CLIMACTERIC--AN EARTHQUAKE AND A MARRIAGE
When the Melbourne MacDowell repertory season closed, the stranded
actors of the “Miss Petticoats” Company were again on the loose.
While San Francisco supported two good stock companies, the Alcazar
presenting high-class drama and the Central given over to melodrama,
their rosters had been completed for the season and they offered rather
lean pickings. But Lawrence Griffith worked them both to the best of
his persuasive powers.
Early fall came with workless weeks, and finally, to conserve his
shrinking treasury, our young actor who had been domiciled in the old
Windsor Hotel, a most moderately priced place on Market and Fourth
Streets, had to bunk in with Carlton, the stage carpenter of the
MacDowell show, in a single-bedded single room. Mr. Carlton was on a
social and mental plane with the actor, but his financial status was
decidedly superior.
The doubling-up arrangement soon grew rather irksome. What with idle
days, a flattened purse, and isolation from theatrical activities,
gloom and discouragement enveloped young Griffith, although he never
seemed to worry.
He had a trunk full of manuscripts--one-act plays, long plays, and
short stories and poems! To my unsophisticated soul it was all very
wonderful. What a cruel, unappreciative world, to permit works of
genius to languish lonely amid stage wardrobe and wigs and greasy
make-up!
On pleasant days when the winds were quiet and the fogs hung no nearer
than Tamalpais across the Gate, we would hie ourselves to the Ocean
Beach, where, fortified with note-book and pencil the actor-poet would
dictate new poems and stories.
One day young Lawrence brought along a one-act play called “In
Washington’s Time.” The act had been headlined over the Keith Circuit.
It had never played in San Francisco. He wondered if he could do
anything with it.
* * * * *
It was approaching the hop-picking season. The stranded young actor’s
funds were reaching bottom. Something must be done.
In California, in those days, quite nice people picked hops. Mother
and father, young folks, and the children, went. Being the dry season,
they’d live in the open; pick hops by day, and at night dance and sing.
Lawrence Griffith decided it would be a healthful, a colorful, and a
more remunerative experience than picking up theatrical odd jobs, to
join the hop pickers up Ukiah way. So for a few weeks he picked hops
and mingled with thrifty, plain people and operatic Italians who drank
“dago red” and sang the sextette from “Lucia” while they picked their
portion. Here he saved money and got atmosphere for a play. Sent me a
box of sweet-smelling hops from the fields, too!
A brief engagement as leading ingénue with Florence Roberts had cheered
me in the interval, even though Fred Belasco made me feel utterly
unworthy of my thirty-five dollar salary. “My God,” said he when I
presented my first week’s voucher, “they don’t give a damn what they do
with my money.”
However, Mr. Griffith soon returned to San Francisco. He hoped to
do something with his playlet. Martin Beck, the vaudeville magnate,
who was then manager of the Orpheum Theatre and booked acts over the
Orpheum Circuit, said to let him see a rehearsal.
Such excitement! I was to play a little Colonial girl and appear at
our own Orpheum Theatre in an act that had played New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Chicago, and other awesome cities. Mr. Beck booked
for the week and gave us a good salary, but could not offer enough
consecutive bookings to make a road tour pay, so that was that.
In the meantime Oliver Morosco had opened his beautiful Majestic
Theatre in upper Market Street, with “In the Palace of the King.”
The New York company lacking a blind Inez, I got the part, and the
dramatic critic, Ashton Stevens, gave me a great notice. In the next
week’s bill, “Captain Barrington,” I played a scene which brought me a
paragraph from Mr. Stevens captioned “An Actress with more than Looks.”
On the strength of this notice Mr. Morosco sent me to play ingénues at
his Burbank Theatre in Los Angeles, at twenty-five dollars per week.
Barney Bernard was stepping out just now. He wanted to see what he
could do away from the musical skits of Kolb and Dill. So he found a
play called “The Financier.” “Lawrence” Griffith had a little job in
it. The hardest part of the job was to smoke a cigar in a scene--it
nearly made him ill. But he had a good season, six weeks with salary
paid.
That over, came a call to Los Angeles to portray the Indian,
Alessandro, in a dramatization of Helen Hunt Jackson’s famous novel
“Ramona.”
It was pleasant for us to see each other. We went out to San Gabriel
Mission together. Mr. Griffith afterwards used the Mission as the
setting for a short story--a romantic satire which he called “From
Morning Until Night.” His brief engagement over, “Lawrence” went back
to San Francisco, and my Morosco season ending shortly afterward, I
followed suit.
In San Francisco, Nance O’Neill was being billed. She was returning
from her Australian triumphs in Ibsen, Sardou, and Sudermann. The
company, with McKee Rankin as manager and leading man, included John
Glendenning, father of Ernest; Clara T. Bracy, sister of Lydia Thompson
of British Blonde Burlesque and Black Crook fame; Paul Scardon from the
Australian Varieties and now husband of a famous cinema star, Betty
Blythe; and Jane Marbury.
Mr. Griffith, hoping for a chance to return East with the company,
applied for a job and was offered “bits” which he accepted. Then one
day, Mr. Rankin being ill, Lawrence Griffith stepped into the part of
the Father in “Magda.” Miss O’Neill thought so well of his performance
and the notices he received that she offered him leading parts for the
balance of the season.
When in the early spring of 1906, the company departed from
San Francisco, it left me with my interest in life decidedly
diminished--but Lawrence Griffith had promised to return, and when he
came back things would be different.
So, while the O’Neill company was working close to Minneapolis, I was
“resting.” I “rested” until eighteen minutes to five on the morning of
April 18th, when something happened.
“Earthquake?”
“I don’t know, but I think we had better get up,” suggested my sister.
* * * * *
I sent Lawrence a long telegram about what had happened to us, but he
received it by post. And then about a week later I received a letter
from Milwaukee telling me that Miss O’Neill and the company were giving
a benefit for desolate San Francisco, and that I had better come on
and meet him in Boston where the company was booked for a six weeks’
engagement.
So to Fillmore Street I went to beg for a railroad ticket to Boston,
gratis. There was a long line of people waiting. I took my place at the
end of the line. In time I reached the man at the desk.
“Where to?”
“Boston.”
“What is your occupation?”
“Actress.”
I thought it unwise to confide my matrimonial objective. No further
questions, however. I was given a yard of ticket and on May 9th I
boarded a refugee train at the Oakland mole, all dressed up in Red
Cross clothes that fitted me nowhere.
But I had a lovely lunch, put up by neighbors, some fried chicken, and
two small bottles of California claret. In another box, their stems
stuck in raw potatoes, some orange blossoms off a tree that stood close
to our tent.
Ah, dear old town, good-bye!
Every night I cried myself to sleep.
Thus I went to meet my bridegroom.
* * * * *
Boston!
Everything a bustle! People, and people, and people! Laughing, happy,
chattering people who didn’t seem to know and apparently didn’t care
what had happened to us out there by the bleak Pacific. I was so
annoyed at them. Their life was still normal. Though I knew they had
helped bounteously, I was annoyed.
But here HE comes! And we jumped into a cab--with a license, but no
ring. In the unusual excitement that had been forgotten, so we had to
turn back in the narrow street and find a jeweler. Then we drove to Old
North Church, where Paul Revere had hung out his lantern on his famous
ride (which Mr. Griffith has since filmed in “America”), and our names
were soon written in the register.
* * * * *
The end of June, and New York! Just blowing up for a thunderstorm.
I had never heard real thunder, nor seen lightning, nor been wet by
a summer rain. What horrible weather! The wind blew a gale, driving
papers and dust in thick swirling clouds. Of all the miserable
introductions to the city of my dreams and ambitions, New York City
could hardly have offered me a more miserable one!
We lived in style for a few days at the Hotel Navarre on Seventh Avenue
and Thirty-ninth Street, and then looked for a “sublet” for the summer.
I’d never heard of a “sublet” before.
We ferreted around and found a ducky little place, so
cheap--twenty-five dollars a month--on West Fifty-sixth Street,
overlooking the athletic grounds of the Y. M. C. A., where I was
tremendously amused watching the fat men all wrapped up in sweaters
doing their ten times around without stopping--for reducing purposes.
But we had little time to waste in such observations. A job must be
had for the fall. In a few weeks we signed with the Rev. Thomas Dixon
(fresh from his successful “Clansman”); my husband as leading man and I
as general understudy, in “The One Woman.” Rehearsals were to be called
in about two months.
To honeymoon, or not to honeymoon--to work or not to work. Work it was,
and David started on a play.
And he worked. He walked the floor while dictating and I took it down
on the second-hand typewriter I had purchased somewhere on Amsterdam
Avenue for twenty dollars. The only other investment of the summer
had been at Filene’s in Boston where I left my Red Cross sartorial
contributions and emerged in clothes that had a more personal relation
to me.
They were happy days. The burdens were shared equally. My husband was
a splendid cook; modestly said, so was I. He loved to cook, singing
negro songs the while, and whatever he did, whether cooking or writing
or washing the dishes, he did it with the same earnestness and
cheerfulness. Felt his responsibilities too, and had a sort of mournful
envy of those who had established themselves.
Harriet Quimby was now writing a weekly article for _Leslie’s_, and
summering gratis at the old Oriental Hotel at Manhattan Beach as
payment for publicizing the social activities of the place. Beach-bound
one day, she called at our modest ménage, beautifully dressed, with
wealthy guests in their expensive car. As the car drove off, Mr.
Griffith gazing sadly below from our window five flights up, as sadly
said “She’s a success.”
The play came along fine, owing much to our experiences in California.
One act was located in the hop fields, and there were Mexican songs
that Mr. Griffith had first heard rendered by native Mexicans who sang
in “Ramona.” Another act was in a famous old café in San Francisco,
The Poodle Dog. It was christened “A Fool and a Girl.” The fool was an
innocent youth from Kentucky, but the girl, being from San Francisco,
was more piquant.
We’d been signed for the fall, and we felt we’d done pretty well by the
first summer. I’d learned to relish the funny little black raspberries
and not to be afraid of thunderstorms--they were not so uncertain as
earthquakes.
And now rehearsals are called for Mr. Dixon’s “The One Woman.” They
lasted some weeks before we took to the road and opened in Norfolk,
Virginia, where we drew our first salaries, seventy-five for him and
thirty-five for her. Nice, it was, and we hoped it would be a long
season.