"ON THE ROAD."
Theatrical life is full enough of business and bustle, even when a
company is playing a long engagement in a large city; but when "on the
road," travelling from town to town--playing here a week and there
a week, with one-night stands in the intervening "villages," actors
and managers find it no easy task to retain their health and spirits,
and keep up with their "dates;" and with all but a few organizations
located almost permanently in New York, thus flitting from place to
place--a round of anxiety and railroad experiences that lasts through
forty weeks of each year--makes up the easy, glorious, and blissful
existence that so many people outside of the profession imagine is the
unalloyed portion of those who are in it.
As much of the business of a company's season as can be arranged in New
York during the summer, is attended to by the manager. He meets the
prominent theatrical managers of the country on "The Square" and makes
dates at their respective houses for his attraction. Having located
his route as to the large cities he proceeds to fill in the intervals
with one or two-night stands in smaller places, and this being done he
and his company are ready to take the road just as soon as the season
begins. The contracts for cities like Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville,
New Orleans, and St. Louis are made and signed in New York during the
summer vacation. The others are completed while the company is on the
road.
Ahead of every attraction is a press agent, herald, avant-courier,
or, as he began to call himself two years ago, a business manager.
When he invades a town the first place he makes a rush for is the most
available opera house or hall, with the proprietor of which he makes a
contract like the following:--
BELLEVILLE, ILL......... 1882.
This is to certify that I have rented the hall (room or theatre)
known as ................ to the Madison Square Theatre Company for
.......... night ...., viz ....................... for the sum of
......... dollars per night, which includes license, stage hands,
ushers, ticket-seller, etc. Said hall, passage-way, and stage to
be well lighted, and also to be kept clean and well warmed, with
services of janitor and privilege of matinee included.
_Signed_:
.................. Lessee.
_Witness_:
................ Business Manager.
Numerous other contracts are made,--for hauling baggage, for carriages
and omnibus, for orchestra, etc. The hotel contract, which is as
follows, is very explicit:--
"This is to certify that the landlord of .....................
does hereby agree with the Agent of the Madison Square Theatre
Company to board and lodge the said company, consisting of ........
persons, more or less, for .......... days, more or less, at the
rate of ........... cents per day for each person. Three meals and
one (night's) lodging to constitute a day's board, and for any
time less than one day the charge shall be at the same rate per
diem as is above mentioned. Fires to be furnished at ..............
cents per each room. No charge to be made under the above agreement
providing the party see fit to go elsewhere. Agent to be kept at
same rates.
..................... Landlord."
Having got through with making contracts the agent begins to "bill
the town." The amount of billing that is done depends largely upon
the reputation of the star or attraction, and the manner in which the
newspapers have been worked. An actress like Mary Anderson puts out
but about one hundred three-sheet bills--a three-sheet bill being the
ordinary poster that is seen upon a single bill-board--in any of the
large cities. Sarah Bernhardt and Adelina Patti, who were kept before
the public by the press for many months before they came to this
country, needed but a few three-sheet bills and a simple announcement
of their coming in the newspapers. Mrs. Langtry, Christine Nilsson,
and Henry Irving will be billed in the same economical way when they
reach our shores. Edwin Booth and John McCullough, like Mary Anderson,
use only a small quantity of three-sheet bills for advertising on the
walls. These people require few lithographs, and are likewise fortunate
in not being required to buy large space in the papers. Nearly all the
minor melodramatic and comedy attractions take to the circus style
of advertising. Charles L. Davis, of "Alvin Joslyn" fame, who wears
the largest diamond and carries the finest watch in the profession,
boasts that he always likes to bill against a circus. When he was in
St. Louis during the season of 1881-2, Mr. W. R. Cottrell, the city
bill-poster, told me that Davis put out about four thousand sheets,
and everlastingly sprinkled the windows with colored lithographs. Mr.
Cottrell also told me that this does not approach the lavishness of
circuses in decorating the fences and walls and bill-boards of cities.
These latter usually put out not less than ten thousand sheets, and
the Great London Show a few seasons ago would spread from eighteen to
twenty thousand sheets before the eyes of a city having a population of
four hundred thousand. The bill-poster gets three cents per sheet for
posting, and $1 per hundred for distributing lithographs, so that, as
will be understood, a circus or a theatrical attraction like Charles L.
Davis is a bonanza to the bill-poster.
From the big type of the bill-boards the advance agent naturally turns
his attention to the smaller, but probably more effective, type of the
newspaper. He rushes into the editorial rooms like a whirlwind, if
he is a cyclonic agent, asks in a voice of thunder for the dramatic
critic, and when that gentleman is pointed out, after depositing a
gilt-edged card and bestrewing the journalist's desk with a mass of
notices from the Oakland _Bugle_, the Bragtown _Boomerang_, and forty
other equally important and severely critical journals, proceeds to
talk so loudly that he disturbs all the writers in the room, and has
the managing editor on the point nineteen times out of twenty of
ordering him out of the office.
"I tell you what, my boy," he shouts, "we just laid 'em out cold in
Pilot Knob last night. Just got a telegram from the manager. See here:
'House jammed to the doors; hundreds turned away; great enthusiasm; big
sales to-morrow night.' Now that's no gag, but the dead square, bang-up
truth, s'elp me God."
"I see the Horse-Tail Bar _Sentinel_ gives you folks fits," the
dramatic critic quietly suggests. "It says your play is bad and your
company worse--how is that?"
"Oh that fellow is a bloody duffer," the agent replies at the top of
his voice. "Tell you the truth, we had a little trouble with him about
comps. He wanted a bushel of 'em, and because we wouldn't give 'em up
blasted us. But we did a rattling good business all the same, and don't
you forget it?"
And in this way the cyclonic agent rattles along, tormenting everybody
within hearing distance until he gets ready to go; and when he is gone
there is a sigh of relief all around the office. The managing editor
comes out and asks the dramatic critic:--
"Who was that d--d fool?"
"The agent of the Doorstep Comic Opera Company," the dramatic critic
replies.
"Well, the next time he comes in here just tell him this is not a deaf
and dumb asylum. We don't want any serenades from side-show blowers.
Don't give his d--d old company more than two lines, and make it less
than that if you can."
Fortunately for the profession this style of advance agent is dying
out, and men who understand newspapers better are coming in. There are
many real gentlemen, clever, quiet and effective, in the business,
like Mr. E. D. Price, formerly of the Detroit _Post and Tribune_;
Frank Farrell, who graduated from the New Orleans _Times_ office,
and others who have forsaken journalism for the equally arduous, but
more lucrative positions that enterprising and long-headed theatrical
managers offer them.
The advance agent sees that the hall or theatre is in proper condition,
looks after the sale of reserved seats, distributes his "comps" as
judiciously as circumstances will allow, and confronts everywhere he
goes the cunning and omnipresent dead-head--that abomination of the
show business who will spend $5 with an agent to get a free ticket from
him, when admission and a reserved sent may be purchased for $1. If the
dead-head fails to circumvent the agent he quietly awaits the coming of
the company, when he lies in ambush for the manager, of whom he demands
a pass or his life. In fact, the manager often has to undo a great deal
that his agent has done in a town, and to do over again much that the
avant-courier had seemingly done in a satisfactory manner. The company,
too, frequently find the way not so smooth or pleasant as the agent
has represented it to be: the hall or theatre in which the performance
is to be given is often a dingy, dismal place that is not only without
conveniences of any kind, but what is worse, may not be proof against
anything like demonstrative weather; the hotel fare is bad, and the
accommodations no better; the mayor, the town council, and sometimes
the prominent citizens, must have free passes; the local papers want
hatfuls of complimentary tickets, and with a house half filled with
dead-heads and one-third of the benches empty, they must, in the face
of most discouraging circumstances, appear as entertainers or meet with
the severest denunciations of the pigmy press and the most galling
criticism from the ungrateful army of dead-heads.
Now and then an actor or an actress contracts a cold during a
barn-storming tour, and the nomadic life not being calculated to aid
the healing power of medicines, the seeds of death are sown, and
soon the played-out player sinks from sight, and without causing a
single ripple upon the surface of the great sea of life, goes down
to the grave. The agent and the manager, too, share this danger, and
altogether the life of professional people when "on the road" is not so
bright or joyful as to cause any one acquainted with their trials and
troubles to envy them their lot.
[Illustration: "ON THE ROAD."]