 
The Great White Way is a recumbent letter I. It is recumbent because the habitues of the Rialto have used it to the point of exhaustion, and because streets are never vertical except in Naples. The Rialto is the name by which The Great White Way was known before the present reckless mania for electric signs suggested the more significant appellation. In that long-ago time one who spoke of the district in question referred to Broadway between the Star Theatre and the office of The Dramatic Mirror. The Great White Way is bounded on the South by the Flatiron Building, on the West by the Metropolitan Opera House, on the North by an enormous incandescent spread-eagle advertising a certain kind of beer, and on the East by the "The Great White Way is a recumbent letter I" There isn't another Great White Way on the face of the earth. Paris has its Place de l'Opera, London its Strand, and Vienna its Ringstrasse, but these resemble New York's theater path only as a candle resembles an arc light. They are streets given up to seekers after pleasure; the Rialto is a street given up to seekers after pleasure, and to seekers after seekers after pleasure. It is not the moths attracted to the flame that lend particular interest to the Great White Way; it is the flame itself, coruscating, scintillant, multi-hued and glowing. Broadway, within the limits set down, is a street of players and playhouses; the only mile of pavement in the world devoted entirely to the members of one profession. Two newspaper buildings rear themselves defiantly in this portion of New York. They seem out of place, though newspaper men are night-workers, too, and come nearer than any other class of men to being of The Great White Way. A few tailors and haberdashers have intruded themselves into the district, settling beside wig makers and sellers of grease paint, but they are neither numerous nor ostentatious. Broadway, as you walk from Twenty-third Street to Forty-seventh, unfolds itself to the view as a line of theaters, theatrical offices, agencies and all-night restaurants. Outsiders go there to see performances and to eat; insiders make of it a world of their own—a queer little, blear little world of unclear visions, abnormal instincts, unreal externals and astigmatic sense of proportion. Parisians call their actors "M'as-tu-vu", which means "Have you seen me?" That is because the first question a French actor asks is "Have you seen me in such-and-such a role?" Your true American actor doesn't waste "Fine", is his reply. "Been playing the 'heavy' with Florence Rant since November. Everybody said I 'hogged the show.'" Half a block farther along we will have occasion to mention a business matter to Sue Brette. "My agent tells me you would go into "Yes. I spoke to her about your giving me a part like the one I played in 'The Greatness of the Small.' You know that was the engagement I lost because I was so much better than the leading woman. She took the piece off and revived 'Across the Divide', and I handed in my notice. The play ended with me dancing on the table—" Twenty minutes later we saunter on with a store of minute information regarding Miss Brette's performance, and how it was enjoyed by the world at large, but with our minds still in Darkest Africa so far as the business of the meeting is concerned. Most people are self-conscious when they speak highly of themselves. Not so actors, to whom such statements as "Everybody said I was the best they had ever seen" or "Alan Dale came three nights running just to watch me" are simply a matter of course. Long thought in this strain has so accustomed the people of the "The actor sees himself so large, and the rest of the world so small" I stopped. "What is it?" I inquired. "A man came up to me as I was leaving the stage door and said: 'Why, you're not really colored, after all!'" A star of my acquaintance recently dismissed an excellent business manager because that individual mentioned the author of the play in his advertising. "You're not working for Everybody talks shop a good deal, but shop is the only thing talked on The Great White Way. Art and science and literature, politics and wars and national calamities have no interest, if they have so much as existence, for the player. "Awful catastrophe that earthquake in 'Frisco!" I exclaimed to an intimate I met at breakfast five or six years ago. "By George, yes!" said he. "Costs me twenty weeks I had booked over the Orpheum Circuit." Your shoe dealer, though he converses about shoes from eight in the morning until six at night, at least drops the subject during the evening. The typical histrion reads nothing in the papers except the theatrical news and re "Alan Dale came three nights running" The theatrical world is as much of and to itself as though the Rialto were a tiny island isolated in the waters of the Pacific. It has its own language, its own daily journal, its own celebrities and its own great events. The jargon spoken would be absolutely unintelligible to a layman. "I doubled the heavy and a character bit because the Guv'ner said cuttin' everything down was our only chance to stay out. We hit 'em hard in Omaha, and it looked like a constant sell out to me, but the Guv'ner swore the show was a frost and we was playin' to paper." What would be your translation of this, gentle reader? Doesn't sound like English, does it? Yet it is—English as you hear it on Broadway. The Telegraph is the organ of the theatrical profession. It is a morning paper published at midnight for the benefit of a clientele that has plenty of time for reading between that hour and bed time. The Telegraph is the connecting The populace of The Great White Way is not more sharply individual in its mentality than in its personality. You could not possibly mistake the types that congregate on street corners or shuttle to and fro on business bent. The stoutish, smooth-shaven, commonplace-looking young fellow who passes you with a stride is a well-known dramatic author whose latest play is in its third month at a near-by theater. The long-haired man behind him whom you notice because of his deep-set eyes, his tapering fingers and his important bearing is not the great genius that you may suppose him, but an ambitious provincial come to town to market his first comedy. Sybilla Grant, whose real name is Carrie O'Brien, and who gets eighteen dollars per week for wearing a five hundred dollar gown conspicuously in the chorus at the Casino, drives to the door of Rector's, while the most prosperous and profitable woman star in America walks quietly down Broadway, a demure little figure in a gray tailor-made gown. The old actor, with frayed linen and threadbare suit, There are so many celebrities on Broadway that, if you are a familiar of the street, you cease to regard them with awe. Men and women whose names fill newspapers and whose pictures crowd magazines meet you at every turn. During the hour's time required for lunching I have seen in one hotel eating room Henry Arthur Jones, Charles Klein, John Kendrick Bangs, Winthrop Ames, George Ade, Paul West, Edgar Selwyn, Roy McCardell, Victor Herbert, Reginald De Koven, Raymond Hubbell, Manuel Klein, Archie Gunn, Hy. Mayer, David Warfield, Frank Keenan, Robert Hilliard, William Faversham, Wilton Lackaye, Theodore Roberts, Henry Miller, "Gets eighteen dollars per week for wearing a five hundred dollar gown" The Great White Way has certain hostelries at which certain classes in "the profession" lunch, dine and sup habitually. Nearly every manager of importance in New York goes to the Knickerbocker, the Madrid, or to Rector's, the former place being popular also with the better sort of actors. Shanley's, the Astor, the Cadillac, Browne's Chop House and Keene's, which is in the old home of the Lambs Club, also are popular, while the faster set, notably including the well known women of musical comedy, affect Churchill's. In the vicinity There is the same divergence of character in lodging places on the Rialto. Above Forty-second Street one finds fashionable apartment houses in which prominent players keep rooms the year around. Farther down are hotels in which the less-successful histrion stops when he is in town, and the cross streets still closer to the foot of the The Great White Way are full of theatrical boarding houses, in which a good room may be had at four dollars per week and The theaters near Broadway are too well known to call for much comment. They include all the playhouses of the better class, about thirty-five in number, beginning with Wallack's and ending with the New Theater. A great majority of the big—I'm not alluding to The word "honey-combed" is used advisedly. All day long, all year 'round these offices are veritable hives of business. The layman has not the least conception of the amount of Of late the Rialto in summer has been so crowded with loungers that a special squad of police has been required to keep the way open to ordinary pedestrians. Knots of players, the men recognizable by their smooth-shaven faces and mobile mouths, the women by that peculiar independence of convention which characterizes the feminine portion of "the profession", group themselves everywhere. Seeing a hub of people, with projecting spokes made up of dogs on strings, you may be quite sure of the conversation. "I could 'a' been with 'Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford', but everybody had it touted for a failure, so I signed for stock in Minneapolis. We only lasted two weeks. If the manager'd had any nerve, I think we'd 'a' won out. The whole town was talking about my work in 'Salomy Jane', and, my dear, you know what I The soil most favorable to the growth of these groups is in front of the Actors' Society, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Knickerbocker Theater Building, and the Putnam Building. The "sportier" class of men congregate before the Hotel Albany, where they cooly ogle the women who pass. Never by any chance does one find a manager in a gathering like this—not even a salaried manager or a press agent. "Hold themselves aloof", you think; and they do, not only from these folk of the lower crust, but from the best class of actors as well. Race hatred and political prejudice are as nothing in comparison with the feeling between the business man of the theater and the player. Each despises the other, more or less secretly, and, except on the neutral ground of the Lambs', each "herds" alone. The Great White Way is most nearly deserted at nine in the morning. Then the rounder has gone to bed and the workman has not yet risen. Surface cars laden with humanity It is not until night, however, that it becomes clear why the street should have the name that has been given it. Then the hundreds of queer-looking signs you have seen through the day suddenly take on light and life; burning blue birds fly "for happiness", glittering chariot-horses race beneath illuminative memoranda of the virtues of table waters, sparkling wine pours itself iridescently into a glowing glass; |
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