"Soldier of Fortune" Was in Box Office
Until His Employer's Lamentations
Drove Figures Out of His Head.
Although he is the son of an actor, this fact was the means of an attempt
to keep Robert Edeson off the stage rather than an aid to him in getting
on it. His father, George R. Edeson, who died while comedian and stage
manager of the Philadelphia Girard Avenue stock company, in 1899, was so
convinced that the actor's calling brought principally heart-sickness and
disappointment that he used every means to dissuade his son from taking up
with it.
As a sort of compromise, when young Robert finished school (he was born in
New Orleans, and the family now lived in Brooklyn) he went into the front
of the house and obtained a position with Colonel Sinn as guardian of the
box-office at the Park Theater.
It was just nineteen years ago that Cora Tanner was booked to appear there
in a new play, "Fascination." The first performance was set down for
Monday night, and at a rehearsal on the Friday previous the player of a
minor part failed to show up. He sent word that he was ill.
Colonel Sinn strolled into the box-office where young Edeson was trying to
balance his accounts, and began to bemoan the ill luck of the thing. To a
fellow engaged in the task of adding figures this running accompaniment of
self-commiseration was not conducive to accuracy in the totals, So,
finally, Edeson turned on his employer with the exclamation:
"Look here, Colonel Sinn, if you will keep quiet and allow me to
straighten out this account in peace, I'll play that part."
Dazed into silence by this daring proposition, his employer remained
speechless long enough to permit Edeson to complete his task. Taking his
coat and hat, he was in the act of leaving the box-office when Colonel
Sinn called after him:
"Young man, I'll bet you one hundred dollars you can't make good on that
bluff."
"I'll go you," was Edeson's reply. "Get me a substitute here and give me
the part."
Concerning the outcome, Edeson himself has since observed:
"I remember very little of that first performance. However, I believe I
was not offensive and therefore was allowed to play the week out. The
following season, not being able to come to terms with Colonel Sinn, I
determined to adopt the stage as a profession and was fortunate enough to
secure the juvenile part in a small company playing Daly's 'A Night Off.'
Then came 'The Dark Secret,' in which the villains and myself were the
only members of the company who escaped the tank."
A few seasons later he was with Charles Dickson in "Incog," which came to
be called in the profession "the matrimonial play," as no less than four
couples met their affinities while acting therein, viz.: Charles Dickson
and Lillian Burkhardt, Louis Mann and Clara Lipman, Harry Davenport and
Phyllis Rankin, and Mr. Edeson and Ellen Burg.
Ten years ago Mr. Edeson was in the Empire stock company, understudy to
William Faversham, and making a particularly good impression when he
played the latter's part in "Under the Red Robe," which ran so far into
the spring that the leaders in the cast became tired out and left their
parts to the next in line, Ida Conquest falling heir to Viola Allen's
_Renee_.
The aftermath of the Spanish-American War nearly lost Edeson to the stage,
as for a time he seriously thought of going to Porto Rico as the agent for
a house selling sporting goods. Luckily he changed his mind and accepted a
position as leading man in the splendid cast Amelia Bingham collected for
"The Climbers."
This play, in the estimation of some critics, made Mr. Edeson, and in the
winter of 1902 he became a star on his own account, with Augustus Thomas's
dramatization of Richard Harding Davis's "Soldiers of Fortune" as the
vehicle.