The Future "Brown of Harvard" Landed
His First Engagement by Singing
"Onward, Christian Soldiers."
It was his singing of the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" that obtained
for Henry Woodruff, the star in "Brown of Harvard," his first engagement.
The play was "H.M.S. Pinafore," by a juvenile company; the line, chorus
work; and the pay, two dollars a week. This was back in 1879, and Harry
was only nine years old at the time.
Just what led up to this decisive step I shall let Woodruff tell for
himself in a memorandum he sent me some years ago in response to a request
for information in regard to his start behind the footlights. The Park
Theater mentioned was in New York, at the corner of Broadway and
Twenty-Second Street (where Brooks Brothers now stands), and I saw it
destroyed by fire, as did Mrs. Langtry, who was watching from a window of
the Albemarle and wondering where she was going to make her American
debut, for it had been arranged that she should appear at that theater on
that very night. Woodruff's memorandum is as follows:
"In 1879 'Baby' was given at the old Park Theater, with Edwin Thorne in
the cast. It was preceded by 'Old Love-Letters,' performed by Mrs. Agnes
Booth and Joseph Whitney. Doubtless neither the actors nor the audience
knew that the night was to prove itself an important one in dramatic
history, nor that the words which were spoken and listened to in the
careless fashion of every-day life were to inspire a young heart with an
ambition as boundless as it was sincere.