generally supposed to be a stage replica of "Kid" McCoy, then in the
very height of his fistic powers. In the piece the fighter warns his
friends not to bet on a certain fight. The lines, in substance, were:
"You have been pretty loyal to me, but I am giving you a tip not to put
any money down on that 'go' in October."
One day Frohman found Barrymore pacing nervously up and down in front of
his office.
"What's the matter, Lionel?" he asked.
"Well," was the reply, "I am very much disturbed about something. I made
a promise to 'Kid' McCoy, and I don't know how to keep it. You know I
have a line in the play in which the prize-fighter warns his friends not
to bet on him in a certain fight in October. The 'Kid,' who has been at
the play nearly every night since we opened, now has a real fight on for
October, and he is afraid it will give people the idea that it is a
'frame-up.'"
"You mean to say that you want me to change Mr. Thomas's lines?" asked
Frohman, seriously.
"I can't ask you to do that," answered Barrymore. "But I promised the
'Kid' to speak to you about it, and I have kept my word."
Frohman thought a moment. Then he said, gravely:
"All right, Lionel, I'll postpone the date of the fight in the play
until November, even December, but not a day later."
Frohman was not without his sense of imitation. He was quick to follow
up a certain type or mood whether it was in the vogue of an actor or the
character of a play. This story will illustrate:
One night early in February, 1895, Frohman sat in his wonted corner at
Delmonico's, then on Broadway and Twenty-sixth Street. He had "The Fatal
Card," by Chambers and Stephenson, on the boards at Palmer's Theater; he
also had A. M. Palmer's Stock Company on the road in Sydney Grundy's
play "The New Woman." This naturally gave him a lively interest in Mr.
Palmer's productions.
Paul Potter, who was then house dramatist at Palmer's, bustled into the
restaurant with the plot of a new novel which had been brought to his
attention by the news-stand boy at the Waldorf. Frohman listened to his
recital with interest.
"What is the name of the book?" he asked.
"Trilby," replied Potter.
"Well," he continued, "it ought to be called after that conjurer chap,
Bengali, or whatever his name is. However, go ahead. Get Lackaye back
from 'The District Attorney' company to which Palmer has lent him.
Engage young Ditrichstein by all means for one of your Bohemians. Call
in Virginia Harned and the rest of the stock company. And there you
are."
With uncanny precision he had cast the leading roles perfectly and on
the impulse of the moment.
During the fortnight of the incubation of the play Potter saw Frohman
nightly, for they were now fast friends. Frohman was curiously
fascinated by "Bengali," as he insisted upon calling Svengali.
"We do it next Monday in Boston," said Potter, "and I count on your
coming to see it."
Frohman went to Boston to see the second performance. After the play he
and Potter walked silently across the Common to the Thorndyke Hotel. In
his room Frohman broke into speech:
"They are roasting it awfully in New York," he began. "Yet Joe Jefferson
says it will go around the world." Then he added, "They say you have cut
out all the Bohemian stuff."
"Nevertheless," replied Potter, "W. A. Brady has gone to New York
to-night to offer Mr. Palmer ten thousand dollars on account for the
road rights."
"Well," said Frohman, showing his hand at last, "Jefferson and Brady are
right, and if Palmer will let me in I'll go half and half, or, if he
prefers, I'll take it all."
At supper after the first performance at the Garden Theater in New York,
Frohman advised Sir Herbert Tree to capture the play for London.
Henceforth, wherever he traveled, "Trilby" seemed to pursue him.
"I've seen your old 'Bengali,'" he wrote Potter, "in Rome, Vienna,
Berlin, everywhere. It haunts me. And, as you cut out the good Bohemian
stuff, I'll use it myself at the Empire."
He did so in Clyde Fitch's version of "La Vie de Boheme," which was
called "Bohemia."
"How did it go?" Potter wrote him from Switzerland.
"Pretty well," replied Frohman. "Unfortunately we left out 'Bengali.'"
On more than one occasion Frohman produced a play for the mere pleasure
of doing it. He put on a certain little dramatic fantasy. It was
foredoomed to failure and held the boards only a week.
"Why did you do this play?" asked William H. Crane.
"Because I wanted to see it played," answered Frohman. "I knew it would
not be successful, but I simply had to do it. I saw every performance
and I liked it better every time I saw it."
Often Frohman would make a contract with a playwright for a play, and
long before the first night he would realize that it had no chance. Yet
he kept his word with the author, and it was always produced.
The case of "The Heart of a Thief," by the late Paul Armstrong, is
typical. Frohman paid him an advance of fifteen hundred dollars. After a
week of rehearsals every one connected with the play except Armstrong
realized that it was impossible.
Frohman, however, gave it an out-of-town opening and brought it to the
Hudson Theater in New York, where it ran for one week. When he decided
to close it he called the company together and said:
"You've done the best you could. It's all my fault. I thought it was a
good play. I was mistaken."
Frohman took vast pride in the "clean quality" of his plays, as he often
phrased it. His whole theatrical career was a rebuke to the salacious.
He originally owned Edward Sheldon's dramatization of Suderman's "The
Song of Songs." On its production in Philadelphia it was assailed by the
press as immoral. Frohman immediately sold it to A. H. Woods, who
presented it with enormous financial success in New York.
He was scrupulous to the last degree in his business relations with
playwrights. Once a well-known English author, who was in great
financial need, cabled to his agent in America that he would sell
outright for two thousand dollars all the dramatic rights to a certain
play of his that Frohman and an associate had on the road at that time.
The associate thought it was a fine opportunity and personally cabled
the money through the agent. Then he went to Frohman and said, with
great satisfaction:
"I've made some money for us to-day."
"How's that?" asked Frohman.
Then his associate told the story of the author's predicament and what
he had done. He stood waiting for commendation. Instead, Frohman's face
darkened; he rang a bell, and when his secretary appeared he said:
"Please wire Blank [mentioning the playwright's name] that the money
cabled him to-day was an advance on future royalties."
Then he turned to his associate and said:
"Never, so long as you work with me or are associated with me in any
enterprise, take advantage of the distress of author or actor. This
man's play was good enough for us to produce; it is still good enough to
earn money. When it makes money for us it also makes money for him."
* * *
By the force of his magnetic personality Charles amiably coerced more
than one unwilling playwright into submission to his will. An experience
with Margaret Mayo will illustrate.
Miss Mayo returned on the same steamer with him when he made his last
trip from London to the United States. As they walked up the gang-plank
at Liverpool the manager told the author that he had a play he wished
her to adapt.
"But I have decided to adapt no more plays," said Miss Mayo.
"Never mind," replied Frohman. "We will see about that."
Needless to say, by the time the ship reached New York the play was in
Miss Mayo's trunk and the genial tyrant had exacted a promise for the
adaptation.
Miss Mayo immediately went to her country house up the Hudson. For a
week she reproached herself for having fallen a victim to the Frohman
beguilements. In this state of mind she could do no work on the
manuscript.
With his astonishing intuition Frohman divined that the author was
making no progress, so he sent her a note asking her to come to town,
and adding, "I have something to show you."
Miss Mayo entered the office at the Empire determined to throw herself
upon the managerial mercy and beg to be excused from the commission. But
before she could say a word Frohman said, cheerily:
"I've found the right title for our play."
Then he rang a bell, and a boy appeared holding a tightly rolled poster
in his hand. At a signal he unfolded it, and the astonished playwright
beheld these words in large red and white letters:
_Charles Frohman_
_Presents_
_I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT_
_A Farce in Three Acts_
_By Margaret Mayo_
Of course the usual thing happened. No one could resist such an attack.
Miss Mayo went back to the country without protest and she finished the
play. It was destined, however, to be produced by some other hand than
Frohman's.
* * *
Frohman always sought seclusion when he wanted to work out the plans for
a production. He sometimes went to extreme lengths to achieve
aloofness. An incident related by Goodwin will illustrate this.
During the run of "Nathan Hale" in New York Goodwin entered his
dressing-room one night, turned on the electric light, and was amazed to
see Charles sitting huddled up in a corner.
"What are you doing here, Charley?" asked Goodwin.
"I am casting a new play, and came here to get some inspiration. Good
night," was the reply. With that he walked out.
* * *
There was one great secret in Charles Frohman's life. It is natural that
it should center about the writing of a play; it is natural, too, that
this most intimate of incidents in the career of the great manager
should be told by his devoted friend and colleague of many years, Paul
Potter.
Here it is as set down by Mr. Potter:
We had hired a rickety cab at the Place Saint-Francois in Lausanne, and
had driven along the lake of Geneva to Morges, where, sitting on the
terrace of the Hotel du Mont Blanc, we were watching the shore of Savoy
across the lake, and the gray old villages of Thonon and Evian, and the
mountains, rising ridge upon ridge, behind them. And Frohman, being in
lyric mood, fell to quoting "The Blue Hills Far Away," for Owen
Meredith's song was one of the few bits of verse that clung in his
memory.
"Odd," said he, relapsing into prose, "that a chap should climb hill
after hill, thinking he had reached his goal, and should forever find
the blue hills farther and farther away."
While he was ruminating the clouds lifted, and there, in a gap of the
hills, was the crest of Mont Blanc, with its image of Napoleon lying
asleep in the snow.
I have seen Frohman in most of the critical moments of his life, but I
never saw him utterly awe-stricken till then.
"Gee," said he, at length, "what a mountain to climb!"
"It is sixty miles away," I ventured to suggest.
"Well," he remarked, "I'll climb it some day. As John Russell plastered
the Rocky Mountains with 'The City Directory,' so I'll hang a shingle
from the top of Mont Blanc: 'Ambition: a comedy in four acts by Charles
Frohman.'" And as we went home to Ouchy he told me the secret desire of
his heart.
He wanted to write a play.
"Isn't it enough to be a theatrical manager?" I asked.
"No," said he, "a theatrical manager is a joke. The public thinks he
spends his days in writing checks and his nights in counting the
receipts. Why, when I wanted to become a depositor at the Union Bank in
London, the cashier asked me my profession. 'Theatrical manager,' I
replied. 'Humph!' said the cashier, taken aback. 'Well, never mind, Mr.
Frohman; we'll put you down as 'a gentleman.'"
"But is a playwright," I asked, "more highly reputed than a theatrical
manager?"
"Not in America," said Frohman. "Most Americans think that the actors
and actresses write their own parts. I was on the Long Branch boat the
other day and met a well-known Empire first-nighter. 'What are you going
to give us next season, Frohman?' he said.
"'I open with a little thing by Sardou,' I replied.
"'Sardou!' he cried. 'Who in thunder is Sardou?'
"All the same," Frohman continued, "I mean to be a playwright. Didn't
Lester Wallack write 'Rosedale' and 'The Veteran'? Didn't Augustin Daly
make splendid adaptations of German farces? Doesn't Belasco turn out
first-class dramas? Then why not I? I mean to learn the game. Don't give
me away, but watch my progress in play-making as we jog along through
life."
He got his first tip from Pinero. "When I have sketched out a play,"
observed the author of "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," "I go and live among
the characters."
Frohman had no characters of his own, but he held in his brain a
fabulous store of other people's plays. And whenever they had a
historical or a literary origin he ran these origins to their lair. At
Ferney, on the Lake of Geneva, he cared nothing about Voltaire; he
wanted to see the place where the free-thinkers gathered in A. M.
Palmer's production of "Daniel Rochat." At Geneva he was not concerned
with Calvin, but with memories of a Union Square melodrama, "The Geneva
Cross." At Lyons he expected the ghosts of _Claude Melnotte_ and
_Pauline_ to meet him at the station. In Paris he allowed Napoleon to
slumber unnoticed in the Invalides while he hunted the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine for traces of "The Tale of Two Cities," and the Place de
la Concorde for the site of the guillotine on which _Sidney Carton_
died, and the Latin Quarter haunts of _Mimi_ and _Musette_, and the Bal
Bullier where _Trilby_ danced, and the Concert des Ambassadeurs where
_Zaza_ bade her lover good-by.
Any production was an excuse for these expeditions. Sir Herbert Tree had
staged "Colonel Newcome"; we had ourselves plotted a dramatization of
"Pendennis"; Mrs. Fiske had given "Vanity Fair"; so off we went, down
the Boulevard Saint-Germain, searching for the place, duly placarded,
where Thackeray lunched in the days of the "Paris Sketch-book" and the
"Ballad of Bouillabaisse."
In the towns of Kent we got on the trail of Dickens with the enthusiasm
of a Hopkinson Smith; in London, between Drury Lane and Wardour Street,
we hunted for the Old Curiosity Shop; in Yarmouth we discovered the
place where Peggotty's boat-hut might have lain on the sands. With
William Seymour, who knew every street from his study of "The Rivals,"
we listened to the abbey bells of Bath. And when "Romeo and Juliet" was
to be revived with Sothern and Marlowe, Frohman even proposed that we
should visit Verona. He only abandoned the idea on discovering that the
Veronese had no long-distance telephones, and that, while wandering
among the tombs of the Montagus and Capulets, he would be cut off from
his London office.
Having thus steeped himself in the atmosphere of his work, he set forth
to learn the rules of the game. I met him in Paris on his return from
New York. "How go the rules?" I asked.
"Rotten," said he. "Our American playwrights say there are no rules;
with them it is all inspiration. The Englishmen say that rules exist,
but what the rules are they either don't know or won't tell."
We went to the Concert Rouge. Those were the happy days when there were
no frills; when the price of admission was charged with what you drank;
when Saint-Saens accompanied his "Samson and Delilah" with an imaginary
flute obligato on a walking-stick; when Massenet, with his librettist,
Henri Cain, dozed quietly through the meditation of "Thais"; when the
students and their girls forgot frivolity under the spell of
"L'Arlesienne."
In a smoky corner sat a group of well-known French playwrights, headed
by G. A. Caillavet, afterward famous as author of "Le Roi." They were
indulging in a heated but whispered discussion. They welcomed Frohman
cordially, then returned to the debate.
"What are they talking about?" asked Frohman.
"The rules of the drama," said I.
"Then there are rules!" cried the manager, eagerly.
"Ask Caillavet," said I.
"Rules?" exclaimed Caillavet, who spoke English. "Are there rules of
painting, sculpture, music? Why, the drama is a mass of rules! It is
nothing but rules."
"And how long," faltered Frohman, thinking of his play--"how long would
it take to learn them?"
"A lifetime at the very least," answered Caillavet. Disconsolate,
Frohman led me out into the Rue de Tournon. Heartbroken, he convoyed me
into Foyot's, and drowned his sorrows in a grenadine.
From that hour he was a changed man. He apparently put aside all thought
of the drama whose name was to be stenciled on the summit of Mont Blanc;
yet, nevertheless, he applied himself assiduously to learning the
principles on which the theater was based.
Another winter had passed before we sat side by side on the terrace of
the Cafe Napolitain.
"I have asked Harry Pettitt, the London melodramatist," Frohman said,
"to write me a play. 'I warn you, Frohman,' he replied, 'that I have
only one theme--the Persecuted Woman.' Dion Boucicault, who was
present, said, 'Add the Persecuted Girl.' Joseph Jefferson was with us,
and Jefferson remarked, 'Add the Persecuted Man.' So was Henry Irving,
who said: 'Pity is the trump card; but be Aristotelian, my boy; throw in
a little Terror; with Pity I can generally go through a season, as with
'Charles the First' or 'Olivia'; with Terror and Pity combined I am
liable to have something that will outlast my life." And Irving
mentioned "The Bells" and "The Lyons Mail."
"But who will write you your Terror and Pity?" I asked Frohman.
"If Terror means 'thrill,'" said Frohman, "I can count on Belasco and
Gillette. If Pity means 'sympathy,' the Englishmen do it pretty well. So
does Fitch. So do the French, who used to be masters of the game."
"You don't expect," I said, "to pick up another 'Two Orphans,' a second
'Ticket of Leave Man'?"
"I'm not such a fool," said Frohman. "But I've got hold of something now
that will help me to feed my stock company in New York." And off we went
with Dillingham to see "The Girl from Maxim's" at the Nouveautes.
When we got home to the Ritz Frohman discussed the play after his
manner: "Do you know," he said, "I find the element of pity quite as
strongly developed in these French farces as in the Ambigu melodramas.
The truant husband leaves home, goes out for a good time, gets buffeted
and bastinadoed for his pains, and when the compassionate audience says,
'He has had enough; let up,' he comes humbly home to the bosom of his
family and is forgiven. Where can you find a more human theme than
that?"
"Then you hold," said I, "that even in a French farce the events should
be reasonable?"
"I wouldn't buy one," he replied, "if I didn't consider its basis
thoroughly human. Dion Boucicault told me long ago that farce, like
tragedy, must be founded on granite. 'Farce, well done,' said he, 'is
the most difficult form of dramatic composition. That is why, if
successful, it is far the most remunerative.'"
Years went by. The stock company was dead. "Charles Frohman's Comedians"
had disappeared. The "stars" had supplanted them. Frohman was at the
zenith of his career. American papers called him "the Napoleon of the
Drama." Prime Ministers courted him in the grill-room of the London
Savoy. The Paris _Figaro_ announced the coming of "the celebrated
impresario." I heard him call my name in the crowd at the Gare du Nord
and we bundled into a cab.
"So you're a great man now," I said.
"Am I?" he remarked. "There's one thing you can bet on. If they put me
on a throne to-day they are liable to yank me off to-morrow."
"And how's your own play getting along?"
"Don't!" he winced. "Let us go to the Snail."
In the cozy recesses of the Escargot d'Or, near the Central Markets, he
unraveled the mysteries of the "star system" which had made him famous.
"It's the opposite of all we ever believed," he said, while the mussels
and shell-fish were being heaped up before him. "Good-by to Caillavet
and his rules. Good-by, Terror and Pity. Good-by, dear French farce.
Give me a pretty girl with a smile, an actor with charm, and I will defy
our old friend Aristotle."
"Is it as easy as that?" I asked, in amazement.
"No," said he, "it's confoundedly difficult to find the girl with the
smile and the actor with charm. It is pure accident. There are players
of international reputation who can't draw a dollar. There are chits of
chorus-girls who can play a night of sixteen hundred dollars in
Youngstown, Ohio."
"And the play doesn't matter?" I inquired.
"There you've got me," said Frohman, as the crepes Suzette arrived in
their chafing-dish. "My interest makes me pretend that the play's the
thing. I congratulate foreign authors on a week of fourteen thousand
dollars in Chicago, and they go away delighted. But I know, all the
time, that of this sum the star drew thirteen thousand nine hundred
dollars, and the author the rest."
"To what do you attribute such a state of affairs?"
"Feminine curiosity. God bless the women."
"Are there no men in your audiences?" I asked.
"Only those whom the women take," said Frohman. "The others go to
musical shows. Have some more crepes Suzette."
"But what do the critics say?" I persisted.
"My dear Paul," said Frohman, solemnly, "they call me a 'commercial
manager' because I won't play Ibsen or Maeterlinck. They didn't help me
when I tried for higher game. I had years of poverty, years of
privation. To-day I take advantage of a general feminine desire to view
Miss Tottie Coughdrop; and, to the critics, I'm a mere Bulgarian, a
'commercial manager.' So was Lester Wallack when he admitted 'The World'
to his classic theater. So was Augustin Daly when he banished
Shakespeare in favor of 'The Great Ruby.' If the critics want to reform
the stage, let them begin by reforming the public."
In his cabin on the _Lusitania_ he showed me a mass of yellow
manuscript, scribbled over with hieroglyphics in blue pencil.
"That's my play," he said, very simply.
"Shall I take it home and read it?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "I will try it on Barrie and bring it back in better
shape."
So he shook hands and sailed with his cherished drama, which reposes
to-day, not on the summit of Mont Blanc, but at the bottom of the Irish
Sea.
XVI
"C. F." AT REHEARSALS
The real Charles Frohman emerged at rehearsals. The shy, sensitive man
who shunned the outside world here stood revealed as a dynamic force.
Yet he ruled by personality, because he believed in personality. He did
every possible thing to bring out the personal element in the men and
women in his companies.
In rehearsing he showed one of the most striking of his traits. It was a
method of speech that was little short of extraordinary. It grew out of
the fact that his vocabulary could not express his enormous imagination.
Instead of words he made motions. It was, as Augustus Thomas expressed
it, "an exalted pantomime." Those who worked with him interpreted these
gestures, for between him and his stars existed the finest kinship.
Frohman seldom finished a sentence, yet those who knew him always
understood the unuttered part. Even when he would give a star the first
intimation of a new role he made it a piece of pantomime interspersed
with short, jerky sentences.
William Faversham had complained about having two very bad parts. When
he went to see Frohman to hear about the third, this is the way the
manager expressed it to him:
"New play--see?... Fine part.--First act--_you_ know--romantic--light
through the window ... nice deep tones of your voice, you see?... Then,
audience say 'Ah!'--then the girl--see?--In the room ... you ... one
of those big scenes--then, all subdued--light--coming through
window.--See?--And then--curtain--audience say 'Great!' ... Now,
second act ... all that tremolo business--you know?--Then you get
down to work ... a tremendous scene ... let your voice go.... Great
climax ... (Oh, a great play this--a great part!) ... Now, last
act--simple--nice--lovable--refined ... sad tones in your voice--and,
well, you know--and then you make a big hit.... Well, now we will
rehearse this in about a week--and you will be tickled to death.... This
is a great play--fine part.... Now, you see Humphreys--he will arrange
everything."
Of course Faversham went away feeling that he was about forty-four feet
tall, that he was a great actor, and had a wonderful part.
Like the soldier who thrills at the sound of battle, Frohman became
galvanized when he began to work in the theater. He forgot time, space,
and all other things save the task at hand. To him it was as the breath
of life.