 
Not long ago an intelligent young man walked into a meeting of the Society of American Dramatists and Composers, at the Hotel Astor, and, after scanning the faces about him, inquired: "Is this the Cloak and Suit Manufacturers' Association?" Don't blame the young man. If tomorrow you undertook on a wager to tell a prosperous tailor from a celebrated author, your safest plan would be to select the individual who looked more like a tailor, and say: "That is the author!" Among persons whose acquaintances do not figure in the public prints, except as "Old Subscriber" or "Vox Populi", the playwright is still supposed to be distinguishable by As a matter of fact, this description fits only the quack doctor and the vender of patent medicines. There are flowing-tie playwrights, but generally they belong in the ranks of the ineffectual and the unproduced. One sees them oftener at studio teas than at "first nights." In whatever other respects they may differ, our dramatists are pretty much alike as regards the commonplaceness of their manner and appearance. Most of them regard the writing of plays as a business, and go about it as a baker goes about making his loaves or a plumber about mending a pipe. On the whole, it is easy to understand the disappointment of a hero-worshipper to whom a companion pointed out Charles Klein. The author of a dozen successful pieces tells the story with great gusto. "It was on a ferry boat," he relates, "and two young chaps were "My chest had already begun to expand when I caught the rejoinder. 'Him!' exclaimed the other. 'Well, I'll be damned!'" Augustus Thomas and David Belasco are two dramatists who would rob no layman of his illusions. Mr. Belasco, whose clerical collar and spiritual face have been pictured in numberless newspapers and magazines, looks every inch a poet, and his soft voice and far-away manner help sustain the impression. Mr. Thomas more evidently belongs to our own mundane sphere; he is a man of the world, distinguished by his poise and polish, by the suavity, reserve and equilibrium that come with confidence and after long experience. The late Clyde Fitch had these qualities, too. He was an artist to his finger tips, a thinker of fine thoughts and a dreamer of great dreams. This article originally began with an account of him, and, since Clyde Fitch was much more than a "Mr. Fitch", I wrote the day he sailed for France, never to return, "is the son of a former army officer, forty-four years old, graduated from Amherst College, and has spent much of his life traveling about Europe. He is quite tall, rather thickly built, and has a heavy, dark mustache. My acquaintance with him dates from the performance of my first original comedy, 'The Little Gray Lady', and is due to a friendly feeling for the new-comers in his profession that is one of his finest traits. "'The Little Gray Lady' was being presented in the Garrick Theater, and I was somewhat excited, the morning after its premiere, at learning that a box had been secured for Mr. Fitch. That night I stationed myself across the auditorium, so that I might judge how he enjoyed the entertainment. My heart almost stopped beating when, soon after the curtain lifted, the object of my interest arose from his seat, and manifested every intention of departing. "This house has afforded a wide-open outlet for its owner's constitutional lavishness, and is, perhaps, as luxuriously appointed and as exquisitely fitted as any residence of its size in New York. Mr. Fitch loves beautiful things, and invests in them with a prodigality that would frighten the heirs of a copper king. 'It doesn't matter how much money I make,' he said to me one afternoon. 'I spend a big income as quickly as a little one.' The Fortieth Street domicile is literally crowded with paintings, carvings, ceramics, and other objects of "Mr. Fitch maintains two establishments beside the place in New York; one at Greenwich, called Quiet Corners—a young woman I know insists upon speaking of it as 'Cozy Corners'—and the other an estate of two hundred acres at Katohna, in Westchester County. James Forbes, who wrote 'The Chorus Lady' and 'The Travelling Salesman', relates an experience of a visit to the former residence. Here he found a stable, which, in lieu of horses, held hundreds of masterpieces in marble and bronze which the "Managers who make contracts with Clyde Fitch will tell you that he appreciates the value of money, but that commodity certainly doesn't cling long to his fingers. However, a responsible man can afford to be irresponsible, and an industrious man to be extravagant. Mr. Fitch has written fifty-four plays in less than twenty years, an average of one play every four months! When you stop to consider that an ordinary manuscript consists of about one hundred and thirty typed pages, and that each piece must be thought out, drafted and re-drafted, rehearsed and produced you will admit that the labor involved in making such a record must have been Herculean. "Nevertheless, Mr. Fitch never seems to be hurried or worried. He entertains a good deal, goes to the theater frequently, and takes a boyish interest in trifles. It is this interest that fills his work with human touches, the small topicalities of the moment. I saw him one "Clyde Fitch's ability to work under any circumstances" "The secret of the Fitch productiveness undoubtedly lies in his ability to work under any circumstances, in odd moments. Austin Strong, author of 'The Toymaker of Nuremberg', and one or two other guests were spending a rainy week-end in the living room at Katohna, when their host excused himself, and, sitting at a desk the other side of the room, began writing. 'Go on talking', he said; 'you don't bother me.' He had plunged into the second act scene between Mabel Barrison and Charles Dickson in 'The Blue Mouse', and he finished it that afternoon. Mr. Forbes saw him one morning in Venice, gliding about in a gondola and scribbling as fast as his pencil could cover the pages. That exquisite bit of 'The Girl Who Has Everything', in which Eleanor Robson punished little Donald "Mr. Fitch abrogates to himself the task of producing his works, taking personal charge of everything, from the selection of the company to the designing of color schemes and the purchase of five and ten cent articles of bric-a-brac. Most people have heard of his skill at rehearsal. He and Mr. Thomas are two of the best stage managers in America. Seated quietly in a corner of the auditorium, or standing just back of the footlights, Mr. Fitch gives the directions that make his performances perfect mosaics of marvelously life-like minutae. Of stories bearing upon his quick perception, his instinct for detail, and his understanding of cause and effect there are enough to make a saga, but one anecdote will serve the purpose of this article. "It was at the dress rehearsal of 'Girls', toward "The property man waited. 'Excuse me', he muttered. 'I didn't mean to interrupt—' 'Never mind that!' the dramatist continued. 'Look here! Miss Maycliffe says "Goodnight!" You wait two seconds and then hammer like blazes on a piece of iron behind that radiator. I want the noise that steam makes in the pipes—' "'I'm on!' grinned the property man. So were the others. Everybody in that house had been awakened in the dead of night by the malicious clanking of the steam pipes, and everybody recognized the bit of every-day. The audience the next night was not less quick of perception, and All this was written two years ago. Quiet Corners and The Other House are deserted now, and the beautiful things that filled them, and the residence in Fortieth Street, have been distributed. A part of the collection was willed to the Metropolitan Museum. It is pathetic to reflect that the first Fitch play to win unqualified praise from the critics was produced after the death of its author. Yet "The City" was not a better piece than "The Climbers", or "Her Own Way", or "The Girl With the Green Eyes", or "The Truth." Clyde Fitch was dead; therein lay the difference. The living Clyde Fitch always was treated by the journalistic reviewers as a sort of malefactor, as a man whose deliberate intent was to do bad work. Only his intimates know how keenly he felt this. "Newspaper praise," he said to me once, "is for the dramatist on his way up or his way down; never for the dramatist at the top." Augustus Thomas conducts rehearsals from an orchestra stall in the body of the theater, whence he shouts instructions through a megaphone. I have often printed the story of the retort courteous which he is said to have made to J. J. Shubert when that impressario interrupted a rehearsal of "The Witching Hour", but, in this connection, perhaps the tale will bear repetition. According to my informant, the author of "Arizona" was intent upon a serious scene when Mr. Shubert, who was financially interested in the production, stopped the players, and, turning to Mr. Thomas, remarked: "I think this would be a good place for some witty dialogue." "Yes?" replied Mr. Thomas. "As for instance?" He is a bold and a foolish man who throws himself upon the point of the playwright's verbal "I had," quoth Mr. Thomas, when he heard the remark, "until I began to have my clothes made by a good tailor!" This ready wit makes the dramatist one of the best, if not the best post prandial speaker in New York. Never a banquet at which he talks but the street rings the next day with quips of his making. "The trouble with amateur carvers", he said at the Friars' dinner to John Drew, "is that the gravy so rarely matches the wall paper." On another occasion he characterized a fatuous argument as being "like a chorus girl's tights, which touch every point and cover nothing." "Augustus Thomas shouts instructions through a megaphone"
Mr. Thomas finds time for many activities outside of his profession. Everyone knows of his energetic work for the cause of William Jennings Bryan. Throughout the three Bryan campaigns the dramatist made speeches, organized political meetings, and otherwise labored beneath the standard of the Commoner. Mr. Thomas' long suit is organizing. Upon the death of Bronson Howard, he succeeded to the presidency of the American Dramatists' Club, which he has metamorphosed into the Society of American Dramatists and Composers. The parent body was deep in the slough of despond, seeming to have no other purpose than proving that genius really is an infinite capacity for taking food. Mr. Thomas awakened the fraternal spirit, got committees to work on suggestions for plan and scope, benevolently assimilated a club of women playwrights, and created an association that is likely to be a power, instead of being merely a pow-wow, in the land. The greater part of the year, Mr. Thomas Charles Klein is of very small stature—a fact that probably accounts for the anecdote related earlier in my article. None of his family has been a sky-scraper. Manuel Klein, the composer, is not above five feet six, and Alfred Klein, another brother, who originated the role of the elephant tamer in "Wang", owed much of his success as a comedian to his brevity—that being, as you know, the soul of wit. No estimate of Mr. Klein could be called complete which did not take account of his grit and stick-to-it-iveness. Connected with the theater from his earliest youth—he was call boy in the company with a relative of mine—he produced his first play when he was hardly more than twenty. His misses were many, and his hits few and far between, but he kept on trying, until, with David Warfield's first starring venture, "The Auctioneer", he struck the bullseye of public approval squarely in the middle. Today he probably is the wealthiest of our dramatists, and a couple of years ago it was estimated that his income could not be less that $3,000 a week. He owns a charming home, called Shirley Manor after the principal In the adamantine quality of his "hard luck story", no one far surpasses Eugene Walter, whose income used to hover about that quoted as Mr. Klein's. It is told that this young man was lodging upon a park bench when Wagenhals & Kemper produced his "Paid in Full", but, personally, I am inclined to regard this tale as more picturesque than accurate. In need of money he may have been, but the parental Walters, who live in Cleveland, were quite able to prevent his lacking real necessities, and 'Gene himself has always been in the way of earning a living in the newspaper or the theatrical business. He served an apprenticeship as press agent of various attractions, and it was while both of us were acting in this capacity that we met at the Walnut Street Theater, in Philadelphia. Mr. Walter's initial effort, "Sergeant James", "Eugene Walter was lodging upon a park bench when Wagenhals & Kemper produced his 'Paid in Full'" His demeanor suggests neither culture nor education, though, as I have said, he comes of a good family and had excellent schooling. The value of erudition, even so far as it concerns the If genius is the quality of doing by instinct, without great thought or labor, obeying the commands of a something outside of one's self, Eugene Walter is certainly a genius. If it is, as some philosopher has said, "an infinite capacity for taking pains", he is nothing of the sort. He works by fits and starts, idling unconscionably for months at a time, and then completing a play in a fortnight. "The Easiest Way" was written in ten days. Mr. Walter's method of composition really is nothing more nor less than The tools necessary to the process are one large room, one outfit of furniture, and one exceptionally rapid stenographer. Mr. Walter and the stenographer enter the room. The door is locked, and work is begun by placing the furniture as it is to be placed on the stage—in other words, by setting the scene. Then the young dramatist begins to act. He is all the characters in his play. He rushes about the apartment, quarreling with himself, making love to himself, now standing here as one person and then racing to the opposite end of the apartment to be another. All the time he is speaking the words that come into his mind as natural under the circumstances, and the stenographer is taking them down at top speed. At the end of an hour or two an act is finished, an invisible curtain is rung down, and, if the amanuensis hasn't fainted, as two did in one day of labor on "Paid in Full", the stage is set for the Of course, you understand that, before the play reaches this point, the story, the situations, and even some details of dialogue must have been carefully thought out. In connection with Mr. Walter, I should say that they must have had time to assemble in his mind, having popped in, like Topsy, already grown. He goes about with what he himself described to me as "a seething mass of stuff in my head" until the "seething mass" cries for release, and then—the impromptu performance before the audience of one. The quickness of Mr. Walter's conception, the instantaneousness with which drama is formed for him, is illustrated by an experience of last winter. We had been to witness a bad play—one doomed to close the following Saturday. "Hopeless!" I said, as we left the theater. "Hopeless", repeated Mr. Walter, "but not without possibilities. If that idea had been mine, I should have commenced with the big situation of the third act. Then I should In five minutes he had sketched a new play, constructed around the theme of the old one, and it was a corker! As everyone knows, Eugene Walter was married recently to Charlotte Walker, the actress, and it is common knowledge, too, that both were bitterly disappointed at David Belasco's refusal to assign the principal role in "The Easiest Way" to Miss Walker. For this disappointment her husband tried to atone by fitting her with "Just a Wife", but the piece failed sadly at the Belasco Theater. The Walters live in the Ansonia Apartments, in upper Broadway, but they are contemplating the erection of a home near Long Island Sound. The man who writes plays, or, for that matter, any other man who performs labor requiring close concentration, finds it impossible to do his best in New York. "The very air is laden with distraction", says George Broadhurst, author of "The Man of the Hour." "When I want to A dramatist of a pattern with Eugene Walter's, though drawn in bolder, blacker lines, is Paul Armstrong, to whom theater-goers owe "Salomy Jane", "The Heir to the Hoorah" and "Alias Jimmy Valentine". Mr. Armstrong's contempt for the ordinary amenities, the graces of every-day, is own big brother to Mr. Walter's. He is a big, fine-looking fellow, characterized by tremendous vigor and virility, by what he himself would call "the punch." He is aggressively self-confident, where Augustus Thomas is only passively so; combative by disposition and much inclined to talk in superlatives. His broad-brimmed hat and his black imperial suggest the Westerner, though most of his life has been spent in New York. He was formerly a well-known authority on pugilism, writing for the Evening Journal under the nom de plume of "Right Cross." Mr. Armstrong's hatred of theatrical managers "The Superstitions of Sue" already had been accepted by the two senior members of the firm of Sullivan, Harris & Woods, and Mr. Armstrong had an appointment to read the piece to the junior member at eleven o'clock one bright Sunday. Promptly at that hour, he appeared at the Woods residence, in Riverside Drive, accompanied by two friends. Introductions followed, and the friends sat down, with Mr. and Mrs. Woods, to hear the new farce. Mr. Armstrong had hardly begun when the visitors burst into a roar of laughter. They howled afresh at every line, including descriptions of characters and "business", and the rendering was concluded with the pair rolling When the men had gone, Mr. Woods said to Mrs. Woods: "I suppose I'm dull, but I thought that play duller still. Of course, Armstrong's friends were brought to laugh, but when you began laughing, too, I knew the piece must be funny." "Why", responded Mrs. Woods, "I only laughed because the others did. I wanted to be civil." "The Superstitions of Sue" was one of the worst failures of its year. I have spoken of Eugene Walter's method of work, but that method is not more remarkable than the faith in a special environment held by James Forbes. Even while he smiles at his own credulity, Mr. Forbes believes firmly "I can think more clearly on a railway train than anywhere else", declares Mr. Forbes. "A chair car is the ideal place for concentration." This young fellow differs from his colleagues in his inability to work in the country. He owns and occupies a veritable palace at Croton-on-Hudson, but he never attempts anything important there. He says: "I find my surroundings too alluring. Only conscience keeps me at a desk anyway, and conscience is weaker than the charm of outdoors." One rather fancies that Jimmie's conscience—he is "Jimmie" to his friends—is pretty rigid. He comes of Scotch ancestry, and was reared in a Scotch Presbyterian community in Canada. "The "This tale stuck fast in my memory. At the age of nine I stole away to see 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and, when the transformation showed Little Eva in Paradise, I slipped out and waited in the street for the theater to burn down. I was terribly disappointed that nothing of the sort happened, and, after hanging around for the better part of the afternoon, I went home a confirmed agnostic." Jimmie drifted from Scotch Presbyterianism into dramatic authorship by easy and natural stages. First he was employed in a wholesale grocery store, then he became an actor, a newspaper man, a press agent, a manager, and, finally, a playwright. A short story, which he had Mr. Forbes is a boyish-looking young man, small in stature, nervous in manner, with a swarthy skin, and an ocean of forehead into which descends a peninsula of glossy black hair. He is general manager for Henry B. Harris, and has numberless business duties to perform in his comfortable little office in the Hudson Theater. He writes exclusively for Mr. Harris, and has an interest in the profits of his plays, besides the regular royalties, so that he has made a considerable fortune out of three big successes. Mr. Forbes probably is the only Winchell Smith, who made the comedy, "Brewster's Millions", and who is author of "The Fortune Hunter", says he chose dramatic authorship "because you don't have to be grammatical in plays." "I couldn't write a magazine article for a million dollars", he adds, "but dialogue comes easy to me." However, Mr. Smith, like many others of his cult, hates "the drudgery of composition." He likes to plan a new piece, but wishes that the manuscript "could be got out of my head by a surgical operation." Mr. Smith is a tall, slender, diffident young man, with a keen sense of humor and a varied experience. He began life in the grain and feed business in Hartford, and acted for many years in support of that still more celebrated Hartfordian, William Gillette. Langdon Mitchell, author of "The New York Idea", and John Luther Long, author of "Madame Eugene Presbrey, grey-bearded, vibrant, intense, devotes himself mainly to the adaptation of novels. "I want the novel that can't be dramatized!" he declares, and, for this reason, he found much pleasure in doing "Raffles." It seemed a hopeless task to win sympathy for a confirmed criminal, and Mr. Presbrey had about abandoned the task, when, one evening in Seventh Avenue, he saw a man running at top speed, a crowd in pursuit, and heard the cry: "Stop thief!" "The fellow was just behind me", says the author, "and, turning around, I got a good view of his hunted, desperate expression. Before I knew what I was doing, I whispered: 'Get up the alley!' And I didn't tell the policeman. 'No sympathy for I have at my side a list of some thirty men and women who write plays and of whom I could chat indefinitely. Each of these authors is so interesting, all of them have lived so many stories, that it is hard for me to admit a space limit and forebear being their Boswell. There is George Broadhurst, lean and business-like, who made a reputation by his farces, and then, when that had been forgotten, made another by his serious dramas. There is Paul Potter, white-haired, rotund, genial, the intimate friend of Charles Frohman, and the adaptor of "Trilby." There are earnest young William C. De Mille, author of "Strongheart"; Paul Kester, a wisp of a lad, timid and self-conscious, who I should like to tell you about pretty Margaret Mayo, who has built a villa from the proceeds of "Polly of the Circus", and whose first fame as a playwright was achieved under circumstances described elsewhere in this book. Rachel Crothers is a sedate, New Englandish They are, for the most part, a quiet, unassuming lot, constituting, of course, the brains of the theater, and lacking wholly the pose and self-importance of their creature, the actor. They are of the stage, and yet singularly apart from it, the glare of the footlights being merged for them with the soft red glow of the library. I am glad to have been their press agent this little time, for the majority of them are almost unknown to the very throngs they entertain vicariously. The wig-maker has his name on the "Margaret Mayo built a villa from the the proceeds of 'Polly of the Circus'" |
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