Part 11

A list of the "first nights" that have gone down into histrionic history would vie in length with a record of the bits of the true cross on view in Europe. Primarily, one would be obliged to record premieres at which riots have occurred, and since, at one time a century ago, it was easier to hold an Irish election without a fight than to give an initial dramatic performance without one, this would take much space and research. The initial representations of great works, such as those of Shakespeare and Moliere, and the professional debuts of celebrated actors, like Thomas Betterton and Peg Woffington, would baffle the descriptive powers of so humble a chronicler as myself. Assuredly, a whole book might be written about the reception originally accorded "Hamlet," and I am certain that we should all like to know precisely what happened at the Boston Theater on the evening of Monday, September 10, 1849, when Edwin Booth made his first bow to the public. Nearly everyone remembers the interesting story of the "first night" of "A Parisian Romance" at the Union Square Theater on January 10, 1883, when an obscure young man named Richard Mansfield made the minor role of Baron Chevrial the biggest part in the play and himself the most-talked-of actor in America.

My own most notable "first night" was at Rome, some time in May, 1890, when, as a youngster, I heard "Cavalleria Rusticana" sung for the first time on any stage. My recollection of the event is not vivid, but I recall that the composer, Pietro Mascagni, wept, and that the audience joined him, having already done every other emotional thing you could call to mind. This sort of enthusiasm is not exceptional among the Latins, and "first nights" in Madrid, Naples, Brussells and Paris always are likely to be extremely spectacular. Berlin, Vienna and Prague are less excitable, though I witnessed rather a remarkable demonstration at a performance of an opera called "Die Hexe" in the metropolis last mentioned, and saw a crowd draw home Charlotte Wolter's carriage one evening in Vienna.

The stalls in a London playhouse hold men and women as reserved and conservative as any in the world, but the pit, which signifies approval by the conventional applause, has made its disapprobation dreaded at premieres. The "boo!" of the Cockney who has paid "two and six" for his place and is resolved upon getting his money's worth or knowing the reason why is a potent damper. Disorder in the pit may not even have been caused by the poorness of a production; persistent enthusiasm on the part of a claque or the appearance of a foreign star often provoke it. I shall never forget how near several patriotic Americans, myself among them, were to provoking a riot against Nat Goodwin at the opening of "The Cowboy and the Lady" in the Duke of York's Theater.

New York, which never commits itself with a "Boo!" or a "Bis!", which never hisses and somewhat rarely applauds, provides the most terrible ordeal in the world for author, actor and manager. The "first nighter" is as much a type here as in London. A small percentage of him are the tired and idle rich, the majority being made up of wine agents, bookmakers, professional "dead-heads", ladies of uneasy virtue, and dramatic critics. Of an opening audience at Weber & Fields' it was said once that "there wasn't a woman in the house who hadn't changed her hair and her husband within the year."

These boulevardiers have seen everything produced in town during a decade, or perhaps two decades, and are absolutely pleasure-proof. Their attitude expresses the defiance: "I _dare_ you to satisfy me." One of their number, asked as to the fate of a comedy, is reported to have replied: "I'm afraid it's a success." If it were only that these people knew everything, and were hard to please, nobody would have the right to object to them. The trouble is that they are pleased with the wrong fare. Witty lines and subtle construction, delicate sentiment and simple sincerity, except for their appeal to the reviewers, must wait for recognition until the second night. Legs and lingerie, _double entendre_ and bald suggestion, the wit of the slap stick and the melody of the street piano are the chosen diet of this "death watch", which "sits in solemn silence", with impassive faces and row after row of masculine shirt bosoms rearing themselves in the darkness like tombstones in a pauper graveyard.

How to avoid this chilling influence is a puzzle that has agitated every producer on Broadway. Your New York manager has a list of the seats regularly occupied by the critics, and these go out first. Then the wine agents and book-makers aforesaid buy the tickets laid aside for them. Next the general public has an opportunity, of which it is slow to take advantage, and then whatever has been left is given away. Nobody ever saw a small "first night" audience in Manhattan, nor one in which there were not at least three hundred enthusiastic persons. This enthusiasm deceives no one--least of all the newspaper men for whom is it intended--and it rebounds like a ball against the hardness of the general imperturbability. Many a time, while the gallant three hundred were splitting their gloves and callousing their hands, I have seen traveling from critic to critic that glance of understanding and disapproval which has sealed the fate of so many thousand plays.

The New York critics are about a score in number, and, during the past few years, there have been many changes in the corps. Its dean, William Winter, resigned from The Tribune, where his post is filled by Arthur Warren. Alan Dale, of The American, continues to be the most widely known of our writers on theatrical topics, and we still have with us, as stand-bys, Adolph Klauber, of The Times; Louis De Foe, of The World; Rennold Wolf, of The Telegraph; Acton Davies, of The Evening Sun; Charles Darnton, of The Evening World; Rankin Towse, of The Post, and Robert Gilbert Welsh, of The Evening Telegram. The Press has been carrying on a lively theatrical war, and, perhaps for that reason, its reviews manifest not only ignorance but the most bumptious disregard of general and expert opinion. Arthur Brisbane having declared against "abuse", The Evening Journal finds good in everything; The Sun has had no regular critic since it lost Walter Prichard Eaton, and The Herald boasts that it prints only "reports" of performances. "First nights" are arranged, when that is possible, on different evenings, so that all the critics may be present at each, but, when there is a conflict, every man picks out the opening he considers most important and either lets the others go until later in the week or sends his assistant.

There are thirty or forty reviewers who represent magazines and periodicals, but, for the most part, these are _de classe_. They flock alone in the lobbies during intermissions, when the men from the daily newspapers congregate in groups to exchange a word or two about the play and to discuss other matters of common interest. These foyer gatherings pronounce a verdict that, as we have seen, is seldom--perhaps too seldom--overruled. Many a manager has leaned against his box office after the third act of a new piece, eavesdropping to learn what intelligence, experience, keen judgment and careful reading and rehearsing have not told him.

For there are two "anxious seats" on a "first night" in New York: One in the author's box and one in the manager's.

_IN VAUDEVILLE_

Being inside information regarding a kind of entertainment at which one requires intelligence no more than the kitchen range.

Variety is the spice of life. So is vaudeville. If you doubt it, consider Gertrude Hoffmann, Valeska Suratt, Eva Tanguay, and other beauties unadorned of "the two a day."

Time was when "continuous performances" offered the best means of convincing Aunt Jane that there were harmless theatrical entertainments besides "The Old Homestead." Variety, of course, had been a word to excite horror. But vaudeville--well, vaudeville was to variety what "darn" is to "damn!"

And, as the advertisements have it, there was a reason. B. F. Keith, when he took the curse off a type of amusement generally associated with dance halls, "stag" houses, minstrel shows and "The Black Crook", had his eye on Aunt Jane. Vaudeville, born in France during the Fifteenth Century, and named after Les Vaux de Vire, the home of its father, Oliver Basselin, stood for something just a little more ribald than variety. Mr. Keith resolved to stand for nothing of the kind. Beginning in Boston, he soon invaded Philadelphia and New York with shows so religiously expurgated that they couldn't have drawn the slightest protest from a Presbyterian Synod.

Oaths might not be spoken at Keith's. Betighted damsels were banned and barred--forbidden fair. Short skirts were permitted under certain rigorous restrictions. One of the restrictions was that ladies who wore short skirts must not wear silk stockings. I remember wondering wherein the silk worm was more immoral than the cotton-gin, and concluding that, despite the phrase "ugly as sin", Mr. Keith had defined sin as anything attractive.

Virtue and vaudeville were synonymous for something over a decade. I don't know precisely when people stopped going to hear the new ditties, and began going to see the nudities. "Living pictures" began it. "Living pictures", you may recollect, were ladies in pink union suits. They were supposed to be popular because of artistic draping and grouping, but the minimum of drapery always brought about the maximum of popularity. It was but a step from union suits to non-union suits; from fleshings to whitewash and bronze varnish. In 1906 London went quite mad over a Venus whose entire wardrobe was applied with a paintbrush. Eventually Venus rose from the sea in America, but, by the date of her arrival, our own performers had so far outstripped her that she didn't create even a mild sensation.

Koster & Bials' had paved the way with Charmion, who disrobed while seated upon a flying trapeze. Oscar Hammerstein had done some astonishing things at his Victoria Theater. Salome, driven out of the Metropolitan Opera House, had taken refuge in vaudeville, garbed--if one may use the word in connection with a costume somewhat less extensive than a porus plaster--in a fashion that made it easy to understand why John the Baptist lost his head. Maud Allen, in England, and Ruth St. Denis, in the United States, were reconciling the authorities to the nude in art, and making possible any sort of display that had dancing or diving as an excuse. Annette Kellarman, attired in a bathing suit that clung to her like a poor relation, wakened wonderful interest in aquatic sports, while Lala Selbini showed herself to be of the opinion that clothing was inconsistent with good juggling, and a female person whose name escapes me demonstrated that bare legs were a great help in playing the violin.

The Princess Rajah, an "Oriental" dancer who had attracted attention at Huber's Museum, journeyed to Broadway, where an excuse for her undress, and her wrigglings, was found in the faint pretence that she impersonated Cleopatra. "Placing a snake in her bosom", read a note on the program, "she danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her." Remarkable as this behavior may seem on the part of a Roman General, it was not wholly incomprehensible to theatre-goers who witnessed the antics of Cleopatra. According to Rajah, the Queen of Egypt demonstrated her sorrow chiefly by seizing a kitchen chair and whirling round and round with it in her teeth.

Of the degeneration of vaudeville the most regrettable feature is that it has brought about no change in the character of vaudeville audiences. Perhaps I should say in their personnel, since their character _must_ have been affected by all this tawdry bawdry and sensationalism. True, one or two of the down-town theaters have become noted for the "sporty" aspect of their audiences, and, necessarily, all these houses have lost the patronage of women shoppers, country people and stay-at-homes that once were so assiduously courted. Mostly, however, the crowds that flock to such performances are made up of young girls, shop assistants, and respectable middle-class folk who look and listen unblushingly at sights and to sentences they would not tolerate in their own circles. It does not seem possible that this sort of thing can be without its influence upon their lives.

When vaudeville was written down as "spice", however, I had in mind not so much its offences against propriety as its appeal to palates that would reject solid food. Vaudeville addresses itself to amusement seekers incapable of giving, or unwilling to give, concentrated and continuous attention. This kind of entertainment calls for orderliness of mind no more than does the newspaper headline. There is no sequence of thought to be preserved, no logical procession of ideas to be kept in line; the impression of the moment is sufficient and supreme. Naturally, such a performance is attractive to undisciplined brains, to empty brains, and to lazy brains. You need bring to a vaudeville theater nothing but the price of admission.... It is this same asking little that has made the popularity of moving pictures.

Vaudeville has about the same relation to the "theatrical business" that insurance bears to other business. When a business man has failed at everything else he tries selling insurance; when a prominent actor has "closed" twice or three times in rapid succession he "goes into vaudeville." The better element is infused without fusing. The regulars are inclined to look askance at these volunteers, resenting the fact that the latter use as a make-shift what _they_ have adopted as a profession, and insisting, often not without justice, that, "while big names may draw the crowds, it is our work that holds 'em." I'm afraid the attitude of many recruits does not tend to lessen this friction. "Is there a 'star dressing room?'" a well-known prima donna inquired loftily as she entered the theater where she was to make her debut in "the two a day."

The juggler to whom the question was put, replied: "Yes ... for falling stars!"

However, many of these "falling stars" perform the strange astronomical feat of climbing back into the heavens. A very large number of the men and women at present heading their own companies have descended into vaudeville, as Antaeus occasionally descended to earth, to renew their strength. One attractive play and Mr. V. Headliner becomes Mr. Broadway Star. Robert Hilliard had been in the varieties for years when he was restored to "the legitimate" by Porter Emerson Browne's "A Fool There Was." Sarah Bernhardt, as everybody knows, appeared at a music hall in London _en route_ to fill her latest engagement in America. Here we have no "Divine Sarah", but vaudeville has sung its siren-song successfully to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Lily Langtry, Charles Hawtrey, Henrietta Crosman, Henry Miller, Arnold Daly, Lillian Russell, and numberless other mimes of great reputation. This song is most aggravating to producers of musical comedy, whose performers, when the librettist insists upon the preservation of some of his text or when their names do not appear in sufficiently large type on the program, always are ready to "go into vaudeville."

A list of people at present offering one-act plays discloses no fewer than twenty actors and actresses of recognized ability. There is Marietta Olly, who did capital work in "The Whirlwind" at Daly's, and Nat C. Goodwin, who, truth to tell, draws a big salary less because of his histrionic than because of his matrimonial versatility. Frank Keenan, Edward Ables, and Maclyn Arbuckle, who has made a hit in Robert Davis' clever comedietta, "The Welcher", have been stars within the twelvemonth and are now in vaudeville, as are also Amelia Bingham, W. H. Thompson, Charles Richman, William Courtleigh, George Beban, Lionel Barrymore, McKee Rankin, Edwin Arden, Sam Chip and Mary Marble. Vaudeville produces its own luminaries, too--Cissie Loftus, for example, and Elsie Janis, who "did a specialty" for years before she was taken up by Charles Dillingham.

Many of the cleverest entertainers in the world are identified exclusively with the varieties. There are Yvette Guilbert, Albert Chevalier, Harry Lauder, and Alice Lloyd, each of whom has a following as large and appreciative as that of Maude Adams or John Drew. Other players, less widely known, go round the circuits year after year, making themselves solid with a class of theater-goers that has come to depend upon them for half an hour of amusement. Cressy and Dayne are among these, as are Mr. and Mrs. Perkins D. Fisher, Clayton White, Carrie de Mar, Irene Franklin and Tom Nawn. George Cohan's career began in vaudeville, and no one who has owed twenty minutes of laughter to his ability as a racounteur will ever forget the late Ezra Kendal. Such men as Jesse Lasky and Joseph Hart, recognizing the opportunities of "the two a day", have made elaborate productions of what really are little musical comedies, and have presented them as part of regular variety bills. Mr. Lasky's "The Love Waltz" and "At the Country Club" were as pretentiously staged as any single act in a comic opera.

It is not my desire or disposition to deny the cleverness of these people or the attractiveness of their "turns." I doubt that today the most wearied theater-goer could find a vaudeville bill without one or two numbers that would entertain him. The point is that this amusement-seeker would be obliged to take a vast quantity of chaff with his wheat, to review an endless procession of clog dancers, trick bicyclists, wire walkers, trained animals, tramp comedians, acrobats and equilibrists before coming to that part of the program which might interest him. Most of these fillers-in are notable chiefly for the awe-inspiring quality of their English, and for their persistence in performing dangerous feats that, when performed, add nothing to the sum total of human happiness, knowledge or pleasure. I haven't been able to discover why anybody should want to see a lion stand on its head, or a gentleman tie his legs in a true lovers' knot, and I shall never understand the public _penchant_ for hearing "The Anvil Chorus" played on tin cans, since it can be played so much better on a piano. One always thinks of the wit who, being informed enthusiastically that some stunt or other was "very difficult", replied: "I wish it were impossible."

The worst of the matter is that, there being comparatively few performers of merit, the same people, doing the same things, return again and again to the same theaters. I remember having seen one team of comedy acrobats, Rice and Prevost, seven times in the space of a single season, at the end of which period I had ceased to laugh uproariously when one of the two humorists fell from a table and struck his face violently upon the floor. Half the "turns" at the Victoria this Saturday may be at the Colonial next Monday, so that, unless you wish your entertainment, like your wine, well-aged, you would do well to make your vaudeville excursions to one theater. It is too much to expect the average variety performer to change his act more often than once in a decade, and then he is likely to retain everything that has been especially well received. Of course, you remember George Ade's friends, Zoroaster and Zendavesta, who, at the end of five years, substituted green whiskers for red, and advertised: "Everything New."

The managers certainly are doing their best to be rid of Zoroasters and Zendavestas. Their agents search every capital of Europe for new talent, and no one makes a hit in the music halls of London or Paris or Berlin without immediately receiving an offer to come to America. Nor is there any limit to the figures mentioned in such an offer. The salaries paid, both for imported and for native talent, were supposed to have reached their utmost height in the palmy days of Keith and Proctor, but they have doubled since Oscar Hammerstein announced on his billboards that he was paying $1,000 a week to Marie Dressler. There are half a dozen performers now who get $2,000, and one or two who are reputed to receive even more. Any number of headliners earn five hundred dollars, or seven hundred and fifty dollars, which, you must remember, probably is in excess of the amount tucked into the yellow envelopes of Otis Skinner or Ethel Barrymore.

There is one important difference between the salaries paid in vaudeville and those paid "legitimate" players. The former cannot consider their earnings as "net", since they are obliged frequently to engage small companies, sometimes numbering twelve or sixteen people, whose wages come out of the sum given their principal. Variety performers defray their own travelling expenses, too, and those of their assistants, together with such other expenses as agents' fees, advertising bills, and similar incidentals. Formerly a great deal of time was lost in long jumps, and between engagements, but managerial combinations have considerably lessened this waste. The successful vaudevillian rarely experiences a break in his bookings now-a-days, and, especially if his act does not depend upon acoustics, he fills out his season with roof gardens, summer parks, and perhaps a circus.

Variety people make up an individual nation in the theatrical world. They have their own language, their own view-point, their own ambitions and grievances, besides their own clubs, hotels and newspapers. The most important of these societies are The Vaudeville Comedy Club, which has rooms in Forty-sixth Street and gives an annual benefit, and The White Rats, an aggressive organization that has conducted spunky fights against greedy agents and the blacklist of the United Booking Offices. The White Rats publish a weekly periodical, yclept The Player, but the real trade paper of the profession is issued in a green cover and called Variety.

The vaudeville performer--he insists upon alluding to himself as "the artist"--actually appears on the stage about forty minutes a day. His labor, however, is not quite so light as these figures make it seem. He must put on and take off his makeup afternoon and evening, and he must be in the theater during a good deal of the time that he is not engaged. Monday morning he rehearses with the orchestra, and is assigned a number on the program of the week--vaudevillians, like convicts and hotel guests, being identified by numbers. His place in the bill depends upon the length of his "turn", the stage room required for it, and its nature. Acts that can be given in front of a drop "in one" must be sandwiched between "full stage" acts, so that scenes may be set for the latter without interrupting the performance, and the experienced stage manager arranges his material with a keen eye to variety.

As important as the star dressing room to a leading woman, as vital as full-faced type to a star is his place on the bill to a vaudevillian. By their numbers ye shall know them. Headliners are given a position midway in the entertainment, and insist upon it as "legitimate" actors upon the center of the stage. Minor acts open or close a show, and the prejudice against being assigned to either end is so great that many stage managers must sympathize with the Irishman who, being informed that a large per centage of the victims of railway accidents are passengers in the last car of the train, inquired: "Then, bedad, why don't they leave off the last car?"