Author of "The Squaw Man" Has a Run
of Ill-Luck to Thank for His
Success as a Playwright.
Edwin Milton Royle, author of "The Squaw Man," is another of that
countless army brought up to the law and who sidetracked themselves to the
stage. He spent his youth in a place that seems to breed actors so
freely--Salt Lake City--where he attended the same Presbyterian school as
Maude Adams. He is now on the sunny side of fifty, having graduated from
Princeton in 1883.
Amateur theatricals at college are responsible for the lure that drew him
to the professional footlights. After Princeton he went to continue his
studies in Edinburgh, and there he took prominent part in a great
performance of the students that had among its spectators some of the most
prominent men in Great Britain.
On his return to America he set about studying law in New York, but he did
not really settle down to it. The inclination toward the stage had by this
time become too strong to be resisted. He began to make a tour of the
manager's offices in search of an opening.
In this he had no better luck than usually falls to the lot of the
unknown. Men in power along the Rialto did not know what he could do, and
it was not to be expected that many of them would take the time to let him
prove his abilities. At last, however, he secured, through Eugene W.
Presbrey, an interview with the late A.M. Palmer, who gave him the small
part of the boy in "Young Mrs. Winthrop," at the Madison Square Theater.
From that he drifted to other small parts in the company of Edwin Booth,
while the latter was at the Fifth Avenue Theater, and the next season he
was with Booth and Barrett during their engagement at the Broadway.
Short on Words.
"You can imagine the nature of my roles," said Mr. Royle, in relating to
me this portion of his career, "by the following incident: At the end of
the season it was decided to bring out a souvenir of the engagement, with
signatures by all the people in the company. Each signature was to be
accompanied by a line from his or her part. When it came my turn to write,
my part was so short that all I had to say in the piece went down as my
contribution, in the shape of--
"'Oh, Caesar! No, by no means!'"
And here began the apparent strokes of ill luck which in the end have
proved blessings in disguise. The first one was the failure of Mrs. Potter
to come to this country for a tour on one occasion when Royle had been
engaged in her support. He did not know that he was free until September,
when it was too late to seek other positions.
Thrown out of a job, he turned his attention to playwriting, having at one
time thought seriously of taking up literature as a profession. He wrote
"Friends," and brought it out in New York the next summer, with a capital
furnished by a Western uncle.
The play made a hit after a rather slow start, and he played it on the
road for some seasons, following it with another, "Captain Impudence," and
later by a farce, "My Wife's Husbands." The latter made a decided hit, but
Mr. Royle was unable to obtain road bookings for it owing to a glut of
attractions kept out of New York by the unfinished condition of two
theaters which should have been ready for them. Shows booked for them,
with companies all engaged, had to be placed somewhere pending the
completion of the Lyceum and the Hudson, so that the dates were all filled
by the time it was known that "My Wife's Husbands" had caught on. In this
crisis, Nat Goodwin, who had just come a cropper with a new offering of
his own, rose up and bought the rights to the play, but failed to make
good in the part himself and shelved it after two weeks' trial.
Meanwhile, one night when he couldn't sleep, Royle got to thinking about
the Indians he used to see when a boy at the Indian reservation not far
from Salt Lake. And then there formed in his mind the germ idea of "The
Squaw Man"--the Englishman tied to the Indian wife when the way was clear
for him otherwise to go back home.
The next morning he told his wife--Selena Fetter--of the scheme, adding
that he thought of making a play out of it.
"Oh, don't," she begged him. "Can't you think of something pleasanter? You
know 'Friends' gained all its success out of the comedy there was in it."
So he did nothing in the matter then, but later, when he was asked to
write a skit for the Lambs' Gambol, he used this idea for a short piece,
which went so well that it was used afterward at the annual public gambol,
where it repeated its hit.
Royle was now in vaudeville, having cut down "Captain Impudence" to the
required time limits. He decided to follow this with "The Squaw Man," and
here is where once more his good luck in the guise of bad stepped upon the
scene.
A Fortunate Rejection.
The vaudeville managers refused positively to consider a sketch containing
more than four people; Royle could not cut "The Squaw Man" to fewer than
ten. Had either he or they given way, the four-act play that has proved
one of the big New York hits of the season might have remained a sketch
and spent its life on the road, instead of tarrying for six months on
Broadway.
In this deadlock it occurred to Royle that he would expand the play and
try it in a new field, but even after this was done he failed to find a
purchaser. Nat Goodwin, to whom he sent it first, turned it down, and
Charles Frohman could not read it within the time limit set.
But Royle had active agents in his brother actors, who had seen the thing
in its Lambs' Club performance, and who were all anxious to play the
leading part. Whenever they got the chance they spoke of the piece to
their respective managers, and in this way Royle finally got four of these
gentlemen to consent to listen to a reading of the play. The result was
the purchase of the rights by Mr. Tyler, of the Liebler Company, on terms
which have netted Mr. Royle royalties amounting close to a thousand
dollars a week.