Potter picked up a theatrical paper and said:
"Shall I read you the theatrical news?"
"No," said Frohman. "I _make_ theatrical news."
* * *
In that supreme test of a man's character--his attitude toward money--he
shone. Though his enterprises involved millions, Frohman had an
extraordinary disregard of money. He felt its power, but he never
idolized it. To him it was a means to an end. He summed up his whole
attitude one day when he said:
"My work is to produce plays that succeed, so that I can produce plays
that will not succeed. That is why I must have money.
"What I would really like to do is to produce a wonderful something to
which I would only go myself. My pleasure would be in seeing a
remarkable performance that nobody else could see. But I can't do that.
The next best thing is to produce something for the few critical people.
That is what I'm trying for. I have to work through the commercial--it
is the white heat through which the artistic in me has to come." It was
his answer to the oft-made charge of "commercialism."
No one, perhaps, has summed up this money attitude of Frohman's better
than George Bernard Shaw, who said of him:
"There is a prevalent impression that Charles Frohman is a hard-headed
American man of business who would not look at anything that is not
likely to pay. On the contrary, he is the most wildly romantic and
adventurous man of my acquaintance. As Charles XII. became an excellent
soldier because of his passion for putting himself in the way of being
killed, so Charles Frohman became a famous manager through his passion
for putting himself in the way of being ruined."
In many respects Frohman's feeling about money was almost childlike. He
left all financial details to his subordinates. All he wanted to do was
to produce plays and be let alone. Yet he had an infinite respect for
the man to whom he had to pay a large sum. He felt that the actor or
author who could command it was invested with peculiar significance.
Upon himself he spent little. He once said:
"All I want is a good meal, a good cigar, good clothes, a good bed to
sleep in, and freedom to produce whatever plays I like."
He was a magnificent loser. Failure never disturbed him. When he saw
that a piece was doomed he indulged in no obituary talk. "Let's go to
the next," he said, and on he went.
He lost in the same princely way that he spent. The case of "Thermidor"
will illustrate. He spent not less than thirty thousand dollars on this
production. Yet the moment the curtain went down he realized it was a
failure. He stood at one side of the wings and Miss Marbury, who had
induced him to put the play on, was at the other. With the fall of the
curtain Frohman moved smilingly among his actors with no trace of
disappointment on his face. But when he met Miss Marbury on the other
side of the stage he said:
"Well, I suppose we have got a magnificent frost. We'll just write this
off and forget it."
* * *
Frohman played with the theater as if it were a huge game. Like life
itself, it was a great adventure. In the parlance of Wall Street, he was
a "bull," for he was always raising salaries and royalties. Somebody
once said of him:
"What a shame that Frohman works so hard! He never had a day's fun in
his life."
"You are very much mistaken," said one of his friends. "His whole life
is full of it. He gets his chief fun out of his work." Indeed, work and
humor were in reality the great things with him.
One of the best epigrams ever made about Frohman's extravagance was
this:
"Give Charles Frohman a check-book and he will lose money on any
production."
To say that his word was his bond is to repeat one of the trite tributes
to him. But it was nevertheless very true. Often in discussing a
business arrangement with his representatives he would say:
"Did I say that?" On being told that he did, he would invariably reply,
"Then it must stand at that."
On one of these occasions he said:
"I have only one thing of value to me, and that is my word. I will keep
that until I am broke and then I'll jump overboard."
* * *
In starting a new venture his method was first to ascertain not how much
it would enrich him, but how much it would cost. Thus fortified, he
entered into it with enthusiasm, and if he lost he never murmured.
Having settled a thing, for good or ill, he would never refer to the
negotiations or anything that might have led up to the culmination of
that business, either for or against. If his attention was afterward
called to it, he would quietly say, "That's yesterday," and in this way
indicate that he did not wish the matter referred to again.
* * *
Frohman's great desire was to make money for other people. One of his
young authors had had a bad failure in London and was very much
depressed. Frohman finally worked out a plan to revive his spirits and
recoup his finances. He took Alfred Sutro in his confidence and invited
the young man to dine. He was like a child, eager to do something good
and pleasing. All through the dinner he chaffed the young man, who
visibly grew more despondent. Finally he said:
"I have decided to revive a very good play, and I have booked an
American tour for it." Then he told the young man that this play was his
first success.
* * *
Charles Frohman's ignorance of money matters was proverbial. One day
just as he was about to take the train for Washington a friend stopped
him and said:
"I've got a great investment for you."
"No," said Frohman, "I never invest in anything except theaters."
"But this is the real thing. The only possible fact that can spoil it is
war, and we are widely remote from war."
In order to get rid of the man Frohman consented to a modest investment.
When he got to Washington the first thing that greeted him was the
announcement that we were on the verge of war with Mexico.
* * *
William Harris once gently remonstrated with Frohman for such lavish
expenditure of money.
"It's simply awful, Charley, the way you spend money," he said.
Frohman smiled and said:
"It would be awful if I lost a finger or a foot, but spending money on
the things that you want to do and enjoy doing is never money wasted."
* * *
At one time he owed a great deal of money to actors and printers, but he
always scorned all suggestions that he go through bankruptcy and wipe
these claims out. He said he would pay in full some day, and he did,
with interest. An actor to whom he owed some four hundred dollars came
to him and offered to settle the claim for one hundred dollars. Frohman
said he did not believe in taking advantage of a man like that. He
advanced the actor one hundred dollars, and eventually paid the other
three hundred dollars.
* * *
Like every great man, Frohman's tastes were simple. He always wore
clothes of one pattern, and the style seldom varied. He wore no jewelry
except a Napoleonic ring on his little finger.
* * *
Frohman never married. A friend once asked him why he had chosen to be a
bachelor.
"My dear fellow," he answered, "had I possessed a wife and family I
could never have taken the risks which, as a theatrical manager, I am
constantly called upon to do."
He lived, in truth, for and by the theater; it was his world. His heart
was in his profession, and no enterprise was too daring, no venture too
perilous, to prevent him from boldly facing it if he believed the step
was expected of him.
* * *
To his intimates Frohman was always known as "C. F." These were the
magic initials that opened or shut the doors to theatrical fame and
fortune.
* * *
Frohman loved sweet things to eat. Pies were his particular fondness,
and he never traveled without a box of candy. As he read plays he
munched chocolates. He ate with a sort of Johnsonian avidity. When he
went to Europe some of his friends, who knew his tastes well, sent him
crates of pies instead of flowers or books.
He shared this fondness for sweets with Clyde Fitch. They did not dare
to eat as much pastry as they liked before others, so they often retired
to Frohman's rooms at Sherry's or to Fitch's house on Fortieth Street,
in New York, and had a dessert orgy.
Frohman almost invariably ate as he worked in his office. When people
saw sandwiches piled upon his table, he would say:
"A rehearsal accompanied by a sandwich is progress, but a rehearsal
interrupted by a meal is delay."
* * *
Frohman's letters to his intimates were characteristic. He always wrote
them with a blue pencil, and on whatever scrap of paper happened to be
at hand. Often it was a sheet of yellow scratch-paper, sometimes the
back of an envelope. He wrote as he talked, in quick, epigrammatic
sentences. Like Barrie, he wrote one of the most indecipherable of
hands. Frequently, instead of a note, he drew a picture to express a
sentiment or convey an invitation. One reason for this was that the man
saw all life in terms of the theater. It was a series of scenes.
* * *
With regard to home life, Frohman had none. He always dwelt in
apartments in New York. The only two places where he really relaxed were
at Marlow, in England, and at his country place near White Plains in
Westchester County, New York. He shared the ownership of this
establishment with Dillingham. It entered largely into his plans. Here
his few intimates, like Paul Potter, Haddon Chambers, William Gillette,
and Augustus Thomas, came and talked over plays and productions. Here,
too, he kept vigil on the snowy night when London was to pass judgment
on the first production of "Peter Pan" on any stage.
The way he came to acquire an interest in the White Plains house is
typical of the man and his methods. Dillingham had bought the place. One
day Frohman and Gillette lunched with him there. Frohman was immensely
taken with the establishment. He liked the lawn, the garden, the trees,
and the aloofness. The three men sat at a round table. Frohman beamed
and said:
"This is the place for me. I want to sit at the head of this table." It
was his way of saying that he wanted to acquire an ownership in it, and
from that time on he was a co-proprietor.
With characteristic generosity he insisted upon paying two-thirds of the
expenses. Then, in his usual lavish fashion, he had it remodeled. He
wanted a porch built. Instead of engaging the village carpenter, who
could have done it very well, he employed the most famous architects in
the country and spent thirty thousand dollars. It was the Frohman way.
Out of the Frohman ownership of the White Plains house came one of the
many Frohman jests. Its conduct was so expensive that Frohman one day
said to Dillingham, "Let's rent a theater and make it pay for the
maintenance of the house."
Frohman then leased the Garrick, but instead of making money on it he
lost heavily.
The factotum at White Plains was the German Max, whom Dillingham had
brought over from the Savoy in London, where he was a waiter. Max
became the center of many amusing incidents. One has already been
related.
One night Max secured some fine watermelons. As he came through the door
with one of them he slipped and dropped it. He repeated this performance
with the second melon. Frohman regarded it as a great joke, and roared
with laughter. Just then Gillette was announced.
"Now," said Frohman, quietly, to Dillingham, "we will have Max bring in
a watermelon, but I want him to drop it." In order to insure the success
of the trick they stretched a string at the door so that Max would be
sure to fall. Then they ordered the melon, and Max appeared, bearing it
aloft. He fell, however, before he got to the string, and the joke was
saved.
All this jest and joke was part of the game of life as Frohman played
it. Whatever the cost, there is no doubt that the charming
white-and-green cottage up in the Westchester valley gave him hours of
relaxation and ease that were among the pleasantest of his life.
This house at White Plains was indirectly the means through which
Dillingham branched out as an independent manager. At this time he was
in Frohman's employ. One day he said to himself:
"This establishment is costing so much that I will have to send out some
companies of my own."
He thereupon got "The Red Mill," acquired Montgomery and Stone, and thus
began a new and brilliant managerial career. No one rejoiced over
Dillingham's success more than Frohman. When Dillingham opened his Globe
Theater in New York Frohman addressed a cable to "Charles Dillingham,
Globe Theater, U. S. A."
It is a curious fact about Charles Frohman that though he had millions
of dollars at stake, he was never a defendant in litigation. Yet through
him foreign authors were enabled to protect their plays from the
customary piracy by the memorization of parts. It used to be accepted
that if a man went to a play and memorized its speeches he could produce
it without paying royalty. N. S. Wood did this with a play called "The
World," that Frohman produced. He took the matter to court as a test
case and won.
* * *
Charles was not good at remembering people's names or their addresses.
This is why he was much dependent upon his stenographers. His secretary
in England, Miss Frances Slater, was so extraordinary in anticipating
his words that he always called her "The Wonder." He used to say:
"Miss Slater, I want to write to the man around the corner," which
turned out to be Arthur Bouclier, the manager of the Garrick Theater,
which was not really around the corner; but when the subject of the
letter came to be dictated, Miss Slater knew whom he meant. He would
never express any surprise on these occasions when the letter handed him
to sign contained the right name and address. He seemed to take it as a
matter of course.
* * *
One day Frohman entered his London office and said to Lestocq:
"You would never guess where I have just come from. I have been to your
Westminster Abbey."
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY CHARLES FROHMAN
_CHARLES FROHMAN'S OFFICE IN THE EMPIRE THEATER_]
Lestocq expressed surprise, whereupon Frohman continued:
"Yes, I just walked in and spoke to a man in a gown and said, 'Where is
Mr. Irving buried?' He showed me, and I stood there for a few minutes,
said a couple of things, and came on here."
* * *
Frohman's office at the Empire Theater was characteristic of the man
himself. It was a room of considerable proportions, with the atmosphere
of a study. It was lined with rather low book-shelves, on which stood
the bound copies of the plays he had produced. Interspersed was a
complete set of Lincoln's speeches and letters.
On one side was a large stone fireplace; in a corner stood a grand
piano; the center was dominated by a simple, flat-topped desk, across
which much of the traffic of the American theater passed.
Near at hand was a low and luxurious couch. Here Frohman sat
cross-legged and listened to plays. This performance was a sort of
sacred rite, and was always observed behind locked doors. No Frohman
employee would think of intruding upon his chief at such a time.
Here, as in London, Frohman was surrounded by pictures of his stars.
Dominating them was J. W. Alexander's fine painting of Miss Adams in
"L'Aiglon." On a shelf stood a bust of John Drew. There were portraits
of playwrights, too. A photograph of Clyde Fitch had this inscription:
"To C. F. from c. f."
There was only one real art object in the office, a magnificent marble
bust of Napoleon, whom Frohman greatly admired. He was always pleased
when he was told that he looked like the Man of Destiny.
His sense of personal modesty was a very genuine thing. Shortly before
he sailed on the fatal trip he had a request from a magazine writer who
wanted to write the story of his life. He sent back a vigorous refusal
to co-operate, saying, among other things:
"It is most obnoxious to me in every way. It is forcing oneself on the
public so far as I am concerned, and I don't want that, and, besides,
they are not interested. It is only for the great men of our country. It
is not for me. It looks like cheek and presumption on my part, because
_it is_, and I ask you not to go on with it."
* * *
He believed in system. One day he said:
"We must have on file in our office the complete record of every
first-class theater in the United States, together with the name of
every dramatic editor and bill-poster." Out of this grew the famous
"Theatrical Guide" compiled by Julius Cahn.
* * *
Charles always provided special sleepers for his company when they had
to leave early in the morning. He felt that it was an imposition to make
the people go to bed late after a play and rise at five or six to get a
train. It not only expressed his kindness, but also his good business
sense in keeping his people satisfied and efficient.
* * *
One of Frohman's eccentricities was that he never carried a watch. On
being asked why he never carried a timepiece, he replied, tersely,
"Everybody else carries a watch," meaning that if he wanted to find out
the time of day he could do it more quickly by inquiring of his
personal or business associates than by looking for a watch that he may
have forgotten to wind up.
"Frohman," said a friend, "made it a rule in life not to do anything
that he could hire somebody else to do, thus leaving himself all the
time possible for those things that he alone could do. He probably
figured it out that if he carried a watch he would be obliged to spend a
certain amount of time each day winding it.
"And on the same principle he refused to worry as to whether he left his
umbrella behind or not, by simply not carrying one. If he couldn't get a
cab--a rare occurrence, doubtless, considering the beaten track of his
travel--he preferred to walk in the rain."
Some time before his death Frohman said to a distinguished dramatist who
is one of his closest friends:
"Whenever I make a rule I never violate it."
A visitor to his place at White Plains came away after spending a night
there, and declared that the "real Charles Frohman had three
dissipations--he smokes all day, he reads plays all night, and--" He
stopped.
"What is it?" was the breathless query.
"He plays croquet."
* * *
Frohman had a rare gift for publicity. More than once he turned what
seemed to be a complete failure into success. An experience with "Jane"
will reveal this side of his versatility.
The bright little comedy hung fire for a while. One reason was that
newspaper criticism in New York had been rather unfavorable. Conspicuous
among the unfriendly notices was one in the _Herald_ which was headed,
"Jane Won't Go."
Frohman immediately capitalized this line. He had thousands of dodgers
stuck up all over New York. They contained three sentences, which read:
"_Jane won't go._"
_Of course not._
_She's come to stay._
From that time on the piece grew in popularity and receipts and became a
success.
* * *
In summing up the qualities that made Frohman great, one finds, in the
last analysis, that he had two in common with J. P. Morgan and the other
dynamic leaders of men. One was an incisive, almost uncanny, ability to
probe into the hearts of men, strip away the superficial, and find the
real substance.
His experience with Clyde Fitch emphasized this to a remarkable degree.
Personally no two men could have been more opposite. One was the product
of democracy, buoyant and self-made, while the other represented an
intellectual, almost effeminate, aristocracy. Yet nearly from the start
Frohman perceived the bigness of vision and the profound understanding
that lurked behind Fitch's almost superficial exterior.
In common, too, with Morgan, Roosevelt, and others of the same type,
Frohman had an extraordinary quality of unconscious hypnotism. Men who
came to him in anger went away in satisfied peace. They succumbed to
what was an overwhelming and compelling personality.
He proved this in the handling of his women stars. They combined a group
of varied and conflicting temperaments. Each wanted a separate and
distinct place in his affections, and each got it. It was part of the
genius of the man to make each of his close associates feel that he or
she had a definite niche apart. His was the perfecting understanding,
and no one better expressed it than Ethel Barrymore, who said, "To try
to explain something to Charles Frohman was to insult him."
XIX
"WHY FEAR DEATH?"
And now the final phase.
The last years of Charles Frohman's life were racked with physical pain
that strained his courageous philosophy to the utmost. Yet he faced this
almost incessant travail just as he had faced all other
emergencies--with composure.
One day in 1912 he fell on the porch of the house at White Plains and
hurt his right knee. It gave him considerable trouble. At first he
believed that it was only a bad bruise. In a few days articular
rheumatism developed. It affected all of his joints, and it held him in
a thrall of agony until the end of his life.
Shortly after his return to the city (he now lived at the Hotel
Knickerbocker) he was compelled to take to his bed. For over six months
he was a prisoner in his apartment, suffering tortures. Yet from this
pain-racked post he tried to direct his large affairs. There was a
telephone at his bedside, and he used it until weakness prevented him
from holding the receiver.
He could not go to the theater, so the theater was brought to him. More
than one preliminary rehearsal was held in his drawing-room. This was
particularly true of musical pieces. The music distracted him from his
pain.
Though prostrate with pain, his dogged determination to keep on doing
things held. Barrie sent him the manuscript of a skit called "A Slice of
Life." It was a brilliant satire on the modern play. Frohman picked
Ethel Barrymore (who was then playing in "Cousin Kate" at the Empire),
John Barrymore, and Hattie Williams to do it, and the rehearsals were
held in the manager's rooms at the Knickerbocker.
Frohman was as much interested in this one-act piece as if it had been a
five-act drama. His absorption in it helped to divert his mind from the
pain that had sadly reduced the once rotund body.
With "A Slice of Life" he introduced another one of the many innovations
that he brought to the stage. The play was projected as a surprise. No
announcement of title was made. The advertisements simply stated that
Charles Frohman would present "A Novelty" at the Empire Theater at eight
o'clock on a certain evening.
Frohman was unable to attend the opening performance, so he wrote a
little speech which was spoken by William Seymour. The speech was
rehearsed as carefully as the play. A dozen times the stage-director
delivered it before his chief, who indicated the various phrases to be
emphasized.
It was during the era of the New Theater when the so-called "advanced
drama" was much exploited. Frohman had little patience with this sort of
dramatic thing. The little speech conveys something of his satirical
feeling about the millionaire-endowed theatrical project which was then
agitating New York.
Here is the speech as Frohman wrote it:
_Ladies and Gentlemen:--My appearance here to-night is by way of
apology. I am here representing Mr. Charles Frohman--you may have
heard of him--the manager of this theater, the Empire._
_His idea in announcing a novelty in connection with Miss
Barrymore's play, "Cousin Kate," was really for the purpose of
getting you here once in time for the ringing up of the curtain.
This will be a special performance of a play to be given by a few
rising members of the School of Acting connected with this theater,
the Empire, of which he is proud--very proud. It is not an old
modern play, but what is called to-day "The Advanced Drama," made
possible here to-night by the momentary holiday of the New Theater,
and it is called "A Slice of Life."_
During those desperate days when, like Heinrich Heine, he seemed to be
lying in a "mattress grave," his dauntless humor never forsook him, as
this little incident will show: Some years previous, Gillette suffered a
breakdown from overwork. When the actor-playwright went to his home at
Hartford to recuperate his sister remonstrated with him.
"You must stop work for a long while," she said. "That man Frohman is
killing you." Gillette afterward told Frohman about it.
Frohman now lay on a bed of agony, and Gillette came to see him. The
sick man remembered the episode of the long ago, and said, weakly, to
his visitor:
"Gillette, tell your sister that _you_ are killing me."