Part 16
After she had heard the story she said, impulsively: "You are wrong. I want to play this part very much."
"All right," said Frohman. "Go ahead."
[Illustration: _ETHEL BARRYMORE_]
As _Zoe Blundell_ she had a triumph. In this character she was artistically reborn. The sweetness and girlishness now stood aside in the presence of a somber and haunting tragedy that was real. Miss Barrymore literally made the critics sit up. It recorded a distinct epoch in her career, and, as in other instances with a Pinero play, the American success far exceeded its English popularity.
When Miss Barrymore did "The Twelve-Pound Look," by Barrie, the following year, she only added to the conviction that she was in many respects the most versatile and gifted of the younger American actresses. Frohman loved "The Twelve-Pound Look" as he loved few plays. Its only rival in his regard was "Peter Pan." He went to every rehearsal, he saw it at every possible opportunity. Like most others, he realized that into this one act of intense life was crowded all the human drama, all the human tragedy.
Miss Barrymore now sped from grave to gay. When the time came for her to rehearse Barrie's fascinating skit, "A Slice of Life," Frohman was ill at the Knickerbocker Hotel. He was very much interested in this little play, so the rehearsals were held in his rooms at the hotel. There were only three people in the cast--Miss Barrymore, her brother John, and Hattie Williams. It was so excruciatingly funny that Frohman would often call up the Empire and say:
"Send Ethel over to rehearse. I want to forget my pains."
Charles Frohman lived to see his great expectations of Ethel Barrymore realized. He found her the winsome slip of a fascinating girl; he last beheld her in the full flower of her maturing art. He was very much interested in her transition from the seriousness of "The Shadow" into the wholesome humor and womanliness of "Our Mrs. McChesney," a part he had planned for her before his final departure. It was one of the many swift changes that Miss Barrymore has made, and had he lived he would have found still another cause for infinite satisfaction with her.
* * *
Another star now swam into the Frohman ken. This was the way of it:
Paul Potter was making a periodical visit to New York in 1901. David Belasco came to see him at the Holland House.
"Paul," said he, "C. F. and I want you to make us a version of Ouida's 'Under Two Flags' for Blanche Bates."
"I never read the novel," said Potter.
"You can dramatize it without reading it," remarked Belasco, and in a month he was sitting in Frohman's rooms at Sherry's and Potter was reading to them his dramatization of "Under Two Flags," throwing in, for good measure, a ride from "Mazeppa" and a snow-storm from "The Queen of Sheba."
"I like all but the last scene," said Frohman. "When _Cigarette_ rides up those mountains with her lover's pardon, the pardon is, to all intents and purposes, delivered. The actual delivery is an anti-climax. What the audience want to see is a return to the garret where the lovers lived and were happy."
As they walked home that night Belasco said to Potter:
"That was a great point which C. F. made. What remarkable intuition he has!"
Frohman and Potter used to watch Belasco at work, teaching the actors to act, the singers to sing, the dancers to dance.
Then came a hitch.
"Gros, our scene-painter," said Frohman, "maintains that _Cigarette_ couldn't ride up any mountains near the Algerian coast, for the nearest mountains are the Atlas Mountains, eight hundred miles away."
He undertook to convert Mr. Gros. Fortunately for him the author of the play stood in the Garden Theater while Belasco was rehearsing a dance.
"Oh," said he, "if it's a comic opera you can have all the mountains you please. I thought it was a serious drama."
Then Frohman ventured to criticize the mountain torrent.
"What's the matter with the torrent?" called Belasco, while _Cigarette_ and her horse stood on the slope.
"It doesn't look like water at all," said Frohman.
Just then the horse plunged his nose into the torrent and licked it furiously. Criticism was silenced. The play was a big, popular success, and with it Blanche Bates arrived as star.
One day, a year later, Frohman remarked to Potter in Paris, "What do you say to paying Ouida a visit in Florence?"
He and Belasco had paid her considerable royalties. He thought she would be gratified by a friendly call. Frohman and Potter obtained letters of introduction from bankers, consuls, and Florentine notables, and sent them in advance to Ouida. The landlord of the inn gave them a resplendent two-horse carriage, with a liveried coachman and a footman. Frohman objected to the footman as undemocratic. The landlord insisted that it was Florentine etiquette, and shrugged his shoulders when they departed, seeming to think that they were bound on a perilous journey.
Through the perfumed, flower-laden hills they climbed, the Arno gleaming below. The footman took in their cards to the villa of Mlle. de la Ramee. He promptly returned.
"The signora is indisposed," he remarked.
The visitors sent him back to ask if they might come some other day. Again he returned.
"The signora is indisposed," was the only answer he could get.
Potter and Frohman drove away. Frohman was hurt. He did not try to conceal it.
"That's the first author," he said, "who ever turned me down. Anyway, the pancakes at lunch were delicious." He met rebuff--as he met loss--with infinite humor.
* * *
Stars now crowded quick and fast into the Frohman firmament. Next came Virginia Harned. Daniel Frohman had seen her in a traveling company at the Fourteenth Street Theater and engaged her to support E. H. Sothern. She later came under Charles's control, and he presented her as star in "Alice of Old Vincennes," "Iris," and "The Light that Lies in Woman's Eyes."
Effie Shannon and Herbert Kelcey followed. Their first venture with him, "Manon Lescaut," was a direful failure, but it was followed up with "My Lady Dainty," which was a success.
Charles Frohman had various formulas for making stars. Some he discovered outright, others he developed. Here is an example of his Christopher Columbus proclivities:
One day he heard that there was a very brilliant young Hungarian actor playing a small part down at the Irving Place German Theater in New York City. He went to see him, was very much impressed with his ability, sent for him, and said:
"If you will study English I will agree to take care of you on the English-speaking stage."
[Illustration: _JULIA MARLOWE_]
The man assented, and Frohman paid him a salary all the while he was studying English. Before many years he was a well-known star. His name was Leo Ditrichstein.
Frohman now got Ditrichstein to adapt "Are You a Mason?" from the German, put it on at Wallack's Theater, and it was a huge success. Besides Ditrichstein, this cast, which was a very notable one, included John C. Rice, Thomas W. Wise, May Robson, Arnold Daly, Cecil De Mille, and Sallie Cohen, who had played Topsy in the stranded "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Company, whose advance fortunes Frohman had piloted in his precarious days on the road.
Just as Frohman led the American invasion in England, so did he now bring about the English invasion of America. He had inaugurated it with Olga Nethersole. He now introduced to American theater-goers such artists as Charles Hawtrey, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Charles Warner, Sir Charles Wyndham, Mary Moore, Marie Tempest, and Fay Davis, in whose career he was enormously interested. He starred Miss Davis in a group of plays ranging from "Lady Rose's Daughter" to "The House of Mirth."
In connection with Mrs. Campbell's first tour occurred another one of the famous Frohman examples of quick retort. He was rehearsing this highly temperamental lady, and made a constructive criticism which nettled her very much. She became indignant, called him to the footlights, and said:
"I want you to know that I am an artist?"
Frohman, with solemn face, instantly replied:
"Madam, I will keep your secret."
One of the early English importations revealed Frohman's utterly uncommercialized attitude toward the theater. He was greatly taken with the miracle play "Everyman," and brought over Edith Wynne Mathison and Charles Rann Kennedy to do it. He was unable to get a theater, so he put them in Mendelssohn Hall.
"You'll make no money with them there," said a friend to him.
"I don't expect to make any," replied Frohman, "but I want the American people to see this fine and worthy thing."
The play drew small audiences for some time. Then, becoming the talk of the town, it went on tour and repaid him with a profit on his early loss.
* * *
One of the happiest of Charles Frohman's theatrical associations now developed. In 1903, when the famous Weber and Fields organization seemed to be headed toward dissolution, Charles Dillingham suggested to Willie Collier that he go under the Frohman management. Collier went to the Empire Theater and was ushered into Frohman's office.
"It took you a long time to get up here," said the magnate. "How would you like to go under my management?"
"Well," replied Collier, with his usual humor, "I didn't come up here to buy a new hat."
The result was that Collier became a Frohman star and remained one for eleven years. He and Frohman were constantly exchanging witty telegrams and letters. Frohman sent Collier to Australia. At San Francisco the star encountered the famous earthquake. He wired Frohman:
"San Francisco has just had the biggest opening in its history."
Whereupon Frohman, who had not yet learned the full extent of the calamity, wired back:
"Don't like openings with so many 'dead-heads.'"
* * *
All the while, William Gillette had been thriving as a Frohman star. Like many other serious actors, he had an ambition to play _Hamlet_. With Frohman the wishes of his favorite stars were commands, so he proceeded to make ready a production. Suddenly Barrie's remarkable play "The Admirable Crichton" fell into his hands. He sent for Gillette and said:
"Gillette, I am perfectly willing that you should play _Hamlet_, but I have just got from Barrie the ideal play for you."
When Gillette read "The Admirable Crichton," he agreed with Frohman, and out of it developed one of his biggest successes. "Hamlet," with its elaborate production, still awaits Gillette.
* * *
In presenting Clara Bloodgood as star in Clyde Fitch's play "The Girl with the Green Eyes," Frohman achieved another one of his many sensations. The smart, charming girl who had made her debut under sensational circumstances in "The Conquerors," now saw her name up in electric lights for the first time. Frohman's confidence in her, as in many of his proteges, was more than fulfilled.
* * *
Charles Frohman, who loved to dazzle the world with his Napoleonic coups, launched what was up to this time, and which will long remain, the most spectacular of theatrical deals. He greatly admired E. H. Sothern, who had been associated with him in some of his early ventures. The years that Julia Marlowe had played under his joint management had endeared her to him. One day he had an inspiration. There had been no big Shakespearian revival for some time, so he said:
"Why not unite Sothern and Marlowe and tour the country in a series of magnificent Shakespearian productions?"
At that time Julia Marlowe had reverted to the control of Charles Dillingham, while Sothern was still under the management of Daniel Frohman. Charles now brought the stars together, offered them a guarantee of $5,000 a week for a forty weeks' engagement and for three seasons. In other words, he pledged these two stars the immense sum of $200,000 for each season, which was beyond doubt the largest guarantee of the kind ever made in the history of the American theater.
It was just about this time that Joseph Humphreys, Frohman's seasoned general stage-manager, succumbed to the terrific strain under which he had worked all these years, as both actor and producer. William Seymour stepped into his shoes, and has retained that position ever since.
Charles was constantly bringing about revolutions. Through him Francis Wilson, for example, departed from musical comedy, in which he had made a great success, and took up straight plays. He began with Clyde Fitch's French adaptation of "Cousin Billy," and thus commenced a connection under Charles Frohman that lasted many years. With him, as with all his other stars, there was never a scrap of paper.
[Illustration: _E. H. SOTHERN_]
Frohman and Wilson met at the Savoy Hotel in London one day. Frohman had often urged him to quit musical comedy, and he now said he was ready to make the plunge.
"All right," said Frohman. "I will give you so much a week and a percentage of the profits."
"It's done," said Wilson.
"Do you want a contract?" asked Frohman.
"No."
This was about all that ever happened in the way of arrangements between Frohman and his stars, to some of whom he paid fortunes.
During these years Charles had watched with growing interest the development of a young girl from Bloomington, Illinois, Margaret Illington by name. She had appeared successfully in the old Lyceum Stock Company when it was transferred by Daniel Frohman to Daly's, and had played with James K. Hackett and E. H. Sothern. Charles now cast her in Pinero's play "A Wife Without a Smile." Afterward she appeared in Augustus Thomas's piece "Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots," and made such a strong impression that Frohman made her leading woman with John Drew in Pinero's "His House in Order."
Just about this time Charles, whose interest in French plays had constantly increased through the years, singled out Henri Bernstein as the foremost of the younger French playwrights. He secured his remarkable play "The Thief" for America. He now produced this play at the Lyceum with Miss Illington and Kyrle Bellew as co-stars, and it proved to be an enormous success, continuing there for a whole season, and then duplicating its triumph on the road, where Frohman at one time had four companies playing it in various parts of the country.
XI
THE CONQUEST OF THE LONDON STAGE
Great as were Charles Frohman's achievements in America, they were more than matched in many respects by his activities in England. He was the one American manager who made an impress on the British drama; he led the so-called "American invasion." As a matter of fact, he _was_ the invasion. No phase of his fascinatingly crowded and adventurous career reflects so much of the genius of the man, or reveals so many of his finer qualities, as his costly attempt to corner the British stage. Here, as in no other work, he showed himself in really Napoleonic proportions.
Behind Charles's tremendous operations in London were three definite motives. First of all, he really loved England. He felt that the theater there had a dignity and a distinction far removed from theatrical production in America. There was no sneer of "commercialism" about it. To be identified with the stage in England was something to be proud of. He often said that he would rather make fifteen pounds in London than fifteen thousand dollars in America. It summed up his whole attitude toward the theater in Great Britain.
In the second place, he knew that a strong footing in England was absolutely necessary to a mastery of the situation in America. Just as important as any of his other reasons was the conviction in his own mind that to produce the best English-speaking plays in the United States he must know English playwrights and English authors on their own ground, and to produce, if possible, their own works on their home stages.
This latter desire led him to the long and brilliant series of productions that he made in London, and which amounted to what later became an almost complete monopoly on British dramatic output for the United States.
The net result was that he became a sort of Colossus of the English-speaking theater. Figuratively, he stood astride the mighty sea in which he was to meet his death, with one foot planted securely in England and the other in New York.
* * *
Charles's first visits to England were made in the most unostentatious way, largely to look over the ground and see what he could pick up for America. His first offices in Henrietta Street were very modest rooms. Unpretentious as they were, they represented a somewhat historic step, because Frohman was absolutely the first American manager to set up a business in England. Augustin Daly had taken over a company, but he allied himself in no general way with British theatrical interests.
When Frohman first engaged W. Lestocq as his English manager, as has already been recorded, he made a significant remark:
"You know I am coming into London to produce plays. But I am coming in by the back door. I shall get to the front door, however, and you shall come with me."
No sooner had he set foot in London than his productive activities were turned loose. With A. and S. Gatti he put on one of his New York successes, "The Lost Paradise," at the Adelphi Theater. In this instance he merely furnished the play. It failed, however. Far from discouraging Frohman, it only filled him with a desire to do something big.
This play marked the beginning of one of his most important English connections. The Gattis, as they were known in England, were prominent figures in the British theater. They were Swiss-Italians who had begun life in England as waiters, had established a small eating-house, and had risen to become the most important restaurateurs of the British capital. They became large realty-owners, spread out to the theater, and acquired the Adelphi and the Vaudeville.
Charles Frohman's arrangement with them was typical of all his business transactions. Some years afterward a well-known English playwright asked Stephen Gatti:
"What is your contract with Frohman?"
"We have none. When we want an agreement from Charles Frohman about a business transaction it is time to stop," was his reply.
With the production of a French farce called "A Night Out," which was done at the Vaudeville Theater in 1896, Frohman began his long and intimate association with George Edwardes. This man's name was synonymous with musical comedy throughout the amusement world. As managing director of the London Gaiety Theater, the most famous musical theater anywhere, he occupied a unique position. Charles was the principal American importer of the Gaiety shows, and through this and various other connections he had much to do with Edwardes.
Frohman and Edwardes were the joint producers of "A Night Out," and it brought to Charles his first taste of London success. This was the only play in London in which he ever sold his interest. Out of this sale grew a curious example of Frohman's disregard of money. For his share he received a check of four figures. He carried it around in his pocket for weeks. After it had become all crumpled up, Lestocq persuaded him to deposit it in the bank. Only when the check was almost reduced to shreds did he consent to open an account with it.
* * *
It remained for an American play, presenting an American star, to give Charles his first real triumph in London. With the production of "Secret Service," in 1897, at the Adelphi Theater, he became the real envoy from the New World of plays to the Old. It was an ambassadorship that gave him an infinite pride, for it brought fame and fortune to the American playwright and the American actor abroad. Frohman's envoyship was as advantageous to England as it was to the United States, because he was the instrument through which the best of the modern English plays and the most brilliant of the modern English actors found their hearing on this side of the water.
Frohman was immensely interested in the English production of "Secret Service." Gillette himself headed the company. Both he and Frohman were in a great state of expectancy. The play hung fire until the third act. When the big scene came British reserve melted and there was a great ovation. It was an immediate success and had a long run.
One feature of the play that amused the critics and theater-goers generally in London was the fact that the spy in "Secret Service," who was supposed to be the bad man of the play, received all the sympathy and the applause, while the hero was arrested and always had the worst of it, even when he was denouncing the spy. Gillette's quiet but forceful style of acting was a revelation to the Londoners.
It was during this engagement that an intimate friend said to Terriss, the great English actor who was distinguished for his impulsiveness:
"Chain yourself to a seat at the Adelphi some night and learn artistic repose from Gillette."
Concerning the first night of "Secret Service" is another one of the many Frohman stories. When a London newspaper man asked the American manager about the magnificent celebration that he was sure had been held to commemorate Gillette's triumph, Frohman said:
"There was nothing of the sort. Mr. Dillingham, my manager, and I joined Mr. Gillette in his rooms at the Savoy. We had some sandwiches and wine and then played 'hearts' for several hours."
This episode inspired Frohman to give utterance to what was the very key-note of his philosophy about an actor and his work. Talking with a friend in England shortly after the opening of "Secret Service," about the modest way in which Gillette regarded his success, he said:
"Nothing so kills the healthy growth of an actor and brings his usefulness to an end so soon, as the idea that social enjoyment is a means to public success, and that industrious labor to improve himself is no longer necessary."
[Illustration: _ELSIE FERGUSON_]
Frohman always regarded the success of "Secret Service" as the corner-stone of his great achievements in England. Once, in speaking of this star's hit, he said:
"You know, what tickles me is the fact that it was left for England to discover that Gillette is a great actor. It's one on America."
* * *
A few years later, Frohman made his first Paris production with "Secret Service." The masterful little man always regarded the world as his field; hence the annexation of Paris. He had a version made by Paul de Decourcelle, and the play was put on at the Renaissance Theater. Guitry, the great French actor, played Gillette's part. A very brilliant audience saw the opening performance, but the French did not get the atmosphere of the play. They could not determine whether it was serious or comic. The character of _General Nelson_ was almost entirely omitted in the play because the actors themselves could not tell whether it was humor or tragedy. Besides, the French actors wanted to do it their own way.
Dillingham, who had charge of the production in Paris, realizing on the opening night that it would be a failure, and knowing that he had to send Frohman some sort of telegram, cabled, with his customary humor, the following:
_The tomb of Napoleon looks beautiful in the moonlight._