He was always willing to admit that his success came from those who
worked for him. Once he was asked the question:
"If you had your life to live over again would you be a theatrical
manager?"
Quick as a flash Frohman replied:
"If I could be surrounded by the same actors and writers who have made
_me_--yes. Otherwise, no."
This feeling led him to say once:
"I believe a manager's success does not come so much from the public as
from his players. When they are ready to march with him without regard
to results, then he has indeed succeeded. This is my success. My
ambition frankly centers in the welfare of the actor. The day's work
holds out to me no finer gratification than to see intelligent, earnest,
deserving actors go into the fame and fortune of being stars."
Nothing could down his immense pride in his stars. Once he was making
his annual visit to England with Dillingham. At that time Olga
Nethersole, who had been playing "Carmen," was under his management.
She was also on the boat. The passenger-list included many other
celebrities, among them Madame Emma Calve, the opera-singer, who had
just made her great success in the opera "Carmen" at the Metropolitan
Opera House. Naturally there was some rivalry between the two _Carmens_.
At the usual ship's concert both Nethersole and Calve inscribed their
names on programs which were auctioned off for the benefit of the
disabled sailors' fund. Competition was brisk. The card that Calve
signed fetched nine hundred dollars. When Nethersole's program was put
up Frohman led the bidding and drove it up to a thousand dollars, which
he paid himself. It was all the money he had with him. Dillingham
remonstrated for what seemed a foolish extravagance.
"I wanted my star to get the best of it, and she did," was the reply.
Frohman, as is well known, would never make a contract with his stars.
When some one urged him to make written agreements, he said:
"No, I won't do it. I want them to be in a position so that if they ever
become dissatisfied they know they are free to leave me."
Like all his other stars, William Collier had no contract with Charles,
merely a verbal understanding extending over a period of years. After
this agreement expired and another year and a half had gone by, Collier
one day asked Frohman if he realized that their original agreement had
run out. Frohman looked up with a start and said:
"Is that so? Well, it's all right, Willie, you know."
"Of course," said Collier, and that ended it.
The next Saturday when Collier got his pay-envelope he found inside a
very charming letter from Frohman, which said:
_I'm sorry that I overlooked the expiration of our agreement. I
hope that you will find a little increase in your salary
satisfactory._
There was an advance of one hundred dollars a week.
Frohman literally loved the word "star," and he delighted in the
so-called "all-star casts." He had great respect for the big names of
the profession; for those who had achieved success. He liked to do
business with them.
In speaking about "all-star casts," he once said to his brother:
"I have to look after so many enterprises that I have no time to conduct
a theatrical kindergarten in developing actors or playwrights save where
the play of the unknown author or the exceptional talents of the unknown
actor or actress appeal to me strongly. There is an element of safety in
considering work by experts, because the theaters I represent need quick
results."
In reply to the oft-repeated question as to why he took his American
stars to London when they could play to larger audiences and make more
money at home, he said:
"In the first place, such exchanges constitute the finest medium for the
development of actress or actor and the liberalizing of the public. Face
to face with an English audience the American actress finds herself
confronted by new tastes, new appreciations, new demands. She must meet
them all or fail. What does this result in? Versatility, flexibility,
and, in the end, a firmer and more comprehensive hold upon her art."
When Frohman was asked to define success in theatrical management he
made this answer:
"The terms of success in the theater seem to me to be the co-operating
abilities of playwright and actor with the principal burden on the
actor. In other words, the play is not altogether 'the thing.' The right
player in the right play is the thing."
The shaping of William Gillette's career is a good example of Frohman's
definition of a successful theatrical manager, whose best skill and
talents are employed largely in the matter of manipulating a hard-minded
person to mutual advantage.
The relationship between stars and audiences is of necessity a very
close one. The Frohman philosophy, however, was not the generally
accepted theory that audiences make stars.
On one of those very rare occasions in his life when he wrote for
publication, he made the following illuminating statement:
_No star or manager should feel grateful to any audience for the
success of a play in which he has figured. A play succeeds because
it is a living, vital thing--and that is why it has got upon the
stage at all. There is life in it and it does not, and will not,
die. It keeps itself alive until the opportunity comes along. Often
a kind of instinct makes the opportunity._
_It is instinct also that prompts an audience to applaud when it is
pleased, laugh when it is amused, weep when it is moved, hiss when
it is dissatisfied. No actor should feel indebted to an audience
for the recognition of good work, because that same audience that
appears to be so friendly, at another time, when one character or
play does not please it, will resent both actor and play. This is
as it should be. The loyalty of English audiences to their old
favorites is fine, but it is bad for the old favorites. It is
stagnating._
_The various expressions of approval and disapproval that come from
the spectators at a play are involuntary on the part of the
spectators. They are hypnotized by the play and the acting. Who
ever, on coming out of the theater after seeing a play that has
pleased him, has felt a sense of happiness that his pleasure had
also pleased the actor, or the author of the play, or the
management of the production? Loyalty, generosity, and
encouragement, as applied to audiences, are so many empty words.
Play-goers who apply them to themselves cheat themselves. Miss
Maude Adams is the only stage personage within my experience who
has a distinct public following, loyal and encouraging to her in
whatever she does._
Audiences interested Frohman immensely. He liked to be a part of them.
He had a perfectly definite reason for sitting in the last row of the
gallery on the first nights of his productions, which he once explained
as follows:
"The best index to the probable career of any play is the back of the
head of an auditor who does not know that he is being watched. The
play-goer in an orchestra stall is always half-conscious that what he
says or does may be observed. But the gallery gods and goddesses have
never thought of anything except what is happening on the stage. They
may yield the time before the rise of the curtain to watching the
audience entering the theater, but once the lights are up and the stage
is revealed they have no eyes or thoughts for anything except the life
unfolded by the actors. These people in the upper part of the theater
represent the masses. They are worth watching, for they are the people
who make stage successes."
Frohman had his own theories about audiences, too. Concerning them he
declared:
"An American at the theater feels first and thinks afterward. A European
at a play thinks first and feels afterward. In conversation a German
discusses things sitting down; a Frenchman talks standing up. But the
American discusses things walking about. Therefore each must have his
play built accordingly."
Once Frohman made this discriminating difference between English and
American audiences:
"In England the pit and the gallery of the audience come to the theater,
turn in their hard-earned shillings, and demand much. Failing to get
what they expect, the theater is filled with boos and cat-calls at the
end of the play. This does not mean that the play has failed. It more
nearly means that the less a man pays to get into a theater the more he
demands of the play.
"An American audience is different, because it has a fine sense of
humor. When an American pays his money through the box-office window he
feels that it is gone forever. Anything he receives after that--the
lights, the pictures on the walls, the music of the orchestra, the sight
of a few or many smiling faces--is so much to the good. So keen is the
American play-goer's sense of humor that often when a play is
wretchedly bad it comes to the rescue, and the applause is terrifically
loud. This does not mean that the play has succeeded. It means rather
that the play will die, a victim of the deadliest of all possible
criticisms--ridicule."
Nor was Frohman often deceived about a first-night verdict. He always
said, "Wait for the box-office statement on the second night."
One of his characteristic epigrammatic statements about the failure of
plays was this:
"In America the question with a failure is, 'How soon can we get it off
the stage?' In London they say, 'How long will the play run even though
it is a failure?'"
Indeed, Frohman's whole attitude about openings was characteristic of
his deep and generous philosophy about life. He summed up his whole
creed as follows:
"A producer of plays, assuming that he is a man of experience, never
feels comfortable after a great reception has been given his play on a
first night. He knows that the reception in the theater does not always
correspond to the feelings of future audiences. Every thinking manager
knows that his play, in order to succeed, must send its audience away
possessed of some distinct feeling. A successful play is a play that
_reflects_, whatever the feeling it reflects.
"The great successes of the stage are plays that are played outside of
the theater: over the breakfast-table; in a man's office; to his
business associates; in a club, as one member tells the thrilling story
of the previous night's experience to another. Great successes upon the
stage are plays of such a sort that one audience can play them over to
another prospective audience, and so make an endless chain of attendance
at the theater.
"I have never in all my experience felt a success on the opening night.
I have only felt my failures.
"I invariably leave the theater after a first-night performance knowing
full well that neither my friends nor I know anything at all as to the
ultimate fortune of the play we have seen."
It is a matter of record that Frohman always viewed his first nights
with great nervousness. Although he attached but little importance, save
on very rare occasions, to tumultuous applause on first nights, he was
sometimes deceived by the reception that was given his productions.
He never tired of telling of one experience. He had left the theater on
the first night, as he expressed it, "with the other mourners." He
returned to his office immediately to cast a new play for the company.
Yet he lived to see this play run successfully for a whole season. This
led him to say:
"There's nothing more deluding to the player and the manager than
enthusiastic applause. The fine, inspired work of a star actor often
makes an audience enthusiastic to such a boisterous extent that one
forgets that it is an individual and not the play that has succeeded."
Here, as elsewhere in the Frohman outlook on life and work, one finds
clear-headed logic and reason behind the bubbling optimism.
XV
PLAYS AND PLAYERS
One day not long before he sailed on the voyage that was to take him to
his death, Charles was talking with a celebrated English playwright in
his office at the Empire Theater. The conversation suddenly turned to a
discussion of life achievement.
"What do you consider the biggest thing that you have done?" asked the
visitor.
Frohman rose and pointed with his stick at the rows of book-shelves
about him that held the bound copies of the plays he had produced. Then
he said with a smile:
"That is what I have done. Don't you think it is a pretty good life's
work?"
He was not overstepping the mark when he pointed with pride at that army
of plays. This list is the greatest monument, perhaps, to his boundless
ambition and energy, for it contains the four hundred original
productions he made in America, besides the one hundred and twenty-five
plays he put on in London. That Charles should have produced so many
plays is not surprising. He adored the theater; it was his very being.
To him, in truth, all the world was a stage.
Everything that he saw as he walked the streets or rode in a cab or
viewed from a railway train he re-visualized and considered in the terms
of the playhouse. If he saw an impressive bit of scenery he would say,
"Wouldn't that make a fine background?" If he heard certain murmurs in
the country or the tumult of a crowd on the highway, he instinctively
said, "How fine it would be to reproduce that sound."
He only read books with a view of their adaptability to plays. Where
other men found diversion and recreation in golfing, motoring, or
walking, Charles sought entertainment in reading manuscripts. He was
never without a play; when he traveled he carried dozens.
In the matter of plays Frohman had what was little less than a contempt
for the avowedly academic. He refused to be drawn into discussions of
the so-called "high brow" drama. When some one asked him to name the
greatest of English dramatists he replied, quick as a flash:
"The one who writes the last great play."
"Whom do you consider the greatest American dramatist?" was the question
once put to him. His smiling answer was:
"The one whose play the greatest number of good Americans go to see."
On this same occasion he was asked, "What seat in the theater do you
consider the best to view a drama or a musical comedy from?"
"The paid one," he retorted.
Back in Charles's mind was a definite and well-ordered policy about
plays. His first production on any stage was a melodrama, and, though in
later years he ran the whole range from grave to gay, he was always true
to his first love. This is one reason why Sardou's "Diplomacy" was, in
many respects, his ideal of a play. It has thrills, suspense, love
interests, and emotion. He revived it again and again, and it never
failed to give him a certain pleasure.
Once in London Frohman unbosomed himself about play requirements, and
this is what he said:
"I start out by asking certain requirements of every piece. If it be a
drama, it must have healthfulness and comedy as well as seriousness. We
are a young people, but only in the sense of healthy-mindedness. There
is no real taste among us for the erotic or the decadent. It is foreign
to us because, as a people, we have not felt the corroding touch of
decadence. Nor is life here all drab. Hence I expect lights as well as
shadows in every play I accept.
"Naturally, I am also influenced by the fitness of the chief parts for
my chief stars, but I often purchase the manuscript at once on learning
its central idea. I commissioned Clyde Fitch and Cosmo Gordon-Lennox to
go to work on 'Her Sister' after half an hour's account of the main
idea. Ethel Barrymore's work in that play is the best instance that I
can give of the artistic growth of that actress. The particular skill
she had obtained--and this is the test of an actress worth
remembering--is the art of acting scenes essentially melodramatic in an
unmelodramatic manner. After all, what is melodrama? Life itself is
melodrama, and life put upon the stage only seems untrue when it is
acted melodramatically--that is, unnaturally."
The foremost quality that Frohman sought in his plays was human
interest. His appraisal of a dramatic product was often influenced by
his love for a single character or for certain sentimental or emotional
speeches. He would almost invariably discuss these plays with his
intimates. Often he would act out the whole piece in a vivid and
graphic manner and enlarge upon the situations that appealed to his
special interest.
Plays thus described by him were found to be extremely entertaining and
diverting to his friends, but when presented on the stage to a
dispassionate audience they did not always fare so well. A notable
example was "The Hyphen." The big, patriotic speech of the old
German-American in the third act made an immense impression on Frohman
when he read the play. It led him to produce the piece in record time.
He recited it to every caller; he almost lost sight of the rest of the
play in his admiration for the central effort. But the audience and the
critics only saw this speech as part of a long play.
What Charles lacked in his study of plays in manuscript was the
analytical quality. He could feel that certain scenes and speeches would
have an emotional appeal, but he could not probe down beneath the
surface for the why and the wherefore. For analysis, as for details, he
had scant time. He accepted plays mainly for their general effect.
He was very susceptible to any charm that a play held out. If he found
the characters sympathetic, attractive, and lovable, that would outweigh
any objections made on technical grounds. When once he determined to
produce a play, only a miracle could prevent him. The more his
associates argued to the contrary, the more dogged he became. He had
superb confidence in his judgment; yet he invariably accepted failure
with serenity and good spirit. He always assumed the responsibility. He
listened sometimes to suggestions, but his views were seldom colored by
them.
His association with men like J. M. Barrie, Haddon Chambers, Paul
Potter, William Gillette, Arthur Wing Pinero, and Augustus Thomas gave
him a loftier insight into the workings of the drama. He was quick to
absorb ideas, and he had a strong and retentive memory for details.
Frohman loved to present farce. He enjoyed this type of play himself
because it appealed to his immense sense of humor. He delighted in
rehearsing the many complications and entanglements which arise in such
plays. The enthusiasm with which French audiences greeted their native
plays often misled him. He felt that American theater-goers would be
equally uproarious. But often they failed him.
The same thing frequently happened with English plays. He would be swept
off his feet by a British production; he was at once sure that it would
be a success in New York. But New York, more than once, upset this
belief. The reason was that Frohman saw these plays as an Englishman. He
had the cosmopolitan point of view that the average play-goer in America
lacked.
This leads to the interesting subject of "locality" in plays. Frohman
once summed up this whole question:
"As I go back and forth, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, the
audiences on both sides seem more and more like one. Always, of course,
each has his own particular viewpoint, according to the side of the
Atlantic I happen to be on. But often they think the same, each from its
own angle.
"You bring your English play to America. Nobody is at all disturbed by
the mention of Park Lane or Piccadilly Circus. If there is drama in the
play, if in itself it interests and holds the audience, nobody pays any
attention to its locality or localisms.
"But an English audience sitting before an American play hears mention
of West Twenty-third Street or Washington Square, and while it is
wondering just where and what these localities are an important incident
in the dramatic action slips by unnoticed. Not that English audiences
are at all prejudiced against American plays. They take them in the same
general way that Americans take English plays. Each public asks, 'What
have you got?' As soon as it hears that the play is good it is
interested.
"English audiences, for example, were quick to discover the fun in 'The
Dictator' when Mr. Collier acted it in London, though it was full of the
local color of New York, both in the central character and in the
subject. Somehow the type and the speeches seemed to have a sort of
universal humor. I tried it first on Barrie. He marked in the manuscript
the places that he could understand. The piece never went better in
America.
"On the other hand, one reason why 'Brewster's Millions' did not go well
in London was because the severely logical British mind took it all as a
business proposition. The problem was sedately figured out on the theory
that the young man did not spend the inherited millions.
"If the locality of an American play happens to be a mining village, it
is better to change its scenes to a similar village in Australia when
you take the play to London. Then the audience is sure to understand.
The public of London gave 'The Lion and the Mouse' an enthusiastic first
night, but it turned out that they had not comprehended the play. It
was unthinkable to them that a judge should be disgraced and disbarred
by a political 'ring.'"
The ideal play for Charles Frohman was always the one that he had in
mind for a particular star. His special desire, however, was for strong
and emotional love as the dominant force in the drama. He felt that all
humanity was interested in love, and he believed it established a
congenial point of contact between the stage and the audience.
Although he did not especially aspire to Shakespearian production, he
used the great bard's works as models for appraising other plays.
"Shakespeare invented farce comedy," he once said, "and whenever I
consider the purchase of such a thing I compare its scenes with the most
famous of all farces, 'The Taming of the Shrew.' It goes without saying
that when it comes to the stage of the production, my aim is to imbue
the performance with a spirit akin to that contained in Shakespeare's
humorous masterpiece."
Frohman often "went wrong" on plays. He merely accepted these mistakes
as part of the big human hazard and went on to something new. His
amazing series of errors of judgment with plays by Augustus Thomas is
one of the traditions of the American theater. The reader already knows
how he refused "Arizona" and "The Earl of Pawtucket," and how they made
fortunes for other managers.
One of the most extraordinary of these Thomas mistakes was with "The
Witching Hour." It was about the only time that he permitted his own
decision to be swayed by outside influence, and it cost him dearly.
The author read the play to Frohman on a torrid night in midsummer.
Frohman, as usual, sat cross-legged on a divan and sipped orangeade
incessantly.
Thomas, who has all the art and eloquence of a finished actor, read his
work with magnetic effect. When he finished Frohman sat absolutely still
for nearly five minutes. It seemed hours to the playwright, who awaited
the decision with tense interest. Finally Frohman said in a whisper:
"That is almost too beautiful to bear."
A pause followed. Then he said, eagerly:
"When shall we do it; whom do you want for star?"
"I'd like to have Gillette," replied Thomas.
"You can't have him," responded Frohman. "He's engaged for something
else."
With this the session ended. Frohman seemed strangely under the spell of
the play. It made him silent and meditative.
The next day he gave the manuscript to some of his close associates to
read. They thought it was too psychological for a concrete dramatic
success. To their great surprise he agreed with them.
"The Witching Hour" was produced by another manager and it ran a whole
season in New York, and then duplicated its success on the road. This
experience made Frohman all the more determined to keep his own counsel
and follow his instincts with regard to plays thereafter, and he did.
Charles regarded play-producing just as he regarded life--as a huge
adventure. An amusing thing happened during the production of "The Other
Girl," a play by Augustus Thomas, in which a pugilist has a prominent
role.