THE ARMY OF ATTACHES.
I have already written about the property-man, his many duties, and
the great responsibility that rests upon him. I have also written
about the prompter, and the vast amount of work he is required to
do. But there remain behind the scenes and in the body of the house,
other persons who go to make up the grand army of theatrical attaches,
and whose place in the amusement world is one of some importance, as
they are the adjuncts without which the drama would be left naked of
its present beauty and splendor and the circumstances under which it
would be patronized would be full of inconvenience and discomfort. The
door-keepers of theatres are often interesting characters. Sometimes
they have been selected outside the ranks of the profession, when,
of course, they have little more to tell you about than the habits
and peculiarities of the theatre-going public; but many of them are
broken-down actors,--actors who have been "crushed," and in whose
better days vistas of unlimited hope opened before their dazzled
vision. These are full of reminiscences of the old-time saints of the
sock and buskin. If one could believe all they have to say, these
victims of circumstances could be looked upon as individuals whose
destiny it had originally been to knock their shiny stove-pipe hats
against the stars of heaven, but, by some strange fatality, had their
backs broken and their majestic tread lamed, so that now they can only
shuffle into a free-lunch saloon and bend their necks over the counter
as they lovingly embrace a schooner of beer. There is always room at
the bottom for the unfortunates of the profession, and they find such
provision usually made for them, as taking tickets at the door, or
working outside among the newspaper boys in the capacity of agent.
The treasurer of a theatre and the ticket seller, who, in the broad
sense of the word, may be looked upon as attaches, are people that all
patrons of theatres are familiar with. They, with the door-keeper, must
in the blandest manner at their command resist the advances of the very
numerous dead-heads. A courteous refusal is always deemed the best, but
frequently the harshest treatment must be resorted to to get rid of
this theatrical nuisance, of whom I shall take occasion to speak later
on, as well as of the free-pass system. The treasurer of a theatre is
always on terms of intimacy with the professionals who frequent his
house, and is usually a jolly-featured, good-natured man who knows how
to entertain his friends, to retain the good opinion of his manager,
while filling up the ticket-box with passes, and who understands and
appreciates the full value of the saying that a soft answer turneth
aside wrath. His salary ranges from $25 to $50 a week, while a good
ticket-seller, who frequently is made to do all the hard work, may be
had for $12 or $15. A door-keeper is paid from $10 to $15 a week.
[Illustration: MINNIE HAUK.]
The great American type of youthful citizen, with all the manners and
dignity of old age and the advisory qualities of a Nestor, is the
theatrical usher--the young chap who takes your reserved seat ticket
with a smile full of malignity and succeeds in getting you into the
wrong chair and almost into a prize fight with every man who comes
into the same row of seats. He does this graciously and with such an
exhibition of carefulness in comparing the number on your coupon with
the number of the chair, that you actually feel ashamed of yourself
to have made a mistake after what appeared to you to be an honest,
vigorous, and successful effort to show you what was right. The ushers
in Western cities are mere boys in uniform; in the East they are young
men, and at Haverly's, Wallack's, and other first-class New York
establishments, you will find them in full evening dress with as large
an exhibition of shirt front as the swellest of the society noodles who
are among the patrons of the house. The usher gets $6 or $8 a week, but
impresses the stranger as if he owned an interest in the theatre. He
may sell calico or run a lemonade stand during the day, but at night he
is master of all he surveys, talks of the actresses as familiarly as
if he were a blood relation, tries to make you believe he has "a solid
girl" in the ballet, and will offer you any favor, from an introduction
to the star to a dozen matinee-passes or a game of seven-up with the
manager. Like the claquers, he is a regular nuisance. After the first
act he will sit or stand and give his opinion of the play, commenting
upon the performers in such brief, half ejaculatory, half interrogatory
way, as, "Ain't she a daisy, though?" or, "Ain't he a dandy, you bet?"
He is expected to applaud even the vilest and least deserving things,
and when the cue is given, works his hands and feet as vigorously as I
have often seen Henry Mapleson in applauding Marie Roze, his wife, or a
travelling manager in commending the efforts of his favorite among the
females of his company.
Down in front, right under the glow of the foot-lights, the bald head
of the leader of the orchestra shines. Often he is interesting, but
sometimes, especially among the leaders for combinations on the road,
he has a life history that compels now tears and now again laughter.
When he is on the road he may have a wife or daughter in the company,
and if he has neither he is bound to look lovingly upon some of the
fair talent whose toes twinkle, or voices ripple in song to the tune
of his waving baton, and he will smile out through his gold-rimmed
spectacles upon his favorite even while she is courting the favor
of the audience, or, perhaps, while she is trying to mash some beefy
blonde in the front rows of the parquette. Jealousy often takes
possession of the breast of the orchestra leader. It may be that he
will find out that the wife he has done everything for to make famous
has younger and handsomer lovers, from whose glowing presence she
comes to her musical lord cold as a Christmas morning with eighteen
inches of ice on pond and river; or it may be that the favorite of the
foot-lights whom he adores has found another favorite in the audience;
then there is war, and sometimes the orchestra is left without its
leader and a story of unrequited love is told in a coroner's inquest
held upon a body found floating in a pool, or hanging from a transom
in the room of some hotel. To leave the pathetic and get down to solid
facts it may be stated that the leader of an orchestra is paid from
$75 to $100 a week, and has from a dozen to sixteen musicians whose
salaries range from $18 to $30 a week.
Again returning to the bosom of the stage--to the sacred precincts
beyond the foot-lights--we encounter the stage manager. Every
travelling company has its own employee who directs and runs the stage
business, and notwithstanding the abolition of stock companies, several
theatres retain stage managers of their own who work in conjunction
with the company's, looking after the setting of scenery, bossing the
stage hands, etc. The stage manager may be an actor, or he may not,
but he must be a man of theatrical training, and thoroughly conversant
with all the requirements of the stage. In travelling combinations he
usually plays a minor part, and, although he may not be able to act
as well as his brethren of the play, he must possess the requisite
artistic knowledge to point out and dictate what all shall do.
He supervises rehearsals; casts plays,--that is, assigns to each
performer his character; and he looks after the mounting of plays and
the costuming, giving the scenic artist the period to which the play
belongs, and imparting the same information to the costumers so that
there may be no anachronism in the representation on the stage.
[Illustration: HELPING THE SCENE PAINTER.]
The scenic artist, who is often known to the people only by his work,
has some extraordinary duties to perform. When a combination or company
has a date at a theatre a week or so beforehand, they send on small
models of the scenery they require for their play. These models greatly
resemble in their general appearance and size the toy theatres that are
sold to children. The stage carpenter, who goes around day and night
treading the stage in his own shuffling and careless way, and who is
entirely unknown to the public, takes the models and builds frames over
which canvas or muslin is spread. Then the canvas-covered frame is
taken to the scene painter's bridge when it is ready for the colors.
In many theatres the bridge is a platform extending across the stage,
and distant from the rear wall about a foot. It is on a level with
the flies, and the opening between it and the rear wall is used for
lowering and hoisting a scene, which is hung on a large wooden frame
while the artist is at work upon it. This frame moves up and down,
being swung on pulleys. The most improved theatres East and West, in
addition to having the dressing-rooms, engines, etc., in a building
separate from the theatre, have the paint bridge also separate. Great
iron doors, three or four stories high, close the opening to the
painting establishment, and all scenery not in use on the stage during
the run of a play is stored in the space under the bridge, while the
bridge itself is really a long narrow room with an opening at one
side of a foot or less, through which communication is had with the
storeroom, and which gives space for the operation of the frames upon
which scenes are painted. The artist's palette is a long table with
compartments at the back for different colors, and there is besides a
profusion of paint cans, jars, etc., with huge brushes that might serve
the whitewasher's wide-spread purpose, and others thin enough to paint
a lady's eye-lash. Water-colors are used, and great splotches of it are
found along the lengthy palette. The removal of the paint-bridge from
the stage is a blessing to actors and actresses alike, for often during
a performance at night or a rehearsal in the morning broadcloths and
silks received dashes of paint from the brush of the man at work in
mid-air. Still actresses do not often keep shy of the paint-bridge. The
ballet-girls are sometimes to be found there amusing themselves with
the artist and his assistants, and they tell the story of two New York
actresses who actually put on aprons, took hold of the big brushes, and
assisted a scenic artist in "priming" his canvas. They were bantering
him about the slow progress he was making with a scene that was wanted
that night, when he remarked: "If you are in such a hurry for the
scene, why don't you come up here and help me?" They accepted the
invitation at once, and went to work in the manner I have suggested.
The scene was ready that night, but the actresses were very tired. They
painted no more.
The "priming" of a scene which I have mentioned in the preceding
anecdote, consists in laying a coat of white mixed with sizing upon the
canvas. When this is dry the artist outlines his scene in charcoal. He
first gets his perspective, which he does by attaching a long piece
of twine to a pin fixed at his "vanishing point." Then blackening the
string and beginning at the top he snaps it so as to make a black
line which is afterwards gone over with ink. This line is reproduced
whenever the drawing requires, and the advantage it affords will be
readily understood by all who know anything about art or appreciate the
value of good perspective in drawing. The sky of the scene is first
filled in rapidly with a whitewash brush, after which follows a swift
but clever completion of the view. The side scenes which are to be used
as continuations of the "flat," as the principal or back part of a
scene is called, must be in perspective with the rest of the picture.
Scenic artists work very quickly, and can prepare a view in a very
short time. Morgan, Marston, Fox, and Voegtlin, in New York; Goatcher,
in Cincinnati; and Dick Halley, Tom Noxon, and Ernest Albert, in St.
Louis, are among the best scene painters in the country. The salaries
paid in this branch of the profession vary from $40 to $150 a week. A
New York artist, it is said, who works very fast, receives as much as
$100 to $150 for one or two scenes. When it is taken into consideration
that at the end of the run of a play these scenes are blotted out to
make way for others, the price paid for them is simply enormous.
[Illustration: THE "OLD WOMAN" OF THE COMPANY.]
The old woman of the company is an elderly matronly female, who may be
found hovering in the wings of every theatre. She is nobody's mother in
particular, but talks in a motherly way to all, and exercises a special
supervision over the female members of the company. In strange contrast
to her is the call-boy, a mischievous devil-may-care young fellow, who
calls Booth "Ed," Bernhardt "Sallie," and has familiar appellations
for the most prominent and dignified people in the profession. It is
his business to call performers from the green-room in time for them
to take their "cue" for going on the stage, and this is about all he
has to do except to make trouble, to learn secrets that he whispers
about, and to become an impish nuisance revelling in more fun and
freedom than anybody else behind the scenes. Aimee took a liking to one
of these little gentlemen once and fed him cigarettes, and let him tell
her lies _ad libitum_. She said she liked him because he was such "a
charming little beast." Alice Oates, of flagrant fame, allowed one of
them out West to get into her good graces, and repented it, when she
found that he disappeared suddenly one day with a lot of her jewels.
The call-boy comes last in the list of attaches, but he is not at
all least. If you believe all he tells you, like the usher, you will
think him a great man, for he often boasts of playing poker with John
McCullough, of taking Lotta out for a drive, or of rolling ten-pins
with Salvini or some equally illustrious representative of the highest
dramatic art. A call-boy gets about $10 a week, and in five cases out
of ten he isn't worth ten cents.
[Illustration: THE ÆSTHETIC DRAMA.]