Chapter 20

Now began the last of the chain of dramatic events which ended in death. As soon as "The Hyphen" was announced, Frohman began to get threatening letters warning him that it would be a mistake to produce so sensational a play in the midst of such an acute international situation. Pro-Germans of incendiary tendency especially resented it. To all these intimations Frohman merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled. It made him all the more determined.

"The Hyphen" was produced April 19th at the Knickerbocker Theater before a hostile audience. Unpatriotic pro-Germans had packed the theater. During the progress of the play the dynamite explosions in the Broadway subway construction outside were misinterpreted for bombs, and there was suppressed excitement throughout the whole performance.

The play was a failure. Yet Frohman's confidence in it was unimpaired. He went to see it nearly every night of its short life in New York. He even sent it to Boston for a second verdict, but Boston agreed with New York. Like every production that bore the Charles Frohman stamp, he gave it every chance. Reluctantly he ordered up the notice to close.

Frohman became greatly attached to Forman. With his usual generosity he invited the author to accompany him on his approaching trip to England.

"I want you to come with me and meet Barrie and know some of my other English friends," Charles said, little dreaming that the invitation to a holiday was the beckoning hand of death to both.

XIV

STAR-MAKING AND AUDIENCES

During all these busy years Frohman had reigned supreme as king of star-makers. Under his persuasive sponsorship more men and women rose to stellar eminence than with all his fellow-managers combined. It was the very instinct of his life to develop talent, and it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction to see the artist emerge from the background into fame.

His attitude in the matter of star-making was never better expressed than in one of his many playful moods with the pencil. Like Caruso, he was a caricaturist. Few things gave him more delight than to make a hasty sketch of one of his friends on any scrap of paper that lay near at hand. He usually made these sketches just as he wrote most of his personal letters, with a heavy blue pencil.

On one occasion he was talking with Pauline Chase about making stars. A smile suddenly burst over his face; he seized pencil and paper and made a sketch of himself walking along at night and pointing to the moon with his stick. Under the picture he wrote, as if addressing the moon:

_Watch out, or I'll make a star out of you._

Once he said to Billie Burke, in discussing this familiar star subject:

"A star has a unique value in a play. It concentrates interest. In some respects a play is like a dinner. To be a success, no matter how splendidly served, the menu should always have one unique and striking dish that, despite its elaborate gastronomic surroundings, must long be remembered. This is one reason why you need a star in a play."

Despite the fact, as the case of Ann Murdock shows, that Charles could literally lift a girl from the ranks almost overnight, he generally regarded the approach to stardom as a difficult and hard-won path. Just before the great European war, he made this comment to a well-known English journalist, who asked him how he made stars:

"Each of my stars has earned his or her position through honest advancement. If the President of the United States wants to reward a soldier he says to him, 'I will make you a general.' By the same process I say to an actor, 'I will make you a star.'

"All the stars under my management owe their eminence to their own ability and industry, and also to the fact that the American is an individual-loving public. In America we regard the workman first and the work second. Our imaginations are fired not nearly so much by great deeds as by great doers. There are stars in every walk of American life. It has always been so with democracies. Caesar, Cicero, and the rest were public stars when Rome was at her best, just as in our day Roosevelt and others shine.

"Far from fostering it, the star system as such has simply meant for me that when one of my stars finishes with a play, that play goes permanently on the shelf, no one ever hoping to muster together an audience for it without the original actor or actress in the star part.

"Vital acting in plays of consequence is the foundation of theatrical success. You have only to enumerate the plays to realize the drain even one management can make upon what is, after all, a limited supply of capable leading actors. This is because the American stage is short of leaders. There is a world of actors, but too few leading actors."

"What do you mean by leading actor?" he was asked.

"I mean that if in casting a play you can find an actor who looks the part you have in mind for him, be thankful; if you can find an actor who can act the part, be very thankful; and if you can find an actor who can look and act the part, _get down on your knees and thank God!_"

Frohman had a very definite idea about star material. He was once talking with a well-known American publisher who mentioned that a certain very rich woman had announced her determination to go on the stage. The manager made one of his quick and impatient gestures, and said:

"She will never do."

"Why?" asked his friend.

"Because," replied Frohman, "in all my experience with the making of stars I have seldom known of a very rich girl who made a finished success on the stage. The reason is that the daughters of the rich are taught to repress their emotions. In other words, they don't seem to be able to let go their feelings. Give me the common clay, the kind that has suffered and even hungered. It makes the best star material."

There is no doubt that Frohman liked to "make" careers. He wanted to see people develop under his direction. To indulge in this diversion was often a very costly thing, as this incident shows:

Chauncey Olcott, who had been associated with him in his minstrel days, and become one of the most profitable stars in the country, once sent a message to Frohman saying that he would like to come under his management. To the intermediary Olcott said:

"Tell Mr. Frohman that I make one hundred thousand dollars a year. He can name his own percentage of this income."

Frohman sent back this message:

"I greatly appreciate the offer, but I don't care to manage Olcott. He is _made_. I like to _make_ stars."

One reason that lay behind Frohman's success as star-maker was the fact that he wove a great deal of himself into the character of the stars. In other words, the personal element counted a great deal. When somebody once remonstrated with him about giving up so much of his valuable time to what seemed to be inconsequential talks with his women stars, he said:

"It is not a waste of time. I have often helped those young women to take a brighter view of things, and it makes me feel that I am not just their manager, but their friend."

Indeed, as Barrie so well put it, he regarded his women stars as his children. If they were playing in New York they were expected to call on him and talk personalities three or four times a week. On the road they sent him daily telegrams; these were placed on his desk every morning, and were dealt with in person before any other business of the day. He had the names of his stars printed in large type on his business envelopes. These were so placed on his table that as he sat and wrote or talked he could see their names ranked before him.

When his women stars played in New York he always tried to visit them at night at the theater before the curtain went up. He always said of this that it was like seeing his birds tucked safely in their nests. Then he would go back to his office or his rooms and read manuscripts until late.

One phase of Charles's great success in life was revealed in this attitude toward his women stars. He succeeded because he mixed sentiment with business. He was not all sentiment and he was not all business, but he was an extraordinarily happy blend of each of these qualities, and they endeared him to the people who worked for him.

The attitude of the great star toward Frohman is best explained perhaps by Sir Henry Irving. Once, when the time came for his usual American tour, he said to his long-time manager, Bram Stoker, who was about to start for New York:

"When you get to America just tell Frohman--you need not bother to write him--that I want to come under his management. He always understands. He is always so fair."

One detail will illustrate Frohman's feeling about stars, and it is this: He never wanted them, male or female, to make themselves conspicuous or to do commonplace things. He was sensitive about what they said or did. For example, he did not like to see John Drew walk up and down Broadway. He spent a fortune sheltering Maude Adams from all kinds of intrusion. With her especially he exhausted every resource to keep her aloof and secluded. He preferred that she be known through her work and not through her personal self. It was so with himself.

Frohman was one of the most generous-minded of men in his feeling about his co-workers. On one occasion when he was rehearsing "The Dictator," William Collier suggested a whole new scene. The next night Frohman took a friend to see it. Afterward, accompanied by his guest, he went back on the stage to congratulate his star. He slapped Collier on the back and, turning to his companion, said:

"Wasn't that a bully scene that Willie put into the play?"

He was always willing to admit that his success came from those who worked for him. Once he was asked the question:

"If you had your life to live over again would you be a theatrical manager?"

Quick as a flash Frohman replied:

"If I could be surrounded by the same actors and writers who have made _me_--yes. Otherwise, no."

This feeling led him to say once:

"I believe a manager's success does not come so much from the public as from his players. When they are ready to march with him without regard to results, then he has indeed succeeded. This is my success. My ambition frankly centers in the welfare of the actor. The day's work holds out to me no finer gratification than to see intelligent, earnest, deserving actors go into the fame and fortune of being stars."

Nothing could down his immense pride in his stars. Once he was making his annual visit to England with Dillingham. At that time Olga Nethersole, who had been playing "Carmen," was under his management. She was also on the boat. The passenger-list included many other celebrities, among them Madame Emma Calve, the opera-singer, who had just made her great success in the opera "Carmen" at the Metropolitan Opera House. Naturally there was some rivalry between the two _Carmens_.

At the usual ship's concert both Nethersole and Calve inscribed their names on programs which were auctioned off for the benefit of the disabled sailors' fund. Competition was brisk. The card that Calve signed fetched nine hundred dollars. When Nethersole's program was put up Frohman led the bidding and drove it up to a thousand dollars, which he paid himself. It was all the money he had with him. Dillingham remonstrated for what seemed a foolish extravagance.

"I wanted my star to get the best of it, and she did," was the reply.

Frohman, as is well known, would never make a contract with his stars. When some one urged him to make written agreements, he said:

"No, I won't do it. I want them to be in a position so that if they ever become dissatisfied they know they are free to leave me."

Like all his other stars, William Collier had no contract with Charles, merely a verbal understanding extending over a period of years. After this agreement expired and another year and a half had gone by, Collier one day asked Frohman if he realized that their original agreement had run out. Frohman looked up with a start and said:

"Is that so? Well, it's all right, Willie, you know."

"Of course," said Collier, and that ended it.

The next Saturday when Collier got his pay-envelope he found inside a very charming letter from Frohman, which said:

_I'm sorry that I overlooked the expiration of our agreement. I hope that you will find a little increase in your salary satisfactory._

There was an advance of one hundred dollars a week.

Frohman literally loved the word "star," and he delighted in the so-called "all-star casts." He had great respect for the big names of the profession; for those who had achieved success. He liked to do business with them.

In speaking about "all-star casts," he once said to his brother:

"I have to look after so many enterprises that I have no time to conduct a theatrical kindergarten in developing actors or playwrights save where the play of the unknown author or the exceptional talents of the unknown actor or actress appeal to me strongly. There is an element of safety in considering work by experts, because the theaters I represent need quick results."

In reply to the oft-repeated question as to why he took his American stars to London when they could play to larger audiences and make more money at home, he said:

"In the first place, such exchanges constitute the finest medium for the development of actress or actor and the liberalizing of the public. Face to face with an English audience the American actress finds herself confronted by new tastes, new appreciations, new demands. She must meet them all or fail. What does this result in? Versatility, flexibility, and, in the end, a firmer and more comprehensive hold upon her art."

When Frohman was asked to define success in theatrical management he made this answer:

"The terms of success in the theater seem to me to be the co-operating abilities of playwright and actor with the principal burden on the actor. In other words, the play is not altogether 'the thing.' The right player in the right play is the thing."

The shaping of William Gillette's career is a good example of Frohman's definition of a successful theatrical manager, whose best skill and talents are employed largely in the matter of manipulating a hard-minded person to mutual advantage.

The relationship between stars and audiences is of necessity a very close one. The Frohman philosophy, however, was not the generally accepted theory that audiences make stars.

On one of those very rare occasions in his life when he wrote for publication, he made the following illuminating statement:

_No star or manager should feel grateful to any audience for the success of a play in which he has figured. A play succeeds because it is a living, vital thing--and that is why it has got upon the stage at all. There is life in it and it does not, and will not, die. It keeps itself alive until the opportunity comes along. Often a kind of instinct makes the opportunity._

_It is instinct also that prompts an audience to applaud when it is pleased, laugh when it is amused, weep when it is moved, hiss when it is dissatisfied. No actor should feel indebted to an audience for the recognition of good work, because that same audience that appears to be so friendly, at another time, when one character or play does not please it, will resent both actor and play. This is as it should be. The loyalty of English audiences to their old favorites is fine, but it is bad for the old favorites. It is stagnating._

_The various expressions of approval and disapproval that come from the spectators at a play are involuntary on the part of the spectators. They are hypnotized by the play and the acting. Who ever, on coming out of the theater after seeing a play that has pleased him, has felt a sense of happiness that his pleasure had also pleased the actor, or the author of the play, or the management of the production? Loyalty, generosity, and encouragement, as applied to audiences, are so many empty words. Play-goers who apply them to themselves cheat themselves. Miss Maude Adams is the only stage personage within my experience who has a distinct public following, loyal and encouraging to her in whatever she does._

Audiences interested Frohman immensely. He liked to be a part of them. He had a perfectly definite reason for sitting in the last row of the gallery on the first nights of his productions, which he once explained as follows:

"The best index to the probable career of any play is the back of the head of an auditor who does not know that he is being watched. The play-goer in an orchestra stall is always half-conscious that what he says or does may be observed. But the gallery gods and goddesses have never thought of anything except what is happening on the stage. They may yield the time before the rise of the curtain to watching the audience entering the theater, but once the lights are up and the stage is revealed they have no eyes or thoughts for anything except the life unfolded by the actors. These people in the upper part of the theater represent the masses. They are worth watching, for they are the people who make stage successes."

Frohman had his own theories about audiences, too. Concerning them he declared:

"An American at the theater feels first and thinks afterward. A European at a play thinks first and feels afterward. In conversation a German discusses things sitting down; a Frenchman talks standing up. But the American discusses things walking about. Therefore each must have his play built accordingly."

Once Frohman made this discriminating difference between English and American audiences:

"In England the pit and the gallery of the audience come to the theater, turn in their hard-earned shillings, and demand much. Failing to get what they expect, the theater is filled with boos and cat-calls at the end of the play. This does not mean that the play has failed. It more nearly means that the less a man pays to get into a theater the more he demands of the play.

"An American audience is different, because it has a fine sense of humor. When an American pays his money through the box-office window he feels that it is gone forever. Anything he receives after that--the lights, the pictures on the walls, the music of the orchestra, the sight of a few or many smiling faces--is so much to the good. So keen is the American play-goer's sense of humor that often when a play is wretchedly bad it comes to the rescue, and the applause is terrifically loud. This does not mean that the play has succeeded. It means rather that the play will die, a victim of the deadliest of all possible criticisms--ridicule."

Nor was Frohman often deceived about a first-night verdict. He always said, "Wait for the box-office statement on the second night."

One of his characteristic epigrammatic statements about the failure of plays was this:

"In America the question with a failure is, 'How soon can we get it off the stage?' In London they say, 'How long will the play run even though it is a failure?'"

Indeed, Frohman's whole attitude about openings was characteristic of his deep and generous philosophy about life. He summed up his whole creed as follows:

"A producer of plays, assuming that he is a man of experience, never feels comfortable after a great reception has been given his play on a first night. He knows that the reception in the theater does not always correspond to the feelings of future audiences. Every thinking manager knows that his play, in order to succeed, must send its audience away possessed of some distinct feeling. A successful play is a play that _reflects_, whatever the feeling it reflects.

"The great successes of the stage are plays that are played outside of the theater: over the breakfast-table; in a man's office; to his business associates; in a club, as one member tells the thrilling story of the previous night's experience to another. Great successes upon the stage are plays of such a sort that one audience can play them over to another prospective audience, and so make an endless chain of attendance at the theater.

"I have never in all my experience felt a success on the opening night. I have only felt my failures.

"I invariably leave the theater after a first-night performance knowing full well that neither my friends nor I know anything at all as to the ultimate fortune of the play we have seen."

It is a matter of record that Frohman always viewed his first nights with great nervousness. Although he attached but little importance, save on very rare occasions, to tumultuous applause on first nights, he was sometimes deceived by the reception that was given his productions.

He never tired of telling of one experience. He had left the theater on the first night, as he expressed it, "with the other mourners." He returned to his office immediately to cast a new play for the company. Yet he lived to see this play run successfully for a whole season. This led him to say:

"There's nothing more deluding to the player and the manager than enthusiastic applause. The fine, inspired work of a star actor often makes an audience enthusiastic to such a boisterous extent that one forgets that it is an individual and not the play that has succeeded."

Here, as elsewhere in the Frohman outlook on life and work, one finds clear-headed logic and reason behind the bubbling optimism.

XV

PLAYS AND PLAYERS

One day not long before he sailed on the voyage that was to take him to his death, Charles was talking with a celebrated English playwright in his office at the Empire Theater. The conversation suddenly turned to a discussion of life achievement.

"What do you consider the biggest thing that you have done?" asked the visitor.

Frohman rose and pointed with his stick at the rows of book-shelves about him that held the bound copies of the plays he had produced. Then he said with a smile:

"That is what I have done. Don't you think it is a pretty good life's work?"

He was not overstepping the mark when he pointed with pride at that army of plays. This list is the greatest monument, perhaps, to his boundless ambition and energy, for it contains the four hundred original productions he made in America, besides the one hundred and twenty-five plays he put on in London. That Charles should have produced so many plays is not surprising. He adored the theater; it was his very being. To him, in truth, all the world was a stage.

Everything that he saw as he walked the streets or rode in a cab or viewed from a railway train he re-visualized and considered in the terms of the playhouse. If he saw an impressive bit of scenery he would say, "Wouldn't that make a fine background?" If he heard certain murmurs in the country or the tumult of a crowd on the highway, he instinctively said, "How fine it would be to reproduce that sound."

He only read books with a view of their adaptability to plays. Where other men found diversion and recreation in golfing, motoring, or walking, Charles sought entertainment in reading manuscripts. He was never without a play; when he traveled he carried dozens.

In the matter of plays Frohman had what was little less than a contempt for the avowedly academic. He refused to be drawn into discussions of the so-called "high brow" drama. When some one asked him to name the greatest of English dramatists he replied, quick as a flash:

"The one who writes the last great play."

"Whom do you consider the greatest American dramatist?" was the question once put to him. His smiling answer was:

"The one whose play the greatest number of good Americans go to see."

On this same occasion he was asked, "What seat in the theater do you consider the best to view a drama or a musical comedy from?"

"The paid one," he retorted.