Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 56

The last years of Charles Frohman's life were racked with physical pain that strained his courageous philosophy to the utmost. Yet he faced this almost incessant travail just as he had faced all other emergencies--with composure.

One day in 1912 he fell on the porch of the house at White Plains and hurt his right knee. It gave him considerable trouble. At first he believed that it was only a bad bruise. In a few days articular rheumatism developed. It affected all of his joints, and it held him in a thrall of agony until the end of his life.

Shortly after his return to the city (he now lived at the Hotel Knickerbocker) he was compelled to take to his bed. For over six months he was a prisoner in his apartment, suffering tortures. Yet from this pain-racked post he tried to direct his large affairs. There was a telephone at his bedside, and he used it until weakness prevented him from holding the receiver.

He could not go to the theater, so the theater was brought to him. More than one preliminary rehearsal was held in his drawing-room. This was particularly true of musical pieces. The music distracted him from his pain.

Though prostrate with pain, his dogged determination to keep on doing things held. Barrie sent him the ma.n.u.script of a skit called "A Slice of Life." It was a brilliant satire on the modern play. Frohman picked Ethel Barrymore (who was then playing in "Cousin Kate" at the Empire), John Barrymore, and Hattie Williams to do it, and the rehearsals were held in the manager's rooms at the Knickerbocker.

Frohman was as much interested in this one-act piece as if it had been a five-act drama. His absorption in it helped to divert his mind from the pain that had sadly reduced the once rotund body.

With "A Slice of Life" he introduced another one of the many innovations that he brought to the stage. The play was projected as a surprise. No announcement of t.i.tle was made. The advertis.e.m.e.nts simply stated that Charles Frohman would present "A Novelty" at the Empire Theater at eight o'clock on a certain evening.

Frohman was unable to attend the opening performance, so he wrote a little speech which was spoken by William Seymour. The speech was rehea.r.s.ed as carefully as the play. A dozen times the stage-director delivered it before his chief, who indicated the various phrases to be emphasized.

It was during the era of the New Theater when the so-called "advanced drama" was much exploited. Frohman had little patience with this sort of dramatic thing. The little speech conveys something of his satirical feeling about the millionaire-endowed theatrical project which was then agitating New York.

Here is the speech as Frohman wrote it:

_Ladies and Gentlemen:--My appearance here to-night is by way of apology. I am here representing Mr. Charles Frohman--you may have heard of him--the manager of this theater, the Empire._

_His idea in announcing a novelty in connection with Miss Barrymore's play, "Cousin Kate," was really for the purpose of getting you here once in time for the ringing up of the curtain.

This will be a special performance of a play to be given by a few rising members of the School of Acting connected with this theater, the Empire, of which he is proud--very proud. It is not an old modern play, but what is called to-day "The Advanced Drama," made possible here to-night by the momentary holiday of the New Theater, and it is called "A Slice of Life."_

During those desperate days when, like Heinrich Heine, he seemed to be lying in a "mattress grave," his dauntless humor never forsook him, as this little incident will show: Some years previous, Gillette suffered a breakdown from overwork. When the actor-playwright went to his home at Hartford to recuperate his sister remonstrated with him.

"You must stop work for a long while," she said. "That man Frohman is killing you." Gillette afterward told Frohman about it.

Frohman now lay on a bed of agony, and Gillette came to see him. The sick man remembered the episode of the long ago, and said, weakly, to his visitor:

"Gillette, tell your sister that _you_ are killing me."

With the martyrdom of incessant pain came a ripening of the man's character. Frohman developed a great admiration for Lincoln. Often he would ask Gillette to read him the famous "Gettysburg Address." Simple, haunting melodies like "The Lost Chord" took hold of him. Marie Doro was frequently summoned to play it for him on the piano. Although his courage did not falter, he looked upon men and events with a larger and deeper philosophy.

During that first critical stage of the rheumatism he sank very low. His two devoted friends, Dillingham and Paul Potter, came to him daily. Each had his regular watch. Dillingham came in the morning and read and talked with the invalid for hours. He managed to bring a new story or a fresh joke every day.

Potter reported at nine in the evening and remained until two o'clock in the morning, or at whatever hour sleep came to the relief of the sick man. One of the compensations of those long vigils was the phonograph.

Frohman was very fond of a tune called "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." The nurse would put this record in the machine and then leave. When it ran out, Potter, who never could learn how to renew the instrument, simply turned the crank again. There were many nights when Frohman listened to this famous rag-time song not less than twenty times. But he did not mind it.

In his illness Frohman was like a child. He was afraid of the night. He begged Potter to tell him stories, and the author of so many plays spun and unfolded weird and wonderful tales of travel and adventure. Like a child, too, Frohman kept on saying, "More, more," and often Potter went on talking into the dawn.

Potter, like all his comrades in that small and devoted group of Frohman intimates, did his utmost to s.h.i.+eld his friend from hurt. When Frohman launched a new play during those bedridden days Potter would wait until the so-called "bull-dog" editions of the morning papers (the very earliest ones) were out. Then he would go down to the street and get them. If the notice was favorable he would read it to Frohman. If it was unfriendly Potter would say that the paper was not yet out, preferring that the manager read the bad news when it was broad daylight and it could not interfere with his sleep.

The humor and comrades.h.i.+p which always marked Frohman's close personal relations were not lacking in those nights when the life of the valiant little man hung by a thread. When all other means of inducing sleep failed, Potter found a sure cure for insomnia.

"Just as soon as I talked to Frohman about my own dramatic projects," he says, "he would fall asleep. So, when the night grew long and the travel stories failed, and even 'Alexander's Rag-Time Band' grew stale, I would start off by saying: 'I have a new play in mind. This is the way the plot goes.' Then Frohman's eyes would close; before long he would be asleep, and I crept noiselessly out."

Occasionally during those long conflicts with pain Frohman saw through the gla.s.s darkly. His intense and constant suffering, for the time, put iron into his well-nigh indomitable soul.

"I'm all in," he would say to Potter. "The luck is against me. The star system has killed my judgment. I no longer know a good play from a bad.

The sooner they 'sc.r.a.p' me the better."

His thin fingers tapped on the bedspread, and, like Colonel Newcome, he awaited the Schoolmaster's final call.

"You and I," he would continue, "have seen our period out. What comes next on the American stage? Cheap prices, I suppose. Best seats everywhere for a dollar, or even fifty cents; with musical shows alone excepted. Authors' royalties cut to ribbons; actors' salaries pared to nothing. Popular drama, b.l.o.o.d.y, murderous, ousting drawing-room comedy.

Crook plays, shop-girl plays, slangy American farces, nude women invading the auditorium as in Paris."

"And then?" asked Potter.

"Chaos," said he. "Fortunately you and I won't live to see it. Turn on the phonograph and let 'Alexander's Rag-time Band' cheer us up."

He got well enough to walk around with a stick, and with movement came a return of the old enthusiasm. A man of less indomitable will would have succ.u.mbed and become a permanent invalid. Not so with Frohman. He even got humor out of his misfortune, because he called his cane his "wife."

He became a familiar sight on that part of Broadway between the Knickerbocker Hotel and the Empire Theater as he walked to and fro. It was about all the walking he could do.

He kept on producing plays, and despite the physical hards.h.i.+ps under which he labored he attended and conducted rehearsals. With the pain settling in him more and more, he believed himself incurable. Yet less than four people knew that he felt that the old t.i.tanic power was gone, never to return.

The great war, on whose stupendous altar he was to be an innocent victim, affected him strangely. The horror, the tragedy, the wantonness of it all touched him mightily. Indeed, it seemed to be an obsession with him, and he talked about it constantly, unmindful of the fact that the cruel destiny that was shaping its b.l.o.o.d.y course had also marked him for death.

Early during the war he saw some verses that made a deep impression on him. They were called "In the Ambulance," and related to the experience of a wounded soldier. He learned them by heart, and he never tired of repeating them. They ran like this:

"_Two rows of cabbages; Two of curly greens; Two rows of early peas; Two of kidney-beans._"

_That's what he's muttering, Making such a song, Keeping all the chaps awake The whole night long._

_Both his legs are shot away, And his head is light, So he keeps on muttering All the blessed night:_

"_Two rows of cabbages; Two of curly greens; Two rows of early peas, And two of kidney-beans._"

It was Frohman's intense feeling about the war, that led him to produce "The Hyphen." Its rejection by the public hurt him unspeakably. Yet he regarded the fate of the play as just one more phase of the big game of life. He smiled and went his way.

The rheumatism still oppressed him, but he turned his face resolutely toward the future. War or peace, pain or relief, he was not to be deprived of his annual trip to England. He was involved in some litigation that required his presence in London. Besides, the city by the Thames called to him, and behind this call was the appeal of old and loved a.s.sociations. With all his wonted enthusiasm he wrote to his friends at Marlow telling them that he was coming over and that he would soon be in their midst.

Frohman now made ready for this trip. When he announced that he was going on the _Lusitania_ his friends and a.s.sociates made vigorous protest, which he derided with a smile. Thus, in the approach to death, just as in the path to great success, opposition only made him all the more decided. With regard to his sailing on the _Lusitania_, this tenacity of purpose was his doom.

Whether he had a premonition or not, the fact remains that he said and did things during the days before he sailed which uncannily suggested that the end was not unexpected. For one thing, he dictated his whole program for the next season before he started. It was something that he had never done before.

When Marie Doro came to his office to say good-by he pulled out a little red pocket note-book in which he jotted down many things and suddenly said:

"Queer, but the little book is full. There is no room for anything else."

Just as he was warned not to produce "The Hyphen," so was he now cautioned by anonymous correspondents (and even by mysterious telephone messages) not to take the _Lusitania_. But all this merely tightened his purpose.

He met the danger with his usual jest. On the day before he sailed he went up to bid his old friend and colleague, Al Hayman, good-by. Hayman, like all his a.s.sociates, warned him not to go on the _Lusitania_.

"Do you think there is any danger?" asked Frohman.

"Yes, I do," replied Hayman.