Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 25

The casting of the parts was in itself an enormous task. Frohman amused himself by having what he called "casting parties." For example, he would call up Miss Adams by long-distance telephone and say:

_I've got ten minutes before my train starts for Atlantic City. Can you cast a peac.o.c.k for me?_

Whereupon Miss Adams would say:

_Ten minutes is too short._

Never, perhaps, in the history of the American stage was the advent of a play so long heralded. The name "Chantecler" was on every tongue. Long before the piece was launched hats had been named after it, controversies had arisen over its Anglicized spelling and p.r.o.nunciation.

All the genius of publicity which was the peculiar heritage of Charles Frohman was turned loose to pave the way for this extraordinary production. It was a nation-wide sensation.

For the first time in his life Charles had to postpone an opening. It was originally set for the 13th of January, 1911, but the first night did not come until the 23d. This added to the suspense and expectancy of the public.

The demand for seats was unprecedented. A line began to form at four o'clock in the afternoon preceding the day the sale opened. Within twenty-four hours after the window was raised at the box-office as high as $200 was offered in vain for a seat on the opening night.

The Empire stage was too small, so the play was produced at the Knickerbocker Theater. A brilliant and highly wrought-up audience was present. Extraordinary interest centered about Miss Adams's performance as _Chantecler_. "Will she be able to do it?" was the question on every tongue. On that memorable opening-night Frohman, as usual, sat in the back seat in the gallery and had the supreme satisfaction of seeing his star distinguish herself in a performance that in many respects revealed Miss Adams as she had never been revealed before. She was recalled twenty-two times.

_Chantecler_ literally crowed and conquered!

Just how much "Chantecler" meant to Charles Frohman is attested by a remark he made soon after its inaugural. A friend was discussing epitaphs with him.

"What would you like to have written about you, C. F.?" asked the man.

The brilliant smile left Frohman's face for a moment, and then he said, solemnly:

"All that I would ask is this: 'He gave "Peter Pan" to the world and "Chantecler" to America.' It is enough for any man."

The last original production that Charles Frohman made with Maude Adams was "The Legend of Leonora," in which she returned once more to Barrie's exquisite and fanciful satire, devoted this time to the woman question.

In England it had been produced under the t.i.tle of "The Adored One."

It was in the part of _Leonora_ that James M. Barrie saw Maude Adams act for the first time in one of his plays. He had come to America for a brief visit to Frohman, and during this period Miss Adams was having her annual engagement at the Empire Theater.

Of course, Barrie had Miss Adams in mind for the American production, and it is a very interesting commentary on his admiration for the American star that about the only instructions he attached to the ma.n.u.script of the play was this:

_Leonora is an unspeakable darling, and this is all the guidance that can be given to the lady playing her._

On her last starring tour under the personal direction of Charles Frohman, Miss Adams combined with a revival of "Quality Street" a clever skit by Barrie called "The Ladies' Shakespeare," the subt.i.tle being, "One Woman's Reading of 'The Taming of the Shrew.'" With an occasional appearance in Barrie's "Rosalind," it rounded out her stellar career under him.

Charles Frohman lived to see Maude Adams realize his highest desire for her success. She justified his confidence and it gave him infinite satisfaction.

Miss Adams's career as a star unfolds a panorama of artistic and practical achievement unequaled in the life of any American star. It likewise reveals a paradox all its own. While millions of people have seen and admired her, only a handful of people know her. The aloofness of the woman in her personal att.i.tude toward the public represents Charles Frohman's own ideal of what stage artistry and conduct should be.

It is ill.u.s.trated in what was perhaps the keenest epigram he ever made.

He was talking about people of the stage who constantly air themselves and their views to secure personal publicity. It moved him to this remark:

"Some people prefer mediocrity in the lime-light to greatness in the dark."

Herein he summed up the reason why Miss Adams has been an elusive and almost mysterious figure. By tremendous reading, solitary thinking, and extraordinary personal application she rose to her great eminence. With her it has always been a creed of career first. Like Charles Frohman, she has hidden behind her activities, and they form a worthy rampart.

The history of the stage records no more interesting parallel than the one afforded by these two people--each a recluse, yet each known to the mult.i.tudes.

IX

THE BIRTH OF THE SYNDICATE

Charles Frohman's talents and energies were very much like those of E.

H. Harriman in that they found their largest and best expression when dedicated to a mult.i.tude of enterprises. Like Harriman, too, he did things in a wholesale way, for he had a contempt for small sums and small ventures.

Going back a little in point of time from the close of the preceding chapter, the final years of the last century found Frohman geared up to a myriad of activities. He had already a.s.sumed the role of Star-Maker, for Drew and Gillette were on his roster, and Maude Adams was about to be launched; the Empire Stock Company was an accredited inst.i.tution with a national influence; he had started a chain of theaters; his booking interests in the West had a.s.sumed the proportions of an immense business; he had begun to make his presence felt in London. Yet no event of these middle 'nineties was more momentous in its relation to the future of the whole American theater than one which was about to transpire--one in which Charles Frohman had an important hand.

Despite the efforts made by the booking offices conducted by Charles Frohman and Klaw & Erlanger, the making of routes for theatrical attractions in the United States was in a most disorganized and economically unsound condition. The local manager was still more or less at the mercy of the booking free-lance in New York. The booking agent himself only represented a comparatively few theaters and could not book a complete season for a traveling attraction.

In New York the manager was an autocrat who frequently dictated unbelievable terms to the traveling companies. Immense losses resulted from small traveling companies being pitted against one another in provincial towns that could only support one first-cla.s.s attraction.

Most theatrical contracts were not worth the paper they were written on.

Charles Frohman had first counted the cost of this theatrical demoralization when his great "Shenandoah" run at the old Star Theater had to be interrupted while playing to capacity because another attraction had been booked into that theater. He and all his representative colleagues in the business realized that some steps must be taken to rectify the situation. Piled on this was the general business depression that had followed the panic of 1893.

One day in 1896 a notable group of theatrical magnates met by chance at a luncheon at the Holland House in New York. They included Charles Frohman, whose offices booked attractions for a chain of Western theaters extending to the coast; A. L. Erlanger and Marc Klaw, who, as Klaw & Erlanger, controlled attractions for practically the entire South; Nixon & Zimmerman, of Philadelphia, who were conducting a group of the leading theaters of that city, and Al Hayman, one of the owners of the Empire Theater.

These men naturally discussed the chaos in the theatrical business.

They decided that its only economic hope was in a centralization of booking interests, and they acted immediately on this decision. Within a few weeks they had organized all the theaters they controlled or represented into one national chain, and the open time was placed on file in the offices of Klaw & Erlanger. It now became possible for the manager of a traveling company to book a consecutive tour at the least possible expense. In a word, booking suddenly became standardized.

This was the beginning of the famous Theatrical Syndicate which, in a brief time, dominated the theatrical business of the whole country. It marked a real epoch in the history of the American theater because within a year a complete revolution had been effected in the business.

The booking of attractions was emanc.i.p.ated from curb and cafe; a theatrical contract became an accredited and licensed instrument. The Syndicate became a clearing-house for the theatrical manager and the play-producer, and the medium through which they did business with each other. Charles Frohman contributed his growing chain of theaters to the organization and secured a one-sixth interest in it which he retained up to the time of his death.

Once launched, the Syndicate proceeded to ride the tempest, for the biggest storm in all American theatrical history soon began to develop.

Out of the long turmoil came a whole new line-up in the business. It affected Charles Frohman less than any of his immediate a.s.sociates in the big combination because, first of all, he was a pa.s.sive member, and, second, he had a kingdom all his own. Yet the story of these turbulent years is so inseparably linked up with the development of the drama in this country that it is well worth rehearsing.

Although the Syndicate standardized the theatrical contract and made efficient and economical booking possible, it did not immediately secure the willing co-operation of some of the best-known traveling stars of the day. They included Mrs. Fiske, Richard Mansfield, Joseph Jefferson, Nat C. Goodwin, Francis Wilson (then in comic opera), and James A.

Herne. They were great popular favorites and had been accustomed to appear at stated intervals in certain theaters in various parts of the country. They booked their own "time" and had a more or less personal relation with the lessees and managers of the theaters in which they appeared.

The Syndicate began to book these stars as it saw fit and as they could be best fitted into the country-wide scheme. A scale of terms was arranged that was regarded as equitable both to the attraction and the local manager.

These stars, however, refused to be booked in this way. They denied the right of the new organization to say when and where they should play.

Out of this denial came the famous revolt against the Syndicate which blazed intermittently for more than two decades.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _FRANCIS WILSON_]

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

Chief among the insurgents was Mrs. Fiske, who had returned to the stage in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," a dramatization of Thomas Hardy's great novel. Her husband and manager, Harrison Gray Fiske, was editor and publisher of _The Dramatic Mirror_, which became the voice of protest.

Mrs. Fiske refused to appear in Syndicate theaters, and she hired independent houses all over the country. Such places were few and far between in those days, and she was forced to play in public halls, even skating-rinks.