Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 15

This production cost the youthful manager ten thousand dollars.

Frohman still had control of "time" at the Standard, so he now put on a play, translated by Henri Rochefort, called "A Daughter of Ireland," in which Georgia Cayvan had the t.i.tle role. Here he scored another failure, but his ardor remained undampened and he went on to what looked at that moment to be the biggest thing he had yet tried.

Dion Boucicault was one of the great stage figures of his period. He was both actor and author, and wrote or adapted several hundred plays, including such phenomenal successes as "Colleen Bawn," "Shaughraun,"

which ran for a year simultaneously in London, New York, and Melbourne, and "London a.s.surance." There was much talk of his latest comedy, "The Jilt." Frohman, who always wanted to be a.s.sociated with big names, now arranged by cable to produce this play at the Standard. Once more he plunged on an expensive company which included, among others, Fritz Williams, Louise Thornd.y.k.e, and Helen Bancroft.

For four weeks he cleared a thousand a week. Then he put the company on the road, where it did absolutely nothing. Charles, who had an uncanny sense of a.n.a.lysis of play failures, now declared that the reason for the failure was that theater-goers resented Boucicault's treatment of his first wife, Agnes Robertson. Boucicault had declared that he was not the father of her child, and when she sued him in England the courts gave her the verdict. Meanwhile Boucicault married, and in the eyes of the world he was a bigamist. This experience, it is interesting to add, taught Charles Frohman never to engage stars on whom there was the slightest smirch of scandal or disrepute.

At Montreal Boucicault refused to continue the tour, and this engagement, like so many of its predecessors, left Charles in a financial hole. Despite all these reverses he was able to make a livelihood out of the booking end of the office, which thrived and grew with each month. Nor was he without his sense of humor in those days.

One day he met a certain manager who had lost a great deal of money in comic opera. Frohman said to him that he heard that there was much money in the comic-opera end of the business.

"So there is," replied the manager.

"You ought to know," responded Frohman, "for you have put enough into it."

This remark, often attributed to others, is said to have originated here.

Frohman was now an established producer, and although the tide of fortune had not gone altogether happily with him, he had a Micawber-like conviction that the big thing would eventually turn up. Now came his first contact with Bronson Howard, who, a few years later, was to be the first mile-stone in his journey to fame and fortune.

Howard's name was one to conjure with. He had produced "Young Mrs.

Winthrop," "The Banker's Daughter," "Saratoga," and other great successes. Charles Frohman, yielding, as usual, to the lure of big names, now put on Howard's play, "Baron Rudolph," for which George Knight had paid the author three thousand dollars to rewrite. Knight gave Frohman a free hand in the matter of casting the production, and it was put on at the Fourteenth Street Theater in an elaborate fas.h.i.+on. The company included various people who later on were to become widely known. Among them were George Knight and his wife, George Fawcett, Charles Bowser, and a very prepossessing young man named Henry Woodruff.

"Baron Rudolph" proved to be a failure, and it broke Knight's heart, for shortly afterward he was committed to an insane asylum from which he never emerged alive. It was found that while the play was well written there was no sympathy for a ragged tramp.

Whether he thought it would change his luck or not, Charles now turned to a different sort of enterprise. He had read in the newspapers about the astonis.h.i.+ng mind-reading feats in England of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving Bishop. Always on the lookout for something novel, he started a correspondence with Bishop which ended in a contract by which he agreed to present Bishop in the United States in 1887.

Bishop came over and Frohman sponsored his first appearance in New York on February 27, 1887, at Wallack's Theater. With his genius for publicity, Frohman got an extraordinary amount of advertising out of this engagement. Among other things he got Bishop to drive around New York blindfolded. He invited well-known men to come and witness his marvelous gift in private. All of which attracted a great deal of attention, but very little money to the box-office. Frohman and Bishop differed about the conduct of the tour that was to follow, and M. B.

Leavitt a.s.sumed the management.

While at 1215 Broadway Charles Frohman established another of his many innovations by getting out what was probably the first stylographic press sheet. This sheet, which contained news of the various attractions that Frohman booked, was sent to the leading newspapers throughout the country and was the forerunner of the avalanche of press matter that to-day is hurled at dramatic editors everywhere.

The booking business had now grown so extensively that the office force was increased. First came Julius Cahn, who a.s.sisted Randall with the booking. Al Hayman took a desk in Frohman's office, which, because of Hayman's extensive California enterprises, had a virtual monopoly on all Western booking.

Now developed a curious episode. Charles, with his devotion to big names, used the words "Daly's Theater Building" on his letter-heads.

This so infuriated Daly that he sent a peremptory message to the landlord insisting that Frohman vacate the building. Frohman and Randall thereupon moved their offices up the block to 1267 Broadway.

Charles Frohman made every possible capitalization of this change. Among other things he issued a broadside, announcing the removal to new offices, and making the following characteristic statement:

_Our agency, we are pleased to state, has been an established success from the very start. We now represent every important theater in the United States and Canada, as an inspection of our list will show, and we will always keep up the high standard of attractions that have been booked through this office, and we want the business of no others. Mr. E. E. Rice, the well-known manager and author, will have adjoining offices with us, and his attractions will be booked through our offices. We transact a general theatrical business (excepting that pertaining to a dramatic or actor's agency), and are in compet.i.tion with no other exchange, booking agency, or dramatic concern. Neither do we have any desk-room to let, reserving all the s.p.a.ce of our office for our own use._

Attached to this announcement was a list of theaters that he represented, which was a foot long. He was also representing Archibald Clavering Gunter, who had followed up "A Wall Street Bandit" with "Prince Karl," and Robert Buchanan, author of "Lady Clare" and "Alone in London."

Frohman and Randall stayed at 1267 Broadway for a year. Shortly before the next change Randall, who had become extensively interested in outside enterprises, retired from the firm. His successor as close a.s.sociate with Charles Frohman was Harry Rockwood, ablest of the early Frohman lieutenants.

Rockwood was a distinguished-looking man and a tireless worker. The way he came to be a.s.sociated with Charles Frohman was interesting. His real name was H. Rockwood Hewitt, and he was related to ex-Mayor Abram S.

Hewitt of New York. He had had some experience in Wall Street, but became infected with the theatrical virus.

One day in 1888 a well-groomed young man approached Gustave Frohman at the Fourteenth Street Theater. He introduced himself as Harry Hewitt.

He said to Frohman:

"My name is Hewitt. I would like to get into the theatrical business."

Gustave invited him to come around to the Madison Square Theater the next day, and asked him what he would like to do.

"Oh, I should like to do anything."

Frohman then gave him an imaginary house to "count up."

Rockwood, who was an expert accountant, did the job with amazing swiftness. Whereupon Gustave Frohman telephoned to Charles Frohman as follows:

"I've got the greatest treasurer in the world for you. Send for him."

Charles engaged him for a Madison Square Company, and in this way Rockwood's theatrical career started. It was the fas.h.i.+on of many people of that time interested in the theatrical business to change their names, so he became Harry Rockwood. In the same way Harry Hayman, brother of Al and Alf Hayman, changed his name to Harry Mann.

In 1889 came the separation between Randall and Frohman. Randall set up an establishment of his own at 1145 Broadway, while Charles, who was now an accredited and established personage in the theatrical world, took a suite at 1127 Broadway, adjoining the old St. James Hotel. In making this change he reached a crucial point in his career, for in these offices he conceived and put into execution the spectacular enterprises that linked his name for the first time with brilliant success.

VI

"SHENANDOAH" AND THE FIRST STOCK COMPANY

With his installation in the new offices at 1127 Broadway there began an important epoch in the life of Charles Frohman. The Nemesis which had seemed to pursue his productions now took flight. The plump little man, not yet thirty, who had already lived a lifetime of strenuous and varied endeavor, sat at a desk in a big room on the second floor, dreaming and planning great things that were soon to be realized.

Although staggering under a burden of debt that would have discouraged most people, Frohman, with his optimistic philosophy, felt that the hour had come at last when the tide would turn. And it did. At this time his financial complications were at their worst. Some of them dated back to the disastrous Wallack Company tour; others resulted from his impulsive generosity in indorsing his friends' notes. He was so involved that he could not do business under his own name, and for a period the firm went on as Al Hayman & Company.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _WILLIAM GILLETTE_]

One of the very first enterprises in the new offices cemented the friends.h.i.+p of Charles Frohman and William Gillette. While at the Madison Square Theater he had booked Gillette's plays, "The Professor" and "The Private Secretary." Frohman, with Al Hayman as partner, induced Gillette to make a dramatization of Rider Haggard's "She," which was put on at Niblo's Garden in New York with considerable success. Wilton Lackaye and Loie Fuller were in the cast.

Gillette now tried his hand at a war play called "Held by the Enemy,"

which Frohman booked on the road. Frohman was strangely interested in "Held by the Enemy." It had all the thrill and tumult of war and it lent itself to more or less spectacular production. When the road tour ended, Frohman, on his own hook, took the piece and the company, which was headed by Gillette, for an engagement at the Baldwin Theater in San Francisco. He transported all the original scenery, which included, among other things, some ma.s.sive wooden cannon.

The San Francisco critics, however, slated the piece unmercifully. The morning after the opening Gillette stood in the lobby of the Palace Hotel with the newspapers in his hand and feeling very disconsolate. Up bustled Frohman in his usual cheery fas.h.i.+on.

"Look what the critics have done to us," said Gillette, gloomily.

"But we've got all the best of it," replied Frohman, with animation.