Abetted by Mark Twain, the Future Playwright
and Star Took to "The Road,"
Which He Found a Thorny One.
William Gillette may be said to have reached the stage on the run, for he
ran away from home in order to gratify his ambition to become an actor.
His family were staid citizens of Hartford, Connecticut, where his father
once ran for Governor of the State.
The idea was to make a lawyer of William, but after he got over a taste
for mechanics, which led him to construct secretly a steam-engine in his
bedroom, he conceived for the stage a craze that refused to be snuffed out
by parental opposition.
Mark Twain, a neighbor in Hartford, was on the boy's side. His "Gilded
Age" was being dramatized, and the author lent his influence to get young
Gillette a place in the cast as foreman of the jury in the company of
which John T. Raymond was the head. In this role he was entrusted with the
onerous task of saying these four words in response to the question of the
judge: "We have. Not guilty."
Gillette was barely nineteen at the time, and after the run of "The Gilded
Age" was over he found himself in New Orleans without another engagement
or the chance of obtaining one. Finally he secured an opening on these
magnificent terms--agreeing to play without salary and to furnish his own
costumes.
The post was that of leading utility man for a New Orleans stock company,
and when, after serving for a while under these humiliating conditions for
the sake of the experience it would bring, Gillette mildly suggested that
he be paid a small honorarium, he was told there was one alternative that
was always open to him--he could leave, which he did.
Thereupon ensued a rough and tumble period of existence for the young
actor, who did not arrive at pleasant pastures again until he took to
writing plays himself. And yet his first production to reach the
footlights was by no means an overwhelming success. This was "The
Professor," produced at the Madison Square Theater, with himself in the
leading part, when that house was managed by an Episcopal clergyman and
his brother.
Success Follows Failure.
It is such a superhuman task to secure a manager's attention for a play
that the new playwright is prone to feel that the Rubicon has been passed
once the manuscript has been accepted. But in reality this is only a
halting-place on the roadside where he may tarry to obtain his second
wind. And young Gillette needed all the recuperative powers possible, for
when "The Professor" was brought to public attention the critics hurled at
it their keenest shafts.
The actor-playwright managed to survive, although his play didn't, and,
failing to be discouraged, he went ahead with his work on "Esmeralda."
This was a story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in which the Mallorys
of the theater had become interested, and the dramatization of which, in
association with the author, they had entrusted to Gillette. This proved
to be a big hit, with Annie Russell in the name-part, and ran to over
three hundred performances.
Another adaptation success quickly followed--that of "The Private
Secretary," in which Gillette also played. Meantime he was at work on
another original piece, "Held by the Enemy," a war drama which almost beat
"Shenandoah" on its own ground in the race for popularity.
Inspired by the success he had achieved, Gillette was not content to go
ahead on the same lines. He ached to branch out, to astonish folks, to do
something big, and with his record behind him he had little difficulty in
persuading Charles Frohman to go halves in the production of "Ninety
Days."
This was a melodrama of the most lurid type, but the Third Avenue edge of
it was supposed to be taken off by the elaborate fashion in which it was
staged and the care with which the mechanical effects were looked after.
It failed completely, running a bare month, and carrying down all
Gillette's savings in its collapse. The disappointment shattered his
health, and he retired to a cabin in South Carolina, where, after a time,
he set to work on some more adaptations--"Too Much Johnson," "All the
Comforts of Home," and "Mr. Wilkinson's Widows."
These were all produced successfully, which could not be said of what
eventually turned out to be his most famous work; for "Secret Service,"
called originally "The Secret Service," was looked upon coldly when it was
launched in Philadelphia, with Maurice Barrymore in the lead.
Gillette gave the piece a thorough overhauling, and it was put on in the
new form, and with the author as the hero, at the Garrick, New York, in
1896, and made the hit that was really the beginning of Gillette's career
of fame as actor-playwright.