Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 41

"'C. F.' is lying ill at the Knickerbocker," he said to himself. "He may die. I must see him. This quarrel of ours is a great mistake."

He started to write a note to his old friend, when the telephone-bell rang. It was his business manager, Benjamin Roeder, who said:

"I have just had a telephone message from Charles Frohman. He wants to see you."

When Belasco told Roeder that he was just in the act of writing to Frohman to tell him that he wanted to see him, both men were amazed at the coincidence.

That night, when the few friends who gathered each evening at Frohman's bedside had gone, Belasco entered the sick-room at the Knickerbocker.

Frohman was so weak that he could hardly raise his hand. Belasco went to him, took his right hand in both of his, and the old comrades put together again the thread of their friends.h.i.+p just where it had been broken twelve years before.

They talked over the old days. Frohman, whose mind was always on the theater, suddenly said:

"Let's do a play together, David."

"All right," said Belasco.

"You name the play. I will get the cast, and we will rehea.r.s.e it together," added Frohman.

Out of this reconciliation came the magnificent revival of "A Celebrated Case," by D'Ennery and Cormon. The cast included Nat Goodwin, Otis Skinner, Ann Murdock, Helen Ware, Florence Reed, and Robert Warwick. On Frohman's recovery he undertook the rehearsals. Belasco came in at the end, but he had little to do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD

_CHARLES FROHMAN and DAVID BELASCO_

_A photograph taken in Boston April 3, 1915, just after the two had renewed their partners.h.i.+p, ending a separation of twenty years._]

Frohman and Belasco not only resumed their joint production of plays, but they resumed part of their old life together. Now began again their favorite diet of pumpkin and meringue pie and tea after the day's work was done. Night after night they met after the theater, just as they had done in the old Madison Square days when they went to O'Neil's, on Sixth Avenue, for their frugal repast, dreaming and planning their futures.

Now each man had become a great personage. Frohman was the amus.e.m.e.nt dictator of two worlds; Belasco, the acknowledged stage wizard of his time.

After a week in Boston the all-star cast in "A Celebrated Case" opened at the Empire Theater in New York. History repeated itself. Frohman and Belasco sat in the same place in the wings where they sat twenty-two years before at the launching of "The Girl I Left Behind Me," which dedicated the Empire. Now, as then, there were tumultuous calls for the producers. Again David tried to induce Charles to go out, but he said:

"No, you go, David, and speak for me. Stand where you did twenty-two years ago."

In 1915, as in 1893, Belasco went out and spoke Frohman's thanks and his own.

The revival of "A Celebrated Case" not only brought Frohman and Belasco together, but led to an agreement between them to do a production together every year.

There was a tragic hint of the fate which was shaping Charles Frohman's end in his last production on any stage. It was a war play called "The Hyphen," by Justus Miles Forman, the novelist. The scenes were laid in Pennsylvania, and the story dealt with the various attempts to unsettle the loyalty of German-Americans through secret agencies. The whole problem of the hyphenated citizen, which had complicated the American position in the great war, was set forth.

Even in his unconscious stage farewell, Charles was the pioneer, because the acceptance of "The Hyphen" and the prompt organization of the company established a new record in play-producing. Up to a certain Sat.u.r.day morning Charles Frohman had never heard of the play. That afternoon the ma.n.u.script was put into his hands and he read it. A messenger was sent off post-haste to find the author. In the mean time, Frohman engaged W. H. Thompson, Gail Kane, and a notable group of players for the cast, and gave orders for the construction of the scenery. Late that afternoon Mr. Forman called on Charles, whom he had never met. Without any further ado the manager said to the playwright-author:

"I am going to produce your play. We have nothing to discuss. A manager often discusses at great length the play that he does not intend to produce. Therefore all that I have to tell you is that your play is accepted. I have already engaged the chief actors needed, and the scenery was ordered two hours ago. I am glad to produce a play on this timely subject, but I am especially glad that it is an American who wrote it."

Charles was greatly interested in "The Hyphen." It was American to the core; it flouted treachery to the country of adoption; it appealed to his big sense of patriotism. He felt, with all the large enthusiasm of his nature, that he was doing a distinct national service in producing the piece. He personally supervised every rehearsal. He talked glowingly to his friends about it. At fifty-five he displayed the same bubbling optimism with regard to it that he had shown about his first independent venture.

Now began the last of the chain of dramatic events which ended in death.

As soon as "The Hyphen" was announced, Frohman began to get threatening letters warning him that it would be a mistake to produce so sensational a play in the midst of such an acute international situation.

Pro-Germans of incendiary tendency especially resented it. To all these intimations Frohman merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled. It made him all the more determined.

"The Hyphen" was produced April 19th at the Knickerbocker Theater before a hostile audience. Unpatriotic pro-Germans had packed the theater.

During the progress of the play the dynamite explosions in the Broadway subway construction outside were misinterpreted for bombs, and there was suppressed excitement throughout the whole performance.

The play was a failure. Yet Frohman's confidence in it was unimpaired.

He went to see it nearly every night of its short life in New York. He even sent it to Boston for a second verdict, but Boston agreed with New York. Like every production that bore the Charles Frohman stamp, he gave it every chance. Reluctantly he ordered up the notice to close.

Frohman became greatly attached to Forman. With his usual generosity he invited the author to accompany him on his approaching trip to England.

"I want you to come with me and meet Barrie and know some of my other English friends," Charles said, little dreaming that the invitation to a holiday was the beckoning hand of death to both.

XIV

STAR-MAKING AND AUDIENCES

During all these busy years Frohman had reigned supreme as king of star-makers. Under his persuasive sponsors.h.i.+p more men and women rose to stellar eminence than with all his fellow-managers combined. It was the very instinct of his life to develop talent, and it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction to see the artist emerge from the background into fame.

His att.i.tude in the matter of star-making was never better expressed than in one of his many playful moods with the pencil. Like Caruso, he was a caricaturist. Few things gave him more delight than to make a hasty sketch of one of his friends on any sc.r.a.p of paper that lay near at hand. He usually made these sketches just as he wrote most of his personal letters, with a heavy blue pencil.

On one occasion he was talking with Pauline Chase about making stars. A smile suddenly burst over his face; he seized pencil and paper and made a sketch of himself walking along at night and pointing to the moon with his stick. Under the picture he wrote, as if addressing the moon:

_Watch out, or I'll make a star out of you._

Once he said to Billie Burke, in discussing this familiar star subject:

"A star has a unique value in a play. It concentrates interest. In some respects a play is like a dinner. To be a success, no matter how splendidly served, the menu should always have one unique and striking dish that, despite its elaborate gastronomic surroundings, must long be remembered. This is one reason why you need a star in a play."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _MARIE TEMPEST_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _MME. n.a.z.iMOVA_]

Despite the fact, as the case of Ann Murdock shows, that Charles could literally lift a girl from the ranks almost overnight, he generally regarded the approach to stardom as a difficult and hard-won path. Just before the great European war, he made this comment to a well-known English journalist, who asked him how he made stars:

"Each of my stars has earned his or her position through honest advancement. If the President of the United States wants to reward a soldier he says to him, 'I will make you a general.' By the same process I say to an actor, 'I will make you a star.'

"All the stars under my management owe their eminence to their own ability and industry, and also to the fact that the American is an individual-loving public. In America we regard the workman first and the work second. Our imaginations are fired not nearly so much by great deeds as by great doers. There are stars in every walk of American life.

It has always been so with democracies. Caesar, Cicero, and the rest were public stars when Rome was at her best, just as in our day Roosevelt and others s.h.i.+ne.

"Far from fostering it, the star system as such has simply meant for me that when one of my stars finishes with a play, that play goes permanently on the shelf, no one ever hoping to muster together an audience for it without the original actor or actress in the star part.

"Vital acting in plays of consequence is the foundation of theatrical success. You have only to enumerate the plays to realize the drain even one management can make upon what is, after all, a limited supply of capable leading actors. This is because the American stage is short of leaders. There is a world of actors, but too few leading actors."

"What do you mean by leading actor?" he was asked.