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Although I am rambling about a little ahead of my story the reader will
have observed that by this time I had crossed the Rubicon and had sold
my first play and was steaming ahead at full speed. Very few weeks pass
during which I am not asked “how to sell a first play” and for the
benefit of all would-be dramatists I propose to pause here and answer
this question for all time by giving a brief description of how I sold
mine.
I had no money at all and absolutely no idea of who the managers were or
how to approach them, but I had a play, or at least I had an amazing
number of perfectly good words neatly set down on paper, and I started
boldly out on my quest. This quest proved as it almost always does an
unbelievably long and difficult one. Luck favored me by bringing about a
chance meeting on Broadway with an old friend, the captain of the
Harvard varsity football team on which I had been a substitute, and
through him I managed to land the job of coaching the football squad of
a New York prep school at a salary of fifty dollars a month. So the food
and shelter problem was solved for the next few months. But all good
things, even football seasons, come to an end, and before I had
discovered, first, that no one would read my play, and, second, that it
was absolutely not worth reading anyway, I had some hard knocks and some
rather dire experiences. At length I made up my mind that possibly the
reason I couldn’t sell my play was because it was a bad one and I
started another, but stern necessity was knocking hard and loud and in a
moment of discouragement I made up my mind to again become an actor. A
kind Providence, however, saved me from this fate, although at the
moment I was tempted to doubt its kindness.
I wrote a letter to the late James O’Neill, who as usual was rehearsing
his company at his home in New London; some mention of my experience at
Harvard caught O’Neill’s eye and he wrote me to join the company at New
London, but he evidently did not think it necessary to enclose
transportation to a worthy Harvard graduate. I arrived in New London one
beautiful August day in 1898 or thereabouts with a capital of ninety
cents, and was asked by Mr. O’Neill to memorize six parts in the various
plays he was to do that season, and to read one of them, the part of the
juvenile lead in VIRGINIOS to him the following morning. To this day
when things are breaking very badly for me I am haunted by some of these
terrible lines: “Spread the news in every corner of the city, and let no
man who calls himself a son of Rome stand aside when tyranny assails its
fairest daughter.” O’Neill listened to my reading of the part and
swallowed hard and remarked that “I still needed a little work,” and
then made me the princely offer of twenty dollars a week for the season
if I would buy seven hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of costumes for
the parts. At that it was my turn to swallow hard as my ninety cents had
shrunk considerably during the last twenty-four hours, but I managed to
stammer out that I’d think it over and let him know.
[Illustration:
“O’Neill listened to my reading of the part.”
(_A caricature by Fornaro. From the Messmore Kendall Collection_)
]
[Illustration:
Edwin Booth as Richelieu
(_From the Messmore Kendall Collection_)
]
Mr. O’Neill went into town to spend the evening leaving me seated on a
rock busy with a mathematical problem, and as I never was a great
mathematician I sat there on that rock until twelve o’clock that night
trying to figure out how to expand the remains of my ninety cents to
cover seven hundred and fifty dollars for costumes and enough over to
live on for five weeks before my salary was to start. It was a difficult
problem, but I still think if I had been given a little more time I
would have solved it. I was interrupted, however, by the sound of voices
approaching in the night. Mr. O’Neill’s home was in a secluded spot. On
one side of it ran the raised tracks of the New Haven railroad. In the
house at that moment young Eugene O’Neill was sleeping in his crib. At
the sound of voices I looked up, my problem still unsolved. Its solution
came very suddenly. Mr. O’Neill, returning along the raised railroad
tracks, stubbed his toe and fell through an open culvert and landed at
my feet with both his legs broken. I left New London the next day. I
have often been back since that night, but my watch is still there.
Had I known as much in those days as I now know of the enormous
difficulties ahead of me it is possible that I might have feared them,
but at the time my confidence was more developed than my prudence and I
had no fear at all. This is, of course, the usual attitude of youth. The
obstacles ahead that seem like mountains to the experience of middle age
are only mole hills to a young man of twenty odd who quite expects to
leap over them without a change of stride.
Yet I doubt if any undertaking in the world is any more difficult than
that of one who elects to make a living as a dramatist. He must win his
place and then he must hold it, and of the two the last is really the
most difficult. The late Charles Kline told me just before his death
that the most pitiful thing in the world was a playwright who had
written a big success and learned enough of the difficulties of doing it
to feel absolutely convinced that there wasn’t the slightest chance of
his ever being able to do it again. Every young playwright must put up
with a number of things that cut deep into a sensitive nature and leave
scars that never quite die away. Many men and women of talent, who might
have developed into fine writers for the theater find themselves too
sensitive for the harsh contacts and give up in despair. The hours of
waiting in managers’ offices, ignored and unwelcome, the contemptuous
acceptance of plays to be read that are ultimately glanced over by an
office boy and scornfully rejected, are all a part of the game.
I took one of my first plays to the Frohman office. What happened to it
there was, or at least I thought it was, a matter of life or death to
me. I had no money at all and during the five weeks I was waiting for a
verdict I sold what few clothes I had left, piece by piece, to pay my
three dollars a week room rent and spent thirty cents a day for food. At
last I was ushered into the presence of the play reader, later one of
the great men of the theater, who met me with this encouraging speech:
“You are,” he said, “a strong and husky young man, with, so I have
heard, some reputation as an athlete. Why don’t you take this play of
yours and see how far you can throw it?” This was hardly a tactful
rejection, and as it turned out rather a silly one, as the play in
question some years later made a very reasonable success.
One must be prepared for this sort of thing and resolute enough to
thrive on it, as success very rarely comes upon a young playwright very
suddenly. It doesn’t sneak up behind one and thrust fame and fortune
into one’s lap, fame and fortune being very timid birds, more likely to
fall into the lap of the one who goes out after them with a gun than to
the dreamer who sits at home and waits patiently. In my experience
patient waiting never got anybody anything. All the prizes worth having
are for the daring—the one who sits and waits never got anything—except
fat.
A dramatist isn’t a dramatist at all until he has had a play produced,
no matter how many plays he may have written, and he must get that first
production at any cost. It is natural enough that the managers should
hesitate before purchasing the play of an untried writer, especially as
there are only a few of them who themselves know enough about a play to
have any real confidence in their own reaction. The successful author,
of course, has a great advantage, and a man with one or two hits to his
credit can get a pretty bad play accepted. Yet Mr. Shaw’s observation
that “If it’s by a good writer it’s a good play” doesn’t mean quite as
much as it used to, since the critic of late has developed a rather
alarming habit of eagerly leaping at the throat of the man who is
obviously trading on an established reputation and trying to get away
with careless and sloppy work.
In some ways it is, I think, more difficult for a beginner to-day than
it was in my youth. In those days almost any play that got itself
produced made some money for its author and any honest writer of long
experience would own up to considerable sums made from plays that cost
their producers a lot of money. To-day, however, plays die quickly and a
failure means that the writer gets little, if anything, more than the
trifling sum of his advance, which is seldom over five hundred and
almost never, in America, over one thousand dollars. The pleasant old
custom of a manager keeping a young writer’s bad plays running long
enough for the writer to live comfortably until he learned how to write
a better one has passed along with the other nice old romantic notions
and to-day he has to hit it the first time or walk the plank.
[Illustration:
CHARLES FROHMAN
“I took one of my first plays to the Frohman office.”
(_From a caricature in the Messmore Kendall Collection_)
]
It is, naturally enough, about as difficult for the beginner to learn
how to write without any real chance of slowly and gradually learning
his business as it is for the young actor of to-day to learn how to act
without any real experience in acting; he lacks the training of the good
stock companies of twenty years ago, or of the classic drama where he
had to play many small parts before he was ever trusted with a big one.
He is asked now to play any part he can look, and is given leading parts
to play and fails in them more from lack of experience than from lack of
talent. This doesn’t in the least mean that I think the acting of
twenty-five years ago was better than the acting of to-day, because I
know better. The lack of the training of the old days is unfortunate,
but the change in method more than makes up for it, and although at
present we have few great actors we have a tremendous supply of very
competent ones. Although at this writing too many of them are in
Hollywood, we can still find a good cast far more easily than we can
find a good play, and there are still far too many promising young
actors unable to get a chance to prove their worth. But their problem is
simple compared to the problem of the young playwright, now or twenty
years ago.
[Illustration:
HARRIGAN AND HART
(_From the Messmore Kendall Collection_)
]
Each generation, I suppose, has its own problems, but the problem of the
one starting out to win a place in a crowded and difficult profession is
never easily solved. It is well, however, to remember that all these
fences built up in front of us to hold us back remain firmly standing
after we have managed to scramble over them and they keep on blocking
the road and give a little breathing time to those who have succeeded in
getting a start.
It’s a tough game any way you figure it, and it’s a queer, lonely and
depressing existence. A young writer must do it all himself and usually
against the advice and the doubts of his acquaintances. He must run
around New York with that first play under his arm until both his feet
and his heart are sore, and he rarely meets any one who takes the
slightest interest in it. Nobody has any faith or confidence in him;
probably he has very little money—I very distinctly remember that I had
none at all—he will very likely be as hungry and lonely and frightened
as I was. But if the play under that young writer’s arm is a real
play—and every once in a while it is—he is not a half starved lonely
vagrant but a prince on a masquerade. He doesn’t know it; the cold and
half contemptuous clerks and secretaries he meets can’t see through his
disguise, but he is a bigger man than any of these who snub him and
outranks the best of them. Soon his time will come—“The King is dead.
Long live the King.” At the time I started, however, I knew nothing at
all of what was ahead of me, and had, as I recall it, few doubts and no
misgivings.
Fate having thrust me back into the ranks of the dramatists I have never
again dared to desert and devoted my efforts only to play writing,
although at odd times, driven by financial or business necessity, I have
served in all the branches of the theater, having worked as actor, stage
manager, stage director, treasurer, box-office man, advance agent, play
doctor, dramatist, business manager, partner in plays of my own and of
other writers, as well as in later years serving a rather varied
apprenticeship in the motion picture studios both in New York and in
California.
Determined to sell this first play of mine I approached at this time the
firm of Davis and Keough and tried to sell them a romantic costume drama
dealing with the Wars of the Roses. When Mr. Keough got through
laughing, he asked me to go that night to see a play he had just
produced called THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY and to call on him the next day.
When I called he asked me if “I thought I could write a play like that.”
I replied that I thought anybody could, but didn’t see why they should.
But when he told me that he would give me five hundred dollars if I
wrote one he liked, I rushed back to my furnished room and went to work.
I am sure the play I wrote was almost as bad as the one he sent me to
see, but for some deep managerial reason he couldn’t see it and told me
to go away and stop bothering him. The Davis and Keough melodrama,
however, had made me think. I had seen that the theater had been crowded
with an audience that responded tremendously to the crude plot and the
rather obvious situations and, as I had told Mr. Keough, it had seemed
to me to be a simple formula to acquire. Later investigation convinced
me that this formula was capable of some expansion without loss to its
effectiveness and I began a rather more scientific study of this form of
play manufacture than had ever before seemed necessary to any of the
writers who had been engaged in it.
As a result of this study I soon evolved a rather mechanical but really
effective mold that served me in the writing of more than one hundred
and fifty of these melodramas with an average of success that seems
startling to me as I look back upon it. Charles Dickens had beaten me to
the trick and of course many others have used it, but as a labor-saving
device it served me well. It had always seemed to me that Dickens’s
stories fell very readily into three molds: one represented by THE TALE
OF TWO CITIES, one by DAVID COPPERFIELD and one by the strictly humorous
type represented by THE PICKWICK PAPERS. I therefore devised my molds,
in my case represented by such western thrillers as THE GAMBLER OF THE
WEST, the second type the New York comedy-drama represented by CHINATOWN
CHARLIE and BROADWAY AFTER DARK, and the last group of what Hollywood
would call the “sexy” type, illustrated by NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK
MODEL and a long string of her persecuted and unfortunate sisters.
It took me some months to figure all this out and to experiment with my
different forms, months of very hard work, as I wrote all day and every
night went to the fifteen-cent gallery of one of the popular-priced
houses, making a real study, not of the plays but of the audiences. When
the very hard-boiled gentleman who sat next to me wept or laughed or
applauded, I wasn’t at first always sure of his reason, my duller mind
not at that time responding to the sentimental dramatic or comedy cue as
quickly as his trained intelligence, and I made a point of falling into
conversation with my neighbors in an effort to share as fully in the
delight of those present as was possible for an unfortunate inhibited by
a Harvard background.
After a time, trained by my comrades in the packed and poorly ventilated
galleries, I found myself thrilling with delight to the noble if
somewhat banal sentiment of such good old phrases as: “Rags are royal
raiment when worn for virtue’s sake,” and taking the utmost satisfaction
in the retribution that always followed the villain and in the sweet,
and somewhat sticky, rewards of those whose feet had never strayed from
the straight and narrow path. Of course life was never like that, but
just as obviously it ought to be, and to the dull lives of the working
people of thirty-five years ago these absurd dramas of ours brought
almost their only glimpse of romance.
The old melodramas were practically motion pictures, as one of the first
tricks I learned was that my plays must be written for an audience who,
owing to the huge, uncarpeted, noisy theaters, couldn’t always hear the
words and who, a large percentage of them having only recently landed in
America, couldn’t have understood them in any case. I therefore wrote
for the eye rather than the ear and played out each emotion in action,
depending on my dialogue only for the noble sentiments so dear to
audiences of that class.
With my mind made up to a conquest of the sensational melodrama field I
worked hard on my first script and in the course of time had it ready.
Curiously enough I had turned out a good play, rather above the usual
specimen of its kind, and as a matter of fact one of the most honest and
complete successes I have ever had. I knew little of its worth at the
time, but I liked the thing, not unusual in a young dramatist, and I
made up my mind to have it produced. To that end I made up a list of
theatrical managers starting with the A’s and ending with the X’s and
set out to call on all of them.
I don’t remember much about the A’s but the B’s were led by the name of
William A. Brady. For a week I called at his office daily with my play
under my arm. There seemed to be a certain vagueness among Mr. Brady’s
clerks as to when he could be seen and after five or six days I ventured
to ask one of them where Mr. Brady was, to be met with the heart-felt
answer: “I wish to God I knew.” Which goes to prove after all how slight
are the changes the years bring.
Pursuing my alphabetical course, I came at last to the H’s and found the
name of “Gus Hill.” After diligent inquiry I discovered that Gus Hill
was the manager of “Gus Hill’s Stars,” at that time holding forth in a
burlesque theater in Brooklyn. The day before the D’s having failed me
in the person of the late Augustin Daly, I started for Brooklyn and Gus
Hill. I asked for Mr. Hill at the stage door of the Star Theatre and was
pointed out his dressing room and told that Mr. Hill was “in there.” I
knocked somewhat timidly at this door and a voice called “Come in,” and
I entered to see a slight, blond, pleasant-looking man, quite naked, who
was rubbing himself down with a towel. I later learned that Mr. Gus Hill
was at that time the “Champion Club Swinger of the World” and that he
had just finished his usual stunt of swinging great clubs several times
larger than himself.
[Illustration:
“The B’s were led by the name of William A. Brady”
(_Photo by White Studio_)
]
[Illustration:
“Henry Miller was ... the greatest teacher of acting I have ever
known.”
(_Photo by Arnold Genthe_)
]
As this turned out to be the critical moment of my life, pardon me if I
drop into the dialogue form in an attempt to do it justice. Mad as the
following may seem, it is true to the very last word. This is what
actually took place between a very much embarrassed youth and a bland,
blond, smiling and quite naked gentleman named Gus Hill:
SCENE
Gus Hill’s Dressing Room in Star Theatre, Brooklyn.
CHARACTERS
GUS HILL, thirty-five, a slight man of extraordinarily powerful frame,
good-natured, smiling, costume absolutely none.
OWEN DAVIS, twenty-four, stout, a bit shy. Costume—the only one he had.
[_As the curtain rises_, GUS HILL _is discovered rubbing himself down
with the contents of a bottle on the label of which we read the words
“For Man or Beast.” There is a timid knock on the door and_ GUS HILL
_calls_:]
HILL
Come in! [_The knock is repeated and again he calls_:] Come in you ——
fool! [_The door opens and_ DAVIS _enters timidly and looks a bit
impressed as he takes in the scene_.]
[_Note: At this time_ DAVIS _was not hardened to managers and could
still be impressed_.]
HILL
[_Pleasantly_]
Who are you?
DAVIS
Er—Er—I’m—er—an author.
HILL
The hell you are? Do you know you’re the first one of ’em I ever saw
this close. What do you want?
DAVIS
Er—well—I thought I—er—I’d like to have you produce my play.
HILL
All right, sit down on the trunk.
DAVIS
[_On trunk_]
Well—er—that is—er—What I mean is I’d like to have you produce my play.
HILL
What the hell is the matter with you? Didn’t I tell you “all right”?
DAVIS
Yes, sir—what I mean is—I—er—I was wondering if—if you’d mind very much
if I was to read you my play?
HILL
If I keep on in this game I suppose I may have to come to that, but
right now I wouldn’t know anything about it. I’m looking for a play and
you say you’ve got one—what’s the answer?
DAVIS
Yes, sir—er—what I mean is—I came here—that is I’d very much like to
have you produce my play.
HILL
——! If you keep on talking long enough I’m ——! ——! sure I won’t, let’s
fix it up quick. How much do you want for it?
DAVIS
Well—er—as a matter of fact I don’t quite know. You see, to tell you the
truth, this—er—er—this is the first time I ever sold a play if—if this
is a time.
HILL
Don’t you know what they sell for?
DAVIS
Er—No, sir.
HILL
You’re a hell of an author.
DAVIS
Er—yes, sir.
HILL
I tell you what, I’ll give you fifty dollars a week and put up all the
money. Then, after I got it back, if and when, I’ll give you one-third
of all the play makes. What do you think of that?
DAVIS
I don’t believe it.
HILL
[_Thoughtfully_]
I’ve heard it said that some guys could write pretty good plays when to
look at ’em you’d wonder how they did it! When we do our play who’s
going to hire the actors and get the scenery and rehearse it?
DAVIS
[_Calmly_]
I am.
HILL
Do you know how?
DAVIS
Er—er—I—I hope so.
HILL
[_Sadly_]
Yes—so do I.
END OF SCENE
This was my introduction to Gus Hill and a true account of how my first
play was placed for production. The play was a melodrama called THROUGH
THE BREAKERS and it ran for five years in the popular-priced theaters of
America and was produced in England, Australia and South Africa with
real success. In spite of Mr. Hill’s quite natural doubts, I did all of
the things I told him I would do, and by some kind of luck or fate, or
by the aid of a really tremendous enthusiasm that has always been my one
claim to anything unusual in the way of talent, I got the play on the
stage and gave a really good performance.
The first matinée of THROUGH THE BREAKERS was the occasion of the second
dramatic criticism to which I alluded some half mile back in this
rambling narrative. The play was produced in Bridgeport, Conn., and the
morning papers had been very flattering in their account of the first
performance of this first born child of mine. I was standing at the back
of the theater during the matinée listening with rapture to my words,
and in all the world there is no listening to equal a young author’s,
when my bliss was rudely shattered by a low-voiced comment from a
gentleman with a dirty collar who sat in the last row. “I have,”
remarked this gentleman to his companion, “seen a lot of shows in my
time, but this is probably the rottenest —— —— —— —— —— of a show I have
ever seen!”
Even in those days I was a meek and quiet and extremely reasonable man
so I merely smiled and bent over the railing and touched the gentleman
with the dirty collar on the shoulder and whispered softly: “Excuse me,
but there is a message for you outside.” After some persuasion I
convinced the gentleman that “some one outside” was asking for him and
he followed me willingly enough to the front door. The theater, luckily,
was what used to be called an “upstairs house” and twenty-five or thirty
steps led gently down to the street. As we approached the head of this
stairway, still smiling I drew back my arm and hit the astonished critic
a snappy uppercut that tumbled him all the way to the sidewalk, then
returned to my pleasant duty of listening to my own words.
This story was noised abroad during the next fifteen or twenty years and
was once used by Alexander Woollcott in an article; used, as I recall
it, by him to explain some favorable notice he had written of one of my
plays.
In justice to myself, however, I must pause here to say that I have been
called worse things than the man with the dirty collar called me by many
critics who are still alive and healthy. As a matter of fact I honestly
think that critics in the end are rarely unfair, and very seldom wrong.
It is an absurdity to say that they ever make or break a play. A good
play is a very sturdy and very important force in itself, of far more
importance than the opinion of any critic, and in the end it lives or
dies because it’s good or because it isn’t. Critics can, and have, made
a bad play live for a short time, but they never killed a good one—and
what’s more, they never wanted to. I have never been an especial pet of
dramatic critics, my somewhat spectacular career not exactly fitting
with their idea of the proper dignity of a dramatist. Yet whenever I
have written a really fine play they have been quick and generous in
their praise of it. So I have always felt they had a perfect right to go
after me tooth and nail upon the more frequent occasions when I have
stubbed my toe.
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