood revealed one May Day morning, having been set up during the night.
When he planned this statue Barrie mentioned it casually to Frohman, and said nothing more about it. Frohman never visited the park to see it, but when the model was put on exhibition at the Academy he said to Lestocq one day:
"Where is that Peter Pan model?" When he was told he said: "I want to see it, but do I have to look at anything else in the gallery?" On being assured that he did not, he said, "All right."
Frohman went to the Academy, bolted straight for the sculpture-room, and stood for a quarter of an hour gazing intently at the graceful figure of Peter playing his pipe. Then he walked out again, without stopping to look at any of the lovely things about him. It was characteristic of Frohman to do just the thing he had in mind to do and nothing else.
Frohman and Barrie seldom wrote to each other. When they did it was a mere scrawl that no other human being in the world could read. The only cablegram that Barrie ever sent Frohman was about "What Every Woman Knows." Hilda Trevelyan played Maggie Wylie. Barrie liked her work so much that he cabled Frohman about it on the opening night. When the actress went down to breakfast the next morning to read what the newspapers said about her she found on her plate a cable from Frohman doubling her salary. It was Frohman's answer to Barrie.
Frohman's faith in Barrie was marvelous. It was often said in jest in London that if Barrie had asked Frohman to produce a dramatization of the Telephone Directory he would smile and say with enthusiasm:
"Fine! Who shall we have in the cast?"
One of the great Frohman-Barrie adventures was in Paris. It illustrates so completely the relation between these men that it is worth giving in detail.
Frohman was in Paris, and after much telegraphic insistence persuaded his friend to come over on his first visit to the French capital. Frohman was aglow with anticipation. He wanted to give Barrie the time of his life.
"What would a literary man like to do in Paris?" was the question he asked himself.
In his usual generous way he planned the first night, for Barrie was to arrive in the afternoon. He was then living at the HÔtel Meurice, in the Rue Royale, so he engaged a magnificent suite for his guest. He ordered a sumptuous dinner at the CafÉ de Paris, bought a box at the ThÉÂtre FranÇais, and engaged a smart victoria for the evening.
Barrie was dazed at the splendor of the Meurice suite, but he survived it. When Frohman spoke of the CafÉ de Paris dinner he said he would rather dine quietly at the hotel, so the elaborate meal was given up.
"Now what would you like to do this evening?" asked his host.
"Are there any of those country fairs around here, where they have side shows and you can throw balls at things?" asked Barrie.
Frohman, who had box seats for the most classic of all Continental theaters in his pocket, said:
"Yes, there is one in Neuilly."
"All right," said Barrie, "let's go there."
"We'll drive out in a victoria," meekly suggested Frohman.
"No," said Barrie, "I think it would be more fun to go on a 'bus."
With the unused tickets for the ThÉÂtre FranÇais in his waistcoat, and the smart little victoria still waiting in front of the Meurice (for Frohman forgot to order the man home), the two friends started for the country fair, where they spent the whole evening throwing balls at what the French call "Aunt Sally." It is much like the old-fashioned side-show at an American county fair. A negro pokes his head through a hole in the canvas, and every time the thrower hits the head he gets a knife. When Frohman and Barrie returned to the Meurice that night they had fifty knives between them. The next night they repeated this performance until they had knives enough to start a hardware-store. This was the simple and childlike way that these two men, each a genius in his own way, disported themselves on a holiday.
One more incident will show the amazing accord between Frohman and Barrie. They were constantly playing jokes on each other, like two youngsters. One day they were talking in Frohman's rooms at the Savoy when a certain actress was announced.
"I would like to know what this woman really thinks of me," said Barrie. "I have never met her."
"All right," said Frohman, "you pretend to be my secretary."
The woman came up and had a long talk with Frohman, during which she gave her impressions, not very flattering, of British playwrights in general and Barrie in particular. All the while the little Scot sat solemnly at a near-by desk, sorting papers and occasionally handing one to Frohman to sign. When the woman left they nearly exploded with laughter.
One of Frohman's delights when in England was to go to Barrie's flat in London, overlooking the Victoria Embankment. He liked this place, first of all, because it was Barrie's. Then, too, he could sit curled up in the corner on a settee, smoking a fat, black cigar, and look out on the historic Thames. Here he knew he would not have to talk. It was the place of Silence and Understanding. He was in an atmosphere he loved. In the flat above lives John Galsworthy; down-stairs dwells Granville Barker; while just across the street is the domicile of Bernard Shaw, whose windows face Barrie's.
When Barrie wanted to notify Shaw that Frohman was with him, he would throw bread-crusts against Shaw's window-panes. In a few moments the sash would fly up and the familiar, grinning, bearded face would pop out. On one of the occasions Shaw yelled across:
"Are you inviting me to a feast, Barrie—are you casting bread upon the troubled waters or is it just Frohman?"
In view of Frohman's perfect adoration of Barrie—and it amounted to nothing else—it is interesting, as a final glimpse of the relation between these men, to see what the American thought of his friend's work. In analyzing Barrie's work once, Frohman said:
"Barrie's distinctive note is humanity. There is rich human blood in everything he writes. He is a satirist whose arrows are never barbed with vitriol, but with the milk of human kindness; a humanist who never surfeits our senses, but leaves much for our willing imagination; an optimist whose message is as compelling for its reasonableness as it is welcome for its gentleness."
Through Barrie and "Peter Pan" came another close and devoted friendship in Charles Frohman's life—the one with Pauline Chase. This American girl had been engaged by one of Frohman's stage-managers for a small part with Edna May in "The Girl from Up There." Frohman did not even know her in those days. After she made her great success as the Pink Pajama girl in "Liberty Belles," at the Madison Square Theater, Frohman engaged her and sent her to England, where, with the exception of one visit to the United States in "Our Mrs. Gibbs," she has remained ever since.
It was not until she played "Peter Pan" that the Frohman-Chase friendship really began. The way in which Miss Chase came to play the part is interesting. Cissie Loftus, who had been playing Peter, became ill, and Miss Chase, who had been playing one of the twins, and was her understudy, went on to do the more important part at a matinÉe in Liverpool. Frohman said to her:
"Barrie and I are coming down to see you act. If we like you well enough to play Peter, I will send you back a sheet of paper with a cross mark on it after the play."
At the end of the first act an usher rapped on Miss Chase's dressing-room door and handed her the much-desired slip with the cross. Frohman sent word that he could not wait until the end of the play, because he and Barrie were taking a train back to London. In this unusual way Pauline Chase secured the part which helped to endear her to the man who was her friend and sponsor.
Frohman, Barrie, and Miss Chase formed a trio who went about together a great deal and had much in common, aside from the kinship of the theater. It was for Miss Chase that Barrie wrote "Pantaloon," in which she appeared in conjunction with "Peter Pan," and which gave her a considerable reputation in England.
When Pauline Chase was confirmed in the little church in Marlow-on-the-Thames, Barrie was her godfather and Miss Ellen Terry was her godmother. Frohman attended this ceremony, and it made a tremendous impression on him. He saw the spectacular side of the ceremony, and the spiritual meaning was not lost on him.
The personal comradeship with Pauline Chase was one of the really beautiful episodes in Frohman's life. He was genuinely interested in this girl's career, and in tribute to her confidence in him she made him, in conjunction with Barrie, her father confessor. Here is an episode that is tenderly appealing, and which shows another of the many sides of his character:
Frohman and Barrie were both afraid that Miss Chase would marry without telling them about it, so a compact was made by the three that the two men should be her mentors. There were many applicants for the hand of this lovely American girl. The successful suitor eventually was Alec Drummond, member of a distinguished English family, who went to the front when the war began.
One reason for Miss Chase's devotion to Charles lay in the fact that the American manager had the body of her mother removed from its resting-place in Washington to the dreamy little churchyard at Marlow-on-the-Thames. It is near Marlow that Miss Chase lived through all the years of the Frohman-Barrie comradeship. Her little cottage at Tree Tops, Farnham Common, five miles from Marlow, was one of the places he loved to visit. On the vine-embowered porch he liked to sit and smoke. On the lawn he indulged in his only exercise, croquet, frequently with Barrie or Captain Scott, who died in the Antarctic, and Haddon Chambers, who lived near by. Often he went with his hostess to feed the chickens.
But wherever he went he carried plays. No matter how late he retired to his room, he read a manuscript before he went to bed. He probably read more plays than any other manager in the world.
Frohman went to Marlow nearly every Saturday in summer. His custom was to alight from the train at Slough, where Miss Chase would meet him in her car and drive him over to Marlow, where they lunched at The Compleat Angler, a charming inn on the river.
Miss Chase sometimes playfully performed the office of manicure for Frohman. Once when she was in Paris he sent her this telegram:
Nails.
Whereupon she wired back:
I am afraid you will have to bite them.
Frohman then sent her the telegram by mail, and under it wrote:
Of all spots in England, and for that matter in all the world, Charles loved Marlow best. It is typical of the many contrasts in his crowded life that he would seek peace and sanctuary in this drowsy English town that nestled between green hills on the banks of the Thames. He always said that it framed the loveliest memories of his life.
When Miss Chase wrote Frohman that she was to be confirmed in the little church in Marlow, she got the following reply from him, which showed how dear the drowsy place was in his affection:
It was Haddon Chambers who first took Frohman to Marlow. It came about in a natural way, because Maidenhead, which is a very popular resort in England (much frequented by theatrical people) is only a short distance away. One day Chambers, who was with Frohman at Maidenhead, said, "There is a lovely, quiet village called Marlow not far away. Let's go over there." So they went.
On this trip occurred one of the many humorous adventures that were always happening when Frohman and Chambers were together. Chambers had the tickets and went on ahead. When he reached the train he found that Frohman was not there. On returning he found his friend held up by the gateman, who demanded a ticket. Quick as a flash Chambers said to him:
The gateman immediately became flurried and excited and made apologies. In the mean time Frohman, who took in the situation with his usual quickness, looked solemn and dignified and then passed in like a peer of the realm.
Chambers rented a cottage at Marlow each summer, and one of the things to which Frohman looked forward most eagerly was a visit with him there. Frequent visits to Marlow made the manager known to the whole town. The simplicity of his manner and his keen interest, humor, and sympathy won him many friends. His arrival was always more or less of an event in the little township.
It is a one-street place, with many fascinating old shops. Frohman loved to prowl around, look in the shop windows, and talk to the tradesmen, who came to know and love him and look forward to his advent with the keenest interest. To them he was not the great American theatrical magnate, but a simple, kindly, interested human being who inquired about their babies and who had a big and generous nature.
Frohman once made this remark about the Marlow antique shops: "They're great. When I buy things the proprietor always tells me whether they are real or only fake stuff. That's because I'm one of his friends." It was typical of the man that he was as proud of this friendship as with that of a prince.
On the tramps through Marlow he was often accompanied by Miss Chase and Haddon Chambers. He had three particular friends in the town. One was Muriel Kilby, daughter of the keeper of The Compleat Angler. When Frohman first went to Marlow she was a slip of a child. He watched her grow up with an increasing pride. This great and busy man found time in New York to write her notes full of friendly affection. A few days before the Lusitania went down she received a note from him saying that he was soon to sail, and looked forward with eagerness to his usual stay at Marlow.
Through Miss Kilby Frohman became more intimately a part of the local life of Marlow. She was head of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, which gave an amateur play every year. Frohman became a member, paid the five shillings annual dues, and whenever it was possible he went to their performances. As a matter of fact, the Marlow Dramatic Society has probably the most distinguished non-resident membership in the world, for besides Frohman (and through him) it includes Barrie, Haddon Chambers, Pauline Chase, Marie Lohr, William Gillette, and Marc Klaw. Frohman always took his close American friends to Marlow. One of the prices they paid was membership in the amateur dramatic society.
Like every really great man, Charles Frohman was tremendously simple, as his friendship with W. R. Clark, the Marlow butcher, shows. Clark is a big, ruddy, John Bull sort of man, whose shop is one of the main sights of High Street in the village. Frohman regarded his day at Marlow incomplete without a visit to Clark. One day he met Clark dressed up in his best clothes. He asked Clark where he was going.
"I am going to visit my pigs," replied the butcher. Frohman thought this a great joke, and never tired of telling it.
Once when Frohman gave out an interview about his friends in Marlow, he sent the clipping to his friend Clark, who wrote him a letter, which contained, among other things:
Then, too, there was Jones, the Marlow barber, who shaved Frohman for a penny because he was a regular customer.
"Jones is a great man," Frohman used to say. "He never charges me more than a penny for a shave because I am one of his regular customers. Otherwise it would be twopence. I always give his boy a sixpence, however, but Jones doesn't know that."
Indeed, the people of Marlow looked upon Frohman as their very own. He always said that he wanted to be buried in the churchyard by the river. This churchyard had a curious interest for him. He used to wander around in it and struck up quite an acquaintance with the wife of the sexton. She was always depressed because times were so bad and no one was dying. Then an artist died and was buried there, and the old woman cheered up considerably. Frohman used to tell her that the only funeral that he expected to attend was his own.
"And mark you," he said, for he could never resist a jest, "you must take precious good care of my grave."
His wish to lie in Marlow was not attained, but in tribute to the love he had for it the memorial that his friends in England have raised to him—a fountain—stands to-day at the head of High Street in the little town where he loved to roam, the place in which he felt, perhaps, more at home than any other spot on earth. Had he made the choice himself he would have preferred this simple, sincere tribute, in the midst of simple, unaffected people who knew him and loved him, to stained glass in the stateliest of cathedrals.
Charles cared absolutely nothing for honors. He was content to hide behind the mask of his activities. He would never even appear before an audience. Almost unwillingly he was the recipient of the greatest compliment ever paid an American theatrical man in England. It happened in this way:
One season when Frohman had lost an unusual amount of money, Sir John Hare gathered together some of his colleagues.
"Frohman has done big things," Hare said to them. "He loses his money like a gentleman. Let us make him feel that he is not just an American, but one of us."
A dinner was planned in his honor at the Garrick Club. He is the only American theatrical manager to be elected to membership in this exclusive club. When Frohman was apprised of the dinner project he shrank from it.
"I don't like that sort of thing," he said. "Besides, I can't make a speech."
"But you won't have to make a speech," said Sir Arthur Pinero, who headed the committee.
Frohman tried in every possible way to evade this dinner. Finally he accepted on the condition that when the time came for him to respond he was merely to get up, bow his acknowledgment, and say, "Thank you." This he managed to do.
At this dinner, over which Sir John Hare presided, Frohman was presented with a massive silver cigarette-box, on which was engraved the facsimile signatures of every one present. These signatures comprise the "Who's Who" of the British theater. These princes of the drama were proud and glad to call themselves "A few of his friends," as the inscription on the box read.
The signers were, among others, Sir Arthur Pinero, Sir Charles Wyndham, Sir John Hare, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Sir James M. Barrie, Alfred Sutro, Cyril Maude, H. B. Irving, Lawrence Irving, Louis N. Parker, Anthony Hope, A. E. W. Mason, Seymour Hicks, Robert Marshall, W. Comyns Carr, Weedon Grossmith, Gerald Du Maurier, Eric Lewis, Dion Boucicault, A. E. Matthews, Arthur Bouchier, Cosmo Hamilton, Allan Aynesworth, R. C. Carton, Sam Sothern, and C. Aubrey Smith.
Nothing gave Charles more satisfaction in England perhaps than his encouragement of the British playwright. He inherited Pinero from his brother Daniel, and remained his steadfast friend and producer until his death. Pinero would not think of submitting a play to any other American manager without giving Frohman the first call. In all the years of their relations, during which Charles paid Pinero a large fortune, there was not a sign of contract between them.
Frohman practically made Somerset Maugham in America. His first association with this gifted young Englishman was typical of the man's method of doing business. Maugham had written a play called "Mrs. Dot," in which Marie Tempest was to appear. Frederick Harrison, of the Haymarket Theater, had an option on it, which had just expired. Another manager wanted the play. Frohman heard of it, and asked to be allowed to read it. Maugham then said:
It was then dinner-time.
"Give me three hours," said Frohman.
At one o'clock in the morning he called up Maugham at his house and accepted the play, which was probably the quickest reading and acceptance on record in England.
Another experience with Maugham shows how Frohman really inspired plays.
"All right," said Maugham.
"All right," said Maugham.
The result was Maugham's play "The Land of Promise," which was really built around Frohman's idea.
Frohman produced all of Maugham's plays in America, and most of them were great successes. He also did the great majority of them in England. Maugham waxed so prosperous that he was able to buy a charming old residence in Chesterfield Street which he remodeled in elaborate fashion. On its completion his first dinner guest was Charles Frohman. When Maugham sent him the invitation it read:
In the same way he developed men like Michael Morton. He would see a French farce in the Paris theaters, and, although he could not understand a word of French, he got the spirit and the meaning through its action. He would buy the play, go to London with the manuscript, and get Morton or Paul Potter to adapt it for American consumption.
Life in London to Charles Frohman was one series of adventures. Like Harun-al-Rashid in the Arabian Nights, he delighted to wander about, often with Barrie, sometimes with Lestocq, seeking out strange and picturesque places in which to eat.
These adventures began in his earliest days in England. Here is a characteristic experience:
One day Madeline Lucette Ryley, the playwright, came to see him in his office in Henrietta Street. A battered old man was hanging around the door.
"Did you see that man outside?" asked Frohman.
"Yes," said Mrs. Ryley. "Is he the bailiff?"
"Oh no," said Frohman, "he is a Maidenhead cabby." This is the story of how he came there.
The day before Frohman had been down to Maidenhead alone for luncheon. At the station he hailed a cabby who was driving a battered old fly.
"Where to, Governor?" asked the man.
"Number 5 Henrietta Street," said Frohman.
"No such place in Maidenhead," said the driver.
The old cabby wasn't a bit flustered, but he said, "I will have to get a new horse."
He changed horses and they made the long way to London, arriving there considerably after nightfall. When Frohman asked for his bill the old man said, with some hesitation:
"That's all right," said Frohman, and paid the bill.
To his great surprise, the cabby showed up next morning, saying: "I like London. I think I'll stay here." It was with the greatest difficulty that Frohman got rid of him. When the cabby finally started to go he said:
"Well, Governor, if you want to go back to Maidenhead I'll do it for half-price."
A short time after this incident Frohman, whose purse was none too full then, asked some people to dine with him at the Hotel Cecil. By some mistake he and his party were shown into a room that had been arranged for a very elaborate dinner. Before he realized it the waiter began to serve the meal. He soon knew that it was not the menu he had ordered, and was costing twenty times more. But he was game and stuck to it. It was midwinter, and when the fresh peaches came on he said to the woman on his right:
Frohman almost invariably took one of his American friends to England with him. It was usually Charles Dillingham, Paul Potter, or William Gillette.
On one of Gillette's many trips with him Frohman got up an elaborate supper for Mark Twain at the Savoy and invited a brilliant group of celebrities, including all three of the Irvings, Beerbohm Tree, Chauncey M. Depew, Sir Charles Wyndham, Haddon Chambers, Nat Goodwin, and Arthur Bouchier. In his inconspicuous way, however, he made it appear that Gillette was giving the supper.
Midnight arrived, and Twain had not shown up. It was before the days of taxis, so Dillingham was sent after him in a hansom. After going to the wrong address, he finally located the humorist in Chelsea. He found Mark Twain sitting in his dressing-gown, smoking a Pittsburg stogie and reading a book.
"Did you forget all about the supper?" asked Dillingham.
"No," was the drawling reply, "but I didn't know where the blamed thing was. I had a notion that some one of you would come for me."
Mark Twain and Frohman were great friends. They were often together in London. Their favorite diversion was to play "hearts."
Few things in England pleased Frohman more than to play a joke on Gillette, for the author of "Secret Service," like his great friend, relaxed when he was on the other side. When Frohman produced "Sue" in England an amusing incident happened.
Despite the fact, as the case of Ann Murdock shows, that Charles could literally lift a girl from the ranks almost overnight, he generally regarded the approach to stardom as a difficult and hard-won path. Just before the great European war, he made this comment to a well-known English journalist, who asked him how he made stars:
"Each of my stars has earned his or her position through honest advancement. If the President of the United States wants to reward a soldier he says to him, 'I will make you a general.' By the same process I say to an actor, 'I will make you a star.'
"All the stars under my management owe their eminence to their own ability and industry, and also to the fact that the American is an individual-loving public. In America we regard the workman first and the work second. Our imaginations are fired not nearly so much by great deeds as by great doers. There are stars in every walk of American life. It has always been so with democracies. CÆsar, Cicero, and the rest were public stars when Rome was at her best, just as in our day Roosevelt and others shine.
"Far from fostering it, the star system as such has simply meant for me that when one of my stars finishes with a play, that play goes permanently on the shelf, no one ever hoping to muster together an audience for it without the original actor or actress in the star part.
"Vital acting in plays of consequence is the foundation of theatrical success. You have only to enumerate the plays to realize the drain even one management can make upon what is, after all, a limited supply of capable leading actors. This is because the American stage is short of leaders. There is a world of actors, but too few leading actors."
"What do you mean by leading actor?" he was asked.
"I mean that if in casting a play you can find an actor who looks the part you have in mind for him, be thankful; if you can find an actor who can act the part, be very thankful; and if you can find an actor who can look and act the part, get down on your knees and thank God!"
Frohman had a very definite idea about star material. He was once talking with a well-known American publisher who mentioned that a certain very rich woman had announced her determination to go on the stage. The manager made one of his quick and impatient gestures, and said:
"Why?" asked his friend.
"Because," replied Frohman, "in all my experience with the making of stars I have seldom known of a very rich girl who made a finished success on the stage. The reason is that the daughters of the rich are taught to repress their emotions. In other words, they don't seem to be able to let go their feelings. Give me the common clay, the kind that has suffered and even hungered. It makes the best star material."
There is no doubt that Frohman liked to "make" careers. He wanted to see people develop under his direction. To indulge in this diversion was often a very costly thing, as this incident shows:
Chauncey Olcott, who had been associated with him in his minstrel days, and become one of the most profitable stars in the country, once sent a message to Frohman saying that he would like to come under his management. To the intermediary Olcott said:
"Tell Mr. Frohman that I make one hundred thousand dollars a year. He can name his own percentage of this income."
"I greatly appreciate the offer, but I don't care to manage Olcott. He is made. I like to make stars."
One reason that lay behind Frohman's success as star-maker was the fact that he wove a great deal of himself into the character of the stars. In other words, the personal element counted a great deal. When somebody once remonstrated with him about giving up so much of his valuable time to what seemed to be inconsequential talks with his women stars, he said:
"It is not a waste of time. I have often helped those young women to take a brighter view of things, and it makes me feel that I am not just their manager, but their friend."
Indeed, as Barrie so well put it, he regarded his women stars as his children. If they were playing in New York they were expected to call on him and talk personalities three or four times a week. On the road they sent him daily telegrams; these were placed on his desk every morning, and were dealt with in person before any other business of the day. He had the names of his stars printed in large type on his business envelopes. These were so placed on his table that as he sat and wrote or talked he could see their names ranked before him.
When his women stars played in New York he always tried to visit them at night at the theater before the curtain went up. He always said of this that it was like seeing his birds tucked safely in their nests. Then he would go back to his office or his rooms and read manuscripts until late.
One phase of Charles's great success in life was revealed in this attitude toward his women stars. He succeeded because he mixed sentiment with business. He was not all sentiment and he was not all business, but he was an extraordinarily happy blend of each of these qualities, and they endeared him to the people who worked for him.
The attitude of the great star toward Frohman is best explained perhaps by Sir Henry Irving. Once, when the time came for his usual American tour, he said to his long-time manager, Bram Stoker, who was about to start for New York:
"When you get to America just tell Frohman—you need not bother to write him—that I want to come under his management. He always understands. He is always so fair."
One detail will illustrate Frohman's feeling about stars, and it is this: He never wanted them, male or female, to make themselves conspicuous or to do commonplace things. He was sensitive about what they said or did. For example, he did not like to see John Drew walk up and down Broadway. He spent a fortune sheltering Maude Adams from all kinds of intrusion. With her especially he exhausted every resource to keep her aloof and secluded. He preferred that she be known through her work and not through her personal self. It was so with himself.
Frohman was one of the most generous-minded of men in his feeling about his co-workers. On one occasion when he was rehearsing "The Dictator," William Collier suggested a whole new scene. The next night Frohman took a friend to see it. Afterward, accompanied by his guest, he went back on the stage to congratulate his star. He slapped Collier on the back and, turning to his companion, said:
He was always willing to admit that his success came from those who worked for him. Once he was asked the question:
"I believe a manager's success does not come so much from the public as from his players. When they are ready to march with him without regard to results, then he has indeed succeeded. This is my success. My ambition frankly centers in the welfare of the actor. The day's work holds out to me no finer gratification than to see intelligent, earnest, deserving actors go into the fame and fortune of being stars."
Nothing could down his immense pride in his stars. Once he was making his annual visit to England with Dillingham. At that time Olga Nethersole, who had been playing "Carmen," was under his management. She was also on the boat. The passenger-list included many other celebrities, among them Madame Emma CalvÉ, the opera-singer, who had just made her great success in the opera "Carmen" at the Metropolitan Opera House. Naturally there was some rivalry between the two Carmens.
At the usual ship's concert both Nethersole and CalvÉ inscribed their names on programs which were auctioned off for the benefit of the disabled sailors' fund. Competition was brisk. The card that CalvÉ signed fetched nine hundred dollars. When Nethersole's program was put up Frohman led the bidding and drove it up to a thousand dollars, which he paid himself. It was all the money he had with him. Dillingham remonstrated for what seemed a foolish extravagance.
"I wanted my star to get the best of it, and she did," was the reply.
Frohman, as is well known, would never make a contract with his stars. When some one urged him to make written agreements, he said:
"No, I won't do it. I want them to be in a position so that if they ever become dissatisfied they know they are free to leave me."
Like all his other stars, William Collier had no contract with Charles, merely a verbal understanding extending over a period of years. After this agreement expired and another year and a half had gone by, Collier one day asked Frohman if he realized that their original agreement had run out. Frohman looked up with a start and said:
"Of course," said Collier, and that ended it.
The next Saturday when Collier got his pay-envelope he found inside a very charming letter from Frohman, which said:
There was an advance of one hundred dollars a week.
Frohman literally loved the word "star," and he delighted in the so-called "all-star casts." He had great respect for the big names of the profession; for those who had achieved success. He liked to do business with them.
"I have to look after so many enterprises that I have no time to conduct a theatrical kindergarten in developing actors or playwrights save where the play of the unknown author or the exceptional talents of the unknown actor or actress appeal to me strongly. There is an element of safety in considering work by experts, because the theaters I represent need quick results."
In reply to the oft-repeated question as to why he took his American stars to London when they could play to larger audiences and make more money at home, he said:
"In the first place, such exchanges constitute the finest medium for the development of actress or actor and the liberalizing of the public. Face to face with an English audience the American actress finds herself confronted by new tastes, new appreciations, new demands. She must meet them all or fail. What does this result in? Versatility, flexibility, and, in the end, a firmer and more comprehensive hold upon her art."
When Frohman was asked to define success in theatrical management he made this answer:
"The terms of success in the theater seem to me to be the co-operating abilities of playwright and actor with the principal burden on the actor. In other words, the play is not altogether 'the thing.' The right player in the right play is the thing."
The shaping of William Gillette's career is a good example of Frohman's definition of a successful theatrical manager, whose best skill and talents are employed largely in the matter of manipulating a hard-minded person to mutual advantage.
The relationship between stars and audiences is of necessity a very close one. The Frohman philosophy, however, was not the generally accepted theory that audiences make stars.
On one of those very rare occasions in his life when he wrote for publication, he made the following illuminating statement:
Audiences interested Frohman immensely. He liked to be a part of them. He had a perfectly definite reason for sitting in the last row of the gallery on the first nights of his productions, which he once explained as follows:
"The best index to the probable career of any play is the back of the head of an auditor who does not know that he is being watched. The play-goer in an orchestra stall is always half-conscious that what he says or does may be observed. But the gallery gods and goddesses have never thought of anything except what is happening on the stage. They may yield the time before the rise of the curtain to watching the audience entering the theater, but once the lights are up and the stage is revealed they have no eyes or thoughts for anything except the life unfolded by the actors. These people in the upper part of the theater represent the masses. They are worth watching, for they are the people who make stage successes."
Frohman had his own theories about audiences, too. Concerning them he declared:
"An American at the theater feels first and thinks afterward. A European at a play thinks first and feels afterward. In conversation a German discusses things sitting down; a Frenchman talks standing up. But the American discusses things walking about. Therefore each must have his play built accordingly."
Once Frohman made this discriminating difference between English and American audiences:
"In England the pit and the gallery of the audience come to the theater, turn in their hard-earned shillings, and demand much. Failing to get what they expect, the theater is filled with boos and cat-calls at the end of the play. This does not mean that the play has failed. It more nearly means that the less a man pays to get into a theater the more he demands of the play.
"An American audience is different, because it has a fine sense of humor. When an American pays his money through the box-office window he feels that it is gone forever. Anything he receives after that—the lights, the pictures on the walls, the music of the orchestra, the sight of a few or many smiling faces—is so much to the good. So keen is the American play-goer's sense of humor that often when a play is wretchedly bad it comes to the rescue, and the applause is terrifically loud. This does not mean that the play has succeeded. It means rather that the play will die, a victim of the deadliest of all possible criticisms—ridicule."
Nor was Frohman often deceived about a first-night verdict. He always said, "Wait for the box-office statement on the second night."
One of his characteristic epigrammatic statements about the failure of plays was this:
"In America the question with a failure is, 'How soon can we get it off the stage?' In London they say, 'How long will the play run even though it is a failure?'"
Indeed, Frohman's whole attitude about openings was characteristic of his deep and generous philosophy about life. He summed up his whole creed as follows:
"A producer of plays, assuming that he is a man of experience, never feels comfortable after a great reception has been given his play on a first night. He knows that the reception in the theater does not always correspond to the feelings of future audiences. Every thinking manager knows that his play, in order to succeed, must send its audience away possessed of some distinct feeling. A successful play is a play that reflects, whatever the feeling it reflects.
"The great successes of the stage are plays that are played outside of the theater: over the breakfast-table; in a man's office; to his business associates; in a club, as one member tells the thrilling story of the previous night's experience to another. Great successes upon the stage are plays of such a sort that one audience can play them over to another prospective audience, and so make an endless chain of attendance at the theater.
"I have never in all my experience felt a success on the opening night. I have only felt my failures.
"I invariably leave the theater after a first-night performance knowing full well that neither my friends nor I know anything at all as to the ultimate fortune of the play we have seen."
It is a matter of record that Frohman always viewed his first nights with great nervousness. Although he attached but little importance, save on very rare occasions, to tumultuous applause on first nights, he was sometimes deceived by the reception that was given his productions.
He never tired of telling of one experience. He had left the theater on the first night, as he expressed it, "with the other mourners." He returned to his office immediately to cast a new play for the company. Yet he lived to see this play run successfully for a whole season. This led him to say:
"There's nothing more deluding to the player and the manager than enthusiastic applause. The fine, inspired work of a star actor often makes an audience enthusiastic to such a boisterous extent that one forgets that it is an individual and not the play that has succeeded."
Here, as elsewhere in the Frohman outlook on life and work, one finds clear-headed logic and reason behind the bubbling optimism.
PLAYS AND PLAYERS
O ne day not long before he sailed on the voyage that was to take him to his death, Charles was talking with a celebrated English playwright in his office at the Empire Theater. The conversation suddenly turned to a discussion of life achievement.
"What do you consider the biggest thing that you have done?" asked the visitor.
Frohman rose and pointed with his stick at the rows of book-shelves about him that held the bound copies of the plays he had produced. Then he said with a smile:
"That is what I have done. Don't you think it is a pretty good life's work?"
He was not overstepping the mark when he pointed with pride at that army of plays. This list is the greatest monument, perhaps, to his boundless ambition and energy, for it contains the four hundred original productions he made in America, besides the one hundred and twenty-five plays he put on in London. That Charles should have produced so many plays is not surprising. He adored the theater; it was his very being. To him, in truth, all the world was a stage.
Everything that he saw as he walked the streets or rode in a cab or viewed from a railway train he re-visualized and considered in the terms of the playhouse. If he saw an impressive bit of scenery he would say, "Wouldn't that make a fine background?" If he heard certain murmurs in the country or the tumult of a crowd on the highway, he instinctively said, "How fine it would be to reproduce that sound."
He only read books with a view of their adaptability to plays. Where other men found diversion and recreation in golfing, motoring, or walking, Charles sought entertainment in reading manuscripts. He was never without a play; when he traveled he carried dozens.
In the matter of plays Frohman had what was little less than a contempt for the avowedly academic. He refused to be drawn into discussions of the so-called "high brow" drama. When some one asked him to name the greatest of English dramatists he replied, quick as a flash:
"The one who writes the last great play."
"Whom do you consider the greatest American dramatist?" was the question once put to him. His smiling answer was:
"The one whose play the greatest number of good Americans go to see."
On this same occasion he was asked, "What seat in the theater do you consider the best to view a drama or a musical comedy from?"
"The paid one," he retorted.
Back in Charles's mind was a definite and well-ordered policy about plays. His first production on any stage was a melodrama, and, though in later years he ran the whole range from grave to gay, he was always true to his first love. This is one reason why Sardou's "Diplomacy" was, in many respects, his ideal of a play. It has thrills, suspense, love interests, and emotion. He revived it again and again, and it never failed to give him a certain pleasure.
Once in London Frohman unbosomed himself about play requirements, and this is what he said:
"I start out by asking certain requirements of every piece. If it be a drama, it must have healthfulness and comedy as well as seriousness. We are a young people, but only in the sense of healthy-mindedness. There is no real taste among us for the erotic or the decadent. It is foreign to us because, as a people, we have not felt the corroding touch of decadence. Nor is life here all drab. Hence I expect lights as well as shadows in every play I accept.
"Naturally, I am also influenced by the fitness of the chief parts for my chief stars, but I often purchase the manuscript at once on learning its central idea. I commissioned Clyde Fitch and Cosmo Gordon-Lennox to go to work on 'Her Sister' after half an hour's account of the main idea. Ethel Barrymore's work in that play is the best instance that I can give of the artistic growth of that actress. The particular skill she had obtained—and this is the test of an actress worth remembering—is the art of acting scenes essentially melodramatic in an unmelodramatic manner. After all, what is melodrama? Life itself is melodrama, and life put upon the stage only seems untrue when it is acted melodramatically—that is, unnaturally."
The foremost quality that Frohman sought in his plays was human interest. His appraisal of a dramatic product was often influenced by his love for a single character or for certain sentimental or emotional speeches. He would almost invariably discuss these plays with his intimates. Often he would act out the whole piece in a vivid and graphic manner and enlarge upon the situations that appealed to his special interest.
Plays thus described by him were found to be extremely entertaining and diverting to his friends, but when presented on the stage to a dispassionate audience they did not always fare so well. A notable example was "The Hyphen." The big, patriotic speech of the old German-American in the third act made an immense impression on Frohman when he read the play. It led him to produce the piece in record time. He recited it to every caller; he almost lost sight of the rest of the play in his admiration for the central effort. But the audience and the critics only saw this speech as part of a long play.
What Charles lacked in his study of plays in manuscript was the analytical quality. He could feel that certain scenes and speeches would have an emotional appeal, but he could not probe down beneath the surface for the why and the wherefore. For analysis, as for details, he had scant time. He accepted plays mainly for their general effect.
He was very susceptible to any charm that a play held out. If he found the characters sympathetic, attractive, and lovable, that would outweigh any objections made on technical grounds. When once he determined to produce a play, only a miracle could prevent him. The more his associates argued to the contrary, the more dogged he became. He had superb confidence in his judgment; yet he invariably accepted failure with serenity and good spirit. He always assumed the responsibility. He listened sometimes to suggestions, but his views were seldom colored by them.
His association with men like J. M. Barrie, Haddon Chambers, Paul Potter, William Gillette, Arthur Wing Pinero, and Augustus Thomas gave him a loftier insight into the workings of the drama. He was quick to absorb ideas, and he had a strong and retentive memory for details.
Frohman loved to present farce. He enjoyed this type of play himself because it appealed to his immense sense of humor. He delighted in rehearsing the many complications and entanglements which arise in such plays. The enthusiasm with which French audiences greeted their native plays often misled him. He felt that American theater-goers would be equally uproarious. But often they failed him.
The same thing frequently happened with English plays. He would be swept off his feet by a British production; he was at once sure that it would be a success in New York. But New York, more than once, upset this belief. The reason was that Frohman saw these plays as an Englishman. He had the cosmopolitan point of view that the average play-goer in America lacked.
This leads to the interesting subject of "locality" in plays. Frohman once summed up this whole question:
"As I go back and forth, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, the audiences on both sides seem more and more like one. Always, of course, each has his own particular viewpoint, according to the side of the Atlantic I happen to be on. But often they think the same, each from its own angle.
"You bring your English play to America. Nobody is at all disturbed by the mention of Park Lane or Piccadilly Circus. If there is drama in the play, if in itself it interests and holds the audience, nobody pays any attention to its locality or localisms.
"But an English audience sitting before an American play hears mention of West Twenty-third Street or Washington Square, and while it is wondering just where and what these localities are an important incident in the dramatic action slips by unnoticed. Not that English audiences are at all prejudiced against American plays. They take them in the same general way that Americans take English plays. Each public asks, 'What have you got?' As soon as it hears that the play is good it is interested.
"English audiences, for example, were quick to discover the fun in 'The Dictator' when Mr. Collier acted it in London, though it was full of the local color of New York, both in the central character and in the subject. Somehow the type and the speeches seemed to have a sort of universal humor. I tried it first on Barrie. He marked in the manuscript the places that he could understand. The piece never went better in America.
"On the other hand, one reason why 'Brewster's Millions' did not go well in London was because the severely logical British mind took it all as a business proposition. The problem was sedately figured out on the theory that the young man did not spend the inherited millions.
"If the locality of an American play happens to be a mining village, it is better to change its scenes to a similar village in Australia when you take the play to London. Then the audience is sure to understand. The public of London gave 'The Lion and the Mouse' an enthusiastic first night, but it turned out that they had not comprehended the play. It was unthinkable to them that a judge should be disgraced and disbarred by a political 'ring.'"
The ideal play for Charles Frohman was always the one that he had in mind for a particular star. His special desire, however, was for strong and emotional love as the dominant force in the drama. He felt that all humanity was interested in love, and he believed it established a congenial point of contact between the stage and the audience.
Although he did not especially aspire to Shakespearian production, he used the great bard's works as models for appraising other plays. "Shakespeare invented farce comedy," he once said, "and whenever I consider the purchase of such a thing I compare its scenes with the most famous of all farces, 'The Taming of the Shrew.' It goes without saying that when it comes to the stage of the production, my aim is to imbue the performance with a spirit akin to that contained in Shakespeare's humorous masterpiece."
Frohman often "went wrong" on plays. He merely accepted these mistakes as part of the big human hazard and went on to something new. His amazing series of errors of judgment with plays by Augustus Thomas is one of the traditions of the American theater. The reader already knows how he refused "Arizona" and "The Earl of Pawtucket," and how they made fortunes for other managers.
One of the most extraordinary of these Thomas mistakes was with "The Witching Hour." It was about the only time that he permitted his own decision to be swayed by outside influence, and it cost him dearly.
The author read the play to Frohman on a torrid night in midsummer. Frohman, as usual, sat cross-legged on a divan and sipped orangeade incessantly.
Thomas, who has all the art and eloquence of a finished actor, read his work with magnetic effect. When he finished Frohman sat absolutely still for nearly five minutes. It seemed hours to the playwright, who awaited the decision with tense interest. Finally Frohman said in a whisper:
"That is almost too beautiful to bear."
A pause followed. Then he said, eagerly:
"When shall we do it; whom do you want for star?"
"I'd like to have Gillette," replied Thomas.
"You can't have him," responded Frohman. "He's engaged for something else."
With this the session ended. Frohman seemed strangely under the spell of the play. It made him silent and meditative.
The next day he gave the manuscript to some of his close associates to read. They thought it was too psychological for a concrete dramatic success. To their great surprise he agreed with them.
"The Witching Hour" was produced by another manager and it ran a whole season in New York, and then duplicated its success on the road. This experience made Frohman all the more determined to keep his own counsel and follow his instincts with regard to plays thereafter, and he did.
Charles regarded play-producing just as he regarded life—as a huge adventure. An amusing thing happened during the production of "The Other Girl," a play by Augustus Thomas, in which a pugilist has a prominent rÔle.
Lionel Barrymore was playing the part of the prize-fighter, who was generally supposed to be a stage replica of "Kid" McCoy, then in the very height of his fistic powers. In the piece the fighter warns his friends not to bet on a certain fight. The lines, in substance, were:
"You have been pretty loyal to me, but I am giving you a tip not to put any money down on that 'go' in October."
One day Frohman found Barrymore pacing nervously up and down in front of his office.
"What's the matter, Lionel?" he asked.
"Well," was the reply, "I am very much disturbed about something. I made a promise to 'Kid' McCoy, and I don't know how to keep it. You know I have a line in the play in which the prize-fighter warns his friends not to bet on him in a certain fight in October. The 'Kid,' who has been at the play nearly every night since we opened, now has a real fight on for October, and he is afraid it will give people the idea that it is a 'frame-up.'"
"You mean to say that you want me to change Mr. Thomas's lines?" asked Frohman, seriously.
"I can't ask you to do that," answered Barrymore. "But I promised the 'Kid' to speak to you about it, and I have kept my word."
Frohman thought a moment. Then he said, gravely:
"All right, Lionel, I'll postpone the date of the fight in the play until November, even December, but not a day later."
Frohman was not without his sense of imitation. He was quick to follow up a certain type or mood whether it was in the vogue of an actor or the character of a play. This story will illustrate:
One night early in February, 1895, Frohman sat in his wonted corner at Delmonico's, then on Broadway and Twenty-sixth Street. He had "The Fatal Card," by Chambers and Stephenson, on the boards at Palmer's Theater; he also had A. M. Palmer's Stock Company on the road in Sydney Grundy's play "The New Woman." This naturally gave him a lively interest in Mr. Palmer's productions.
Paul Potter, who was then house dramatist at Palmer's, bustled into the restaurant with the plot of a new novel which had been brought to his attention by the news-stand boy at the Waldorf. Frohman listened to his recital with interest.
"What is the name of the book?" he asked.
"Trilby," replied Potter.
"Well," he continued, "it ought to be called after that conjurer chap, Bengali, or whatever his name is. However, go ahead. Get Lackaye back from 'The District Attorney' company to which Palmer has lent him. Engage young Ditrichstein by all means for one of your Bohemians. Call in Virginia Harned and the rest of the stock company. And there you are."
With uncanny precision he had cast the leading rÔles perfectly and on the impulse of the moment.
During the fortnight of the incubation of the play Potter saw Frohman nightly, for they were now fast friends. Frohman was curiously fascinated by "Bengali," as he insisted upon calling Svengali.
"We do it next Monday in Boston," said Potter, "and I count on your coming to see it."
Frohman went to Boston to see the second performance. After the play he and Potter walked silently across the Common to the Thorndyke Hotel. In his room Frohman broke into speech:
"They are roasting it awfully in New York," he began. "Yet Joe Jefferson says it will go around the world." Then he added, "They say you have cut out all the Bohemian stuff."
"Nevertheless," replied Potter, "W. A. Brady has gone to New York to-night to offer Mr. Palmer ten thousand dollars on account for the road rights."
"Well," said Frohman, showing his hand at last, "Jefferson and Brady are right, and if Palmer will let me in I'll go half and half, or, if he prefers, I'll take it all."
At supper after the first performance at the Garden Theater in New York, Frohman advised Sir Herbert Tree to capture the play for London. Henceforth, wherever he traveled, "Trilby" seemed to pursue him.
"I've seen your old 'Bengali,'" he wrote Potter, "in Rome, Vienna, Berlin, everywhere. It haunts me. And, as you cut out the good Bohemian stuff, I'll use it myself at the Empire."
He did so in Clyde Fitch's version of "La Vie de BohÈme," which was called "Bohemia."
"How did it go?" Potter wrote him from Switzerland.
"Pretty well," replied Frohman. "Unfortunately we left out 'Bengali.'"
On more than one occasion Frohman produced a play for the mere pleasure of doing it. He put on a certain little dramatic fantasy. It was foredoomed to failure and held the boards only a week.
"Why did you do this play?" asked William H. Crane.
"Because I wanted to see it played," answered Frohman. "I knew it would not be successful, but I simply had to do it. I saw every performance and I liked it better every time I saw it."
Often Frohman would make a contract with a playwright for a play, and long before the first night he would realize that it had no chance. Yet he kept his word with the author, and it was always produced.
The case of "The Heart of a Thief," by the late Paul Armstrong, is typical. Frohman paid him an advance of fifteen hundred dollars. After a week of rehearsals every one connected with the play except Armstrong realized that it was impossible.
Frohman, however, gave it an out-of-town opening and brought it to the Hudson Theater in New York, where it ran for one week. When he decided to close it he called the company together and said:
"You've done the best you could. It's all my fault. I thought it was a good play. I was mistaken."
Frohman took vast pride in the "clean quality" of his plays, as he often phrased it. His whole theatrical career was a rebuke to the salacious. He originally owned Edward Sheldon's dramatization of Suderman's "The Song of Songs." On its production in Philadelphia it was assailed by the press as immoral. Frohman immediately sold it to A. H. Woods, who presented it with enormous financial success in New York.
He was scrupulous to the last degree in his business relations with playwrights. Once a well-known English author, who was in great financial need, cabled to his agent in America that he would sell outright for two thousand dollars all the dramatic rights to a certain play of his that Frohman and an associate had on the road at that time. The associate thought it was a fine opportunity and personally cabled the money through the agent. Then he went to Frohman and said, with great satisfaction:
"I've made some money for us to-day."
"How's that?" asked Frohman.
Then his associate told the story of the author's predicament and what he had done. He stood waiting for commendation. Instead, Frohman's face darkened; he rang a bell, and when his secretary appeared he said:
"Please wire Blank [mentioning the playwright's name] that the money cabled him to-day was an advance on future royalties."
Then he turned to his associate and said:
"Never, so long as you work with me or are associated with me in any enterprise, take advantage of the distress of author or actor. This man's play was good enough for us to produce; it is still good enough to earn money. When it makes money for us it also makes money for him."
By the force of his magnetic personality Charles amiably coerced more than one unwilling playwright into submission to his will. An experience with Margaret Mayo will illustrate.
Miss Mayo returned on the same steamer with him when he made his last trip from London to the United States. As they walked up the gang-plank at Liverpool the manager told the author that he had a play he wished her to adapt.
"But I have decided to adapt no more plays," said Miss Mayo.
"Never mind," replied Frohman. "We will see about that."
Needless to say, by the time the ship reached New York the play was in Miss Mayo's trunk and the genial tyrant had exacted a promise for the adaptation.
Miss Mayo immediately went to her country house up the Hudson. For a week she reproached herself for having fallen a victim to the Frohman beguilements. In this state of mind she could do no work on the manuscript.
With his astonishing intuition Frohman divined that the author was making no progress, so he sent her a note asking her to come to town, and adding, "I have something to show you."
Miss Mayo entered the office at the Empire determined to throw herself upon the managerial mercy and beg to be excused from the commission. But before she could say a word Frohman said, cheerily:
"I've found the right title for our play."
Then he rang a bell, and a boy appeared holding a tightly rolled poster in his hand. At a signal he unfolded it, and the astonished playwright beheld these words in large red and white letters:
Charles Frohman
Presents
I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT
A Farce in Three Acts
By Margaret Mayo
Of course the usual thing happened. No one could resist such an attack. Miss Mayo went back to the country without protest and she finished the play. It was destined, however, to be produced by some other hand than Frohman's.
Frohman always sought seclusion when he wanted to work out the plans for a production. He sometimes went to extreme lengths to achieve aloofness. An incident related by Goodwin will illustrate this.
During the run of "Nathan Hale" in New York Goodwin entered his dressing-room one night, turned on the electric light, and was amazed to see Charles sitting huddled up in a corner.
"What are you doing here, Charley?" asked Goodwin.
"I am casting a new play, and came here to get some inspiration. Good night," was the reply. With that he walked out.
There was one great secret in Charles Frohman's life. It is natural that it should center about the writing of a play; it is natural, too, that this most intimate of incidents in the career of the great manager should be told by his devoted friend and colleague of many years, Paul Potter.
Here it is as set down by Mr. Potter:
We had hired a rickety cab at the Place Saint-FranÇois in Lausanne, and had driven along the lake of Geneva to Morges, where, sitting on the terrace of the HÔtel du Mont Blanc, we were watching the shore of Savoy across the lake, and the gray old villages of Thonon and Evian, and the mountains, rising ridge upon ridge, behind them. And Frohman, being in lyric mood, fell to quoting "The Blue Hills Far Away," for Owen Meredith's song was one of the few bits of verse that clung in his memory.
"Odd," said he, relapsing into prose, "that a chap should climb hill after hill, thinking he had reached his goal, and should forever find the blue hills farther and farther away."
While he was ruminating the clouds lifted, and there, in a gap of the hills, was the crest of Mont Blanc, with its image of Napoleon lying asleep in the snow.
I have seen Frohman in most of the critical moments of his life, but I never saw him utterly awe-stricken till then.
"Gee," said he, at length, "what a mountain to climb!"
"It is sixty miles away," I ventured to suggest.
"Well," he remarked, "I'll climb it some day. As John Russell plastered the Rocky Mountains with 'The City Directory,' so I'll hang a shingle from the top of Mont Blanc: 'Ambition: a comedy in four acts by Charles Frohman.'" And as we went home to Ouchy he told me the secret desire of his heart.
He wanted to write a play.
"Isn't it enough to be a theatrical manager?" I asked.
"No," said he, "a theatrical manager is a joke. The public thinks he spends his days in writing checks and his nights in counting the receipts. Why, when I wanted to become a depositor at the Union Bank in London, the cashier asked me my profession. 'Theatrical manager,' I replied. 'Humph!' said the cashier, taken aback. 'Well, never mind, Mr. Frohman; we'll put you down as 'a gentleman.'"
"But is a playwright," I asked, "more highly reputed than a theatrical manager?"
"Not in America," said Frohman. "Most Americans think that the actors and actresses write their own parts. I was on the Long Branch boat the other day and met a well-known Empire first-nighter. 'What are you going to give us next season, Frohman?' he said.
"'I open with a little thing by Sardou,' I replied.
"'Sardou!' he cried. 'Who in thunder is Sardou?'
"All the same," Frohman continued, "I mean to be a playwright. Didn't Lester Wallack write 'Rosedale' and 'The Veteran'? Didn't Augustin Daly make splendid adaptations of German farces? Doesn't Belasco turn out first-class dramas? Then why not I? I mean to learn the game. Don't give me away, but watch my progress in play-making as we jog along through life."
He got his first tip from Pinero. "When I have sketched out a play," observed the author of "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," "I go and live among the characters."
Frohman had no characters of his own, but he held in his brain a fabulous store of other people's plays. And whenever they had a historical or a literary origin he ran these origins to their lair. At Ferney, on the Lake of Geneva, he cared nothing about Voltaire; he wanted to see the place where the free-thinkers gathered in A. M. Palmer's production of "Daniel Rochat." At Geneva he was not concerned with Calvin, but with memories of a Union Square melodrama, "The Geneva Cross." At Lyons he expected the ghosts of Claude Melnotte and Pauline to meet him at the station. In Paris he allowed Napoleon to slumber unnoticed in the Invalides while he hunted the Faubourg Saint-Antoine for traces of "The Tale of Two Cities," and the Place de la Concorde for the site of the guillotine on which Sidney Carton died, and the Latin Quarter haunts of Mimi and Musette, and the Bal Bullier where Trilby danced, and the Concert des Ambassadeurs where Zaza bade her lover good-by.
Any production was an excuse for these expeditions. Sir Herbert Tree had staged "Colonel Newcome"; we had ourselves plotted a dramatization of "Pendennis"; Mrs. Fiske had given "Vanity Fair"; so off we went, down the Boulevard Saint-Germain, searching for the place, duly placarded, where Thackeray lunched in the days of the "Paris Sketch-book" and the "Ballad of Bouillabaisse."
In the towns of Kent we got on the trail of Dickens with the enthusiasm of a Hopkinson Smith; in London, between Drury Lane and Wardour Street, we hunted for the Old Curiosity Shop; in Yarmouth we discovered the place where Peggotty's boat-hut might have lain on the sands. With William Seymour, who knew every street from his study of "The Rivals," we listened to the abbey bells of Bath. And when "Romeo and Juliet" was to be revived with Sothern and Marlowe, Frohman even proposed that we should visit Verona. He only abandoned the idea on discovering that the Veronese had no long-distance telephones, and that, while wandering among the tombs of the Montagus and Capulets, he would be cut off from his London office.
Having thus steeped himself in the atmosphere of his work, he set forth to learn the rules of the game. I met him in Paris on his return from New York. "How go the rules?" I asked.
"Rotten," said he. "Our American playwrights say there are no rules; with them it is all inspiration. The Englishmen say that rules exist, but what the rules are they either don't know or won't tell."
We went to the Concert Rouge. Those were the happy days when there were no frills; when the price of admission was charged with what you drank; when Saint-SaËns accompanied his "Samson and Delilah" with an imaginary flute obligato on a walking-stick; when Massenet, with his librettist, Henri Cain, dozed quietly through the meditation of "ThaÏs"; when the students and their girls forgot frivolity under the spell of "L'Arlesienne."
In a smoky corner sat a group of well-known French playwrights, headed by G. A. Caillavet, afterward famous as author of "Le Roi." They were indulging in a heated but whispered discussion. They welcomed Frohman cordially, then returned to the debate.
"What are they talking about?" asked Frohman.
"The rules of the drama," said I.
"Then there are rules!" cried the manager, eagerly.
"Ask Caillavet," said I.
"Rules?" exclaimed Caillavet, who spoke English. "Are there rules of painting, sculpture, music? Why, the drama is a mass of rules! It is nothing but rules."
"And how long," faltered Frohman, thinking of his play—"how long would it take to learn them?"
"A lifetime at the very least," answered Caillavet. Disconsolate, Frohman led me out into the Rue de Tournon. Heartbroken, he convoyed me into Foyot's, and drowned his sorrows in a grenadine.
From that hour he was a changed man. He apparently put aside all thought of the drama whose name was to be stenciled on the summit of Mont Blanc; yet, nevertheless, he applied himself assiduously to learning the principles on which the theater was based.
Another winter had passed before we sat side by side on the terrace of the CafÉ Napolitain.
"I have asked Harry Pettitt, the London melodramatist," Frohman said, "to write me a play. 'I warn you, Frohman,' he replied, 'that I have only one theme—the Persecuted Woman.' Dion Boucicault, who was present, said, 'Add the Persecuted Girl.' Joseph Jefferson was with us, and Jefferson remarked, 'Add the Persecuted Man.' So was Henry Irving, who said: 'Pity is the trump card; but be Aristotelian, my boy; throw in a little Terror; with Pity I can generally go through a season, as with 'Charles the First' or 'Olivia'; with Terror and Pity combined I am liable to have something that will outlast my life." And Irving mentioned "The Bells" and "The Lyons Mail."
"But who will write you your Terror and Pity?" I asked Frohman.
"If Terror means 'thrill,'" said Frohman, "I can count on Belasco and Gillette. If Pity means 'sympathy,' the Englishmen do it pretty well. So does Fitch. So do the French, who used to be masters of the game."
"You don't expect," I said, "to pick up another 'Two Orphans,' a second 'Ticket of Leave Man'?"
"I'm not such a fool," said Frohman. "But I've got hold of something now that will help me to feed my stock company in New York." And off we went with Dillingham to see "The Girl from Maxim's" at the NouveautÉs.
When we got home to the Ritz Frohman discussed the play after his manner: "Do you know," he said, "I find the element of pity quite as strongly developed in these French farces as in the Ambigu melodramas. The truant husband leaves home, goes out for a good time, gets buffeted and bastinadoed for his pains, and when the compassionate audience says, 'He has had enough; let up,' he comes humbly home to the bosom of his family and is forgiven. Where can you find a more human theme than that?"
"Then you hold," said I, "that even in a French farce the events should be reasonable?"
"I wouldn't buy one," he replied, "if I didn't consider its basis thoroughly human. Dion Boucicault told me long ago that farce, like tragedy, must be founded on granite. 'Farce, well done,' said he, 'is the most difficult form of dramatic composition. That is why, if successful, it is far the most remunerative.'"
Years went by. The stock company was dead. "Charles Frohman's Comedians" had disappeared. The "stars" had supplanted them. Frohman was at the zenith of his career. American papers called him "the Napoleon of the Drama." Prime Ministers courted him in the grill-room of the London Savoy. The Paris Figaro announced the coming of "the celebrated impresario." I heard him call my name in the crowd at the Gare du Nord and we bundled into a cab.
"So you're a great man now," I said.
"Am I?" he remarked. "There's one thing you can bet on. If they put me on a throne to-day they are liable to yank me off to-morrow."
"And how's your own play getting along?"
"Don't!" he winced. "Let us go to the Snail."
In the cozy recesses of the Escargot d'Or, near the Central Markets, he unraveled the mysteries of the "star system" which had made him famous.
"It's the opposite of all we ever believed," he said, while the mussels and shell-fish were being heaped up before him. "Good-by to Caillavet and his rules. Good-by, Terror and Pity. Good-by, dear French farce. Give me a pretty girl with a smile, an actor with charm, and I will defy our old friend Aristotle."
"Is it as easy as that?" I asked, in amazement.
"No," said he, "it's confoundedly difficult to find the girl with the smile and the actor with charm. It is pure accident. There are players of international reputation who can't draw a dollar. There are chits of chorus-girls who can play a night of sixteen hundred dollars in Youngstown, Ohio."
"And the play doesn't matter?" I inquired.
"There you've got me," said Frohman, as the crÊpes Suzette arrived in their chafing-dish. "My interest makes me pretend that the play's the thing. I congratulate foreign authors on a week of fourteen thousand dollars in Chicago, and they go away delighted. But I know, all the time, that of this sum the star drew thirteen thousand nine hundred dollars, and the author the rest."
"To what do you attribute such a state of affairs?"
"Feminine curiosity. God bless the women."
"Are there no men in your audiences?" I asked.
"Only those whom the women take," said Frohman. "The others go to musical shows. Have some more crÊpes Suzette."
"But what do the critics say?" I persisted.
"My dear Paul," said Frohman, solemnly, "they call me a 'commercial manager' because I won't play Ibsen or Maeterlinck. They didn't help me when I tried for higher game. I had years of poverty, years of privation. To-day I take advantage of a general feminine desire to view Miss Tottie Coughdrop; and, to the critics, I'm a mere Bulgarian, a 'commercial manager.' So was Lester Wallack when he admitted 'The World' to his classic theater. So was Augustin Daly when he banished Shakespeare in favor of 'The Great Ruby.' If the critics want to reform the stage, let them begin by reforming the public."
In his cabin on the Lusitania he showed me a mass of yellow manuscript, scribbled over with hieroglyphics in blue pencil.
"That's my play," he said, very simply.
"Shall I take it home and read it?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "I will try it on Barrie and bring it back in better shape."
So he shook hands and sailed with his cherished drama, which reposes to-day, not on the summit of Mont Blanc, but at the bottom of the Irish Sea.
"C. F." AT REHEARSALS
T he real Charles Frohman emerged at rehearsals. The shy, sensitive man who shunned the outside world here stood revealed as a dynamic force. Yet he ruled by personality, because he believed in personality. He did every possible thing to bring out the personal element in the men and women in his companies.
In rehearsing he showed one of the most striking of his traits. It was a method of speech that was little short of extraordinary. It grew out of the fact that his vocabulary could not express his enormous imagination. Instead of words he made motions. It was, as Augustus Thomas expressed it, "an exalted pantomime." Those who worked with him interpreted these gestures, for between him and his stars existed the finest kinship.
Frohman seldom finished a sentence, yet those who knew him always understood the unuttered part. Even when he would give a star the first intimation of a new rÔle he made it a piece of pantomime interspersed with short, jerky sentences.
William Faversham had complained about having two very bad parts. When he went to see Frohman to hear about the third, this is the way the manager expressed it to him:
"New play—see?... Fine part.—First act—you know—romantic—light through the window ... nice deep tones of your voice, you see?... Then, audience say 'Ah!'—then the girl—see?—In the room ... you ... one of those big scenes—then, all subdued—light—coming through window.—See?—And then—curtain—audience say 'Great!' ... Now, second act ... all that tremolo business—you know?—Then you get down to work ... a tremendous scene ... let your voice go.... Great climax ... (Oh, a great play this—a great part!) ... Now, last act—simple—nice—lovable—refined ... sad tones in your voice—and, well, you know—and then you make a big hit.... Well, now we will rehearse this in about a week—and you will be tickled to death.... This is a great play—fine part.... Now, you see Humphreys—he will arrange everything."
Of course Faversham went away feeling that he was about forty-four feet tall, that he was a great actor, and had a wonderful part.
Like the soldier who thrills at the sound of battle, Frohman became galvanized when he began to work in the theater. He forgot time, space, and all other things save the task at hand. To him it was as the breath of life.
One reason was that the theater was his world; the other that Charles was, first and foremost, a director and producer. His sensibility and force, his feeling and authority, his intelligence and comprehension in matters of dramatic artistry were best, almost solely, known to his players and immediate associates. No stage-director of his day was more admired and desired than he.
At rehearsal the announcement, "C. F. is in front," meant for every one in the cast an eager enthusiasm and a desire to do something unusually good to merit his commendation. His enormous energy, aided by his diplomacy and humor, inspired the player to highest performance.
Such expressions as, "But, Mr. Frohman, this is my way of doing it," or "I feel it this way," and like manifestations of actors' conceit or argument would never be met with ridicule or contempt. Sometimes he would say, "Try it my way first," or "Do you like that?" or "Does this give you a better feeling?" He never said, "You must do thus and so." He was alert to every suggestion. As a result he got the very best out of his people. It was part of his policy of developing the personal element.
The genial human side of the man always softened his loudest tones, although he was seldom vehement. So gentle was his speech at rehearsals that the actors often came down to the footlights to hear his friendly yet earnest direction.
Frohman had that first essential of a great dramatic director—a psychologic mind in the study of the various human natures of his actors and of the ideas they attempted to portray.
He was an engaging and fascinating figure, too, as he molded speech and shaped the play. An old friend who saw him in action thus describes the picture:
"Here a comedian laughs aloud with the comic quaintness of the director. There a little lady, new to the stage, is made to feel at home and confident. The proud old-timer is sufficiently ameliorated to approve of the change suggested. The leading lady trembles with the shock of realization imparted by the stout little man with chubby smile who, seated alone in the darkened auditorium, conveys his meaning as with invisible wires, quietly, quaintly, simply, and rationally, so as to stir the actors' souls to new sensibilities, awaken thought, and viviby(?) glow of passion, sentiment, or humor."
At rehearsals Frohman usually sat alone about the tenth row back. He rarely rose from his seat, but by voice and gesture indicated the moves on his dramatic chess-board. When it became necessary for him to go on the stage he did so with alacrity. He suggested, by marvelously simple indications and quick transitions, the significance of the scene or the manner of the presentation.
There was a curious similarity, in one respect, between the rehearsing methods of Charles Frohman and Augustin Daly. This comparison is admirably made by Frohman's life-long friend Franklin H. Sargent, Director of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Empire School of Acting, in which Frohman was greatly interested and which he helped in every possible way. He said:
"Like a great painter with a few stray significant lines of drawing, Frohman revealed the spirit and the idea. In this respect he resembled Augustin Daly, who could furnish much dramatic intuition by a grunt and a thumb-joint. Both men used similar methods and possessed equal keenness of intelligence and sense of humor, except that Frohman was rarely sarcastic. Daly usually was. Frohman's demeanor and relationship to his actors was kindly and considerate. Rules, and all strictly enforced, were in Daly's policy of theater management. Frohman did not resort to rules. He regulated his theaters on broad principles, but with firm decision when necessary. In Daly's theater there was obedience; in Frohman's theater there was a willing co-operation. The chief interest of both managers was comedy—comedy of two opposite kinds. Daly's jest was the artificial German farce and Shakespearian refinement. Frohman's tastes ranged between the French school—Sardou's 'Diplomacy' and the modern realities—and the pure sentiments of Barrie's 'The Little Minister.' Frohman was never traditional in an artificial sense, though careful to retain the fundamental original treatment of imported foreign plays.
"The verities, the humanities, the joys of life always existed and grew with him as with a good landscape architect who keeps in nature's ways. His departures into the classicism of Stephen Phillips, the romanticism of Shakespeare, or the exotic French society drama were never as valuable and delightful as his treatment of modern sentiment and comedy."
In this respect a comparison with the workmanship of another genius of the American theater, David Belasco, is inevitable. Belasco, the great designer and painter of theatrical pictures, holds quite a different point of view and possesses different abilities from those of Charles Frohman. Belasco revels in the technique of the actor. Frohman's mÉtier was the essentials. The two men were in many ways complements of each other and per force admirers of each other and friends. In brief, Belasco is the technicist; Frohman was the humanitarian.
Charles usually left details of scenery, lighting, and minor matters to his stage-manager. "Look after the little things," he would say, in business as in art, for he himself was interested only in the larger themes. The lesser people of the play, the early rehearsing of involved business, was shaped by his subordinates. The smaller faults and the mannerisms of the actor did not trouble him, provided the main thought and feeling were there. He would merely laugh at a suggestion to straighten out the legs and walk, to lengthen the drawl, or to heighten the cockney accent of a prominent member of his company, saying:
"The public likes him for these natural things."
Frohman's ear was musically sensitive. The intonations, inflections, the tone colors of voice, orchestral and incidental music, found him an exacting critic.
To plays he gave thought, study, and preparation. The author received much advice and direction from him. He himself possessed the expert knowledge and abilities of a playwright, as is always true of every good stage-director. Each new play was planned, written, cast, and revised completely under his guidance and supervision. His stage-manager had been instructed in advance in the "plotting" of its treatment. The first rehearsals were usually left in charge of this assistant.
At the first rehearsals Frohman made little or no comments. He watched and studied in silence. Thereafter his master-mind would reveal itself in reconstruction of lines and scenes, re-accentuation of the high and low lights of the story involved, and improvement of the acting and representation. Frohman consulted with his authors, artists, and assistants more in his office than in actual rehearsal. In the theater he was sole auditor and judge. His stage-manager would rarely make suggestions during rehearsals unless beckoned to and asked by his manager. When the office-boy came in at rehearsal on some important business errand, he got a curt dismissal, or at most a brief consideration of the despatch, contract, or message.
Here is a vivid view of Frohman at rehearsal by one who often sat under the magic of his direction:
"In the dim theater he sits alone, the stage-manager being at a respectable distance. If by chance there are one or two others present directly concerned in the production, they all sit discreetly in the extreme rear. The company is grouped in the wings, never in the front. The full stage lights throw into prominence the actors in the scene in rehearsal. Occasionally the voice of Mr. Frohman calls from the auditorium, and the direction is sometimes repeated more loudly by the stage-manager. Everybody is listening and watching.
"The wonderfully responsive and painstaking nature of Maude Adams is fully alive, alert, and interested in Mr. Frohman's directions even in the scenes in which she has no personal part, during which, very likely, she will half recline on the floor near the proscenium—all eyes and ears.
"Or perhaps it is a strong emotional scene in which Margaret Anglin is the central character. At the theatrically most effective point in the acting the voice breaks in, Miss Anglin stops, hastens to the footlights, and listens intently to a few simple, quiet words. Over her face pass shadow and storm, and in her eyes tears form. Again she begins the scene, and yet again, with cumulative passion. Each time, with each new incitement from the sympathetic director, new power, deeper feeling, keener thought develop, until a great glow of meaning and of might fills the stage and the theater with its radiance. Mr. Frohman is at last satisfied, and so the play moves on."
Just as Frohman loved humor in life, so did he have a rare gift for comedy rehearsal. William Faversham pays him this tribute:
"I think Charles Frohman was the greatest comedy stage-manager that I have known. I do not think there was a comedy ever written that he could not rehearse and get more out of than any other stage-director I have ever seen—and I have seen a good many. If he had devoted himself, as director, entirely to one company, I think he would have produced the greatest organization of comedians that Europe or America ever saw. I don't suppose there is a comedy scene that he couldn't rehearse and play better than any of the actors who were engaged to play the parts. The subtle touches that he put into 'Lord and Lady Algy' were extraordinary. The same with 'The Counsellor's Wife,' with 'Bohemia,' and again with a play of H. V. Esmond's called 'Imprudence,' which we did. He seemed to love this play, and I never saw a piece grow so in all my life as it did under his direction. All the successes made by the actors and actresses in that play were entirely through the work of Charles Frohman.
"He had a keen sense of sound, a tremendous ear for tones of comedy. He could get ten or twelve inflections out of a speech of about four lines; he had a wonderful method of getting the actors to accept and project these tones over the footlights. He got what he wanted from them in the most extraordinary way. With his disjointed, pantomimic method of instruction he was able to transfer to them, as if by telepathy, what he wanted.
"For instance, he would say: 'Now, you go over there ... then, just as he is looking at you ... see?—say—then ... that's it! you know?' And simply by this telepathy you did know."
His terse summing up of scenes and facts was never better illustrated than when he compressed the instructions of a whole sentimental act into this simple sentence to E. H. Sothern:
"Court—kiss—curtain."
In one detail he differed from all the other great producers of his time. Most managers liked to nurse a play after its production and build it up with new scenes or varied changes. With Frohman it was different. "I am interested in a production until it has been made, and then I don't care for it any more," he said. This is generally true, although some of his productions he could never see often enough.
Frohman's perception about a play was little short of uncanny. An incident that happened during the rehearsal of the Maude Adams all-star revival of "Romeo and Juliet" will illustrate. James K. Hackett was cast for Mercutio. He had worked for a month on the Queen Mab speech. He had elaborated and polished it, and thought he had it letter and tone perfect.
Frohman sat down near the front and listened with rapt attention while this fine actor declaimed the speech. When he finished Charles said, in his jerky, epigrammatic way:
"Hackett, that's fine, but just in there somewhere—you know what I mean."
As a matter of fact, Hackett, with all his elaborate preparation, had slipped up on one line, and it was a very essential one. Frohman had never read "Romeo and Juliet" until he cast this production, yet he caught the omission with his extraordinary intuition.
Charles was the most indefatigable of workers. At one time, on arriving in Boston at midnight, he had to stage a new act of "Peter Pan." He worked over it with carpenters, actors, and electricians until three in the morning. Then he made an appointment with the acting manager to take a walk on the Common "in the morning."
The manager took "in the morning" to mean nine o'clock. When he reached the hotel Frohman was just returning from his walk, and handed the man a bunch of cables to send, telegrams to acknowledge, and memoranda of information desired. At ten o'clock Frohman was conducting the rehearsal of a new comedy by Haddon Chambers, which he finished at four. At five he was on a train speeding back to New York, where he probably read manuscripts of plays until two in the morning. This was one of the typical "C. F." days.
Occasionally a single detail would fascinate him in a play. "The Waltz Dream" that he did at the Hicks Theater in London in 1908 was typical. Miss Gertie Millar, who sang the leading part, had an important song. Frohman did not like the way she sang it, so he worked on it for two weeks until it reached the perfection of expression that he desired. But that song made the play and became the most-talked-of feature in it. This led him to say:
"I am willing to give as much time to a single song as to the rehearsal of a whole play."
Frohman had a phrase that he often used with his actors and directors. It was:
"Never get a 'falling curtain.'"
By this he meant a curtain that did not leave interest or emotion subdued or declining. He wanted the full sweep of rage, terror, pity, suspense, or anger alive with the end of the act.
He always said, "A man who sees a play must feel that he is in the presence of an act." It was his way of putting forth the idea that any acted effort, no matter how humble, must have the ring of sincerity and conviction.
Charles had an almost weird instinct for what was right on the stage. Once at rehearsals he pointed to a heavy candelabrum that stood on a table.
"I want that thing on the mantelpiece," he said.
"You mean the candelabrum?" asked one of his assistants.
"I don't know what it is, but I know that it belongs on the mantelpiece." And it did.
Many of Frohman's rehearsals were held out of town. He was particularly fond of "pointing up" a production in a strange environment. Then the stage-director would ask the local manager for an absolutely empty theater—"a clear auditorium."
"Peter Pan" was to be "finished off" at Washington. The call was issued, the company assembled—everybody was present except Frohman. "Strange," was the thought in all minds, for he was usually so prompt. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed until the stage-manager left the theater in search of the manager. He was found at the front entrance of the theater, unsuccessfully arguing with a German door-tender who, not knowing him and immensely amused at the idea that he was pretending to be Charles Frohman, refused to admit him until reassured by the company stage-manager. Later, when the man came to apologize, Frohman's only comment was:
"Oh! I forgot that an hour ago."
Few people knew the Frohman of rehearsals so well as William Seymour, for many years his general stage-director. His illuminating picture of the Little Chief he served so long is as follows:
"At rehearsals Charles Frohman was completely wrapped up in the play and the players. His mind, however, traveled faster than we did. He often stopped me to make a change in a line or in the business which to me was not at all clear. You could not always grasp, at once, just what he was aiming at. But once understood, the idea became illuminative, and extended into the next, or even to succeeding acts of the play. He could detect a weak spot quicker than any one I ever knew, and could remedy or straighten it out just as quickly.
"After the rehearsal of a new play he would think of it probably all the evening and night, and the next morning he had the solutions of the several vague points at his fingers' ends. He was also very positive and firm in what he wanted done, and how he thought it should be done. But what he thought was right, he believed to be right, and he soon made you see it that way.
"I confess to having had many differences of opinion and arguments, sometimes even disagreements, with him. In some instances he came round to my way of thinking, but he often said:
"'I believe you are right—I am sure you are right—but I intend doing it my way.'
"It was his great and wonderful self-confidence, and it was rarely overestimated.
"To his actors in a new play, after a week's 'roughing out' of the lines and business, the announcement that 'C. F. will be here to-morrow' would cause a flutter, some consternation, and to the newer members a great fear. To those who had been with him before he was like a sheet-anchor in a storm. They knew him and trusted and loved him. He was all sympathy, all comfort, all encouragement—if anything, too indulgent and overkind. But he won the confidence and affection of his people at the outset, and I have rarely met a player who would not have done his slightest bidding."
One of Frohman's characteristic hobbies was that he would never allow the leading man or the leading woman of his theater, or anybody in the company, no matter what position he or she held, to presume upon that position and bully the property man, or the assistant stage-manager, or any person in a menial position in the theater. He was invariably on the side of the smaller people.
Very often he would say, "The smallest member of this organization, be he of the staff or in the company, has as much right to his 'say' in an argument as the biggest member has."
On one occasion a certain actor, who was rather fond of issuing his wishes and instructions in a very loud voice, made his exit through a door up the center of the stage which was very difficult to open and shut. It had not worked well, and this had happened, quite by accident, on several occasions during the run of the play. The actor had spoken rather sharply to the carpenter about it instead of going, as he should have done, to the stage-manager. He always called the carpenter "Charley." The carpenter was a rather dignified person named Charles Heimley.
On the night in question this actor had had the usual trouble with the door. Heimley was not in sight, for he was evidently down in his carpenter-shop under the stage. The actor leaned over the balustrade and called out: "Charley! Charley!"
Frohman, who was just walking through the side door on his way to William Faversham's dressing-room, turned to the star and said:
"Who is calling? Does he want me?"
"Oh no, he is calling the carpenter," replied Faversham.
Frohman tapped the noisy actor on the shoulder with his stick, and said, "You mean Mr. Heimley, don't you?" He wanted the carpenter's position to be respected.
HUMOR AND ANECDOTE
T he most distinctive quality in Charles Frohman's make-up was his sense of humor. He mixed jest with life, and it enabled him to meet crisis and disaster with unflagging spirit and smiling equanimity. Like Lincoln, he often resorted to anecdote and story to illustrate his point. He summed up his whole theory of life one day when he said to Augustus Thomas:
"I am satisfied if the day gives me one good laugh."
He had a brilliancy of retort that suggested Wilde or Whistler. Once he was asked this question:
"What is the difference between metropolitan and out-of-town audiences?"
"Fifty cents," he replied.
Haddon Chambers was writing a note in Frohman's rooms at the Savoy.
"Do you spell high-ball with a hyphen?" he asked.
"No, with a siphon," responded Frohman.
Charles Dillingham, when in Frohman's employ, was ordered to hurry back to New York. From a small town up New York state he wired:
Wash-out on line. Will return as soon as possible.
Frohman promptly sent the following reply:
Never mind your wash. Buy a new shirt and come along at once.
That he could also meet failure with a joke is shown by the following incident:
He was producing a play at Atlantic City that seemed doomed from the start. In writing to a member of his family he said:
I never saw the waves so high and the receipts so low.
Frohman and Pinero were dining in the Carleton grill-room one night when a noisy person rushed up to them, slapped each on the shoulder, and said:
"Hello, 'C. F.'! Hello, 'Pin.'! I'm Hopkins."
Frohman looked up gravely and said:
"Ah, Mr. Hopkins, I can't say that I remember your name or your face, but your manner is familiar."
When Edna May married Oscar Lewisohn she gave a reception on her return from the honeymoon. She sent Charles one of the conventional engraved cards that read:
"At home Thursday from four to six."
Frohman immediately sent back the card, on which he had written, "So am I."
Once when Frohman and Dillingham were crossing to Europe on the Oceanic they had as fellow-passenger a mutual friend, Henry Dazian, the theatrical costumer, on whom Charles delighted to play pranks. On the first day out Dillingham came rushing back to Frohman with this exclamation:
"There are a couple of card-sharks on board and Dazian is playing with them. Don't you think we had better warn him?"
"No," replied Frohman. "Warn the sharks."
Some years ago Frohman sent a young actor named John Brennan out on the road in the South in "Too Much Johnson." Brennan was a Southerner, and he believed that he could do a big business in his home country. Frohman then went to London, and, when playing hearts at the Savoy one night with Dillingham, a page brought a cablegram. It was from Brennan, saying:
Unless I get two hundred dollars by next Saturday night I can't close.
Whereupon Frohman wired him:
Frohman delighted to play jokes on his close friends. In 1900, Dillingham opened the New Jersey Academy of Music with Julia Marlowe, and it was a big event. This was before the day of the tubes under the Hudson connecting New Jersey and New York. When Dillingham went down to the ferry to cross over for the opening night he found a basket of flowers from Frohman marked, "Bon voyage."
Nor could Frohman be lacking in the graceful reply. During a return engagement of "The Man from Mexico," in the Garrick Theater, William Collier became very ill with erysipelas and had to go to a hospital. The day the engagement was resumed happened to be Frohman's birthday, and Collier sent him the following cablegram:
Many happy returns from all your box offices.
He received the following answer from Frohman:
My happiest return is your return to the Garrick.
Behind all of Frohman's jest and humor was a serious outlook on life. It was mixed with big philosophy, too, as this incident will show:
He was visiting Sir George Alexander at his country house in Kent. Alexander, who is a great dog fancier, asked Frohman to accompany him while he chained up his animals. Frohman watched the performance with great interest. Then he turned to the actor-manager and said:
"I have got a lot of dogs out at my country place in America, but I never tie them up."
"Why?" asked Alexander.
"Let other people tie up the dogs. You let them out and they will always like you."
Frohman was known to his friends as a master of epigram. Some of his distinctive sayings are these:
"The best seat at a theater is the paid one."
"An ounce of imagination is worth a pound of practicality."
"The man who makes up his mind to corner things generally gets cornered."
"You cannot monopolize theaters while there are bricks and mortar."
"When I hear of another theater being built I try to build another author."
"No successful theatrical producer ever died rich. He must make money for everybody but himself."
"Great stage successes are the plays that take hold of the masses, not the classes."
Frohman could always reach the heart of a situation with a pithy phrase or reply. On one of the rare occasions when he attended a public dinner he sat at the Metropolitan Club in New York with a group of men representing a variety of interests. He condemned a certain outrageously immodest Oriental dancer, who, at the moment, was shocking New York.
"She must have a nasty mind to dance like that," said Frohman.
"Don't be too hard on her," responded a playwright who sat near by. "Consider how young she is."
"I deny that she is as young as you imply," retorted Frohman. "But I am bound to admit that she is certainly a stripling."
Frohman's mind worked with amazing swiftness. Here is an example:
At the formation of a London society called the West End Managers Association, Sir Charles Wyndham gave a luncheon at the Hyde Park Hotel to discuss and arrange preliminaries. Most of the London managers were present, including Frohman. There was a discussion as to what should be the entrance fee for each member. Various sums were discussed from £100 downward. Twenty-five pounds seemed to be the most generally accepted, when one manager said:
"Why should we not each give one night's receipts."
This was discussed for a little while, when Sir Charles said, "What do you say, Frohman?"
The American replied, "I would sooner give a night's receipts than £25."
There was a short silence, then everybody seemed to remember that he had at that moment a failure at his theater. The humor of it was hailed with a shout of laughter.
Just as he mixed sentiment in business so did Frohman infuse wit into most of his relations. He once instructed W. Lestocq, his London manager, to conduct certain negotiations for a new play with a Scotchwoman whose first play had made an enormous success in America, and whose head had been turned by it. The woman's terms were ten thousand dollars in advance and a fifteen-per-cent. royalty. When Lestocq told Frohman these terms over the telephone, all he said was this:
"Did you tell her not to slam the door?"
Frohman would always have his joke in London, as this incident shows:
He had just arrived in town and went to a bank in Charing Cross with a letter of credit, which he deposited. When he emerged he was smiling all over.
"I got one on that young man behind the counter," he said.
"How's that?" asked Lestocq, who was waiting for him.
"Well," he replied, "the young man bade me good morning and asked me if I have brought over anything good this time. I replied, 'Yes, a letter of credit on your bank, and I am waiting to see if it is any good.'"
A manager, who for present purposes must be named Smith, called on Frohman to secure the services of a star at that time under contract to the latter. His plan was to drop in on Frohman at a busy hour, quickly state the case, and, getting an affirmative answer, leave without talking terms at all. Later he knew it would be enough to recall the affirmative answer that had been given without qualification. The transaction took but a moment, just as the manager wished.
"Well, then, I may have him?" said Smith.
"Er-m-ah-er-yes—I will let you have him," replied Frohman, at the same time running over a paper before him. The visitor was already at the door.
"By the way, Smith," called out Frohman, "how much do you want me to pay you for taking him off my hands?"
Frohman was as playful as a child. Once he was riding in a petite voiture in Paris. It was a desperately hot night. The old cocher took his hat off, hung it on the lamp, and wiped his forehead. Frohman took the hat and hid it under his seat. When the driver looked for his hat it was gone. He stopped the horse and ran back two or three blocks before he could be stopped. Then he went on without it, muttering and cursing, and turning around every few moments. Watching his opportunity, Frohman slipped the hat back on the lamp, and there was the expected climax that he thoroughly enjoyed.
On one of his trips to Paris he was accompanied by Dillingham. Knowing Frohman's fondness for rich food, his friend decided to take him to dine at Durand's famous restaurant opposite the Madeleine. He even went to the cafÉ in the afternoon and told the proprietor that he was going to bring the great American manager. Great anticipation prevailed in the establishment.
That night when they got to the restaurant Frohman gave Dillingham the shock of his life by saying:
"I want to be a real American to-night. All I want is an oyster stew."
Dillingham instructed the chef how to make the stew. After long delay there was a commotion. In strode the chef, followed by two assistants, bearing aloft a gigantic silver tureen which was placed on the table and opened with great ceremony. Inside was a huge quantity of consommÉ with two lonely oysters floating on top.
Frohman regarded it as a great joke, and ever afterward when he met anybody in Paris that he did not like, he would say to them:
"If you want the finest oyster stew in the world, go to Durand's."
Frohman, who was always playing jokes on his friends, was sometimes the victim himself. He was crossing the ocean with Haddon Chambers when the latter was accosted by two enterprising young men who were arranging the ship's concert. Chambers was asked to take part, but declined. Then he had an inspiration.
"We have on board the greatest American singer of coon songs known to the stage."
"Who is that?" asked the men.
"It's Charles Frohman."
The men gasped.
"Of course we knew him as a great manager, but we never knew he could sing."
"Oh yes," said Chambers. "He is a great singer."
He pointed out Frohman and hid behind a lifeboat to await the result. Soon he heard a sputter and a shriek of rage, and the two men came racing down the boat as if pursued by some terror. Up came Frohman, his face livid with rage.
"What do you think?" he said to Chambers, who stood innocently by. "Those men had the nerve to ask me to sing a coon song. I have never been so insulted in all my life."
He was so enraged that he wrote a letter to the steamship line about it and withdrew his patronage from the company for several years in consequence.
Here is another instance when the joke was on Frohman. No one viewed the manager's immense success with keener pride or pleasure than his father, Henry Frohman. As theater after theater came under the son's direction the parent could gratify his great passion for giving people free passes to its fullest extent. He would appear at the offices at the Empire Theater with his pockets bulging with home-made cigars. The men in the office always accepted the cigars, but never smoked them. But they gave him all the passes he wanted.
One day the father stopped in to see Charles. It was a raw spring day. Charles remarked that the overcoat Henry wore was too thin.
"Go to my tailor and get an overcoat," he said.
"Not much," said the father. "Your tailor is too expensive. He robs you. He wouldn't make one under seventy-five dollars, and I never pay more than twenty dollars."
Charles's eye twinkled. He said, quickly:
"You are mistaken. My tailor will make you a coat for twenty dollars. Go down and get one."
Father went down to the fashionable Fifth Avenue tailor. Meanwhile Frohman called him up and gave instructions to make a coat for his father at a very low price and have the difference charged to him.
In an hour Henry Frohman came back all excitement. "I am a real business man," he said. "I persuaded that tailor of yours to make me an overcoat for twenty dollars."
Charles immediately gave him the twenty dollars and sent the tailor a check for the difference between that and the real price, which was ninety-five dollars. He dismissed the matter from his mind.
A few days later Charles had another visit from his father. This time he was in high glee. He could hardly wait to tell the great news.
"You've often said I wasn't a good business man," he told his son. "Well, I can prove to you that I am. The other night one of my friends admired my new overcoat so much that I sold it to him for thirty-five dollars."
Charles said nothing, but had to pay for another one-hundred-and-fifteen-dollar overcoat because he did not want to shatter his father's illusion.
Here is still another. When Frohman got back to New York from a trip few things interested him so much as a good dinner. It always wiped out the memory of hard times or unpleasant experiences. Once he returned from a costly visit to the West. On Broadway he met an old-time comedian who had been in one of his companies. His greeting was cordial.
"And now, 'C. F.,'" said the comedian, "you've got to come to dinner with me. We have a new club, for actors only, and we have the best roast beef in town. We make a specialty of a substantial, homelike dinner. Come right along."
The club rooms were over a saloon on the west side of Broadway, between Thirty-first and Thirty-second streets. The two went up to the room and sat down. The actor ordered dinner for two. The waiter went away and Frohman's spirits began to rise.
"It's the best roast beef in New York, I tell you," said the host, by way of an appetizer.
Then the waiter reappeared, but not with the food. He was visibly embarrassed.
"Sorry, sir," he said to the comedian, "but the steward tells me that you can't have dinner to-night. He says you were posted to-day, and that you can't be served again until everything is settled."
Charles used to tell this story and say that he never had such an appetite for roast beef as he did when he rose from that club table to go out again into Broadway.
Frohman was always interested in mechanical things. When the phonograph was first put on the market he had one in his office at 1127 Broadway. Once in London he found a mechanical tiger that growled, walked, and even clawed. He enjoyed watching it crouch and spring.
He took it with him on the steamer back to New York, and played with it on the deck. One day Richard Croker, who was a fellow-passenger, came along and became interested in the toy, whereupon Frohman showed him how it worked.
Frohman told of this episode with great satisfaction. He would always end his description by saying:
"Fancy showing the boss of Tammany Hall how to work a tiger!"
The extraordinary affinity that existed between Frohman and a small group of intimates was shown by an incident that occurred on shipboard. He and Dillingham were on their way to Europe. They were playing checkers in the smoking-room when an impertinent, pushing American came up and half hung himself over the table. Frohman said nothing, but made a very ridiculous move. Dillingham followed suit.
"What chumps you are!" said the interloper, and went away.
Frohman wanted to get rid of the man without saying anything. This was his way of doing it, and it succeeded.
Frohman was always having queer adventures out of which he spun the most amazing yarns. This is an experience that he liked to recount:
When Augustus Thomas had an apartment in Paris he received a visit from Frohman. The flat was five flights up, but there was an elevator that worked by pushing a button.
There was a ring at the bell of the Thomas apartment. When the playwright opened the door he found Frohman gasping for breath, and he sank exhausted on a settee.
"I walked up," he managed to say. When he was able to talk Thomas said to him:
"Why in Heaven's name didn't you use the elevator?"
Frohman replied:
"I couldn't make the woman down-stairs understand what I wanted. She made motions and showed me a little door, but I thought she had designs on my life, so I preferred to walk."
That Charles Frohman had the happy faculty of saying the right thing and saying it gracefully is well illustrated by the following:
When the beautiful Scala Theater in London was opened it made such a sensation that Frohman asked Lestocq if he could not inspect it. The proprietor, Dr. Distin Maddick, being an old friend of Lestocq, the latter called informally with Frohman. While they were admiring the white stone and brass interior, Maddick was suddenly called away. He returned in a few minutes to say that a manager friend from Edinburgh, hearing that Frohman was in the theater, had come in and asked to be introduced. Of course Frohman acquiesced. After a little talk the gentleman said:
"We have no beautiful theater like this in Edinburgh."
Quickly Frohman replied, with his fascinating smile, "No, but you have Edinburgh."
Frohman hated exercise. In this he had a great community of interest with Mark Twain.
On Sunday mornings, when he was out at his farm at White Plains, he would read all the dramatic news in the papers, and then he searched them carefully for items about people who had died from over-exertion. When he found one he was greatly pleased, and always sent it to Mark Twain.
In order to get him to exercise Dillingham once took him for a stroll and pretended to be lost. The second time he tried this, however, Frohman discovered the subterfuge and refused to go walking.
Frohman could pack a world of meaning in a word or a sentence. As Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree once expressed it, "he was witty with a dry form of humor that takes your breath away with its suddenness." He gave an example of this with Tree one day in London. They were discussing French plays for America. The question of American taste came up. Frohman described certain primitive effects which delighted our audiences.
"Ah," said Tree, "America can stand that sort of thing. It is a new country."
"Was," came the laconic reply.
Frohman's retiring disposition and dislike for putting himself forward was one of his chief traits. An illustration occurred when he controlled the Garden Theater. It was during the presentation of Stephen Phillips's play "Ulysses." There was a new man on the door one night when Frohman dropped into the theater for a few minutes' look at the play. The doorkeeper did not know the producer, his own employer, and would not allow him to enter without a ticket. Instead of storming about the lobby, Frohman simply walked quickly out of the door, around to the stage entrance and through the theater. At the end of the act he walked out of the main entrance. The doorkeeper, recognizing him as the man he had "turned down," was about to ask him how he got in when the manager of the house interposed.
He liked surprise and contrast. On one occasion his old chum, Anson Pond, wanted to talk over business matters with him.
"Let's go to a quiet place," said Frohman.
They went to a Childs restaurant. Before their luncheon was served an intoxicated man came in, ordered a plate of beans, and then exploded a package of fire-crackers on it.
When he went to pay his check Frohman's comment was:
"I didn't know they had changed the date of the Fourth of July."
No other theatrical manager in New York had a better news sense than Frohman. He knew just what a paper wanted, and all the matter sent out from his offices was short, newsy, and direct. He knew how to shape a big "story," and could offhand dictate an interview that was all "meat." While he had little time in New York to greet newspaper men personally, he was especially cordial to all that came to see him on the road. He never went out of town without visiting some of the older critics he had known throughout his career, men like George P. Goodale of The Detroit Free Press, and Montgomery Phister of The Commercial Tribune in Cincinnati. When in Baltimore he invariably gave an hour for a long interview to Walter E. McCann, the critic of The News of that city.
Frohman knew a newspaper's wants and limitations as far as theatrical matter was concerned. He knew just how far his press representative could be expected to go, and what his obstacles were.
On one occasion in Cleveland, when he was producing a play by Clyde Fitch for the late Clara Bloodgood, the chief press representative from the New York office was taken along to look after the work. The press agent sent stories to all of the papers for Saturday morning's publication, and to his dismay not a line was used. Feeling that Frohman would be hurt about it (for Charles was hurt and not angered by the failure of any of his men), he wrote a note to his chief, stating that he was sorry nothing had been used in print and did not understand it.
At lunch that day Frohman remarked to the agent:
"Why did you send me that note about the papers?"
"Because," replied the young man, "I feared that you would think I had not attended to my work."
"Well," said Frohman, "you sent matter to all the papers, didn't you?"
"Yes," said the agent, "all of them, of course."
"Then," said the manager, "what else could you do? You are not running the papers."
It was not only an evidence of Frohman's fairness, but an instance of his knowledge of newspapers.
Frohman had a remarkable memory. One night during Collier's London engagement he asked the actor to meet him at the Savoy the next morning at nine o'clock. Collier, who had been playing bridge until dawn, showed up at the appointed time, whereupon Frohman said:
"How did you do it?"
"I sat up for it," said Collier.
Five years later Frohman asked Collier one night to meet him at nine o'clock the next morning. Then he added, quickly:
"You can sit up for it."
Frohman got much amusement out of a butler named Max who was employed at his house at White Plains. One of the most original episodes in which this man figured happened on the opening night of "Catherine" at the Garrick Theater.
The play was a little thin, and the whole action depended on a love scene in the third act, in which the hero, a young swell played by J. M. Holland, on telling his mother that he loved a humble girl, gets the unexpected admonition to go and be happy with her. Dillingham had two seats well down in the orchestra. Frohman was to sit in the back of a box. Just before the curtain went up Frohman said to Dillingham, who then had a house on Twenty-fourth Street, "Let us have some of those nice little lamb chops and peas down at your house after the play."
"All right," said Dillingham, and he telephoned the instructions to Max, who had been drafted for town service.
The curtain went up, the first two acts went off all right, and the house was dark for the third act. The seat alongside Dillingham was vacated, so Frohman came down and occupied it. The curtain went up and the action of the play progressed. The great scene which was to carry it was about to begin when Dillingham heard a loud thump, thump, thump down the aisle. Frohman turned to Dillingham and said:
"What in the name of Heaven is that? The play is ruined!"
The thump, thump, thump continued, coming nearer. Just in the middle of the act a German voice spoke up and said:
"Oxkuse me, Meester Dillingham, dere ain't a lam' chop in der house."
It was Max, the butler, who, worried over what seemed the imminent failure of the midnight repast, had come to report to headquarters for further instructions. Fortunately the interruption passed unnoticed and the play made quite a hit.
On one occasion Nat C. Goodwin invited him to the Goodwin residence in West End Avenue, New York. The comedian wanted to place himself under the management of his guest. Goodwin stated the case, and Frohman then asked how remunerative his last season had been. The host produced his books. After a careful examination Frohman remarked, with a smile:
"My dear boy, you don't require a manager. What you need is a lawyer."
THE MAN FROHMAN
G reat as producer, star-maker, and conqueror of two stage-worlds, Charles Frohman was greater as a human being. Like Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, he was more than a man—he was an institution. His quiet courage, his unaffected simplicity, his rare understanding, his ripe philosophy, his uncanny penetration—above all, his abundant humor—made him a figure of fascinating and incessant interest.
No trait of Charles Frohman was more highly developed than his shyness. He was known as "The Great Unphotographed." The only time during the last twenty-five years of his life that he sat for a photograph was when he had to get a picture for his passport, and this picture went to a watery grave with him. Behind his prejudice against being photographed was a perfectly definite reason, which he once explained as follows:
"I once knew a theatrical manager whose prospects were very bright. He became a victim of the camera. Fine pictures of him were made and stuck up on the walls everywhere. He used to spend more time looking at these pictures of himself than he did attending to his business. He made a miserable failure. I was quite a young man when I heard of this, but it made a great impression on me. I resolved then never to have my photograph taken if I could help it."
Once when Frohman and A. L. Erlanger were in London he received the usual request to be photographed by a newspaper camera man. The two magnates looked something alike in that they had a more or less Napoleonic cast of face. Frohman, who always saw a joke in everything, hatched a scheme by which Erlanger was to be photographed for him. The plan worked admirably, and pictures of Erlanger suddenly began to appear all over London labeled "Charles Frohman."
He could be gracious, however, in his refusal to be photographed. One bright afternoon he was watching the races at Henley when he was approached by R. W. MacFarlane, of New York, who had been on the Frohman staff. MacFarlane asked if he could take a photograph of Frohman and give it to his niece, who was traveling with him.
"No," said the manager, "but you can take a picture of your niece and I will pose her for it."
Frohman's shyness led to what is in many respects the most remarkable of the countless anecdotes about him. It grew out of his illness. In 1913 he had a severe attack of neuritis in London. Although his friends urged him to go and see a doctor, he steadfastly refused. He dreaded physicians just as he dreaded photographers.
One day Barrie came to see him at his rooms at the Savoy. Frohman was in such intense pain that the Scotch author said:
"Frohman, it is absurd for you not to see a doctor. You simply must have medical attention. As a matter of fact, I have already made an engagement for you to see Robson-Roose, the great nerve specialist, at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
Frohman, who accepted whatever Barrie said, acquiesced. Next day, when half-past three o'clock came, the manager was almost in a state of panic. He said to Dillingham, who was with him:
"Dillingham, you know how I hate to go to see doctors. You also know what is the matter with me. Why don't you go as my understudy and tell the doctor what is the matter with you? He will give you a nice little prescription or advise you to go to the Riviera or Carlsbad."
"All right," said Dillingham, who adored his friend. "I'll do what you say."
Promptly at four o'clock Dillingham showed up at the great specialist's office and said he was Frohman. He underwent a drastic cross-examination. After which he was asked to remove his clothes, was subjected to the most strenuous massage treatment, and, to cap it all, was given an electric bath that reduced him almost to a wreck. He had entered the doctor's office in the best of health, He emerged from it worn and weary.
When he staggered into Frohman's rooms two hours later and told his tale of woe, Frohman laughed so heartily over the episode that he was a well man the next day.
Frohman had a great fund of pithy sayings, remarkable for their brevity. With these he indicated his wishes to his associates. His charm of manner, his quick insight into a situation, and his influence over the minds of others were great factors in the accomplishment of his end, often attaining the obviously impossible.
For example, when he would tell his business manager to negotiate a business matter with a man, and it would come to a point where there would be a deadlock, he would say:
"I will see him. Ask him to come down to my hotel."
The next morning he would walk into the office with a smile on his face, and the first thing he would say perhaps would be:
"I fixed it up all right yesterday; it is going your way."
"You are a wonder!" his associates would exclaim.
"Oh no! I just talked to him," was the reply.
Frohman disliked formality. He wanted to go straight to the heart of a thing and have it over with. Somebody once asked him why he did not join the Masonic order. He said:
"I would like to very much if I could just write a check and not bother with all the ceremony."
Although he never spoke of his great power in the profession, occasionally there was a glimpse of how he felt about it as this incident shows:
Once, when Frohman and Paul Potter were coming back from Atlantic City, Potter picked up a theatrical paper and said:
"Shall I read you the theatrical news?"
"No," said Frohman. "I make theatrical news."
In that supreme test of a man's character—his attitude toward money—he shone. Though his enterprises involved millions, Frohman had an extraordinary disregard of money. He felt its power, but he never idolized it. To him it was a means to an end. He summed up his whole attitude one day when he said:
"My work is to produce plays that succeed, so that I can produce plays that will not succeed. That is why I must have money.
"What I would really like to do is to produce a wonderful something to which I would only go myself. My pleasure would be in seeing a remarkable performance that nobody else could see. But I can't do that. The next best thing is to produce something for the few critical people. That is what I'm trying for. I have to work through the commercial—it is the white heat through which the artistic in me has to come." It was his answer to the oft-made charge of "commercialism."
No one, perhaps, has summed up this money attitude of Frohman's better than George Bernard Shaw, who said of him:
"There is a prevalent impression that Charles Frohman is a hard-headed American man of business who would not look at anything that is not likely to pay. On the contrary, he is the most wildly romantic and adventurous man of my acquaintance. As Charles XII. became an excellent soldier because of his passion for putting himself in the way of being killed, so Charles Frohman became a famous manager through his passion for putting himself in the way of being ruined."
In many respects Frohman's feeling about money was almost childlike. He left all financial details to his subordinates. All he wanted to do was to produce plays and be let alone. Yet he had an infinite respect for the man to whom he had to pay a large sum. He felt that the actor or author who could command it was invested with peculiar significance. Upon himself he spent little. He once said:
"All I want is a good meal, a good cigar, good clothes, a good bed to sleep in, and freedom to produce whatever plays I like."
He was a magnificent loser. Failure never disturbed him. When he saw that a piece was doomed he indulged in no obituary talk. "Let's go to the next," he said, and on he went.
He lost in the same princely way that he spent. The case of "Thermidor" will illustrate. He spent not less than thirty thousand dollars on this production. Yet the moment the curtain went down he realized it was a failure. He stood at one side of the wings and Miss Marbury, who had induced him to put the play on, was at the other. With the fall of the curtain Frohman moved smilingly among his actors with no trace of disappointment on his face. But when he met Miss Marbury on the other side of the stage he said:
"Well, I suppose we have got a magnificent frost. We'll just write this off and forget it."
Frohman played with the theater as if it were a huge game. Like life itself, it was a great adventure. In the parlance of Wall Street, he was a "bull," for he was always raising salaries and royalties. Somebody once said of him:
"What a shame that Frohman works so hard! He never had a day's fun in his life."
"You are very much mistaken," said one of his friends. "His whole life is full of it. He gets his chief fun out of his work." Indeed, work and humor were in reality the great things with him.
One of the best epigrams ever made about Frohman's extravagance was this:
"Give Charles Frohman a check-book and he will lose money on any production."
To say that his word was his bond is to repeat one of the trite tributes to him. But it was nevertheless very true. Often in discussing a business arrangement with his representatives he would say:
"Did I say that?" On being told that he did, he would invariably reply, "Then it must stand at that."
On one of these occasions he said:
"I have only one thing of value to me, and that is my word. I will keep that until I am broke and then I'll jump overboard."
In starting a new venture his method was first to ascertain not how much it would enrich him, but how much it would cost. Thus fortified, he entered into it with enthusiasm, and if he lost he never murmured. Having settled a thing, for good or ill, he would never refer to the negotiations or anything that might have led up to the culmination of that business, either for or against. If his attention was afterward called to it, he would quietly say, "That's yesterday," and in this way indicate that he did not wish the matter referred to again.
Frohman's great desire was to make money for other people. One of his young authors had had a bad failure in London and was very much depressed. Frohman finally worked out a plan to revive his spirits and recoup his finances. He took Alfred Sutro in his confidence and invited the young man to dine. He was like a child, eager to do something good and pleasing. All through the dinner he chaffed the young man, who visibly grew more despondent. Finally he said:
"I have decided to revive a very good play, and I have booked an American tour for it." Then he told the young man that this play was his first success.
Charles Frohman's ignorance of money matters was proverbial. One day just as he was about to take the train for Washington a friend stopped him and said:
"I've got a great investment for you."
"No," said Frohman, "I never invest in anything except theaters."
"But this is the real thing. The only possible fact that can spoil it is war, and we are widely remote from war."
In order to get rid of the man Frohman consented to a modest investment. When he got to Washington the first thing that greeted him was the announcement that we were on the verge of war with Mexico.
William Harris once gently remonstrated with Frohman for such lavish expenditure of money.
"It's simply awful, Charley, the way you spend money," he said.
Frohman smiled and said:
"It would be awful if I lost a finger or a foot, but spending money on the things that you want to do and enjoy doing is never money wasted."
At one time he owed a great deal of money to actors and printers, but he always scorned all suggestions that he go through bankruptcy and wipe these claims out. He said he would pay in full some day, and he did, with interest. An actor to whom he owed some four hundred dollars came to him and offered to settle the claim for one hundred dollars. Frohman said he did not believe in taking advantage of a man like that. He advanced the actor one hundred dollars, and eventually paid the other three hundred dollars.
Like every great man, Frohman's tastes were simple. He always wore clothes of one pattern, and the style seldom varied. He wore no jewelry except a Napoleonic ring on his little finger.
Frohman never married. A friend once asked him why he had chosen to be a bachelor.
"My dear fellow," he answered, "had I possessed a wife and family I could never have taken the risks which, as a theatrical manager, I am constantly called upon to do."
He lived, in truth, for and by the theater; it was his world. His heart was in his profession, and no enterprise was too daring, no venture too perilous, to prevent him from boldly facing it if he believed the step was expected of him.
To his intimates Frohman was always known as "C. F." These were the magic initials that opened or shut the doors to theatrical fame and fortune.
Frohman loved sweet things to eat. Pies were his particular fondness, and he never traveled without a box of candy. As he read plays he munched chocolates. He ate with a sort of Johnsonian avidity. When he went to Europe some of his friends, who knew his tastes well, sent him crates of pies instead of flowers or books.
He shared this fondness for sweets with Clyde Fitch. They did not dare to eat as much pastry as they liked before others, so they often retired to Frohman's rooms at Sherry's or to Fitch's house on Fortieth Street, in New York, and had a dessert orgy.
Frohman almost invariably ate as he worked in his office. When people saw sandwiches piled upon his table, he would say:
"A rehearsal accompanied by a sandwich is progress, but a rehearsal interrupted by a meal is delay."
Frohman's letters to his intimates were characteristic. He always wrote them with a blue pencil, and on whatever scrap of paper happened to be at hand. Often it was a sheet of yellow scratch-paper, sometimes the back of an envelope. He wrote as he talked, in quick, epigrammatic sentences. Like Barrie, he wrote one of the most indecipherable of hands. Frequently, instead of a note, he drew a picture to express a sentiment or convey an invitation. One reason for this was that the man saw all life in terms of the theater. It was a series of scenes.
With regard to home life, Frohman had none. He always dwelt in apartments in New York. The only two places where he really relaxed were at Marlow, in England, and at his country place near White Plains in Westchester County, New York. He shared the ownership of this establishment with Dillingham. It entered largely into his plans. Here his few intimates, like Paul Potter, Haddon Chambers, William Gillette, and Augustus Thomas, came and talked over plays and productions. Here, too, he kept vigil on the snowy night when London was to pass judgment on the first production of "Peter Pan" on any stage.
The way he came to acquire an interest in the White Plains house is typical of the man and his methods. Dillingham had bought the place. One day Frohman and Gillette lunched with him there. Frohman was immensely taken with the establishment. He liked the lawn, the garden, the trees, and the aloofness. The three men sat at a round table. Frohman beamed and said:
"This is the place for me. I want to sit at the head of this table." It was his way of saying that he wanted to acquire an ownership in it, and from that time on he was a co-proprietor.
With characteristic generosity he insisted upon paying two-thirds of the expenses. Then, in his usual lavish fashion, he had it remodeled. He wanted a porch built. Instead of engaging the village carpenter, who could have done it very well, he employed the most famous architects in the country and spent thirty thousand dollars. It was the Frohman way.
Out of the Frohman ownership of the White Plains house came one of the many Frohman jests. Its conduct was so expensive that Frohman one day said to Dillingham, "Let's rent a theater and make it pay for the maintenance of the house."
Frohman then leased the Garrick, but instead of making money on it he lost heavily.
The factotum at White Plains was the German Max, whom Dillingham had brought over from the Savoy in London, where he was a waiter. Max became the center of many amusing incidents. One has already been related.
One night Max secured some fine watermelons. As he came through the door with one of them he slipped and dropped it. He repeated this performance with the second melon. Frohman regarded it as a great joke, and roared with laughter. Just then Gillette was announced.
"Now," said Frohman, quietly, to Dillingham, "we will have Max bring in a watermelon, but I want him to drop it." In order to insure the success of the trick they stretched a string at the door so that Max would be sure to fall. Then they ordered the melon, and Max appeared, bearing it aloft. He fell, however, before he got to the string, and the joke was saved.
All this jest and joke was part of the game of life as Frohman played it. Whatever the cost, there is no doubt that the charming white-and-green cottage up in the Westchester valley gave him hours of relaxation and ease that were among the pleasantest of his life.
This house at White Plains was indirectly the means through which Dillingham branched out as an independent manager. At this time he was in Frohman's employ. One day he said to himself:
"This establishment is costing so much that I will have to send out some companies of my own."
He thereupon got "The Red Mill," acquired Montgomery and Stone, and thus began a new and brilliant managerial career. No one rejoiced over Dillingham's success more than Frohman. When Dillingham opened his Globe Theater in New York Frohman addressed a cable to "Charles Dillingham, Globe Theater, U. S. A."
It is a curious fact about Charles Frohman that though he had millions of dollars at stake, he was never a defendant in litigation. Yet through him foreign authors were enabled to protect their plays from the customary piracy by the memorization of parts. It used to be accepted that if a man went to a play and memorized its speeches he could produce it without paying royalty. N. S. Wood did this with a play called "The World," that Frohman produced. He took the matter to court as a test case and won.
Charles was not good at remembering people's names or their addresses. This is why he was much dependent upon his stenographers. His secretary in England, Miss Frances Slater, was so extraordinary in anticipating his words that he always called her "The Wonder." He used to say:
"Miss Slater, I want to write to the man around the corner," which turned out to be Arthur Bouclier, the manager of the Garrick Theater, which was not really around the corner; but when the subject of the letter came to be dictated, Miss Slater knew whom he meant. He would never express any surprise on these occasions when the letter handed him to sign contained the right name and address. He seemed to take it as a matter of course.
One day Frohman entered his London office and said to Lestocq:
"You would never guess where I have just come from. I have been to your Westminster Abbey."
Lestocq expressed surprise, whereupon Frohman continued:
"Yes, I just walked in and spoke to a man in a gown and said, 'Where is Mr. Irving buried?' He showed me, and I stood there for a few minutes, said a couple of things, and came on here."
Frohman's office at the Empire Theater was characteristic of the man himself. It was a room of considerable proportions, with the atmosphere of a study. It was lined with rather low book-shelves, on which stood the bound copies of the plays he had produced. Interspersed was a complete set of Lincoln's speeches and letters.
On one side was a large stone fireplace; in a corner stood a grand piano; the center was dominated by a simple, flat-topped desk, across which much of the traffic of the American theater passed.
Near at hand was a low and luxurious couch. Here Frohman sat cross-legged and listened to plays. This performance was a sort of sacred rite, and was always observed behind locked doors. No Frohman employee would think of intruding upon his chief at such a time.
Here, as in London, Frohman was surrounded by pictures of his stars. Dominating them was J. W. Alexander's fine painting of Miss Adams in "L'Aiglon." On a shelf stood a bust of John Drew. There were portraits of playwrights, too. A photograph of Clyde Fitch had this inscription:
"To C. F. from c. f."
There was only one real art object in the office, a magnificent marble bust of Napoleon, whom Frohman greatly admired. He was always pleased when he was told that he looked like the Man of Destiny.
His sense of personal modesty was a very genuine thing. Shortly before he sailed on the fatal trip he had a request from a magazine writer who wanted to write the story of his life. He sent back a vigorous refusal to co-operate, saying, among other things:
"It is most obnoxious to me in every way. It is forcing oneself on the public so far as I am concerned, and I don't want that, and, besides, they are not interested. It is only for the great men of our country. It is not for me. It looks like cheek and presumption on my part, because it is, and I ask you not to go on with it."
He believed in system. One day he said:
"We must have on file in our office the complete record of every first-class theater in the United States, together with the name of every dramatic editor and bill-poster." Out of this grew the famous "Theatrical Guide" compiled by Julius Cahn.
Charles always provided special sleepers for his company when they had to leave early in the morning. He felt that it was an imposition to make the people go to bed late after a play and rise at five or six to get a train. It not only expressed his kindness, but also his good business sense in keeping his people satisfied and efficient.
One of Frohman's eccentricities was that he never carried a watch. On being asked why he never carried a timepiece, he replied, tersely, "Everybody else carries a watch," meaning that if he wanted to find out the time of day he could do it more quickly by inquiring of his personal or business associates than by looking for a watch that he may have forgotten to wind up.
"Frohman," said a friend, "made it a rule in life not to do anything that he could hire somebody else to do, thus leaving himself all the time possible for those things that he alone could do. He probably figured it out that if he carried a watch he would be obliged to spend a certain amount of time each day winding it.
"And on the same principle he refused to worry as to whether he left his umbrella behind or not, by simply not carrying one. If he couldn't get a cab—a rare occurrence, doubtless, considering the beaten track of his travel—he preferred to walk in the rain."
Some time before his death Frohman said to a distinguished dramatist who is one of his closest friends:
"Whenever I make a rule I never violate it."
A visitor to his place at White Plains came away after spending a night there, and declared that the "real Charles Frohman had three dissipations—he smokes all day, he reads plays all night, and—" He stopped.
"What is it?" was the breathless query.
"He plays croquet."
Frohman had a rare gift for publicity. More than once he turned what seemed to be a complete failure into success. An experience with "Jane" will reveal this side of his versatility.
The bright little comedy hung fire for a while. One reason was that newspaper criticism in New York had been rather unfavorable. Conspicuous among the unfriendly notices was one in the Herald which was headed, "Jane Won't Go."
Frohman immediately capitalized this line. He had thousands of dodgers stuck up all over New York. They contained three sentences, which read:
"Jane won't go."
Of course not.
She's come to stay.
From that time on the piece grew in popularity and receipts and became a success.
In summing up the qualities that made Frohman great, one finds, in the last analysis, that he had two in common with J. P. Morgan and the other dynamic leaders of men. One was an incisive, almost uncanny, ability to probe into the hearts of men, strip away the superficial, and find the real substance.
His experience with Clyde Fitch emphasized this to a remarkable degree. Personally no two men could have been more opposite. One was the product of democracy, buoyant and self-made, while the other represented an intellectual, almost effeminate, aristocracy. Yet nearly from the start Frohman perceived the bigness of vision and the profound understanding that lurked behind Fitch's almost superficial exterior.
In common, too, with Morgan, Roosevelt, and others of the same type, Frohman had an extraordinary quality of unconscious hypnotism. Men who came to him in anger went away in satisfied peace. They succumbed to what was an overwhelming and compelling personality.
He proved this in the handling of his women stars. They combined a group of varied and conflicting temperaments. Each wanted a separate and distinct place in his affections, and each got it. It was part of the genius of the man to make each of his close associates feel that he or she had a definite niche apart. His was the perfecting understanding, and no one better expressed it than Ethel Barrymore, who said, "To try to explain something to Charles Frohman was to insult him."
"WHY FEAR DEATH?"
A nd now the final phase.
The last years of Charles Frohman's life were racked with physical pain that strained his courageous philosophy to the utmost. Yet he faced this almost incessant travail just as he had faced all other emergencies—with composure.
One day in 1912 he fell on the porch of the house at White Plains and hurt his right knee. It gave him considerable trouble. At first he believed that it was only a bad bruise. In a few days articular rheumatism developed. It affected all of his joints, and it held him in a thrall of agony until the end of his life.
Shortly after his return to the city (he now lived at the Hotel Knickerbocker) he was compelled to take to his bed. For over six months he was a prisoner in his apartment, suffering tortures. Yet from this pain-racked post he tried to direct his large affairs. There was a telephone at his bedside, and he used it until weakness prevented him from holding the receiver.
He could not go to the theater, so the theater was brought to him. More than one preliminary rehearsal was held in his drawing-room. This was particularly true of musical pieces. The music distracted him from his pain.
Though prostrate with pain, his dogged determination to keep on doing things held. Barrie sent him the manuscript of a skit called "A Slice of Life." It was a brilliant satire on the modern play. Frohman picked Ethel Barrymore (who was then playing in "Cousin Kate" at the Empire), John Barrymore, and Hattie Williams to do it, and the rehearsals were held in the manager's rooms at the Knickerbocker.
Frohman was as much interested in this one-act piece as if it had been a five-act drama. His absorption in it helped to divert his mind from the pain that had sadly reduced the once rotund body.
With "A Slice of Life" he introduced another one of the many innovations that he brought to the stage. The play was projected as a surprise. No announcement of title was made. The advertisements simply stated that Charles Frohman would present "A Novelty" at the Empire Theater at eight o'clock on a certain evening.
Frohman was unable to attend the opening performance, so he wrote a little speech which was spoken by William Seymour. The speech was rehearsed as carefully as the play. A dozen times the stage-director delivered it before his chief, who indicated the various phrases to be emphasized.
It was during the era of the New Theater when the so-called "advanced drama" was much exploited. Frohman had little patience with this sort of dramatic thing. The little speech conveys something of his satirical feeling about the millionaire-endowed theatrical project which was then agitating New York.
Here is the speech as Frohman wrote it:
Ladies and Gentlemen:—My appearance here to-night is by way of apology. I am here representing Mr. Charles Frohman—you may have heard of him—the manager of this theater, the Empire.
His idea in announcing a novelty in connection with Miss Barrymore's play, "Cousin Kate," was really for the purpose of getting you here once in time for the ringing up of the curtain. This will be a special performance of a play to be given by a few rising members of the School of Acting connected with this theater, the Empire, of which he is proud—very proud. It is not an old modern play, but what is called to-day "The Advanced Drama," made possible here to-night by the momentary holiday of the New Theater, and it is called "A Slice of Life."
During those desperate days when, like Heinrich Heine, he seemed to be lying in a "mattress grave," his dauntless humor never forsook him, as this little incident will show: Some years previous, Gillette suffered a breakdown from overwork. When the actor-playwright went to his home at Hartford to recuperate his sister remonstrated with him.
"You must stop work for a long while," she said. "That man Frohman is killing you." Gillette afterward told Frohman about it.
Frohman now lay on a bed of agony, and Gillette came to see him. The sick man remembered the episode of the long ago, and said, weakly, to his visitor:
"Gillette, tell your sister that you are killing me."
With the martyrdom of incessant pain came a ripening of the man's character. Frohman developed a great admiration for Lincoln. Often he would ask Gillette to read him the famous "Gettysburg Address." Simple, haunting melodies like "The Lost Chord" took hold of him. Marie Doro was frequently summoned to play it for him on the piano. Although his courage did not falter, he looked upon men and events with a larger and deeper philosophy.
During that first critical stage of the rheumatism he sank very low. His two devoted friends, Dillingham and Paul Potter, came to him daily. Each had his regular watch. Dillingham came in the morning and read and talked with the invalid for hours. He managed to bring a new story or a fresh joke every day.
Potter reported at nine in the evening and remained until two o'clock in the morning, or at whatever hour sleep came to the relief of the sick man. One of the compensations of those long vigils was the phonograph. Frohman was very fond of a tune called "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." The nurse would put this record in the machine and then leave. When it ran out, Potter, who never could learn how to renew the instrument, simply turned the crank again. There were many nights when Frohman listened to this famous rag-time song not less than twenty times. But he did not mind it.
In his illness Frohman was like a child. He was afraid of the night. He begged Potter to tell him stories, and the author of so many plays spun and unfolded weird and wonderful tales of travel and adventure. Like a child, too, Frohman kept on saying, "More, more," and often Potter went on talking into the dawn.
Potter, like all his comrades in that small and devoted group of Frohman intimates, did his utmost to shield his friend from hurt. When Frohman launched a new play during those bedridden days Potter would wait until the so-called "bull-dog" editions of the morning papers (the very earliest ones) were out. Then he would go down to the street and get them. If the notice was favorable he would read it to Frohman. If it was unfriendly Potter would say that the paper was not yet out, preferring that the manager read the bad news when it was broad daylight and it could not interfere with his sleep.
The humor and comradeship which always marked Frohman's close personal relations were not lacking in those nights when the life of the valiant little man hung by a thread. When all other means of inducing sleep failed, Potter found a sure cure for insomnia.
"Just as soon as I talked to Frohman about my own dramatic projects," he says, "he would fall asleep. So, when the night grew long and the travel stories failed, and even 'Alexander's Rag-Time Band' grew stale, I would start off by saying: 'I have a new play in mind. This is the way the plot goes.' Then Frohman's eyes would close; before long he would be asleep, and I crept noiselessly out."
Occasionally during those long conflicts with pain Frohman saw through the glass darkly. His intense and constant suffering, for the time, put iron into his well-nigh indomitable soul.
"I'm all in," he would say to Potter. "The luck is against me. The star system has killed my judgment. I no longer know a good play from a bad. The sooner they 'scrap' me the better."
His thin fingers tapped on the bedspread, and, like Colonel Newcome, he awaited the Schoolmaster's final call.
"You and I," he would continue, "have seen our period out. What comes next on the American stage? Cheap prices, I suppose. Best seats everywhere for a dollar, or even fifty cents; with musical shows alone excepted. Authors' royalties cut to ribbons; actors' salaries pared to nothing. Popular drama, bloody, murderous, ousting drawing-room comedy. Crook plays, shop-girl plays, slangy American farces, nude women invading the auditorium as in Paris."
"And then?" asked Potter.
"Chaos," said he. "Fortunately you and I won't live to see it. Turn on the phonograph and let 'Alexander's Rag-time Band' cheer us up."
He got well enough to walk around with a stick, and with movement came a return of the old enthusiasm. A man of less indomitable will would have succumbed and become a permanent invalid. Not so with Frohman. He even got humor out of his misfortune, because he called his cane his "wife." He became a familiar sight on that part of Broadway between the Knickerbocker Hotel and the Empire Theater as he walked to and fro. It was about all the walking he could do.
He kept on producing plays, and despite the physical hardships under which he labored he attended and conducted rehearsals. With the pain settling in him more and more, he believed himself incurable. Yet less than four people knew that he felt that the old titanic power was gone, never to return.
The great war, on whose stupendous altar he was to be an innocent victim, affected him strangely. The horror, the tragedy, the wantonness of it all touched him mightily. Indeed, it seemed to be an obsession with him, and he talked about it constantly, unmindful of the fact that the cruel destiny that was shaping its bloody course had also marked him for death.
Early during the war he saw some verses that made a deep impression on him. They were called "In the Ambulance," and related to the experience of a wounded soldier. He learned them by heart, and he never tired of repeating them. They ran like this:
"Two rows of cabbages;
Two of curly greens;
Two rows of early peas;
Two of kidney-beans."
That's what he's muttering,
Making such a song,
Keeping all the chaps awake
The whole night long.
Both his legs are shot away,
And his head is light,
So he keeps on muttering
All the blessed night:
"Two rows of cabbages;
Two of curly greens;
Two rows of early peas,
And two of kidney-beans."
It was Frohman's intense feeling about the war, that led him to produce "The Hyphen." Its rejection by the public hurt him unspeakably. Yet he regarded the fate of the play as just one more phase of the big game of life. He smiled and went his way.
The rheumatism still oppressed him, but he turned his face resolutely toward the future. War or peace, pain or relief, he was not to be deprived of his annual trip to England. He was involved in some litigation that required his presence in London. Besides, the city by the Thames called to him, and behind this call was the appeal of old and loved associations. With all his wonted enthusiasm he wrote to his friends at Marlow telling them that he was coming over and that he would soon be in their midst.
Frohman now made ready for this trip. When he announced that he was going on the Lusitania his friends and associates made vigorous protest, which he derided with a smile. Thus, in the approach to death, just as in the path to great success, opposition only made him all the more decided. With regard to his sailing on the Lusitania, this tenacity of purpose was his doom.
Whether he had a premonition or not, the fact remains that he said and did things during the days before he sailed which uncannily suggested that the end was not unexpected. For one thing, he dictated his whole program for the next season before he started. It was something that he had never done before.
When Marie Doro came to his office to say good-by he pulled out a little red pocket note-book in which he jotted down many things and suddenly said:
"Queer, but the little book is full. There is no room for anything else."
Just as he was warned not to produce "The Hyphen," so was he now cautioned by anonymous correspondents (and even by mysterious telephone messages) not to take the Lusitania. But all this merely tightened his purpose.
He met the danger with his usual jest. On the day before he sailed he went up to bid his old friend and colleague, Al Hayman, good-by. Hayman, like all his associates, warned him not to go on the Lusitania.
"Do you think there is any danger?" asked Frohman.
"Yes, I do," replied Hayman.
"Well, I am going, anyhow," was the answer.
After he had shaken hands he stopped at the door and said, smilingly:
"Well, Al, if you want to write to me just address the letter care of the German Submarine U 4."
Those last days ashore were filled with a strange mellowness. Ethel Barrymore came down from Boston to see him. They had an intimate talk about the old days. When she left him she saw tears in his eyes. That night, just as she was about to go on in "The Shadow" in Boston, she received this telegram from him:
Nice talk, Ethel. Good-by. C. F.
The Lusitania sailed at ten o'clock on Saturday morning, May 1, 1915. Even at the dock Frohman could not resist his little joke. When Paul Potter, who saw him off, said to him:
"Aren't you afraid of the U boats, C. F.?"
"No, I am only afraid of the I O U's," was the reply.
THE LETTERS OF CHARLES FROHMAN
U nlike many men of achievement, Charles Frohman was not a prolific letter-writer. He avoided letter-writing whenever it was possible. When he could not convey his message orally he resorted to the telegraph. Letters were the last resort.
He had a sort of constitutional objection to long letters. The only lengthy epistles that ever came from him were dictated and referred to matters of business. They all have one quality in common. As soon as he had concluded the discussion of the topic in mind he would immediately tell about the fortunes of his plays. He seldom failed to make a reference to the business that Maude Adams was doing (for her immense success was very dear to his heart), and he always commented on his own strenuous activities. He liked to talk about the things he was doing.
The really intimate Frohman letters were always written by hand on scraps of paper, and were short, jerky, and epigrammatic. Most of these were written, or rather scratched, to intimates like James M. Barrie, Paul Potter, and Haddon Chambers.
As indicated in one of the chapters of this book, Frohman delighted in caricature. To a few of his friends he would send a humorous cartoon instead of a letter. He caricatured whatever he saw, whether riding on trains or eating in restaurants. If he wanted a friend to dine with him he would sketch a rough head and mark it "Me"; then he would draw another head and label it "You." Between these heads he would make a picture of a table, and under it scrawl, "Knickerbocker, Friday, 7 o'clock."
Frohman seldom used pen and ink. Most of his letters were written with the heavy blue editorial pencil that he liked to use. He wrote an atrocious hand. His only competitor in this way was his close friend Barrie. The general verdict among the people who have read the writing of both men is that Frohman took the palm for illegible chirography.
Frohman could pack a world of meaning into his letters. To a fellow-manager who had written to Boston to ask if he had seen a certain actress play, he replied: "No, I have had the great pleasure of not seeing her act."
His letters reflect his moods and throw intimate light on his character. He would always have his joke. To William Collier, who had sent him a box for a play that he was doing in New York, he once wrote: "I do not think I will have any difficulty in finding your theater, although a great many new theaters have gone up. Many old ones have 'gone up' too."
His swift jugglery with words is always manifest. To Alfred Sutro he sent this sentence notifying him that his play was to go into rehearsal: "The die is cast—but not the play."
Through his letters there shines his uncompromising rule of life. Writing to W. Lestocq, his agent in London, in reference to the English failure of "Years of Discretion," he said: "It is a failure, and that is the end of it. You can't get around failure, so we must go on to something else."
The number of available Frohman letters is not large. The following, gathered from various sources, will serve to indicate something of their character:
To an English author whose play, a weak one, was rapidly failing:
No; it is not the war that is affecting your business. It is the play—nothing else.
To Cyril Maude, whose penmanship is notably indecipherable:
I can't read your handwriting very well; but I wonder if you can read my typewriting. Just pretend I typed this myself.... Speaking of hits, Granville Barker arrived yesterday, and the city suddenly became terribly cold—awful weather. Barker will do well.
To Haddon Chambers:
Last night we produced "Driven" against your judgment. The press not favorable. But still I'm hoping.
To a colleague:
I announced "Driven" as a comedy. Next day I called it a play. But soon I may call it off.
To W. Lestocq:
The American actors over here are worried about so many English actors in our midst. I employ both kinds—that is, I want good actors only.
To an English author:
As to conditions here being bad for good plays; that is a joke. The distressful business is for the bad plays that I and other managers sometimes produce.
To one of his managers:
Do not use the line "The World-Famous Tri-Star Combination." Just say "The Great Three-Star Combination." It is easier to understand. And all will be well.
To one of his managers who spoke of the superiority of an actress who had replaced another about to retire to private life:
But now that her stage life is over we should remember her years of good work. She had a simple, childish, fairy-like appeal. I write this to you to express my feeling for one who has left our work for good, and I can think now only of pleasant memories. I want you to feel the same.
To an English author, January, 1915:
Over here they say the real heroes of the year are the managers that dare produce new plays.
To a business colleague about a singing comedian who was laid up with a serious illness:
I am sorry he is sick. But that was a rotten thing for him to do—to steal our song. I suppose he is better. Only the good die young.
To Marie Doro:
I saw you in the picture play. It and you were fine. What a lot of money you make! When I return from London I'm going to see if I can earn $10 a day to play in some of the screens. We are all going up to the Atlantic Ocean Island to see them taking you in the "White Pearl" pictures.
Refusing to go to a public banquet:
That's the first free thing that has been offered me this year. But there are three things my physician forbids me from doing—to eat, drink, or talk.
To a manager:
There are no bad towns—only bad plays!
On hearing that an actress in his employ had reflected on his management:
In this message I am charged with neglecting your interests. This is a shock to me, because when one neglects his trust, he is dishonest. This is the first time I have ever been so accused, and I am wondering if you inspired the message. I think it important that you should know.
Being adjured by one of the family to take more exercise:
I drove out to Richmond. Then I walked a mile. Now I hope you'll be satisfied.
To his sisters (he lived then at the Waldorf, but joined the family at a weekly dinner up-town):
I am sending you a cook-book by Oscar of this hotel. You may find some use for it.
When he came to the next weekly dinner he was offered several choice dishes prepared from Oscar's recipes. "I see my mistake," he said. "I wanted my usual home dinner. You give me what I receive all the time at the hotel."
To Alfred Sutro, in London:
Give us something full of situations, and we will give you a bully time again in America.
To William Seymour, his stage-manager, about a performance of one of his plays:
When you rehearse to-day will you try and get the old woman out of too much crying; get some smiles, and stop her screwing up her face every time she speaks. Of course, it's nervousness, but it looks as if she were ill.
To one of his associates:
Miss Adams's receipts last week in Boston were the largest in the history of Boston theaters or anywhere—$23,000. But I had some others which I won't tell you about.
To an English author in 1913:
At present the taste is "down with light plays, down with literary plays." They want plays with dramatic situations, intrigue, sex conflict. There is no use in giving the public what it does not want and what they ought to have. I am just finding that out, with much cost.
To a French agent:
It seems a little reckless to be asked to pay $2,500 for the privilege of reading a new French play. The author seems to want to get rich quickly. I would be willing to add to his wealth if he has something that can be produced without such a preliminary penalty.
To W. Lestocq:
When one talks to an English author about "Diplomacy," he says, "Oh, that's a theatrical play!" I wish I could get another like it.
To an English manager:
A hundred theaters here are a few too many. Houses have closed on a Saturday night without any warning. Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia have been better. You see we have this wonderful country to fall back on, which makes it different from London.
To an author in London:
What you say is quite true; a good play is a good play; but the difficulty I find is to ascertain through the public and the box-office what they think is a good play. Our opinion is only good for ourselves. But give me a dramatic play and I'll put it at once to the test.
To Hubert Henry Davies, the dramatist, during an interim of that author's activities:
It grieves me when I can't get your material going, especially as I want to come over as soon as I can and get one of those nice lunches in your nice apartment.
To the manager of an up-state New York theater regarding an impending first-night performance:
I hope we shall draw a representative audience the first night. I know audiences with you are sometimes a little reluctant about first nights. I can't understand this myself. In my opinion there is an extra thrill for them in the experience of a first performance, as it is a special event.
To Granville Barker, January, 1913:
I am very jealous of the Barrie plays, and I do want them for my own theater for revivals.... I hear such good reports about your Shakespearian work that I am awfully pleased. I have had a Marconi from Shakespeare himself, in which he speaks highly of what you have done for his work. I am sure this will be as gratifying to you as it is to me.
Alluding to his painful rheumatism in a letter to George Edwardes, the producer, in England, January, 1913:
I can't run twelve yards, but I can drink a lot of that bottled lemonade of yours when I get over. In fact, at the moment I think that is the best thing running in London.
In February, 1913, Frohman made frequent trips to Baltimore to rehearse and superintend the production of his plays in that city. He has this to say of Baltimore in a letter to Tunis F. Dean, manager of a theater there:
I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing your fine theater, for I have decided on a very important production with one of our leading stars there next season. So that I shall spend a week in Baltimore. I like that. There is no one living in Baltimore that has a greater regard for that fine, dignified city. I have had it for years, and with the beautiful theater and my feeling for Baltimore and you at the head of that theater, I am looking forward with pleasure to coming to you next season.
Frohman was simple, direct, and forcible in his criticism of plays. In rejecting a French play, he wrote to Michael Morton in defense of his judgment, New York, February, 1913:
I was awfully glad you made arrangements for the play, the one I don't like, and I hope the other fellow is right. These three-cornered French plays are going to have a hard time over here in the future unless they contain something that is pretty big, novel, or human. The guilty wife is a joke here now, and they have lots of fun when they play these scenes in these plays. The American and English play is different. They get there quicker in a different manner instead of the old-fashioned scheme. Of course, French plays, as you say, may be laid in England and in America. I understand that. But even then it seems to be about the same as if they were in France.
His brief, epigrammatic style of criticism is evident in a letter to Charles B. Dillingham, wherein he speaks of a certain play under consideration:
I think the end of the play is not good. It is that old-time stand-around-with-a-glass-of-wine-in-your-hand and wish success to the happy people.
Extracts from an interview with Frohman which he wrote for the London papers, March, 1913:
There will be no change in my work of producing for the London stage. I shall continue to do so at my own theaters or with other London managers just as long as I am producing on any stage, and I fear that will be for a long time yet, as I am younger now than I was twenty years ago.
Prior to his departure for England he wrote the following to John Drew in March, 1913:
Thanks for your fine letter. It is like this, John: I hope to get off next week, but I don't seem to be able to get the accommodations I want on either one of the steamers that I should like to travel on, and that sail next week. I need a little special accommodation on account of my leg, which still refuses to answer my call and requires the big stick.
To Alfred Sutro, in January, 1913, on the current taste in plays:
These American plays with thieves, burglars, detectives, and pistols seem to be the real things over here just now. None of them has failed.
Memorandum for his office-boy, Peter, for a week's supply of his favorite drinks:
Get me plenty of orange-juice, lemon soda, ginger ale, sarsaparilla, buttermilk.
To Alfred Sutro, 1913:
Haddon Chambers sails to-day. You may see him before you see this. He leaves behind him what I think will give him many happy returns (box-office) of the season, as Miss Barrymore is doing so well with his "Tante."
To W. Lestocq, concerning one of his leading London actresses:
Miss Titheridge is all right, as I wrote Morton, if her emotions can be kept down, and if she can try to make the audience act more, and act less herself.
To Michael Morton regarding an actress:
She needs to be told that real acting is not to act, but to make the audience feel, and not feel so much herself.
To the editor of a popular monthly magazine upon its first birthday:
I understand that your September issue will be made to mark ——'s first birthday. Judging from your paper your birthday plans miss the issue; because—— becomes a year younger every September. I do not congratulate you even upon this fact; because you cannot help it. I do not congratulate your readers because they get your paper so very cheap. I do congratulate myself, however, for calling attention to these wonderful facts.
To W. Lestocq, referring to a statement made by R. C. Carton, the dramatist:
I don't quite understand what he means by "holding up" the play. Over here it is a desperate expression—one that means pistols and murder, and all that. I presume it means something different in London, where Carton lives.
To Mrs. C. C. Cushing, the playwright, declining an invitation:
It is impossible to come and see you because I haven't got Cottage No. 4, but I've got Cell No. 3 on the stage of the Empire Theater, where I am passing the summer months.
Even Frohman's cablegrams reflected his humor. In 1913 Billie Burke was ill at Carlsbad, so he cabled her some cheering message nearly every day. Here is a sample:
Drove past your house to-day and ran over a dog. Your brother glared at me.
When Blanche Bates's first baby was born (she was at her country house near Ossining at the time), Frohman sent her this message:
Ossining has now taken its real place among the communities of the country. Congratulations.
To Alfred Sutro, January, 1913:
I was glad to hear from you. First let me strongly advise you to take the comedy side for the Alexander play. I honestly believe, unless it is something enormous, and for big stars and all that, the other side is no good any more. For the present, anyway, I speak of my own country. The usual serious difficulties between a husband and wife of that class—really they laugh at here now, instead of touching their emotions. They have gone along so rapidly. Take my advice in this matter, do! I am glad you have dropped that scene from the third act of your Du Maurier play.
Now that I am back to town I intended writing you about it. I assure you I had a jolly good time for the first two acts of that farce, and I can see Gerald Du Maurier all through it. The third act worries me for this country, as I wrote you. But the performance may change all this. It is so difficult to judge farcical work where it is so thoroughly English in its scene that I speak of to get any idea from the reading of it for this country. Everything is going along splendidly.
To Haddon Chambers, March, 1913:
I propose, and the troupes dispose! We had a lot of floods and things here which keep us on the move, or keep our troupes moving so much that I am compelled to postpone my sailing until April 12th on the Olympic, which makes it just a little later when I have the joy of seeing you. My best regards.
To Richard Harding Davis, July, 1913:
All right, we'll fix the title. I am glad they are asking about it. About people, they all seem to want Collier salaries. As you have chiefly character parts, and they are so good, I think it would be a good idea for us to create a few new stars through you, and
Yours truly,
Charles Frohman.
To George Edwardes, July, 1913:
First, I am glad to hear that you are away giving your heart a chance. I am back here trying to give my pocket-book a chance.
To William Collier, September, 1913:
All right, all arranged, Thursday night in New York; Monday and Tuesday in Springfield, Massachusetts. I shall leave here Monday ready to meet the performance and anything else! I hope all is well.
To Viola Allen, September, 1913:
I was awfully glad to get your letter. First let me say you had better come to see "Much Ado About Nothing" this Saturday, because it is the last week. We withdraw it to-morrow night and produce a new program at once. "Much Ado" wouldn't do for more than two weeks. After that it fell. Of course I find on Broadway it is quite impossible to run Shakespeare to satisfying "star" receipts. So come along to-morrow if you can. It would be fine to have you, and fine to have some of the original members of the Empire company to play in this house, and I should like it beyond words. I don't, however, believe in that sex-against-sex play. In these great days of the superiority of woman over mere man I don't think it would do.
Referring to a young actress he wished to secure, he writes to Col. Henry W. Savage in January, 1913:
My dear Colonel: I want to enter on your works in this way. You have a girl called——. I know she is very good, because I have never seen her act, but I understand she is not acting just as you want her to, and therefore not playing, either because she is laying off, or that you have stopped her from playing. I have a part for which I could use this girl. Will you let me have her, and in that way do another great wrong by doing me a favor? If she doesn't, or you do not wish her to play, perhaps it would be as much satisfaction to you if you thought you were doing me a favor and let her play in my company as if she were not playing at all. My best regards, and I hope this letter will not add much to the many pangs of the season to you.
To Sir James M. Barrie, October, 1913:
As I wrote you, I felt we had a good opportunity here under the conditions here, and I produced your "The Dramatists Get What They Want" last night. It went splendidly with the audiences, and has very good press. Of course the class of first-night audience that we had last night understood it. The censor is a new thing over here. The general public don't understand it, and it may on that account not make so strong an impression on further audiences. However, that is all right. I am delighted with the way it went, and you would have been delighted had you been present. I think the press was very good when you consider the subject is so new to us. The three plays have all, I assure you, been nicely done, well produced and cast, and you would be pleased with them as I am pleased in having had them to produce. It helped considerably with plays that would not have made much of an impression without them. It has helped the general business of these plays, which, although it is not great, is good, and makes a fair average every week. It is chiefly what you would call "stall" business. "The Will" has been a fine thing for John Drew, and he is very happy in it. He has made a very deep impression indeed. I think the part with the changes of character as played by him has made it really a star part. If you have any more of them, send them along.
To W. Somerset Maugham, October, 1913:
Regarding the first act of "The Land of Promise," this is what I think, and maybe you will think the same, and, if you do, give me a good speech. Send it as soon as you can. I think that we should have a different ending to the first act, uplifting the ending. After the girl tells about her brother being married, wouldn't it be a good idea for her to say something like this, in your own language, of course: "Canada! Canada! You are right." (Turning to Miss Pringle), "England, why should I stay in England? I'm young, I want gaiety, new life. Then why not go to a young country where all is life and gaiety and sunshine and joy and youth—the land of promise, the land for me?" Remember, in the last act she speaks of all she expected to find and how different the realization. This new idea of the end of the first act will help this speech, I think. And besides uplifting the ending, gives the great contrast we want to show in the play and is driven into the minds of the audience at the end of the first act. Give the girl a good uplifting speech at the end of the first act, instead of a downward one. That is what I mean. Then after that we get the contrast of the countries. I hope this is clear and you will understand what I mean.
To J. E. Dodson, October, 1913:
My greatest regret is that my profession takes me to Baltimore on the day that you are giving the dinner at the Lotus Club to my friend Cyril Maude. It would give me the greatest pleasure to eat his health with you. I rejoice that you are giving recognition on his first arrival here in New York to such a sincere actor and such a real man. He belongs to all countries.
To Haddon Chambers, June, 1911:
Had a fine trip over. Found it hot here. Started in building your scenery. Am only dropping you a line because I want to ask you, while I think of it, if you will get a copy of that special morning dress that Gerald wears at the beginning of the second act, for Richard Bennett. I think it would be a good idea to bring it over. Bennett is not quite as tall as Du Maurier and just a bit thicker, and as it is a sort of loose dress there will be no difficulty in fitting it here.
Now our cast is in good shape for your play, and I am very pleased with it. We have an asylum full of children awaiting your selection on your arrival.
To Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, August, 1911:
The man I selected to produce your play is Charles Frohman. He is not only good at producing plays that have never been staged before, but he likes your play thoroughly. He has made such a careful study of it that he believes that he knows it in every detail. He feels confident of his ability to handle it and to make the changes you have made just as he thinks you and your public over here would like to have it done.
To Sir James M. Barrie, London, September, 1911:
This will be signed for me, as I am still confined to my bed—fighting rheumatism. I thought I would not write you until you return to London. All goes well here. So far my new productions have met with success. Miss Barrymore began in Mason's play last night in Trenton, New Jersey. The play was well received before a large audience. Miss Adams begins the new season in Buffalo next Monday night. I am hoping within the next two weeks to be able to get out on crutches. I have been to many rehearsals. They carry me in a Bath chair to and from the theater.
To Somerset Maugham, September, 1911:
Thanks for yours. I am still down with rheumatism—partly on account of the weather, but more especially because you are not doing any work.
To a New York critic, October, 1911:
I hope in two or three weeks to be able to see myself as other good critics, like you, would see me—well and about again in my various theaters.
To Sir James M. Barrie, November, 1911:
Your letter was a delight, and it will be fine news for Miss Adams. I hope you will send the material as soon as you can. Here I am dictating to you from bed; so I will be brief. My foot is now tied to a rope which is tied to the bed with weights. They are trying to stretch the leg. I am hoping that in three or four weeks I may be able to sit around. Five months on one's back is not good for much more than watching aeroplanes.
To Sir James M. Barrie, December, 1911:
I was very glad to get your letter. I am still in bed, so that I am obliged to dictate this letter to you. The manuscript arrived, but found me out of condition to read it. I sent it on at once to Maude Adams. She telegraphed me how delighted she is with it, and I have had a letter from her telling me what a remarkable piece of work it is. When she gets back to town I shall read the manuscript. Any plan you work out for London will be fine. I should judge, without knowing, that your idea for matinÉes is the best.
I am hoping that in another month I will be out; I am living on that hope. Then I will commence to think about coming over to you. I dare not think of it until I once more get out, I am afraid. All this has naturally disturbed my London season. I am happy in the thought that we will soon have "Peter" on again in London. What a difference your plays made to my London season!
I shall write you again soon. "Peter and Wendy" is fine. My most affectionate remembrances.
To Sir James M. Barrie, January, 1912:
I cabled you on receiving your letter because my voice was leaving me rapidly. It was a case of a bad throat, and I wanted to get some reply to you quickly. My throat is better now. I have had about everything, and I fear I shall have to keep to my rooms for some time to come. I hope to see you around the end of March.
I think your Shakespearian play is a most wonderful work. I quite appreciate all you say about its chances. I rather felt that a Shakespearian novelty of this kind would be most striking if produced by Tree on top of his newspaper claim of having lost over 40,000 pounds on Shakespeare.
I am all bungled up here. I don't know quite what to do about London this season. As I understood what you wanted, I replied as I did. You know how I hate to lose any of your work for anybody or anywhere. Now you understand. That is splendid about the Phillpotts play, and I thank you. I am hoping about the Pinero play. I shall be glad to see you.
This is all the voice I have left for dictation; so I end with my best regards.
To David Belasco, February, 1912:
This is written for me. I am still confined to my rooms, and, although able to sit up during the day for work, I do not get out in the evening. I was glad to hear from you, and I hope you will telephone that you will come round any old night that suits you.
I wish you could play "Peter Grimm" up here; I'd like to see it.
To Sir James M. Barrie, February, 1912:
I haven't written you because lately I have been having a lot of pain. I sent you papers which will tell you how wonderfully your fine play—"A Slice of Life"—has been received. It has caused a tremendous lot of talk; but I just want to tell you that there is absolutely no comparison, in performance, as the play is given here and the way it was given in London. Fine actors, although the London cast had, my people here seem to have a better grasp of what you wanted. They have brought it out with a sincerity and intelligence of stroke that is quite remarkable. Ethel Barrymore never did better work. Her emotional breakdown, tears, her humiliation—when she confesses to her husband that she had been a good woman even before she met him, all this is managed in a keener fashion, and with even a finer display of stage pathos than she showed in her fine performance in "Mid-Channel."
As the husband, Jack Barrymore is every inch a John Drew. He feels, and makes the audience feel, the humiliation of his position. When he confesses, it is a terrible confession. Hattie Williams, in her odd manner, imitated Nazimova—as Nazimova would play a butler.
So these artists step out into the light—before a houseful of great laughter; one feels that they have struck the true note of what you meant your play should have. I think the impossible seriousness of triangle scenes in modern plays has been swept off the stage here—and "A Slice of Life" has done it....
The effect of "A Slice of Life" is even greater and more general than "The Twelve-Pound Look." All agree that each year you have given our stage the real novelty of its theatrical season. And the fine thing about it is that you have given me the opportunity of putting these before the public.
I am getting along very slowly. I am able to do my work in my rooms and go on crutches for a couple of hours at rehearsals. But always I am in great pain. I hope to see you by the end of March. I don't know whether you will shake my hand or my crutch. But I expect to be there. We can take up the matters of "A Slice of Life," etc., then.
I am so delighted about "Peter Pan" this season. I am wondering if you have done anything about that Shakespeare play, which I believe would be another big novelty.
To Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, March, 1912:
Perhaps this will reach you on your return from the Continent. I hope you have made a good trip and that you are happy.
I hope to give you for the "Mind the Paint Girl" Miss Billie Burke, who is an enormous attraction here. She played in her little piece from the French last week in St. Louis to $15,700. All the way along the line her houses are sold out completely before her appearance. Her play is only a slight thing—an adaptation from the French, but play-goers seem to have gone wild over her. Besides this, she is not only handsome, but every inch the very personification of the "Paint Girl." Moreover, she is a genuinely human actress. It will be a big combination for me to make—the large cast required for the "Paint Girl," together with this valuable star and your great play.
To John Drew, March, 1912:
I am glad to hear from you and to know that you are having freezingly cold weather in the South. The joke is on the people here. They think you are having such nice warm weather.
I am getting along pretty well. I am about the same as when you left me except that there is great excitement among my doctors because I can now move my small toe.
To Sir James M. Barrie, September, 1913:
"Half an Hour" has been going splendidly and had a fine reception the first night. The majority of the press were splendid indeed, one or two felt an awakening to see the change in the work that you have been doing. I am awfully pleased the way it came out. I am delighted to see that you have added another act to the "Adored One." That makes it a splendid program for Miss Adams. Making it a three-act play is fine for this side, as I cabled you. All the Americans coming home who have seen your play are delighted with it in every way. Hope all is going well. I am leaving to-morrow to meet Maude Adams and see the piece that she is now playing called "Peter Pan." I shall be away from New York for perhaps a week, and on my return I will write you again fully.
To Alfred Sutro, September, 1911:
You know how happy your success has made me. You know how I longed for it. You know all that so thoroughly that words were not necessary. My illness prevented me from reading the play. I shall read it in eight or ten days. But it is all understood, and when I get up and out I shall fix up all the business.
John Drew, who is now free of worry concerning his new production, is to read "The Perplexed Husband" next week. I shall write you then. But the main thing is, we have the success and can take care of it. And I am extremely happy over it.
To J. A. E. Malone, the London manager, regarding the American presentation of "The Girl from Utah" and its instantaneous success:
Believe me that the success is due entirely to the American members, the American work, and, of course, the American stars.... The English numbers went for nothing. In short, the American numbers caught on.
To Haddon Chambers, in London in 1914:
There have been a number of failures already, but they would have failed if every day was a holiday. There has been just now a new departure here in play-writing—a great success—"On Trial." This is by a boy twenty-one years of age. The scenes are laid in the court-room, and as the witness gets to the dramatic part of the story the scene changes and the characters are shown to act out the previous incidents of the story that is told in court, and then they go back to the court and work that way through the play. It has been a great sensation and is doing great business.
Concerning one of his English productions in London, he writes Dion Boucicault:
I want on my side to have you understand, however, that as far as I am concerned I am keeping the theater open for the company and the employees, and not for myself. I should have closed positively if I had not my people in mind. That was my only reason....
To Dion Boucicault:
It seems to me that there are too many English actors coming over here, and I fear some of them will be in distress, because there don't seem to be positions enough for all that are coming, and people are wondering why so many are coming instead of enlisting. It might be well for you to inform some of these actors that the chances are not so great now, because there are so many here on the waiting-list. I use a great many, but I also use a great many Americans, as merit is the chief thing.
To Otis Skinner:
I felt all that you now feel about the vision effect when I saw the dress rehearsal. It looked to me like a magic-lantern scene that would be given in the cellar of a Sunday-school.
To Dion Boucicault, October, 1914:
I am despondent as to what to do in London. I'd rather close. I don't want to put on things at losses, because I do not wish to send money to cover losses to London now. The rates of exchange are something terrific, and therefore I don't want to be burdened with this extra expense. Twelve pounds on every hundred pounds is too much for any business man to handle. Over here we are feeling the effects of the war, but the big things (and I am glad to say I am in some of them) are all right.
To an English actor about to enlist in the army:
I have your letter. I am awfully sorry, but I haven't anything to offer. So therefore I congratulate the army on securing your services.
Declining an invitation for a public dinner:
I thank you very much for your very nice invitation to be present at the dinner, but I regret that, first, I do not speak at dinners, and, next, I do not attend dinners.
One of the lines that Frohman wrote very often, and which came to be somewhat hackneyed, was to his general manager, Alf Hayman. It was:
Send me a thousand pounds to London.
To W. Lestocq, in 1914, regarding another manager:
I notice that Mr. Z—— has a man who can sign for royalties I send him. I wonder why he can't find some one to sign for royalties that are due me!
Of a production waiting to come to New York:
Broadway may throw things when we play the piece here, still I have failed before on Broadway.
To James B. Fagan, in London, December, 1912, referring to his production of "Bella Donna" in this country:
Mr. Bryant is giving an exceptionally good performance of the part, and is so much taken with my theater and company that I have the newspapers' word that he married my star (Nazimova).
To Alfred Sutro, November, 1914:
It seems to me that a strong human play, with good characters (and clean), is the thing over here; and now, my dear Sutro, I do believe that throughout the United States a play really requires a star artist, man or woman—woman for choice....
To W. Lestocq, in November, 1914:
I have just returned from Chicago, where Miss Adams has a very happy and delightful program in "Leonora" and "The Ladies' Shakespeare." "The Ladies' Shakespeare" is delightful, but very slight. The little scenes that Barrie has written that are spoken before the curtain are awfully well received, but the scenes from Shakespeare's play when they are acted are very short and the whole thing is played in less than an hour. Miss Adams, of course, is delightful in it, and it goes with a sparkle with her; and as it is so slight and so much Shakespeare and so little Barrie, although the Barrie part in front of the curtain is fine, I cannot say how it would go with your audiences [referring to the London public]. I am happy in the thought, however, that Barrie has furnished Miss Adams with a program that will last her all through the season and well into the summer.
To Haddon Chambers:
Hubert Henry Davies's "Outcast" has made a hit, but he really has a wonderful woman—I should say the best young emotional actress on the stage—in Miss Ferguson. So he is in for a good thing.
To Cyril Maude, in Boston, November, 1914:
Yours to Chicago has just reached me here in New York. As soon as I heard that you were going to write me to Chicago I immediately left for New York.
I am glad you are doing so very big in Boston. They say you are going to stay all season. Things are terrible with me in London, and the interests I had outside of London have been shocking. I am hoping and believing, however, that all will be well again on the little island—the island that I am so devoted to.
In this letter, it is worth adding, Frohman made one of his very rare confessions of bad business. He only liked to write about his affairs when they were booming.
To Margaret Mayo Selwyn, New York, November 30, 1914:
I was glad to receive your letter. I have been thinking about the revival of the play you mentioned. In fact, the thought has been a long one—three years—but I haven't reached it yet. I have been thinking more about the new play you are writing for me. I know you now have a lot of theaters, a lot of managers, and a lot of husbands and things like that, but, all the same, I want that play. My best regards.
Frohman loved sweets. He went to considerable trouble sometimes to get the particular candy he wanted. Here is a letter that he wrote to William Newman, then manager of the Maude Adams Company, in care of the Metropolitan Opera House, St. Paul:
Will you go to George Smith's Chocolate Works, 6th and Robert Streets, St. Paul, and get four packages of Smith's Delicious Cream Patties and send them to me to the Knickerbocker Hotel, New York?
Frohman had his own way of acknowledging courtesies. A London friend, Reginald Nicholson, circulation manager of the Times, sent him some flowers to the Savoy. He received this reply from the manager, scrawled with blue pencil on a sheet of hotel paper:
A lot of thanks from Savoy Court 81.
Frohman's apartment for years at the Savoy Hotel was Savoy Court 81.
To Paul Potter, written from the Blackstone, Chicago, in February, 1915:
Dear Paul:
I received your telegram, and was glad to get it. The sun is shining here and all is well. I hope to see you Saturday night at the Knickerbocker.
C. F.
This is in every way a typical Charles Frohman personal note. He usually had one thing to say and said it in the fewest possible words.
One day Frohman sent a certain play to his brother Daniel for criticism. On receiving an unfavorable estimate of the work he wrote him the following memorandum:
Who are you and who am I that can decide the financial value of this play? The most extraordinary plays succeed, and many that deserve a better fate fail; so how are we to know until after we test a play before the public?
In reply to Charles Burnham's invitation to attend the Theatrical Managers' dinner, he wrote:
Thank you very much, but my condition is still such that my game leg would require at least four seats, and as we now have at least several managers to every theater, and several theaters in every block, I haven't the heart to accept the needed room, and thus deprive them of any.
Writing to E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe, in April, 1915, he said:
I wonder why you don't both sail with me May 1 (Lusitania). As far as I am concerned, when you consider all the stars I have managed, mere submarines make me smile. But most affectionate regards to you both.
Writing to John Drew, who was willing to prolong his touring season in 1915, he says:
All right. Why a young man like you cares to continue on his long tours, I don't know. I hope to get away on May 1st and to return shortly after you reach New York. Am in quest of something for you. Our last talk before you left gave me much happiness.
Refusing to book his attractions in a city for a week where three nights were sufficient, he said:
My stars like week stands, but they don't like weak business.
To Haddon Chambers, in London:
I am hoping to get off on the Lusitania. It seems to be the best ship to sail on. I shall be glad to see you.
Writing to S. F. Nixon, a business colleague, regarding Miss Barrymore in "The Shadow":
You are quite right as to the play being terribly somber. I thought it a good idea to show what a representative American actress of serious parts she was; so that next season we will offer a contrast, and make the audiences laugh so much that they will be compelled to crowd the theater. She will play then as humorous a part ("Our Mrs. McChesney") as she did so earnestly a serious one.
To J. C. O'Laughlin, of the Chicago Herald:
We managers have certain ideas about plays. We produce a play and find our ideas and opinions often wrong. Our opinions are only sound, I think, as far as the question of a play being actable is concerned. My sympathetic feeling for all writers makes it very hard to venture an opinion detrimental to their work, especially as we find we are frequently wrong.
To one of his leading women, April, 1915:
I appreciate the expression of your affection. It almost makes me turn westward instead of eastward. However, we must do our jobs, and so I do mine. I am sailing Saturday (per Lusitania). Heaven only will know where I am in July. I cannot tell this year anything about anything.
To Booth Tarkington:
I don't suppose you have any idea of coming to New York. There are a lot of fine things here worth your while, including myself.
Concerning Hubert Henry Davies, the author of "Outcast," Miss Elsie Ferguson's very successful vehicle:
He is a delightful, charming, simple, splendid fellow. You will be delighted with him, and Miss Ferguson will be more than delighted with him, because he will be so delighted with her. It is a fine thing to have so nice a man as Davies arrive, and entirely misunderstanding the person he is to rehearse because the surprise will be all the greater. It pleases me, knowing what a fine emotional (one of the very best in the world) young actress our star is.
To Harry Powers, manager of Powers Theater, Chicago, where his play "The Beautiful Adventure," with Ann Murdock, was then running:
Regarding "The Beautiful Adventure," if I am doing wrong in making a clean situation out of one that is not clean, I am going to do wrong. The theater-going public in the cities may not always get a good play from me, but they trust me, and I shall try and retain that trust. We may not get the same amount of money, but if we can live through it we will get a lot more satisfaction for those we like and for ourselves.
Some of the last letters written by Frohman were filled with a curious tenderness and affection. In the light of what happened after he sailed they seem to be overcast with a strange foreboding of his doom. The most striking example of this is furnished in a letter he wrote to Henry Miller on April 29th, a few days before he went aboard the Lusitania. He had not written to Miller for a year, yet this is what he said:
Dear Henry: I am going to London Saturday A.M. I want to say good-by to you with this—and tell you how glad I am you've had a good season.
Affectionately,
C. F.
Miller was immensely touched by this communication. He wired to his son Gilbert to find out what steamer Frohman was taking, and send him a wireless. This message was probably the last ever received by Frohman, for no other similar telegram was sent him in care of the Lusitania.
The last letter written by Frohman, before leaving the Hotel Knickerbocker on the morning the Lusitania sailed, was to his intimate friend and companion Paul Potter. Potter, who had telephoned that he expected to meet him at the steamer, was much depressed, which explains one of the sentences in Frohman's letter:
Saturday A.M., May 1, 1915.
Dear Paul: We had a fine time this winter. I hope all will go well with you. And I think luck is coming to you. I hope another "Trilby." It's fine of you to come to the steamer with all these dark, sad conditions.
C. F.
On his way to the Lusitania Frohman stopped for a moment at his office in the Empire Theater. There he dictated a note to Porter Emerson Browne, the playwright. It was his last dictation. The note merely said, "Good-by. Keep me posted." He referred to a new play that Browne was writing for him.