Part 6
As everyone knows, Eugene Walter was married recently to Charlotte Walker, the actress, and it is common knowledge, too, that both were bitterly disappointed at David Belasco's refusal to assign the principal role in "The Easiest Way" to Miss Walker. For this disappointment her husband tried to atone by fitting her with "Just a Wife", but the piece failed sadly at the Belasco Theater. The Walters live in the Ansonia Apartments, in upper Broadway, but they are contemplating the erection of a home near Long Island Sound. The man who writes plays, or, for that matter, any other man who performs labor requiring close concentration, finds it impossible to do his best in New York. "The very air is laden with distraction", says George Broadhurst, author of "The Man of the Hour." "When I want to work I get as far as possible from Forty-second street."
A dramatist of a pattern with Eugene Walter's, though drawn in bolder, blacker lines, is Paul Armstrong, to whom theater-goers owe "Salomy Jane", "The Heir to the Hoorah" and "Alias Jimmy Valentine". Mr. Armstrong's contempt for the ordinary amenities, the graces of every-day, is own big brother to Mr. Walter's. He is a big, fine-looking fellow, characterized by tremendous vigor and virility, by what he himself would call "the punch." He is aggressively self-confident, where Augustus Thomas is only passively so; combative by disposition and much inclined to talk in superlatives. His broad-brimmed hat and his black imperial suggest the Westerner, though most of his life has been spent in New York. He was formerly a well-known authority on pugilism, writing for the _Evening Journal_ under the nom de plume of "Right Cross."
Mr. Armstrong's hatred of theatrical managers used to be a by-word, but it has been less so since he himself undertook the production of his own melo-drama, "Society and the Bulldog." His experience with one impressario, A. H. Woods, to whom he sold "The Superstitions of Sue", is as amusing a story as I know.
"The Superstitions of Sue" already had been accepted by the two senior members of the firm of Sullivan, Harris & Woods, and Mr. Armstrong had an appointment to read the piece to the junior member at eleven o'clock one bright Sunday. Promptly at that hour, he appeared at the Woods residence, in Riverside Drive, accompanied by two friends. Introductions followed, and the friends sat down, with Mr. and Mrs. Woods, to hear the new farce.
Mr. Armstrong had hardly begun when the visitors burst into a roar of laughter. They howled afresh at every line, including descriptions of characters and "business", and the rendering was concluded with the pair rolling about in a perfect ecstacy of mirth. Mr. Woods regarded them with sober suspicion. His risibles hadn't been touched, but, when Mrs. Woods joined in the merriment, he determined that he didn't know humor when he met it, and, the seance being over, closed a contract to present "The Superstitions of Sue."
When the men had gone, Mr. Woods said to Mrs. Woods: "I suppose I'm dull, but I thought that play duller still. Of course, Armstrong's friends were _brought_ to laugh, but when you began laughing, too, I knew the piece _must_ be funny."
"Why", responded Mrs. Woods, "I only laughed because the others did. I wanted to be civil."
"The Superstitions of Sue" was one of the worst failures of its year.
I have spoken of Eugene Walter's method of work, but that method is not more remarkable than the faith in a special environment held by James Forbes. Even while he smiles at his own credulity, Mr. Forbes believes firmly that he can put forth his best effort only in Room 371 of the Bellevue Hotel, in Boston. Whenever he "feels a play coming on", he boards a train, journeys to The Hub, and locks himself up in the apartment which bears that number. There he composed the scenarios of "The Chorus Lady", "The Travelling Salesman," and "The Commuters."
"I can think more clearly on a railway train than anywhere else", declares Mr. Forbes. "A chair car is the ideal place for concentration." This young fellow differs from his colleagues in his inability to work in the country. He owns and occupies a veritable palace at Croton-on-Hudson, but he never attempts anything important there. He says: "I find my surroundings too alluring. Only conscience keeps me at a desk anyway, and conscience is weaker than the charm of outdoors." One rather fancies that Jimmie's conscience--he is "Jimmie" to his friends--is pretty rigid. He comes of Scotch ancestry, and was reared in a Scotch Presbyterian community in Canada. "The theater was held up to my youthful attention as a dreadful place", he told me one night, when we were lingering over supper. "The stock story in my family concerned a playhouse in Edinboro, which, being used sacreligously for the representation of a scene in heaven, was promptly burned, with every soul in it, as a divine judgment.
"This tale stuck fast in my memory. At the age of nine I stole away to see 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and, when the transformation showed Little Eva in Paradise, I slipped out and waited in the street for the theater to burn down. I was terribly disappointed that nothing of the sort happened, and, after hanging around for the better part of the afternoon, I went home a confirmed agnostic."
Jimmie drifted from Scotch Presbyterianism into dramatic authorship by easy and natural stages. First he was employed in a wholesale grocery store, then he became an actor, a newspaper man, a press agent, a manager, and, finally, a playwright. A short story, which he had published under the title of "The Extra Girl", suggested "The Chorus Lady", and an acquaintance with Rose Stahl, who had been leading woman of a company in which he had acted, lead to her being chosen for the principal role in the one act play of that name. Mr. Forbes soon saw the possibility of amplifying the sketch into a four act comedy, and, though Miss Stahl was not enthusiastic about the idea at first, he induced her to assume the part in which she has since appeared more than a thousand times.
Mr. Forbes is a boyish-looking young man, small in stature, nervous in manner, with a swarthy skin, and an ocean of forehead into which descends a peninsula of glossy black hair. He is general manager for Henry B. Harris, and has numberless business duties to perform in his comfortable little office in the Hudson Theater. He writes exclusively for Mr. Harris, and has an interest in the profits of his plays, besides the regular royalties, so that he has made a considerable fortune out of three big successes. Mr. Forbes probably is the only dramatist in the world who, in addition to writing his play, stages it, attends to the details of business management, plans the advertising campaign, and supervises the press work.
Winchell Smith, who made the comedy, "Brewster's Millions", and who is author of "The Fortune Hunter", says he chose dramatic authorship "because you don't have to be grammatical in plays." "I couldn't write a magazine article for a million dollars", he adds, "but dialogue comes easy to me." However, Mr. Smith, like many others of his cult, hates "the drudgery of composition." He likes to plan a new piece, but wishes that the manuscript "could be got out of my head by a surgical operation." Mr. Smith is a tall, slender, diffident young man, with a keen sense of humor and a varied experience. He began life in the grain and feed business in Hartford, and acted for many years in support of that still more celebrated Hartfordian, William Gillette. Langdon Mitchell, author of "The New York Idea", and John Luther Long, author of "Madame Butterfly", both are Philadelphians. Mr. Mitchell won fame as a poet, under the pseudonym of John Philip Varley, before "Becky Sharp" brought him to the attention of theater-goers. Mr. Long, whose ethereal fancies are so charming, pretends to practice the prosaic profession of law at 629 Walnut street.
Eugene Presbrey, grey-bearded, vibrant, intense, devotes himself mainly to the adaptation of novels. "I want the novel that can't be dramatized!" he declares, and, for this reason, he found much pleasure in doing "Raffles." It seemed a hopeless task to win sympathy for a confirmed criminal, and Mr. Presbrey had about abandoned the task, when, one evening in Seventh Avenue, he saw a man running at top speed, a crowd in pursuit, and heard the cry: "Stop thief!" "The fellow was just behind me", says the author, "and, turning around, I got a good view of his hunted, desperate expression. Before I knew what I was doing, I whispered: 'Get up the alley!' _And I didn't tell the policeman._ 'No sympathy for a criminal!' I exclaimed to myself, when I had leisure to analyze my action. 'Why, every human being is a criminal at heart! He knows that, under certain circumstances, he might be the fugitive, and he feels sorry for the other fellow in proportion.'" Mr. Presbrey wrote "Raffles" in three weeks, and it has been acted in every country that boasts a theater.
I have at my side a list of some thirty men and women who write plays and of whom I could chat indefinitely. Each of these authors is so interesting, all of them have lived so many stories, that it is hard for me to admit a space limit and forebear being their Boswell. There is George Broadhurst, lean and business-like, who made a reputation by his farces, and then, when that had been forgotten, made another by his serious dramas. There is Paul Potter, white-haired, rotund, genial, the intimate friend of Charles Frohman, and the adaptor of "Trilby." There are earnest young William C. De Mille, author of "Strongheart"; Paul Kester, a wisp of a lad, timid and self-conscious, who glories in swashbuckling melodramas and who did "When Knighthood Was in Flower"; Thompson Buchanan, newspaper reporter to his finger tips, who landed a big success in "A Woman's Way" and afterward wrote "The Cub"; Sydney Rosenfeld, the wit and dreamer, one time editor of Puck, who refused to turn out a book sub rosa with Augustus Thomas because he objected to any scheme "which involved pooling our separate fames to become anonymous"; and there are a whole army of brilliant young chaps, like William J. Hurlbut, of "The Fighting Hope", who lives a stone's throw from me at Shoreham, L. I., and Avery Hopwood, who collaborated with me in producing "Clothes", and with Mary Roberts Rhinehart in producing "Seven Days."
I should like to tell you about pretty Margaret Mayo, who has built a villa from the proceeds of "Polly of the Circus", and whose first fame as a playwright was achieved under circumstances described elsewhere in this book. Rachel Crothers is a sedate, New Englandish young woman, who used to teach acting in the Wheatcroft School, and whom I met when she was going from office to office with the manuscript of "The Three of Us." Rida Johnson, famed for "Brown of Harvard" and "The Lottery Man", is tall, dark, fine-looking, and her professional career began when she was leading woman for her husband, James Young, in her first play, "Lord Byron." I can't make you acquainted with people in a line--only Kipling can do that--and a proper description of all our playwrights would fill a volume.
They are, for the most part, a quiet, unassuming lot, constituting, of course, the brains of the theater, and lacking wholly the pose and self-importance of their creature, the actor. They are of the stage, and yet singularly apart from it, the glare of the footlights being merged for them with the soft red glow of the library. I am glad to have been their press agent this little time, for the majority of them are almost unknown to the very throngs they entertain vicariously. The wig-maker has his name on the program in larger letters than they, and the chorus girl receives infinitely more attention from the newspapers. More than any other class of men, I believe them to be actuated by the desire to do fine things. "I want to write plays that add to the joy of life!" exclaims one of the cult, looking over my shoulder. "I shall never write a play that does not contain something of hope and happiness!"
_STAGE STRUCK_
Being a diagnosis of the disease, and a description of its symptoms, which has the rare medical merit of attempting a cure at the same time.
"From the stern life of an officer in Uncle Sam's Navy to a merry job carrying a spear in the chorus of a musical comedy may be a far cry", but that is the step which a metropolitan newspaper recently recorded as having been taken by a young man named in the story whose beginning is quoted above. On another page of this same newspaper was an article which announced that "because pink teas, bridge whist, and dances no longer amused her", a certain "society woman" had joined the chorus of a company appearing at the Casino. These two cases composed a single day's list of casualties from the malignant disease known as stage-fever.
When my eye had finished its journey over the accounts of the "society woman" and the naval officer, I paused to wonder whether either of these aspirants would be checked by seeing spread-headed over the first page of the journal in question the horrid details of a theatrical suicide. The night before, an actress of reputation--a woman who had won everything that these new-comers had but a faint chance of winning--had killed herself in an hotel in Baltimore. Of course, it had not been shown that this "star" was influenced by any circumstance connected with her work, and, of course, it is true that people of various professions are self-slain, and yet--I wondered.
If the naval officer was restrained in his resolve it was not for long. A week or so later I saw this impetuous youth, who couldn't stand "being bottled up on a battle-ship", on the stage of an up-town theater. He was standing near the middle of a row of young men, waving his hands at stated intervals, and singing "yes--yes" at the end of every second line rendered by the principal comedian. He had but to wave his hands a moment too soon or too late in order to incur a fine or a reprimand. Perhaps by this time he has discovered that there are worse misfortunes than being "bottled up on a battleship."
Whether he does or not, the stream of the stage-struck will continue to flow like the brook poeticized by Tennyson. There is no stopping it. Youth has a better chance of missing measles or scarlet-fever than of escaping that consuming passion to "go on the stage." Nearly everyone struggles with the mania for a time; the wise conquer it, the foolish make up the comic opera choruses, the unimportant road companies, and the stage-door-keeper's list of "extra ladies and gentlemen." From every class and walk of life, from every town and city troop the victims, abandoning their vocations and their homes, as though they had heard the witching notes of a siren song. They come with high hopes and bright dreams, most of them to the great, gay city of New York, where they besiege the agencies, and the managers, and the teachers of acting until their dreams fade, or their money gives out, or they are smitten with realization. There is hardly a community in the country so small as to be without its "amateur dramatic club", and no one even distantly connected with the theatrical profession has lacked his or her experience with the innoculated unfortunate who knows that "I could succeed if I only had a chance."
Some time ago I happened to be in Syracuse, and used the long-distance telephone to communicate with New York. My conversation over, I sat down in the hotel lobby, and had just lit a cigar when a page announced: "Long distance wants you." I returned to the booth. "Yes?" I inquired. A woman's voice replied: "I overheard enough of your talk with New York to judge that you're in the theatrical business."
"I'm indirectly connected with it", I replied.
"Well", said the voice, "I'm the long-distance operator, and I want to go on the stage. Please get me an engagement."
I explained my misfortune in being acquainted with no manager who was likely to consider extensive training in enunciation of "hello" and "busy" sufficient education for the stage. The lady probably didn't believe me, for it is the popular impression that anyone concerned in the business of the playhouse has only to ask in order to receive a contract for whomever he wishes to assist. That song-heroine, who declared herself "an intimate friend of an intimate friend of Frohman", has her prototype in real life. Moreover, no aspirant to footlight honors ever can be convinced that actors must be made as well as born, and that there may be a few people in the world, who, given the opportunity, would not become Modjeskas and Mansfields.
William A. Brady once was served at dinner by a waitress whose surliness astonished him. He made no remark, however, and at last the waitress addressed him. "You're William A. Brady", she said; "ain't you?"
Mr. Brady confessed.
"Well", exclaimed the duchess of dishes, "my name's Minnie Clark. I've been a waitress since I was fourteen years old, and I think I can stand it until about next Wednesday. Give me a job, will you?"
David Belasco had a less amusing experience with a chambermaid in Attleboro, Mass., where he spent a night with the organization supporting David Warfield in "The Auctioneer." This girl, whose tap at the door interrupted the wizard producer while he was blue-penciling a scene, had just heard of his presence in town, and lost no time approaching him. She had been stage-struck since childhood. Hearing of Mr. Belasco's success in teaching dramatic art, she had determined to visit him in New York. "I saved my money for three years", she said, "and then I went up to you. I called at your office every day, but they wouldn't let me in. When all my money was spent I came back home, and began saving again. I had about half enough when I found that you were coming to Attleboro." Mr. Belasco was unable to give the girl the least encouragement. She was wholly illiterate, and, moreover, her death warrant was writ on her face. She was suffering from an incurable disease of the lungs.
Collin Kemper, one of the managers of the Astor Theater, recently had a letter from an elderly priest, who, after twenty years in the pulpit, felt that he wanted "a larger field of expression", and yearned to play Shakespeare. A wrinkled old woman of sixty sought the late Edward Marble, when he was conducting a school of acting in Baltimore, and confided in him her desire to be seen as Juliet. This desire she had cherished nearly half a century when the death of a relative gave her the means of gratifying her ambition. Daniel Frohman once received a young man, who laid on his desk a letter of introduction from an acquaintance in the West. "Ah!" said Mr. Frohman. "So you wish to become an actor?"
"Yes", replied the young man. "I'm puh-puh-puh-perfectly wa-wa-willing to ba-ba-ba-begin at the ba-bottom--"
He stuttered hopelessly.
The most astonishing feature of stage fever, however, is that its ravages are not confined to the ranks of people who would be bettered by success in their chosen profession. My wealthiest friend, a silk importer, who owns a charming home in Central Park West, dines alone while his wife stands in the wings of a dirty little theater in Paris, where their only daughter earns a hundred francs a week by dancing. A successful literary man of my acquaintance, who would cheerfully devote his entire income, something more than fifteen thousand a year, to making his young wife happy in his cozy apartment yields per force to her wish to appear in vaudeville. The most valuable member of the staff of an out-of-town newspaper, recipient of a big salary, suddenly threw up his position two years ago, since when he has been employed seven weeks, and that seven weeks in an organization presenting "The Chinatown Trunk Mystery."
A. L. Wilbur, at the time when he conducted the well-known Wilbur Opera Company, printed in the program of his performances an advertisement for chorus girls. Successful applicants were paid twelve dollars a week, yet recruits came by the dozens from the best families in the territory through which the aggregation was touring. Scores of the young women who play merry villagers on Broadway today are well born and bred victims of the virus. "Society" has contributed even to the ranks of the chorus men, whose caste is far below that of their betighted sisters. When Maybelle Gilman opened her metropolitan season in "The Mocking Bird" a male chorister, whose weekly stipend was eighteen dollars, electrified the management by purchasing nine boxes. This Croesus of the chorus proved to be "Deacon" Moore, a Cornell graduate and son of one of the biggest mine operators in the West.
The germ of stage fever frequently is as slow to get out of the system as it is quick to enter it. Douglas Fairbanks is a clever comedian, who, after a long apprenticeship, has been elevated to the stellar rank by William A. Brady. Mr. Fairbanks fell in love with the daughter of Daniel J. Sully, and, according to report, was given parental permission to marry her if he would abandon his profession. Mr. Fairbanks retired from the stage, and was out of the cast of "The Man of the Hour" for a trifle less than two months. Margaret Fuller came to town a few years ago with an ambition to star. She enlisted the help of a well-known manager, who told her that he would give her a chance to play Camille if she could get rid of twenty pounds of superfluous flesh. Miss Fuller presented "Camille" at a special matinee, and has not been heard of since. She is still in the theatrical profession, content with minor roles, but clinging tenaciously to the vocation. There are hundreds of men and women haunting the agencies in New York, promenading that graveyard of buried hopes, The Great White Way, who might be enjoying the comfort of luxurious homes and the affectionate care of doting relatives.
In nine cases out of ten the mania to go on the stage is prompted by pure desire for glorification. Love of excitement, and the fallacious notion that the profession is one of comparative ease and luxury, may be alloying factors, but the essence of the virus is vanity. No other field offers the same quick approval of successful effort, and no other climber is quite so much the center of his eventual triumph. In the other arts, approbation follows less promptly and is less direct. The fortunate player hears the intoxicating music of applause a dozen times every evening and two dozen times on matinee days. He struts about his mimic world, the observed of all observers, conscious of the strained attention of the thousands who have paid to see him, profiting not only by his own achievements but by those of the author, the director, the scene-painter and the orchestra. The newspapers are full of his praise and his photographs, recording his slightest doing and giving to the opinions expressed by him, or by his press agent, an importance scarcely less than might be accorded the President of the United States. In the course of time he even begins to arrogate to himself the heroic virtues of the characters he impersonates. It is sweet to see one's name on the cover of a novel, sweet to scrawl one's autograph in the lower left-hand corner of a painting, but O, how doubly and trebly sweet to meet one's own image lithographed under a laudatory line and posted between advertisements of the newest breakfast food and the latest five cent cigar!