Chapter 17

In the case of Edna May there could be no star-making. The spectacular rise of this charming girl from the chorus to the most-talked-of musical comedy role in the English-speaking world--that of the Salvation Army girl in "The Belle of New York"--had given her a great reputation. Frohman now capitalized that reputation in his usual elaborate fashion. He first presented Miss May in "The Girl from Up There."

She appeared under his management in various pieces, both in New York and in London. Her company in New York included Montgomery and Stone, Dan Daly, and Virginia Earle. When he presented Miss May at the Duke of York's in "The Girl from Up There" the result was the biggest business that the theater had known up to that time. In succession followed "Kitty Gray," which ran a year in London, "Three Little Maids," and "La Poupee."

All the while there was being written for Miss May a musical piece in which she was to achieve one of her greatest successes, and which was to bring Charles into contact with another one of his future stars. It was "The School Girl," which Frohman first did in May, 1903, in London, and afterward put on with great success at Daly's in New York.

In the English production of this play was a petite, red-haired little girl named Billie Burke, who sang a song called "Put Me in My Little Canoe," which became one of the hits of the play. Frohman was immensely attracted by this girl, and afterward took her under his patronage and she became one of his best-known stars.

Edna May, under Frohman's direction, was now perhaps the best known of the musical comedy stars in England and America. He took keen delight in her success. In "The Catch of the Season," which he did at Daly's in New York in August, 1905, she practically bade farewell to the American stage. Henceforth Frohman kept her in England. In "The Belle of Mayfair" she was succeeded by Miss Burke in the leading part. Frohman's production of "Nelly Neil" at the Aldwych Theater in 1907 was one of the most superb musical comedy presentations ever made. For this Frohman imported Joseph Coyne from America to do the leading juvenile role. He became such a great favorite that he has remained in England ever since.

Just as Edna May had bidden farewell to America in "The Catch of the Season," so she now bade farewell to the English stage in "Nelly Neil." She had become engaged to Oscar Lewisohn, who insisted on an early marriage. About this time Frohman and George Edwardes secured the English rights to "The Merry Widow." They both urged Miss May to postpone her marriage and appear in it. Miss May was now compelled to decide between matrimony and what would have been perhaps her greatest success, and she chose matrimony.

Her good-by appearance on the stage, May 1, 1907, was one of the most extraordinary events in the history of the English theater. This lovely, unassuming American girl had so completely endeared herself to the hearts of the London theater-goers that she was made the center of a tumultuous farewell. The day the seat-sale opened there was a queue several blocks long. During the opening performance Charles sat in his box alone. When some friends entered he was in tears. He had a genuine personal affection for Miss May, and her retirement touched him very deeply.

In connection with "Nelly Neil" there is a little story which illustrates Charles's attitude toward his productions. He had spent a fortune on "Nelly Neil," and it was not a financial success. After giving it every chance he instructed Lestocq to put up the two weeks' notice. Lestocq remarked that it was a shame to end such a magnificent presentation. Whereupon Frohman turned around quickly and said:

"Shut up, or I'll run it another month. You know, Lestocq, if I don't keep a hand on myself sometimes my sentiment will be the ruin of me."

* * *

By this time Frohman and James M. Barrie had become close friends. The manager had produced "Quality Street" at the Vaudeville Theater with great success. He now approached a Barrie production which gave him perhaps more pleasure than anything he did in his whole stage life. The advent of "Peter Pan" was at hand. The remarkable story of how Charles got the manuscript of "Peter Pan" has already been told in this biography.

The original title that Barrie gave the play was "The Great White Father," which Frohman liked. Just as soon as Barrie suggested that it be named after its principal character, Frohman fairly overflowed with enthusiasm. In preparing for "Peter Pan" in England, Charles was like a child with a toy. Money was spent lavishly; whole scenes were made and never used. He regarded it as a great and rollicking adventure.

The first production of the Barrie masterpiece on any stage took place at the Duke of York's Theater, London, on December 27, 1904. Frohman was then in America. At his country place up at White Plains, only his close friend, Paul Potter, with him, he eagerly awaited the verdict. It was a bitterly cold night, and a snow-storm was raging. Frohman's secretary in the office in New York had arranged to telephone the news of the play's reception which Lestocq was expected to cable from London. On account of the storm the message was delayed.

Frohman was nervous. He kept on saying, "Will it never come?" His heart was bound up in the fortunes of this beloved fairy play. While he waited with Potter, Frohman acted out the whole play, getting down on all-fours to illustrate the dog and crocodile. He told it as _Wendy_ would have told it, for _Wendy_ was one of his favorites. Finally at midnight the telephone-bell rang. Potter took down the receiver. Frohman jumped up from his chair, saying, eagerly, "What's the verdict?" Potter listened a moment, then turned, and with beaming face repeated Lestocq's cablegram:

_Peter Pan all right. Looks like a big success._

This was one of the happiest nights in Frohman's life.

The first _Peter_ in England was Nina Boucicault, who played the part with great wistfulness and charm. She was the first of a quartet which included Cissy Loftus, Pauline Chase, and Madge Titheradge.

Charles so adored "Peter Pan" that he produced it in Paris, June 1, 1909, at the Vaudeville Theater, with an all-English cast headed by Pauline Chase. Robb Harwood was _Captain Hook_, and Sibyl Carlisle played _Mrs. Darling_. It was produced under the direction of Dion Boucicault. The first presentation was a great hit, and the play ran for five weeks. On the opening night Barrie and Frohman each had a box. Frohman was overjoyed at its success, and Barrie, naturally, could not repress his delight. What pleased them most was the spectacle of row after row of little French kiddies, who, while not understanding a word of the narrative, seemed to be having the time of their lives.

From the date of its first production until his death, "Peter Pan" became a fixed annual event in the English life of Charles Frohman. He revived it every year at holiday-time. No occasion in his calendar was more important than the annual appearance of the fascinating boy who had twined himself about the American manager's heart.

* * *

Charles was now a conspicuous and prominent figure in English theatrical life. The great were his friends and his opinion was much quoted. In addition to his sole control of the Duke of York's, he had interests in a dozen other playhouses. He liked the English way of doing business. Yet, despite what many people believed to be a strong pro-British tendency, he was always deeply and patriotically American, and he lost several fortunes in pioneering the American play and the American actor in England.

To name the American plays that he produced in London would be to give almost a complete catalogue of American drama revealed to English eyes. Curiously enough, at least two plays, "The Lion and the Mouse" and "Paid in Full," that had made enormous successes in America, failed utterly in England under his direction. He gave England such typically American dramas as "The Great Divide," "Brewster's Millions," "Alias Jimmy Valentine," "Years of Discretion," "A Woman's Way," "On the Quiet," and "The Dictator."

In addition to Gillette he presented Billie Burke in "Love Watches," William Collier in "The Dictator" and "On the Quiet," and Ethel Barrymore in "Cynthia."

With his presentation of Collier he did one of his characteristic strokes of enterprise. Marie Tempest was playing at the Comedy in London. He had always been anxious to try Collier's unctuous American humor on the British, so the American comedian swapped engagements with Miss Tempest. She came over to the Criterion in New York to do "The Freedom of Suzanne," while Collier took her time at the Comedy in "The Dictator." He scored a great success and remained nearly a year.

* * *

The time was now ripe for the most brilliant of all the Charles Frohman achievements in England. Had he done nothing else than the Repertory Theater he would have left for himself an imperishable monument of artistic endeavor. The extraordinary feature of this undertaking was that it was left for an American to finance and promote in the very cradle of the British drama the highest and finest attempt yet made to encourage that drama. The Repertory Theater would have proclaimed any manager the open-handed patron of drama for drama's sake.

The National or Repertory Theater idea, which was the antidote for the long run, the agency for the production of plays that had no sustained box-office virtue, which took the speculative feature out of production, had been preached in England for some time. Granville Barker had tried it at the Court Theater, where the Shaw plays had been produced originally. The movement lagged; it needed energy and money.

Barrie had been a disciple of the Repertory Theater from the start. He knew that there was only one man in the world who could make the attempt in the right way. One day in 1909 he said to Frohman:

"Why don't you establish a Repertory Theater?"

Then he explained in a few words what he had in mind.

Without a moment's hesitation Frohman said, briskly:

"All right, I'll do it."

With these few words he committed himself to an enterprise that cost him a fortune. But it was an enterprise that revealed, perhaps as nothing in his career had revealed, the depths of his artistic nature.

With his marvelous grasp of things, Frohman swiftly got at the heart of the Repertory proposition. When he launched the enterprise at the Duke of York's he said:

_Repertory companies are usually associated in the public mind with the revival of old masterpieces, but if you want to know the character of my repertory project at the Duke of York's, I should describe it as the production of new plays by living authors. Whatever it accomplishes, it will represent the combined resources of actor and playwright working with each other, a combination that seems to me to represent the most necessary foundation of any theatrical success._

Frohman stopped at nothing in carrying out the Repertory Theater idea. He engaged Granville Barker to produce most of the plays. Barker in turn surrounded himself with a superb group of players. The most brilliant of the stage scenic artists in England, headed by Norman Wilkinson, were engaged to design the scenes. Every possible detail that money could buy was lavished on this project.

The result was a series of plays that set a new mark for English production, that put stimulus behind the so-called "unappreciated" play, and gave the English-speaking drama something to talk about--and to remember. The mere unadorned list of the plays produced is impressive. They were "Justice," by John Galsworthy; "Misalliance," by Bernard Shaw; "Old Friends" and the "The Twelve-Pound Look," by James M. Barrie; "The Sentimentalists," by George Meredith; "Madras House," by Granville Barker; "Chains," by Elizabeth Baker; "Prunella," by Lawrence Housman and Granville Barker; "Helena's Path," by Anthony Hope and Cosmo Gordon Lenox, and a revival of "Trelawney of the Wells," by Sir Arthur Pinero.

The way "The Twelve-Pound Look" came to be produced is interesting. When the repertory for the theater was being discussed one day by Barrie and Barker at the former's flat in Adelphi Terrace House, Barker said:

"Haven't you got a one-act play that we could do?"

Barrie thought a moment, scratched his head, and said:

"I think I wrote one about six months ago when I was recovering from malaria. You might find it somewhere in that desk." He pointed toward the flat-top table affair on which he had written "The Little Minister" and "Peter Pan."

Barker rummaged around through the drawers and finally found a manuscript written in Barrie's hieroglyphic hand. It was "The Twelve-Pound Look."

The production of "Justice" was generally regarded in England as the finest example of stage production that has been made within the last twenty-five years. Despite the expense, and the fact that Frohman insisted upon making each play a splendid production, the Repertory Theater prospered. It ran from February 21, 1910, until the middle of May. Its run was temporarily terminated by the death of King Edward VII., and it was impossible to revive the project successfully after the formal period of mourning closed.

* * *

Frohman's constantly widening activities in London made it necessary for him to have more spacious quarters. The story of his offices really tells the story of his work, for they increased in scope as his operations widened. When he leased the Aldwych Theater he set up his headquarters there. With the acquisition of the Globe he needed more room, and this theater became the seat of his managerial operations. In 1913, and with characteristic lavishness, he engaged what is perhaps the finest suite of theatrical offices in London. They were in a marble structure known as Trafalgar House, in Waterloo Place, one of the choicest and most expensive locations in the city.

Here he had a suite of six rooms. Like the man himself, his own personal quarters were very simple. There was a long, high-ceiled room, with a roll-top desk, which was never used, at one end, and a low morris-chair at the other. From this morris-chair and from his rooms at the Savoy Hotel he ruled his English realm.

Charles's love for his stars never lagged, and wherever it was possible for him to surround himself with their pictures he did so. As a result, the visitor to his London rooms found him surrounded by the familiar faces of Maude Adams, Ethel Barrymore, Ann Murdock, Marie Doro, Julia Sanderson, William Gillette, and John Drew. On the roll-top desk, side by side, were the pictures of his two _Peter Pans_, Miss Adams and Pauline Chase.

Charles's last London production, strangely enough, consisted of two plays by his closest friend, Barrie. This double bill was "The New Word," a fireside scene, which was followed by "Rosy Rapture."

By a strange coincidence his first English venture was a failure, and so was his last. Yet the long and brilliant journey between these two dates was a highway that any man might have trod with pride. The English-speaking drama received an impetus and a standard that it never would have had without his unflagging zeal and his generous purse. He left an influence upon the English stage that will last.

What endeared him perhaps more than anything else to England was the smiling serenity with which he met criticism and loss. There may have been times when the English resented his desire for monopoly, but they forgot it in tremendous admiration for his courage and his resource. He revolutionized the economics of the British stage; he invested it with life, energy, action; he established a whole new relation between author and producer. Here, as in America, he was the pioneer and the builder.

XII

BARRIE AND THE ENGLISH FRIENDSHIPS

The fortunes of Charles Frohman's English productions ebbed and flowed; actors and actresses came and went; to him it was all part of a big and fascinating game. What really counted and became permanent were the man's friendships, often made in the theatrical world of make-believe, but always cemented in the domain of very sincere reality. In England were some of his dearest personal bonds.

They grew out of the fact that Charles had the rare genius of inspiring loyal friendship. He gave much and he got much. Yet, like Stevenson, it was a case of "a few friends, but these without capitulation."

In England he seemed to be a different human being. The inaccessibility that hedged him about in America vanished. He emerged from his unsocial shell; he gave out interviews; he relaxed and renewed his youth in jaunt and jest. His annual trip abroad, therefore, was like a joyous adventure. It mattered little if he made or lost a fortune each time.

Frohman was happy in London. He liked the soft, gray tones of the somber city. "It's so restful," he always said. Even the "bobbie" delighted him. He would watch the stolid policeman from the curb and say, admiringly: "He is wonderful; he raises his hand and all London stops." He was greatly interested in the traffic regulations.

Although he had elaborate offices, his real London headquarters were in the Savoy Hotel. Here, in the same suite that he had year after year, and where he was known to all employees from manager to page, he literally sat enthroned, for his favorite fashion was to curl up on a settee with his feet doubled under him. More than one visitor who saw him thus ensconced called him a "beaming Buddha."

From his informal eminence he ruled his world. Around him assembled the Knights of the Dramatic Round Table. Wherever Frohman sat became the unofficial capitol of a large part of the English-speaking stage. In those Savoy rooms there was made much significant theatrical history. To the little American came Barrie, Pinero, Chambers, Jones, Sutro, Maugham, Morton, with their plays; Alexander, Tree, Maude, Hicks, Barker, Bouchier, with their projects.

Like Charles Lamb, Frohman loved to ramble about London. Often he would stop in the midst of his work, hail a taxi, and go for a drive in the green parks. The Zoological Gardens always delighted him. He frequently stopped to watch the animals. The English countryside always lured him, especially the long green hedges, which held a peculiar fascination. He walked considerably in the country and in town, and he took great delight in peering in shop windows.

In London, as in New York, the theater was his life and inspiration. Almost without exception he went to a performance of some kind every evening. At most of the London theaters he was always given the royal box whenever possible. He liked the atmosphere of the British playhouse. He always said it was more like a drawing-room than a place of amusement.

* * *

To Charles, London meant J. M. Barrie, and to be with the man who wrote "Peter Pan" was one of his supreme delights. The devotion between these two men of such widely differing temperaments constitutes one of the really great friendships of modern times. Character of an unusual kind, on both sides, was essential to such a communion of interest and affection. Both possessed it to a remarkable degree.

No two people could have been more opposite. Frohman was quick, nervous, impulsive, bubbling with optimism; Barrie was the quiet, canny Scot, reserved, repressed, and elusive. Yet they had two great traits in common--shyness and humor. As Barrie says:

"Because we were the two shyest men in the world, we got on so well and understood each other so perfectly."

There was another bond between these two men in the fact that each adored his mother. In Charles's case he was the pride and the joy of the maternal heart; with Barrie the root and inspiration of all his life and work was the revered "Margaret Ogilvy." He is the only man in all the world who ever wrote a life of his mother.

There was still another and more tangible community of interest between these two remarkable men. Each detested the silk hat. Frohman had never worn one since the Haverly Minstrel days, when he had to don the tile for the daily street parade. Barrie, in all his life, has had only one silk hat. It is of the vintage of the early 'seventies. The only occasion when he wears the much-detested headgear is at the first rehearsal of the companies that do his plays. Then he attires himself in morning clothes, goes to the theater, nervously holds the hat in his hand while he is introduced to the actors and actresses. Just as Charles used to hide his silk hat as soon as the minstrel parade was over and put on a cap, so does Barrie send the objectionable headgear home as soon as these formalities are over and welcome his more comfortable bowler as an old friend.

Curiously enough, Frohman and Barrie did not drift together at once. When the little Scotchman made his first visit to America in 1896 and "discovered" Maude Adams as the inspired person to act _Lady Babbie_, he met the man who was to be his great friend in a casual business way only. The negotiations for "The Little Minister" from England were conducted through an agent.

But when Frohman went abroad the following year the kinship between the men started, and continued with increasing intimacy. The men became great pals. They would wander about London, Barrie smoking a short, black pipe, Frohman swinging his stick. On many of these strolls they walked for hours without saying a word to each other. Each had the great gift of silence--the rare sense of understanding.

Barrie and his pipe are inseparable, as the world knows. There is a legend in London theatrical lore that Frohman wanted to drive to Barrie's flat one night. He was in his usual merry mood, so the instruction he gave was this:

"Drive to the Strand, go down to Adelphi Terrace, and stop at the first smell of pipe smoke."

Frohman never tired of asking Barrie about "Peter Pan." It was a curious commentary on the man's tenacity of interest and purpose that, although he made nearly seven hundred productions in his life, the play of the "Boy Who Would Never Grow Up" tugged most at his heart. Nor did Barrie ever weary of telling him how the play began as a nursery tale for children; how their insistent demand to "tell us more" made it the "longest story in the world"; how, when one pirate had been killed, little Peter (the original of the character, now a soldier in the great war) excitedly said: "One man isn't enough; let's kill a lot of them."

No one will be surprised to know that in connection with "Peter Pan" is one of the most sweetly gracious acts in Frohman's life. The original of _Peter_ was sick in bed at his home when the play was produced in London. The little lad was heartsick because he could not see it. When Frohman came to London Barrie told him about it.

"If the boy can't come to the play, we will take the play to the boy," he said.

Frohman sent his company out to the boy's home with as many "props" as could be jammed into the sick-room. While the delighted and excited child sat propped up in bed the wonders of the fairy play were unfolded before him. It is probably the only instance where a play was done before a child in his home.

As most people know, Barrie, at his own expense, erected a statue of _Peter Pan_ in Kensington Gardens as his gift to the children of London who so adored his play. It was done as a surprise, for the statue stood revealed one May Day morning, having been set up during the night.

When he planned this statue Barrie mentioned it casually to Frohman, and said nothing more about it. Frohman never visited the park to see it, but when the model was put on exhibition at the Academy he said to Lestocq one day: