It was the role 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 role, 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."
[Illustration: _ETHEL BARRYMORE_]
As _Zoe Blundell_ she had a triumph. In this character she was
artistically reborn. The sweetness and girlishness now stood aside in
the presence of a somber and haunting tragedy that was real. Miss
Barrymore literally made the critics sit up. It recorded a distinct
epoch in her career, and, as in other instances with a Pinero play, the
American success far exceeded its English popularity.
When Miss Barrymore did "The Twelve-Pound Look," by Barrie, the
following year, she only added to the conviction that she was in many
respects the most versatile and gifted of the younger American
actresses. Frohman loved "The Twelve-Pound Look" as he loved few plays.
Its only rival in his regard was "Peter Pan." He went to every
rehearsal, he saw it at every possible opportunity. Like most others, he
realized that into this one act of intense life was crowded all the
human drama, all the human tragedy.
Miss Barrymore now sped from grave to gay. When the time came for her to
rehearse Barrie's fascinating skit, "A Slice of Life," Frohman was ill
at the Knickerbocker Hotel. He was very much interested in this little
play, so the rehearsals were held in his rooms at the hotel. There were
only three people in the cast--Miss Barrymore, her brother John, and
Hattie Williams. It was so excruciatingly funny that Frohman would often
call up the Empire and say:
"Send Ethel over to rehearse. I want to forget my pains."
Charles Frohman lived to see his great expectations of Ethel Barrymore
realized. He found her the winsome slip of a fascinating girl; he last
beheld her in the full flower of her maturing art. He was very much
interested in her transition from the seriousness of "The Shadow" into
the wholesome humor and womanliness of "Our Mrs. McChesney," a part he
had planned for her before his final departure. It was one of the many
swift changes that Miss Barrymore has made, and had he lived he would
have found still another cause for infinite satisfaction with her.
* * *
Another star now swam into the Frohman ken. This was the way of it:
Paul Potter was making a periodical visit to New York in 1901. David
Belasco came to see him at the Holland House.
"Paul," said he, "C. F. and I want you to make us a version of Ouida's
'Under Two Flags' for Blanche Bates."
"I never read the novel," said Potter.
"You can dramatize it without reading it," remarked Belasco, and in a
month he was sitting in Frohman's rooms at Sherry's and Potter was
reading to them his dramatization of "Under Two Flags," throwing in, for
good measure, a ride from "Mazeppa" and a snow-storm from "The Queen of
Sheba."
"I like all but the last scene," said Frohman. "When _Cigarette_ rides
up those mountains with her lover's pardon, the pardon is, to all
intents and purposes, delivered. The actual delivery is an anti-climax.
What the audience want to see is a return to the garret where the lovers
lived and were happy."
As they walked home that night Belasco said to Potter:
"That was a great point which C. F. made. What remarkable intuition he
has!"
Frohman and Potter used to watch Belasco at work, teaching the actors to
act, the singers to sing, the dancers to dance.
Then came a hitch.
"Gros, our scene-painter," said Frohman, "maintains that _Cigarette_
couldn't ride up any mountains near the Algerian coast, for the nearest
mountains are the Atlas Mountains, eight hundred miles away."
He undertook to convert Mr. Gros. Fortunately for him the author of the
play stood in the Garden Theater while Belasco was rehearsing a dance.
"Oh," said he, "if it's a comic opera you can have all the mountains you
please. I thought it was a serious drama."
Then Frohman ventured to criticize the mountain torrent.
"What's the matter with the torrent?" called Belasco, while _Cigarette_
and her horse stood on the slope.
"It doesn't look like water at all," said Frohman.
Just then the horse plunged his nose into the torrent and licked it
furiously. Criticism was silenced. The play was a big, popular success,
and with it Blanche Bates arrived as star.
One day, a year later, Frohman remarked to Potter in Paris, "What do you
say to paying Ouida a visit in Florence?"
He and Belasco had paid her considerable royalties. He thought she would
be gratified by a friendly call. Frohman and Potter obtained letters of
introduction from bankers, consuls, and Florentine notables, and sent
them in advance to Ouida. The landlord of the inn gave them a
resplendent two-horse carriage, with a liveried coachman and a footman.
Frohman objected to the footman as undemocratic. The landlord insisted
that it was Florentine etiquette, and shrugged his shoulders when they
departed, seeming to think that they were bound on a perilous journey.
Through the perfumed, flower-laden hills they climbed, the Arno
gleaming below. The footman took in their cards to the villa of Mlle. de
la Ramee. He promptly returned.
"The signora is indisposed," he remarked.
The visitors sent him back to ask if they might come some other day.
Again he returned.
"The signora is indisposed," was the only answer he could get.
Potter and Frohman drove away. Frohman was hurt. He did not try to
conceal it.
"That's the first author," he said, "who ever turned me down. Anyway,
the pancakes at lunch were delicious." He met rebuff--as he met
loss--with infinite humor.
* * *
Stars now crowded quick and fast into the Frohman firmament. Next came
Virginia Harned. Daniel Frohman had seen her in a traveling company at
the Fourteenth Street Theater and engaged her to support E. H. Sothern.
She later came under Charles's control, and he presented her as star in
"Alice of Old Vincennes," "Iris," and "The Light that Lies in Woman's
Eyes."
Effie Shannon and Herbert Kelcey followed. Their first venture with him,
"Manon Lescaut," was a direful failure, but it was followed up with "My
Lady Dainty," which was a success.
Charles Frohman had various formulas for making stars. Some he
discovered outright, others he developed. Here is an example of his
Christopher Columbus proclivities:
One day he heard that there was a very brilliant young Hungarian actor
playing a small part down at the Irving Place German Theater in New York
City. He went to see him, was very much impressed with his ability, sent
for him, and said:
"If you will study English I will agree to take care of you on the
English-speaking stage."
[Illustration: _JULIA MARLOWE_]
The man assented, and Frohman paid him a salary all the while he was
studying English. Before many years he was a well-known star. His name
was Leo Ditrichstein.
Frohman now got Ditrichstein to adapt "Are You a Mason?" from the
German, put it on at Wallack's Theater, and it was a huge success.
Besides Ditrichstein, this cast, which was a very notable one, included
John C. Rice, Thomas W. Wise, May Robson, Arnold Daly, Cecil De Mille,
and Sallie Cohen, who had played Topsy in the stranded "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" Company, whose advance fortunes Frohman had piloted in his
precarious days on the road.
Just as Frohman led the American invasion in England, so did he now
bring about the English invasion of America. He had inaugurated it with
Olga Nethersole. He now introduced to American theater-goers such
artists as Charles Hawtrey, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Charles Warner, Sir
Charles Wyndham, Mary Moore, Marie Tempest, and Fay Davis, in whose
career he was enormously interested. He starred Miss Davis in a group of
plays ranging from "Lady Rose's Daughter" to "The House of Mirth."
In connection with Mrs. Campbell's first tour occurred another one of
the famous Frohman examples of quick retort. He was rehearsing this
highly temperamental lady, and made a constructive criticism which
nettled her very much. She became indignant, called him to the
footlights, and said:
"I want you to know that I am an artist?"
Frohman, with solemn face, instantly replied:
"Madam, I will keep your secret."
One of the early English importations revealed Frohman's utterly
uncommercialized attitude toward the theater. He was greatly taken with
the miracle play "Everyman," and brought over Edith Wynne Mathison and
Charles Rann Kennedy to do it. He was unable to get a theater, so he put
them in Mendelssohn Hall.
"You'll make no money with them there," said a friend to him.
"I don't expect to make any," replied Frohman, "but I want the American
people to see this fine and worthy thing."
The play drew small audiences for some time. Then, becoming the talk of
the town, it went on tour and repaid him with a profit on his early
loss.
* * *
One of the happiest of Charles Frohman's theatrical associations now
developed. In 1903, when the famous Weber and Fields organization seemed
to be headed toward dissolution, Charles Dillingham suggested to Willie
Collier that he go under the Frohman management. Collier went to the
Empire Theater and was ushered into Frohman's office.
"It took you a long time to get up here," said the magnate. "How would
you like to go under my management?"
"Well," replied Collier, with his usual humor, "I didn't come up here to
buy a new hat."
The result was that Collier became a Frohman star and remained one for
eleven years. He and Frohman were constantly exchanging witty telegrams
and letters. Frohman sent Collier to Australia. At San Francisco the
star encountered the famous earthquake. He wired Frohman:
"San Francisco has just had the biggest opening in its history."
Whereupon Frohman, who had not yet learned the full extent of the
calamity, wired back:
"Don't like openings with so many 'dead-heads.'"
* * *
All the while, William Gillette had been thriving as a Frohman star.
Like many other serious actors, he had an ambition to play _Hamlet_.
With Frohman the wishes of his favorite stars were commands, so he
proceeded to make ready a production. Suddenly Barrie's remarkable play
"The Admirable Crichton" fell into his hands. He sent for Gillette and
said:
"Gillette, I am perfectly willing that you should play _Hamlet_, but I
have just got from Barrie the ideal play for you."
When Gillette read "The Admirable Crichton," he agreed with Frohman, and
out of it developed one of his biggest successes. "Hamlet," with its
elaborate production, still awaits Gillette.
* * *
In presenting Clara Bloodgood as star in Clyde Fitch's play "The Girl
with the Green Eyes," Frohman achieved another one of his many
sensations. The smart, charming girl who had made her debut under
sensational circumstances in "The Conquerors," now saw her name up in
electric lights for the first time. Frohman's confidence in her, as in
many of his proteges, was more than fulfilled.
* * *
Charles Frohman, who loved to dazzle the world with his Napoleonic
coups, launched what was up to this time, and which will long remain,
the most spectacular of theatrical deals. He greatly admired E. H.
Sothern, who had been associated with him in some of his early ventures.
The years that Julia Marlowe had played under his joint management had
endeared her to him. One day he had an inspiration. There had been no
big Shakespearian revival for some time, so he said:
"Why not unite Sothern and Marlowe and tour the country in a series of
magnificent Shakespearian productions?"
At that time Julia Marlowe had reverted to the control of Charles
Dillingham, while Sothern was still under the management of Daniel
Frohman. Charles now brought the stars together, offered them a
guarantee of $5,000 a week for a forty weeks' engagement and for three
seasons. In other words, he pledged these two stars the immense sum of
$200,000 for each season, which was beyond doubt the largest guarantee
of the kind ever made in the history of the American theater.
It was just about this time that Joseph Humphreys, Frohman's seasoned
general stage-manager, succumbed to the terrific strain under which he
had worked all these years, as both actor and producer. William Seymour
stepped into his shoes, and has retained that position ever since.
Charles was constantly bringing about revolutions. Through him Francis
Wilson, for example, departed from musical comedy, in which he had made
a great success, and took up straight plays. He began with Clyde Fitch's
French adaptation of "Cousin Billy," and thus commenced a connection
under Charles Frohman that lasted many years. With him, as with all his
other stars, there was never a scrap of paper.
[Illustration: _E. H. SOTHERN_]
Frohman and Wilson met at the Savoy Hotel in London one day. Frohman
had often urged him to quit musical comedy, and he now said he was ready
to make the plunge.
"All right," said Frohman. "I will give you so much a week and a
percentage of the profits."
"It's done," said Wilson.
"Do you want a contract?" asked Frohman.
"No."
This was about all that ever happened in the way of arrangements between
Frohman and his stars, to some of whom he paid fortunes.
During these years Charles had watched with growing interest the
development of a young girl from Bloomington, Illinois, Margaret
Illington by name. She had appeared successfully in the old Lyceum Stock
Company when it was transferred by Daniel Frohman to Daly's, and had
played with James K. Hackett and E. H. Sothern. Charles now cast her in
Pinero's play "A Wife Without a Smile." Afterward she appeared in
Augustus Thomas's piece "Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots," and made such a
strong impression that Frohman made her leading woman with John Drew in
Pinero's "His House in Order."
Just about this time Charles, whose interest in French plays had
constantly increased through the years, singled out Henri Bernstein as
the foremost of the younger French playwrights. He secured his
remarkable play "The Thief" for America. He now produced this play at
the Lyceum with Miss Illington and Kyrle Bellew as co-stars, and it
proved to be an enormous success, continuing there for a whole season,
and then duplicating its triumph on the road, where Frohman at one time
had four companies playing it in various parts of the country.
XI
THE CONQUEST OF THE LONDON STAGE
Great as were Charles Frohman's achievements in America, they were more
than matched in many respects by his activities in England. He was the
one American manager who made an impress on the British drama; he led
the so-called "American invasion." As a matter of fact, he _was_ the
invasion. No phase of his fascinatingly crowded and adventurous career
reflects so much of the genius of the man, or reveals so many of his
finer qualities, as his costly attempt to corner the British stage.
Here, as in no other work, he showed himself in really Napoleonic
proportions.
Behind Charles's tremendous operations in London were three definite
motives. First of all, he really loved England. He felt that the theater
there had a dignity and a distinction far removed from theatrical
production in America. There was no sneer of "commercialism" about it.
To be identified with the stage in England was something to be proud of.
He often said that he would rather make fifteen pounds in London than
fifteen thousand dollars in America. It summed up his whole attitude
toward the theater in Great Britain.
In the second place, he knew that a strong footing in England was
absolutely necessary to a mastery of the situation in America. Just as
important as any of his other reasons was the conviction in his own mind
that to produce the best English-speaking plays in the United States he
must know English playwrights and English authors on their own ground,
and to produce, if possible, their own works on their home stages.
This latter desire led him to the long and brilliant series of
productions that he made in London, and which amounted to what later
became an almost complete monopoly on British dramatic output for the
United States.
The net result was that he became a sort of Colossus of the
English-speaking theater. Figuratively, he stood astride the mighty sea
in which he was to meet his death, with one foot planted securely in
England and the other in New York.
* * *
Charles's first visits to England were made in the most unostentatious
way, largely to look over the ground and see what he could pick up for
America. His first offices in Henrietta Street were very modest rooms.
Unpretentious as they were, they represented a somewhat historic step,
because Frohman was absolutely the first American manager to set up a
business in England. Augustin Daly had taken over a company, but he
allied himself in no general way with British theatrical interests.
When Frohman first engaged W. Lestocq as his English manager, as has
already been recorded, he made a significant remark:
"You know I am coming into London to produce plays. But I am coming in
by the back door. I shall get to the front door, however, and you shall
come with me."
No sooner had he set foot in London than his productive activities were
turned loose. With A. and S. Gatti he put on one of his New York
successes, "The Lost Paradise," at the Adelphi Theater. In this instance
he merely furnished the play. It failed, however. Far from discouraging
Frohman, it only filled him with a desire to do something big.
This play marked the beginning of one of his most important English
connections. The Gattis, as they were known in England, were prominent
figures in the British theater. They were Swiss-Italians who had begun
life in England as waiters, had established a small eating-house, and
had risen to become the most important restaurateurs of the British
capital. They became large realty-owners, spread out to the theater, and
acquired the Adelphi and the Vaudeville.